Publication Series of the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna VOLUME 12

Transcultural

Transcultural Modernisms
Based on the findings of an interdisciplinary research project, Transcultural
Modernisms maps out the network of encounters, transnational influences, and
local appropriations of an architectural modernity manifested in various ways

Modernisms
in housing projects in India, Israel, Morocco, and China that served as exemplary
standard models, not only for Western societies. Three case studies of modernist
architectural projects realized in the era of decolonization form a basis for the
project, which further investigates specific social relations and the transcultural
character of building discourses at the height of modernism. Rather than build-

Model House
ing on the notion of modernism as having moved from the North to the South—
or from the West to the rest of the world—the emphasis in Transcultural Modern-
isms is on the exchanges and interrelations among international and local
actors and concepts, a perspective in which “modernity” is not passively received,

Research Group
but is a concept in circulation, moving in several different directions at once,
subject to constant renegotiation and reinterpretation. In this book, modernism
is not presented as a universalist and/or European project, but as marked by
cultural transfers and their global localization and translation.

(Ed.)
With contributions by Fahim Amir, Zvi Efrat, Eva Egermann, Nádia Farage, Gabu
Heindl, Moira Hille, Rob Imrie, Monica Juneja, Christian Kravagna, Christina
Linortner, Duanfang Lu, Marion von Osten, Anoma Pieris, Vikramāditya Prakāsh,
Susan Schweik, Felicity D. Scott, and Chunlan Zhao
Transcultural
Modernisms
 Transcultural
Modernisms
Model House
Research Group
Fahim Amir
Eva Egermann
Moira Hille
Jakob Krameritsch
Christian Kravagna
Christina Linortner
Marion von Osten
Peter Spillmann
Publication Series of the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna
(Editors)
Eva Blimlinger, Andrea B. Braidt, Karin Riegler (Series Eds.)
Volume 12
On the New Publication Series We are pleased to present this new volume in the publication series of the
Academy of Fine Arts Vienna. This book, published in cooperation with our
highly committed partner Sternberg Press, successfully embodies the series’
new concept, which is now devoted to central themes of contemporary
thought about art. The volumes in the series comprise collected contributions
on subjects that are the focus of discourse in terms of art theory, cultural
studies, art history, and research at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna and form
the quintessence of international study and discussion taking place in the
respective fields. Each volume is published in the form of an anthology edited
by staff members of the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna. Authors of high inter-
national repute are invited to write contributions dealing with the respective
areas of emphasis. Research activities such as international conferences,
lecture series, institute-specific research focuses, or research projects serve
as the points of departure for the individual volumes.

We should like to thank the editors, in particular Christian Kravagna and Moira
Hille, project leader Marion von Osten, and the authors for their outstanding
conceptual, scholarly, and artistically innovative work, the graphics team of
Surface for the new layout design, and Martina Dattes (Academy of Fine Arts
Vienna) for her editorial supervision and thorough support of the series. Special
thanks go to Sternberg Press for its constructive and creative partnership
with the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna.

The Rectorate of the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna

Eva Blimlinger, Andrea B. Braidt, Karin Riegler
 Contents

Editors: Moira Hille, Christian Kravagna, Marion von Osten

Translation: Erika Doucette, Emily Lemon, Sam Osborn
Copyediting: Emily Lemon, Erika Doucette, Gabrielle Cram Introduction
Proofreading: Charlotte Eckler Marion von Osten 12
Design: Surface, Frankfurt am Main/Berlin
Photo editing: Christina Linortner, Peter Spillmann
Webdesign and programming: Peter Spillmann, Michael Vögeli Transcultural Beginnings
Printing and binding: Generál Nyomda Szeged
Understanding Transculturalism
ISBN 978-3-95679-012-6 Monica Juneja and Christian Kravagna in Conversation 22

© 2013 Akademie der bildenden Künste Wien, Sternberg Press Transcultural Beginnings: Decolonization, Transculturalism, and the
All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in Overcoming of Race
part in any form. Christian Kravagna 34

This book is part of the research project

Model House-Mapping Transcultural Modernisms Around Chandigarh
http://www.transculturalmodernism.org
Supported by WWTF - Vienna Science and Technology Fund The Many Names of Chandigarh: An Index for Heritage Planning
Vikramāditya Prakāsh 50

Sternberg Press From Around a Modern House

Caroline Schneider Moira Hille 66
Karl-Marx-Allee 78
D-10243 Berlin Home/Nation/Gender: Modern Architectural Practices in Sri Lanka
www.sternberg-press.com Anoma Pieris and Moira Hille in Conversation 82
With Animals And Crip
Dwellers and Strayers: Modernist Zoopolitics in Post/colonial Worlds Buildings That Fit Society: The Modernist Ideal and the Social Production
Fahim Amir 94 of Ableist Spaces
Rob Imrie and Eva Egermann in Conversation 208
No Collar, No Master: Workers and Animals in the Modernization of
Rio de Janeiro 1903-04 Unlikely Encounters in the Fog: Crip Connections Within the Project
Nádia Farage 110 Model House
Eva Egermann 220

In China Searching for the International Deformed Nation: Or “Too Loud in Its
Patterns”
Mythopoeic Affairs: The Role of Vernacular Architecture in Susan Schweik and Eva Egermann in Conversation 230
Maoist China
Christina Linortner 130
Epilogue
Walking on Many Legs: Spatial Productions between State Socialism
and Third World Modernism in Maoist China So Many Reports, So Many Questions. For Instance: Is There Such a
Duanfang Lu and Christina Linortner in Conversation 144 Thing as Postcolonial Critical Planning?
Gabu Heindl 244
A Modernist Project in China: Gan-da-lei Mudhouses in Early Daqing
Chunlan Zhao 156
Biographies 256

From Casablanca to Be’er Sheva Acknowledgments 260

Non-Pedigreed Architecture
Felicity D. Scott and Marion von Osten in Conversation 172

Patios, Carpets, and No Pavilion: Model Housing in Morocco and Israel

Marion von Osten 180

An Architectural Overdose: On Planning Discourses of Late 1950s and

Early 1960s Architectural Projects in Israel
Zvi Efrat and Marion von Osten in Conversation 198
 Marion von Osten 13

Introduction
This publication is an outcome of the research project Model House–Mapping
Transcultural Modernisms, which investigated and mapped out the network of
encounters, transnational influences, and local appropriations of an architec-
tural modernity manifested in various ways in housing projects in India, Israel,
Marion von Osten Morocco, and China that served as exemplary standard models, not only for
Western societies. Based on three case studies of modernist architectural proj-
ects realized in the era of decolonization, the project covered specific social
relations and the transcultural character of building discourses at the height
of modernism. Rather than building on the notion of modernism as having
moved from the North to the South—or from the West to the rest of the world—
the emphasis in Model House was on the exchanges and interrelations among
international and local actors and concepts, a perspective in which “modernity”
is not passively received, but is a concept in circulation, moving in several dif-
ferent directions at once, subject to constant renegotiation and reinterpretation.

At the beginning of the research project, we were concerned with the ques-
tion of how the travel and building practices of both Western and non-Western
architects within colonial and postcolonial contexts set transnational knowl-
edge transfers in motion. Thus, the project studied the mutual migration of
discourses, people, and practices across geographical space. At the same
time, the experimental methods of the researchers—a team of artists, architects,
and humanities scholars—allowed the project to compare the local, social,
political, and discursive conditions under which the building projects were
realized, on the basis of different approaches in terms of material as well
as forms of interpretation. Throughout the project there was an ongoing ex-
change by publishing the research findings and other documents on a website
and database especially conceived for the project. These processes made it
possible to examine whether the concrete local contexts produced specific
methods, results, or even crises for the modernist planning certainties. More-
over, the assumption that spaces/places are characterized by the constant in-
teraction of many different actors under unequal conditions lead Model House
to employ a praxeological approach, which initially grasps everything as ac-
tion, i.e., perceiving of everything that exists as being endowed with agency.
The built environment is not simply something that is built and inhabited,
but that is formed through and in interaction with the given political, social,
technological, and economic conditions, public discourses, concepts, and ar-
tistic and scientific production. Thus, the basic question of the research team
was formulated in a deliberately open way: who or what builds a city or a city
district?

Against this background, in his doctoral research project, philosopher Fahim

Amir expands on the notion of transculturality by including dimensions of
nonhuman agency in architecture and urban planning, which have thus far
been neglected. Conceptual questions concerning the agency of nonhuman
14 Introduction Marion von Osten 15

animals as “other actors” in both the production of metropolitan and post/ colonial modernity, in which European architects had once played a formative
colonial spatiality and in the traces and manifestations of animality found in role, to a modernity of independence along with its actors. Some building
images and discourses surrounding architectural modernism, such as in Le projects adopted colonial building methods or a modernist vocabulary of
Corbusier’s early writings or in the planning discourse on Chandigarh, have forms—as in the case of Chandigarh—but in their realization employed local
provided new insights into the significance of nonhuman actors for modern methods of building and materials that were based on manual labor. And, at
planning discourse. Moreover, the interwovenness of modern architecture the same time, as the examples from China and Morocco show, there was
discourse and nonhuman animals as former co-dwellers is strongly linked to also a synthesis of regional architectural traditions and the modern language
discourses on biopolitics, epidemics, and hygiene, as Nádia Farage shows in of form. Can approaches to postmodern thought perhaps already be found at
her examination of the modernization of Rio de Janeiro. On the one hand, the the height of modernity, during the era of decolonization? How did this para-
erasure of nonhuman animals and rural practices from public view in the digm shift correspond with the postcolonial condition and its actors—and did
modern city at the beginning of the twentieth century, which continues to it, or did they, bring it about?
this day, mirrors processes of “class–making” and the introduction of new forms
of industrial production, but as Farage highlights, on the other hand, it also The increased global interest in local, vernacular forms of building in modern
shows how new movements of resistance and solidarity were formed between architecture since the end of the Second World War, and a turn toward the
human and nonhuman animals. use, everyday practices and self-building of the inhabitants themselves, and
toward the relation and relationships between the private and public spheres
Politics of segregation and erasure that also constituted social movements are seem to indicate a change in perspective. Issues of vernacular architecture
reflected in artist Eva Egermann’s interview with Susan Schweik, in which and regionalism were central issues of debate within the Congrès International
she speaks about the Ugly Laws in modern city policies and the City Beautiful d’Architecture Moderne (CIAM) in the 1950s or in UN chartas on housing.
Movement in the United States, which had radical effects on disabled and These discourses were also popularized through Bernard Rudofsky’s famous
homeless persons as well as on international planning ideologies. In the inter- 1964 exhibition “Architecture without Architects” at the Museum of Modern
view with Rob Imrie, the question of architecture as an enabling practice Art, New York. As a result, a number of regionalist concepts that utilized ver-
entails a critique of the normative approach to the human body within architec- nacular architecture and regional building traditions in various ways emerged
ture. Since Eva Egermann’s doctoral research also focused on bodily differ- around the globe. However, as the conversation with architecture historian
ence in the context of architectural modernity and the spaces where disability/ Felicity D. Scott shows, the discourse on the vernacular within building prac-
ableism intersect with urban planning, the Model House research collective tice had many outcomes and interpretations. It was used for very different
was also able to address space as a form of representation of social structures, planning concepts and highly diverse practices. It became a style or basis for
as a product of power relations and of social, economical, and cultural dis- “climate sensitive” approaches in modernist housing programs. On colonial
courses and practices. grounds references to the vernacular had bio-political implications and served
colonial apartheid politics. In postwar Britain it affected non-plan movements
With this conceptual framework, current approaches from Postcolonial Studies, that celebrated the self-builder and local building practices. Thus one result
such as the idea of a multiple or “entangled” modernity, are not simply applied of the transdisciplinary research process was the specification of the contextual
to the discourse of modern architecture, but are also expanded upon through framings, in which the vernacular functioned as an agent with very different
adding other perspectives from ideology critique or queer perspectives on outcomes.
the production of space. This methodological openness enabled us to bring
specific urban planning models into conversation with one another and to A case study conducted by architect Christina Linortner in collaboration with
explore potential connections or differences. Simultaneously, inquiring about her research fellows, historian Jakob Krameritsch and artist Eva Egermann,
the actors and agency involved in architecture and urban planning also investigates postwar urbanist projects of various actors in China that employ
opened up perspectives that could account for counter-narratives, resistance, notions of the premodern, the regional, and the vernacular. These typologies
and unruliness. and practices had been a subject of interest for modernist architects such as
Margarete Schütte-Lihotzky and Werner Hebebrand in their travels to China in
In the course of the research process, particularly with the focus on the concrete the 1950s. The interview with architectural historian Duanfang Lu, whose theo-
building projects in China, India, and Israel, the research team was confronted retical basis strongly refers to Linortner’s research, highlights how modernity
with the question of how to grasp and describe the transformation from a grappled with different histories, cultures, nationalities, and ethnicities, while
16 Introduction Marion von Osten 17

also pointing to the intertwined relationship between modernity, scarcity, and this regional approach is not easily comparable with other regionalisms, such
the built environment, specifically after the Great Leap Forward in China. as the UN proclamation of that time, and that De Silva’s translocal approach
The article by the architect Chunlan Zhao argues that the gan-da-lei housing took ideas from the modernist revaluation of traditional crafts in addition to
in the new town of Daqing, which was derived from a local vernacular hous- taking into account the social-political aesthetics of the colonial/postcolonial
ing typology, has metaphorically gained a double meaning: as a basic living domestic sphere.
unit and as a working method, it represented both past traditions and Mao’s
imperative to “build the country through thrift and hard work.” In this book, modernism is not presented as a universalist and/or European
project, but as marked by cultural transfers and their global localization and
A second case study conducted by artist and writer Marion von Osten in col- translation. Thus, as art historian Christian Kravagna points out in his article,
laboration with artist Peter Spillmann focused on “cultural-specific housing a central theoretical precondition for the project at large was how the distinct
projects for Muslims” developed by Michel Écochard under French colonial meaning of the transcultural can be described as a concept and compared
rule in Casablanca, Morocco, which also had an impact on new town pro- to other concepts that have been used to understand phenomena of cultural
grams in Israel after 1948, such as the model neighborhood in Be’er Sheva. change within situations of culture contact. In reference to the historical focus
This study raises the question as to which shifts in meaning can be traced of the Model House research project, namely the period of decolonization in
when a building typology—in itself a vernacular-modern synthesis—travels from the mid-twentieth century, Kravagna produces a historical perspective on the
a specific location and political conditions to another political context/territory. term and the meanings of transculturality by examining a range of theoretical
While the patio house in Casablanca consciously claimed to Arabize modern models that developed between the 1920s and 1970s. The many ways in which
planning by creating housing for the colonized working class that segregated the notion of the transcultural is “loosely” used or the belief that transcultur-
them from the colonial city center, the Israeli adaptation transformed a similar ality might describe a world where difference is dissolved harmoniously are
concept of the patio house into a desert climate-specific, regional approach. critically examined in the interview with art historian Monica Juneja. Moreover,
Nonetheless, both projects share similar biopolitical implications, as they Kravagna’s finding that the formation of transcultural thinking often took
were both built to accommodate a large influx of people. Housing programs place in transdisciplinary milieus where scholarship, art practice, and political
were seen as measures for governing the arriving populations who were movements mutually transform one another has greatly informed the experi-
mainly non-European in both cases. In the interview with Jerusalem architect mental layout of the research project itself.
and curator Zvi Efrat, he demonstrates how the search for new typologies
and models in architecture and urban planning was associated with the historical From the very beginning, the Model House project facilitated and intensified
project of Zionism and nation building in Israel. However, in addition, the the exchange between researchers from different disciplines and the integra-
new “models” also express a specific architectural practice in which social tion of a multiplicity of text forms, media, and aesthetic practices. The re-
questions are reduced to new design concepts. search-based digital database, which is represented in this publication in the
form of screenshots, was an important conceptual tool for exchanging, col-
The third case study conducted by artist Moira Hille, in research collaboration lecting, and analyzing ideas within the project. Designed and conceptualized
with philosopher Fahim Amir, applies a praxeological perspective in their by artist Peter Spillmann, in collaboration with the historian Jakob Krameritsch
analysis of the construction of the new city Chandigarh as a Euro-Asian enter- and the programmer Michael Vögeli, the database and website not only en-
prise in independent India. Against this background, architect, urbanist, and abled but also constantly visualized the research process and its different steps.
historian Vikramāditya Prakāsh’s article shows that the building process of this The result of this art- and design-based methodology was the creation of a
large new town as part of the nation building process in India also created polylogical and multiperspectival narration by a number of different speakers
divisions between specific religious groups and separated the rural and the as well as visual and textual materials. The potential of this dialogical method
modern population. Furthermore, in a script for the video Around Chandigarh, is not in the publication of information but, in the sense of Dipesh Chakrabarty,
Moira Hille traces the history of architect Minnette De Silva, the representative in describing the project of modernism from the perspective of a series of
of India and Ceylon at the CIAM Conference in Aix-en-Provence in 1953. De localized events and specific actors, instead of continuing to tread the heroic
Silva established a regional, modern-architecture approach combining local path of universalism. By mapping and publishing first insights into self-generated
handcrafts and skills with modern construction methods and the use of local online cartographies, a collective process was set in motion that resulted in
materials, allowing for the construction of modern, low-price houses. In the the “Habitat Chart,” a collective output, which architect Gabu Heindl reflects
interview with architectural historian Anoma Pieris, it is once again clear that on in her article in this publication. With her epilogue and the other contributions
18 Introduction 19

to this book, the reader will not simply find a historical reevaluation of mod-
ernist projects under postcolonial conditions but also inquiries about the
consequences of this project’s research-based approach in addition to con-
templations related to contemporary design practices and the responsibility
of architects, designers, and planners today.
Transcultural
Beginnings
 Monica Juneja and Christian Kravagna in Conversation 23

Understanding
Christian Kravagna: In German-speaking countries, even within academic
circles, we are often told that philosopher Wolfgang Welsch was the one to
introduce the term “transculturality” in the 1990s. This supports the idea
that it is a very new concept within cultural discourse. However, as we are

Transculturalism
both well aware, the term “transculturation” has been in use at least since
1940 through the work of Fernando Ortiz, and since around the 1920s, theories
of transculturality have also played a key role in attempts to overcome the
concept of “race” and notions of culture based on nation/ethnicity. What are
your historic-theoretical points of reference for addressing transculturality?
Could it be that all that is left for German-speaking scholars is to simply ac-
Monica Juneja and Christian Kravagna in Conversation knowledge its delayed arrival (and, on top of that, that a German philosopher
has been accredited with introducing the term)? Or would you say that,
within this discursive context, there were other precursors of the current ap-
proach to transculturality?

Monica Juneja: Though it might seem a truism, it must be observed that

transculturation or the transcultural as an analytic approach inevitably
builds on the groundwork of theoretical approaches of the past few de-
cades, often indirectly—the linguistic-cum-cultural turn, gender studies,
postcolonial studies—whose insights it responds to, refines and takes in
different directions. The term itself, “transculturation” does indeed go
back to the anthropologist Fernando Ortiz in his study of the sugar and
tobacco cultures in colonial and postcolonial Cuba. While Ortiz saw this
as a unidirectional process that entailed an initial loss followed by the
emergence of something new, the transcultural in its present usage has
become a concept and a perspective that is multidirectional and multi-
valent. In Ortiz’s understanding—and this was an important observation—
the explanatory potential of transculturation went beyond that of accul-
turation, in that it helped reconceptualize processes of adaptation as
transformation. Furthermore, his analysis directs our attention to the nexus
between objects and practices. In recent years, the transcultural has
become a buzzword of sorts, used by a range of scholars in different, not
always consistent ways and framed by diverse disciplinary contexts; this
calls for a certain critical distance. At times the term is loosely used to stand
for “cross-cultural” or “intercultural” in other contexts to denote a sensi-
tivity to differences and the competences required within a multicultural
society (e.g., in the case of fields designated as “transcultural” nursing
or psychiatry); in German historical writing of the late twentieth century
it was used as an adjective to qualify civilizational entities beyond the
frontiers of Europe (“transkulturell vergleichende Geschichtswissenschaft”)
– here too, it is important to critically question the historical underpin-
nings of these taxonomic entities in the first place.
24 Understanding Transculturalism Monica Juneja and Christian Kravagna in Conversation 25

The definition proffered by Wolfgang Welsch has been generally regarded was premised on the notion that life worlds of identifiable groups were
as a major theoretical landmark in that Welsch deployed transculturality ethnically bound, internally cohesive and linguistically homogeneous
as a heuristic device to critique the conceptualization of culture ascribed spheres. Culture, applied as a conceptual category to societies, past and
to Herder and the Enlightenment—i.e., a view of culture as a closed, in- present, invariably existed in tension with unruly and contradictory
ternally cohesive, and linguistically homogeneous sphere—which, accord- trends generated by mobility and extended contacts that have character-
ing to Welsch, is “untenable” today as it is no longer commensurate with ized regions and societies over centuries. The terms “transculture/trans-
the experience of modern societies. “Transculturality,” he writes, “is a con- culturality” are an explicit critique of this notion, for the prefix “trans-”
sequence of the inner differentiation and complexity of modern cultures.” enables emancipation from the concept. Transculturality is about spatial
This makes it a more appropriate concept in his view than intercultural mobility, circulation or flows, an insight drawn from studies of globalization,
or multicultural, both of which sustain a hermetic and fixed idea of culture but is neither synonymous with nor reducible to these. It focuses on pro-
instead of transcending it. Finally, Welsch considers the traditional Herd- cesses through which forms emerge in local contexts within circuits of
erian view of culture as “normatively dangerous,” and hence the trans- exchange. Contact, interaction, and entanglement make the transcultural
cultural—equated automatically with the cosmopolitan or the syncretic— a field constituted relationally, so that asymmetry, as one attribute of
is seen as a political and ethical corrective to ethnocentrism and relationships (together with categories such as difference, non-equivalence,
xenophobia. dissonance), is an element that makes up this field. This attention to
uncovering the dynamics of those formations both in the past and the
While the perspective of the Heidelberg Cluster “Asia and Europe in a present constituted through regimes of circulation and exchange distin-
Global Context” shares Welsch’s critique of a bounded notion of culture, guishes our understanding from that of Welsch—our research projects
it departs from Welsch’s position in some significant ways. To begin go back to antiquity and extend into the present. In other words, our re-
with, Welsch’s critique of existing notions of culture as obsolete is premised search aims to investigate the multiple ways in which difference is nego-
on the assumption that border crossings and cultural mixing are unique tiated within contacts and encounters, through selective appropriation,
attributes of modernity. This is an approach which he shares with other mediation, translation, re-historicizing and rereading of signs, alterna-
cultural anthropologists who seek to spotlight the radical break that con- tively through non-communication, rejection or resistance—or through a
temporary globalization has effected with the past by obscuring earlier succession/coexistence of any of these. Exploring the possible range of
historical forms of mobility and connectedness that have been character- transactions built into these dynamics works as a safeguard against polar
istic of cultures over centuries, pre-dating the advent of modern com- conceptions of identity and alterity, equally against dichotomies be-
munication and global capital. Secondly, Welsch conceives of transcul- tween complete absorption and resistance, which characterize certain
turality as stasis, as a characterization of culture, and of the multiple kinds of postcolonial scholarship, or more recent studies of cultural dif-
identities of those who inhabit it. His analytical model does not address ference such as Hans Belting’s Florence and Baghdad: Renaissance Art
issues of processuality. And finally, his normative approach, which sees and Arab Science (2011), which, while seeking to write a connected his-
transculturality simply as an ethical corrective and postulates an opposition tory of perspectival vision, ends up dealing with Asia bringing in a form
between “folklore” or “rhetoric” and the “real” syncretic substance of of cultural essentialism through the backdoor.
cultures, stands in the way of historicizing ethnocentric notions of culture
as ideological constructs, which are equally embedded within and CK: In my research on the early history of theories of transculturality, I mainly
products of transcultural processes and exist in a constant state of ten- focused on the “Black Atlantic.” Here, the beginnings of Transcultural Studies
sion with alternative positions, fueling virulent conflicts. I will return to can be traced back to the early twentieth century. I have hardly done any
this point while answering your last question. work on Asia. In which contexts can early ideas of Transcultural Studies be
found there?
Our understanding, while it draws upon insights of previous scholarship,
views transculturation as denoting a process of transformation that MJ: Theoretical approaches in different areas of study are embedded in
unfolds through extended contacts and relationships between cultures. and shaped by historical processes and identity formations of the con-
The concept can be used to refer both to a concrete object of investiga- cerned actors. Individuals and communities living in the diaspora, often
tion as well as an analytical method. The discursive category of “culture,” in contexts marked by racism and other asymmetries of power, provided
as it emerged in the social sciences in tandem with the modern nation, some of the earliest impulses for transcending existing disciplinary
26 Understanding Transculturalism Monica Juneja and Christian Kravagna in Conversation 27

frameworks to theorize histories of slavery and a shared past that could a setting that already entails a process of negotiating concepts and terms.
not be contained within the boundaries of the present-day nation states. Are there different conceptions of transculturality within the Cluster and if
In a number of Asian contexts, on the other hand, disciplinary formations so, do you consider them to be based on something other than differences
in the humanities—such as history and art history—were shaped by anti- in region and/or traditions of thought? Is there an “internal” debate on the
colonial nationalism so that disciplines came to be closely tied to identity term and its meaning within the Cluster? Or is there a kind of general approach
formations around the nation: the nation was thus the unit of analysis; a to transculturality that is agreed upon for this project? Within the Cluster,
narrative of its unique achievements, past and present, explained purely what disciplines are considered to be forerunners or innovators for transcul-
from within, was transmitted through disciplines and institutions—the tural thought?
university, the museum, and the heritage industry. All these left little space
for transcultural frameworks. While Postcolonial Studies—in the Indian MJ: While it is true that the Cluster brings together researchers with dif-
context Subaltern Studies—brought in fresh and critical voices, which ferent regional specializations—European and Asian studies—their primary
questioned the narratives of national solidarity by shifting the focus to the concern in seeking a common platform is to be able to overcome the
margins and repressed voices, their framework continued to be deter- hermetic isolation of their disciplines, which have left their mark on the
mined by the territorial frontiers of the nation state. More recently, histo- local material they study. The result is a large, grey area of unasked
rians have written about “connected” or “entangled histories,” or have questions and unstudied links; an equally large range of anomalies that
framed their subjects of study as being connected by bodies of water— refuse to fit into the existing explanatory patterns; and, most irritatingly,
the Indian Ocean, the South Pacific; anthropologists now focus on dias- a vicious circle where the angle and selection dictated by a “nation state
poras, mobility, and porous boundaries; art history, on the other hand, default mode,” which itself has not been subjected to scrutiny, leads to
has by and large remained assiduously tied to a paradigm that precludes results that, in turn, fortify the unproven assumptions on the basis of which
insights into cultural dynamics and entanglements, which question nar- they had been gained in the first place. Transculturality thus becomes a
ratives of cultural purity and originality. Institutional structures prevailing heuristic tool, an analytical mode rather than a theoretical given: its ex-
in Western universities have maintained the boundaries between the planatory potential needs to be elaborated and substantiated by empirical
area studies and the “mainstream,” which has been a major hurdle to in- research. The focus of our research is not on the existence of the trans-
vestigations adopting a transcultural approach. It is therefore not sur- cultural per se but on its dynamics—which then requires linguistic and
prising that the critical edge of perspectives such as the Black Atlantic is cultural competences across departments and regional specializations.
rare in an Asian context. More recently, however, writings on globaliza- Each of these necessarily implies certain disciplinary understandings, prac-
tion, migration, and modern media—mainly authored by scholars of Asia tices, and canons, which then have to stand the test of critical reread-
located in the West—have hailed a world without boundaries, marked by ings and fresh questions. Our Cluster has not sought to set up a separate
global flows (Appadurai), which, in a sense, involve a rejection of localized new framework of Transcultural Studies outside of existing fields, rather
bounded cultures, thereby providing an initial impulse to transcultural to draw upon the competences of these fields as an indispensable asset
studies—as has been done in the first phase of our Cluster. Yet here too, for a transcultural approach. Having said this, however, there is a con-
our research has brought us to a point where transcultural studies can stant need to negotiate inner differences—one example has been the dif-
refine the analysis of flows by looking more closely and critically at the ferent ways in which disciplines—anthropology, Indology, or art history—
dialectic between the dissolution of certain boundaries and the reaffir- define the concept of culture. An “avant-garde,” if we so wish to term it,
mation of other kinds of difference, of how de-territorialization is invari- can be identified less in terms of a discipline per se, but rather can be
ably followed by re-territorialization. Moreover the challenge now is to found in areas of scholarship and subjects, which individual scholars or
find a language to theorize the complex morphology of flows, to supple- groups have defined innovatively and boldly across disciplines—studies
ment macro-perspectives by descending into the thicket of localities— of migration and diasporas across time, of transregional literary public
urban and rural, past and present, central and at the margins—in which spheres, studies of cosmic kingship in pre- and early modern Eurasian
the dynamics of actual encounters involving a host of actors become regions, or studies of slavery, to name a few.
more clearly evident and meaningful.
CK: My own research has shown that there is a remarkable relationship be-
CK: In the “Europe and Asia Cluster,” there are researchers from different re- tween transculturality and transdisciplinarity (Fernando Ortiz uses literary
gions and different traditions of thought working in collaboration. This implies parables; Édouard Glissant is a poet and theoretician; Melville Herskovits
28 Understanding Transculturalism Monica Juneja and Christian Kravagna in Conversation 29

draws on the artistic protagonists of the New Negro Movement). Have you political logic of modern nation states nor according to civilizational or
made similar observations? cultural categories drawn up by the universal histories of the nineteenth
century, but are continually defined as participants in and as contingent
MJ: Yes, indeed, a transcultural framework requires the synergetic inter- upon the historical relationships in which they are implicated. As such,
action of disciplines. As an art historian, I am drawn to certain conceptu- transculturality is not just another metaphor or umbrella term for “cultural
alizations of literary phenomena that highlight the tension between flows,” “hybridity,” or any cognate deployed to capture exchanges that
national belonging and the need to make the world your canvas. The transgress cultural, linguistic, and material boundaries. As understood
study of migrant objects also involves grappling with their translation here, it rather operates on a different register and highlights the procedural
into different media—image, text, political treatise, or myth. character of a broad variety of phenomena, including flows, entangle-
ments, and other forms of circulation, and confronts us with the challenge
CK: There are several different concepts of culture as a process of amalgama- of finding a precise language to capture the morphology of the relation-
tion and translation (syncretism, creolization, hybridity), which were initially ships built into these phenomena.
created to address certain regional and historical situations (the Antilles in
Glissant, Cuba in Ortiz, Brazil in Arthur Ramos and Gilberto Freyre, etc.), all CK: The correlation between transculturality in modern architecture and
of which had close ties with colonialism. In recent years, these situated terms decolonization is one of the central themes in our research project Model
have been “globalized” and many of the authors who played a key role in House–Mapping Transcultural Modernisms. During the era of decolonization,
the development of transcultural thought have commented on this process. the West exported models of modernist architecture to the colonies, where
For instance, Édouard Glissant has stated that “the whole world is becoming they underwent processes of transcultural appropriation and transformation.
creolized”; and Stuart Hall has also made similar statements. Do you think In part, the same thing happened in the early reception of Transcultural
we can now speak of a kind of globalization of the transcultural? If so, would Studies within the Euro-American context (e.g., Ortiz, Glissant). They are in-
this also mean discounting the link between transculturality and “contra- volved in political projects. Based on your research, do you also see this
modernity” (Homi K. Bhabha) or “counter-culture of modernity” (Paul Gilroy)? connection between transculturality and decolonization?
In other words: is it important to distinguish between different conceptual-
izations of transculturality and their use? MJ: Decolonization is per se a transcultural project, however, viewing it
through this lens allows you to transcend binaries of different kinds:
MJ: Transcultural Studies owes its formative impulses to concepts such as those in which culture is seen as flowing from high metropolitan centers
“hybridity” or “creolization,” which, at the time they were formulated, to absorptive colonial peripheries, where colonies are evacuated of
sensitized us to border crossings and cultural mixing. Together with their agency through asymmetries of power; or even in cases where colonies
“globalization,” these concepts have, however, suffered dilution from have recast and reconfigured models exported to them, the matrix re-
inflationary usage. The explanatory power of hybridity, for instance, remains mains the colonizer-colony binary. A transcultural view allows you to lo-
limited by the presupposition, implicit in the term’s indelible biologist cate these processes in a global context that transcends this opposition
overtones, of “pure” cultures, which then somehow blend or merge into and views cultural phenomena as multi-sited interactions. One example
a “hybrid” that is treated as a state beyond enunciation or articulation. of this approach is Partha Mitter’s study of modernism in South Asia,
This and other terms, such as creolization or métissage, often end up as which he plots on a global scale that looks beyond the bipolar model of
theoretical straightjackets into which experiences of global relationships colonial agency that introduced modernist art as part of its civilizing
can be accommodated without further investigation of the processes mission and the nationalist Indian response to it. I have worked on the
and agents involved—and thus at the cost of the precision necessary for architectural history of the central governmental complex of New Delhi
grasping their specificity and dynamics. In that sense, I would argue after it was declared the new capital of India in 1912. This work showed
against the conflation of transcultural with these terms. A transcultural that classicizing architecture was very much part of a multi-pronged
perspective, premised as it is on an understanding of culture that is in a transcultural relationship that connects European capital cities with others,
condition of being made and remade, does not take historical units and such as Washington DC, Pretoria, and Canberra. In these cases, archi-
boundaries as given, but rather constitutes them as a subject of investi- tects from the European continent migrated to Chicago, and then Peking,
gation, as products of spatial and cultural displacements. Units of inves- creating a classicizing mold for capital cities. This phenomenon can be
tigation are constituted neither mechanically following the territorial-cum- fully grasped when a model is transplanted to and translated within
30 Understanding Transculturalism Monica Juneja and Christian Kravagna in Conversation 31

multiple sites. Its location within a different matrix, and the close exami- objects appropriated in different historical contexts of the past from cul-
nation of the complex local negotiations involved, allow us to understand tures across the world, which now are present in the displays of Western
and theorize the proliferation of multiple translations. museums. What are the ethical issues involved here? Does the circum-
stance that the British Museum hardly possesses any objects of “British”
CK: During a discussion at the International Congress of Art Historians in art make it less of a “national” museum and rather a “universal” museum,
Nuremberg, art historian Horst Bredekamp called for an end of postcolonialism. as James Cuno has termed it? Here, too, we need to make a distinction
Only when postcolonialism (and the “guilty conscience” it instills in “us”) is between the institutional processes of creating a museum and the stories
finally a thing of the past, will we be able to approach research on global art the objects themselves narrate. The institution itself is an enterprise im-
history in an unfraught manner. Although radically phrased, Bredekamp is plicated in nation-building—nationalist sentiment, however, is not stable
not alone in his opinion. Parul Mukherji has critically noted that more and and unchanging over time but historically formed. Museums of the nine-
more congresses (also in English-speaking contexts) are tending towards a teenth century were formed by contexts of the nation and empire—in
transcultural paradigm in place of postcolonial perspectives. The critical this sense, the British Museum does not need to possess “British” objects
issue regarding this trend is the loss of the political. So, would this mean to qualify as “national”; its collection is about and part of the nation’s
that transculturality is just an academically sanctioned version of postcolo- history of collecting through different means from across the globe—and
nial critique? the transactions involved here—archaeological enterprises, gifting, war-
fare, and the art market—need to be made transparent. In today’s context,
MJ: While I share the view that the practice of disciplines is an ethical nations cultivate a self-image that is not identical with that of the nine-
undertaking, ethics is not something that can be reduced to ascribing teenth or early twentieth century: so, if reunified Germany seeks to bring
“blame” or “guilt” in absolute terms to individual scholars. In this sense, together its collections of non-European art in a museum of the world,
postcolonial perspectives are more about a methodological critique of housed behind the restored façade of an erstwhile Prussian castle, this is
existing disciplinary practices being complicit with asymmetries of power also a nationalist enterprise of the present, to claim a cosmopolitan
rather than about imputing responsibility to individual scholars of succeed- character for the nation, which would come as a corrective to the past.
ing generations for acts of colonial violence and appropriation. Viewed However, the objects themselves tell their own stories, which resist efforts
in this light, Horst Bredekamp’s stance looks at the issue from a perspec- to contain them in established narratives: for instance, how does the
tive of political correctness that reduces academic pursuits to a matter presence of non-European objects in the heart of the metropolis make
of good and evil. And transcultural practice certainly has a lot to do with us rethink master narratives about “Western” heritage, here, for instance,
ethics—indeed, by questioning the underpinnings of disciplinary forma- housed in museums that are a stone’s throw away from the Humboldt
tions, taxonomies, and research protocols, it takes us into the heart of an Forum? Critical stances are not a monopoly of postcolonial writing alone—
ethical question—about our role as producers of knowledge and how and transcultural perspectives will stand the test of acceptability only by
this knowledge has shaped institutions. To take the example of art history: living up to ethical imperatives of criticality and bringing to light fresh
the discipline has ended up separating individual objects, has reorganized histories and understandings of culture, which disciplinary practices of
them into genres, hierarchies, and neat chronological sequences; it uses the past have ended up suppressing.
the category of style as a convenient tool for coordination and stabilizing
endless mobility and metamorphoses of objects and forms. The idea of CK: “Asymmetry” is a key concept within the Cluster’s research program.
stylistic development implies a scheme that is not only artificially main- Does this focus on asymmetries (of vectors, of power relations), as supple-
tained by attending to a geographic location as self-contained; more ments to “flows,” serve as a methodological tool to circumvent what I would
than that, the idea itself is inevitably like a biological, evolutionary construct call “happy transculturalism” which has become increasingly popular (par-
applied to culture, where it does not belong and where it operates by ticularly in art history)? (Though German-speaking art history barely knew
creating centers and peripheries and by suppressing human agency and what to do with the transcultural paradigm only a few years ago, it currently
the circulation of material objects. Reminding ourselves that the discipline appears to be perfectly content with perceiving anything and everything as
itself as a product of history is the first ethical responsibility we share. transcultural.)

A contentious issue of the present—which I think Bredekamp is referring MJ: Among the many “loose” usages of the notion of the transcultural is
to but which has also evoked discussions elsewhere—is the question of the romanticizing belief that we inhabit a world where difference is
32 Understanding Transculturalism Monica Juneja and Christian Kravagna in Conversation 33

harmoniously dissolved, where connectivity and mobility imply a fortunate metries are therefore one among a whole complex of relationalities that
cosmopolitanism and emancipatory potential. In fact, this belief under- a transcultural perspective takes upon itself to investigate.
lies Welsch’s definition of transculturality as an important ethical corrective
to ethnocentrism, wherein he dismisses all assertions of difference or
rejections of cosmopolitan identities as “folklore” or “rhetoric” as distinct
from the “real,” syncretic substance of cultures, one “which favors co-
existence rather than combat.” Yet no serious scholarship can work with
this opposition between “substance” and “rhetoric”—the latter is not in-
separable from a transcultural relationship. A closer look at transregional
circulation and communication invariably brings forth a vast amount of
material making assertions of difference—cultural, ethnic, linguistic, and
religious, which become central to the construction of identities. There is
no dearth of examples from across the globe to show that a shared lan-
guage created through the experience of migration and exchange, the very
intensity of entanglement, precipitates a concern with the generation of
difference. In fact, the language of sharing itself, taken as given, can oc-
clude the contestations and the means, at times violent, through which
groups negotiated their differences. The strength of a transcultural method
that examines the varied and often contradictory processes of relation-
ality would lie in analyzing the workings of such rhetoric, its translation
into social and cultural practice, and the modes of resistance against it,
rather than dismiss it as politically reprehensible. To take a concrete ex-
ample: warfare presents us with the paradox of bringing together men
(and in specific historical contexts entire families) of different ethnicities,
religious faiths, and linguistic identities (often fighting across these
lines), thereby promoting, in the long run, the practice of cosmopolitan
exchange and at the same time of producing discourses of irreconcilable
alterity, articulated through innumerable textual and visual representa-
tions, and practices such as iconoclasm or looting. Another example: in
today’s world of contemporary art where cultures are said to share a
common, unbounded notion of art that cuts across national and cultural
divisions, we encounter a new divide between those who enjoy access
to authoritative knowledge about art, share the values of autonomy and
transgression ascribed to it, and those who do not. This boundary cuts
through a transnational and connected art world: it is often produced by
fissured constellations within the locality and can generate conflict, con-
troversy, and censorship, which in turn become global issues. The Danish
cartoon controversy, the destruction of the Bamiyan Buddhas, the assaults
on the Indian artist M. F. Husain, or the forced detention of Ai Weiwei are
all examples of conflagrations that have erupted within fractured public
spheres where today’s global vocabularies about autonomous, interven-
tionist art do not find a uniform resonance. Here, a transcultural view
goes a long way in helping us grapple with the complexity of global phe-
nomena that generate their own forms of exclusion and violence. Asym-
 Christian Kravagna 35

Transcultural
When we take a critical look at the history of modernity today and attempt to
approach the phenomena of transcultural modernism from a post-Eurocentric
perspective, we usually operate with a dynamic notion of culture that we have
borrowed from Postcolonial Studies, critical migration and Diaspora Studies,

Beginnings
critical anthropology, and parts of globalization theory. It is clear that several
of the terms used to examine classical modern conceptions of culture have
become part of our language through works published since the early 1990s.
Against the backdrop of economic globalization and sociopolitical debates
on migration and multiculturalism, critiques of a nationally defined conception

Decolonization,
of culture and of the idea of separate and ethnically distinct cultural spheres,
which especially modern ethnology propagated, made themselves heard toward
the end of the twentieth century. While conservative authors such as Samuel
Huntington responded to these developments with warnings of a “clash of

Transculturalism,
civilizations,”1 thereby operating with the essentialist notion that each culture
is a distinct entity unto itself, others opted for a more precise examination
of the transitions, exchanges, constellations, and mutual exchange of cultural
traits and practices, not only in the current era of globalization but also
throughout the history of modernity, colonialism, and decolonization. Arjun

and the Over­­

Appadurai has analyzed the process of cultural globalization as a complex
dynamics of diverse “flows” and “scapes,” emphasized the global production
of locality, and brought attention to transnational identity-scapes.2 Homi K.
Bhabha has focused on the “in-between of culture” and on the hybridization

coming of Race
processes that are part of cultural practices and the production of culture,
which he presents as counter-movements to the sharp boundaries drawn be-
tween the cultures of the colonizers and the colonized, and has recognized
a postcolonial “contra-modernity” within these processes.3 Mary Louise Pratt
has historically examined “contact zones” as sites of agency, power relations,
and resistance along colonial borders.4 James Clifford has countered anthro-
Christian Kravagna pology’s fixation on a static and place-bound conception of culture with a
paradigm of “routes,” advocating for a particular emphasis to be placed on
“traveling cultures.”5 With the concept of the “Black Atlantic,” Paul Gilroy radi-
cally severed the link between culture and territory; he examined the marks
left by the slave trade, colonialism, and diasporic cultural movements on the
Atlantic, in which he sees a “counterculture of modernity.”6

1 Samuel Huntington, The Clash of Civiliza- Writing and Transculturation (London:

tions (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1996). Routledge, 1992).
2 Arjun Appadurai, Modernity at Large: Cul- 5 James Clifford, Routes: Travel and Translation
tural Dimensions of Globalization (Minne- in the Late Twentieth Century (Cambridge,
apolis, MN: Minnesota University Press, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997).
1996). 6 Paul Gilroy, The Black Atlantic: Modernity
3 Homi K. Bhabha, The Location of Culture and Double Consciousness (London: Verso,
(London: Routledge, 1994). 1993).
4 Mary Louise Pratt, Imperial Eyes: Travel
36 Transcultural Beginnings Christian Kravagna 37

Recalling that these (and numerous other) widely read volumes were published on the sexual and cultural mixing of European, African, and Amerindian ele-
in the 1990s, one could be inclined to situate the emergence of transcultural ments, which had been going on for hundreds of years. Alongside psycholo-
studies at a time when—to adhere for a moment to a common historical narra- gist Arthur Ramos’s research on Black cultures, which began in the 1920s and
tive—globalization came after the division of the world into two parts in the wherein he studied and observed, among other things, “the merging of African
decades of the Cold War. However, tracing the history of transcultural thought deities with Christian saints and the divinities in the Indian theology,”7 within
further back, an increasing number of variations on writings of this kind can the “syncretic” religious notions and practices of Candomblé, the work of so-
be observed to arise between the two world wars. The idea here is not to pin- ciologist Freyre had a particularly strong impact on Brazil’s post-ethnic identi-
point the very first theory of transculturality, but instead to locate the early ty model as well as on international transcultural research. Following in the
development of transcultural studies within the historical-political contexts from footsteps of German-American anthropologist Franz Boas, who had super-
which they emerged, and their connections with decolonial movements, vised his doctorate in New York, Freyre continued to decouple cultural analysis
antiracist thought, and new, post-ethnic notions of cultural identity, as well as from biologically determined racial dispositions by underscoring the impor-
with nation-building processes. A review of the most important publications tance of historical, economic, and social factors. Although the notion of race
from the American context shows that the era in which transcultural studies remains present in Freyre’s work, he speaks out against a determinist inter-
began appearing in Brazil, Cuba, Mexico, and the United States was the same pretation thereof and against the notion of racial superiority or inferiority. In
era when the fascist systems in Europe emerged as the climax of the race ide- his book Casa Grande e Senzala (The Masters and the Slaves), first published
ologies that had been developing since the eighteenth century. The modern in 1933, Freyre describes the “formation of an agrarian, slave-holding and
Western conception of culture is founded on the notion that a people, nation, hybrid society,”8 which, since the very beginnings of Portuguese colonization,
and/or race are the bearers of culture and that it is necessary to demarcate had witnessed the ongoing intermingling of ethnic groups and mutual influ-
boundaries between cultures and races in order to ensure “purity,” and to ence, both in terms of spiritual and material culture. Freyre underscores the
dominate or even annihilate purportedly inferior races. Each of the contribu- ability of the Portuguese colonizers to overcome the climate conditions in the
tions to early transcultural thought discussed in the following are based on tropics and their willingness to forge sexual and family bonds with Indian
an earnest, if at times problematic, attempt to overcome race as a determin- and African women as conditions for the “success” of colonization in Brazil,
ing factor of culture. Gilberto Freyre in Brazil, Fernando Ortiz in Cuba, José and attributes the strength of Brazilian society and the beauty of its culture
Vasconcelos in Mexico, and Melville J. Herskovits in the United States have, to its hybridity: “the contact of European culture with that of the aborigines was
each in their own way, endeavored to decouple race from culture, to view smoothed by the oil of African mediation.”9 Freyre describes the influence of
the boundaries between European, Amerindian, and African cultures as per- the African slaves’ eating habits on the Europeans, or of the Black nurses’ stories
meable and, instead of distinguishing between cultures or races, to acknowl- on white children’s imaginations, and speaks of Christianity in the masters’
edge and closely examine their hybrid forms, even downright propagating houses as influenced by the “superstitions” of the slave hut. Freyre’s valorization
such hybrid forms as a means of undoing racist orders of domination. The set of the African components of Brazilian culture played a formative role in forging
of problems that arise from these theoretical approaches, both on a political a new national self-conception that recognized African and Indian blood in the
and social level, can also be read as an aftereffect of slavery and its abolition. veins of every Brazilian, leading to the repeal of discriminatory laws.

Of the entire American continent, the country with the largest African popula- Later, Freyre was rightly accused of sugarcoating the colonial violence that
tion and, in 1888, the last to abolish slavery, was Brazil. The liberation of the shaped relations during slavery. Upon this basis, he euphemistically proclaimed
Black population and the transition from empire to republic in 1889 not only
brought about fundamental changes in the country’s social order and economic
relations of production; with it also emerged a question of Brazilian national 7 Arthur Ramos, The Negro in Brazil [1939], Latin America,” in The Creolization Reader:
identity. One of the earliest political responses was the so-called embranqueci- trans. Richard Pattee (Washington, DC: Studies in Mixed Identities and Cultures,
The Associated Publishers, Inc., 1951), 94. eds. Robin Cohen and Paola Toninato
mento, an immigration offensive with the goal of intensifying immigration
8 Gilberto Freyre, The Masters and the (London: Routledge, 2010), 257–65. On a
from Europe to accelerate the modernization of Brazil by shoring up the white Slaves: A Study in the Development of Bra- critique of the sexist and anti-Semitic fac-
labor force. This policy of “whitening” arose from the European notion that zilian Civilization, trans. Samuel Putnam ets of Freyre’s writings, cf.: Jeffrey D. Nee-
progress was inextricably linked to the white “race.” In the earlier decades of (Berkeley: University of California Press, dell, “Identity, Race, Gender and Moderni-
1986), 3. ty in the Origins of Gilberto Freyre’s
the twentieth century, and in opposition to this concept of white superiority, 9 Ibid., 78. Oeuvre,” The American Historical Review
numerous scholars and artists developed Brazilian identity concepts based 10 Lourdes Martínez-Echazábal, “Mestizaje in 100, no. 1 (February 1995): 51–77.
38 Transcultural Beginnings Christian Kravagna 39

an “ethnic democracy” in Brazil, with equal rights for all population groups, of culture, Freyre’s ideas about the sexual union between members of different
which was exposed as a national myth that had served to obscure social inequality ethnic groups still strongly rely on the concept of race. This is reminiscent
for many decades to come.10 Nonetheless, the positive value Freyre placed of Mexican philosopher and politician José Vasconcelos, who, in 1925, an-
on the creativity generated within processes of “miscegenation” (mestiçagem) nounces the end of racial difference through the mestizaje and proclaims the
and processes of cultural hybridity gained widespread appeal in the 1930s, emergence of a universal “synthetical” race in his book La Raza Cosmica.
for example among US American researchers and Black civil rights activists What had already come to pass in Latin America would later spread throughout
who faced racial segregation (Jim Crow Laws) within their own social contexts.11 the world—the disappearance of all known races through their fusion into a
From today’s perspective, perhaps the most remarkable thought in Freyre’s singular “cosmic race” that combines all the better attributes of the former races.
interpretation of the conditions under which the Brazilian or “Luso-tropical” A new aesthetic era of humanity would emerge from Latin America, under
society emerged is found in an argument he uses to explain the Portuguese the sign of love, beauty, and creativity, bringing the era of rationality and racial/
colonizers’ adeptness in terms of adaptation and integration. Because the cultural purity to an end. “What is going to emerge out there is the definitive
Portuguese were what he terms “bicontinental” even before their American race, the synthetical race, the integral race, made up of the genius and the blood
expansion, the category race always carried little significance for Portugal. The of all peoples and, for that reason, more capable of true brotherhood and of
geographic and climatic proximity to Africa and the long history of Moorish a truly universal vision.”14 Regardless of the fact that his project may appear
presence had made the Portuguese into a “people existing indeterminately merely utopian and esoteric, or in part rely on former notions of evolutionist
between Europe and Africa,”12 which, by integrating Islamic religious elements race theory, the context in which Vasconcelos formulates his ideas is the Mexican
into its culture, for example, had developed the capacity to merge opposing revolution, which the author actively participated in. As a minister between
elements. To whatever extent this may be true or false, it is relevant for the con- 1921 and 1924, he worked on democratizing the educational system as a com-
cepts of transculturality that later developed in that it assumes the existence ponent in the process of restructuring Mexican society. One significant dif-
of a culture (and population) that has always been mixed, thereby undermining ference from Freyre’s identity model of mestiçagem and hybrid culture in Brazil
the ideologies of cultural separation and racial purity that were predominant is that Vasconcelos’s approach is explicitly transnational and aimed at a Latin
throughout the first half of the twentieth century. Although Freyre uses this con- American racial and cultural synthesis. Viewed within the context of the struggle
cept to argue that Brazil’s colonial practices were markedly different from against contemporary forms of US imperialism on the American continent,
those of other colonizers, in particularly the British, but also the Spanish, there- throughout his entire essay, the leitmotiv of Latin America serves as an anti-
by fostering a “Luso-Brazilian” brand of nationalism, his ideas are nonetheless thesis to the Anglo-Saxon concept of segregation and hierarchical racial and
indicative of conceptions of culture and identity that later emerged. For in- cultural orders, examples of which he sees in white supremacy and the US
stance, Édouard Glissant distinguishes between the creolization of “composite segregation policy.
cultures” of the Americas, particularly in the Caribbean, where the creolization
process is more recent, from “atavistic” forms of culture where identity is Cuban concepts of transculturality, of which Fernando Ortiz is the most
derived from a singular common root, pointing out that the latter underwent prominent theorist, were developed within the political and economic context
creolization long before.13 of a postcolonial Cuba facing the threat of neo-colonialism. In 1933, Ortiz
himself had been a consultant for the short-lived revolutionary government
Between the 1920s and 1940s, the main problem characteristic of the research under Grau San Martín and had written Contrapunteo Cubano del tabaco y
in this field is the overcoming of race. From today’s perspective, it is not easy el azúcar (Cuban Counterpoint. Tobacco and Sugar), published in 1940, during
to comprehend the difficulties that scholars, even those who were politically the Batista dictatorship, which had catered to the economic interests of the
antiracist, faced in devalorizing the concept of race within social and cultural United States who in turn gave the regime its support. The fact that Ortiz found-
science. The protagonists discussed here differ from one another, both in ed the “Cuban Alliance for a Free World” shortly after his book was published
terms of their academic biographies and of the extent of progress they made
regarding their own perceptions of race. For instance, Freyre and Ortiz both
made radical transitions over the course of their careers, from early studies 11 Henry Louis Gates Jr., Black in Latin Amer- of Michigan Press, 1997).
concerned with the “decadence,” lack of physical vigor (Freyre), and criminality ica (New York: New York University Press, 14 José Vasconcelos, The Cosmic Race/La
(Ortiz) of certain groups, to employing social and economic models of ex- 2011), 12–58. raza cósmica [1925], trans. Didier T. Jaén
12 Freyre, The Masters and the Slaves, 4. (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University
plaining modes of behavior and cultural practices. As we have already seen, 13 Édouard Glissant, Poetics of Relation, Press, 1997), 20.
despite the radical revaluation of processes of mixing and the valorization trans. Betsy Wing (Ann Arbor: University
40 Transcultural Beginnings Christian Kravagna 41

is a clear indication of the anti-imperialist direction of his analyses of Cuban and Cuba merely the symbolic name of a great center controlled by a foreign
history, economy, and society in Cuban Counterpoint and his other works. In stockholders’ corporation.”19 Ortiz refers to the development of class-con-
1906, as a young scholar still largely influenced by biological concepts of sciousness among the tobacco workers in the nineteenth century, emphasizing
race and evolutionary models of history, he published his first book Hampa in particular the public readings that took place in the tobacco workrooms.
afro-cubana: los negros brujos (Afro-Cuban Underworld: The Black Sorcerers), While the noise in the sugar mills made communication impossible, and the old
an anthropological study of criminality, a treatise on Afro-Cuban “backwardness” “work songs” of the slaves could no longer be heard, the silence of the to-
and “deviance.” He later takes up a sociological approach that emphasizes bacco workrooms made them well suited for readings that were also used to
the importance of cultural and economic rather than biological factors for promote local political propaganda. “They worked with tobacco leaves and
progress. In his works to follow, however, he still focuses on the backwardness book leaves.”20 Within this branch of industry, the first workers’ unions were
of Cubans and how to overcome this predicament. Although Ortiz at first founded, newspapers printed, and the tobacco workers provided the strongest
utilizes a European-Western notion in regards to the kind of “civilization” Cuba support for the revolutionary struggle for Cuban independence.
must achieve, he soon develops a deep appreciation for regional popular
cultures and begins writing about Cuban folk music and its African influences, In the section “On the Social Phenomenon of ‘Transculturation’ and Its Impor-
among other things.15 tance in Cuba,” Ortiz introduces the term transculturation.21 He himself deems
it a “neologism,” and a “substitute for the term acculturation, whose use is
In Cuban Counterpoint, Ortiz writes about the economic, social, and cultural now spreading.”22
development of Cuba from its colonial beginnings up to the time the book
was written. He depicts the history of Cuba as an interplay between tobacco Acculturation is used to describe the process of transition from one culture
and sugar, which function as actors whose historical contexts constitute to another, and its manifold social repercussions. But transculturation is a
counterpoints that have contributed to shaping Cuban society and culture. more fitting term. I have chosen the word transculturation to express the
The sugar economy had been bound up with capitalism from the onset (in- highly varied phenomena that have come about in Cuba as a result of the
vestments, machines, credits, banks, etc.), unlike tobacco: “the child of the extremely complex transmutations of culture that have taken place here,
savage Indian and the virgin earth is a free being.”16 The difference between and without a knowledge of which it is impossible to understand the evolu-
tobacco and sugar is intensive versus extensive cultivation, quality versus tion of the Cuban folk, either in the economic or in the institutional, legal,
quantity, individuality versus uniformity. Sugar requires energy, machines, la- ethical, religious, artistic, linguistic, psychological, sexual, or other aspects
bor divisions, creates time pressure, since it has to be processed within a of its life.23
short time, as well as intermittent “jobs” for many. Sugar consumes and de-
stroys the land, because more energy (forests) and means of transport (rail- The true history of Cuba is the history of its interconnected transculturations.
ways) are needed in order to produce a greater volume. Tobacco requires The indigenous, Spanish, African (here, Ortiz mentions many and makes
knowledge instead of machines, careful attention and selection of soil, light, some distinctions based on cultural relativism), European, Jewish, and Asian
and leaves, offers regular jobs for few, and prospers in smaller agricultural groups, who settled on the land bit by bit, had been uprooted and had to
units. adapt to a “new syncretism of cultures,” “faced with the problem of disadjust-
ment and readjustment, of deculturation and acculturation—in a word, of
Tobacco and sugar also bring different cultures with them. The one is simple,
rural, and folkloristic; the other an urban high culture influenced by Europe.
15 Fernando Coronil, “Introduction to the 19 Ibid., 64.
Tobacco generated an independent middle-class; sugar brought about the ex- Duke University Press Edition: Transcultura- 20 Ibid., 92.
tremes between master and slave, the rich and the working class. “In the history tion and the Politics of Theory: Countering 21 Ortiz traces the transculturation of tobacco
of Cuba sugar represents Spanish absolutism; tobacco the native liberators.”17 the Center, Cuban Counterpoint,” in Cuban (consumption) from a social and ritualistic
Counterpoint: Tobacco and Sugar [1947] phenomenon among the indigenous pop-
Sugar not only brought slavery and is the reason that the slave trade and slavery
(Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1995), ulation to its demonization by the coloniz-
persisted in Cuba for so long, it also stands for the deprivation of freedom in ix–lvi, here specifically xviii. ers and the first appropriation by the
general, for Cuba’s status as a colony, and its economic backwardness even 16 Fernando Ortiz, Cuban Counterpoint: To- slaves from Africa, to its medical and eco-
after colonialism—“keeping Cuba in the economic status of a colony.”18 Ortiz’s bacco and Sugar [1947] (Durham, NC: nomical uses in Europe, which were ori-
Duke University Press, 1995), 56. ented on status, distinction, and profit.
descriptions of the sugar industry are reminiscent of the current economies 17 Ibid., 71. 22 Ibid., 97.
of transnational corporations. “As though the whole country were one huge mill, 18 Ibid., 80. 23 Ibid.
42 Transcultural Beginnings Christian Kravagna 43

transculturation.”24 Ortiz writes: “this vast blend of races and cultures over- behind race theory in the United States.30 Therefore, when Herskovits holds
shadows in importance every other historical phenomenon.”25 that African Americans showed “complete acculturation” to (white) US cul-
ture, it is indeed to be understood in the sense of assimilation. However,
I am of the opinion that the word transculturation better expresses the differ- when Herskovits speaks of “acculturation” in his later texts, the term has taken
ent phases of the process of transition from one culture to another because on greater complexity and comprises many of the meanings Ortiz subsumes
this does not consist merely in acquiring another culture, which is what the under the term transculturation. As a member of a committee set up by the
English word acculturation really implies, but the process also necessarily Social Science Research Council in 1935 to outline “acculturation studies,”
involves the loss or uprooting of a previous culture, which could be defined Herskovits defines the term in a Memorandum for the Study of Acculturation
as a deculturation. In addition it carries the idea of the consequent cre- as follows:
ation of new cultural phenomena, which could be called neoculturation.26
“Acculturation comprehends those phenomena which result when groups of
Similar to Freyre in Brazil, Ortiz was also later criticized for his cubanidad con- individuals having different cultures come into continuous first-hand contact,
struction of identity, with which all ethnic and cultural differences could be with subsequent changes in the original cultural patterns of either or both
overcome. However, the professed equality through mixing had not eradicated groups.”31 Upon further specification, the difference between the terms is ad-
social inequality. Bronisław Malinowski, a leading anthropologist of his time, dressed: “under this definition, acculturation is to be distinguished from
whose later work focused on the processes of “culture contact,” enthusiastically culture-change, of which it is but one aspect, and assimilation, which is at times
adopts the new term “transculturation” and declares acculturation as “eth- a phase of acculturation.”32 In his field studies in Western Africa, Suriname,
nocentric” in his introduction to the Spanish edition from 1940—wherein he Brazil, and the Caribbean, Herskovits develops a refined instrument for study-
seeks to appropriate Ortiz’s decidedly historical approach as belonging to ing cultural transfer, the adoption and appropriation of cultural elements in
the functionalist school of thought he represented. Malinowski recognizes the situations of contact under conditions of colonial rule and slavery within the
“moral connotation,” which problematically implies that the “primitive” African American context. Melville Herskovits’s historical significance can be
(must) adapt to Western culture, and highlights the heuristic advantages of attributed to his book The Myth of the Negro Past, published in 1941, which
transculturation, which describes a mutual exchange of cultural traits, a was highly controversial at the time of its publication both within anthropology
process through which new realities—“original and independent”—emerged.27 as well as in a broader discourse on US race relations. Herskovits demon-
strates the perpetuation of African elements in the linguistic, religious, social,
The fact that acculturation need not always be understood as a one-sided pro- and cultural practices of Blacks in the Americas. In terms of method, he fo-
cess when applied to cultural transformation in situations of contact is dem- cuses on ethnohistory and formulates a critique of structural functionalism,
onstrated in the works of US American anthropologist Melville J. Herskovits, which conceives of the present as the only temporal axis.
one of the pioneers of African American Studies. In the late 1920s, Herskovits
began researching Black cultures in the Americas and their connections to
Africa, and was in contact with his senior “colleagues” Freyre, Ramos, and Ortiz
in the 1930s and 1940s, adopting certain terms they had developed, includ- 24 Ibid. “The Real Race Problem,” The Crisis, no. 1
25 Ibid., 99. (December 1910): 22–25.
ing Ramos’s syncretism.28 While Freyre’s and Ortiz’s studies on cultural contact 26 Ibid., 102–3. 30 Melville J. Herskovits, “The Negro’s Ameri-
and mutual transformation are instrumental for the development of post-ethnic 27 Bronisław Malinowski, “Introduction,“ in canism,” in The New Negro: Voices of the
concepts of national identity, Herskovits’s research is embedded within the Cuban Counterpoint: Tobacco and Sugar, Harlem Renaissance, ed. Alain Locke (New
ed. Alfred A. Knopf [1947] (Durham, NC: York: Touchstone, 1997), 359. For a de-
context of racial discrimination in the United States. Unlike Freyre’s and Ortiz’s Duke University Press, 1995), lvii–lix. tailed account of Herskovits’s intellectual
early works, which still use a biologistical and evolutionist framework, Her- 28 Kevin A. Yelvington, “The Invention of Af- biography, see Jerry Gershenhorn, Melville
skovits, coming from the “anti-racist” school of Franz Boas,29 detaches cul- rica in Latin America and the Caribbean: J. Herskovits and the Racial Politics of
Political Discourse and Anthropological Knowledge (Lincoln: University of Nebraska
ture from the idea of racial determinism from the very beginning. This goes
Praxis, 1920–1940,” in Afro-Atlantic Dia- Press, 2004).
so far that young Herskovits makes even the slightest trace of cultural differ- logues: Anthropology in the Diaspora, ed. 31 Robert Redfield, Ralph Linton, and Melville
ence between African Americans and white Americans disappear in his earli- Kevin A. Yelvington (Santa Fe: School of J. Herskovits, “A Memorandum for the
est essays. In 1925, he writes about his observations of life in Harlem “of the American Research Press, 2006), 35–82. Study of Acculturation,” Man: A Monthly
29 In 1910, Boas had already identified the US Record of Anthropological Science, no. 35
African culture, not a trace,” consciously avoiding anything suggestive of a American “race problem” as mainly being (October 1935): 145–46.
link between genetics and culture, since this had been the predominant idea a problem of racial prejudice. Franz Boas, 32 Ibid., 146.
44 Transcultural Beginnings Christian Kravagna 45

His extensive data and examples thus refute the popular myth supported by in terms of research and publishing. Manuel Querino (1851–1923), who is
racist sciences whereby African American population groups had lost their considered the first Black historian in Brazil, and who was also active as an artist
culture through uprooting and enslavement, or willingly given it up in the face and politician, had to fight for the abolition of slavery before he (without any
of the “superiority” of their masters’ white culture. The scientific mainstream connection to the university) could conduct his research on Afro-Brazilian re-
around Herskovits interpreted differences in Black lifestyles and forms of ex- ligious and popular cultural practices, including Bahian customs and cookery.36
pression as mere “degenerations” of white civilization resulting from African Today, when authors establish that several of Freyre’s arguments for his model
Americans’ racially-based “inability.” On the contrary, one of the central state- of Brazilian identity were taken from Querino, they also point out that the
ments in Herskovits’s book on the contemporary debate concerning race vs. same Black researcher was also an activist in the autonomous organization of
culture, reads: “Culture is learned, not inborn [...] the factor of race does not workers and in the Afro-Brazilian struggle for equal rights, thus by no means
enter.”33 in a situation where Freyre’s democracia racial had actually been put into prac-
tice.37 Herskovits’s research also benefitted from his collaborations with Alain
“Retention” and “reinterpretation” present the two processes whose respective Locke, Zora Neale Hurston, W.E.B. Du Bois, and the latter’s connections to Western
relationships to one another allow for a description of the dynamics of trans- Africa as well as his own research on the “American Negro.”38 These are but
formation in cultural contact, whereby these relationships can take thoroughly two examples from the immediate context of the contributions discussed in
different forms: from an insistence on old elements, to “borrowings” from this article that address the beginnings of the analysis and theory of transcul-
new ones, as well as their reinterpretation in particular aspects (language, be- turality within the American context. Each of these contributions has, in its own
lief, art), depending on the conditions under which they occur.34 Herskovits’s right and with a more or less lasting effect, played a part in forging a new un-
empirical studies debunk distorted images presented by the myth of the “Negro derstanding of culture and in overcoming “race” as a scientific paradigm and
past” as arguments for legitimizing racial suppression in the United States. category of political order. Though some of the arguments may seem problem-
At the close of the first chapter, he defines the political meaning of a scientific atic from a historical perspective, the approaches cited here were nonetheless
examination of the history and presence of African cultural elements in the significant contributions to an early transnational discourse on decolonizing
United States: “To give the Negro an appreciation of his past is to endow him the notion of culture.
with the confidence in his own position in this country and in the world
which he must have, and which he can best attain when he has available a
foundation of scientific fact concerning the ancestral cultures of Africa and
the survivals of Africanisms in the New World.”35

African American intellectuals and activists largely welcomed Herskovits’s re-

search, as it often provided them with the empirical data for their own inter-
pretation of African American culture. The Myth of the Negro Past appeared as
part of a study on race relations in the United States, commissioned by the
Carnegie Foundation and headed by Swedish economist Gunnar Myrdal, enti-
tled An American Dilemma, which dealt with the contradiction between the
“American Creed” (freedom and equal opportunity) and the reality of racial
discrimination.

If one emphasizes the positive reception of these anthropological studies on

the transculturality of African American religions, songs, dances, stories,
33 Melville J. Herskovits, The Myth of the Negro 37 Gates Jr., Black in Latin America, 40–58.
language use, etc., it is necessary at this point to address a structural problem Past (Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 2005), xxi. 38 Christian Kravagna, “The Trees of Knowl-
within the history of research on transculturality, for: similar studies were 34 Ibid., chap. 4. edge: Anthropology, Art, and Politics. Mel-
conducted simultaneously, or perhaps even earlier, by Black researchers, whose 35 Ibid., 32. ville J. Herskovits and Zora Neale Hurston
36 E. Bradford Burns, “Manuel Querino’s In- – Harlem ca. 1930,” Unsettling Knowledges,
work did not receive the same recognition. One of the reasons these re-
terpretation of the African Contribution to Transversal, no. 1 (2012), http://eipcp.net/
searchers have largely remained forgotten can certainly be attributed to the Brazil,” The Journal of Negro History 59, transversal/0112/kravagna/en.
fact that, in comparison to white scholars, they faced more difficult conditions no. 1 (January 1974): 78–86.
46 Transcultural Beginnings Christian Kravagna 47

Literature

Appadurai, Arjun. Modernity at Large: Cul- Herskovits, Melville J. The Myth of the Negro Yelvington, Kevin A. “The Invention of Af-
tural Dimensions of Globalization. Minne- Past. Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 2005. rica in Latin America and the Caribbean:
apolis: Minnesota University Press, 1996. Political Discourse and Anthropological
Huntington, Samuel. The Clash of Civiliza- Praxis, 1920–1940.” In Afro-Atlantic Dia-
Bhabha, Homi K. The Location of Culture. tions. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1996. logues: Anthropology in the Diaspora. Edited
London: Routledge, 1994. by Kevin A. Yelvington, 35–82. Santa Fe:
Kravagna, Christian. “The Trees of Knowl- School of American Research Press, 2006.
Boas, Franz. “The Real Race Problem.” The edge: Anthropology, Art, and Politics. Mel-
Crisis, vol. 1 (December 1910): 22-25. ville J. Herskovits and Zora Neale Hurston
– Harlem ca. 1930.” Unsettling Knowledg-
Burns, E. Bradford. “Manuel Querino’s In- es, Transversal, no. 1 (2012). Published by
terpretation of the African Contribution to eipcp – European Institute for Progressive
Brazil.” The Journal of Negro History, vol. Cultural Policies. Accessed April 1, 2013.
59, no. 1 (January 1974): 78-86. http://eipcp.net/transversal/0112/kravag-
na/en.
Clifford, James. Routes: Travel and Trans-
lation in the Late Twentieth Century. Cam- Malinowski, Bronisław. Introduction to
bridge: Harvard University Press, 1997. Cuban Counterpoint: Tobacco and Sugar
[1947], by Fernando Ortiz, lvii-lix. Durham,
Coronil, Fernando. “Introduction to the NC: Duke University Press, 1995.
Duke University Press Edition: Transcultur-
ation and the Politics of Theory: Counter- Martínez-Echazábal, Lourdes. “Mestizaje
ing the Center, Cuban Counterpoint.” In in Latin America.” In The Creolization
Ortiz, Fernando. Cuban Counterpoint: To- Reader: Studies in Mixed Identities and
bacco and Sugar [1947]. Durham, NC: Duke Cultures. Edited by Robin Cohen and
University Press, 1995. Paola Toninato, 257-265. London: Rout-
ledge 2010.
Freyre, Gilberto. The Masters and the
Slaves: A Study in the Development of Bra- Needell, Jeffrey D. “Identity, Race, Gender,
zilian Civilization. Translated by Samuel and Modernity in the Origins of Gilberto
Putnam. Berkeley: University of California Freyre’s Oeuvre.” The American Historical
Press, 1986. Review, vol. 100, no. 1 (February 1995): 51-77.

Gates, Henry Louis, Jr. Black in Latin Ortiz, Fernando. Cuban Counterpoint:
America. New York: New York University Tobacco and Sugar [1947]. Durham, NC:
Press, 2011. Duke University Press, 1995.

Gershenhorn, Jerry. Melville J. Herskovits Pratt, Mary Louise. Imperial Eyes: Travel
and the Racial Politics of Knowledge. Lin- Writing and Transculturation. London:
coln: University of Nebraska Press, 2004. Routledge, 1992.

Gilroy, Paul. The Black Atlantic: Modernity Ramos, Arthur. The Negro in Brazil [1939].
and Double Consciousness. London: Ver- Translated by Richard Pattee. Washington,
so, 1993. D.C.: Associated Publishers, Inc., 1951.

Glissant, Édouard. Poetics of Relation. Redfield, Robert, Ralph Linton, and Melville
Translated by Betsy Wing. Ann Arbor: Uni- J. Herskovits, “A Memorandum for the
versity of Michigan Press, 1997. Study of Acculturation.” Man: A Monthly
Record of Anthropological Science, vol. 35
Herskovits, Melville J. “The Negro’s Ameri- (October 1935): 145-48.
canism.” In The New Negro: Voices of the
Harlem Renaissance. Edited by Alain Vasconcelos, José. The Cosmic Race. La
Locke, 353-360. New York: Touchstone, Raza Cósmica [1925]. Translated by Didier
1997. T. Jaén. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Univer-
sity Press, 1997.
Around
Chandigarh
 Vikramāditya Prakāsh 51

The Many Names

At a time of unprecedented globalization and urbanization, one cannot not
heed the clarion call to “save” Chandigarh, to create a manifesto and a legis-
lation to conserve what Chandigarh stands for. But what does it stand for?
There is many a great claim that can be made in the name of Chandigarh.

of Chandigarh
Chandigarh was made, after all, as the aspirational city of postcolonial India,
a modernist utopian “tabula rasa,” designed by Le Corbusier, arguably the
most prodigious architect of the twentieth century. Yet there are so many other
claims addressed by so many other names that can be made in the name of
Chandigarh. Such other claims, by the ineluctable logic of “distinerrance,” must

An Index for
necessarily remain lost in the fog of history—ever present as potential claim-
ants, and yet inevitably in the shadow, secondary and derivative, of the city’s
given names, its great claims: India – Tabula Rasa – modernism – Le Corbusier.

Heritage Planning
India, Tabula Rasa, modernism, Le Corbusier are, of course, in themselves
metonyms, shorthand names for larger claims, that are in the end unverifi-
able. Who really does speak for “India,” or “modernism,” or even “Le Corbusier”?
Metonymy functions by clearing a ground for itself, by keeping other claim-
ants out of the center it claims. It makes other claims, derivative, orbital, pe-
ripheral. These derivative peripherals, orbiting around the center, are what in
Vikramāditya Prakāsh fact make the center, that give it a presence where there isn’t any, that make
a there for it where there isn’t one. An abstraction, in essence, is not present
as itself. It is made present only by its derivations, its manifestations, its im-
pure multiplicities, at least once removed from itself.

The following praxeological reading is conceived as a listing of the multitude

of those other possible name claims for Chandigarh—proxies, as it were—
here remembered as a kind of act of historic preservation, restorative in content
and restitutional in intent. It is enumerative and performative, and telescopes
repeatedly across time, seeking the provenance and posterity of alter-claims and
proxies. This essay (essayer in French: to try, to try out) of course does not
ipso facto transform, or claim to transform, the “ground” realities as it were; i.e.,
it cannot undo that authoritative grounding, verification of grand abstractions
that is the making of Chandigarh. There is, nevertheless, in such an essay, the
aspiration of outlining a strategy of historic preservation, a framework for re-
thinking the past as the reimagining of another possible future, a future that
is somewhat more inclusive and perhaps a little less servile to, a little less de-
rivative from, its singular, special past.

Claim I: The Nation

The oft-repeated primary aspiration for Chandigarh was to verify the naissance
of the new nation, i.e., to literally make in stone (verificare in Latin: literally
“make into stone”) that great claim called “India.” Jawaharlal Nehru was the
52 The Many Names of Chandigarh Vikramāditya Prakāsh 53

synecdochal client of Chandigarh as the first Prime Minister of the Indian na- repartitioning of Pakistan with the creation of Bangladesh. And by the 1980s,
tion recently claimed as an act of independence from colonial rule. He is oft both Pakistan and Punjab were reeling under religious violence, with the
quoted, with no ultimate source to verify its provenance, as having said: “Let Taliban gaining ground in Pakistan and a Sikh demand in Punjab for an au-
this be a new city, unfettered by the past, a symbol of the nation’s faith in the tonomous religious state resorting to terrorist tactics, learned from the
future.” The city, and in particular its Capitol Complex with its self-conscious Reagan-trained mujahedin in Afghanistan.
modernist staging of the institutions of state—the Assembly, the High Court,
and the Secretariat—was created as one of the key identifiers of this Nehruvi- 3. Although birthed by the Partition, there is no memorial or public account
an vision. Nehru’s vision for India was developmentalist, but today, early in of the Partition in Chandigarh—or Punjab, or Pakistan, or Bangladesh for that
the twenty-first century, the Nehruvian state is under siege, routinely vilified matter. There is a “Martyrs’ Memorial” on the Capitol Plaza in Chandigarh
in the neo-liberal push to globalize. In the uncertainties of globalization, in that is still incomplete and whose provenance and symbolic purpose remains
the midst of the incessant ins and outs of the flight of capital, is born the call un-established.2 The larger consequences of the Partition are also still un-
for Chandigarh’s preservation, a once futurist, developmentalist vision now to resolved in postcolonial India and in South Asia in general.3
be protected from the vicissitudes of capital (masquerading as the effect-of-
time) through embalming. But even this restricted frame of preservation as 4. A limited number of Sikh and other refugees from Pakistan were given
protection must also stage the question of the Nehruvian legacy with all its preferential homes in Chandigarh (at market prices with generous loan
attendant derivatives. Such as: terms), but as a named city Chandigarh was rigorously denied any identity
as a refugee-resettlement city.4 The refugees were either allotted vacated
Although framed by the staging of the nation-state, Chandigarh in fact was
1.  Muslim homes (erasure by substitution) or resettled in new colonies, devel-
a consequence of quid pro quo logics of the colonial partitioning of British oped in particular in and around Delhi.5 These new colonies stood in for
India along religious lines. Ostensibly meant to protect the Muslim minority and did the actual work of resettlement that should have been a part of
(about thirty percent at the time), the colonial authority’s acceptance of the Chandigarh’s core brief. As proxy Chandigarhs, these colonies were called:
demand for a separate Muslim state was a derivative of the colonial project a. Lajpat Nagar
that was justified as the waiting room of history, i.e., the “white man’s burden” b. Rajinder Nagar
of preparing a primitive people for enlightenment and self-governance, c. Nizamuddin East
until they were ready for it.1 By this logic, the making of Pakistan, specifically d. Punjabi Bagh
as a Muslim state, was an act of premature birthing, a guarantee that had e. Rehgarpura
to be instated to safeguard a “not-yet-ready” people. Only the two Muslim f. Jungpura
dominant states that were directly under British rule—Punjab and Bengal— g. Kingsway Camp (later Guru Teg Bahadur or GTB Nagar)
were partitioned. And since Calcutta (now Kolkata), the colonial capital of
Bengal, was included in the new India, Lahore, the old Mughal capital of 5. The decision to make a new city rather than selecting an existing city as a
Punjab was “given” to Pakistan by the colonialist logics of identitarian belong- capital was designed to force continuity, an elision, between the “birth” of
ing (Mughal = Muslim = Pakistan). Chandigarh thus was made as India’s a new nation and the “birth” of a new city. Some of the other cities that
“New Lahore.” were considered and rejected to enable the Chandigarh elision were:
a. Ludhiana
2. But as India’s New Lahore, Chandigarh was conceived in a rigorously secu- b. Amritsar
larist mold, i.e., as “Not Lahore,” to negate the colonial-religious identitarian
logics of the Partition. Modern architecture thus functioned as a proxy
for decolonization as secularism in Chandigarh. Reciprocally, Pakistan in 1 Dipesh Chakrabarty’s phrase in his book so that suggests that with this one the
Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial Capitol may in fact have been intended to
the early 1960s also began the construction of its own modernist capital,
Thought and Historical Difference (Prince- mark the martyrs of the Partition.
Islamabad, whose master plan was designed by Doxiadis, and a state as- ton: Princeton University Press, 2000). 3 This is, of course, an infinite topic ranging
sembly in Dhaka, designed by Louis Kahn—both of which can be construed See Introduction for the “waiting room of from Kashmir to Abbottabad, for which I
as acts of defiance against their “not-yet-ready” mandate—in this case history” argument. don’t have room in this essay.
2 Most of the “program” for Chandigarh was 4 From the “Randhawa Papers,” Chandigarh
modern architecture functioning as a proxy for decolonization, as Western- based on what was “lost” with Lahore. But Archives.
ization. By the early 1970s, however, India had successfully supported the there was no Martyrs’ Memorial in Lahore, 5 Ibid.
54 The Many Names of Chandigarh Vikramāditya Prakāsh 55

c. Ambala most of the developing world, deruralization is the process of the incomplete
d. Patiala displacement of an agro-rural sociality that remains inadequately converted
e. Shimla into or accounted for in the new urban. Urbanization in this sense is more ac-
curately and more ethically named “deruralization.” More than urbanization,
6. Although framed as the aspiration of the new nation, Chandigarh was in deruralization requires a better accounting to its rural not-tabula rasa:
fact required only as the administrative capital of the State of Punjab. The
State of Punjab, an abstraction in its own right, was made to align faithfully 1. Extensive pottery and other artifacts dating back to the second and third
with the staging of the nation-state. This “made-to-align”-ment quickly millennium BCE were found during construction excavations on site, sug-
proved to be fissiparous and unstable. Misalignments, there before the gesting the possibility of a significant unexcavated city or town beneath
Partition, quickly asserted themselves, in particular the demand for an au- the Chandigarh site.7 The Associate Director of the local Government Museum
tonomous Punjabi Suba. By stressing linguistic identity as the basis of state insists that the planning of Chandigarh directly derives from that of Indus
formation, the Punjabi Suba movement had in fact challenged the colonial- Cities such as Mohenjo-Daro. The original names of Indus cities are unknown,
ist religion-based partitioning of Punjab. The Nehruvian vision struggled because their script remains inconclusively deciphered. The civilization is
between linguistic-based regional formations and a centralized, abstract named after the present name of the river system that formed its backbone:
identity based on the nation.6 By 1965, following the assassination of Punjab’s the Indus. Recent remote sensing archaeology also suggests that another
pro-Nehru Chief Minister, this alignment came undone. To maintain peace, river, the Ghaggar, was central to this civilization. The Ghaggar’s running
the State of Punjab was divided into Punjab and Haryana; and Chandigarh, dry in the middle of the second millennium BCE was most likely the central
now a contested capital, was sublated into a Union Territory administered di- cause that led to that civilization’s abandonment. Chandigarh is located at
rectly by New Delhi that simultaneously also hosted two state administra- the very “neck” of the Ghaggar, the point where it emerges from the Hima-
tions. The Secretariat, the Assembly, and the High Court were divided in layas to begin its doomed journey across the plains. Given the contemporary
the ratio of 60:40 between Punjab and Haryana respectively. Chandigarh’s Indian penchant for renaming cities based on their “origins,” Chandigarh
urban area today is sometimes referred to as the “Tri-State Region.” perhaps, one day may conceivably be renamed the “Ghaggar city.”

2. Chandigarh was so named purportedly because of a village that existed on

Claim II: Tabula Rasa site with a temple dedicated to the goddess Chandi. The location and history
of this village is both disputed and the subject of mythology.
Like the “nation,” nature as “tabula rasa” is an impossible abstraction, verified
by the discourse of physical geography. The site for Chandigarh was selected 3. By modern Hindu mythology, Chandi is one of the many names of THE
purposefully by aerial reconnaissance by P. L. Verma and P. N. Thapar, the goddess, or Devi, or the Female Principle. Unlike the male gods of the
Chief Engineer and Chief Administrator respectively encharged with building Hindu pantheon, who are many, with many an avatar or manifestation, Devi
Chandigarh. From 15,000 feet only the geographical/ecological advantages of is the only female god whose many forms and corresponding names are a
the site were highlighted—a gently sloping plain at the Shivalik foothills irri- property of the varied characters known by different names that she assumes
gated by intermittent rivers. This rigorously geographical reading of site, the as the equivalent feminine counterparts to the various male gods. In all her
site abstracted as nature, provided the alibi that verified it (verificare) as a forms, Devi is always just herself, different only in names. Some of Devi’s
“tabula rasa.” Tabula rasa as raw nature requires the erasure of the historic other names, by the substitutional logics of Devi’s names, also therefore
specifics of the pre-existing inhabitants of the land. It points to the inherent substitutable prefixes for Chandigarh, are:
epistemic violence resident in what we might retrospectively recount as a a. Durga
strictly ecological reading of site. Ecology without the sociality erroneously b. Parvati
imagines deruralization as the responsibility only of restoring the rural to nature.
The nation in fact occupies nature through such an abstraction. The land was 6 The Indian Constitution, like that of the 7 A major Indus city lies beneath a mam-
acquired by the Nehruvian state using eminent domain. United States and other modern nations, moth mound in Ropar, a mere thirty kilo-
struggles to balance the powers and iden- meters from Chandigarh.
In the United States, where I teach, as in most parts of the Western world
tity of the Center and the States. The his-
where the rural is erased and fully converted to the urban, deruralization can tory of postcolonial India can be read as
possibly be theorized as the responsibility to restore nature. In India, and in the indexing of this struggle.
56 The Many Names of Chandigarh Vikramāditya Prakāsh 57

c. Uma k. Saini Majra

d. Gauri l. Rurki Parao
e. Himvati m. Kheri
f. Jagatmata n. Bajwara
g. Bhavani o. Shahpur
h. Kali p. Fatehgarh Kanthala
i. Shakti
8. Every one of these sixteen villages was bulldozed and their land seamlessly
4. “Garh,” the suffix, can mean simply “place,” but it usually, particularly in the integrated into the secular grid delineating the sectors of the city. They are
local language Panjabi, denotes a “fort,” a securitized territory, usually atop not visible in the urban fabric anymore; they have been erased, the site rig-
a hill. Fatehgarh, Hoalgarh, Lohgarh, Keshgarh, and Anandgarh are examples orously deruralized.
of local Punjabi towns that were formerly forts.
9. If one had wanted to, one could have preserved the names of the erased
5. As per the original master plan of Chandigarh, the city was to be “protected” villages by making them the names of the following sectors based on the
by the controlled periphery six kilometers wide on average. This protection sites of their erasure:
was enshrined in the Chandigarh Periphery Control Act of 1952. The pe- a. Sector 3 - Mehla Majra
riphery, however, was breached when Punjab was subdivided in 1965. The b. Sector 6 - Ram Nagar
periphery, like land created by erased fort falls, then became the site for c. Sector 8 - Kalibar
new cities peripheral to the “old” city, like Panchkula and Mohali. Together, d. Sector 12 - Sehzadpur
Panchkula, Chandigarh, and Mohali constitute the “Tri-City Region.” e. Sector 14 - Kanji Mijra
f. Sector 19 - Nagla
6. Chandigarh is a mere 100 kilometers from Kurukshetra, the haloed mythical g. Sector 20 - Kheri
battlefield of the Mahabharata, where the Gita is said to have been revealed h. Sector 22 - Rurki Parao
in dialogue between Lord Krishna and Arjuna. Savitri Prakash, my mother i. Sector 23 - Bajwara
and a self-studied authority on the Gita, has suggested that Chandigarh j. Sector 24 - Kailar
may have been the city, Virata, where the Pandavas spent the thirteenth k. Sector 25 - Saini Majra
year of the fourteen-year exile, when they were required to live l. Sector 26 - Hamirgarh
anonymously. m. Sector 28 - Dalheri Jattan or Gurdaspur
n. Sector 31 - Kanthala
7. The archival record shows that there were at least sixteen villages—none o. Sector 34 - Fatehgarh
called Chandigarh—existing on the site where Chandigarh was laid out.8 p. Sector 38 - Shahpur
And so by the official logic of naming, the names of any one of these other
villages could also have been the name of Chandigarh. Chandigarh’s sixteen
other possible names were: 10. When the villages were bulldozed, the only structures that were left standing
a. Mehla Majra were the religious structures, the Hindu temples and the Sikh Gurdwaras.9
b. Ram Nagar
c. Sehzadpur
d. Kalibar 8 The number of villages on site, of course, taking sixteen as the villages that were
depends on how you count. Gopal Krishan’s erased when Phase I of Chandigarh was
e. Hamirgarh
superb documentation Inner Space – Out- established by the Capital Project Team,
f. Nagla er Space of a Planned City: A Thematic At- 1949–65.
g. Kanji Mijra las of Chandigarh, Chandigarh Perspec- 9 The Indian definition of secularism involves
h. Dalher Jattan tives, 1999, Map-2, suggests that the num- equality of all religions and is not anti-reli-
ber of villages could be counted as being gion like say, the French definition, which
i. Gurdaspur twenty-four or even fifty-four, depending requires radical separation of church and
j. Kailar on the area you count as Chandigarh. I am state.
58 The Many Names of Chandigarh Vikramāditya Prakāsh 59

These were seamlessly incorporated into the gridded fabric of the new city and services, and they want to be a part of Chandigarh in name and in
without any kind of visual priority, a part of the secularist framing of the deed. Freed from any zoning regulations, these incorporated villages have
city. In Sector 8, a Hindu Mandir and a Sikh Gurdwara share adjacent plots, today become super-dense agglomerations catering to the vital informal
in line with a row of private homes. Over time, however, both the Mandir economy of Chandigarh.
and Gurdwara have grown exponentially, asserting their presence on the
street and skyline, insisting on special zoning exceptions for themselves. 16. Relatively speaking, these “urban villages” are at the high-end of the low-end
real estate values, catering to the infinite cheap rental economy required
11. Oral history suggests that all the Muslims who lived in the villages where by migrant workers and the new rural for urban migrants. These “urban vil-
Chandigarh was made were massacred during the Partition by their neigh- lages” have been the staging grounds of the inflow of migrants into Chan-
bors. The villagers who were displaced by the making of Chandigarh were digarh, accommodated by the informality of their regulations that allows
given new homes in the houses that were “vacated” by the Muslims. The unregulated dense growth.
Muslim mosques, however, it seems were not retained.
17. Because of their density, these “urban villages” of Chandigarh, along with
12. Oral history also suggests that the village of Burail has the reputation that some of the “slums” in the periphery, also constitute the largest voting
its “Rajput” residents were the only ones from the area who went to the blocks of the city and dominate municipal elections. The village, or rural
camp where the Muslims of its village were sheltered in 1947 and invited population of Chandigarh is, like in most Indian cites, the majority of the
them to come back, assuring their safety. Since then, Burail has had a solid urban population. The urban modern self-image of the city, like most Indi-
reputation as a haven for displaced Muslims. After 2002, after the Godhra an cities, suffers as a consequence of this fact. The majority of Indian cities
massacres of Muslims in Gujarat, the Muslim migrant populations of Burail are rural.
swelled significantly.10 New Chandigarh has many new mosques.
The elected Chandigarh Municipal Corporation, however, does not enjoy its
13. When Chandigarh’s Second Phase was built in the 1970s, three additional full constitutionally mandated power because the city, with its status as a
villages were slated to be deruralized. Through political negotiations these “Union Territory,” is primarily governed by an administration consisting almost
villages had to give up their agricultural land but were able to retain their entirely of civil servants appointed by New Delhi.
village land and housing with the promise that they would be incorporated
into the city. These were:
a. Burail Claim III: Modernism
b. Attawa
c. Khajeri As the aspiration to establish an objective, universal language, born of the
Enlightenment, modern architecture was the ideal claim to manifest the nation.
14. These three villages were incorporated into the fabric of Chandigarh with a Modernism was part of the technology without identity that was imported by
lal dora (red thread) arrangement; i.e., the laws governing Chandigarh did the Nehruvian state as part of its secular framing: “the temples of modern India.”
not apply within the red lines delineating their boundaries. Burail, Attawa, In this sense, architectural modernism was part of the nation’s project, along
and Khejeri’s lal doras delineated a rectilinear boundary around the village, with the massive hydroelectric dams such as Bhakra Nangal, to occupy nature.
oriented to the cardinal directions, so that these villages stand out distinct-
ly because of their orientation and because of the dense, “organic” mass- However, the time on task to convert the project into a city was the responsibility
ing of their urbanism, like a counterproposition to the unfolding order of in the first instance of the officers of the Indian Administrative Services, of
the modernist, secularist sectors.11 Punjab cadre, or in Punjab Administration by so-called “special appointment.”

15. The residents of these incorporated so-called “urban villages,” however,

complain that they were a part of Chandigarh “in name only,” precisely be- 10 Oral history from site visit by author in the direction of the prevailing winds. All
cause none of the laws of Chandigarh applied to them, so none of the ser- March 2012. the villages, however, in time-honored tra-
11 The grid of Chandigarh is oriented North- dition were oriented to the cardinal
vices standard to Chandigarh were extended to them. Today the senior East South-West to be better oriented to directions.
landowners of these villages are agitating for more formal building bylaws the mountains and to take advantage of
60 The Many Names of Chandigarh Vikramāditya Prakāsh 61

1. The oldest files in the archives refer to the anticipated city as simply the From the Chandigarh Railway’s rest house (a standard British Public Works
5. 
“Capital Project.”12 The brief to make Chandigarh in the mold of a Garden Department structure with high ceilings, banked rooms, and a shaded
City was prepared by A. L. Fletcher, a Kerala cadre officer of the Indian verandah) was the most convenient state guesthouse from where the offi-
(erstwhile Imperial) Civil Service, who was the first administrative officer in cers and architects could visit the site with ease by jeep. This is where Le
charge of the Capitol Project. Together with Verma and Thapar, Fletcher Corbusier made his first stage “modifications” to the Mayer plan. M. N.
prepared a detailed “brief” of the Capital Project down to the relative densities, Sharma, the first of the Indian architects to join the “Capital Project,” first
the types of houses, and their relative square feet. His conception of a met Le Corbusier and the rest of his team here.
modern city was based in part on his experience as an administrator in the
modernizing of colonial Lahore early in the twentieth century and was, The Kalka express, the only train that serviced this station in the 1950s, arrived
6. 
therefore, colonial in origin.13 a little after midnight. My father, Aditya Prakash, the last of the Indian ar-
chitects to join the project, was received at this station in 1952, two years
Albert Mayer and Matthew Nowicki, the first Americans who prepared the
2.  after construction of the city had begun, by Maxwell Fry even at this late
core conceptual design for Chandigarh, worked from Shimla. Mayer was hour. He recalled having to drive a considerable distance in a jeep over kucha
picked for the project by Nehru because he was already in India, in Uttar dusty roads to reach the site. Later the Chandigarh railway station was
Pradesh implementing a “model village” scheme, inspired by Mahatma shifted to its current location by building a special loop. The broad gauge
Gandhi. Mayer, a planner, brought in Nowicki as the architect on the project. terminus, however, has remained in Kalka.
Nowicki’s death in 1949 precipitated the creation of a new team. By the
time Le Corbusier and the rest of his European team were hired, the Capital
Project had begun its implementation stage, and so a project site was Claim IV: Le Corbusier
needed as a staging platform for the project. The site maps show that
“Chandigarh” was the name of a railway station that was chosen as the As the largest built work of the most influential architect of the twentieth
project site. century, Chandigarh can be considered the epicenter of modern architecture.

3. The Chandigarh Railway Station was conveniently located on the route Mulk Raj Anand, editor of Marg, an avid Nehruvian modernist, in the pref-
1. 
from New Delhi to Shimla. New Delhi, the old colonial capital, was adopted ace to Aditya Prakash’s retrospective manifesto Chandigarh: A Presentation
as the seat of the postcolonial Indian national government. Shimla was the in Free Verse, recalled the atmosphere in the Chandigarh guesthouse:
erstwhile “summer capital” of colonial India and was where the state gov- In the little clearing in the jungle, by the barn-like refugee style hut, where
ernment of partitioned Punjab was temporarily located after 1947 until the Le Corbusier and his associate architects worked, the heavy perfume
new capital city was built. of the vegetation came into our nostrils. The mosquitoes buzzed in a
conference as though to pass a resolution against the building of Chan-
4. In their persistent search to escape the heat and dust of India, the British digarh, as a few of us crowded around the pale sage with the big, black-
“Raj” had laboriously built a railway line that connected New Delhi all the framed glasses on his furtive eyes.14
way up to Shimla (elevation 7,100 feet). To reach that elevation they had to
build a train for the narrow gauge—two feet six inches, rather than the
“standard” four feet eight and a half inches gauge used in the plains. At 12 These are the archives known as the this booklet was written by Aditya Prakash
“Randhawa Papers” held in the City Museum, from his desk as the Principal of Chandi-
Kalka, twenty-seven kilometers from the Capital Project Site, from the point Sector 10, Chandigarh. garh College of Architecture around 1974.
where the Himalayas rise rapidly, the track shifts from the standard to the 13 William J. Glover, Making Lahore Modern: It was illustrated with the famous gestural
narrow gauge. Ten kilometers from Kalka, along the railway track, there was Constructing and Imagining a Colonial sketches of Sunirmal Chatterjee, profes-
City (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota sor of Drawing at the Chandigarh College
a railway rest house, one of the innumerable built by the colonial adminis-
Press, 2007). of Architecture. Mulk Raj Anand, novelist,
tration to service the needs of their officers traveling on their extensive rail 14 Mulk Raj Anand, “Conversation with Le essayist, and founding editor of the jour-
network. This rest house was located next to a small temple dedicated to Corbusier,” in Chandigarh: A Presentation nal Marg, traversed the Chandigarh site
Chandi, and so the railway station giving access to the rest house was called, in Free Verse, published by Aditya Prakash, from its earliest days becoming close
Chandigarh Administration, Chandigarh, friends with all the architects, particularly
on maps, Chandigarh. date unknown: 6. Written on the twenty- Aditya Prakash.
fifth anniversary of Chandigarh’s founding,
62 The Many Names of Chandigarh Vikramāditya Prakāsh 63

2. An avid Nehruvian modernist, Mulk Raj Anand christened Chandigarh “the documents that could be executed on site with hand poured concrete.
finest city of humanism,” speaking in Le Corbusier’s voice. For Anand, But in his own designs—the housing, the schools, the university—Jeanneret
Chandigarh’s new gods of modern India were the sun and air. stepped out to explore the possibilities of an Indian modernism, informed
by ways of building with local materials—exposed brick, with the occasional
3. 
At the same time, Chandigarh, according to Mulk Raj Anand, could be un- concrete and river rock—to suit the local climate. His best buildings work
derstood as a modern village relearned from the villages on-site: quietly and in place, austere yet subtle essays in the art of functionalism.
I asked ‘Corb’ whether he had been to see the villages nearby. Always re- His biggest errors—like Gandhi Bhawan—attempt to be heroic.
luctant to speak at length in English, he said: “Oui! – See this model I
have made of the symbol on the walls of the villages. [...] You look— Jeanneret’s best work, in this sense, was the furniture that he designed and
8. 
my sketch book.” We all eagerly scanned as he turned the pages: Open that he set up the atelier to design to furnish the innumerable government
Hand, camels, donkeys, village belles, turbaned peasants, snakes, buildings that were created by the Capital Project Office. Fifty years anon, this
doorways, corners, verandahs, trees, pipal leaves, all drawn with the free furniture is old and broken and sits in many a rubbish heap that the govern-
hand, in great profusion “I will make a plan which is simple,” said Le ment of India perforce maintains as a record of its innumerable possessions.
Corbusier. ”A big village. In burnt brick. I will bring in air. Keep Sun God in Stolen from such rubbish heaps, this furniture is being purchased for fabu-
control. Garden in every house. Not Paris, London, New York—Chandigarh, lous prices for collections all over North America and Europe as “original”
new city.” pieces of modernist art.

Not Paris, not London, not New York, these other not-names of Chandigarh
4.  In its own time, however, this so-called Jeanneret furniture was built to be
9. 
were documented by Le Corbusier, in which he overlaid the profile of the used. It was designed so that it could be built cheaper than mass-produced
Chandigarh Plan on top of that of Paris. In another drawing, he contrasted furniture—industrial mass production being the coveted, but rarely achieved,
New Delhi and Chandigarh. fantasy of modernist furniture—by hand, by local craftsmen, using local
materials. Jeanneret, in other words, was using his learning of how to build
Le Corbusier indexed Chandigarh-as-a-village in carefully calibrated design
5.  in India to design this furniture, which was mass-produced by hand.
gestures at the Capitol, incorporating the bucolic landscape of the agricul-
tural zone around Chandigarh into the symbolic map of the Capitol Complex 10. Towards the end of his life, Jeanneret had moved to making furniture with
as a privileged point of reference. The Capitol Complex was built on land local cotton and leather, suspended from chains, a whimsical summary of
that originally belonged to the village Kansal (the actual village was preserved designs that were now quotations from the makeshift furniture of the infor-
and still thrives today.) At one point he also worked on a “village” to be mal sector. Jeanneret never married and rarely ventured far from Chandigarh.
attached to the governor’s palace, his reading of the minimal dwelling, but His occasional parties were attended mostly by fellow architects. His closest
this “village” in fact was intended to house servants and staff of the governor. friend, however, was his driver Bansi, who not only drove him wherever he
needed, but also, according to oral sources, took care of all his material
6. In Mulk Raj Anand’s narrative, Pierre Jeanneret played the role of translator and spiritual needs. Little is known of Bansi, as yet. Domestic help in India
to Le Corbusier, a role that seemed to have been natural to him at the time: migrates from rural regions, often at great distance, and is subsequently
Pierre Jeannert [sic] commented in French what I understood him to
  forgotten by the archives.
mean: ‘Corb’ believes in precise drawing for his pupils. Himself, he is for
something more than drawing. He did not go to ecole or college. He has 11. When Jeanneret left Chandigarh, sick and soon to die, he packed everything
mastered his craft. So that he can forget it. He is a creative artist. he could, “official” drawings and all, and took them back with him to Switzer-
land. Today these effects constitute the invaluable Jeanneret Archives, held at
Jeanneret, Chief Architect of the Capital Project Office, faithfully followed
7.  the Canadian Centre for Architecture in Montreal.
the modernist creed in his own designs for the minimal dwelling with a
clerestory ventilating a simple split plan with a small front and large back 12. Yet a significant portion of the signature Chandigarh modernism was designed
yard. For the most part, Jeanneret labored to fulfill the Le Corbusian vision, by Maxwell Fry and Jane Drew alongside Pierre Jeanneret. For Fry and Drew,
in particular by being the architect on site who painstakingly translated Le their work in Chandigarh was part of the general staging of environmentally
Corbusier’s free-form designs sent from Paris into manageable construction and socially responsible architecture. Fry and Drew, however, left Chandigarh
64 The Many Names of Chandigarh Vikramāditya Prakāsh 65

after only three years. They published their work done in Chandigarh later What then is “living heritage”? Heritage planning can be described as the pro-
as part of their book Tropical Architecture in the Dry and Humid Zones (1956), cess of “managing change with a conscionable view to past.” The management
which made no special mention of the staging of Chandigarh as a postco- of change prepares for a future that must remain, at least partly, by definition
lonial project. For them, modernism was simply a geophysical project. unknown. In helping prepare for a future that is uncertain and partly, by definition,
unknown, the ethical responsibility of the historian, I would argue, is not to
13. There is a great photograph in the Chandigarh Architecture Museum that fictionalize a singular past as authoritative metonymy, but to aspire to the
shows the Capitol Project Team. Set up in the manner in which colonial ethical indexing of the past in a defined set of registers. In the present case, I
administrations were set up, in long rows organized very strictly according have begun the process of laying out the “living field” that I believe should
to hierarchy, the Capital Project team in fact consists of seventy-eight define the architectural heritage of this important city.
people:
a. twelve men, sitting on the ground;
b. eighteen men, one woman, sitting in the second row;
c. twenty-five men, standing in the third row;
d. twenty-three men, standing on a bench in the back row.

14. Jane Drew is the only woman present in the picture. U. E. Chowdhry was the
only Indian woman architect working on the project. Chowdhry, however,
was absent the day this historic photograph was taken. There were, of
course, thousands of women, part of the migrant labor force, who worked
on the construction sites.

15. Other than the four white Europeans, the names of the remaining seventy-
five members of the Capitol Project Team have yet to be fully recovered
from the archives. This does not include the administration, the contrac-
tors, and the workers who built the buildings.

Chandigarh today is a well-established brand name. Legal battles are fought

for the right to use the Chandigarh name. There is a Chandigarh University,
located in Mohali, and Mullanpur has recently won the right to be renamed
“New Chandigarh.” Bollywood films and local pop-songs claim to describe
a distinct Chandigarh-type youth—both male and female—too sophisticated
for the village and small town folks of Punjab, but not urbane enough like
those in Bangalore and Mumbai. Numerous new townships are on the boards
in the former peripheral lands of Chandigarh. Greater Chandigarh, as it is
now called, includes Mullanpur (also known as New Chandigarh), Kharar,
Literature
Banur, Zirakpur, and Derabassi. All these areas have master plans, prepared
by Jurong Consultants of Singapore, developed in the last five years. Chakrabarty, Dipesh. Provincializing Europe: Gopal, Krishan. Inner Spaces, Outer Spaces
Postcolonial Thought and Historical Differ- of a Planned City: A Thematic Atlas of
ence. Princeton: Princeton University Chandigarh. Chandigarh: Chandigarh
Chandigarh administration has twice prepared, and withdrawn, its dossier Press, 2000. Perspectives, 1999.
nominating Chandigarh for “World Heritage” status, worried about the ability
of the city to grow in the fossilization criteria of World Heritage. Brasilia’s Glover, William J. Making Lahore Modern: Prakash, Aditya. Chandigarh: A Presenta-
Constructing and Imagining a Colonial tion in Free Verse. Chandigarh: Marg Pub-
World Heritage status in this case is precisely the model of what not to do for lications, 1980.
Chandigarh. City. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota
Press, 2008.
 Moira Hille 67

From Around
In this article, the term “transculturation” functions as a theoretical and practical
tool which, according to Fernando Ortiz, with an awareness for the hierarchical
and unequal power relations present therein, enables transcultural encounters
to be conceived as a process of mutual interactions.1 The term “transculturation”

a Modern House
“refers to a multidirectional and endless interactive process between various
cultural systems that is in opposition to unidirectional and hierarchical structures
determined by the principle of origin that is always associated with claims for
cultural authority.”2 The analysis here focuses on two modernist projects that
were planned, but never realized. Both will be discussed in relation to trans-
culturation and analyzed as actors within the modernist architecture discourse
Moira Hille of the 1950s, with particular attention to transfers, interconnections, appro-
priation, and resistance.
The starting points are Le Corbusier’s plan of the Museum of Knowledge in
Chandigarh and architect Minnette De Silva’s concept for a film about a dancer,
also from the 1950s. What these two projects have in common is that, while a
rough draft exists for each, neither was ever fully formulated.
Both of the architectures—here, architecture refers not only to buildings, but
to constructions at large, thereby encompassing both the museum and the
film—allow for a debate on knowledge production with a focus on depicting
underrepresented actors, relations and references, conflicts and forms of
knowledge within modernist architecture projects of the 1950s. This framework
allows us to examine and critically assess each project’s perspective and
possibilities in regards to critical knowledge production. The architectures will
also be analyzed as “built” displays that cast images of manifold influences,
enabling us to study the actual sites where knowledge has been gathered and
catalogued.
From this perspective, architectures are not simply built or inhabited; rather,
they are founded upon political, social, technological, and economic conditions,
powers, and struggles. This implies viewing the project of modernity through
the lens of its manifold influences and deconstructing the concept of univer-
salism by grasping it as a network of references and relations. In the Model
House project, we respond to this network of connections and transcultural
influences by mapping out structures, thereby rendering the “dialogical rela-
tions between specific places and times” visible “and thus creat[ing] chrono-
topical forms of narration in the sense of Bakhtin.”3 This not only enables a
dialogue between seemingly unrelated concepts and considerations, but also

1 For more on the term transculturation and (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1998), xi.
Fernando Ortiz, see Christian Kravagna, 3 Fahim Amir, Eva Egermann, Moira Hille,
Transculturation, 2012, http://www.trans- Johannes Köck, Jakob Krameritsch, Christian
culturalmodernism.org. See also Kravagna’s Kravagna, Christina Linortner, Marion von
contribution to this book. Osten, and Peter Spillmann, “Model House–
2 Felipe Hernández, Mark Millington, and Mapping Transcultural Modernisms,” Texte
Iain Borden, eds., Transculturation: Cities, zur Kunst, no. 82 (June 2011): 147.
Spaces and Architecture in Latin America
68 From Around a Modern House Moira Hille 69

a focus on practices rather than on representation. Montage, a figure em- the first row. Margarete Schütte-Lihotzky sits to the left of De Silva in the front
ployed in modern cinema as well as in archives and museums, can be used to row. The image reads very differently in each of the publications. In the CIAM
perform a textual analysis “around Chandigarh.” Using both these projects book, it documents a meeting and focuses on the star architects of European
and artistic research as a basis,4 I will discuss four images related to the proj- and US American modernity by giving more space to the names than the image
ects, in order to open up a conflict, both between the Museum of Knowledge itself. In the De Silva publication, the image shows an important historical
and the film, and also between the photographs and their captions.5 After all, event, in which she is the main protagonist and the center of attention. – CUT –
it is only “when we take not just the ‘flipside’ of images into account, along
with their comments, stamps, and cryptic abbreviations, but rather the entire In 19539 and 1997,10 De Silva mentions that she is planning, and respectively,
context of their production and circulation, will their promise to represent re- had planned, a film about a dancer in a village.11 The broad outline she de-
ality be saved.”6 scribes is the structure, a kind of architecture we can use to examine the rela-
De Silva’s and Le Corbusier’s practices both connect cinematic and visual tionship between architecture, bodies, and representation in De Silva’s
production and architectural practices, not only in their architectural concep- practice.
tion, but also in the filmmaking and photographic practices and in the visual De Silva was born in Sri Lanka between 1916 and 1918 into a Burgher/Sinhalese
material accompanying the built works. While Le Corbusier visually stages his family and died in 1998, just one week before the first volume of her autobiog-
architectures, the material depicting De Silva’s houses is largely documentary. raphy The Life & Work of an Asian Woman Architect was published, which had
Here, the focus is often placed on the workers constructing and the people originally been planned as a two-volume publication. For most of her life, she
living in De Silva’s houses—similar to her film project about a dancer in a village. lived in Kandy, a hill country in Sri Lanka, which belonged to the category
In contrast, the visual representations of Le Corbusier’s works, which he “upper country.” While the lower countries had already been conquered by
helped create, focus on presentations or demonstrations of the architecture’s the colonial powers in the early sixteenth century, the British took over power
functionality. in Kandy in the first half of the nineteenth century. De Silva was an architect,
The following is an encounter of the two. – CUT – an architecture theorist, and taught architecture history. She was the first Sri

There is an image in The CIAM Discourse on Urbanism 1928-1960 of a group of

people sitting in rows.7 The caption tells us that the image is from the CIAM 4 Artistic research is understood here as an the shot is potential montage, in the de-
congress 1946 in Bridgwater, England. The image is very small and the people ongoing discussion since the 1950s, but it velopment of its intensity shattering the
has increased particularly within the last quadrilateral cage of the shot and explod-
depicted can only be identified with the help of a legend. The same image two decades. The discussion is concerned ing its conflict into montage impulses be-
appears in another publication—in the biography of De Silva.8 The image is with critically reassessing the binary be- tween montage pieces. As, in a zigzag of
about ten times as large as in the previous publication. Names are listed under tween science and art as well as critiquing mimicry, the mise-en-scène splashes out
the politics of knowledge, research, and into a spatial zigzag with the same shat-
the photograph, partly handwritten, since they had become more and more
institutions. Here, artistic research is used tering.” Sergei Eisenstein, “The Cinemato-
illegible from repeated reprinting. The size of an image does not necessarily as a method that links up to other ap- graphic Principle and the Ideogram,” in
correspond to a thematic focus, but has to do with agreements between the proaches and projects “that have used Film Form, ed. Jay Leda (New York: Har-
author and the publisher, financial matters concerning printing, etc. The viewer techniques of artistic—which is to say dia- court, 1977), 28–44.
logical, experimental, actor-related, or 6 Hito Steyerl, Die Farbe der Wahrheit. Do-
glances over the image. There are seventy-six people sitting in four rows in even agitorial—research to analyze and kumentarismen im Kunstfeld (Vienna: Tu-
front of a bright brick wall. Thirteen women are present. Most of them are there present historical-contemporary coloniali- ria & Kant, 2008), 34.
with their husbands, some have architecture firms with their partners. Two of ties to produce a specific knowledge that 7 Eric Mumford, The CIAM Discourse on Ur-
exhibits rather than conceals the tortured banism 1928–1960 (Cambridge, MA: MIT
the women have their own architecture firms; one of them is Minnette De Silva. materiality of objects and the practical Press, 2000).
She represents India/Ceylon at the congress and is sitting in the first row, like logic of the institutions to which it owes 8 Minnette De Silva, The Life & Work of an
all the other women, with the exception of Mrs. Wiener and Mrs. Stam-Beese, its existence.” See Tom Holert, “Artistic Asian Woman Architect (Colombo: Smart
Research: Anatomy of an Ascent,” Texte Media Productions, 1998).
who are standing in the back rows. Minnette De Silva is wearing a sari, her
zur Kunst, no. 82 (June 2011): 56. 9 Ibid., 257.
hands are resting on her legs, which are crossed. She is sitting between Walter 5 “So, montage is conflict. As the basis of 10 Susan Reed, interview with Minnette De
Gropius and Cornelis van Eesteren and, like most everyone, is looking into the every art is conflict (an ‘imagist’ transfor- Silva on August 27, 1997 (unpublished
camera. On her far right, at the end of the row is Le Corbusier. Jane Drew is mation of the dialectical principle). The manuscript).
shot appears as the cell of montage. 11 Parts of the following were taken from
sitting next to Gropius, and behind her Maxwell Fry; both were involved in Therefore it also must be considered from previously published texts on http://www.
planning Chandigarh. Jane Drew and Sigfried Giedion make up the middle of the viewpoint of conflict. Conflict within transculturalmodernism.org.
70 From Around a Modern House Moira Hille 71

Lankan woman to be trained as an architect and the first Asian woman to be Setting:
elected as a member of the Royal Institute of British Architecture (RIBA). From The camera enters a house through an open door. The house is old and empty;
1946 to 1956, she was the CIAM delegate for India and Ceylon. Beside her it seems like nobody has taken care of it for ages. The camera looks around.
regular journeys to Europe, she traveled to Greece, Iran, Pakistan, Afghani- It is a modern house, built in the late 1940s. It is obvious that the camera is part
stan, and India in the 1960s and started teaching architecture history in Hong of a moving body. The camera follows the steps as it follows the subjective
Kong in the 1970s. She occupies a very important discursive position in the gaze. After looking around (it is either the living room or the entrance hall, there
debates around modernist architecture and architecture history. In 1953, she are big windows on one side of the room, stairs that lead to the lower ground
published an essay in Marg Magazine about the first house she planned, the of the house, one wall is colored in a dark yet intense red, there is a huge rect-
“Karunaratne House” (1947–1951), for which she outlines a concept and a angular hole in one wall, it appears that it was once made to make a picture
building practice of “Modern Regional Architecture.” She focuses on notions fit inside, through the windows a garden is conjecturable, the grass looks wild),
of traveling discourses, which avoid developing theories and practices that the camera starts to be affected by the architectural lines, the lines and
create exclusions based on identity, operating instead with the notion of streams caused by architecture, as well as the lines and streams caused by the
transnational and transcultural understanding. time based cracks on the walls and the ground.
Her autobiography, published in 1998, is a collection of photographs, drawings, Camera:
notes, and stories, which are presented in a somewhat nonlinear way. Her There is a slow fade-in, as the camera, in a hovering motion, gently sweeps
awareness of the intersection between postcoloniality, ethnicity, gender, and across the entrance area/upper living room in slow motion. The view follows,
heteronormativity is illustrated in the title of her book: Life & Work of an Asian the camera continues onward, toward the upper stage, observing all the
Woman Architect. Experiences of being exoticized in 1940s postwar London walls, cautiously, slowly, exactly.
as an “exotic visitor from another planet,” “romanticized” by Le Corbusier Voice-Over:
when “he was greatly attracted by his first live contact with l’Inde,”12 not being The voice-over begins while the camera continues to follow the lines and cracks.
taken seriously as an architect in Sri Lanka, being refused as a “daughter of It is the fifteenth of October in 1954. My name is Minnette De Silva. I am writing
the nation” because her parents were from different castes,13 and falling out of a letter to Basil Wright: “I wonder whether you remember meeting me in London.
heteronormativity by living alone and unmarried, choosing to concentrate on We talked about a film of Ceylon and you said you would be interested … I said
production rather than reproduction, and the effect these experiences had on I would get in touch when more details were worked out. The story is well on
her life and work are described with a feminist attitude in her autobiography.14 its way to completion: I have the broad outline worked out and there are two
The book is reminiscent of a collage and, as such, of her architecture. Her experts on Ceylon Culture and folk life working on the details. I am meeting
narratives rotate around terms such as modern and traditional, regional and various people to discuss the financial side of the film, being guided by your
international, skilled and unskilled. Like in her book, De Silva created a col- rough estimate of what an inexpensive color-film would cost. We are hoping
lage of her activities and the products of her activities as an architect, theore- Shell might finance us: do you know the people at that end? Or would any of
tician, teacher, ceramist, weaver. Overall, the book appears to be an elaborate the film people there be interested in this idea?
collection. The second volume of the autobiography was never published; It is a purely indigenous film based on life in a village, with all the folk culture
the manuscript, along with the rest of her archives and collection, has since and living depicted, woven round the life of a young danseuse. She exists
been lost. – CUT – and is a lovely dancer and an interesting character. And, of course, this
brings in the whole dancing clan too. This is just a bare sketch of the theme.
The following scene is meant to visually establish the house as the stage, as I believe film companies are in need of ‘exotic’ film themes. This one is
the setting of negotiations between bodies, movement, representation, unique and with imaginative and poetic direction and photography could be
house, home, and gender. a very beautiful film.
Place:
Karunaratne House, Kandy.15
Sound: 12 Minnette De Silva, The Life & Work of an Social Scientists’ Association, 2001),
At first, the sound fades out, placing the full attention on the image. As the Asian Woman Architect, 100. 103–04.
sound recedes into the background, the images come to the fore until the 13 On “nationalism and respectability” see 14 De Silva, The Life & Work of an Asian Wom-
Neloufer De Mel, Women & the Nation’s an Architect.
sound takes over once again, taking the house out of the private sphere and Narrative. Gender and Nationalism in 15 Minnette De Silva, “A House in Kandy,”
into a more public sphere, e.g., the village. Twentieth Century Sri Lanka (Colombo: Marg VI, no. 3 (1953): 4–11.
72 From Around a Modern House Moira Hille 73

Please write to me immediately to let me know your thoughts on this. First of its irregularities are its most salient feature. […] We see the problem of post-
all, whether you are seriously interested. Please keep this as private as pos- coloniality exposed as a precarious balance of Eastern and Western cultures,
sible. I am sending this letter and two other copies to various friends in the not as an aesthetic synthesis.”20 The village in the film becomes a stage, or rather,
hope that one would forward it on. … You gave me your address but it seems is treated as a stage, a form of display that depicts references and relationships
to be lost.”16 between movement and architecture, between the dancer and the village.
The hand-held camera leaves the house through the front door, briefly looks The village is also significant as a point of reference for analyzing modernist
up, then straight ahead toward the street. – CUT – housing settlements.21 The medialization of modernist architecture itself was
also a key point of reference and was often incorporated into the architecture.22
In 1935, De Silva’s sister, Anil Marcia, and their friend, painter George Keyt, De Silva’s work also addresses the relationship between moving bodies and
produced a dance piece, the first in which the history of Sri Lanka was per- the surrounding architecture in a way that sets it apart from medializing archi-
formed. De Silva herself has an appearance as a tableau dancer. Focusing on tecture that only represents the interior or exterior of a building. It is impor-
Kandyan Dance, Susan Reed has extensively described the relationship be- tant to add that De Silva’s architectures were influenced by the idea of flexible
tween dance, decolonization, feminism, and nation-building. Until the 1940s, spaces and architectures capable of adapting to the ever-changing needs of
Kandyan Dance was performed only by men from certain castes in rural areas. their inhabitants. – CUT –
During the struggles for independence, however, it became a significant site
of struggle and conflict, also a site of feminist appropriation, where women There is a black-and-white photograph at the Le Corbusier Center in Chandigarh.
challenged the Sri Lankan ideals of female purity and respectability by perform- Next to the image, a piece of paper reads “Le Corbusier with Minnette De
ing the dance. Though Kandyan Dance has been described as conservative, Silva.” In the 1950s, during the construction phase, Le Corbusier invited De Silva
the historical absence of female dancers and feminist appropriations of the to Chandigarh. The caption doesn’t correspond to the image. On the left
dance “provide[d] Sinhala women with open territory, the opinion of pushing side of the image, there is a man with his back to the camera, and Le Corbusier
boundaries of what is considered suitable dance for their gender.”17 I under- is standing in the middle and talking to a woman on his left. De Silva is not in
stand De Silva’s use of the term “exotic” in her film description as a political term the picture.23 Archives and museums sort and organize photographs based on
on multiple levels. For one, she appropriates the term by emphasizing it, the information found on the back: year, place, persons depicted, photogra-
treating this colonial mode of constructing a female other with irony, and using pher. The front of the photograph only exists on a symbolic level, as an iconic
it to get funding from British film companies, as she is well aware of its cur- stimulus.24 It is less about the truthfulness of whom or what we see, but rather
rency on the postcolonial market. In addition, the “exotic” does not correspond about the way in which truths are produced through classifications and in-
with the image of women and the use of female bodies dictated by national scriptions. Minnette De Silva is often mentioned as a friend of Le Corbusier’s,
ideals of “modesty, restraint, and submissiveness” in 1950s Sri Lanka. What’s not as an architect or a consultant. Through the photograph that she is not in,
more, the dancers’ growing popularity also enabled criticism of the caste she is also documented in the Le Corbusier Center Archive. – CUT –
system to become more visible in media and politics. In this period of nation-
building, an “exhibitionary order” was established,18 especially for dance, The city of Chandigarh was divided by the European modern city planning
which depoliticized the performances by relegating them to the aesthetic realm principles of CIAM.25 The layout of Chandigarh is based on the Modulor, a
of national folklore. “As an expression and embodiment of ‘culture’, dance
as a medium is especially well suited for displays of identity, combining music,
dress, body, and movement to convey ideas of a group’s distinctiveness.”19 16 De Silva, The Life & Work of an Asian Woman display at the 1954 UN Housing Exhibition
Architect, 257. in Delhi, http://www.transculturalmodern-
Since De Silva and her siblings began taking dance lessons in the 1920s, her 17 Susan Reed, Dance and the Nation: Perfor- isms.org.
film and dance can be viewed as a critical examination of national traditional- mance, Ritual, and Politics in Sri Lanka 22 Beatriz Colomina, Privacy and Publicity:
isms and folklorisms. The fact that she does not draw clear boundaries between (Madison, Wisconsin: University of Wis- Modern Architecture as Mass Media (Cam-
consin Press, 2010), 206. bridge, MA: MIT Press, 1994).
traditional and modern, regional and international, gives visibility to combina-
18 Susan Reed borrows this term from Timothy 23 “Le Corbusier with Telly Tata in Bombay, mid-
tory practices, which serve as a critical counterpoint to the construction of Mitchell. 1950s.” See Nicholas Fox Weber, Le Corbusier:
identities. Anoma Pieris identifies an architectural precarity within De Silva’s 19 Reed, Dance and the Nation, 5. A Life (New York: Knopf, 2008), 549.
work that goes against the grain of a notion of modernity that bases itself on 20 Anoma Pieris, Architecture and National- 24 Steyerl, Die Farbe der Wahrheit, 32.
ism in Sri Lanka: The Trouser under the 25 Parts of the following were taken from
national identity. “There was no attempt in her work of smoothing out the Cloth (London: Routledge, 2012), 134. previously published texts on http://www.
rough edges of the different approaches into a coherent aesthetic; in fact, 21 See village architecture as an exhibition transculturalmodernism.org.
74 From Around a Modern House Moira Hille 75

measurement plan based on the human figure of a 1.83-meter-tall British man, ing used as soon as the overwhelming techniques of electronics intervene
transferring organic functionalism to urban space. The city center is positioned (pictures, sounds, words, colours, diagrams, etc...) manifested by magnetic
as the heart, while the capitol complex is at the head. Here, discourse on life tape recordings which I have called the ‘Round Books,’ that is to say audiovi-
and architecture converge in a way that renders them indistinguishable from sual films.”29
one another. Chandigarh is thus not only a living or organic architecture The concept for the Museum of Knowledge invites criticism on different levels—
based on a functionalist notion of production, but what we have here is a as a biopolitically oriented repository of knowledge, as the representational
functionalist aesthetic that is not only modeled on the human body but also apparatus of a feigned democracy, or as a sculpturalization and monumental-
claims to be life itself. In 1950, Le Corbusier was invited to develop this new ization of technology. Within the Chandigarh project, the possibility of repre-
capital city and prefecture for the Indian Punjab, at the request of India‘s first senting marginalized and underrepresented positions and influences is struc-
prime minister, Nehru, after India gained independence in 1947. Within the tured to the effect that its name inevitably questions the type of knowledge
Indian Independence Act, the partition into India and Pakistan (West and East) being presented. Because the museum does not actually exist, one may ask
was executed with the idea of separating Muslims from Hindus and Sikhs and whose knowledge fails to be represented. This question closely corresponds
vice versa. Punjab was divided up between Pakistan and India, and the capital to the initial demand for a place that collects documentation on all activities,30
Lahore was given to Pakistan. Immediately after the new lines were established, thereby building (and assuming the function of) a pool of knowledge rather
about fifteen million people crossed the border. There are many reasons why than of an archive based on a hierarchy of knowledge.
Chandigarh was built: to build a new capital for Punjab, to resettle people, to Administrative officials eventually used a hierarchical and dominant concept
attract capital, to rebuild an economy, to symbolize India’s independence, to of knowledge to justify why the museum had failed to be realized in the
create a new bureaucratic center, since Shimla, the temporary capital, couldn’t 1950s: “In a country like India, however, where 80 percent of the population
accommodate the full government machinery, as a strategy to deal with the depends on primitive agricultural techniques and where the literacy rate is
material and psychological loss of Lahore and to build a counterpart to it, and abysmally low, Le Corbusier’s idea sounded incomprehensible.”31 – CUT –
also because city life had begun to appeal to the ordinary middle class or
lower middle class Indian.26 There is a magazine called ANQ in the library of the Chandigarh Architecture
As the capital of the states of Haryana and Punjab, Chandigarh was meant to School.32 Inside, there are photographs from the construction of Sector 34 in
be an administrative city. Marked by the main features of Western modernity Chandigarh. The photocopies are black and white. Sector 34 is a commercial
and symbols of ancient India, Chandigarh afforded the possibility to stand
through and with these two references against colonialism. Chandigarh was
the official city planning project of Indian postcolonialism and within this un- 26 For more on the role of Chandigarh see: pret this archive, for the documents claim
dertaking, it had the mission to make the assumed break between colonialism Vikramāditya Prakāsh, Chandigarh’s Le to be the law. To be guarded thus, in the
Corbusier: The Struggle for Modernity in jurisdiction of this stating the law, they
and postcolonialism visible and push the old agricultural India to a new state
Postcolonial India (Seattle: University of needed at once a guardian and a localiza-
of industrialization. Chandigarh was meant to foster the establishment of a Washington Press, 2002). tion. See also Jacques Derrida and Eric
new national confidence. 27 P. L. Varma, “Corbusier’s Brave New World: Prenowitz, “Archive Fever: A Freudian Im-
The plans for Chandigarh’s capitol complex, largely drawn up by Le Corbusier, Personal Impressions,” Architecture + De- pression,” Diacritics 25, no. 2 (Summer
sign: Le Corbusier in India (September– 1995): 9–63.
consisted of four buildings—the administrative office, the high court, the December 1987): 47. 29 Ravi Kalia, Chandigarh: The Making of an
parliament, and the governor’s palace, which was later redesigned as the 28 See Jacques Derrida, “Dem Archiv ver- Indian City (New Delhi: Oxford University
Museum of Knowledge. According to Nehru, building a governor’s palace on schrieben,” in Archivologie, eds. Knut Eb- Press, 1987), 116.
eling and Stephan Günzel (Berlin: Kul- 30 With reference to Nehru’s demands con-
the capitol complex did not correspond to the democratic architecture that turverlag Kadmos, 2009), 29–60. An cerning the Museum of Knowledge, he
was fundamental to the idea of Chandigarh. These basic democratic principles archive/archeíon is the site where all only ever spoke of human activities, non-
were supposed to be manifested in the capitol complex. The idea had been to knowledge is stored, and also the place human activities were never mentioned.
that endows those in political power with For more on nonhuman activities see Fa-
create a building that represented and symbolized democratic ideals, that
the right to validate or demonstrate laws. him Amir’s contribution to this book.
would archive, collect, and represent all “human activities.”27 It was to be an “On account of their publicly recognized 31 Kalia, Chandigarh: The Making of an Indi-
all-encompassing archive in the capitol complex built on the site of the gover- authority, it is at their home, in that place an City, 117.
nor’s palace.28 The archive was positioned as the brain in the Modulor. Le Cor- which is their house (private house, family 32 Chris Gordon and Kilian Kist, Chandigarh.
house, or employees’ house), that official Forty Years after Le Corbusier (Amster-
busier described the Museum of Knowledge as an “Electronic Laboratory for documents are filed.” (Derrida) As guard- dam: Architectura and Natura Quarterly
Scientific Decision”; a museum that “becomes practicable and capable of be- ians, the archons have the power to inter- 40, 1993).
76 From Around a Modern House Moira Hille 77

subcenter. In one picture, there is a high-rise concrete building, which was The anti-Rajdhani committee had promised the government to launch a satya-
probably not meant to be a residential, but instead a commercial, office, or graha involving over 30,000 people all over the state to stop the construction
restaurant space. The building is surrounded by huts that are about one-fifth of Chandigarh. It does not seem as if this massive agitation ever took off the
the size of the concrete building. The image is blurry, neither the structural ground. What did was a series of protest actions at the village level involving
engineering nor the materials used are really discernible. They do not look the local people. […] Yet the agitation was fairly influential. Not much work
like they are made out of the same materials—bricks or cement—as the build- could be done between 1948 and 1951 […] because of the agitation by the lo-
ings under construction, but rather out of clay with thatched roofs. There is cal villagers. People would not allow the survey of ground water or the con-
no information on how long or when these dwellings were there. There are no struction of sheds from where the engineers might function.”38 – CUT –
people in the photograph. Pictures from the construction of the capitol com-
plex showing women, men, and donkeys became especially popular, and I took a picture from the roof of the administrative office. The photograph
manual modes of production and their aesthetic became significant for Chan- shows part of the extensive capitol complex. There are trails leading in different
digarh. These images represented the production relations between modern directions that cut across the green areas that surround the capitol complex.
architecture and manual labor, and representations of construction sites in There could be various reasons that the Museum of Knowledge remained a
general were very popular for the idea of the future and modernity, since “the project that was never realized. However, precisely its absence enables us to
very idea of ‘reconstruction’ called forth the hopes of architectural modernity. use Chandigarh as an opportunity to pose questions of democratic participation,
Where the war had hit, however, utopian city concepts had little chance of modern urban planning, and nation-states. While the construction of the museum
being enacted anywhere immediately after 1945.”33 This at least gave some is an issue that still crops up in political debates, a body of knowledge has
visibility to the workers in their jobs, although their living conditions re- long since been inscribed in the capitol complex’s landscape. Paths have
mained underrepresented. Though photographic documentations of the con- emerged that were never planned, but that people who work in Chandigarh use
struction site and the representative buildings created a kind of visibility for on a daily basis. Economic power relations and an unequal representation are
the workforce, the workers’ living quarters were declared illegal once the first inscribed in the compound. They connect the workers who live in the sur-
buildings had been completed.34 – CUT – rounding neighborhoods and villages since they cannot afford to live in Chan-
digarh with their jobs in the city. – CUT –
After the partition, around 30,000 construction workers built Chandigarh as
Punjab’s new capital, with around 5,000 people working on the construction bell hooks writes: “Yet to ignore this standpoint [that centralizes the perspec-
site at a time.35 Half of them were children and women. Though Chandigarh was tives of poor and working-class folks] is to reproduce a body of work that is
meant to represent the modern city of the age of industrialization, it was built neocolonial insofar as it violently erases and destroys those subjugated
by hand; manpower cost less than machine power, and it included women-power, knowledges that can only erupt, disrupt, and serve as acts of resistance if
child-power, and donkey-power.36 “On the manual labor of men, women, and
children ‘as innumerable as ants’ with the leisurely aid of miniature donkeys 33 Stanislaus von Moos, Chandigarh 1956 do it and we will forcibly remove and we
and scorning the impatient hustle of machinery, the city is slowly taking form. (Zurich: Scheidegger & Spiess, 2010), 55. will recover the cost from you.” Chandi-
The same old crazy scaffolding bamboo, tied with bits of strings, astonishingly 34 Cf. Interview with Madhu Sarin on March garh, http://www.transculturalmodernism.
14, 2011 (Moira Hille): “So during the con- org. See also Madhu Sarin, “Beyond the
gives birth to structures of sublime grace and impressive solidity.”37 struction of Chandigarh the laborers built Margins of Planning,“ in Chandigarh. Forty
During the construction of Chandigarh, the notion of a modern architectural their huts, no one talked about it. It was Years after Le Corbusier (Amsterdam: Ar-
universalism is set in contrast to the use of regional and local materials. With natural; Chandigarh needed labor and the chitectura and Natura Quarterly 40 1993):
laborers needed huts. A trade union leader, 67-69
their practices and methods, artisans and construction workers were an inte- maybe a member of the communist party, 35 Parts of the following were taken from
gral component of an architectonic modernity in Chandigarh; these practices told me during my research that till 1959 previously published texts on http://www.
and materials become modern, that is to say, components of modernity, so no one talked about the huts. But when transculturalmodernism.org.
the buildings started being finished, they 36 U. E. Chowdhury, “High Cost Housing and
that any attempt to relegate these practices to a realm of anachronistic and
started to say: Oh, you can’t build like this; Interiors,” Marg XV, no. 1 (1961): 26–28.
outdated tradition, which is seen as precisely the opposite of modernity, is this is illegal use of the land. Their vested 37 von Moos, Chandigarh 1956, 35.
bound to fail. interest will grab valuable land in the new 38 Kavita Sharma, Chitleen K. Sethi, Meeta,
From the very beginning, the villagers demonstrated resistance against the city and so we must ask them to get lost. and Rajivlochan, Chandigarh Lifescape:
In 1959 they issued the first notice to re- Brief Social History of a Planned City
construction: “The people’s resistance to displacement was formalised in the move the huts at their own cost within (Chandigarh: Government Press, 1999), 26.
anti-Rajdhani (note: Rajdhani: lit. capital) committee that was formed in 1948. such and such time: If you don’t, we will
78 From Around a Modern House Moira Hille 79

they are visible, remembered. Documentation of a cultural genealogy of resis- Though there has been much speculation about the film, I find the perspective
tance invites the making of theory that highlights the cultural practices which of movement to be a productive point from which to examine the relationship
transform ways of looking and being in a manner that resists reinscription by between architecture and film. Therein, one can find what can perhaps be
prevailing structures of domination. Subversive historiography connects op- seen as a critique of representation within De Silva’s work, which is based on
positional practices from the past with forms of resistance in the present, subjects who are endowed with movement and agency within spaces, and on
thus creating spaces of possibility where the future can be imagined differently— building architecture to accommodate rather than dictate these movements.
imagined in such a way that we can witness ourselves dreaming, moving – CUT –
forward and beyond the limits and confines of fixed locations.”39 – CUT –

This montage reveals the correlation between various documents, plans, con-
cepts, and narratives, instead of grasping them as singular events. The examples
show cultural practices that resist a dominant language, a language that lays
claim to and co-opts the notion of modernity for itself.
In the 1950s, CIAM questioned a universalist notion. Building prefabricated
high-rises were not the answer, and architects began looking for inspiration
across the globe. When Sigfried Giedion writes about the aesthetic dignity of
vernacular modes of “self-building,” he employs a colonial binary logic of the
“primitives” and the West.40
In this context, we should reconsider De Silva’s film and the scope of knowl-
edge she negotiates therein. A scope of knowledge is produced that relates
both to modernist architectures and to vernacular building practices. Accord-
ingly, De Silva’s statement and practice (“in this house the architect, the
craftsman and the artist have worked together”41) can serve to deconstruct
patriarchal histories of building and architecture. Time and again, she also
challenges a modernist concept of master, aesthetic dominance, and hierarchi-
cal concepts of disciplines.
For De Silva, the village is not merely the backdrop against which an event
takes place, but rather it is the stage itself, and its architecture the actor. Ar-
chitecture, body, and movement thus encounter one another as actors. In
Pierre Chenal’s 1929 film L’Architecture d’aujourd’hui, which Le Corbusier
helped create, a camera moves along one of Le Corbusier’s houses. The main
actors are the camera, the house, and their relation, while the inhabitants
are more responsible for showing or demonstrating how to use the house. In
describing Le Corbusier’s houses, Beatriz Colomina explains that “the house
is no more than a series of views choreographed by the visitor, the way a film-
maker effects the montage of a film.”42 However, the architect is granted the
authority to direct the camera and decide which portion of the image will be
shown. Though the movement that creates a view of the outside is ascribed
39 bell hooks, “Black Vernacular: Architec- 41 De Silva, The Life & Work of an Asian Woman
to the subject within the space, we are still dealing with representative archi- ture as Cultural Practice,” in Art on My Architect, 119.
tecture in which possible bodily movements and perspectives have already Mind: Visual Politics (New York: The New 42 Beatriz Colomina, “Häuslicher Voyeuris-
been determined, meaning that the architect remains the most formative ele- Press, 1995), 151. mus,” in Privileg Blick. Kritik der visuellen
40 For more extensive research on the topic, Kultur, ed. Christian Kravagna (Berlin: Edi-
ment in this context. By taking the moving body as a point of departure, De
see Christian Kravagna, Primitivism in tion ID-Archiv, 1997), 218.
Silva’s architectural concept adds an element to this always already predefined Habitat, http://www.transculturalmodern-
view. isms.org.
80 From Around a Modern House Moira Hille 81

Literature

Fahim Amir, Eva Egermann, Moira Hille, Hernández, Felipe, Mark Millington, and Sharma, Kavita, Chitleen K. Sethi, Meeta, Varma, P.L. "Corbusier’s Brave New World:
Johannes Köck, Jakob Krameritsch, Chris- Iain Borden (eds.). Transculturation. Cit- and Rajivlochan. Chandigarh Lifescape. Personal Impressions.” Architecture + De-
tian Kravagna, Christina Linortner, Marion ies, Spaces and Architecture in Latin Brief Social History of a Planned City. sign. Le Corbusier in India (September–
von Osten, and Peter Spillmann. “Model America. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1998: xi. Chandigarh: Government Press, 1999. December 1987): 47.
House–Mapping Transcultural Modern-
isms.” Texte zur Kunst. Artistic Research, Hille, Moira. Interview with Madhu Sarin, Steyerl, Hito. Die Farbe der Wahrheit. Do- Von Moos, Stanislaus. Chandigarh 1956.
vol. 82 (June 2011): 147. March 14, 2011. Chandigarh, http://www. kumentarismen im Kunstfeld. Vienna: Tu- Zurich: Scheidegger & Spiess, 2010.
transculturalmodernism.org. Accessed ria & Kant, 2008.
Chowdhury, U.E. “High Cost Housing and May 1, 2013.
Interiors.” In Marg, vol. XV, no. 1, (1961/Re-
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of an Ascent.” Texte zur Kunst. Artistic Re-
Colomina, Beatriz. Privacy and Publicity. search, vol. 82 (June 2011): 56.
Modern Architecture as Mass Media. Cam-
bridge, MA: MIT Press, 1994. hooks, bell. “Black Vernacular: Architec-
ture as Cultural Practice.” In Art on My
Colomina, Beatriz. “Häuslicher Voyeuris- Mind: Visual Politics, 145-151. New York:
mus.” In Privileg Blick. Kritik der visuellen New Press, 1995.
Kultur. Edited by Christian Kravagna, 201–
222. Berlin: Edition ID-Archiv, 1997. Kalia, Ravi. Chandigarh. The Making of an
Indian City. New Delhi: Oxford University
De Mel, Neloufer. Women & the Nation’s Press, 1987.
Narrative. Gender and Nationalism in
Twentieth Century Sri Lanka. Colombo: Mumford, Eric. The CIAM Discourse on Ur-
Social Scientists’ Association, 2001. banism 1928–1960. Cambridge, MA: MIT
Press, 2000.
De Silva, Minnette. The Life & Work of an
Asian Woman Architect. Colombo: Smart Model House–Mapping Transcultural Mod-
Media Productions, 1998. ernisms. Accessed April 1, 2013. http://
www.transculturalmodernism.org.
De Silva, Minnette. “A House in Kandy.”
Marg, vol. VI, no. 3, (1953): 4–11. Pieris, Anoma. Architecture and National-
ism in Sri Lanka. The trouser under the
Derrida, Jacques and Eric Prenowitz. “Ar- cloth. London: Routledge, 2012.
chive Fever: A Freudian Impression.” Dia-
critics, vol. 25, no. 2 (Summer, 1995): Prakāsh, Vikramāditya. Chandigarh’s Le
9–63. Corbusier. The Struggle for Modernity in
Postcolonial India. Seattle: University of
Eisenstein, Sergei. “The Cinematographic Washington Press, 2002.
Principle and the Ideogram.” In Film Form.
Edited by Jay Leda, 28–44. New York: Har- Reed, Susan. Dance and the Nation. Per-
court, 1977. formance, Ritual, and Politics in Sri Lanka.
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Eisenstein, Sergei: Das dynamische Quad- sin Press, 2010.
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Sarin, Madhu. “Beyond the Margins of
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 Anoma Pieris and Moira Hille in Conversation 83

Home/Nation/
Moira Hille: In the first chapter of your book, Architecture and Nationalism in
Sri Lanka: The Trouser Under the Cloth (2012), you refer to the connection
between domesticity and decolonization and a politicization of the private
sphere through colonialism and nationalism. What history and role does the

Gender
domestic space or home have as an actor in this phase? How did the emerg-
ing importance of the house and home as ideological space change the un-
derstanding, meaning, and aesthetic of architecture in Sri Lanka?

Anoma Pieris: The argument in my book is, firstly, that the architecture

Modern
of the colonial public sphere was largely determined by colonial actors—
architects, engineers, superintendents of public works—and that they
used exogenous models, which were sometimes adapted to the local
context. These spatial norms and forms dominated the urban and institu-

Architectural
tional landscape, offering few opportunities for self-determination. As a
result, the home, as the private domain, became an intense site of ex-
perimentation and was rapidly transformed by new elites to meet social
expectations and aspirations. Whereas public forms of social mobility
were largely framed by colonial governmental structures, the home, as

Practices
the primary site of self-fashioning, created opportunities for marginal
castes, women, and ethnic others to explore new and more lucrative iden-
tities. The hybrid nature of these identities and the negotiation between
Eastern and Western values in their creation and adaptation is implied in

in Sri Lanka
the metaphor, the “trouser under the cloth.” The term, which is based on
the name for a mode of dress worn by native gentlemen and prescribed
for official regalia, embodies inherent tensions within colonial metropolitan
values.

At this point I might observe that a number of scholars have challenged

Anoma Pieris and Moira Hille in Conversation this public vs. private divide by illustrating how colonial and indigenous
elites combined expertise and resources in the production of colonial
cities. The most recent book to make this argument is Preeti Chopra’s A
Joint Enterprise (2011), but I might also mention that the work of Peter
Scriver and Shanti Jayewardene is complicating this dialectic. This is also
true in the shaping of Colombo during the early twentieth century,
which, although typically attributed to colonial planners, was essential-
ly a joint enterprise. However, it took form through the orga-
nization of private space followed by public amenities, rather than the
reverse.

Once we move to the era of nation building, my second argument, the

public sphere becomes available to the once-colonized subjects, and
they produce a different model for public architecture. The first model,
produced via the colonial Public Works Department, is of a monumental
architecture derived from palatial and religious buildings. This becomes
84 Home/Nation/Gender Anoma Pieris and Moira Hille in Conversation 85

the architecture of official nationalism and is in many ways an extension of Shanti Jayewardene, the first critical historian of Sri Lankan architecture
early twentieth century Victorian eclecticism. The forms are quite exclu- who wrote on Bawa in 1984, argues that the five-pavilion configuration
sive, majoritarian, and assume an authoritative presence. In short, the first of the parliament is derived from monastic complexes in the ancient
generation of architecture post independence is brokered by colonial Buddhist capital at Anuradhapura. While the aesthetic is a synthesis of
architects and represents their translation of both colonial and Eastern modern and traditional vocabularies, her argument creates an opening
values. Indigenous architects and a range of actors, including the much- for a different line of analysis on how and when Bawa referred to monu-
neglected craftsmen and laborers, are involved in their production. mental traditions, which may well contradict my position on the vernacular
derivative. I do hope she writes about it. The wonderful thing about Bawa
The Sri Lankan case is remarkable for its resistance to this official nation- is that since he was so reticent about his own approach, there is plenty to
alism in the private sphere. Educated in secular modernism overseas, debate on. I believe we should not try to fix him as a modernist or re-
the first generation of Sri Lankan (or at that time Ceylonese) architects gionalist, create a retroactive climatic manifesto, or even institutionalize
rejected these monumental forms for a far more domestic aesthetic. and commodify him. But we (broadly generalizing of course) are guilty
They—and here I am referring, firstly, to Minnette De Silva and after her of doing all these things...
to Geoffrey Bawa, who is far better known internationally—invested their
careers in the creation of an aesthetic derived from the local vernacular. MH: How did the idealization of the home affect a feminist critique on do-
Courtyard houses, roadside verandahs, village temples, grain storage mesticity? Is there an articulated feminist critique nowadays on this emer-
structures, all became inspirations for a new architectural vocabulary. The gence of the affirmation of the home as it evolved during the struggles for
appropriation of these forms was in terms of form, space, material, and independence?
technology and was prompted by a period of import substitution (when
Sri Lanka was socialist), where architects were forced to look for local AP: If we look closely at the Ceylonese context, we find that Christianiza-
solutions. The end result was that many of the homes and institutions tion enabled the rapid transformation of the domestic sphere along an-
they built during the 1960s and 70s were derived from domestic archi- glophile lines, most evident in the adaptation of Portuguese, Dutch, and
tecture with no reference to monumental forms. So while Sri Lanka was British modes of dress by local elite women, particularly for weddings. In
becoming increasingly hegemonic along ethno-national lines, these some ways the home was an elaboration of this change, aided by a cast
architects resisted this process quite literally. of butlers, tutors, and governesses who trained elite ladies in appropriate
behaviors. Eurasian and Burgher women would have informed and influ-
My argument shifts again towards the end of the book when I explore how enced these practices. The feminist scholar Kumari Jayawardena has written
economic liberalization changes this rather modest early approach in extensively on this subject, for example in The White Woman’s Other
order to cater to the new programs of globalization. I look at the parliament, Burden (1995). These women and their denationalization was the target of
a key signifier of the national self and the desire for international visibility, early anti-colonial nationalism and saw a highly politicized movement in
and the resort hotel, which repackages culture for external consumption. dress reform that strove to constrain them in an appropriate dress code
Whereas discourses on vernacular architecture always had an anthropo- derived, ironically, from Victorian ideas of morality. However, nationalist
logical slant, the late twentieth century discourse on regionalism identified modes of dress were also adapted internally in imitation of Indian behav-
monumental structures as signifying regional cultures. Bawa’s parliament iors when local ladies began wearing saris instead of dresses. For the
was produced and recognized, externally, through that discourse but sits period following independence, I have reproduced an image from the first
very uncomfortably within it. My argument is that the parliament is an advertisement for the Ceylon Government Railway launched in 1956
elaboration of the vernacular approach, where the simple pavilion structure where all three trains are given gendered identities and represented as
is reproduced at a scale and for a program it cannot match. It presents coy damsels, the southern princess, the highland maiden, and the
a very convincing image of a resistant indigenization when compared to northern goddess. We can see how nationalist rhetoric continued to re-
the eager embrace of modernist designs and architects in Chandigarh, cast women as representatives of an uncontaminated tradition, even in
Dhaka, and Islamabad, but contains various incongruities that deny site, this case when associated with modern technology.
local materials, and technologies so fundamental to the vernacular
approach. The gendering of the home is more pertinent to current analyses of the
Sri Lankan ethnic conflict, where the home has been violated at many
86 Home/Nation/Gender Anoma Pieris and Moira Hille in Conversation 87

levels. I have recently written about filmic representations of gender and materiality and a decorative quality that does not conform to the aesthetic
the home around cultural anxieties related to female soldiers. The female norms that we are schooled in—the consequence, perhaps, of her for-
suicide bomber is the antithesis of the traditional homemaker and there mative years in India. But architectural aesthetics are based on exogenous
has been much feminist debate around her politics. Feminist scholarship frameworks imposed by Western curricula, and we make judgments about
is lacking in architecture particularly in scholarship in or on Asia. I might good or bad aesthetics via a Western gaze. Bawa, on the other hand,
mention Swati Chattopadhyay’s Representing Calcutta (2005) and Ananya deftly synthesized a vernacular scale with picturesque vistas and spatial
Roy’s City Requiem (2003) as examples of a feminist approach. A recent relationships derived from the European tradition. For this reason his
issue of Gender, Place and Culture (2012), edited by Gülsüm Baydar, com- approach is immediately attractive to Western visitors. For example, I
bines a number of essays along these lines. doubt that De Silva would use a classical statue of a male nude or Roman
pavilion in her work, but we are quite happy to absorb it as a feature of
Yet, even at a more basic level, information on women architects is lacking, Bawa’s work and label his architecture Sri Lankan.
revealing perhaps how patriarchal the profession and professional prac-
tices still are. We have plenty of female students studying architecture but With regard to the CIAM discourse, De Silva’s essay in the 1965–66 journal
many female professionals struggle in isolation unless they are support- would have been the avenue for translating CIAM ideals to local practi-
ed by male partnerships. This has a lot to do with how elite clientele are tioners. Marg and its role were less well known, and by then its focus
sought and won and the insidious politics of large commissions. This was shifting to fine art and craft. Also, due to her years away and lack of
lacuna is also evident in publishing and pedagogy. The Aga Khan Trust, involvement in the local architectural school, these ideas were not devel-
which produced the most significant design monographs on non-Western oped in any substantial way. De Silva’s contribution to vernacular archi-
architects during the 1980s—and was a trailblazer in this regard, neglect- tecture discourse was subsumed by Bawa’s reputation for producing it
ed to include women. Women in Architecture by the Hecar Foundation as an aesthetic.
(2000) is a useful book to refer to. While there are several prominent young
women architects, for example, India’s Anupama Kundoo, Thailand’s MH: In 1954, an exhibition on low-cost housing took place in Delhi initiated
Kanika Rkul, and Sri Lanka’s Hiranti Welandawe, whom I have written about, by the Indian Government and the UN. The concept of the exhibition was the
only the Japanese architects such as Itsuko Hasegawa and Kazuyo Sejima village as an expression of a living environment. How do you see the inter-
have reached international status. connection of home, village, and nation at this time in Sri Lanka? What does
the village mean on an aesthetic and political level, as an interface between
MH: You name Minnette De Silva as a central actor who uses and combines home and nation?
vernacular construction methods, regional materials, and aesthetics with
modern materials, designs, and construction methods. She is one of the first AP: In my book I barely touched on the serial production of domestic space
architects in Sri Lanka who has established a modern regional style of archi- as a form of social engineering. I felt that was an entirely different dis-
tecture. But there is also a certain bulkiness in De Silva’s architecture, as you cussion related to settlement ideology, and Sri Lanka has been a major
say, she “never framed a tropical landscape or subscribed to the picturesque player in this area dating from the early settlement schemes of the 1950s
gaze.” Could one read this as resistance to a nationalist aesthetic of the through to the Village Reawakening projects of President R. Premadasa
home as a fundament of the nation? Also, Minnette De Silva was the CIAM (1980s–90s). More recently, neo-liberal scenarios of post-tsunami recon-
(Congrès International d’Architecture Moderne) delegate for India and Ceylon struction and more hegemonic postwar resettlement revisit these highly
for over ten years, at a time when there was a shift from the functionalist politicized responses. The fact is that politicians consistently manipulated
notion of the home as a machine for living towards a naturalized notion of the village for their own ends. Ananda Coomaraswamy raised the model
habitat. Can you relate this shift in the CIAM discourses to a shift in architec- of an idealized village life against what he saw as the denationalization
tural debates in Sri Lanka and vice versa? of the elite (1909). The Sinhala villager, alienated from his land by colonial
plantations, was idealized against Tamil plantation workers during the
AP: To respond to your first question, De Silva certainly wrote quite 1930s when the Ceylonese sought constitutional reform. The rural poor
scathingly about the monumental Buddhist architecture of the indepen- were the subject of early reformist agendas and the object of socialist
dence era and produced the vernacular against it. I see certain Indian nationalism during the 1950s. Yet even following economic liberalization,
characteristics in her designs, a particular relationship of scale and politicians always idealized the village so as to ensure rural votes. We
88 Home/Nation/Gender Anoma Pieris and Moira Hille in Conversation 89

might argue that in some ways, despite the monumental forms expressed MH: Within this understanding of regionalism, craftsmen, for example, were
in official architectures, the politicization of the village paralleled the revival assigned a new role. In Dance and the Nation: Performance, Ritual, and Politics
of vernacular architecture, creating an environment receptive to the ideal- in Sri Lanka (2010), Susan Reed described the changing role of the dancers in
ization of rural values and imagery as fundamental to Sri Lankan identity. the era of decolonization and nation-building from an invisible part of Sri
Lankan culture to a figure of expression of Sri Lankan nationalism through
De Silva held an exhibition on twelve villages at the Commonwealth the development of tradition and folklore. How exactly did the role of the
Institute, which appears to continue the discussion on rural community craftsman change? And in relation to this, what did this mean concerning
values. It is something worth looking into. the role and meaning of the construction workers?

MH: For many years architectural modernism was described as a singular AP: Political regionalism in Asia was based on Cold War alliances and
phenomenon with Western origin. The focus in our project is on transcultural non-alignment. The adoption of the term regionalism after the Western
aspects focusing on the interconnections, political circumstances, and dif- aesthetic discourse, in ignorance of this association, needs to be
ferent actors which and who were involved in different modernist projects. problematized. That said, I find it unconscionable that books on Asian
How would you relate the term transculturality to the emergence of regional architects fail to acknowledge other actors (village masons, craftsmen,
modern architecture as you researched it in Sri Lanka? manual laborers) employed in a project, transposing the invisibility of labor
in colonial relations onto new postcolonial class hierarchies. The jarring
AP: Many in the first generation of architects, and by that I mean those reality is that the textured, visceral environments of Asia that so delight
educated during the 1950s and 1960s, passed through the Architectural postindustrial Western sensibilities are achieved through abominable labor
Association School in London and were impacted by the program in tropi- practices: poor wages, appalling living conditions, and reluctance to train
cal architecture run by Maxwell Fry and Jane Drew and later headed by or mechanize. If, like Ananya Roy, you examine female labor relations, the
Otto Koenigsberger. So we may argue that in Sri Lanka—as it was, say, in conditions are even worse. The Sri Lankan architectural profession has
Singapore—tropical modernism was their first response. This is certainly expended minimal energy in training laborers or craftsmen. A recent PhD
evident in the work of De Silva, Bawa, and a third architect, Valentine thesis by Milinda Pathiraja (University of Melbourne 2010–2011) exposes
Gunasekara. Bawa was clearly influenced by European modernism and these lacunas. What we see (across the nineteenth and twentieth centuries)
the British picturesque tradition, although his time in Italy may be equally is a remarkable shift in labor practices. Initially we have traditional medi-
instrumental in informing his vernacular approach. David Robson is keen eval castes of craftsman largely of South Indian origin patronized by the
to trace strains of modernism within Bawa’s approach in contrast with— royal court in Kandy and discussed in detail in Coomaraswamy’s Medieval
perhaps—what might be seen as his eclecticism. De Silva’s architecture is Sinhalese Art (1908). Following the fall of Kandy (the hill country capital
a hybrid of her Indian, Ceylonese, and European influences. Her greatest that resisted colonial rule) in 1815, many of them came southward to
mentor was Le Corbusier, whose connection with her has been written coastal areas augmenting the craftsmen created by colonial industry—the
on by Charles Jencks. Gunasekara toured the USA and met Richard Neutra, fisher-carpenter caste of Moratuwa. An entire chapter in my book
Louis Kahn, Paul Rudolph, the Eames, and worked in Eero Saarinen’s office demonstrates how the carpenter caste rose in the colonial economy due
under Kevin Roche. This exposure informed his design orientation. His work to their ability to reproduce themselves in the colonial public sphere
is reminiscent of the Californian strain of modernist regionalism. But I through architecture, whereas the indigenous farming elites found them-
am reluctant to call this architecture regionalist or even to use the term selves unable to command this labor resource to the same extent. The
so liberally. Regionalism is a very political term with specific meanings Sinhala carpenters combined with Muslim masons on many urban projects.
for Asia. Kenneth Frampton’s polemical repositioning of the modernist The introduction of concrete created opportunities for lime burners. To-
avant-garde has no direct relevance for Asia, although great pains have wards the late colonial period we see how government projects begin to
been made to rethink Asia in terms of his criteria. Can one, in all honesty, employ and produce skilled and unskilled workers, changing these caste-
have a discussion of Asian architecture that leaves out social, cultural, based economies. The abstraction of labor occurred through metropolitan
and political issues and focuses on site, climate, light, and tectonic. I building projects of the Public Works Department. Today the equivalent
think not...This may be possible in a postindustrial environment where process would be evident in an entire generation trained on worksites in
social security is guaranteed, but in Asia we must deal with environmental the Middle East.
and social forces.
90 Home/Nation/Gender Anoma Pieris and Moira Hille in Conversation 91

The vernacular revival in architecture undoubtedly saw a rejuvenation of Literature

(labor intensive) craft-based traditions, particularly in relation to timber-
Baydar, Gülsüm. “Sexualised Productions Jencks, Charles. Le Corbusier and the
work, tiling, and roofing practices. Bawa was responsible for reintroducing of Space.” Gender, Place and Culture: A Continual Revolution in Architecture. New
long discarded materials and features into domestic spaces and known Journal of Feminist Geography, vol. 19, no. York: The Monacelli Press, 2000.
for recycling building elements. He worked with specific baas’s (village 6 (2012): 699-706.
Pathiraja, Milinda. “The Idea of ‘Robust
masons), and they in turn learned on the job. At the beginning this was a Chattopadhyay, Swati. Representing Cal- Technology’ in the Definition of a ‘Third-
recognizably sustainable approach. When the materials were applied to cutta: Modernity, Nationalism, and the Co- World’ Practice: Architecture, Design and
larger programs it became unsustainable. Vernacular aesthetics, sustain- lonial Uncanny. London: Routledge, 2006. Labour Training.” PhD Thesis, Faculty of
Architecture, Building and Planning, Uni-
able practices, and craftsmanship go hand in hand when the architecture
Chopra, Preeti. A Joint Enterprise: Indian versity of Melbourne, 2010–2011.
remains at a domestic scale, but this relationship is unviable in a large Elites and the Making of British Bombay.
program (resort hotel or parliament), and the desired hand-crafted aesthetic Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Pieris, Anoma. Architecture and National-
effect can only be achieved by other means. Press, 2011. ism in Sri Lanka: the trouser under the
cloth. New York: Routledge, 2012.
Coomaraswamy, Ananda K. Essays in
National Idealism. Colombo: Colombo Reed, Susan A. Dance and the Nation. Per-
Apothecaries Co. Ltd., 1909. formance, Ritual, and Politics in Sri Lanka.
Madison: The University of Wisconsin
Coomaraswamy, Ananda K. Medieval Sin- Press. 2010.
halese art: being a monograph on medi-
eval Sinhalese arts and crafts, mainly as Roy, Ananya. City Requiem, Calcutta: Gen-
surviving in the eighteenth century, with der and the Politics of Poverty. University
an account of the structure of society and of Minnesota Press, 2003.
the status of the craftsmen. Broad Camp-
den: Essex House Press, 1956. Scriver, Peter. The Scaffolding of Empire.
CAMEA Conference Proceedings, Univer-
De Silva, Minnette. “Experiments in Mod- sity of Adelaide, 2007.
ern Regional Architecture in Ceylon:
1950–1960.” Journal of the Ceylon Insti- Somaya, Brinda, and Urvashi Mehta. An
tute of Architects (1965-66): 13-17. Emancipated Place. The proceedings of
the conference and exhibition held in
Frampton, Kenneth. “Toward a Critical Re- Mumbai. Women in Architecture – 2000
gionalism: Six Points of an Architecture of Plus. Mumbai: Hecar Foundation. February
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16-30. Port Townsend, WA: Bay Press, “Twelve Villages: a study of habitat in In-
1983. dia, Bangladesh, and Sri Lanka at the
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Other Burden: Western Women and South
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Jayewardene, I. S. (Shanti). “The Work of

Geoffrey Bawa: Some Observations to-
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With
Animals
 Fahim Amir 95

Dwellers and
One dark night—when people were in bed,
Old Mrs. O’Leary lit a lantern in her shed;
The cow kicked it over, winked its eye and said,
There’ll be a hot time in the old town tonight.

Strayers
—Chicago Tribune

As a modern myth goes, one of the greatest disasters of the United States in the

Modernist
nineteenth century, the great fire of 1871 that destroyed one third of the entire
city of Chicago, was caused by “a hitherto unremarkable cow.”1 Mrs. O’Leary,
her legal owner, had tried to milk the cow on an exceptionally hot Sunday
evening when the unruly animal kicked over the lantern lighting the shed and

Zoopolitics in
sparked a hellish inferno that ate humans, animals, and architecture alike.2

The reconstruction of Chicago in the following years helped modernize the

city and prepared it for its unparalleled rise to become the “hog butcher for
the world” by the end of the century. The rebuilding also attracted architects

Post/colonial
who saw it as a laboratory for urban innovation, constructing, for example, the
Reliance Building in 1895 as a harbinger of the “international style” that
would dominate the twentieth century. Skyrocketing land prices and new reg-
ulations concerning fire safety had led to the erection of the first skyscraper

Worlds
in the world in 1884, the Home Insurance Building, housing the office of legend-
ary meatpacking industrialist and robber baron Philip Armour, whose company
motto was the famous “we feed the world.” More than simply a marketing slogan,
the Union Stock Yards of Chicago indeed processed the majority of US meat
until the 1920s—more than any other place in the world. Connecting producers
with their markets, revolutionizing work organization and efficiency while in-
Fahim Amir venting cooling technologies to transport the precarious substance of mammal
flesh, Chicago indeed became “nature’s metropolis,”3 the world capital of
animal death and the nexus of “a new animal landscape that was governed as
much by economics as by ecology.”4

It was probably Chicago that inspired critical theorist Max Horkheimer to pub-
lish his 1934 aphorism, “Skyscraper,” which employed an architectural image
to describe late capitalist society: The skyscraper would have at its top the
“feuding tycoons” and reach down to the “poor, the aged, and the sick.”5 Below

1 Hannah Higgins, The Grid Book (Cam- Norton, 1991).

bridge, MA: MIT Press, 2009), 1. 4 Ibid., 224.
2 Richard F. Bales, The Great Chicago Fire 5 Max Horkheimer, “Skyscraper,” in Dawn
and the Myth of Mrs. O’Leary’s Cow (Jef- and Decline: Notes 1926–1931 and 1950–
ferson: McFarland, 2002). 1969, trans. Michael Shaw (New York: Sea-
3 William Cronon, Nature’s Metropolis: Chi- bury Press, 1978), 66.
cago and the Great West (New York: W. W.
96 Dwellers and Strayers Fahim Amir 97

these were the floors reserved for the exploited colonies, but even lower, deep compelling argument: because most machines failed to integrate the living or
inside the intestines of the architectural leviathan, the animals were incarcer- dead animal into mechanized production, the social organization of human
ated in the basement of society: labor itself had to be mechanized. Before the rapid transformation of small-scale
butchery into the world’s biggest integrated industry, a handful of skilled
Below the spaces where the coolies of the earth perish by the millions, the workers would kill and disassemble an animal. Now over 160 workers were
indescribable, unimaginable suffering of the animals, the animal hell in human involved, each assigned with a special task and clocked to the rhythm of the
society, would have to be depicted, the sweat, blood, despair of the animals. moving conveyor belt. The invention of the disassembly line soon inspired
[…] The basement of that house is a slaughterhouse, its roof a cathedral, Henry Ford, who had visited Armour’s plant, to construct the assembly lines
but from the windows of the upper floors, it affords a really beautiful view for automobile production (soon displacing horses with cars in public life).
of the starry heavens.6 Giedion’s account of the relationship between animals, technology, and archi-
tecture now appears in sharp contrast to Horkheimer’s approach: While the
As a refugee fleeing from Nazi terror in Europe, Horkheimer would later spend latter saw only vulnerability in animals as capitalism continued its course of
time in the United States where his opinions about the relationship between the reificating all social relations, the former understood the resistance of animals
functioning of modern society, animals and animality would be further elaborated.7 both as obstacles to and catalysts of capitalist modernization.8
But while Horkheimer’s animals were mostly conceptualized as passive recipi-
ents of capitalism’s atrocities during the formation of bourgeois subjectivity and On a formal level, Giedion’s approach throughout his book resembles more
painted as the total victims of history, another refugee fleeing war-torn Europe, contemporary forms of art-based research than seemingly sober variations of
Sigfried Giedion, took an apparently similar but in fact entirely different approach a history of technological development. Throughout the book, artworks seem
concerning the relations between space, animals, and social philosophy. to have the same heuristic value to Giedion as calculations and patent drawings.
Artistic methods such as montage appear to transport his arguments, and his
Giedion, the long time secretary-general of CIAM, had been invited by Walter selection of images range from stills of surrealist films to historical commer-
Gropius to hold the Charles Eliot Norton Lectures at Harvard University from cial advertisements. Giedion is more interested here in “other actors” such as
1938–39 that would culminate in his work Space, Time and Architecture, (1941). the anonymous engineers of the industrial age whose story Giedion wants to
While the latter would become the theoretical groundwork for generations of tell in re-enacting the plots of traditional historiographies that need a genius
architecture students who wanted to educate themselves about modernist ar- of some sort in its center.
chitecture, it was his time in the United States that allowed him to gather the
documents and materials that would form the basis of his Mechanization Takes In the spirit of Giedion’s work I want to portray exemplary animals as active
Command (1948). In this book, which included more then 700 images, Giedion parts of urban planning and the production of space, as co-producers of city
ascribed the crisis of modern subjectivity, the feeling of being lost in and life, and unruly dwellers, and strayers whose actions and interrelations deter-
irritated by modern times and mass society, to the emergence and diffusion of mined the course of history and the shape of cities along with human activity.
machines. The central chapter, titled “Mechanization of Death: Meat,” deals with I will focus on the first half of the twentieth century and concentrate on mos-
the relationship of the modern city to its slaughterhouses and draws on di- quitoes and cows in post/colonial constellations as real living beings.
verse materials to document the (mostly unsuccessful) attempts to mechanize
killing and meat packing in Chicago. This chapter was the center of his project at
that time, because if Giedion’s thesis was the resistance of living matter to
6 Ibid. of re- and counteracting, Giedion’s analy-
mechanization and the problems it posed, the resistance of living and dead an- 7 Famous are the passages on animals and sis interestingly resembles Operaist theo-
imals against the mechanized slaughterhouse was its logical culmination point. animality in the Dialectic of Enlighten- ry, an Italian Marxist discourse that argues
ment, written with Theodor W. Adorno for the conceptual and political autonomy
and originally published in 1947. For the of living labor against the over-accentua-
In Giedion’s account, all attempts of the celebrated heroes of progress—the animal issue in the work of the Frankfurt tion of allegedly objective developments
engineers—failed in Chicago because of the “subjectivity” of the animals, School, see John Sanbonmatsu, Critical of capitalism in economic theory and po-
who were not so easily deceived to willingly run to their death, and the “bodily Theory and Animal Liberation (Lanham: litical practice. For the methodology of
Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2011). Operaism, see Steve Wright, Storming
constitution” of the animals that (economically) forbid too careless handling
8 In taking living animal agency and the Heaven: Class Composition and Struggle
in life or death. Until this day, a slaughtered animal cannot be disassembled bodily resistance of animals as primary in Italian Autonomist Marxism (London:
by machines; it still is a bloody monopoly of human manual labor. Giedion’s and assigning capitalism a secondary role Pluto Press, 2002).
98 Dwellers and Strayers Fahim Amir 99

Warm Wars and Tiny Architects After the African child was understood by colonial medicine as the main reser-
voir of pathogens, the segregation of the white settlers from the African children
The period in which Europeans conquered most of tropical Africa between seemed to be the proper solution. The question remained, how far should the
1880 and the First World War was also a time of rapid advance in tropical Europeans be removed from African children and the African population in
medicine. Before these advances, malaria had been known for centuries but general. In short: how far could a mosquito fly? It was agreed “that the residen-
associated with swampy, humid, and often heated geographies and its sup- tial quarters of Europeans should be completely divided from the native towns
posedly hazardous, bad air— Italian “mal aria.”9 Until the nineteenth century, or communities by at least a quarter of a mile.”17 The important aspect here is
malaria was successfully fought in most parts of Europe with drainage and that the supposed size of the habitat of the mosquito became the measurement
large-scale geo-engineering. So, by the end of the nineteenth century, the often by which to separate the habitats of colonizers and colonized.
fatal fever was no longer significantly present in most parts of Western Europe
“and thus already acquired some of its modern associations with distant lands Since mosquitoes were thought to be nocturnal creatures, the segregation
and hot climates.”10 Malaria was considered to be by far the most serious health had to be most severe at night. So while the officials could fulfill their respon-
threat to Europeans living in the African tropics (especially imperial bureaucrats) sibilities during the day in the city, during the dangerous African nights they
and a key obstacle to the further colonization of areas beyond the coasts of would be safeguarded in gated communities. But since the European officials
Africa, South America, and Asia. did not want to forgo the luxuries that made the colonies so attractive, e.g.,
servants, keeping two servants in special separate rooms at the backside of
While Louis Pasteur had proven that microscopic organisms were responsible the houses was permitted, undermining the whole segregationist health effort.18
for some diseases, it was a trans-imperial medico-military network involving
actors from and in China, India, Great Britain, France, and Algeria that enabled
9 Robert Sallares, Malaria and Rome: A His- adulthood. Considering the role of this ac-
Ronald Ross to combine scattered theories and material evidence to prove tory of Malaria in Ancient Italy (New York: quired differential immunity for anticolo-
his “mosquito theory.”11 Philosopher and sociologist Bruno Latour argues about Oxford University Press, 2002). nial struggles, environmental historian
the far fetching consequences of the Pasteurians: “If it had been necessary to 10 Jennifer Yee, “Malaria and the Femme Fa- John Robert McNeill argues: “Historians
tale: Sex and Death in French Colonial Af- for generations have brilliantly illuminated
make colonial society only with masters and slaves, there would never have rica,” Literature and Medicine 21, no. 2 this age of revolution. One thing that has
been any colonial society. It had to be made with microbes, together with the (2002): 201. escaped their spotlight is the role of mos-
swarming of insects and parasites that they transported.”12 11 Jeanne Guillemin, “Choosing Scientific quitoes in making the revolutionaries vic-
Patrimony: Sir Ronald Ross, Alphonse Lav- torious.” John Robert McNeill, Mosquito
eran, and the Mosquito-Vector Hypothesis Empires: Ecology and War in the Greater
At the beginning of the twentieth century the discovery of mosquitoes as car- for Malaria,” Journal of the History of Med- Caribbean, 1620–1914 (Cambridge: Cam-
riers and vectors of the pathogen agent facilitated small and large-scale ar- icine and Allied Sciences 57, no. 4 (Octo- bridge University Press, 2010), 193.
ber 2002): 385–409. 15 Leo Spitzer, “The Mosquito and Segrega-
chitectural, terra-forming, and urban planning projects.13 Indeed it had been a
12 Bruno Latour, The Pasteurization of France, tion in Sierra Leone,” Canadian Journal of
multitude of tiny flying females looking for a drop of blood for their offspring trans. Alan Sheridan and John Law (Cam- African Studies 2, no. 1 (Spring 1968):
that changed the course of history once again.14 bridge: Harvard University Press, 1988), 144. 52–54.
13 Timothy Mitchell, Rule of Experts: Egypt, 16 Stephen Frenkel and John Western, “Pre-
Techno-politics, Modernity (Berkeley: Uni- text or Prophylaxis? Racial Segregation
Ross visited the capital of Sierra Leone, supposedly the most malaria-infected versity of California Press, 2002), 19–53; and Malarial Mosquitos in a British Tropi-
spot in the British Empire, Free Town, in 1899 and recommended four mea- Maria Kaika, “Dams as Symbols of Mod- cal Colony: Sierra Leone,” Annals of the
sures: the destruction of breeding pools, the destruction of larvae by kerosene ernization: The Urbanization of Nature Be- Association of American Geographers 78,
tween Geographical Imagination and Ma- no. 2 (June 1988): 216.
or humans, the shutting off of houses against mosquitoes, and the construc- teriality,” Annals of the Association of 17 Ibid.
tion of European houses on elevated sites.15 The Colonial Office sent its own American Geographers 96, no. 2 (2006): 18 This later proved to be a vast underesti-
expedition to study the situation and soon identified the “real” problem—the 276–301; Paul S. Sutter, “Nature’s Agents mation, since female mosquitoes can fly
or Agents of Empire? Entomological Work- up to three kilometers in search of human
African child. While African adults had only mild attacks, African children very
ers and Environmental Change During the blood, as the US military would later find
often became seriously ill: “It is universally the practice in Tropical Africa to Construction of the Panama Canal,” Isis out while researching possible attacks on
allow and even encourage native huts to be built close to European houses. 98, no. 4 (December 2007): 724–54. Cuba through weaponized mosquitoes.
These huts always contain numerous children with parasites and Anopheles 14 Humans exposed to malaria and yellow fe- Jeffrey A. Lockwood, Six-Legged Soldiers:
ver in childhood and having survived had Using Insects as Weapons of War (New
with sporozoites ready for injection.”16 much better chances to survive these dis- York: Oxford University Press, 2009).
eases again than those exposed to it in
100 Dwellers and Strayers Fahim Amir 101

Some officials opposed these sanitary-spatial politics because it was feared Bee Modern in Donkey Urbanism
that segregation would not allow white people to act as “teachers and
friends” to Africans—a popular legitimization of colonialism at that time. But While the mosquito stood for all the dangers and unpleasantness of life that
at various points in the French and British Empire, the segregationist option colonialists feared, another insect can rightly count as the mosquito’s coun-
was chosen for health and social reasons. In 1902 and 1919, meetings of all terpart in the Western imaginary landscapes and especially in the works of Le
principal medical officers for all British West African colonies were organized Corbusier: the honeybee.
by the Colonial Office. There the decision was made and a plan was prepared
“to complete the segregation of the European population in all African towns The supposed subjectivity of bees as hard-working social animals, living as
within ten years, but the plan was easier to apply in designing new towns “bee colonies” in orderly organized sociality within self-built architectural city-
than in rebuilding old ones.”19 habitat structures has inspired much visual production and moral reflection
since antiquity. As a state-like, condensed vertical structure in an open garden-
The segregationist mosquito doctrine was handled differently all over Africa, like space, the beehive was also regularly depicted by Le Corbusier and em-
from the strictest form, practiced in the Belgian Congo, where the cordon ployed as part of his visual and conceptual vocabulary. The beehive appears in
sanitaire encompassed a golf course, a botanical garden, and a zoo, to West Le Corbusier’s Urbanisme from 1925 on a two-page montage of six images
Africa, occupied by the French, where in the new city of Dakar all thatch-roof on page 166. The left page shows three pictures: the patio of the royal palace,
houses were burned in the European residential areas after the plague of one of park scenery, and one of the Tuileries. Three city maps are found on
1914, or even the German colony of Cameroon, where the medical authorities the right page: the area around the Tuileries, a section of Le Corbusier’s “city
had published a city plan in 1904 favoring a six-part subdivision of the city of today,” and a part of the Champs-Élysées. The picture of the garden on
based on “race” and “race mixture.”20 the left and the map of Le Corbusier’s plan are both bigger in size and centrally
placed between the two other pictures below and above them.
Hill stations, formerly keeping the Europeans above the swampy areas and
originating in the Indian context, were now expanded to other areas to protect The visual rhetoric of arrangement gives these two pictures an eminent and
them from the supposedly infected local population.21 In South Africa, hill elevated position: the ideal city and its map. The picture of the garden shows
stations even became part of the “clean air circuit” that attracted many sick a slightly wild park in Paris—the Park Monceau. The only non-organic structure
and weakened Europeans from the crowded European cities to regain their in the park is a little white box in the left part of the picture that is slightly ele-
health and strength in the colonies before traveling back to attend to their vated above the grass by stilts. The only architectural structure on Le Corbusier’s
duties at home.22 At the same time, hill stations and European “healthy quar- picture of the ideal city fit for today’s needs is—a modern beehive: “Le Corbusier’s
ters” allowed civil servants to bring their families along, a process that helped suggestions for town planning, in brief, can be summed up as an intention to
end decades of racial intermingling and personal relationships on various concentrate the population in compact dwelling blocks, off the ground and
levels. separated from each other by space and natural vegetation. Is it any surprise
then that this type of ideal city was conceived with the apiary as the model?”24
In 1915, the year after the completion of the Panama Canal, the newly founded
Rockefeller Foundation took over the mosquito campaign and launched a But Le Corbusier had his own mosquito: the donkey. The first pages of Le
worldwide program to study and control mosquitoes all over the planet— Corbusier’s Urbanisme start with the Manichean enemy of Le Corbusier and
transnational corporate philanthropy with a militaristic twist: “Disease was to his Modulor: the pack donkey, whose monstrous agency supposedly produced
be defeated not by improved social conditions or medical intervention but
by the physical elimination of the enemy species.”23
19 Spitzer, “The Mosquito and Segregation in & Present, no. 165 (November 1999):
Sierra Leone,” 52–54. 141–81.
20 Philip D. Curtin, “Medical Knowledge and 23 Harriet Deacon, “Racial Segregation and
Urban Planning in Tropical Africa,” The Medical Discourse in Nineteenth-Century
American Historical Review 90, no. 3 (June Cape Town,” Journal of Southern African
1985): 602. Studies 22, no. 2 (June 1996): 287–308.
21 Ibid., 608. 24 Mitchell, Rule of Experts: Egypt, Techno-
22 Sheldon Watts, “British Development Poli- politics, Modernity, 26.
cies and Malaria in India 1897–1929,” Past
102 Dwellers and Strayers Fahim Amir 103

paths en passant that laid the original maps for the topology of all great in 1947. Shortly after, the birth of the republican successor states of Pakistan
European cities. According to the architectural mastermind, London, Paris, and and India led to massive shifts in the social, political, cultural, and economic
Rome are all haunted by the spirits of the lazy beast of burden. Le Corbusier tectonics within and between the two sibling states. The new border sudden-
argues that the pack donkey’s non-linear paths are the reason for their conges- ly ran across the state of Punjab; Lahore, the capital—and the cultural center
tion and inefficient temporalities of movement. of India since the Mughal period—fell to Pakistan, and the rest of the econom-
ically important state was divided between the two countries. In the midst of
In her reflections on The Burdens of Linearity, architectural theorist Catherine riots and violence, twelve and a half million people had to flee—the Muslims
Ingraham asks why animals, beasts of burden to be precise, played such an towards Pakistan, the Hindus in the opposite direction. In the Chandigarh City
important role at crucial points in both Claude Lévi-Strauss’s and Le Corbusier’s Museum, which provides information about the planning and building pro-
writing. In both cases, real and imaginary animals suddenly came up when cess of the city in a permanent exhibition, the story of Chandigarh starts with
questions of controlled spatiality and its transgression were topical. Her assump- large-scale photography of the expulsion and flight of Hindus from Pakistan.
tion is that the contrast of urbanist or architectural lines and animal paths “of- Many hundreds of thousands of refugees rejected state trains that were pro-
fered a certain resistance to the various tactics of ideality. [...] In this scheme, tected by the Indian security forces and chose the difficult and dangerous
linearity—an ideal system based on the same ‘passage to the limit’ that pure trek on foot. Otherwise they would have had to leave their dairy cows behind.
geometry is based on—must be perpetually won away, through philosophical The depiction of the immediate history of the founding of the city shows the
means (Cartesian intellectualism, for example), from animality, irrationality, im- small-scale farmers with their cows as a “companion species,” their relation-
propriety, disease, and death.”25 ships being torn apart and remade in the postcolonial dynamics.29

Le Corbusier may have made his peace with the donkey at the end of his life The attractiveness of Chandigarh clearly lies in its greenness. City Beautiful,
in Chandigarh. According to a local worker, Le Corbusier was so thankful for the official municipal name for Chandigarh, not only refers to the topology of
the labor of the working animal, without which the city never could have been spacious and well-maintained roads, but also to the vegetation that was
built, that he even thought about erecting a donkey monument as a symbol of planted along the highways and within sectors. But apart from very general
his gratitude.26 Be that as it may, the contradiction that industrial aesthetics statements by Le Corbusier concerning the color and size of the plantings,
could only be built with pre-industrial means was solved if not in theory, at the local landscape designers had a free hand.30 Probably the most important
least in practice. Le Corbusier and his partners had to find out while building actor in this context was the Indian official, M. S. Randhawa, the chairman of
Chandigarh. the Landscaping Committee during the construction of Chandigarh and later
in the country’s capital, New Delhi. Randhawa’s contribution to the aesthetics
of Chandigarh is considered as important as those of the European architects.
A Happily Conscienceless Horde of Parasites
A problem plagued Randhawa and the Landscaping Committee since the first
Chandigarh is not just any city. Impressive proof of the power of a young republic plantings, according to meetings that Le Corbusier and his brother attended
with an entire city as a picture of its future, Chandigarh was visited by repre- with regularity: stray cattle, mainly cows, who feasted on the imported exotic
sentatives of other postcolonial states such as Pakistan or Burma, allowing them plants and often rested on the roadside or directly on the street. The Land-
to draw lessons for their own urban design projects.27 But the Chandigarh scaping Committee meeting minutes show ongoing problems concerning
Master Plan had many masters and was by no means the concise plan of a co-
herent architectural subject, as dominant modes of architectural history still 25 Juan Antonio Ramírez, The Beehive Meta- don: Mansell Publishing, 1982); Ravi Kalia,
tell the story: “various modernities were involved in the planning of Chandigarh phor: From Gaudí to Le Corbusier (London: Chandigarh: The Making of an Indian City
and these were questioned, contested, deconstructed, and reconstructed Reaction, 2000), 123. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999).
26 Catherine Ingraham, Architecture and the 29 Nihal Perera, “Contesting Visions: Hybridi-
many times during the planning process.”28
Burdens of Linearity (New Haven: Yale Uni- ty, Liminality and Authorship of the Chan-
versity Press, 1998), 85. digarh Plan,” Planning Perspectives 19, no.
I would like to pursue a hitherto completely neglected aspect of the planning 27 Vibhor Mohan, “Corbusier Wanted a Don- 2 (2004): 75–199.
and architectural history of the City Beautiful: the role of nonhuman actors, key Monument,” The Times of India, Sep- 30 Donna Haraway, When Species Meet (Min-
tember 11, 2010. neapolis: University of Minnesota Press,
mainly cows, in the postindependence process. The Indian independence 28 Madhu Sarin, Urban Planning in the Third 2006).
movement was able to celebrate the liberation from the yoke of colonial power World: The Chandigarh Experience (Lon-
104 Dwellers and Strayers Fahim Amir 105

stray cows, often in connection with their local owners, and they employed Having the animals killed by state officials was never really an option, even
different analyses of the problem, seeking different solutions in order to han- less so in postcolonial India. In 1955, the local government had passed the
dle this problem during construction and afterward.31 Punjab Prohibition of Cow Slaughter Act, which punished the intentional kill-
ing of cows with two years of prison. In an ethnically and religiously heated
As was typical of modernist city planning, agricultural use of animals was for- political climate, the cow was rediscovered as a “national animal.” The idea
bidden in the city; an exception was the 500-acre residential buildings in the was to protect the sacred cow from the marauding Muslims, even though it
far north. Residents of these prestigious estates had permission to own a was never clear if any of the few remaining Muslims in Punjab had ever really
dairy cow; containers for the collection and disposal of cow dung were built killed a cow. Until the partition of India, a complex system of division of labor
in modernist aesthetics. Before long this exemption was eliminated. along caste and religious affiliation had existed; this social fabric was torn by
the secession and the riots and flights after the partition. Until 1947, Muslim
Because the city was mainly used for bureaucrats who lived there and worked butchers had taken the male calves and older cows and handed the remains
for three territorial administrative units in the early years, the Indian techno- over to leather production companies, which were mainly in Hindu hands.32
crats were not pleased by stinking dung—neither from the stray cattle nor the Now the Muslims were missing in Punjab to do the job, but hordes of stray
modernist containers in front of the villas. Stray cows were also an obstacle cattle were flocking to the city that could not be killed.
to governmental automobile traffic.
At the Landscaping Committee meeting on February 15, 1955, the decision was
The idea of a garden city that should soften or resolve the contradictions be- made to transport unclaimed animals to the distant Kalesar forest. This plan
tween country and city in the form of integrated landscape design was never did not work, as the animals were returning to their villages on their own. In the
intended in Chandigarh, where a zone of several kilometers around the city following years, the Landscaping Committee tried to make the city cow-free
was free of settlements and commercial activities were prohibited. In the through different measures. For example, a second “cattle pond” was built, and
course of various phases, refugees and immigrants built settlements in and a separate municipal entity was formed whose job it was to capture the animals
around Chandigarh, many allowing space for dairy cows. wherever they could. At one point, the Landscaping Committee even consid-
ered officially rededicating the entire capital area as a forest reserve, because
Given the fact that Chandigarh had been built against the opposition of the higher penalties could then be imposed on the owners of stray cattle. Finally,
local rural population, it may be not surprising that the Landscaping Commit- the establishment of a Gaoshala, a religiously motivated sanctuary for cows,
tee resorted to state violence to solve the problem of stray cows. Point six- was established, paid for by private donations. This way cows could be perma-
teen, the last item on the agenda of the Landscaping Committee meeting on nently concentrated in one place and the urban area was freed from the un-
April 24, 1954, proposed the “destruction of all remaining villages” as the final wanted dwellers, strays, and eaters who did not seem to fit into the modernist
solution to the “stray cattle” problem. As a result of the rapidly growing suc- aesthetics of the City Beautiful.
cess of peasant militants who joined forces in socialist collectives, this vision
proved to be unrealistic. In addition, newcomers quickly founded new village- A comment in the daily newspaper The Tribune from July 4, 1959, entitled
like settlements around Chandigarh with their cows never too far away. “COWS – THE GARDEN VARIETY,” summarized the stray cattle situation of
Chandigarh:
In the following years, the Landscaping Committee considered fencing in the
city as a whole, but this urbanist anti-cow approach proved futile; the con- It would be nice to be a cow. In Chandigarh it certainly would. We have a
struction of the fence would have consumed the Landscaping Committee’s large population of stray cows who live off the fat of the land without a
entire budget. The plants would have been saved, but no money for the plant- thought as to whose land it is or whether they have the right. A happily
ing itself would have remained. The fence was not an issue anymore, but the
Landscaping Committee under the directorship of Randhawa succeeded in
reassigning one school building to function as a ”cattle pond.” Captured stray 31 Surindera Singh Bhatti, Chandigarh and 32 For an analysis of biopower and criminal
cattle were held temporarily in the former school and only handed over to the the context of Le Corbusier’s “Statute of cows in India, see Anand Pandian, “Pastoral
rightful owners after they paid a fine. Since the penalty was quite low, this the Land.” A Study of Plan, Action and Re- Power in the Postcolony: On the Biopoli-
ality (Chandigarh: Panjab University, tics of the Criminal Animal in South India,”
measure had limited success. Moreover, the unclaimed animals had to be 1990), 1134. Cultural Anthropology 23, no. 1 (2008):
provided with food, which also created unexpected costs. 85–117.
106 Dwellers and Strayers Fahim Amir 107

conscienceless horde of parasites, they have become a part of our way of surface on which cow dung cakes could be plastered. When she was told
life. And since nothing whatever is done about them by the authorities, I that in Chandigarh she would not be allowed to keep a cow in her house,
presume they are also part of the town plan—a kind of primitive charm, to she was outraged. What was the point in becoming a government official if
ward off the evil eye from this most modern and perfect of cities. you could not have the prestige of keeping a cow?33

It was not until the early sixties of the twentieth century that it was possible The stray cattle of Chandigarh still enter and leave the City Beautiful every
to tackle the problem of stray cattle in Chandigarh. Up to 900 cows were day at dusk and dawn through the area of the new IT park that functions as
loaded onto trucks monthly and driven several thousand miles to the south of the cows’ entryway into the city. They were in the city before there was a city;
India. This strategy was ultimately effective; the number of cows in the city they have struggled with planners and their agencies, and still are here to
dropped (to rise again twenty years later and produce even more noise, but make the city what every city is—a multi-species habitat consisting of many
that is another story). By this time, Randhawa had become the top landscaper multi-species habitats, neither innocent nor wholly holy, but part of human
in New Delhi. In this position he combined efforts to free the public spaces of living since the beginning of cities and settlements.
Chandigarh and New Delhi from cows.

The fact that the cows felt attracted to the cityscape and resisted removal is
certainly due to the availability of food sources and its diversity in the city,
especially the buffet of exotic vegetation provided by the Landscaping Com-
mittee. Local farmers and the authorities responsible for stray cattle control
agreed, however, that the cows stayed in the city because they were plagued
by mosquitoes, especially in the morning and evening hours. Few mosquitoes
were found at the roadsides and on the streets, and the movement of cars
produced pleasant artificial ventilation.

But the cow dung and the mosquitoes accompanying the dung not only 33 S. P. Gupta, The Chandigarh (Chandigarh:
caused aesthetic concerns in the city; they seemed to produce medical haz- ESS PEE Publication, 2010).
ards. Manure provided the ideal breeding conditions for mosquitoes as a
cause of fatal malaria. The cow is and was part of a whole culture; only a few
kilometers away from the city, diametrically opposed convictions were found. Literature
Once a year in the rural villages around Chandigarh the ground floor of the
Adams, David P. “Malaria, Labor, and Pop- Bunge, Eric and Juan Antonio Ramirez.
dwellings were and still are treated with a mixture of cow products, including ulation Distribution in Costa Rica: A Bio- “Bee Modern: An Interview with Juan An-
manure. This is supposed to guarantee happiness for a year and protect historical Perspective.” Journal of Interdis- tonio Ramirez.” Cabinet: A Quarterly of Art
against mosquitoes. The concrete and bricks of Chandigarh are not suitable ciplinary History, vol. 27, no. 1 (Summer and Culture, Animals, no. 4 (2001). http://
1996). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press: 75–85. www.cabinetmagazine.org/issues/4/
for this treatment nor was it wished that the materials of a new area should bunge.php.
be chronopolitically polluted with these remnants of a pre-modern era. The Bales, Richard F. The Great Chicago Fire
villages were called “cucha villages,” referring to their building practice and the Myth of Mrs. O’Leary’s Cow. Jef- Carter, Eric D. “‘God Bless General Perón’:
ferson: McFarland, 2002. DDT and the Endgame of Malaria Eradica-
using unburned bricks. But the subjects and their webs of cultural production tion in Argentina in the 1940s.” Journal of
of meaning and social interconnectivity did not conform to the purity of Bhatti, Surindera Singh. Chandigarh and the History of Medicine and Allied Scienc-
plans and ideas. A report from the beginnings of Chandigarh illustrates this the context of Le Corbusier’s “Statute of es, vol. 64, no. 1 (2008): 78–122.
the Land.” A Study of Plan, Action and Re-
point:
ality. Chandigarh: Panjab University, 1990. Chandra, Bipan, Mridula Mukherjee, and
Aditya Mukherjee. India After Indepen-
At the time when the first housing designs were developed, the architects Bruchhausen, Walter. Medizin zwischen dence. New Delhi: Penguin Books, 1999.
tried to interview the government employees and their wives to seek their den Welten: Geschichte und Gegenwart
des medizinischen Pluralismus im südöstli- Cronon, William. Nature’s Metropolis:
opinion about the house plan for their category. A government official’s chen Tansania. Göttingen: V&R Unipress, Chicago and the Great West. New York:
wife objected to the designs because there was no provision for a wall- 2006. W. W. Norton, 1991.
108 Dwellers and Strayers Fahim Amir 109

Curtin, Philip D. “Medical Knowledge and Ingraham, Catherine. Architecture and the Oldstone, Michael. Viruses, Plagues, and Wright, Steve. Storming Heaven: Class
Urban Planning in Tropical Africa.” The Burdens of Linearity. New Haven: Yale Uni- History: Past, Present, and Future. New Composition and Struggle in Italian Auton-
American Historical Review, vol. 90, no. 3 versity Press, 1998. York: Oxford University Press, 1998. omist Marxism. London: Pluto Press,
(June 1985): 594–613. 2002.
Jha, D. N. The Myth of the Holy Cow. London: Pandian, Anand. “Pastoral Power in the
Deacon, Harriet. “Racial Segregation and Verso, 2002. Postcolony: On the Biopolitics of the Yee, Jennifer. “Malaria and the Femme Fa-
Medical Discourse in Nineteenth-Century Criminal Animal in South India.” Cultural tale: Sex and Death in French Colonial Af-
Cape Town.” Journal of Southern African Kaika, Maria. “Dams as Symbols of Mod- Anthropology, vol. 23, no. 1 (2008): rica.” Literature and Medicine, vol. 21, no.
Studies, vol. 22, no. 2 (June 1996): ernization: The Urbanization of Nature 85–117. 2 (Fall 2002): 201–215.
287–308. Between Geographical Imagination and
Materiality.” Annals of the Association of Perera, Nihal. “Contesting Visions: Hybrid- The Tribune. Chandigarh. All issues from
Evenson, Norma. Chandigarh. Berkeley: American Geographers, vol. 96, no. 2 ity, Liminality and Authorship of the Chan- 1959.
University of California Press, 1966. (2006): 276–301. digarh Plan.” Planning Perspectives, vol.
19, no. 2 (2004): 75–199. Interviews (September 2011):
Frenkel, Stephen and John Western. “Pre- Kalia, Ravi. Chandigarh: The Making of an Interview with cattle owners on the out-
text or Prophylaxis? Racial Segregation Indian City. New York: Oxford University Protocols of the Landscaping Committee skirts of Chandigarh who preferred to stay
and Malarial Mosquitos in a British Tropi- Press, 1999. of Chandigarh, Union Territory, 1952–1967. anonymous.
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Association of American Geographers, vol. Latour, Bruno. The Pasteurization of Ramírez, Juan Antonio. The Beehive Meta- Interview with Mr. Surender Kumar Shar-
78, no. 2 (June 1988): 211–228. France. Translated by Alan Sheridan and phor: From Gaudí to Le Corbusier. London: ma, Municipal Corporation Chandigarh.
John Law. Cambridge: Harvard University Reaction, 2000.
Giedion, Sigfried. Mechanization Takes Press, 1988. Interview with Mr. M.N. Sharma, first chief
Command: A Contribution to Anonymous Sallares, Robert. Malaria and Rome: A His- architect of Chandigarh and associate of
History. New York: Oxford University Le Corbusier. The City of Tomorrow and Its tory of Malaria in Ancient Italy. New York: Le Corbusier.
Press, 1948. Planning. New York: Dover Publications, 1987. Oxford University Press, 2002.
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Guillemin, Jeanne. “Choosing Scientific Lockwood, Jeffrey A. Six-Legged Soldiers: Sarin, Madhu. Urban planning in the Third ment Museum & Art Gallery, Chandigarh.
Patrimony: Sir Ronald Ross, Alphonse Lav- Using Insects as Weapons of War. New World: the Chandigarh experience. Lon-
eran, and the Mosquito-Vector Hypothesis York: Oxford University Press, 2009. don: Mansell Publishing, 1982.
for Malaria.” Journal of the History of Med-
icine and Allied Sciences, vol. 57, no. 4 Mavhunga, Clapperton Chakanetsa. “The Slater, Leo Barney. “Malarial Birds: Model-
(October 2002): 385–409. Mobile Workshop: Mobility, Technology, ing Infectious Human Disease in Animals.”
and Human-Animal Interaction in Gonar- Bulletin of the History of Medicine, vol. 79,
Gupta, S.P. The Punjab. Chandigarh: ESS ezhou (National Park), 1850–present.” Dis- no. 2 (Summer 2005): 261–294.
PEE Publication, 2004. sertation submitted in partial fulfillment of
the requirements for the degree of Doctor Sanbonmatsu, John. Critical Theory and
Gupta, S.P. The Chandigarh. Chandigarh: of Philosophy (History), University of Animal Liberation. Lanham: Rowman & Lit-
ESS PEE Publication, 2010. Michigan, 2008. tlefield Publishers, 2011.

Gerhardt, Christina. “The Ethics of Ani- McLeod, Marc. “‘We Cubans are Obligated Spitzer, Leo. “The Mosquito and Segrega-
mals in Adorno and Kafka.” New German Like Cats to Have a Clean Face’: Malaria, tion in Sierra Leone.” Canadian Journal of
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159–168. Cuba, 1898–1940.” The Americas, vol. 67, 49–61.
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Haraway, Donna. When Species Meet. Min- Sutter, Paul S. “Nature’s Agents or Agents
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Mitchell, Timothy. Rule of Experts: Egypt, Watts, Sheldon. “British Development Poli-
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tember 11, 2010).
 Nádia Farage 111

No Collar,
At the beginning of January 1904, a note in the Rio de Janeiro newspaper A
Nação reported that there had been gunfire at a city slaughterhouse and a
circus.1 A laconic note that might have passed unnoticed were it not for the
intriguing connection it establishes, at first sight, between disparate loca-

No Master
tions. The link between the two is the presence of animals and, from this per-
spective, the note is an invitation, which I take up here, to reflect upon the
codification of the presence of animals in town and the consequent political
conflicts during the urban reform of the Brazilian federal capital, Rio de
Janeiro, in the first decade of the twentieth century.

Workers and Epidemic outbreaks of yellow fever and smallpox throughout the nineteenth
century and the bubonic plague at the start of the twentieth, ravaged the
port of Rio de Janeiro, resulting in heavy losses to commerce, most notably to

Animals in the
coffee exports. In addition to this, in the eyes of the intellectual elite, Rio de
Janeiro—with its narrow streets, colonial houses and ridden with epidemics—
epitomized the backwardness of the country.
Reacting to this, the newly established republic aimed to reform the capital—
following the model of Paris and, more closely, that of Buenos Aires—in order

Modernization
to make it attractive for foreign investment. To further this goal, the federal
government designated engineer Francisco Pereira Passos as the mayor of
the city and physician Oswaldo Cruz as Director of Hygiene, who had recently
arrived from Paris, enthused with Pasteurian theory. Under the direction of

of Rio de Janeiro
both, the rebuilding of the central and port areas of the city was accompa-
nied by sanitary measures to prevent epidemics. While the mayor ordered the
old colonial town to be destroyed—an authoritarian process which the local
population, the cariocas, captured in the expression bota-abaixo or “take it
down”—hygiene officials entered the slums and fumigated or burned the few

1903–04*
belongings of the poor. The whole set of measures—very problematic in
terms of constitutional rights—was contemporaneously described as “sanitary
despotism.”

In the last few decades, this process has been a topic of interest to historiog-
Nádia Farage raphy, which has emphasized the sanitization of society.2 However, this his-
toriography tells very little about the impact of the sanitization process on the
animal population, which was also gravely affected. As microbes or bacteria
entered the popular imaginary, so, conversely, cows, pigs, dogs and other

1 A Nação, January 10, 1904. neiro Imperial (São Paulo: Cia das Letras,
2 Jaime L. Benchimol, Pereira Passos, um 1999); Myriam Bahia Lopes, O Rio em mov-
Haussmann tropical: a renovação urbana imento: quadros médicos e(m) história,
da cidade do Rio de Janeiro no inicio do 1890–1920 (Rio de Janeiro: Fiocruz,
seculo XX (Rio de Janeiro: Departamento 2000); Nicolau Sevcenko, A revolta da
Geral de Documentação e Informação vacina: mentes insanas em corpos rebel-
Cultural, 1992); Sidney Chalhoub, Cidade des (São Paulo: Cosac Naify, 2010).
Febril: cortiços e epidemias no Rio de Ja-
112 No Collar, No Master Nádia Farage 113

species were, from that moment, expelled from urban space and rendered Cruz St, 35, Meyer.
invisible to urban dwellers. The sanitary model, which came into being at the For sale—a Zebu ox, to see and contact at Botafogo Beach, 170, hotel.7
start of the twentieth century, would persist thereafter and, in its most aggres-
sive form, would regulate the lives of animals, conceiving of them as com- It is also necessary to mention that dogs and donkeys, especially the latter,
modities the surfeit of which would be disposable in the modern city. Intruders worked to complete exhaustion in public transport systems and were con-
they would be, co-dwellers never more. stantly replaced.8 In addition, there were worn out cattle that crossed the town
to die in the urban slaughterhouses, the cirques and even sporadic bullfight-
The rebuilding of Rio de Janeiro was thus a crucial moment in the establishment ing in the residential area of Laranjeiras:9
of a bio-politics and, for this reason, it constitutes a strategic locus by which
the political and ontological disputes around the correlate definitions of animal Tauromachy: It will be the last of the season, the bullfighting announced
and human in Brazilian modernity can be envisaged. for tomorrow, in the bull ring at Larangeiras. The funds will be for the charity
benefit of the Asylum of N. S. Auxiliadora. The public, for sure, will not leave
an empty seat in the bull arena.10
Animal Co-Dwellers: A Sketch
Large houses in residential areas were often advertised as including pasture
Keith Thomas’s classic study delineates the gradual movement in England, for grazing, for example:
from the end of the nineteenth to the first decades of the twentieth century,
which created the conditions for the subsequent industrial production of For sale [...] 22$000 a house with many rooms in the center of an expansive
animals.3 Notably, it was due to the expulsion of stock-rearing farms and property, just two minutes from the Engenho Novo station [...] On the prop-
slaughterhouses to the outskirts of the cities, which veiled the suffering erty there are many fruit trees and pasture for three or four animals.11
and death of animals from urban sensibilities.4 As Claude Lévi-Strauss5 pointed
out some time ago, social distance constitutes the symbolic operator by And, in order to get a plausible image of the presence of animals in town the
which the animal is transformed into an anonymous multiplicity, exactly de- sight of the “continuous flight of insects” on the meat exhibited for sale at the
scribing the condition of animals in modern industrial societies, in sharp streets must also be mentioned.12
contrast to the domestic rearing of animals, which is based upon dense social
relations between human and animal. When raising so-called farm animals in town was forbidden in January 1903, a
significant number of accusations and complaints were presented to the
Such a transition can be detected in the context of the Rio de Janeiro of the municipality targeting piggeries, barnyards, and coach houses in residential
beginning of the century. A brief examination of the press of those years areas of the town.13 Although the complaints may have veiled existing quar-
presents a picture of a town populated by varied species of animals, mostly rels between neighbors, they are still telling of the conspicuous presence of
domestic ones: advertisements in the newspapers reveal houses with pas- animals in town.
tures in residential areas, coach houses, barns and widespread urban trade in
milking cows and their calves, pigs, chicken, ducks or birds. This can be seen, for 3 Keith Thomas, O homem e o mundo natu- 8 Francisco Pereira Passos, Mensagens do
example, in the advertisements of the daily Correio da Manhã in the beginning ral: mudanças de atitude em relação às Prefeito lidas na Sessão do Conselho Mu-
of the year 1903: plantas e os animais, 1500–1800 (São Pau- nicipal (Rio de Janeiro: Typographia da
lo: Companhia das Letras, 1988). Gazeta de Notícias, 1903–1907).
4 See also Coral Lansbury, The Old Brown 9 Bullfighting and other animal fights for
For sale—a heifer, first pregnancy two months ago, very cheap. Contact at Dog: Women, Workers and Vivisection in public entertainment were forbidden in
Catumby St, 5. Edwardian England (Madison: University Brazil by Federal Decree n.16.590 in 1924.
of Wisconsin Press, 1985). 10 Correio da manhã, January 3–4, 1903.
For sale—a small donkey, young, and very tame. It is perfect. Price
5 Claude Lévi-Strauss, O Pensamento Selva- 11 Correio da manhã, January 8, 1903.
140$000. Frei Caneca St, 200.6 gem (São Paulo: Cia Ed.Nacional, 1976); 12 Pereira Passos, Mensagens do Prefeito li-
see also, Elisabeth de Fontenay, Le silence das na Sessão do Conselho Municipal, 7.
Or, de bêtes: la philosophie à l’epreuve de 13 Livro de Queixas e Reclamações da Munici-
l’animalité (Paris: Fayard, 1998). palidade do Rio de Janeiro, Arquivo Geral
For sale—excellent cows, Cerqueira Lima St, 24, Riachuelo station. 6 Correio da manhã, January 3, 1903. da Cidade do Rio de Janeiro, 1903.
For sale—a beautiful dapple-grey horse, a young pacer. Contact at Dias da 7 Correio da manhã, January 4, 1903.
114 No Collar, No Master Nádia Farage 115

Indeed, besides the obvious exploitation of animal labor, which fed and rats and mice.17 The Hygiene Directory offered a small sum of money as an in-
moved the town, we can assume that the co-residence and social proximity centive for each animal delivered. The purchase of rats and mice by the State,
of animals made it difficult to reduce them, in their condition and being, sole- although viewed with suspicion by the population,18 actively engaged the
ly to commodities. This is manifest in the touching description of the suburbs poor quarters of the city. However, this trade in rodents left space for private
of Rio de Janeiro by the Brazilian writer Lima Barreto in early 1900: rearing and brokers: a broker from the nearby town of Niterói became sadly
famous for charging the municipality the then significant sum of 8,000 Réis
The most distant streets from the line of the Central Railway are full of for the delivery of a consignment of mice.19 As early as February 1903, critical
patches of grass and weed, on which families place clothes to bleach under references to the bio-medical combat against mice, and the corresponding
the sun. From morning to evening, the terrain is populated by all kinds of experimental bacteriological research on the plague, appear in the carnival
small domestic animals: hens, ducks, teals, goats, sheep, and pigs, not to parade: in a masquerade ball hosted by Lucinda Theatre, a guinea pig and
mention dogs which fraternize with all of them. two rats were mixed in among the clowns and Adonis and Venus callipygia.20
The carnival of 1904 took up the topic again with its polka “Rato-Rato” (Rat-Rat),
In the evening, from every gate sounds a “gathering call”: “Mimoso! An which was a big hit that year. A rough translation of the lyrics is as follows:
owner calls her goat. Sereia! It is a sow that a child beckons home, and so
on. Sheep, goats, teals, hens, turkeys­—all enter through the front door, Rat, rat, rat
cross the length of the house and retire to the backyard.14 For what reason did you gnaw my kist?
You, insolent and malevolent rascal
Lima Barreto witnessed precisely the multifold process that initiated the Rat, rat, rat
forced decline of domestic animal rearing, expelling animals from Rio’s urban I shall see your last day
space, as well as the state-sponsored systematic extermination of undesirable Will the trap haunt you
animals. Following Foucault,15 it would be a truism to point out that the defini- And satisfy my want
tion of undesirable was informed by linkages of the modern medical-sanitary Who conceived of you?
project and the architectural plans for the city: as a necessary correlate, the No other than the devil, you’d better believe it!
new aesthetics had a new ethical codification, which aimed to create a Who gave you life?
“clean” social space. It was a mother-in-law at death’s door
Who created you?
It was revenge, I guess
The Pest and the Stray Rat, rat, rat
Messenger of the Jew
At the outset was the battle against flies, which had been targeted as trans- When the trap is sprung
mitters of yellow fever. In a chronicle of 1903, Lima Barreto16 satirized the You, cowardly monster,
campaign, by investing the fly with a narrative voice to describe its fatal en- Do not come with your kikiki, please
counter with a young dandy physician with thick black hair—a caricature of
Oswaldo Cruz—who, tormented by a fly for one night, had sworn eternal re-
venge against the species. Indeed, the campaign against yellow fever was un- 14 A. H. Lima Barreto, Clara dos Anjos, Prosa ores,” Opera Omnia (Rio de Janeiro: Imp.
Seleta (1904) (Rio de Janeiro: Nova Agui- Brasileira, 1972), 323–72.
derstood as a war, which was mirrored in the vocabulary used to refer to it: as lar, 2001), 691–92. 18 Nádia Farage, “De ratos e outros homens:
mentioned before, anti-fly squads were organized to fumigate all the slums, 15 Michel Foucault, Vigiar e Punir: nascimen- resistência biopolítica no Brasil moderno,”
pensions and dwellings of the poor in central areas of the city. to da prisão (Petrópolis: Vozes, 1987). in Manuela Carneiro da Cunha: o lugar da
16 Lima Barreto, “Memórias de um stegomya cultura e o papel da antropologia, eds.
fasciata. (1903),” in Toda Crônica, vol. 1, Claude Lépine et al. (Rio de Janeiro: Ed.
At the same time, due to the bubonic plague, a program aimed at exterminat- eds. Beatriz Resende and Rachel Valença Beco do Azougue, 2011), 279–309.
ing rats and mice was put in place. Oswaldo Cruz had previously tested his (Rio de Janeiro: Agir, 2004), 64–65. 19 Edigar de Alencar, O carnaval carioca
techniques to combat the plague in the port of Santos between 1899 and 17 Oswaldo G. Cruz, “Relatorio acerca da Mo- através da música (Rio de Janeiro: Livraria
lestia Reinante em Santos, apresentado Freitas Bastos, 1965), 77.
1900. According to his own report, he adopted the same technique deployed pelo Dr Oswaldo Gonçalves Cruz a S.Ex. o 20 Rio Nu, February 25, 1903.
by the Americans in Philippines, which encouraged the population to hunt Sr Ministro da Justiça e Negócios Interi-
116 No Collar, No Master Nádia Farage 117

Old, impudent gnawing rat in the streets—be they rats, dogs or cows—was, significantly, the responsibility
Old rat, you horrify me of the Public Cleansing Department.
I will show you I am wicked
My pence is guaranteed The regulation of the presence of animals in urban space was not a unique
I will never release you, no matter what. initiative of the Republican period. Indeed, a municipal by-law of September
11, 1838, had already set up detailed laws on the movement of cattle, their
The polka was apparently inspired by the jota de las ratas movement of the fa- slaughter and commerce in fresh meat, as well as the movement of horses
mous satiric zarzuela La Gran Via (1886, by the Spanish maestros Villaverde and donkeys.23 The same by-law forbade the rearing of pigs and goats in
and Chuenca), which referred to the opening of an avenue in Madrid, displacing yards, and dogs from wandering the streets. In 1892, the Municipality of Rio de
thieves, sailors and rats. Irreverent, with an offensive anti-Semitic reference, Janeiro addressed the issue of dogs once more making their registration
the polka “Rato-Rato” simultaneously mocked both the rats and the government. obligatory: unaccompanied dogs should be collected by the Municipality and
The pipe and chorus parodied the peculiar sound of the animals as well as sent to scientific laboratories for experiments.24 The very notion of the “stray,”
the call of the mice brokers in the streets. One may note that the polka does as one can see, emerged from these rules and political practices. The law was
not make any reference to the disease brought by the rats, but only to the never enforced, however, during the nineteenth century. It was the project of
losses caused by mice as co-dwellers—“For what reason do you gnaw my kist?” urban renewal, which consolidated the modern ethical project that created
The mice hunt is an act of counter-revenge, but the animal—the child of re- the conditions that led to the fulfillment of the legislation’s attempt.
venge, the malevolence of the mother-in-law and of the devil—turns to be, at
the same time, a commodity: “My pence is guaranteed, I will never release
you, no matter what.” New Customs, Old Laughter
No debate on the matter is allowed; useless would be the protest, the “kikiki” Nicknamed “The Perfect”—a good-humored corruption of the Portuguese pre-
of the rat. Indeed, a pragmatic agreement appears to be established between feito (“prefect,” or more correctly, mayor)—Pereira Passos passed legislation
the scientific and popular conceptions of the rat, settling upon a common governing animals as one of his first acts of governance on January 6, 1903.
meaning, although based on different motives, for the notion of a pest animal. There’s nothing like a Kings’ Day to start a career of a vice-king, opined a
“lettre d’un missiu” to the mayor in intentionally broken French.25
Furthermore, the state’s battle against flies or rats was triggered by a demo-
graphic calculus, as the priority target for sanitary control was the quantity of The decree of January 6, 1903 included amendments to the Code of 1838 that
animals—further mediated by invisible legions of microbes or bacteria. The prescribed the rearing, the transit and the commercialization of animals,
war waged against animals was constantly mocked in the press, as can be seen dead or alive, in town. Thus, the movement of cows in urban areas, and door-
in the satirical newspaper Rio Nu: to-door milking, which was a customary practice of the time, were forbidden:
“I also abolished the rustic practice of milking cows in public streets, as the
Public Health, with the new regulations, will comprise a division consist- cows were covering the paths with their dejecta, scenes that certainly no one
ing of three brigades: killing flies, killing mice and killing dogs, all of them will judge proper to a civilized city.”26
commanded by Dr. O. Cruz in the post of general. The Ministry of War is
astonished.21 Furthermore, the new regulations controversially prescribed that hygiene
officers inoculate cattle against tuberculosis and the inspection of livestock,
This scornful note makes a point, however, about the alignment of the animals be it for milk or slaughter.
targeted for elimination—it highlights the link established by demography.
Indeed, it seems that it is the countless number of animals that equalizes dif- 21 Rio Nu, January 9, 1904. trito Federal, 1894 (Rio de Janeiro: Pape-
ferent species—and different inter-species relationships—in the same clas- 22 Donna Haraway, The Companion Species laria e Typographia Mont’Alverne).
sificatory position of “pest.” This is the route through which the elimination or Manifesto: Dogs, People and Significant 24 Jornal do Commercio, August 25, 1892.
Otherness (Chicago: Prickly Paradigm 25 Rio Nu, January 7, 1903.
expulsion process reached the domestic animals, those socially closer species
Press, 2003). 26 Pereira Passos, Mensagens do Prefeito li-
that Donna Haraway has rather optimistically designated as “companion species.”22 23 In Código de Posturas, Leis, Decretos e das na Sessão do Conselho Municipal, 7.
The reality is that from 1903 on, the demographic control of animal populations Editaes da Intendência Municipal do Dis-
118 No Collar, No Master Nádia Farage 119

In the case of milk, the regulations aimed to avoid its adulteration with The zealous municipal authority would have had his way, if, while many
water—a practice that the newspaper Rio Nu playfully said to be “homeopathic curious assistants debated the fact, the smart boy had not run, pulling the
dynamisation.” This was also done to prevent commerce in milk from cows cow along with him, to take refuge in his grandmother’s pasture, few steps
affected by tuberculosis, of which there were a considerable number at the from the scene of the event.
time. The obligatory sanitary inspection of slaughterhouses aimed to both
control cattle diseases and to prevent the deterioration of meat sold by street Popular reaction targeted not only cows. The use of horses and donkeys for
vendors. The regulations that prescribed the inspection of live animals on transportation, on which public and cargo transporters depended, was then
government premises gave rise to long judicial disputes with private slaugh- taxed at three thousand Réis per head. This was undoubtedly the main reason
terhouses. Nevertheless, the official statistics demonstrate that cattle failed to for a coachmen and carriers’ strike in January 1904, which made waves in the
pass the inspections not so much due to transmissible diseases,27 but due to city’s political waters. I shall return to this point further below. For now, it is
malnutrition or traumas from long trips on foot or in closed train wagons with sufficient to note that the carriers claimed that the tax made their labor more
no food or water for days, as they often came from distant estates or even vulnerable to exploitation, as most of them were employees. It did not pass
neighboring Uruguay. Many were dead on arrival.28 unnoticed, as stated in the press, that the tax also led to a hyper-exploitation
of animals, whose owners, in order to evade the tax and protect their inter-
The same regulations stipulated that the slaughter of cattle could only take ests, cut back on the number of animals used to carry out their operations and
place in public butcheries which were then slowly moving to the periphery of even reduced their feed—whips were the only abundance these animals knew,
the city, in order, it was maintained, to avoid the stampede of cattle in the as the owners sought to extract more work from the fewer animals available.
streets, then a common occurrence, causing the city dwellers great alarm and
perhaps some concern for the terrified animals, which often sought refuge Finally, it is necessary to mention the rabid—excuse the unavoidable pun—cam-
in nearby houses and even churches.29 paign Pereira Passos launched against dogs in the city. Municipal regulations
required all dogs in the city to be registered, upon payment of a prescribed fee.
In this regard, referring to municipal prohibitions on the slaughter of cattle In addition, a fine was levied on owners who allowed dogs to roam freely. Sheep
and meat commerce in Rio, the libertarian periodical Gazeta Operaria was the dogs were the only exception, which, if properly registered could wander the
only voice to boldly state: “As a matter of ideas and sentiments, we are streets by themselves. Thus, the rules imposed yet another tax on the population;
against those who eat corpses…”30 and those who could not afford the tax ran the risk of having their dogs taken
from them. The data shows that the tax on dog registrations culminated in rev-
This strong stance is detailed further below. Yet, the banishment of dairy enue of 96,701 Réis in 1903, and declined in the subsequent years, indicating
cows from urban spaces caused perplexed, if not indignant reactions in the that the population either refused or simply could not afford to pay.33 Abandoned
press. On January 7, 1903, the Rio Nu newspaper commented that the “Su- dogs—classified in official documentation as vagrant dogs—were hunted down
preme Intendant” had forbidden “the cow men to deliver milk door to door, and exterminated. According to the press, 13,000 dogs were exterminated be-
claiming that some of the tamed cows they lead might be bitten by a wild tween 1903 and 1904.34 Pereira Passos reported the following for the year
one.” The comic aspect of the comment relied upon double entendres, as in 1904: “I ordered the urgent capture and elimination of thousands of dogs that
the pornographic patois of the time, “unruly cows”—or in general, “cattle”— strayed near the city, giving to it the repugnant aspect of certain eastern
were coquettes or prostitutes. In the same vein, johns and pimps were march- cities and with grave loss to public security and morality.”35
ands, the cattle merchants; brothels were the “slaughterhouses” and, in the
27 Pereira Passos, Mensagens do Prefeito li- 30 Gazeta Operária, February 8, 1903.
continued metaphor, sexual intercourse was referred to as “slaughter.” Be- das na Sessão do Conselho Municipal. 31 Rio Nu, February 25 and 28, 1903.
trayed husbands were referred to as the “oxen.”31 28 For an analysis of cattle slaughter, see J. V. 32 Rio Nu, January 17, 1903.
Gomes Dias, “O rigor da morte: abate hu- 33 Pereira Passos, Mensagens do Prefeito lidas
manitário e produção industrial de animais na Sessão do Conselho Municipal, 21.
Sparse notes in the press reveal that the population contested the prohibi-
no Brasil contemporâneo,” Dissertação de 34 A Nação, February 14, 1904.
tion. An article in Rio Nu reports:32 mestrado inédita, IFCH UNICAMP, 2009. 35 Jaime L. Benchimol, “Questões Municipais,”
29 For the analogous case of London, in the [1905] in Pereira Passos, um Haussmann
A few days ago a young man led his aunt’s cow to pasture […] when a Mu- same period, see Coral Lansbury, The Old tropical: a renovação urbana da cidade do
Brown Dog: Women, Workers and Vivisec- Rio de Janeiro no inicio do seculo XX (Rio de
nicipal Officer decided to imprison him and take the animal to the pound, tion in Edwardian England (Madison: Uni- Janeiro: Departamento Geral de Documen-
despite the fact that the young man swore that he was not a milk dealer. versity of Wisconsin Press, 1985). tação e Informação Cultural, 1992).
120 No Collar, No Master Nádia Farage 121

As one can well imagine, this moral argument for the elimination of dogs on Long live Rio de Janeiro!
account of their mating in public provided an endless source of pornographic
satire. In a chronicle published by Rio Nu on February 14, 1903, the author, It is worth remembering the perfect symmetry between the municipal regula-
pretending to hold a political office, declared in his manifesto that: “No dog tions that targeted animals and those targeting unemployed people or infor-
may play seesaw in the middle of the streets, without previous knowledge of mal workers, as beggars, prostitutes, ruffians, gamblers, street vendors and
the municipality officer.” slum dwellers were also arrested or removed from the central areas of the
city. Therefore, it is no coincidence that the Head of Police when reporting on
The same newspaper sarcastically reported on January 13, 1904: “Yesterday, the street riots in November 1904, referred to “vagrants and ragged women”
the police arrested a couple of dogs for being united in wedlock without li- as coming out of “burrows” to set the city awry. This symmetry, along with
cense of the Municipality.” the political process of animalization it reveals, was the object of a rather
Swiftian irony in the pages of Rio Nu: “Following what the Prefect has been
The tensions created by the bio-political practices of the state began to cul- doing to vagrant dogs, the Head of Police will order the caging of all minors
minate and led to a riot against obligatory smallpox vaccination in November without owners who wander the streets of the city. Well done.”38
1904, but that will not be pursued here. Let us stick to the mordacious, Rabe-
laisian laugh of the population during Carnival, which continued beyond the The extreme image of “bare lives,” as Giorgio Agamben acutely describes it,
period of the ritual. are animal lives. Thus conceived, within the bio-political calculus that is un-
der consideration here, “bare life” is also “excess life”— the crowd in its un-
In 1904, the Carnival—the acme of cultural critique of the carioca population— controllable numbers, whether they are human or animal.39
would once more, and with renewed vigor, take regulating animal presence in
urban areas as its theme: indeed, cows and dogs were not left out of the street However, from a popular point of view, bio-political symmetry seems to have
parades and carnival balls. It is quite amusing that the masques, incorporating produced solidarity as a counterpart: the banishment and elimination of ani-
animals in the ritual event, challenged the municipal prohibition and allowed mals invoked a range of responses, from cultural comment to popular reaction.
them to circulate at will during the nights of Carnival. In a malicious reference
to the town council, the Fenians, a carnival association, paraded an allegory
under the name “Rats of the Council” with an array of masked dogs, mice and Freedom for Piety
mosquitoes representing “the three chased species.”36 Another association,
the Democrats, opened the parade with nothing less than a clarion band of Indeed, not only cultural critics challenged the “sanitary despotism” of the
masked Stegomya fasciata, the feared mosquitoes; another allegory the Dem- time. Official documentation from the period reveals evidence of workers
ocrats presented under the title “The Hunting Down of Dogs” showed a pa- who took direct action to free captured animals. The complaints register of
rade “defending the liberty of dogs.”37 This was probably the parade of “dogs” the municipality for the year 1903 includes this entry:
referred to by R.de Athayde (n.d:214), which, divided between those “regis-
tered” and “unregistered,” sang this good-humored protest: Yesterday at about eleven o’clock, the dog collection cart arrived here, ac-
companied by a squad of Municipal Officers, who seized a large number of
This beautiful cage dogs, some belonging to workers in the textile factory. As they were leav-
Which comes with no obstacles ing and passing the gates of the factory, the cart was attacked by the work-
Is the nicest invention ers, who liberated all the encaged dogs. As a result of these events, the fis-
Of the genial Dr. Passos cal officer arrived at the place, looking for soldiers to arrest the workers,
From one extreme to the other of the streets who already had returned to their work in the factory […]
Climbing and descending mountains At the gate of the factory, the officer insisted that the soldiers invade the
Wherever it passes it gathers factory to arrest the workers who had released the dogs and who were
Vagrant dogs
Always frenetic land
36 Correio da Manhã, February 18, 1904. 39 Giorgio Agamben, The Open: Man and Animal
Unmatched in the whole world 37 Ibid. (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2004).
Wonderful city 38 Rio Nu, January 6, 1904.
122 No Collar, No Master Nádia Farage 123

back at their work, which the soldiers refused to do, alleging they could tion in all currents that, between the end of the nineteenth to the first decades
not be ordered by a civilian authority.40 of the twentieth centuries, claimed human freedom would only be attained
(Casern of the Sixth Policial Post in the 4th of October of 1903. by putting an end to production and returning to nature.
[signed] Pedro Manoel de Souza, Commander)
In broad terms, libertarian naturism affirmed that capitalism had corrupted the
The coachmen and carriers’ strike in January 1904, mentioned above, is un- human condition by taking it so far from nature. Hence the struggle against
doubtedly another exemplary instance of worker solidarity with animals. “Vira capitalism demanded the eschewal of all technologies, generally speaking, of
a joça” (“dump the trash”) was the call of the strikers and the picketers as the artificial. Human beings, it was asserted, should go back to nature, to live
they proceeded to overturn and immobilize carts and trolleys around the city. side by side with other living beings. This general principle became a primary
However, it is quite significant that when the strike erupted, the first target mark of difference, separating naturists from communists and even anarchists,
was a dog collection cart, which was broken into to free the animals.41 It seems because the concept of revolution of the latter two still retained the line of
that the action was supported by the population, as the press also reported production, raising the objection from the naturists that production would al-
another dog collection cart being dumped and the dogs released in a different ways produce slaves. Returning to nature was apparent in a variety of practices
sector of the town on the same day.42 such as vegetarianism (or a kind of veganism avant la lettre, refusing the
consumption of all animal by-products), crudivorism, nudism, and in gathering
Based on the documentary evidence of the time, the practice of releasing dogs fruits instead of agriculture.
was indeed a recurrent event in those turbulent years. Even the prefect
acknowledged this, reporting that he had to order a police escort “in order to Two periodicals in Rio de Janeiro spread libertarian naturist ideas: Gazeta
prevent the populace from destroying the carts collecting vagrant dogs.”43 Operária, published in the years 1900 through 1903 and 1906, and A Vida,
This case is diametrically opposed to those of the classical studies of E. P. published in the years 1914 through 1915. They appeared alongside the pam-
Thompson and Robert Darnton,44 where animals appear as a sign of bourgeois phleteering work of anarchist Eugenio George and writer Lima Barreto, the
power in class struggle. British historiography, from the 1980s on, had already latter of whom was strongly influenced by Tolstoi and Kropotkin.
formed strong counter examples to Darnton’s bourgeois cats, pointing out
that the first actions against bull-baiting came from workers in the manufac- Peter Kropotkin’s Mutual Aid, published in London in 1902, provided a sound
turing city of Birmingham, and that during the nineteenth century the British theoretical basis for the idea of solidarity among species, for solidarity was a
humanitarian movement’s multifold struggle against cruelty to animals was factor of evolution in his argument. Far from Darwin’s idea of the predator as
deeply rooted in workers’ associations. Regrettably, British historians tended the most fit, Kropotkin argued that the most fit were bands of beings who
to read the humanitarian movement as a surrogate for class struggle rather helped each other against a hostile environment, an argument he held to be
than an ideology in its own right.45 valid in relation to humans (be they primitive or peasant communities, or anar-
chist collectivities) as well as animals. The concept of solidarity in Kropotkin,
In the first years of the twentieth century in Rio de Janeiro, as elsewhere, as the author acknowledges, is equivalent to the notion of piety in Rousseau—
workers may have seen their own destitute lives mirrored in the persecution a natural feeling which is present in all living and sentient beings. Inverting the
of animals. However, I suggest that the acknowledgment of similitude was poles of social Darwinism, which extends nature to social categories, Kropotkin
not confined to this, but overflowed and brought about active resistance in reads the relationship among species as a field of intense sociality, a solidarity
defense of the existence of animals tout court. In other words, if bio-power network against nature, a concept he confined to climatic or geological
symbolically equated animals with poor men, the workers’ reaction was not to
negate the equation, but to creatively turn it into a struggle for life. I argue
that to a certain extent the intelligibility of such resistance relied on naturist 40 Livro de Queixas e Reclamações da Munic- massacre de gatos e outros episódios da
ipalidade do Rio de Janeiro, 89–90. história cultural francesa (Rio de Janeiro:
ideas present in the workers’ circles of Brazil at the time.
41 A Nação, January 10, 1904. Graal, 1986).
42 Correio da Manhã, January 10, 1904. 45 James C. Turner, Reckoning with the
Naturism had its origins in French anarchism at the end of the nineteenth 43 Jaime L. Benchimol, “Questões Beast: Animals, Pain and Humanity in Vic-
century and spread via international anarchist links to South America, mainly Municipais.” torian Mind (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins
44 E. P. Thompson, Senhores e Caçadores: a University Press, 1980); David Perkins, Ro-
through periodicals published in Catalunya. So the very idea of interspecies origem da Lei Negra (Rio de Janeiro: Paz e manticism and Animal Rights (Cambridge:
solidarity was not alien to Brazilian libertarianism, as it was a pervasive assump- Terra, 1997); Robert Darnton, O grande Cambridge University Press, 2007).
124 No Collar, No Master Nádia Farage 125

phenomena. In this line, the author praised the small, anonymous lives class condition, an echo of past struggles can be heard: a human voice ex-
based on solidarity, of animals or workers who give their lives for the sake of presses affection and empathy with a vagrant dog, and the vagrant dog in the
others. song—the dog with “no collar and no master”— pays a canine homage to the
anarchist slogan “no country and no master.”*
It seems that the Kropotkian idea of a solidary network of sentient life, when
transposed to the industrial and urban ambiance, found its crucial anchorage
in domestic species, the ones man “encages for fun, kills for pleasure and
subdues to forced labor and torture.46 In this vein we can understand one of
Lima Barreto’s melancholic passages in defense of animals: “it is over their
suffering, it is over their own lives that we erect ours.”47

From a naturist point of view, the hyper-exploitation of animal work and life was
the ultimate form of slavery that still needed to be abolished. Animal slavery
was also human slavery: only in the company of men, “reduced to misery, un-
dernourished, compelled to agglomeration and dirt” do animals live a de-
graded existence, because human life is degraded by capitalism.48 On the eve
of the war in 1914, the periodical La Vie Anarchiste reiterated that human
slavery sprang from animal slavery, with the advice: “if you understand that
[...] your children will not be prison-fodder.”49 The expression “prison-fodder”
eloquently manifests naturist reasoning of a homologous fate of animals and
workers in the context of capitalist production.

In this frame, workers’ resistance to the expulsion and killing of animals in Rio
de Janeiro gains full meaning as a struggle against the commoditization of
life. Alas, “piety was held prisoner in the dungeons of repression,” as the Gazeta
Operária remonstrates in 1906, protesting against indifference to the brutal
violence towards animals and entreating: “may all living beings emancipate
themselves.”50

It is true that “sanitary despotism” persisted in the control of animal lives in

urban space, in the imposition of more miserable conditions on their lives and
the strict regulation of their death. It is also true that dogs have not freed
themselves of collars, nor have workers freed themselves of masters.
46 Eugênio George, Loucuras da Medicina 48 Eugênio George, O perigo das vacinas
Nevertheless, the struggle for solidarity at the beginning of the twentieth cen- (Rio de Janeiro: Pap. Moderna, 1927), 11. (Rio de Janeiro: Pap. Moderna, 1927).
tury would endure in popular memory, as we can see in the samba by Alberto 47 A. H. Lima Barreto, Prosa Seleta: Contos e 49 In Viva la naturaleza! Escritos libertarios
Ribeiro, a hit sung by Carmen Miranda during the Vargas dictatorship in 1937: histórias de animais [1919], Coisas do reino contra la civilización, el progreso y la cien-
do Jambon [1953] (Rio de Janeiro: Nova cia (1894–1930), ed. J. Rosseló (Barcelona:
Aguilar, 2001), 1020. Virus Editorial, 2008), 68–71.
I like very much a vagrant dog 50 Gazeta Operária, December 12, 1906.
Which walks alone in the world
With no collar and no master.
* This paper is part of a work in progress on libertarian naturism and anti-vivisection ideas in mod-
ern Brazil, granted by FAPESP, the Research Foundation of the State of São Paulo. I thank my
The samba points out the burden of class even for animals; while some have students and my colleagues, Sidney Chalhoub and Mauro Almeida, for their useful comments.
lunch and dinner, others have not a bone to chew. But, together with a shared My special thanks to Derek Matyszak for assistance in the English version.
126 No Collar, No Master Nádia Farage 127

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In China
 Christina Linortner 131

Mythopoeic 1 The Role of the Vernacular

In the 1930s architects Lin Huiyin and Liang Sicheng conducted a survey on
ancient Chinese temple architecture on behalf of the Society for Research in

Affairs
Chinese Architecture. Both had been educated at Penn School in Philadelphia
under a strict Beaux Arts curriculum and spent their honeymoon visiting Italy.
The quest to find the oldest and most authentic structures possible led the
young upper class architects to the most remote parts of China, and these ar-
chitectural surveys culminated in Liang Sicheng’s publication Chinese Ar-

The Role
chitecture: A Pictorial History, which can be regarded as the foundation of Chinese
architectural historiography on which basis young architects created a national
architectural style in the 1950s.

of Vernacular
Traveling had become an integral part of architectural education from the
nineteenth century onwards, and when young architecture graduates in Europe
and the United States left their academies and their cities and set out on a
voyage to the South to experience the Grand Tour, apart from the obligatory
itinerary of the classical monuments, inevitably many of the “ordinary” dwell-

Architecture
ings caught their eye and ended up in sketchbooks.2 As Paul Overy has stated,
the encounter with—and subsequent adoption of—vernacular architecture of
the Mediterranean and North Africa into the formal vocabulary by architects
not only reflected that “admiration for Middle Eastern vernacular architecture

in Maoist China
was common among ‘progressive’ architectural circles in the early years of
the twentieth century,” but that these “evoked otherness […] implicit in ar-
chitectural tours to North Africa and the Middle East.”3 Hence, vernacular archi-
tecture has never opposed modern architecture but was a strong sub-current
from the beginning.

Christina Linortner During their travels in the various provinces, rural vernacular dwellings also
drew the attention of the architects Liang and Lin, as is evident from the
abundance of archived photographs. Initially, none of these found their way
into publication or were studied like the sacred architecture. These images

1 The term mythopoeic is taken from a re- Ethnography, Archeology, and the Attrac-
cent dissertation by Karin Jaschke and un- tion of Tribal Cultures in the Work of Aldo
derstood as she describes it: “as part of an van Eyck and Herman Haan,” (PhD Thesis,
intellectual lineage concerned with nonra- Princeton University, 2012), 7.
tional modes of thought and practice 2 Paola Tosolini, “Other Itineraries: Modern
explored at different times and in different Architects on Countryside Roads,” The
disciplinary contexts in relation to tradi- Journal of Architecture 13, no. 4 (2008):
tional mythologies, the worldviews and 427–51.
epistemologies of early and small-scale 3 Paul Overy, “White Walls, White Skins:
societies, artistic creation, psychological Cosmopolitanism and Colonialism in Inter-
dispositions, and broader philosophical War Modernist Architecture,” in Cosmo-
societal constellations, including modern politan Modernisms, ed. Kobena Mercer
ones.” Karin Jaschke, “Mythical Journeys: (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2005), 59.
132 Mythopoeic Affairs Christina Linortner 133

were published posthumously many years later, after research on vernacular traveling culture. Forming international networks to push forward the enterprise
architecture had been institutionalized.4 of modernist architecture, traveling long distances to promote one’s individual
work to colleagues, attending universities in other countries, undertaking study
In this article I want to focus on the role of vernacular architecture in China trips, taking on commissions abroad, etc., had made traveling a significant
and the different roles it was assigned to in relation to modernist architecture and vital component of the disciplinary practice.6 However, this tendency was
and modernization processes in China in the early communist period after multiplied through the diverse experiences of forced migration and amplified
1949. First, I want to examine how non-Western vernacular architecture became mobilities during and after the Second World War.
a significant component in Western postwar architectural discourse. Against
this backdrop I am going to trace how architects Margarete Schütte-Lihotzky
and Werner Hebebrand synchronically developed their own ideas about the Préterrain I: Charta of Habitat and the Ethnographic Turn
role of traditional housing in modernized China on separate visits in 1956 and
1957 with the objective of getting a first-hand picture of the progress of the As much as China’s architecture production and radical spatial transformation
young socialist country. Secondly, I am going to show what roles were given is a topic in today’s debates in Western architecture circles, it was just as absent
to vernacular architecture in China at times of economic crisis and funda- throughout the debates in the 1950s when what has recently been coined an
mental social, political, and cultural transformations. The ambiguity between “ethnographic turn” took place in Western postwar modernist architectural
vernacular building knowledge and the ideas of development in times of discourses.7 This turn resulted from an increasing discontent with the latest
Maoist socialism are reflected in the work of architect Hsia Changshi, who uti- developments in modernist large-scale urban projects and concerns about what
lized a body of research on vernacular architecture in South China’s Guang- direction to take in the future. In particular, the younger generation integrat-
dong Province as a background to build within a formal language derived from ed their interest and research about far away architecture into their professional
European modernism. I also want to give a brief account of a shift towards a practice. Aldo van Eyck wrote an editorial for Forum magazine about a voyage
new interest in vernacular architecture in China’s architecture discourse ex- he had undertaken with his fellow architect Herman Haan to Mali to explore
pressed by one of its main official voices, the architectural magazine Jianzhu the ancient Dogon settlements in 1951 and 1952. Another instance is a new
Xuebao. urban housing typology based on an Indonesian long house and explorations
of collective living in Morocco, introduced by Peter and Alison Smithson in
1952 for their Golden Lane Estate competition entry. This tendency towards an
Architecture and Traveling increasing interest in non-Western architecture became noticeable at the
ninth CIAM (Congrès International d’Architecture Moderne) in Aix-en-Provence
In his seminal essay “Traveling Cultures,” James Clifford examined the work of in 1953 to the older members as well. Sigfried Giedion stated that one of the
the “normative or ideal-type” ethnographic scope of work by looking at it as a specific characteristics of this CIAM congress was the “cultural influx of far-
culture of its very own. Shifting the focus and attention from the ethnographer’s flung continents.” The three major themes discussed in Aix were first, the
object of examination towards the underlying conditions and (omitted) con- shift from a focus on urbanism as manifested in the Charta of Athens towards
text of the “fieldwork”—that in general had been regarded as the essential part a concentration of questions of dwelling in the form of a Charta of the Habitat.
of the discipline—has profoundly changed the discipline. Clifford claims that Second was the role of aesthetics and art, and third, the role of the younger
the prioritized standing of fieldwork in anthropology leads to a series of blanks generation of architects within CIAM. In addition, an exhibition by students
and omissions neglecting, e.g., national contexts, the university home, travel from a recent “expedition to explore native cultures in Cameroon” showed local
itself, discursive aspects of the work, translations, altogether what Georges architecture, leading Giedion to postulate, “primitive architecture is the direct
Condominas called the “‘préterrain’, all those places you have to go through
and be in relation with just to get to your village or that place of work you will
4 Wu Liangyong, Collected Works of Liang the ideal-type architects, as they are rep-
call your field.”5 Sicheng, vol. 8 (Beijing: China Architec- resented in specialist literature, mono-
ture & Building Press, 2001). graphs, and autobiographies of the
As Clifford considered the practical and discursive field of the discipline of 5 James Clifford, “Traveling Cultures,” in protagonists.
Cultural Studies, eds. Lawrence Gross- 7 Jaschke, “Mythical Journeys: Ethnogra-
anthropology a culture, in the following case study I would like to consider berg, Cary Nelson, and Paula Treichler phy, Archeology, and the Attraction of
and investigate (the discipline of) modernist architecture not only as a culture (New York: Routledge, 1992), 100. Tribal Cultures in the Work of Aldo van
but argue that modernist architecture of the twentieth century was also a 6 This might be true for a limited number of Eyck and Herman Haan,” 14.
134 Mythopoeic Affairs Christina Linortner 135

expression of life forms that have been preserved through the course of time construction, and urban planning and reflected the current state of affairs.
deeply rooted in human and cosmological conditions.”8 “Serving production as well as people’s livelihoods,”13 was a slogan of the First
Five-Year Plan; during a later period of the same plan it changed to “produc-
CIAM was smitten with their new discovery of this natural dignity of the primitive tion first, livelihood second.”14 Towards the end of the Second Five-Year Plan,
hut, contrasting with the soulless prefabricated house. Contemporary archi- known as the “three difficult years” (1959, 1960, 1961), the lowering of housing
tecture could regain its humbleness. While Giedion called his essay “Universal- standards was promoted with the slogan “thrifty is revolutionary.”
ismus und Regionalismus” (Universalism and Regionalism), it conveys the idea
of the vernacular based in romanticism as “a timeless realm beyond the reach Chinese scholarship and architectural discourse inside China has only very
of social tensions or commercial ambitions,” emphasizing “indigenous traditions,” recently taken this period into account, and it is still hardly considered more
“authenticity,” “folk virtues,” and “an idyllic harmony between humans and na- than a mere reproduction of Soviet planning models in the West. During the
ture.”9 It is a space opposed to the modern, evoking “the informal, spontaneous first years of building the new China, when the Soviet Union served as a role
use of space unsanctioned by official laws and rules.”10 model for general development, “Learning from the Soviet Union” was pro-
moted not only for urban planning and housing schemes but was also partly
implemented on a university level, encouraging the fast training of profes-
Préterrain: And China? Socialist Developmentalism sional experts. Even though this period is commonly regarded as block-in-
ternal colonization, Susanne Stein has shown that transfers of knowledge
Despite the novel interest among CIAM protagonists in non-Western culture were neither one nor two directional, but a manifold network of interconnec-
and although a great number of Chinese architects had studied and worked tions.
in Europe, throughout CIAM’s existence China does not appear on its map.
Entering “China” as a keyword into the CIAM archives does not result in a sin- These two discursive sets, including the heated debates about the Charta of
gle hit.11 After the 1949 communist shift, China’s modernization mostly took Habitat, the crisis of first generation modernism, and the turn towards issues
place outside the scope of the Western architectural focus. located in and in relation to the non-West is what I would like to call the dis-
cursive préterrain of Margarete Schütte-Lihotzky and Werner Hebebrand’s
The time of the Jianshe (reconstruction), the umbrella term for all phenomena trip to China in 1956 and 1957.
of political, social, and economical nature that emerged during the years of
transformation into a socialist state economy signaled a rational realignment
of the relationships between state, society, man, and nature and mobilized Traveling to China
the individual to participate in this collective project of modernization. […] In
this context a special role was assigned to urban development, urban plan- In 1956 Margarete Schütte-Lihotzky was invited to China as part of an official
ning, and the building industry in general; these spheres of activity function Austrian delegation of professionals to learn about the progress of the young
as discursive points of intersection where material and metaphoric contexts
of meaning of the term Jianshe converge.12
8 Sigfried Giedion, “Habitat,” 9. CIAM Kon- Shanghai, Nanking neither renders any re-
gress, gta Zürich, 1953. sults in the CIAM collection nor in Sigfried
After the 1949 revolution and the establishment of the People’s Republic of 9 Gwendolyn Wright, “On Modern Vernacu- Giedion’s correspondence (information
China, architectural modernism was discontinued as a specific architectural lars and J.B. Jackson,” in Everyday America: from Daniel Weiss, archivist at gta Archiv,
Cultural Landscape Studies After J.B. ETH Zürich, March 2, 2013).
form and instead expressed through the broad implementation of centralized Jackson, eds. Chris Wilson and Paul Groth 12 Susanne Stein, “Von der Konsumentenstadt
and standardized housing and design necessary for the bio-political organiza- (Berkeley: University of California Press, zur Produktionsstadt: Visionen von ‘Aufbau’
tion of a socialist life, the adoption of intrinsically modernist concepts such 2003), 166. und Urbanisierung im Neuen China, 1949–
10 Mark Fiege, “Private Property and the Eco- 1957,” (PhD Thesis, University of Tübingen,
as the American neighborhood unit, the transfer of educational models, and
logical Commons in the American West,” 2008), 5.
an emphasis on industrial buildings. in Everyday America: Cultural Landscape 13 Junhua Lue, Peter G. Rowe, and Jie Zhang,
Studies After J.B. Jackson, eds. Chris Wilson eds., Modern Urban Housing in China:
The transition of the old China to the new socialist state order was supported and Paul Groth (Berkeley: University of 1840–2000, (New York: Prestel, 2001),
California Press, 2003), 223. 105.
by consecutive official political campaigns, each containing countless princi- 11 A search in the CIAM archive for China, 14 Ibid., 106.
ples and guidelines. Many of them were directly targeted at issues of housing, Chine, Chinese, Chinois and Peking,
136 Mythopoeic Affairs Christina Linortner 137

communist country.15 The group traveled to five cities in five weeks in Septem- project for an unknown location in Beijing had been published in the 1957
ber and October 1956.16 The itinerary consisted of joint trips and individual edition of the magazine Werk und Zeit from the German Werkbund by one of
arrangements according to the individual professions. The sites of interest— its members, architect Werner Hebebrand. Hebebrand and Schütte-Lihotzky
most likely selected by the host, the Chinese People’s Association for Cultural had worked together in Frankfurt under Ernst May and later both followed him
Relations with Foreign Countries—consisted mainly of places displaying the to Moscow. Hebebrand traveled to China shortly after Schütte-Lihotzky, and
country’s recent developmental progress such as factories, universities, and a his design was intended as gift to his Chinese hosts.
cultural program including a huge political rally on Tiananmen Square.
In 1952 he had become the head of the city planning department in Hamburg,
As a result of this trip, Schütte-Lihotzky adapted the newly gained insights and leading its re-construction, and professor of urban planning at the University of
impressions of China’s progress in regard to urban planning and architecture Fine Arts in Hamburg. He also led the rebuilding of a German CIAM group after
in the manuscript China’s Megacities. A Visual Travel Diary.17 The small book gives the war. In 1957 Hebebrand was selected to take part in an official study trip
an impression of the on-going debates and conflicts that arose in urban plan- to China. The Association of Chinese Architects, which was also a member of
ning during the first decade of the newly established nation-state and, having the UIA (International Union of Architects), had invited delegates from their
been part of designing and building the socialist culture of the Soviet Union German counterpart associations from both parts of the recently divided country,
almost two decades earlier, Schütte-Lihotzky enthusiastically recognized the consisting of four architects from West Germany and eight GDR delegates.
social improvements that had taken place since her first visit to China in The group traveled via Moscow to Changchun, Beijing, Shanghai, Nanking, and
1934. But the manuscript is also a firm testament of how Schütte-Lihotzky adored Mukden during a five-week trip, participating in a formal reception with China’s
the urban structure of old Beijing and its courtyard houses by referring to it prime minister Zhou Enlai, shaking hands with Mao, meeting local urban
as “one of the most beautiful cities in the world—and as the biggest garden planners and architects, giving lectures, and visiting sites of contemporary and
city of the world.”18 Although Schütte-Lihotzky’s task was to gain an under- ancient China. The tour was not only covered by Chinese media, but also after
standing of the current state of architecture and urban planning during the their return several articles were published in German newspapers reflecting
journey, she was taken with the traditional courtyard house, the Siheyuan, the architects’ experiences and the progress and problems of the young
and spent a considerable amount of time and effort studying its features in country. During the voyage Hebebrand started to design a prototype for a
depth. The inherent logic and coherence of traditional Chinese architecture settlement based on the Chinese courtyard typology mixed with multi-story
and towns affected Schütte-Lihotzky—otherwise a strict rationalist—in such a dwellings.
way that she spoke almost romantically of its advantages. Addressing the
question of how to rebuild China’s old cities, Schütte-Lihotzky pleaded for a
preservation of “this giant garden city with its wonderful silhouettes of walls, 15 Mostly known for her design of the “Frankfurt städte Chinas: Bilder- und Reisetagebuch
kitchen,” Schütte-Lihotzky was not only an einer Architektin (Vienna: Springer, 2007).
doors, and rolling rooftops.” In general, the new regime had not used the old
avid traveler but had worked abroad be- 18 Ibid., 37.
courtyard houses for urban housing schemes. Even though a number of low- fore the war, first in Frankfurt in the 1920s, 19 From 1860 on, a transcultural typology,
rise settlements had been erected after 1949 in Shanghai in the first phase, then in the Soviet Union. After leaving the the Shikumen or Lilong houses, developed
this typology was later considered a waste of space and subsequently re- Soviet Union in 1937 she went to Istanbul, in the British concession in Shanghai with
where she became part of an exile Austri- elements taken from the Chinese court-
placed by multi-story buildings. In 1956, in light of the anti-waste campaign, a an resistance group. In 1941 she eventual- yard house as well as the British workers’
shift from Soviet row housing schemes to local, economical low-rise court- ly returned to Austria where her clandes- housing. The combination of industrial
yard typologies took place, as can be seen in the entries of the 1958 national tine work was uncovered, and she was pre-fab construction methods, imported
imprisoned until 1945. After the war materials such as cement, plaster, or US
housing competition. Some of the proposed layouts were based on the Lilong Schütte-Lihotzky, a member of the Com- pine wood, and the integration of sanitary
typology.19 Nevertheless, Schütte-Lihotzky proposed to categorically maintain munist Party, was part of the CIAM Austria facilities with an inner courtyard, south-
the low-rise principle of the existing garden city. The deficient infrastructure group. She took part in CIAM 7 and was facing doors, and vernacular motifs re-
engaged in ongoing debates about the sulted in a distinctive form of two- to three
and poor condition of the courtyard houses would not allow renovation, but
Charta of Habitat. story dwellings and neighborhoods;
instead a new modern version of the courtyard house was to be developed, 16 A geographer and his wife, a national Chunlan Zhao, “Socio/Spatial Transforma-
carefully introduced with necessary taller buildings that would not destroy economist, an artist, an art historian/sinol- tion in Mao’s China: Settlement Planning
the harmony and elegance of the existing settlements and would not alter the ogist, and two zoologists. and Dwelling Architecture Revisited
17 The manuscript was published post mor- (1950s–1970s),” (PhD Thesis, Katholieke
proportion of the area covered by buildings and open space. She cited a de- tem in 2007. Karin Zogmayer and Marga- Universiteit Leuven, 2007), 161.
sign by an old friend of hers as an exemplary approach. This low-rise housing rete Schütte-Lihotzky, eds., Millionen-
138 Mythopoeic Affairs Christina Linortner 139

 he original merging of modern knowledge of town planning with traditional

T production that would have one of the most severe impacts on China’s recent
elements of Chinese dwelling culture mark this plan as an impressive docu- history. Resulting in immense scarcity, almost all building activity came to a
ment of cosmopolitan attitude, as it should exist within the relations be- halt. Many architects were sent out to rural areas to support the transformation
tween foreign peoples, so that a mutual understanding can emerge. During of rural settlements into people’s communes, and a lot of them encountered
the talk Werner Hebebrand pointed out that the Chinese themselves are the rural parts of China for the first time. According to Zhang Jie, their rural
still searching for the architectural form that best expresses their new will circumstances, isolated from any access to research resources in their field,
of life. At first the political situation gave way to a representational archi- made them turn to what was there, and many of them started to study local
tecture of a strong Soviet influence, and partly these notions are still present vernacular architecture.22
today. For some time however, a heated controversy has ensued over inde-
pendent forms of expression, giving hope for substantial progress in this Officially the “Walking on Two Legs” campaign that “revised earlier versions
area. Possibly Hebebrand’s design could contribute to this matter, precisely that over-emphasized industry over agriculture and the urban over the rural in
because it is far away from trying to convince Chinese architecture of a both economic and construction perspectives” came into effect.23 Besides
characterless modernity.20 industrial modernization and technological progress, a special focus was also
put on small-scale production and on the recourse of local modes of produc-
Hebebrand sent a copy of the article to Schütte-Lihotzky, who used his design tion. For architecture this meant a combination of both modern and traditional
as a potential future model for housing schemes in the New China in her own methods. Architects and planners were called on to consider efficient and
manuscript. The design did not go unnoticed in China either. In the April 1958 resource-friendly construction and recollect old techniques. The government
issue of China’s architecture magazine, Jianzhu Xuebao, Hebebrand’s design continued to increase its focus on vernacular and local building practices as
was published on the very last page, and Chinese architects were asked to the budgetary constraints and general economic circumstances tightened. The
submit their opinion on the subject. 1958 national design competition constituted a “clear return to the local con-
text. […] A nation-wide standard design approach, which required the consid-
Four years later Hebebrand developed a housing scheme on the basis of single- erable support of a modernized building industry, was no longer stressed.
story courtyard dwellings for a new development area in Hamburg, calling Instead, local dwelling traditions were encouraged, including their spatial or-
them “Atrium houses.” The urban layout of this development strongly resembled ganization, building technique, and materials.”24 In the same year a conference
the one he had completed four years earlier for his fellow Chinese architects. on local design was held and turned into a national exhibition later focusing
He argues: on buildings “including houses made with bamboo-woven walls in the Sichuan
Province and buildings constructed with materials other than steel, iron, cement,
 he well-proven single-story type, propagated more than 30 years ago by
T wood, or brick in Harbin.”25
Ludwig Hilberseimer in his manuscripts on town planning, attains final per-
fection through the addition of the garage. In Scandinavian countries this The extensive use of bamboo was promoted, bringing about experiments with
form of living is more popular for practical reasons, but also in regards to “‘bamboo-concrete’ in floor panels, attempts to make door and window frames
quality of planning and realization—considerably superseding our method of with a special type of clay,”26 a gymnasium with a bamboo structure, or the
construction. In Southern countries, but also the Far East, Ancient China, implementation of traditional hearth heating from North China in multistory
and in Japan the courtyard house typology is not only the highest developed buildings in a few cases, but most exemplary was the housing construction in
dwelling culture, but undertakes the task to protect against sun, wind, and the case of the Daqing oil field in Heilongjiang province.
dust. At our latitudes special attention has to be paid to the exact oppo-
site—to catch the sun for the apartment—not only in summer time, but es-
pecially in winter.21
20 Justus Bueckschmitt, “Vorschlag für ein 23 Zhao, “Socio/Spatial Transformation in
Wohnviertel in China,” Werk und Zeit, no. Mao’s China,” 148.
10 (1957): 1. 24 Ibid., 161.
Vernacular Constraints 21 Werner Hebebrand, Zur Neuen Stadt (Berlin: 25 Lue et al., Modern Urban Housing in China,
Gebrüder Mann, 1969), 37–38. 153.
22 Christina Linortner, unpublished interview 26 Zhao, “Socio/Spatial Transformation in
In 1958, one year after Hebebrand’s visit to China, Mao announced the Great with Professor Zhang Jie, Tsinghua Univer- Mao’s China,” 146–47.
Leap Forward, the Second Five-Year Plan, and a mass campaign for steel sity, October 20, 2011.
140 Mythopoeic Affairs Christina Linortner 141

Other conferences followed in Zhangjiang in 1961 and in Wuxi in 1963 where, In order to expand his professional practice beyond this, Hsia Changshi devel-
“based on the investigation of local geographical conditions and climate, oped a number of techniques utilizing economic, vernacular, and rational
some designs with local features also appeared. Research on traditional con- elements, climatic matters, and the study of spatial qualities in garden archi-
struction skills also brought some changes to the practice of copying the tecture to create a distinct regional adaptive architecture. The use of modernist
Soviet experience.”27 In December 1962 a Rural Housing Design Symposium principles such as functionality, “sincerity” of material, and structure can be
was held, and vernacular dwelling types were published in China’s Architec- seen as passive resistance encouraging the growth of an architectural thinking
tural Journal together with examples of regionalist adaptations of architecture that was unconventional and controversial at that time and place. Architec-
in other Third World countries.28 While the Western visitors and CIAM members tural practice in Guangzhou among Hsia Changshi and his colleagues was ori-
looked at ancient building traditions, these depictions focused on modern ented around building, teaching, and research. A research center for vernacular
developments in these nations. architecture with a special focus on Lingnan gardens was established. Hsia
and his colleague Mo Bozhi conducted site surveys with their students; archival
The interest in local materials and their manufacturing methods triggered by photographs show students measuring vernacular architecture.
the rise of thriftiness was furthered through the decentralization of a major
sector of construction work: “Starting from 1959, each province, city, or auton- The way vernacular architecture was appropriated by the cases described above
omous region took over the responsibility of organizing standard housing is an example of “how a shared history of art and ideas was experienced dif-
designs from the State Construction Commission.”29 Accordingly, research ferently around the globe.”30 On their trips to China, Western visitors Schütte-
groups on local housing were installed throughout the provinces and sparked Lihotzky and Hebebrand were inspired by the traditional courtyard house and
a much greater understanding of Chinese architecture, which is reflected strongly pleaded for a modernist remake of the typology to use for future
in the Jianzhu Xuebao issues from the years 1960–63. They feature a series of housing in China. “The more collectivist our life becomes,” Lihotzky argues,
surveys of folk dwellings of minorities throughout China’s provinces. the faster “architects and urban planners should be agonizing about where
and how spaces of quiet and concentration could be created within big cities,
as well as individually in the context of housing, as well as collectively within
Climate Responsive Architecture in South China public buildings like libraries, museums, pools, etc.” Otherwise “the accelerated
pace of work and traffic” could lead to “a nervous breakdown and an intellectual
Economic constraints and the ruling paradigm of thriftiness put limitations on scantiness sealing the fate of the peoples.”31 Their praise of the low-rise housing
and challenged architects and planners’ professionalism. In some cases this as a peaceful antipode to the busy modern collectivist life can be viewed in
created opportunities to bypass the strict framework of official guidelines re- the context of the discussion around the CIAM Charta of Habitat that aimed
stricting architectural expression. In the 1950s in Guangdong Province, South at a revision of the urban visions of the first generation modernists focusing
China, a specific regional architectural modernism evolved, promoted by a on the immediate surrounding of the dwelling, rather than the “cell” and models
group of architects affiliated with the South China University of Technology. One of zoning. At the same time, the debates in China were dominated by a constant
of the main protagonists was the architect Hsia Changshi who, like many of aggravation of economic constraints and politically motivated requirements.
his fellow architects in that generation, had studied abroad and adapted ideas Duanfang Lu has claimed that this factor is one of the signifying characteris-
he had encountered during his education to specific local conditions he tics of what she coined “Third World Modernism.” While Schütte-Lihotzy and
found in South China. While the official line for architecture and construction Hebebrand focused on the spatial qualities of the old Chinese housing typol-
was geared to the Soviet model under the slogan “Learning from the Soviet ogy, in China the vernacular was used in multiple fashions. These ranged
Union” and simultaneously a Neo-Sino-Classicism, a climate-adaptive approach from a vehicle for the grander nation-building project to an adequate formal
in South China allowed for the otherwise discredited modernist architectural and technological language of modesty and inherent rationality in times of
language using horizontal lines in its design that was associated with the
Western capitalist class enemy. The consequences of the Great Leap Forward had 27 Lue et al., Modern Urban Housing in China, 30 Kobena Mercer, ed., Cosmopolitan Mod-
not only caused a rigid austerity program, but matters related exclusively to 159. ernisms (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press,
architectural questions with no relevance for the re-construction of economy 28 Duanfang Lu, Remaking Chinese Urban 2005), 7.
Form: Modernity, Scarcity and Space, 1949– 31 Zogmayer et al., Millionenstädte Chinas:
or general welfare were commonly considered rightist. However, the study
2005 (London: Routledge, 2006), 122. Bilder- und Reisetagebuch einer Architek-
of vernacular architecture and the use of local building methods and material 29 Lue et al., Modern Urban Housing in China, tin, 52.
had been promoted by the officials. 348.
142 Mythopoeic Affairs Christina Linortner 143

heightened scarcity to the utilization of this modesty to develop an individual Literature

architectural language opposing the political demands, as in the case of Hsia
Bueckschmitt, Justus. “Vorschlag für ein Lu, Duanfang. Remaking Chinese Urban
Changshi. Wohnviertel in China.” Werk und Zeit, no. Form. Modernity, Scarcity and Space,
10 (1957): 1. 1949–2005. London: Routledge, 2006.

Clifford, James. “Traveling Cultures.” In Lu, Duanfang. Third World Modernism:

Cultural Studies. Edited by Lawrence Architecture, Development and Identity.
Grossberg, Cary Nelson, and Paula London: Routledge, 2010.
Treichler, 96–116. New York: Routledge,
1992. Lue, Junhua, Peter G. Rowe, and Jie Zhang
(eds.). Modern Urban Housing in China:
Fairbank, Wilma. Liang and Lin: Partners in 1840–2000. New York: Prestel, 2001.
Exploring China’s Architectural Past. Phila-
delphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, Mercer, Kobena (ed.). Cosmopolitan Mod-
1994. ernisms. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2005.

Fiege, Mark. “Private Property and the Eco- Overy, Paul. “White Walls, White Skins:
logical Commons in the American West.” Cosmopolitanism and Colonialism in Inter-
In Everyday America: Cultural Landscape War Modernist Architecture.” In Cosmo-
Studies After J.B. Jackson. Edited by Chris politan Modernisms. Edited by Kobena
Wilson and Paul Groth, 219– 232. Berkeley: Mercer, 50–67. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press,
University of California Press, 2003. 2005.

Giedion, Sigfried. (1953). “Habitat” zum 9. Peng, Changxin. “Regionalism and Realism:
CIAM Kongress Giedion, P.1, GTA Zürich: Hsia Changshi’s Ideas on Modern Archi-
43-T-15-1953-9. tecture in China.” South Architecture, vol.
2 (2010): 36–41.
Hebebrand, Werner. Zur Neuen Stadt. Berlin:
Gebrüder Mann, 1969. Stein, Susanne. “Von der Konsumentenstadt
zur Produktionsstadt: Visionen von “Aufbau”
Hoa, Léon. Reconstruire la Chine: trente ans und Urbanisierung im Neuen China, 1949–
d‘urbanisme 1949–1979. Paris: Moniteur, 1957.” PhD Thesis, University of Tübingen,
1981. 2008.

Hsia, Changshi. “Problems of Lowering Tosolini, Paola. “Other Itineraries: Modern

the Temperature of Buildings in the Sub- Architects on Countryside Roads.” The
tropical Zone.” Jianzhu Xuebao, 10 (1958): Journal of Architecture, vol. 13, no. 4 (2008):
36–39. 427-451.

Hsia, Changshi and Bozhi Mo. “Lingnan Wright, Gwendolyn. “On Modern Vernaculars
Gardens.” Jianzhu Xuebao, 03 (1963): and J.B. Jackson.” In Everyday America:
11–14. Cultural Landscape Studies After J. B.
Jackson. Edited by Chris Wilson and Paul
Jaschke, Karin. “Mythical Journeys: Ethnog- Groth, 163–177. Berkeley: University of
raphy, Archeology, and the Attraction of California Press, 2003.
Tribal Cultures in the Work of Aldo van Eyck
and Herman Haan.” PhD Thesis, Princeton Zhao, Chunlan. “Socio/Spatial Transforma-
University, 2012. tion in Mao’s China: Settlement Planning
and Dwelling Architecture Revisited
Liangyong, Wu. Collected Works of Liang (1950s–1970s).” PhD Thesis, Katholieke
Sicheng. vol. 8. Beijing: China Architecture Universiteit Leuven, 2007.
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Zogmayer, Karin and Margarete Schütte-
Linortner, Christina. Unpublished Inter- Lihotzky (eds.). Millionenstädte Chinas:
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University, October 20, 2011. Vienna: Springer, 2007.
 Duanfang Lu and Christina Linortner in Conversation 145

Walking on
Christina Linortner: Architectural modernism is still widely perceived (within
the field) as originating in the West (Europe and the United States) from
where it spread to the rest of the world, rather than as a product of an ongoing
transcultural process. However, in recent years with the rise of postcolonial

Many Legs
thought this one-directional perspective has been revised by a number of
scholars both in the Western and non-Western world. Still, most of the best-
known examples (with a few exceptions of course) of (late) modernist archi-
tecture in Latin American, African, and Asian countries were built by Western
architects. I am referring to prominent examples such as Le Corbusier’s

Spatial
Chandigarh, Kahn’s design in Bangladesh and India, Drew’s and Fry’s plans
for the University of Ibadan in Nigeria, Gropius’s work for Baghdad University,
etc. There are a few other examples of well-known non-Western architects,
such as Kenzō Tange, Oscar Niemeyer, and Hassan Fathy, but the enormous

Productions
spatial transformations in the Chinese context have largely been ignored in
(Western) postwar architecture discourse and hardly appear on the map. In
recent years you have published two books, Remaking Chinese Urban Form
(2006) and Third World Modernism (2011), that open up a new perspective
on the neglect of China’s spatial production in and beyond the context of

between State
(architectural) modernism. How would you describe the modernism/moder-
nity and its conditions/constraints of postwar Chinese space production?
(And why has it been so neglected in and outside of China?)

Socialism and
Duanfang Lu: While modernity has constantly wrestled with the differences
of histories, cultures, nationalities, and ethnicities, dominant discourses
tend to focus on the universality, rationality, and homogeneity of the
modern. Under the assumption that only Western society is truly modern,
Western Cold War scholarship, for example, depicted state socialism as

Third World
a type of “unmodernity” when measured with normative standards of
capitalist modernity. Meanwhile, conventional architectural historiography
is marked by its ordering of heterogeneous design practices into progres-
sive movements and codification of aesthetically exemplary buildings into

Modernism in
stylistic categories. Things that mess up the neat categories are excluded.
As a result, up until the last three decades, the official history of modern
architecture had focused on its development in the West, and academic
inquiry with the built environment in China and other “developing societ-
ies” concentrated on traditional forms. Little attention was devoted to

Maoist China
their modern architecture, which was considered merely lesser forms of
Western modernism, apart from a very small number of architects such
as those you mentioned who fit the categories. Inside China, under the
catch-up complex—the urgent desire to keep up with the most devel-
oped countries—researchers had concentrated their energy on learning
Duanfang Lu and Christina Linortner in Conversation what others were doing and deciding on what was to be done next, rather
than reflecting on what had been done and what was happening.
146 Walking on Many Legs Duanfang Lu and Christina Linortner in Conversation 147

As Pierre Bourdieu points out, one often knows what one does, but does of urban space and construction. There were major efforts to convert the
not know what one doesn’t do. Reflecting on the actual effects on what “cities of consumption” into the “cities of production” during the 1950s.
one does in a broad context is a daunting task, not to mention that China Urban functions in commerce, finance, and services were suppressed;
has been a particularly huge and complicated entity embedded in a long most of the city’s manpower and resources were transferred to industrial
history and a tangled world system. I struggled painfully with the task development. State investment in urban development was tilted heavily
of grasping and describing the essence of Chinese modernity for a few towards productive construction—the erection of structures that were
years. Eventually, starting with “the beginning of a new time” seemed directly related to production—and biased against non-productive construc-
appropriate. Let us not forget that for at least one millennium much of tion—the erection of structures that rendered services for people. The
Asia was a loosely integrated ensemble of regions, countries, and cities challenges China was facing were similar to those faced by other “devel-
held together by a tribute-trade system centered on China. This is simul- oping countries” at the time. I have, therefore, characterized Chinese
taneously a political-economic framework and an epistemological system. modernity as socialist and Third World.
To peripheral components, China was modern culturally, politically, eco-
nomically, and epistemologically. Financially, for instance, while the history CL: What is your particular interest when looking at Chinese urban form of the
of money in China dates back four millennia, money did not become the 1950s and its dominant element, the “work unit” (danwei)? What is there to
dominant medium of exchange in Japan until the twelfth century (by using see and learn beyond its physical appearance?
currency imported from China), Korea until the fifteenth century, and
Vietnam until the eighteenth century. The phrase tianxia, literally “under DL: I am interested in seeing the built environment not as an autonomous
the heavens,” was used to denote the entire geographical world under arena but rather a social field with important political implications. The
the rule of the emperor since at least the first millennium BC. The latter development of the work unit as the dominant urban form under Chinese
was positioned at the center of this celestial/temporal/spatial structure. socialism is a significant example here. The work unit—the socialist en-
When an emperor ascended the throne, the year would be changed to terprise or institute—functioned not only as workplace but also as a social
Year One under the title of his reign. If one knows this history well, one institution in China. It was also a territorial unit that possessed a distinct
can see how radical it was to adopt the Greenwich Mean Time system as spatial form that integrates work, housing, and a variety of social facilities
the nation’s official time system. This not only represented a ruthless such as nurseries, canteens, clinics, and shops in close proximity within
break with a self-referential, Sinocentric historical and spatial framework, its walled compound(s). Residents might conduct most daily affairs with-
but also positioned the nation in a relationship of synchronic temporality out leaving their unit. The characteristic form of the work unit had pro-
with other nations of the world. China found itself not only as one of the found effects on urbanism under Mao. The work unit as the focus of urban
many, but also lagging behind. Seeking the fastest track to “wealth and life resulted in a small community atmosphere lacking anonymity, a pe-
power” (fuqiang) became the nation’s most urgent task during the late culiar urban experience not found in other modern cities. The design of
Qing and Republican periods, but the efforts were disrupted by wars. After the work unit created an institutionally non-sexist environment that sup-
the 1949 revolution, the catch-up complex was further complicated by ported the activities of employed women and their families. In contem-
revolutionary drives: a perpetual search for an alternative future by con- porary China, urban women were expected to have paid employment,
stantly transcending the independent revolution, the socialist revolution, while homebound women were the exception. The work unit’s integration
industrial modernity and more, “one after another.” This forceful tempo- of production, residence, and social services on a manageable scale
rality to which the nation subscribed itself constitutes a fundamental as- greatly facilitated the functioning of two-worker families. Public kitchens
pect of Chinese modernity. and canteens offered alternatives to cooking at home, and nurseries
within the unit compound reduced the time spent commuting.
Spatial production in socialist China needs to be examined against this
context. To keep up with advanced capitalist countries, China, like other The distinct mixed land-use pattern of the work unit also had important
socialist countries, decided to focus on the development of capital- environmental significance. The close association of workplace, resi-
intensive heavy industry, but the attempt was constrained by limited re- dence, and social facilities greatly reduced the need for urban residents
sources. The national austerity policy was adopted; the state privileged to travel beyond their unit compound. Such an urban form depended little
production over consumption to accumulate maximum capital for indus- on the provision of an extensive and expensive public transport system.
trialization. This policy was quickly translated into new conceptualizations As Clifton Pannell observed in the late 1970s, major Chinese cities such
148 Walking on Many Legs Duanfang Lu and Christina Linortner in Conversation 149

as Shanghai and Beijing had a very small number of buses and other public assist various modernization programs in China, and their opinions often
transport vehicles: the number for both cities was around 2,200 in 1977, outweighed local objections to key decisions. In the sphere of architec-
much less than other Western cities of similar sizes. Without any private tural production, Soviet advisors sought to transplant “Socialist Realism”
cars, the principal modes of travel at the time were bicycling and walking. to China, the national style which had been established in Russia since
Energy consumption was also reduced through shared facilities such as the 1930s as a reaction to the adoption of “decadent bourgeois styles,”
canteens and public bathhouses. It is indeed an incredible environmental including constructivism, which had flourished in the USSR earlier, and
achievement to have an urban system based on minimum energy costs the International style, which developed in capitalist society. The slogan
without creating serious dysfunctions in economic and social organization. for this style was: “Socialist in content, national in form.” Under this notion,
the Revivalist style, first developed by Western architects in Republican
Despite these positive features, there were negative implications at the China, was re-fashioned as the revolutionary style of the socialist state.
urban level. The enclosed character of the work unit resulted in less
choice, social interaction, and heterogeneity. Georg Simmel, in his analy- In the field of residential planning, the idea of the neighborhood unit was
sis of the modern city, contrasts urban space, where density and diversity introduced to China in the 1930s. It was employed by Japanese colonial
constantly put the individual in touch with a myriad of possibilities, to rural planners in the planning of cities such as Changchun and Datong, and
space, where individual movement and opportunities are restricted. In used by Chinese planners in planning proposals for several major cities
the Maoist city, one’s social life was largely confined within one’s own work immediately after World War II. Socialist planners experimented with
unit, which was separated from other parts of the city physically and several competing residential planning ideas during the 1950s. The mi-
socially. As there was little done to facilitate interactions in society at large, crodistrict (xiaoqu in Chinese and mikrorayon in Russian), an idea from
the urbanite in the Maoist city was restricted to the concentric social the Soviet Union and essentially similar to the neighborhood unit schema,
pattern centered on the work unit. The streets had fewer shops, restaurants, gradually gained favor. With the exception of a few built examples of the
ads, recreational centers, and other urban facilities. The social environ- microdistrict, however, planners failed to realize the model to any great
ment of the work unit encouraged socialist collectivism while discourag- extent under Mao (1949–76). Instead, the work unit gradually became
ing social heterogeneity, which is central to Wirth’s notion of “urbanism as the de facto dominant form to organize the Chinese city.
a way of life.” As a result, there was a high level of homogeneity in terms
of life styles, and fewer chances for urban interactions leading to Chinese urban form, as it exists today, bears little resemblance to what
innovations. Chinese socialist planners had in mind. Yet by looking into the production
process of space, I consider that urban form and function under Mao
CL: As a communist country, architecture in China after 1949 and before the were nonetheless “socialist” in nature, as they were produced as part of
Sino-Soviet split in 1960 was widely regarded as derivative of the Soviet socialist production and accumulation strategies. My study shows that
model of space, and by identifying the work unit as one of the crucial princi- the integral spatial form of the work unit was the unique outcome gener-
ples of urban and social organization in China you understand the idea of ated by the conflicts between the needs of capital accumulation and the
the neighborhood unit (by Clarence Perry) as a traveling typology that is en- necessity of labor reproduction within a peculiar socialist/ Third World
tangled in a global web of manifold capitalist, socialist, or postcolonial histo- context. Industrial expansion caused a dramatic growth in the urban pop-
ries and contexts. Simultaneously, you show how the work unit became a ulation in the 1950s. As mentioned earlier, under the national austerity
distinct and unique feature of Chinese Socialist space making. Can you elab- policy, little state investment was allocated to non-productive construction.
orate on this apparent ambiguity? Rapid urban growth and biased investment policies created an immense
scarcity of crucial consumption facilities; there was a constant shortage
DL: The first stage of construction (1949–52) bore the mark of the previous of housing and facilities. Much conflict was generated between the
era; Chinese architects were free to make their own stylistic decisions. But needs of accumulation and the necessity of labor reproduction.
you are right; very soon, as the Chinese Communist Party aligned the
nation with the socialist camp and considered China a “junior member” My archival research reveals that the building of living facilities within
of the Soviet-led alliance of communist countries, the Soviet influence work units was often accomplished through construction outside the
began to permeate every aspect of Chinese rebuilding. During the state approved plan, resource hoarding, and exchanges via informal
1950s, more than 10,000 advisors from the Soviet Union were invited to channels. This certainly did not happen automatically. Instead, it was a
150 Walking on Many Legs Duanfang Lu and Christina Linortner in Conversation 151

result of the conflicted relationship between the state, work units, and however, many social and spatial choices made in “developing societies”
planners in the construction of essential consumption facilities. Although that cannot be well explained without including the dimension of scarci-
the Chinese state was depicted as a totalitarian regime in Cold War-era ty. In fact, much of urban transformation in contemporary China can
research, the control of the socialist state over enterprises and labor was only be explained when scarcity, as a historically constituted condition,
structurally weak. Under socialism enterprises operate within soft bud- is taken into account. By using scarcity as an epistemic starting point for
get constraints—that is, if a production unit suffers financial losses, the the understanding of Third World modernism, I hope to bring together
state will cover it sooner or later. Hence, the socialist economic system political economy and the analysis of the postcolonial, the two spheres
does not possess the kind of disciplinary control of enterprises charac- that have largely remained separated in current cultural debates.
teristic of capitalism. Meanwhile, due to the lack of labor markets, layoffs,
bankruptcies, and so on, the means for disciplining labor under social- Scarcity has profound effects on human agency. This is especially true
ism are less efficient than those under capitalism. The strong bargaining when even a subsistence level of existence cannot be maintained. With
power of the work unit over the local government and the planning de- a strong desire for survival, scarcity becomes a powerful magic wand,
partment, and workers over their work unit, played a key role in redirecting transforming individuals into collective human movements, with the vir-
capital from production to consumption construction. tues required to bring about revolutions—sacrifice, self-discipline, and
fearlessness in the face of death, to name just a few. I believe this can
With the immense scarcity of consumption facilities causing severe political partially explain why movements against capitalist domination, contra-
tension and strife during the 1950s, the state responded by imposing the dictory to what Marx had predicted, were de-radicalized in the “overripe”
responsibility of urban provision upon the work unit. Faced with political core but succeeded in the underdeveloped periphery. Therefore, in that
pressure from employees below and administrators above, unit leaders well-known quote, Mao celebrated the fact that the Chinese were “poor
strived to meet the needs of their workers. The ideal model for residential and blank” and proclaimed that it was precisely because of such condi-
development for planners was a combination of the principle of function- tions that the desire for “change,” “action,” and “revolution” would be in-
al zoning and unitary neighborhood planning. Due to limited resources cited. For better or for worse, Mao was a real life Faust who aspired to
and weak planning power, however, planners failed to realize the model to build a brave new world by eliminating anything that stood in the way of
any great extent before 1978. In theory, public ownership and the centrally modernization. With a characteristically Maoist thinking, scarcity was
planned system should provide favorable conditions for the realization of ironically turned into a favored condition—“a blank sheet of paper free of
planning ideas. In practice, construction investment was channeled any mark”—in the push for modernization, so that scarcity and moderni-
through all-powerful vertical sectoral lines, over which the planning de- ty were conceptually reconciled. Yet this synthesis was nonetheless a
partment had little control. In theory, all construction projects should be fragile one, constantly in danger of disintegrating into new contradic-
put under the supervision of planners. In practice, planners operated in tions in practice.
the lower echelon of the power system and did not possess adequate
means for regulation. The Chinese state was sufficiently pragmatic not Facing tremendous difficulties to achieve industrialization in a poor
to follow planning orthodoxies blindly, but to adapt to the changing ur- country, the Chinese state adopted two basic strategies to achieve maxi-
ban reality. Eventually Chinese socialism produced a unique urban form, mum accumulation of capital and surplus value: privileging production
which was an alternative to both capitalist and Soviet urbanism. over consumption, and extracting surplus value from agriculture. China’s
accumulation rates were even higher than the Soviet Union’s in compa-
CL: At the beginning of Remaking Chinese Urban Form you used a quote by rable phases. An “anti-waste” (fan langfei) discourse arose soon after
Mao claiming the potential that lies within poverty. What role does scarcity 1949. The rhetoric received a new impetus in 1955 when a resolution was
play in China’s spatial production and the development of the built environ- made in the Soviet Union, which denounced the tendency of impractical
ment at that time and how did this affect the self-image of the country? extravagances in construction. In architectural practice, nationalistic
structures with big roofs and traditional ornamentation were condemned
DL: I consider it a pity that recent postcolonial debates largely concentrate as wasteful in 1955. Liang Sicheng, the Vice Chairman of the Beijing Urban
on modernity as a “cultural” dilemma, seeking ways to confront the Planning Committee, became the object of severe political attacks for
problems of the Third World in terms of the issue of cultural identity being the main proponent of the national style. Under the austerity policy,
alone. While the issue of identity politics is important, there remain, construction was reduced to pragmatic designs; structures were built
152 Walking on Many Legs Duanfang Lu and Christina Linortner in Conversation 153

according to an ultra-economical standard and showed little aesthetic self-knowledge and other knowledge besides Western knowledge. These
concern. constituted a unique Chinese sense of “Third World Modernism.”

CL: Within the Model House project we developed an understanding of trans- CL: The term immediately established an international network beyond the
culturality that considers the relationships and networks among the manifold socialist brother states. What points of view are revealed, and what conflicts
actors that are involved in processes of building. In this perspective, can you are negotiated within that context?
describe the utopian people’s commune movement with its aim to level the
differences between the rural and the urban realms and is it possible to call DL: China had consistently identified itself with the Third World and con-
it a transcultural project? sidered strengthening solidarity with other “developing countries” to be
its basic foreign policy since the founding of the Third World coalition at
DL: The people’s commune movement assembled knowledge, ideas, and the Bandung conference in 1955. The recognition of the importance of
people from different directions. In that sense, you may characterize it learning from other “developing countries” mentioned above conflated
as “transcultural.” Ideas for the purpose of the “education of desire” were the South/North confrontation newly formulated by the CCP after the
cited from different sources: from Karl Marx’s The German Ideology, the formal Sino-Soviet split in 1960. With China’s increasing alienation from
Paris Commune of 1871, to the peasant communes in the Soviet Union in the USSR, the CCP attempted to lead a Third World challenge to super-
the 1930s. Similarly, commune planning proposals were based on con- power control. Mao’s famous theory of the three worlds saw global
cepts such as functional zoning, communal housing, and microdistricts space differently from the normal division of the three worlds. It consid-
that were initially developed in other societies. Planners, architects, and ered the First World consisting of the two superpowers, the United
students in spatial disciplines were sent to the countryside to help with States and the USSR, the Second World including the developed coun-
commune planning. Peasants were mobilized to produce artwork to tries of Europe and Japan, and the Third World made up of both socialist
depict desired changes. Poetry competitions were held in villages, new folk and underdeveloped capitalist countries. As the Second World was “con-
songs were performed, and dazibao, the “big character poster,” were trolled and bullied by the superpowers,” the contradiction between the
employed to publicize poems and proposals. It was a period of fervent two could be exploited by the Third World to unite the Second “in the
mass movement. common struggle for self-determination.” Meanwhile, Jawaharlal Nehru’s
conceptualization of the “third way” for Asian nations provided a differ-
CL: The limited access to material and financial resources and concurrent ent conceptual framework to cope with the two superpowers in the Cold
processes of modernization including a constant pushing towards industrial War. There were not only competitions for the leadership role between
development characterizes what you coined “Third World Modernism.” Can China and India, but also among other developing nations such as Indo-
you describe what exactly this “Third World Modernism” means for China nesia and Sri Lanka.
(and in general)?
The export of architecture to Third World countries as part of China’s
DL: In fact, the sense of being lacking was so powerful that the Chinese foreign aid programs has played an important role in this power negotia-
state quickly conceptualized the nation as one of scarcity. This new tion process. Extensive Chinese architectural export began in 1956 as
orientation allows a transposition of Chinese national identity from the part of overseas aid programs within the Cold War context. In the de-
state of “being less” to the state of “being lacking.” A number of im- cades that followed, Chinese architects built construction projects ranging
portant conceptual shifts are made possible through this transposition, from major national buildings to factories in Asia, Africa, and the Middle
which can be briefly summarized as follows. First, the failure of desire East. Among others, the Bandaranaike Memorial International Conference
is externalized by considering that the failure is due to scarcity—being Hall (BMICH) in Colombo, Sri Lanka, represents one of the most signifi-
lacking in means to achieve the goals—instead of due to its being “less cant examples. Designed by Dai Nianci, a prominent figure in the history
than one” or “less civilized.” Second, as the failure becomes an exterior of modern Chinese architecture, BMICH echoes both postwar tropical
condition, the distance between the nation’s current state and its projected architecture and the iconography of Maoist utopianism. Due to its strik-
identity is justified as a relational term that exists only during a certain ing aesthetic appeal, BMICH has become a symbol of national identity
period and can be shortened via specific strategies. Third, as the possibility and a premier tourist attraction in Sri Lanka. Notably, BMICH successful-
to learn from the failure is opened up, there arises a new need for ly hosted the Fifth Non-Aligned Summit Conference in August 1976,
154 Walking on Many Legs Duanfang Lu and Christina Linortner in Conversation 155

which in turn helped Sri Lanka to project its own global influence among Through these discursive parameters, the architectural practices of other
Third World nations. “developing countries” were conceptually linked with those of China,
creating a world of synchronic temporality and shared spatiality. The di-
CL: Following the Sino-Soviet split in China there is a strong two-directional verse interpretations of modernist architecture by these nations, along
shift noticeable in architecture discourse. A great number of published arti- with the various local traditions of China’s own, fuelled new imaginings
cles in the official architecture magazines turn away from developmental of modern Chinese architecture. With regional characteristics emphasized
topics such as hospital, factory, or school building and towards traditional in this new orientation, the early 1960s saw a flourish of design projects
vernacular modes of building that I understood as an attempt at nation with a strong local flavor. The regional solidarity between China and the
building. On the other hand, as you mentioned in your book, in the very Third World countries destabilized the previous discursive framing of
same magazines, examples of modern architecture outside of China emerge. “Western modernist architecture,” which once again became a subject
So there is a simultaneous opening to the inside and the outside. What were of intellectual contention.
the intentions behind that and what happened in both cases?
Key to this reassessment was a new cognitive distinction made between
DL: In the early 1960s, the rethinking of Chinese modern architecture was the modernism of the West and that of the Third World. While Chinese
fuelled by newly acquired lessons from the people’s commune move- and Western modernist architecture were previously synthesized into a
ment. The failure of the commune plan forced Chinese architects to re- universal knowledge, the sameness was inevitably disrupted by the
examine the issue of architectural modernism. Although architects problems surrounding Chinese modernism against the backdrop of con-
were eager to apply modernist design to rural development, the country flicting relations involving nationalistic concerns and the problem of
was short of steel and concrete. By 1962, with a new focus on agriculture underdevelopment. If scarcity was an inherited wound of Third World
in economic development, the state mobilized architects to design new modernity, further modernization only made it deeper: millions of people
rural houses emphasizing the idea of “walking on two legs,” a combination lost their lives to starvation during the commune movement. The crisis
of both modern and traditional methods. In the December 1962 “Rural gave rise to a new need for a modernism based on self-knowledge and
Housing Design” symposium, designers discussed the applicability of other spatial rationalities besides that of the West.
concrete structures in the countryside and recognized the necessity
of adapting design to the realities of existing materials, technology, and
skills. 1963 saw a sudden expansion of knowledge of vernacular forms in
different parts of the country.

At the same time, when the reports of vernacular dwelling types were pub-
lished in Architectural Journal, the same journal also began to extensively
introduce architecture in Third World countries. The 1963 issues covered
architecture in Indonesia, Cambodia, Burma, Cuba, North Korea, Vietnam,
and Albania, while the 1964 issues added Egypt, Mexico, Ghana, Guinea,
and Syria to the list. Unlike typical Western representations, these articles
focused on the newly developed modernist architecture of Third World
countries rather than their traditional structures. Authors paid particular
attention to how architects in these countries adapted modernist buildings
to local geographical, climatic, and cultural conditions. The narratives were
filled with praise for the progress made in architectural modernization in
these nations. Occasionally, a “sameness” was drawn between building
traditions in China and those in other “developing countries.” Sotto porti-
cos (qilou) in Cambodia, for example, were associated with similar ar-
rangements in the city of Guangzhou, which was followed by comments
on the advantages of such arrangements in hot and humid weather.
 Chunlan Zhao 157

A Modernist
Unlike most Chinese cities featured in a rather long urban history of compli-
cated socio-cultural development, Daqing is one of the few “new” cities that
has emerged since the second half of the twentieth century. Initially devel-
oped as a dispersed network of numerous small settlements clustered around

Project in China
a large oil field in northeast China, Daqing became a brand new industrial
town that transformed a vast territory of wild land into a fast growing area with
both urban and rural features.1 One of the main built forms in the early forma-
tion of Daqing, gan-da-lei housing was derived from a local vernacular housing
typology with a double metaphorical meaning. It refers to not only the basic

Gan-da-lei
living unit in its material status but also to the fundamental working method
and spirit of the first generation of residents who built them. The Daqing proj-
ect can be seen as a proto-developmental enterprise, and, for a number of
reasons explained in this article, became a model representing Mao’s call to

Mudhouses in
“build the country through thrift and hard work.”

However, in contrast with substantial “propaganda” material in the form of small

booklets, posters, newspapers, and magazines produced during the 1960s
and 70s, there was a lack of academic interest in Daqing and gan-da-lei hous-

Early Daqing*
ing in the decades that followed.2 While most of these earlier works were
published anonymously or semi-anonymously, a more recent publication by
Song Liansheng seems to be the first individual research done on this subject
inside China.3 In terms of more specific discussions on its settlement planning
and architecture, only a few anonymous articles can be found in two issues of
Chunlan Zhao the domestic architectural journal Jian Zhu Xue Bao (JZXB) in 1966. Some
more serious research on Daqing’s planning appeared outside China in the

1 Daqing was selected by CCTV as one of Guifang), compiled and published by Work-
the ten most glamorous cities in China of er’s Press in 1966; Shiyou gungun jian taiyang:
the year 2006: “The city has the largest oil daqing gongren jiashi xuan (Rolling Petro-
field in China, which has created enor- leum Towards the Sun: Collections of Daqing
mous material and spiritual wealth that Worker’s Family History), compiled and
deeply influenced the country. It is not published by Shanghai People’s Press in 1977;
only an energy city, but also an environ- and Dui Daqing jingyan de zhengzhi jingjixue
mentally friendly city with development kaocha (A Political and Economical Research
balanced between taking from and giving on Daqing’s Experience), written by a spe-
to nature, where the red-crowned crane cial research group under the same name
likes to live. It is a place full of great ener- and published by People’s Press in 1979.
gy!” From the organizing committee’s These anonymous works will be referred
comment, it is interesting to see the im- to as XGF, 1966; JTS, 1977; and DQZJ, 1979
pact Daqing’s earlier balanced urban-rural respectively later in the text. Literature
development had upon its later published after the 1970s includes Daqing
development. shizhi (Daqing City Record) in 1988 and
2 Among materials published before the Daqing jianshi (Brief History of Daqing) in
end of the 1970s, three pieces are consid- 1991.
ered most informative for this research, 3 Liansheng Song, Gongye xue Daqing shimo
including: Daqing jiashu geminghua de (The Beginning and End of the Campaign
biaobing: Xue Guifang (The Model of Daqing’s of Learning from Daqing in Industry) (Hubei:
Revolutionaries Family Dependents: Xue People’s Press, 2005).
158 A Modernist Project in China Chunlan Zhao 159

late 1970s and early 1980s;4 an important book, Reconstruire la Chine: Trente the new petroleum equipment began filling more and more of the grassland,
ans d‘urbanisme, 1949–1979, was published by Hua Lanhong under his French conflict and tension also grew between the two. It was reported that some
name Léon Hoa in Paris in 1981. Here, the renowned Chinese architect and herdsmen even dismantled a newly built refinery with written complaints from
planner gives us a clear, comprehensive picture of the modernization and ur- both sides that reached all related administrative levels and finally Premier
banization process in China between the 1950s and 1970s, in which Daqing Zhou Enlai.7
served as an important example to demonstrate the unique Chinese approach
to building a self-reliant settlement by mixing urban and rural, heavy industry, Locals were also supportive during the initial preparation for the Daqing proj-
and agriculture.5 This paper intends to explore the historic trajectory of this ect. Aside from large numbers of veterans, soldiers, and petroleum workers
modernist project in greater detail within the context of modern China. transferred from other locations, more than a thousand local technicians and
builders were gathered from nearby cities and counties like Qiqiha’er, Jiamusi,
Zhaoyuan, and Anqing. In addition to persuading local residents to vacate
1. Initial Programming and Preparation for Daqing some of their houses, the local government arranged for a timber factory in
the provincial capital Ha’erbin to provide mobile wooden houses as temporary
In order to catch up with the pace of national economic development after shelters.
the First Five-Year Plan (1953–57), top leaders agreed that it was important to
locate and build new petroleum fields in China to increase its production and
transportation capacities. After two years of careful investigations in its 2. Construction of Gan-da-lei Housing
northeast region, a vast oil field was detected under the Song-Liao Basin, and
on September 26, 1959, the first petroleum was taken from the ground. The It wasn’t long before the leadership agreed to prioritize oil production in order
field was soon named Daqing, meaning great celebration, a double metaphor to meet the requirements of the national strategic plan, but pragmatic solutions
celebrating the discovery of the oil field and the upcoming tenth anniversary also had to be found to provide basic housing. Given the difficult situation in
of the new People’s Republic. But guaranteeing a quick oil output meant not the overall national economy caused by the Great Leap Forward and the Sino-
only setting up working posts but also building settlements to meet the de- Soviet split in the early 1960s, it was impossible for the state to further assist
mands of basic living and logistics supplies for workers and their families. The Daqing beyond what was mentioned above. As Vice Minister Sun argued, it
leadership envisioned a “great combat” against the harsh environment to was impossible to build even conventional one-floor brick and tile houses due
achieve acceptable living and working conditions. to the lack of transportation and professional construction teams.8 This meant
that another unique “combat” was needed to provide mass housing as quickly
The first difficulty in organizing such a campaign was the lack of labor, which and economically as possible.
was quickly solved when the central government approved the mobilization
of 30,000 veterans and another 3,000 retired officers to join the force, many
of whom were party members and youth league members. Some of them had 4 In a special issue of the French journal is, and the Chinese version was published
participated in the Korean War. At the same time, professional personnel and L’Architecture d’Aujourd’hui in 1979, several in China in 2006.
authors contributed their studies on “ar- 6 According to Song’s research, due to the
equipment were also organized from different posts within the petroleum sec- chitecture et urbanisme en Chine 1949– Cold War in general and the new Sino-So-
tor. On March 15, 1960, some 17,000 people had arrived in Daqing, including 1979,” including a three-page introduction viet tension in particular, the development
11,000 veterans, 5,000 petroleum workers based in Daqing, and 1,000 work- to Daqing. In addition to academic publi- of the Daqing oil field was kept secret with
cations, Dutch film producer Joris Ivens and extra precautions in the early years. Later
ers from other posts. By early April the total personnel in Daqing had reached his French partner Marceline Loridan also on, the public was told it was the Anda
40,000, including more than 1,000 technical cadres (experts, university pro- produced an interesting documentary film, Agricultural Cultivation Farm. It was only
fessors, engineers, etc.).6 A Petroleum Field: Daqing, which provides when Daqing’s steady increase in produc-
a vivid record of the daily life and working tion ensured that China would reach ist
scenes in Daqing in the early 1970s. goal of a self-sufficient petroleum supply
As revealed in Song Liansheng’s study, relations between the locals and the 5 Leon Hoa, Reconstruire la Chine: Trente that its real name was announced to the
newcomers were complicated. On one hand, the former group was very sup- ans d’urbanisme, 1949–1979 (Paris: Monit- public at the end of 1963. Song, Gongye
portive towards the latter at the beginning. It was the local herdsmen who va- eur, 1981). Due to a language barrier, this xue Daqing shimo, 163.
book was kept from many Chinese readers 7 Ibid., 143–44.
cated their houses and stables to temporarily accommodate the “petroleum and researchers. Eventually it was trans- 8 Song, Gongye xue Daqing shimo, 97.
troop” and helped dig up the oil pond during the great combat period. But as lated by Li Yin, a Chinese journalist in Par-
160 A Modernist Project in China Chunlan Zhao 161

So how were they to build houses without bricks, cement, tiles, or even pro- to be rather high. While some people started to question such an unprofes-
fessional construction teams? The suggestion offered by the provincial sional approach, most people remained confident. By then, a few concentrated
government was adopted by the Daqing leadership, which was to learn from living quarters had been built, where four basic building types could be found—
a dwelling architecture widely adopted in the northeast region of China: a simple houses for people, warehouses for equipment, garages for automobiles, and
mud house called gan-da-lei. It is built mainly with fine soil, a conventional cellars for vegetables. Such a mixed spatial juxtaposition of urban and rural,
building material available in northern China. Except for a small amount of wood living and working, is in fact the defining feature of those early Daqing settle-
for doors and window frames and some local plants as an insulation layer for ments, which reflects the vision and attitude of its planners and builders at
the roof, the walls and the roof are both built with soil. The name gan-da-lei— the time.
literally drying-tamping-laying—refers to a basic local building technique to
make the fifty-centimeter thick wall. These vernacular houses are said to have After more thoroughly researching conventional construction methods and
at least four advantages: 1) they can be built with local materials at no cost; consulting more experienced local builders, the design team finally found so-
2) the building technique is easy to learn so that everyone could participate; lutions to solve the leakage and humidity problems. Moreover, a more standard
3) a lot of wood can be saved; 4) its thick mud wall and the use of a firewall building technique and procedure was developed after many experiments,
ensures good insulation—warm in the winter and cool in the summer.9 which improved both the housing quality and construction speed. Different from
the two common techniques—to build with pre-made clay blocks or to build
Based on investigations conducted by in-house designers and construction with damp clay—designers invented a third method: to build the wall with a
technicians in nearby towns and villages, another mass campaign was initiated mixture of clay, straw, and mineral wastes poured into the molds made of
to build gan-da-lei houses. Under the direct guidance of some local builders, at wooden slabs. Because of its simple structure, mass participation in both con-
the end of April 1960, a sample project with a total area of 512 m2 was completed struction and repairs was possible. Of the thirty-six construction procedures,
and another 2,500 m2 finished with only their load-bearing structures. In ad- regular oil workers and their families could complete twenty-two of them. During
dition, basic procedures and building code were also summarized to ensure the the quieter agricultural season in the subsequent years, workers and their fami-
quality. Suggestions were made to improve the molding boards for making the lies were organized to join the better-trained construction teams to build new
mud wall, and the invention of an electronic tamper machine helped to more homes or repair old ones. Such new houses had proved to be very successful
than double construction efficiency. From June 1960, all working units were in providing better insulation with their thick, tamped dry-earth walls and roof,
requested to organize their own construction teams to build their houses. and small openings for windows and doors.

Many difficulties arose throughout the process; for example, there was no As D. J. Dwyer later commented, “it is worth remembering that during the
transportation to ship the much needed timber from forests hundreds of 1960s the Daqing oil field in Heilongjiang was opened up by laborers whose
miles away, some oil workers not only had to work on the oil fields but also to activities included not only building the oil installations and growing their
build houses, all technician cadres participated in construction in their spare own food but also erecting their own housing out of stamp earth.”12 Indeed,
time, and local builders were also organized to give on-site guidance. After as Hua Lanhong has commented, the benefit of looking for a particular solu-
working day and night for three months, a total of almost 1,000,000 m2 of floor tion by considering local conditions and materials not only included such
space was completed for gan-da-lei houses by the end of September 1960, practical factors as low cost; it was also the start of searching for new methods,
which ensured that everyone could move in the newly built houses before the potentially leading to more appropriate solutions than the so-called modern
harsh winter.10 ones, or finding a better combination with the latter.13 This approach of building
with local materials, knowledge, and manpower became an important com-
According to a rough calculation made at the time, the average cost per square ponent of the Daqing model.
meter was no more than thirty RMB, because the main building material was
free, labor was free, some volunteered during their spare time, and others were
on salary during working hours. If it were to be built with conventional methods, 9 Lanhong Hua, Chongjian Zhongguo: 11 Ibid.
the average cost for a standard multi-floored public building and houses that Chengshi guihua sanshi nian, 1949–1979 12 D. J. Dwyer, “Urban Housing and Planning
could resist the extreme winter climate was no less than 200 RMB per square (Reconstructing China: Urban Planning in in China,” Transactions of the Institute of
Thirty Years, 1949–1979) (Beijing: SDX British Geographers 11, no. 4 (1986): 489.
meter.11 However, due to the lack of experience, there were serious problems Joint Publishing Company, 2006), 113. 13 Hua, Chongjian Zhongguo, 114.
with leakage in these early houses, and the follow-up maintenance cost seemed 10 Song, Gongye xue Daqing shimo, 98–99.
162 A Modernist Project in China Chunlan Zhao 163

3. Self-Construction and the Role of Women shop. Started with three veterans and five female dependents in the winter of
1960, the workshop was responsible for washing oil workers’ dirty clothes,
Residents not only built houses, but they also built public buildings in Daqing. mending and taking apart old ones, and making new ones. The major purpose
The construction of schools can be seen as a representative case. During the was to fully utilize the materials by recycling old clothes into new ones in a
early period of settlement construction, Daqing had adopted a strategy of rough “two-old into one-new” proportion. Growing from the initial workshop
“enrolling students first, constructing school buildings second.” The first class equipped with only simple tools collected from home into a small-scale factory
for new students on the opening day of school was to build their school with with dozens of sewing machines, the workers also managed to rebuild the
their own hands. During the period when no school buildings were available at initial working space into a new workshop based on the pipelining principle.15
the beginning, teaching was done in various locations wherever possible.
Canteens, warehouses, cattle barns, and corridors were frequently used. Basic Meanwhile, as more and more new buildings were built to accommodate
furniture such as desks made of clay blocks and small benches made of community facilities such as canteens, daycares, kindergartens, barbershops,
remaining small pieces of wood were all handmade. Following the gan-da-lei clinics, and primary schools, some family dependents also joined other female
building method, school buildings were built from scratch with significant employees in these services. By the end of 1965, more than ninety-five percent
participation of students who were happy and proud to study there afterwards. of the family dependents in Daqing had joined the workforce in one way or
This self-construction process may also be considered a predecessor of the another.16 As revealed in the Ivens/Loridan documentary, many women were
educational system introduced later that involved part-time studying and part- proud to talk about their participation in house construction and agricultural
time work. activities when interviewed by the filmmaker. According to them, it was nec-
essary and exciting for them to get involved in building activities, which had
In addition to regular primary schools and middle schools, professional schools traditionally been perceived as men’s work. In their own words, by participat-
were gradually established within a few years, specializing in geology, mineral ing in both farming and construction, they proved what they were capable of.
exploration, agricultural mechanics, education, finance and economy, health- And they were even happier when their husbands no longer looked down on
care, etc. All of them complied with the practical demands of the overall settle- them but showed more respect. As some explicitly stated, these experiences
ment. In fact, during its most crucial period, roughly the first half of the 1960s, helped them become more confident to pursue equality in their relationships
self-construction had been a basic and effective tool in shaping the initial with their husbands.17
physical landscape of Daqing’s numerous settlements.

When female dependents started to arrive after the initial great campaign in 4. Typological Change
1961, women began playing an active role in settlement construction. Follow-
ing an organized group study and some labor (such as collecting organic ma- Before the overall planning approach was decided, some modest and down-
nure to make fertilizers), the first women’s production brigade was formed in to-earth practices had already been adopted to provide immediate housing to
the spring of 1962 to convert the grassland into agricultural land. By the end workers and their families from the very beginning. Constrained by financial
of 1962, records show that there were already 3,800 family dependents in the and material scarcity, yet inspired by local building tradition and technology,
workforce, forming 182 production teams. They converted 4,000-mu (266.7 designers working for the Daqing Oil Group were able to develop the so-
hectares) of land and yielded 330,000 kg of grain and 375,000 kg of vegeta- called gan-da-lei housing model after continued experiments during the early
bles. When more dependents arrived in 1963, the total working population in- 1960s. As the basic spatial unit shaping people’s everyday lives in these set-
creased to 14,000 in 398 production teams. Besides working on grain and tlements, a close reading of its layout is necessary to better understand how
vegetables, they also started planting orchards and raising chickens, pigs, people actually lived in such a settlement.
and cattle, which allowed the locals to enjoy homegrown rice, vegetables,
fruit, poultry, eggs, meat, and even milk. With support from nearby industry,
some 200 female agricultural mechanics were trained, and their working
tools developed from simple to semi-mechanized.14 14 Daqing jianshi (Daqing Brief History), 17 This interpretation is based on an episode
78–79. of the film in which a group of women sit-
15 Song, Gongye xue Daqing shimo, 114–18. ting in front of their homes in the Founda-
Besides conventional agricultural production, women also played important 16 Ibid., 114. tion Making Settlement were interviewed.
roles in other services. One good example is the sewing and mending work- Ivens et al., A Petroleum Field: Daqing.
164 A Modernist Project in China Chunlan Zhao 165

Following the dwelling tradition in rural areas in northern China, each house tion links between each settlement. For settlements where fixed public facili-
comprises a series of fixed spatial elements: a cooking/heating stove, a large ties were not yet available, mobile staff and teams were then organized to
built-in bed (kang), and a firewall connected to the chimney. The stove plays a provide services such as healthcare, haircuts, and grain products. In short, ef-
dual role for both cooking and heating to endure the long harsh winter. forts were made to provide communal services in the shortest range possible
so that residents could have their basic needs met without leaving their
Unlike the conventional method of placing the stove and the kang in the front settlement.
part of the house, in the new plan the stove was placed towards the middle in
the entrance hall, and the kang was pushed farther away from the window to The immediate benefits of such a communal working and living system were
the back. This change must be viewed considering the changing lifestyles. reflected in several ways. No rent was collected for housing, as most resi-
Traditionally, placing the kang right next to the front window made the big dents had participated in construction and maintenance. Free medical care
kang area the most comfortable domestic space in addition to providing the was provided for those who were injured during working hours without any
sleeping function during the night. Usually it was two by three meters with deduction from their wages. Both daycare and education were provided for
the best possible natural lighting, ventilation, and heating. By placing a small very low fees paid by families. The introduction of a new educational sys-
low table on top of it during the day, this became the central area where fami- tem—part-time studying, part-time working (participating in either industrial
ly activities such as eating, sewing, and homework took place. Mostly located and/or agricultural activities)—to all middle schools and vocational schools in
in small villages, sometimes in the central village, three to five of such houses Daqing in 1964 was another effort aimed at producing future generations
were constructed as one building with slightly different layouts according to equipped with both industrial and agricultural production knowledge to con-
family structures and population. Families with two generations were often tinue developing these settlements under the same principle.
given big and small bedrooms either with an independent or a shared kitchen.
Married couples without children often lived in a one-bedroom house with a In the documentary film made by Ivens and Loridan, a group of female residents
shared kitchen. openly expressed their feelings and attitudes towards such communal living
in interviews.18 Speaking honestly, some admitted that in the beginning many
of them acted like common housewives whose worldview only included her
6. Communal Living in Daqing’s Everyday Life own family, husband, and children. But as soon as they participated in com-
munal work such as farming and home building, the immediate outcome made
Single workers were generally accommodated in large dormitory rooms lo- them feel the difference. Paid according to the wage system based on labor
cated in the central village. According to the numbers of cups and basins credits, participation in the collective work enabled them to earn independent
shown in a sketch of the interior of a worker’s dormitory dated March 1964, income and achieve self-liberation through labor as envisioned by the com-
each room was likely to host ten to twelve people. The division between the munist leadership. This shift in mentality certainly did not occur overnight, nor
sleeping area and the everyday storage area was similar to those often seen was it easy. With the increasing participation of women in all kinds of collec-
in school or army dormitories. As described in a short note next to the draw- tive work ranging from agriculture to social services, “women supporting half
ing, the fact that items like quilts, towels, washbasins, cups, and books were the sky” became a quite accurate conclusion for what happened in Daqing’s
always neatly lined up suggested a communal lifestyle that had been prac- settlement development.
ticed by those who were working or studying away from home at that time.

Without any kitchen facilities, single workers had their meals served in a com- 18 According to Ian Mundell’s study of Ivens there is a sense that these Chinese docu-
munal cafeteria nearby. Meals could also be bought ready-made or partially and his films, the use of “cinema direct” mentaries show a spectacle that would be
made and be eaten at the canteens or taken back home. Often a large cafete- techniques in this series of China documen- taking place even if the camera was not
taries was discussed extensively. In Mundell’s there. They also return to Ivens’s enduring
ria was also used as a multifunctional space where big meetings were orga-
view, this technique and approach helped themes of work, the elements, and a people
nized, operas were performed, and films were shown. Families were free to Ivens and Loridan explore and capture life trying to build a new way of life.” Ian
choose between daycare and twenty-four-hour care for their young children. in China after the Cultural Revolution Mundell, “Joris Ivens,” Senses of cinema
During the busy farming season, babies were often brought to their mothers close up. As he suggests, “This is perhaps 37 (October 2005), http://www. sensesof-
why they suffer more than usual from ac- cinema.com/contents/directors/05/ivens.
who were working in the fields to be breastfed. Although probably with limit- cusations of construction and their prox- html.
ed frequency, buses ran along major roads that provided essential transporta- imity to the official line. However [...]
166 A Modernist Project in China Chunlan Zhao 167

As analyzed earlier, with the increasing time and energy devoted to the new non-professionals over professionals, the negative consequences were also
communal work and lifestyles of both men and women, the space, role, and obvious.
meaning of the individual’s house/family/home was also considerably trans-
formed. Although it is imaginable that such a new way of living must have
been resisted and challenged by old conventions and habits from time to time, 8. Summary
the intense participation in communal affairs was certainly a vital and promi-
nent aspect in everyday life at Daqing’s numerous settlements during the 1960s The early modest approach to finding proper housing forms and building
and 1970s. techniques was Daqing’s legacy in the field of spatial planning and building
construction and fit right into the pragmatic and ideological concerns of
the day. The unassertive attitude and down-to-earth working method of early
7. “Learning from Daqing” Campaign design staff involving countless consultations with vernacular builders and
trial-and-error experiments finally resulted in the gan-da-lei building. The success
Daqing’s achievement was summarized in an official report prepared by the of this typology in Daqing lies in its honest expression and the relationship be-
Petroleum Ministry at the beginning of 1964. After listening to a two-and-a-half tween the building materials, techniques, and forms, which were deeply rooted
hour presentation given by the petroleum minister, Yu Qiuli, about his personal in its geo-cultural context.
experience, Mao Zedong immediately made a positive comment and suggest-
ed that Chinese industry should learn from Daqing. The comment appeared Above all, great efforts were made to manage and coordinate different aspects
on the front page of People’s Daily on January 25, 1964, which clearly marked of social life based on limited resources in regard to the socio-spatial organi-
the beginning of the nationwide campaign, “Learning from Daqing.” zation within each settlement in Daqing. The development of Daqing settlements
was inspired by Mao’s earlier guideline from 1957 that large state-owned en-
This resulted in Wang Jinxi, a model worker from Daqing with the nickname terprises “should engage in agriculture, trade, education, and military training,
“iron man,” being selected to be a people’s representative and attend the as well as industry,” and was also in accordance with the People’s Commune
national congress in 1964. He was also invited to attend a special birthday principles of the early 1960s. They provided another example of how industry,
dinner for Mao Zedong on December 26 of the same year with other model agriculture, commerce, education, healthcare, and civilian self-defense could
figures from different areas.19 If Wang represented the best of the Daqing be incorporated into both spatial planning and social organization.21
workers, then Xue Guifang represented Daqing’s family dependents, when she
attended a national conference held by the All Chinese Women’s Federation However, the earlier indigenous approach and attitude, which led to the intro-
(ACWF) on International Women’s Day (March 8) in 1965. A play performed by duction of gan-da-lei buildings through careful studies of and experiments
Daqing’s women about their life experience helped spread the story about with local materials and building techniques, seemed to have been largely
how Daqing settlements were constructed and developed in a balanced way ignored in the construction of new buildings in Daqing’s later developments.
with both urban and rural features. Yet it was the publication of the People’s Despite the introduction of new building materials and techniques, little effort was
Daily article on April 2, 1966, and the republication in the Journal of Architecture made to find new solutions for the crucial insulation issue or put into the
that reinforced Daqing’s contribution to planning and architecture in a more search for the rationale between new materials such as bricks, tiles, and cement,
explicit way. their techniques, and their corresponding forms. When the earlier gan-da-lei
approach and method was oversimplified and reduced to a cost cutter while
This campaign had a positive impact on both architectural and planning prac-
tices, such as more innovative design proposals for family houses and dormi-
tories with local materials, techniques, and typologies, and more integrated 19 It was the first and last time that Mao made scientist, who was later remembered as
his birthday celebration a public event by the “father of Chinese missiles,” etc.
collaboration between designers, engineers, builders, and end users through
inviting several key figures of the time, in- 20 Hua, Chongjian Zhongguo, 118–123.
the promotion of on-site design. Also, more professionals started reflecting cluding Dong Jiagen and Xin Yanzi as male 21 Shan-hao Chiang, “Daching Impressions
on the general ignorance of planning and construction in small cities and towns, and female models of educated teenagers (IV): Combining Urban and Rural Life,” Pe-
the lack of regional planning to balance existing urban and rural relations, who volunteered to build the countryside, king Review, no. 27 (1977): 24; Yaolin Ding,
Chen Yonggui as the model farmer from “Daqing Oilfield Today,” Beijing Review,
and the lack of flexibility in housing design.20 Yet, when “learning from Daqing” Dazhai, Wang Jinxi as the model worker no. 13 (1983): 23–25.
became simplified and narrowed down to a way to save money and empower from Daqing, Qian Xuesen as the model
168 A Modernist Project in China Chunlan Zhao 169

ignoring its success in meeting basic comfort and durability needs proven in Literature
innovative experiments, the consequences were severe. Large numbers of
Chiang, Shan-hao. “Daching Impressions Hoa, Léon. Réconstruire la Chine: Trente
highly economical buildings of poor quality, such as those built in later years (IV): Combining Urban and Rural Life.” Pe- ans d’urbanisme, 1949–1979. Paris: Monit-
in Daqing itself, were produced all over the country in the following decade. king Review, no. 27 (1977): 24. eur, 1981.

Ding, Yaolin. “Daqing Oilfield Today.” Bei- Hua, Lanhong. Chongjian Zhongguo:
The formation and development of Daqing settlements between the 1960s and jing Review, no. 13 (1983): 23–25. Chengshi guihua sanshi nian, 1949–1979
1970s provided both legacies and lessons for settlement planning and related (Reconstructing China: Urban Planning in
social organizations aimed at responding to industrialization and urbanization DQJS editorial board. Daqing jianshi (Daq- Thirty Years, 1949–1979). SDX Joint Pub-
ing Brief History). Contemporary China lishing Company, 2006.
in a more balanced way. Spatial features such as a dispersed and decentralized
Press, 1991.
structure, mixed land use, and self-construction, which were prominent during Ivens, Joris, and Marceline Loridan. A
early stages of development, had proved to be an effective approach and DQTPJ editorial. Daqing tupian ji (Collec- Petroleum Field: Daqing (one of the 12
strategy to cope with practical difficulties in funding, material, and manpower. tion of Daqing Photography), People’s Fine documentary films under a general title
Arts Press, and Heilongjiang People’s How Yukong Moved Mountains), 1976.
More importantly, such small-scale settlements also helped shape family Press, 1977.
and social life, where everybody was stimulated or urged to participate more Kwok, Reginald. “Architecture et urban-
in public life and self-management.* DQXM editorial. Daqing xinmao (New Im- isme 1949–1979.” L’Architecture
age of Daqing), People’s Fine Arts Press, d’Aujourd’hui, no. 201 (February 1979):
1976. 8–14.

DQZJ editorial board. Dui Daqing jingyan Kwok, Reginald. “Da-qing et le modèle ur-
de zhengzhi jingji xue kaocha (A Political bain.” L’Architecture d’Aujourd’hui, no. 201
and Economical Research on Daqing’s Ex- (February 1979): 54–57.
perience). People’s Press, 1979.
Mundell, Ian. “Joris Ivens.” Senses of cine-
Dwyer, D. J. “Urban Housing and Planning ma, Great directors, 37 (October 2005).
in China.” Transactions of the Institute of Accessed July, 2006. http://www.sens-
British Geographers, New Series, vol. 11, esofcinema.com/contents/directors/05/
no. 4 (1986): 479-489. ivens.html.

Editorial Committee of Daqing City Re- Song, Liansheng. Gongye xue Daqing shi-
cord Office. Daqing shizhi (Daqing City mo (The Beginning and End of the Cam-
Record). Nanjing Publishing House, 1988. paign of Learning from Daqing in Industry).
Hubei: People’s Press, 2005.

* This paper is a revised version based on the contents of Chapter 6, 8, and 9 of my doctoral dis-
sertation entitled “Socio-Spatial Transformation in Mao’s China: Settlement Planning and
Dwelling Architecture Revisited (1950s–1970s),” completed at KU Leuven, Leuven, Belgium in
2007.
From Casablanca
To Be’er Sheva
 Felicity D. Scott and Marion von Osten in Conversation 173

Non-Pedigreed
Marion von Osten: In the Western and non-Western architectural practices of
the 1950s and 1960s, cultural expressions and techniques, which had hither-
to not been regarded as modern but as pre-modern, were assiduously studied
by architects and planners. One path of this movement was to “learn from”

Architecture
vernacular architecture, to acknowledge the pre-industrial city as well as
dwelling practices of nomadism as major influences for new methods of design
and planning. Such references were also to be found in the influential ex-
hibitions “Mostra Di Architettura Spontanea” by Giancarlo de Carlo held in
Milan in 1951; or in “This is Tomorrow” at the Whitechapel Gallery London in
1956 as well as in the influential show “Architecture Without Architects” by
Felicity D. Scott and Marion von Osten in Conversation Bernard Rudofsky at MoMA in New York in 1964. Theoretical writings by Sibyl
Moholy-Nagy, such as the influential book Native Genius in Anonymous Ar-
chitecture (1957) or The Matrix of Man (1968) are vivid signs for a discourse
that can also be interpreted as crisis of modernist authorship in architecture
and posed the pressing question: who builds? But Rudofsky’s approach
turned out to be one of the most popular of its time.

Felicity D. Scott: I think there were many factors informing the resurgent
interest among architects in pre-industrial architectural vernaculars and
nomadic structures in the 1950s and 1960s, some of which help explain
the enormous popularity of Rudofsky’s 1964 exhibition, others do not. Al-
though the specific conditions driving this shift in discourse vary across
different contexts and with different protagonists—the Italian discourse
being quite distinct from the French, British, or American, for instance—
one key underlying factor haunting the architectural imagination was, I
believe, the recent experience of war in Europe. Beyond the significant
destruction of urban environments on account of bombing, the massive
displacements of populations in inter-war, wartime, and postwar Europe
exacerbated the experience of uprootedness and environmental insecurity
that had long been a condition of modernity. Driven by processes of in-
dustrialization and the forces of capitalism, rural to urban migration had,
of course, been taking place for generations in Europe. Yet the rising tide
of nationalism during this period, and the racially motivated claims to a
“native place” or authentic mode of belonging that often accompanied
nationalist politics, was for many a truly (and often quite literally) unset-
tling phenomenon. The pre-industrial village, with its supposedly organic
social relations and material connection to traditional culture, thus
emerged as a rather paradoxical cipher for this condition; it stood at
once for a lost (and to many minds better) form of life and a challenge
to identitarian models of form-function-place relations that had long been
assumed by architects. It raised the question not only of how an architect
was supposed to operate within such a condition of deracination or un-
settlement but also of modern architecture’s proximity to, even partici-
pation within, industrialized violence and environmental destruction.
174 Non-Pedigreed Architecture Felicity D. Scott and Marion von Osten in Conversation 175

Architects now asked: had modernism’s embrace of new technologies The exhibition consisted of seventy-five large photographic panels, with
for their capacity to advance enlightenment ideals of progress unwit- forty-five smaller panels accommodating both photos and text, along
tingly served to turn those ideals on their heads? Following the end of with a title panel and one containing the introductory wall text. At MoMA
World War II, the threat of violence remained, of course, on people’s the panels were installed within a labyrinth-like aluminum frame, with
minds, whether on account of escalating fears of atomic warfare or of some presented vertically, some horizontally, some titled, some recessed,
military conflicts born of Cold War divides (notably the Korean War, etc. In many instances the images were at a distance from the captions
which received only limited attention from Europe and the United States, referencing them, an organization that produced for some viewers an
and the war in Vietnam). Beyond the task of reconstructing cities dam- annoying disassociation while for others gave rise to a complex set of
aged by war, that is, this connection between technological advancement, associations among and between the images. Like his earlier work for
warfare, environmental destruction, and displacement was a profound the United States pavilion at the 1958 Brussels Fair, Rudofsky deployed a
legacy of the devastating wars of the first half of the twentieth century, a decidedly open-ended or non-narrative approach that encouraged the
legacy that I believe served to condition this shift in discourse. Coupled visitor to wander in an aleatory manner amidst the three-dimensional lat-
with growing evidence of environmental devastation wrought by indus- tice of images, hence producing their own set of associations.
trialization (popularized by the 1962 publication of Rachel Carson’s Silent
Spring, followed by Stewart L. Udall’s The Quiet Crisis the next year) and There was, however, a set of ordering devices at work in the selection of
the sense of failure associated with large-scale urban renewal projects in images and organization of the show, which was carefully crafted in or-
American and European cities, architecture’s relation to the environment, der to resonate with modern architecture and its aesthetic logic. Indeed,
and to capitalist industrialization, was being profoundly reconsidered. radically decontextualizing the buildings or environments depicted in
the photographs from their cultural and geographical contexts (about
Modern architects had, of course, long been interested in vernacular and which he often knew very little), Rudofsky divided the material into
mobile forms—we need only think of Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Le thematic sections such as prefabrication, standardization, flexibility, por-
Corbusier, or Hannes Meyer during the inter-war period—so in many regards tability, etc. He also carefully selected the images to resonate with
the fascination with Mediterranean hill towns and mobility was not new. modernist aesthetics and even sometimes with particular works of mod-
Indeed, the fascination with architectural vernaculars was distinctly modern. ernism, aiming to elicit a profoundly unstable resonance between the
What was new, as you indicate, was the enormous popularity of Rudofsky’s vernacular and the modern.
exhibition, which after closing at MoMA in New York traveled nationally
and internationally to more than eighty locations, for over a decade. It The 122 panels and demountable frame then traveled to subsequent
was so popular that MoMA had to fabricate a second, condensed version venues in a single box to be reconstituted according to desired or possible
of the traveling show to accommodate the demand. Sibyl Moholy-Nagy’s layout at the next site. In other words, this was not fixed in advance. The
1955 book, Native Genius in Anonymous Architecture, or the many impor- panels could, for instance, even be hung more conventionally on a wall,
tant Italian exhibitions on regional vernaculars simply did not enjoy the although it would remain evident that they were designed for circulation.
scale of success of Rudofsky’s polemical show and its accompanying The publication itself largely repeated the visual material used in the ex-
catalog, even if they were known and appreciated by many architects. hibition, along with their witty and often ironic captions. Designed by
And it is perhaps important to mention that Rudofsky’s fascination with Rudofsky himself, the book was presented as a “prelude” to a larger study,
vernacular architecture and mobility itself dated back to the 1920s but which appeared in 1969 as The Prodigious Builders, but enjoyed nothing
did not receive widespread attention until he packaged it in a seductive like the reception of Architecture without Architects.
visual format with the catchy title, “Architecture without Architects.” In-
deed, to understand its popular success I think we need to understand While to many at the time the exhibition and book seemed to be offering
the manner in which both the exhibition and publication embodied a models for contemporary design, Rudofsky was adamant that he had no
media strategy that the architect developed over many decades and in such instrumentalizing ambition, and repeatedly refused the suggestion
many institutional contexts. While that story is too complex to recount that vernacular architecture offered simple models for architects. In fact,
in detail here, a short account of the images displayed in Architecture he insisted repeatedly that the show operated in the register of a para-
without Architects and the polemics to which they spoke will hopefully ble or allegory. In many ways it was exactly the same set of conditions,
help elucidate aspects of this phenomenon. anxieties, and desires which made the subject matter so appealing that
176 Non-Pedigreed Architecture Felicity D. Scott and Marion von Osten in Conversation 177

led to the profound misunderstanding (that it offered solutions), and hence FDS: If you are asking whether Rudofsky was engaged with or could be
its success. Finally, that Rudofsky’s show received such a divided re- considered to be part of this genealogy of architectural research and
ception—being hailed by some in the critical and architectural establish- practice during the 1950s, the answer is largely “no.” He was certainly a
ments as an important intervention into contemporary debates yet reader of Fumihiko Maki’s Investigations in Collective Form (1964) and
considered by others to be a severely misguided and nostalgic retrieval Oscar Newman’s CIAM 59 in Otterlo (1961), and he was familiar with as-
of pre-industrial forms and a romance with the “exotic”—and that it was pects of Yona Friedman’s work, so it was not that he was unfamiliar
launched from a bastion of modern architecture in America, also helped with studies of bidonvilles, self-built environments, colonial cities, and
fuel the fire of its visibility and fame. With its catchy title and visually participatory strategies. But in many ways he remained a distinctly modern
captivating photographs achieving near-global circulation, Architecture architect when compared to these discourses and practices: the plan
without Architects—both catalog and exhibition—proved among other remained important to him, and the “subject” of his concerns was not
things an auspicious vehicle for disseminating images of pre-industrial populations displaced by the violence of colonization or forces of indus-
structures and rural vernaculars into diverse contemporary debates. All trialization but the contemporary European or American city dweller. In
this to say that I think many factors informed the success of Rudofsky’s fact, one of the most astounding aspects of researching Rudofsky is how
show—from its ability to resonate with issues regarding architecture, rare it is for him to even acknowledge colonialism, let alone liberation
technology, and the environment that were on so many people’s minds struggles and the process of decolonization. I certainly wish one could
to its media-savvy visual realization. more forcefully make this connection, but the archival evidence is simply
not there.
MvO: In the writings and projects by the Swiss architect André Studer in
North Africa in the early 1950s, a proposal for a new synthesis between the MvO: This would also speak for the modernist discourse of the “vernacular”
modern and the pre-modern is expressed. Designs relate to a concept of a as an agent that wanders through different localities and time zones. Thus,
north-African kasbah and international modern architecture. In the housing the study and usage of the vernacular need to be understood as a contextual
complex Sidi Othman built in 1952 on the outskirts of Casablanca, these concept, as its meaning shifts within concrete architectural practices em-
concepts were implemented in the design and building process. Another bedded in specific political and local conditions. Like in the French colonies,
path of this “vernacular modernism” started in North Africa with the locus of the vernacular-modern synthesis varied from the re-ordering of the bidon-
anti-colonial liberation movements—the bidonvilles—and from there a new ville (restructuration) to temporary rehousing (relogement) and finally to the
perspective developed that focused on dwelling practices and was critical creation of new housing estates (habitations à loyer modéré) based on the
of previous modern approaches to dwelling. As a dwelling environment, standard Écochard grid that consisted of a standard two-room patio house.
the bidonvilles was not only the locus of the first encounters and negotiations Also, the patio house gained kind of a model status for international postwar
with the modern city for a lot of people coming from rural areas, it was also architects. It can be found in Israel’s Development Towns like Be’er Sheva for
the spatial expression of a non-planned way of organizing an urban environ- example, but also as a basic structure in tourist resorts or villa architecture in
ment. European architects like Georges Candilis and Shadrach Woods de- the Mediterranean. Often it is argued that the patio house is a response to
clared the bidonvilles a subject of study and investigated this environment specific climate conditions. How would you—in the context of Rudofsky’s
with an anthropological approach. They “learned” from the inhabitants of work—understand this trend?
the bidonvilles how everyday dwelling practices made an urban neighbor-
hood possible through self-organization. This line of architectural debate FDS: Rudofsky’s use of the patio house or courtyard house typology was
recognized the self-built environment in the colonial city as valuable housing in fact one of the most fascinating, and contradictory, aspects of his
practices from which European planners would need to learn. The studies work. With his earliest published patio house design, a sketch for “Haus
in Casablanca or John Turner’s similar studies on self-built housing in the B. auf Capri” of 1934, we find for instance that the photo collage he pro-
shantytowns of Peru also influenced a generation of “non-planned” and par- duced uses an image of the Greek Island of Santorini as its base, not one
ticipatory strategies. This led in part to a new role for the architect and from Capri. The house designed the following year for himself and Berta
architecture in urban planning in the 1960s. Do you see certain genealogies Doctor (soon to be Berta Rudofsky) for the island of Procida, also off the
and particular developments that need to be drawn from here? coast of Naples, would in some senses appear to be closer to a conven-
tional use of vernacular architecture by a modern architect. But when one
reads Rudofsky’s 1938 account of the house, as it appeared in Domus
178 Non-Pedigreed Architecture 179

under the title “Non ci vuole un nuovo modo di costruire, ci vuole un nuovo
modo di vivere” (We don’t need a new way of building but a new way of
living), what you find are a series of concerns that depart significantly from
such paradigms. In addition to musings on the affinities between modern
architecture and Mediterranean forms of life, and familiar polemics
against architectural fashions and styles, we find in this text a series of
peculiar but persistent obsessions regarding the naked foot and the idea
of bringing the occupant down to the very surface of the house in order
to produce an intimacy with the floor. Moreover, following the Anschluss
in March 1938, which motivated his departure from Italy, Rudofsky re-
peatedly used the Mediterranean typology in other contexts, such as
Brazil and the United States. Indeed, the patio house quite literally came
to serve as something like a mobile infrastructure for an uprooted life,
providing the basis of an intimate mode of dwelling wherever one might
be and hence a form of (primarily psychological) defense against external
conditions.

As I argue in my forthcoming book, Cartographies of Drift: Bernard

Rudofsky’s Encounters with Modernity, the patio house served as the key
term in his formulation of a mode of domesticity that might enable the
subject to dwell while adrift, to be at home anywhere. It becomes a device
for mediating between the international aspirations of high modernism
with its footholds in vernacular architecture, and the technical and geo-
political conditions informing deracination; it served as a demonstration
of a post-regional, even post-national formulation of architecture, an
architecture of unsettlement. When Rudofsky’s patio houses in Brazil were
included in Philip Goodwin’s 1943 MoMA exhibition, “Brazil Builds,” this
non-regional idiom was noted by Henry-Russell Hitchcock, for whom the
designs seemed “less acculturated” than they might have been, to him
a very problematic quality. It might also be noted that Rudofsky’s very first
publications following his arrival in the United States were two texts on
patio houses that appeared in New Pencil Points, “Notes on Patios” and
“Three Patio Houses,” the latter an account of his three major houses in
Brazil in which he polemically insisted that the type was strictly not indig-
enous to the region. “Notes on Patios” returned to the subject of a 1938
text in Domus, “Quattro esempi di giardini,” and stressed again that the
patio house was not regional but universal. But more unexpected is his
implicit argument tying the emergence of the patio type in the United States
to the use of the stockade by European settlers, and hence to questions
of colonizing operations on foreign territories and with them the need for
defense. Hence we find ourselves at quite a distance, conceptually speak-
ing, from the figure of authentic, or climatically appropriate modes of
dwelling often attributed to this typology.
 Marion von Osten 181

Patios, Carpets,
In 1956, the artists Nigel Henderson and Eduardo Paolozzi, and the architects
Alison and Peter Smithson, all members of the Independent Group, created the
“Patio and Pavilion” installation for the famous “This Was Tomorrow” exhibition at
the Whitechapel Art Gallery in London. In photographs documenting “Patio and

and No Pavilion
Pavilion,” found and faulty materials and objects are loosely displayed on sand,
strewn over the gallery floor. In the center of the set, a three-walled shack was
installed, topped with a translucent roof and fenced in by a precarious aluminum-
plywood wall. Unlike other participations, the “Patio and Pavilion” area was not
a proto-pop statement like other group exhibits, for example, the contributions

Model Housing
by Richard Hamilton, John McHale, and John Voelcker. Instead, the mixture and
collage of different images and objects in the “Patio and Pavilion” installation
highlighted the more profane aesthetics of everyday life together with vernacular
building practices. As an artistic strategy, all materials and objects were dis-

in Morocco and
played “as found.”1 But as Ben Highmore argues, the “Patio and Pavilion” exhibit
was not just an installation of different objects, materials, and panels, but also a
“conglomeration of references.” For him, “Patio and Pavilion” was “enough like a
house in an Algerian Bidonville, enough like a shed in Bethnal Green, enough like
a post-nuclear ruin, enough like a rural dwelling, enough like a smashed-up shop,

Israel
enough like an ur-form dwelling. [...] But it was also enough not like previous
architectural pavilions, enough not like a celebration of consumerism.”2

Combining the pavilion—a site of Asian and European garden architecture, world
fairs, and exhibitions—with the vernacular courtyard house, the patio in the in-
Marion von Osten stallations title also related to empirical and anthropological studies of the time
on Western and non-Western localities. On the one hand, it referred to the many
self-built shelters that were part of the urban fabric of the bombed European cit-
ies in the early years after the Second World War, and, on the other hand, to the
emerging urban-anthropological studies conducted in working class districts. In
addition to the Independent Group’s shift to popular cultures and the everyday,
the Smithsons had also been participants of the ninth CIAM Congress and were
involved in the discussions around architectural studies in North Africa, which
focused on the building practices of slum dwellers. These studies marked a shift
in postwar modern building approaches, as the self-built environments of the
shantytown dwellers were presented as models for understanding the interrela-
tion between the public and the private sphere. This was an emerging intercul-
tural debate that formed new architectural approaches, in which the Smithsons,
as founding members of the group Team 10, were central actors.3

1 Claude Lichtenstein and Thomas Schregen- 3 Marc Crinson, “From the Rainforest to the
berger, As Found: The Discovery of the Ordi- Streets,” in Colonial Modern: Aesthetics of
nary: British Architecture and Art of the the Past, Rebellions for the Future, eds.
1950s (Zurich: Lars Müller Publishers, 2001). Tom Avermaete, Serhat Karakayali, and
2 Ben Highmore, “Rough Poetry: Patio and Marion von Osten (London: Black Dog
Pavilion Revisited,” Oxford Art Journal, no. Publishing, 2011), 98–111.
29 (2006): 269–90.
182 Patios, Carpets, and No Pavilion Marion von Osten 183

The GAMMA Grid architects should take the opportunity to learn from vernacular architecture as
well as the self-built environments and dwelling practices of local populations.
At the ninth CIAM (Congrès International d’Architecture Moderne) meeting in Thus, the study created an image of conditions determined by self-organization
Aix-en-Provence in the summer of 1953, these shifts from single architecture and small-scale interventions by the dwellers themselves. As a dwelling envi-
solutions to larger concepts of city planning were expressed in a new guideline, ronment, the bidonville was not only the locus of the first encounters and ne-
the Charta of Habitat.4 Here, a younger generation of modern architects pre- gotiations with the modern city for many people coming from rural areas;
sented ideas that were critical of the functional separation within urban plan- above all, it was the spatial expression of an unplanned way of organizing an
ning between housing, work, leisure, and transportation. In an amendment to urban environment. This focus on the everyday life of the inhabitants and
the 1933 Athens Charter, which was developed at the first CIAM meetings, builders of the bidonvilles was a radical challenge to the abstract rational pa-
they called attention to the interconnectedness of housing, street, district, rameters of the earlier CIAM congresses, which would have considered this
and city. Next to other factors, one context for this dispute was the presenta- ad-hoc urbanism a pre-modern phenomenon that modern architecture would
tion of three visual urban studies (so-called “grids”): the “GAMMA Grid,” pre- radically overcome.7
sented by the Groupe d’Architectes Modernes Marocains, guided by Michel
Écochard in Casablanca, the “Mahieddine Grid,” a study of a shantytown in Presenting self-built environments or street usage in working class districts as
Algiers presented by Roland Simounet, and the “Urban Re-Identification Grid,” models for understanding the interrelation between the public and the private
by Alison and Peter Smithson, a collage of photographs, children’s drawings, sphere was an alternate interpretation of the CIAM concept of “habitat” by
and an urban analysis of street usage in East London’s working class and co- the younger, more international generation. These new proposals caused
lonial migrant district, Bethnal Green.5 heated debates and marked a first sign of the dissolution of CIAM as an inter-
national organization of the modernist movement. The ninth CIAM meeting
The GAMMA section of the CIAM meeting 1953 consisted of Michel Écochard ended in conflicts with the congress’ older generation of founding members,
and a group of young architects, including students of Le Corbusier who such as Le Corbusier, Gropius, and Giedion. The dispute included the consti-
were working in the ATBAT Afrique office in Tangier, Algiers, and Casablanca. tution of a group of younger architects from different local backgrounds who
Michel Écochard, director of the Morocco Department of Urban Planning in would later meet under the name Team 10, as they were charged with orga-
Casablanca from 1946–52, had developed a large-scale program under the nizing of the tenth CIAM congress in Dubrovnik, Yugoslavia.8
name “Housing for the Greatest Number,” with the aim of addressing the Mo-
roccan proletariat that had settled in the city’s outskirts. For his master plan,
he applied a grid structure as the main planning instrument for the new urban
neighborhoods that were to replace the numerous bidonvilles (tin can cities). 4 In her article “The Concept of Habitat: Osten, “Learning from...,” in In der Wüste
Écochard in Morocco,” published in the der Moderne. Koloniale Planung und dan-
Gaining knowledge of the social and physical characteristics of the field was
above-mentioned Colonial Modern: Aes- ach, ed. Haus der Kulturen der Welt (Ber-
a prerequisite for his planning method. Écochard introduced sociological and thetics of the Past, Rebellions for the Future, lin: taz supplement for the same-titled ex-
building surveys to investigate “human groups in all of their daily realities, as Monique Eleb argues that the notion of hibition, 2008), 3.
well as cartographic and statistical analyses, used to identify ‘the city’s funda- “Habitat” “was borrowed from ethnologists, 6 Michel Écochard, Casablanca, le roman
geographers and anthropologists, who d’une ville (Paris: Edition de Paris, 1955),
mental tendencies.’”6 Instead of showing single examples of modern architec- addressed the issues of shelter, housing 105.
ture, the GAMMA group presented an analysis of the social conditions of a and environment, the concept of geography 7 Tom Avermaete, Another Modern: The
shantytown in the suburbs of Casablanca, an area that had thus far been and terrain, and the links with civilisation Post-War Architecture and Urbanism of
as opposed to rural areas.” She states that Candilis-Josic Woods (Rotterdam: NAi
treated as a misery that needed to be eliminated. Their detailed grid present- before the 1950s, the term habitat was al- Publishers, 2005); Gwendolyn Wright, The
ed in Aix-en-Provence included different sources such as aerial photographs ready in use during colonial rule to refer Politics of Design in French Colonial Ur-
alongside sociographic charts and documentary images about the modern, to non-Western societies, 156. banism (Chicago: University of Chicago
5 Mustafa Baghdadi, “Changing Ideals in Ar- Press, 1991).
industrialized and rural, traditional aspects of daily life in the so-called bidon-
chitecture: From CIAM to Team X,” in Ar- 8 Eric Mumford, CIAM Discourse on Urban-
villes, the self-built settlements where new migrants, arriving mainly from the chitectural Knowledge and Cultural Diver- ism, 1928–1960 (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press,
Atlas Mountains, were forced to live. The study proposed cleaning up bidon- sity, ed. William O’Reilly (Lausanne: 2000); Alison Smithson, Team 10 Primer
villes by relating to European discourses of hygiene, and presented a new ur- Comportements, 1999), 22–56; Zeynep (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1968); Paul
Çelik, “Learning from the Bidonville: CIAM Rabinow, French Modern: Norms and Forms
ban scheme that included a low-rise patio house grid and a few experimental Looks at Algiers,” Harvard Design Maga- of the Social Environment (Cambridge, MA:
high-rise buildings. But the grid also proposed—as a side effect—that modern zine, (February 2003): 476–79; Marion von MIT Press, 1989).
184 Patios, Carpets, and No Pavilion Marion von Osten 185

Moreover, the detailed study of the GAMMA Group produced for the ninth significantly altered that one can now no longer distinguish the original base
CIAM Congress also resulted in new experimental buildings and already exist- structure. The builders simply used the original design as a foundation upon
ing new urban schemes. Two architects from the group, Georges Candilis and which to construct three or four floors of apartments. The many ways in which
Shadrach Woods, later leading Team 10 members, were able to present a people appropriate space and architecture can also lead to the assumption
completely planned and realized building that they had constructed as an ex- that both colonialism and the postcolonial government never managed to
perimental high-rise structure: the Cité Verticale was built next to what was assume complete power over the population. This is an aspect I highlighted
one the largest bidonville settlements at the time—and still is today—the Car- in my article “Architecture without Architects,” which appeared in the e-flux
rières Centrales in Casablanca. They transferred the collective analysis of ver- journal in 2010.12 When investigating the implementation of the patio as a
nacular architecture and the hut settlements directly onto an exceptional modernist typology in other localities, it is necessary that a further aspect of
modernist architectural project.9 The result was a design that integrated the this planning principle be foregrounded, namely “clustering and class-making.”
bidonvilles’ everyday vernacular practices, local climatic conditions as well as
modernist ideas of educating people on becoming modern.10 On a formal lev- In fact, the large-scale housing programs were attempts by the French pro-
el, the buildings can be seen as a synthesis of a traditional building—the patio tectorate to build modern settlements for the colonized in the very moment
house—translated into a stacked block of apartments with balconies. One of of emerging anti-colonial sentiment, as Morocco gained independence in
the three high-rise buildings of the Cité Verticale was named the “beehive”11 1956. In this moment of resistance, the strategies of the French-led Service
in the architects’ plans. de l’Urbanisme varied from the re-organization of the bidonville (restructura-
tion) to temporary housing (relogement) and finally to the creation of new
housing estates (habitations à loyer modéré), all based on the Écochard grid.
“Habitat Musulman” His master plan applied notions of “culturally specific” dwellings, taking—in
their interpretation—local building practices as a point of departure for devel-
The building models and shantytown study from Casablanca had a lasting in- oping a variety of dwelling typologies for different categories of inhabitants.
fluence on a younger generation of architects, who witnessed modernism These categories were still confined to existing definitions of cultural and ra-
appearing to adapt to local climatic and “cultural” conditions, thus slightly cial difference. However, it was only under colonial rule that these categoriza-
deviating from its universalist path. My interest in this crisis of planning prin- tions were reinforced and turned into a means of exercising governmental
ciples is manifold, and provokes many questions that are the subject of this power. The Écochard plan divided the city into different residential zones for
article and further research on the patio house scheme and its implementation European, Moroccan, and Jewish residents, as well as for industry and com-
in other regions of the world. A central question for the Casablanca case is merce. The housing estates for Muslims were built far from the “European”
how the European relation to the colonized, and the phantasms of Arabian colonial city, creating a so-called Zone Sanitaire surrounded by circular roads
culture are expressed in the “culturally specific” master plan and translated and the motorway. This spatial division was also a legacy of the colonial
into the modernist typology of the modernist patio house. The question that apartheid regime, in which Moroccans were forbidden from entering the pro-
follows is how the cultural misrecognition that informed this modernist syn- tectorate city unless they were employed as domestic servants in European
thesis through hierarchic power relations can still be incorporated and inter- households, and likewise constituted a strategic measure, facilitating military
preted by inhabitants of the building structures in the era of decolonization operations against possible resistance struggles.13 Special neighborhoods
and after. Implemented until 1984, the low-rise scheme of the Écochard patio were also developed for the Moroccan-Jewish population of Casablanca. Built
house grid was the most prevalent planning structure in Casablanca’s suburbs
after Morocco’s independence in 1956, and is still visible today. Since its
emergence in Morocco, it has also been adapted in other cities in North Africa 9 Jean-Louis Cohen and Monique Eleb, Casa- Arial Sharon. See also Fahim Amir’s entries
and the Middle East. blanca: Colonial Myth and Architectural about the “Bee Modern” and “Biopolis” at
Ventures (New York: Monacelli Press, 2002). http://www.transculturalmodernism.org/
10 Janet Abu-Lughod, Rabat: Urban Apartheid page/58?layer=14 and Juan Antonio
From the 1950s onward, housing programs in the French colonies attempted in Morocco (Princeton: Princeton University Ramírez, The Beehive Metaphor: From
to take certain specific local, regional, or cultural conditions into account, Press, 1980). Gaudí to Le Corbusier (London: Reaction,
11 Like the notion “habitat,” the “bee hive” 2000).
but these conditions turned out to be much more complex after decoloniza-
metaphor is borrowed from ethnologists 12 See http:/www.e-flux.com/journal/
tion than previously thought. The single-floor, mass-built modernist patio and serves an important planning refer- architecture-without-architects—another-
houses, intended to facilitate the control of Moroccan workers, have been so ence in the work of Le Corbusier as well as anarchist-approach.
186 Patios, Carpets, and No Pavilion Marion von Osten 187

near the seaside, the El Hank district is one of the largest neighborhoods in Blain.17 The patio house in Écochard’s vision allowed the possibility for “growing”
Casablanca. These buildings were also placed in a sort of intermediate zone, through usage. As Monique Eleb stated at the “Colonial Modern” conference,
but within sight of the French population, located on the Corniche, between the patio reference was not a copy of a traditional courtyard house, but a Eu-
the exclusive residential area of Anfa and the old Medina, very close to the ropean (mis)interpretation thereof. On the other hand, the patio house structure
colonial city center of Casablanca. The spatial organization of the residential in the French colonies must be understood as a modernist synthesis, a Euro-
and urban planning projects was highly hierarchical. It divided the Moroccan centric translation with the pedagogical intention of teaching people the modern
population into religious groups (Jews, Muslims), while the Europeans re- ways of industrial production and consumerism.18 Moreover, the patio refer-
mained a universal category. Thus, the master plan itself was not just an ex- ences are also a sign for an “anthropological turn” in architecture discourse
pression of, but also in itself constitutive for, the Euro-American principle of a against the background of heavy geopolitical drifts and ruptures.19 It combines
white, middle class, nuclear family ideal. Teaching the local population to Orientalist studies on the Arabic house and its functions with modernist stud-
“become modern” meant not only studying “their habits” and “culturally spe- ies on the bidonvilles’ self-builders, and adapts the grid, historically a colonial
cific” building, but also trying to create modern living habits based on Euro- planning strategy, for its building concept, combining it with neighborhood
pean preconceptions of ethnic and religious differences. Here, the master concepts established in the United States. The rationales that served as a ba-
plan divided the populations along constructed strata, in which the Berber sis for the Athens Charter (the industrialization of building) and for the con-
and Arab population were placed into the frame of the poor working class. cept of building for the “Existenz Minimum,” (constructing a great number of
The so-called culturally specific low-rise building programs like the Écochard functional and cheap housing) are also articulated in the modernist patio
patio grid were developed for the Moroccan proletariat, meanwhile high-rise house grid. The grid plan is also a territorial strategy for settling and expand-
housing projects were created for the so-called Évolués, which was, accord- ing as fast as possible.
ing to French ideology, a local group that already spoke French, followed
French laws, and usually held white-collar jobs (although rarely higher than From the outset, the new urban strategies were situated in the field of tension
clerks). As Frantz Fanon argues: between the emancipatory aims of improving inhabitants’ everyday lives and
the search for governing tools that complied with these intentions. In 1952,
In the early days of colonisation, a single column could occupy immense an important demonstration, organized by the Istiqlal Party, the national liber-
stretches of country: the Congo, Nigeria, the Ivory Coast and so on. Today, ation movement, and other anti-colonial forces, took place in the bidonvilles
however, the colonised countries’ national struggle crops up in a com-
pletely new international situation. After a phase of accumulation of capital, 13 Jean-Louis Cohen and Monique Eleb, Cas- cessed February 9, 2013.
capitalism has today come to modify its conception of the profit-earning ablanca: Colonial Myth and Architectural 17 See http://www.team10online.org/re-
capacity of a commercial enterprise. The colonies have become a market. Ventures (New York: Monacelli Press, search/papers/delft2/blain.pdf.
2002); Janet Abu-Lughod, Rabat: Urban 18 Pierre Bourdieu, In Algerien. Zeugnisse
The colonial population is a customer who is ready to buy goods.14
Apartheid in Morocco (Princeton: Prince- einer Entwurzelung (Graz: Camera Austria,
ton University Press, 1980). 2003); Brian Ackley, “Blocking the Cas-
The so-called “Housing Grid for Muslims” measured eight by eight meters, 14 Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth bah: Le Corbusier‘s Algerian fantasy,” Bi-
and consisted of two rooms and a large outdoor space, which, according to (London: Penguin Books, 1963), 51. doun, no. 6 (2005): 13–39, http://www.bi-
15 Monique Eleb, “An Alternative Functional- doun.org/magazine/ 06-envy/
Écochard corresponded to an Arabic patio. The grid was dimensioned ac- ist Universalism: Écochard, Candilis and blocking-the-casbah-le-corbusiersalgeri-
cording to a courtyard dwelling typology, believed to be the appropriate hab- ATBAT Afrique,” in Anxious Modernisms: an-fantasy-by-brian-ackley.
itat adapté for the future inhabitants, the former bidonville dwellers.15 This Experimentation in Postwar Architectural 19 Moreover, the courtyard or patio house
Culture, eds. Sarah Williams Goldhagen was also an important planning issue in
modernist patio house was based on existing and newly conducted colonial and Réjean Legault (Cambridge, MA: MIT the new town planning of Chandigarh in
studies of Moroccan habitats as well as on the appropriation of the US neigh- Press, 2000), 55–74. India. When Margarete Schütte-Lihotzky
borhood unit concept, and included streets and infrastructure.16 Part of the 16 In the course of the 20th century, the traveled to China in 1956, she also did an
Neighborhood Unit scheme became a in depth study of the traditional courtyard
ensuing sixty-four square meter patio house grid or “carpet” plan was orga-
leading tool in town planning, not only in houses, the Siheyuan (see Christina
nized in an intricate ground-level structure of patio-dwellings, alleys, and the United States, where it was first ap- Linortner’s contribution in this book). One
public squares. A single house in this grid consisted of two or three rooms, plied to the designs for Sunnyside gar- year later, Werner Hebebrand published a
with a patio as entry space. Using a variety of combinations, it was designed dens and Radburn, New Jersey by Henry proposal for a new model housing settle-
Wright and Clarence Stein, cf. Chart Habi- ment, based on traditional yards, in the
to be flexible enough to eventually accommodate the creation of other types tat / Develop / Neighborhood Unit: http:// German Werkbund magazine.
of housing (individual or collective), states architectural historian Catherine www.transculturalmodernism.org. Ac-
188 Patios, Carpets, and No Pavilion Marion von Osten 189

of Carrières Centrales and was brutally suppressed by the French rulers. The Carpet Settlement in Be’er Sheva
Thus, the construction of the new housing plan took place in the midst of mil-
itary actions, with tanks and heavily armed troops, arrests and killing. It must Following an invitation by Michael Gross from the Bauhaus Center Tel Aviv, I
have been virtually impossible to not recognize the conflict, as it happened first visited Israel in 2008. There, I met the architect and curator Zvi Efrat,
on the very site of the building construction itself. The basic capacity for the who does research, publishes, and organizes important exhibitions on 1950s
young Team 10 architects to fully accomplish an experimental settlement in and 1960s architecture in Israel and the so-called Development Towns. Since
Morocco and Algeria was fundamentally bound to the circumstances of colo- I had done work on the ATBAT Afrique housing settlement projects in Casa-
nial occupation and anti-colonial resistance.20 These circumstances were re- blanca for the exhibition “In the Desert of Modernity. Colonial Planning and after”
flected in the research, exhibition, and publication project Colonial Modern. (Berlin, Casablanca 2008/2009), he strongly recommended I travel to the
Aesthetics of the Past. Rebellions for the Future. desert city Be’er Sheva and visit several spectacular Israeli Brutalist buildings,
particularly the so-called “Model Neighborhood Mishol Girit,” built in Be’er
The intention of the architects and urban planners working under colonial rule Sheva by a group of young Israeli architects in the late 1950s. On this visit, I
in Morocco who wanted to revise modern architectural and planning approaches also recognized a number of modernist patio structures. The “new town” of
by integrating knowledge on dwelling practices and habits into urban planning Be’er Sheva emerged within the context of the comprehensive urbanizing
and architecture was ambivalent because ethnographic knowledge is ultimately program of establishing “development towns” in the Negev Desert during the
based on specific production conditions—on conditions that might even lead late 1950s and early 1960s. The master plan had been designed by Ariel Sharon
to a fundamental epistemological “misrecognition.” This assumption is sound as part of the project of Zionist socialism, which also brought about the Kibbutz.
to the extent that colonialism creates an “ethnographic state.” In other words: The majority of “development towns” however had been built in the Galilee
it subjugates the colonized on the basis of ethnographic knowledge.21 For the region of northern Israel and in the north part of the Negev Desert of southern
modern architects, learning from the inhabitants was mainly a matter of ad- Israel. Thus, even today, they are still the outposts of Israel’s borders with the
justing their planning and architecture design according to ethnological findings. surrounding Arab states.26
Their concept of observing everyday dwelling related uncritically to already
existing ethnological and anthropological studies and Orientalist narratives of In this larger context, the “Model Neighborhood” in Be’er Sheva was the first
African space, which included perspectives similar to those used for studying attempt to create an alternative to the standard public housing projects in Israel’s
the working class in Europe.22 In addition, while new concepts of postwar archi- Development Town program after 1948, which had mainly been based on the
tectural modernism strongly related to the everyday practices of population Garden City principle. The Model Neighborhood was meant as an experiment
groups that had become mobile, they were also used to regulate and control, that would translate ideas of the neighborhood unit into new climate-specific
employing the planning instrument of an architecture for the “greatest num- approaches. A group of young architects including Avraham Yaski, Amnon
ber.” Moreover, modernist architecture and housing projects in non-Western
contexts in times of anti-colonial uprisings also played a highly symbolic role
in shifting the concept from a “civilizing” to a “developing” colonial modernity. 20 See Georges Candilis, Bauen ist Leben. 24 See Udo Kultermann, Neues Bauen in Afrika
At the moment of decolonization, towards the end of the Second World War, Ein Architekten-Report (Stuttgart: K. (Tübingen: E. Wasmuth, 1963); Jaqueline
Krämer, 1978). Tyrwhitt, Report on the Seminar on Hous-
the “civilizing” discourse turned into a “development” discourse.23 After the 21 See Nicholas Dirks, Castes of Mind: Colo- ing and Community Planning, given to the
independence movements in the global South, development discourse became nialism and the Making of Modern India UN by Jaqueline Tyrwhitt, 1954, Archive
even more dominant within high-modernist concepts of new town planning. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001); School of Planning and Architecture, New
Arjun Appadurai, Modernity at Large: Cul- Delhi; Okwui Enwezor, ed., The Short Cen-
Many architects who had built under colonial rule were now asked to create tural Dimensions of Globalization (Minneap- tury: Independence and Liberation Move-
housing projects and public buildings for the newly independent states under olis: University of Minnesota Press, 1996). ments in Africa, 1945–1994 (Munich: Pres-
specially created “development programs” initiated by the former colonial 22 Johannes Fabian, Time and the Other: tel, 2001).
How Anthropology Makes Its Object (New 25 See http://halshs.archives-ouvertes.fr/
powers.24 Michel Écochard himself applied these principles later in his career,
York: Columbia University Press, 1983). docs/00/42/45/44/PDF/EUHConference-
for planning new towns and town extensions in the newly independent states of 23 Aram Ziai, “Zur Kritik des Entwicklungs- Verdeil-Michel_Ecochard.pdf.
Guinea, Lebanon, Pakistan, Senegal, Cameroon, the Ivory Coast, and Kuwait.25 diskurses,” Aus Politik und Zeitgeschichte, 26 Anna Minta, Israel Bauen. Architektur,
APuZ, no. 10 (2010): 23–28; Mark Crinson, Städtebau und Denkmalpolitik nach der
Modern Architecture and the End of Empire Staatsgründung 1948 (Frankfurt am Main:
(Aldershot, Hants, England and Burlington, Reimer, 2004), 248–53.
VT: Ashgate, 2003).
190 Patios, Carpets, and No Pavilion Marion von Osten 191

Alexandroni, Nahum Zolotov, Daniel Havkin, and Ram Karmi were commis- conceptual ideas on new urban models and were involved in the international
sioned to find new local solutions for a settlement with 3000 residential debates around the concept of “Habitat” and the discourse on vernacular
units. Yaski and Alexandroni designed the large “quarter kilometer block,” a modernism.
reference to contemporary architectural ideas by Le Corbusier. The architects
Nahum Zolotov and Daniel Havkin, who were also part of the planning team, However, the question that remains unanswered in this transfer of architectural
designed the modernist patio house grid, the “The Carpet (Hashatia) Settlement,” designs and concepts from Morocco to Israel is how the “culturally specific”
which consisted of a patio house grid that was integrated into the larger studies conducted in Casablanca—which had led to heated debates in Aix-en-
master plan.27 This modernist patio house grid, also referred to as the “Carpet Provence in 1956 and to the segregation of the local population in Morocco,
Settlement,” resembles an almost identical base and ornamental grid plan and are closely related to this planning model—could be excluded from the
structure as the “Housing Grid for Muslims” in Casablanca that Michel Écochard Israeli “Patio Plan,” in favor of a climate specific mode of construction. After
developed in 1951. all, the relationship to the vernacular appears to point the Israeli Patio House
Settlement in an utterly different direction than its Moroccan predecessor
Thus, based on this first visit, I asked myself how and why an architectural or had taken. Though Zvi Efrat calls attention to the fact that architects in Israel
urban building concept from North Africa, which had been planned for Berbers might have had an eye on the old Ottoman center of Be’er Sheva when plan-
and Arabs in Morocco during colonial rule, could make its way to Israel for ning the model neighborhood, this cannot be viewed as research on vernacular
the construction of houses for newly arriving Jewish settlers. On the one hand, architecture.29 The “old” city center of Be’er Sheva was planned and constructed
an exchange of ideas might be easily explained by the fact that European ar- as a colonial grid structure by civil engineers from the German imperial crown
chitects traveled between America, Asia, Africa, and Europe and were agents at the beginning of the twentieth century, by order of the Ottoman Empire.
of a global transfer of knowledge, propagating modernist ideas that were German military architects had translated the spatial order of a medina into a
then internationalized. Many architects from the Middle East, Latin America, settlement structure, which is popularly known today as the “Arabic Kasbah.”
and Asia participated in the international CIAM congresses and were in intel- During the Ottoman Empire, Be’er Sheva had been a key strategic military base
lectual and personal contact. In addition, architectural and urban planning en route to the Suez Canal. It was laid out in a grid that resembled an admin-
experiments in Africa, Asia, and South America didn’t go unnoticed. Numerous istrative outpost for the military. It was here that, near the end of the First World
international architecture journals kept up with the projects that had developed War, the last sultan of the Ottoman Empire fought against the British Army
under colonial and postcolonial conditions. The French magazine L‘Architec- with his German and Austrian allies, ultimately leading to the loss of control
ture d‘Aujourd‘hui was an important player in the dissemination of this knowl- over Palestine and consequently also of the entire Middle East. Due to this
edge. On the other hand, Israeli architects like Artur Glikson, head of the military alliance, Austrian and German orientalists had conducted research on
planning department of the Ministry of Labor’s Housing Division, had a signifi- local architecture and archeological diggings.
cant influence on the planning discourses in Israel during the 1950s and
1960s. Glikson had designed a prototype of a modern patio house, laid out as The history of this place and the archeological discoveries made there were
a habitat adapté in a “carpet form” in Kyriat Gat shortly before the Model crucial in the Zionist discourse on the plans for the territory, because they
Neighborhood in Be’er Sheva was realized. Glikson also did intense research on were used to authenticate its biblical ties. This was a development that led to
vernacular architecture, not so much in Israel, but on Crete, where he created a very specific regionalism following the Six-Day War of 1967, which deliberately
a regional planning method, modeled after a Mediterranean vernacular typology. interpreted the past in terms of a specific desire for the future, reflecting a
He was an influential teacher at the Technion in Haifa, where he passed on his discourse as well as a practice that Eyal Weizmann has termed the “politics of
knowledge to a younger generation of architects. Since he was closely con- verticality.”30 The Model Neighborhood in Be’er Sheva is perhaps the first
nected to Team 10, he also knew about the urban experiments in Morocco,
seeing as members of Team 10, namely Georges Candilis and Shadrach
27 Noam Dvir, “Magic carpet,” http://www. 28 James M. Mayo, “The Ideologies of Artur
Woods, were central protagonists in this endeavor. Glikson was also in close
haaretz.co.il/hasite/spages/1082108.html. Glikson,” Journal of Architectural and
contact with Clarence Perry and Lewis Mumford, and connected to the ideas Avraham Yaski, foreword in A. Hirsch and R. Planning Research, no. 21 (2004): 99–101.
of Patrick Geddes. As a central protagonist within the regional planning and Sharshevski, Occupants’ reactions on the 29 See the conversation with Zvi Efrat in this
vernacular architecture discourse, he had a major impact on his younger col- planning of apartment and neighbourhood publication.
in the Experimental Housing Project in Be’er 30 Eyal Weizman, Hollow Land: Israel’s Archi-
leagues when they were asked to develop their ideas for experimental hous- Sheva, 1–5, Ministry of Housing, Unit of tecture of Occupation (London and New
ing proposals.28 Both Artur Glikson and Ariel Sharon articulated important Social and Economic Research, 1968. York: Verso, 2007).
192 Patios, Carpets, and No Pavilion Marion von Osten 193

harbinger of this “situated modernity” after 1967. At the time of the foundation French Protectorate in 1952 and the emerging movement of decolonization,
of the state, Zionist socialism also aimed to renew the previously existing the anti-colonial fighters portrayed the Jewish population as colluding with the
social structures and did so by employing a very specific form of collectivism, French. Many Jewish authors have noted that the moment Morocco gained
one that, taking into consideration its history of immigration, imagined and independence, a wave of anti-Semitism also ensued.33 Thus, it could also be
set out to form a collective that was not based on national origin, but on the argued that this estrangement was an effect of the “culturally specific” zoning
Jewish faith, coupled with a commitment to modernity. The Palestinian locals of Écochard’s plan and the urban apartheid policy of the French colonial powers,
and the nomadic population became a minority within the new state. At the as mentioned above. However, in the 1950s, large waves of Jewish emigrants
same time, the Sharon Plan pursued a politics of settlement in the regions from Morocco arrived in Israel. Prior to the mass exodus of Jews between 1948
where these “minorities” lived. However, this did not engender a new “cultur- and 1967, the Jewish population in Morocco had been over 250,000.
ally specific” form of architecture, like in North Africa during French colonial
rule; instead, the Israeli planning discourse focuses on the formation of The strategy of new town planning in Israel was also called “population decen-
community(s) and, architecturally, on “clusters.” tralization,” which included a “Judaization” of the new national territory. In this
context, there was also talk of the “exigencies of national security” and the
Thus, in current discourses surrounding the “Carpet Settlement“ of Be’er Sheva, “conquering of the frontiers.” After their arrival in Israel, many Jewish-African
the influence of vernacular Palestinian or Arabian architecture on the devel- emigrants were confronted with settlement politics that were termed “From
opment of the patio house’s specific design vocabulary has partially been ad- Ship to Frontier.” These entailed the relocation of a majority of the Mizrahi Jews
dressed, but also highly relativized.31 While the Israeli modernist patio houses to transit camps, as well as direct relocation to the newly built development
resemble a climate-sensitive approach, the term regional is not meant to de- cities.34 Oren Yiftachel introduces the term “ethnocracy” to describe a type of
scribe a specific local population or building practice, as it refers neither to regime that promotes social segregation and enables the government to cat-
Bedouins nor to Palestinians. Rather, in recent discourses, Interbau Berlin’s in- egorize different ethnicities and (re)produce uneven class relations. As Yifachtel
fluence has been cited as having had an impact on the planning discourse of argues:
the development towns, although the roots of the modernist patio house or
“Carpet Settlement” cannot be directly traced back to the Hansaviertel in Berlin. Largely absent from the planning discourse of the time, as appearing in
Instead, the Israeli patio house grid—the “Carpet Settlement”—is still a product documents, plans and books, was an examination of the social conse-
of a transnational knowledge transfer, carried out by journals, the CIAM con- quences of this ambitious project. Population dispersal goals, historical ra-
gresses from 1928 onwards, and personal encounters. Above all, the modernist tionales, territorial strategies, design criteria and economic development
patio house is an expression of a Eurocentric discourse on Arabic secular proposals took centre stage, with only scant reference to the plight of the
buildings, situated within the modernists’ construction of tradition and moder- (mainly Mizrahi) people about to be housed in the new towns, or to their
nity, and the phantasmic binary of the Occident and the Orient. The modernist needs and aspirations. This can be partially explained by the social positions
patio house as a planning principle thus tries to simultaneously embrace and of most Israeli planners of the time, being European educated, middle- or
overcome the vernacular by recreating and shifting it into a modernist rationale, upper-class Ashkenazim. This group of highly capable professionals, many of
which can be both filled with and emptied of any concrete meaning.32 whom worked for the government, fused their own vision and interests with

Becoming Arab 31 Hadas Shadar, “Vernacular Values in Pub- Jews from Arab Countries: A Neglected Issue
lic Housing,” Architectural Research Quar- (Tel Aviv: World Organization of Jews from
terly, Cambridge 8, no. 2 (2004): 171–81; Arab Countries, 1977), 32–33; Said Ghal-
Some names on the doors of the Be’er Sheva patio house settlement show that Robert Oxman, Hadas Shadar, and Ehud lab, “Les Juifs vont en enfer,” Les Temps
the transnational relationship between the settlements in Morocco and Israel Belferman, “Casbah: a brief history of a de- Modèrnes, no. 229 (April 1965): 2247–51.
sign concept,” Architectural Research 34 Roy Kozlovsky, “Temporal States of Archi-
is clearly marked by the post-1948 emigration of Moroccan Jews to Israel. At the
Quarterly, Cambridge, no. 4 (2002): tecture: Mass Immigration and Provisional
end of the Second World War, the Moroccan-Jewish population was forced 321–36. Housing in Israel,” in Architecture and Pol-
to leave Morocco, which had a long history of religious tolerance. In her pub- 32 V. Y. Mudimbe, The Invention of Africa: itics in the Twentieth Century, eds. Sandy
lication Not the Enemy. Israel’s Jews from Arab Lands, Rachel Shabi notes that Gnosis, Philosophy and the Order of Isenstadt and Kishwar Rizvi (Seattle: Uni-
Knowledge, (Bloomington: Indiana Univer- versity of Washington Press, 2008),
the Moroccan Jews had not been a discriminated group under the French sity Press, 1988). 139–60.
Protectorate in Morocco. However, during the first large uprisings against the 33 See: Maurice Roumani, The Case of the
194 Patios, Carpets, and No Pavilion Marion von Osten 195

that of the state. Their plans were thus represented as reflecting ‘national’ Literature
or ‘state’ objectives, although they mirrored the views and interests of spe-
Abu-Lughod, Janet. Rabat: Urban Apart- Downie Jr., Leonard. “Israel builds.” Alicia
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 Zvi Efrat and Marion von Osten in Conversation 199

An Architectural
Marion von Osten: We are sitting here in the southern part of the Hansaviertel
in Berlin that was constructed from 1953 to 1960 as part of the “Internationale
Bauausstellung” (IBA), which took place in 1957. Israeli architects came and
visited the event. You mentioned once that the Hansaviertel served as a

Overdose
model for the Development Town programs in Israel.

Zvi Efrat: For lack of sufficient historiographical documents and critical

writing, my research on the Israeli new town planning had to frequently
draw on interviews I conducted with the major protagonists of the period.

On Planning
Regarding the relationship between the IBA and experimental housing in
Israel, the influence has been mentioned in many testimonies. The 1957
Berlin IBA certainly served as a direct model for the Israelis, but it was
also criticized and argued that it would need to be improved for the Israel

Discourses of
housing program. The Hansa ensemble was initially constructed as a
fairground or an exhibition of a sort. A collection of renowned architectural
figures created a number of exemplary architectural objects, which
were embedded in certain environmental and social settings that didn’t
prove to work well in Israel. Essentially, Hansaviertel was still entrenched

Late 1950s and

in the garden-city paradigm, in the pastoral reform of the urban, in the
promise of a slow and soft modernism.

But, in Israel of the late 1950s and early 1960s the garden city was already

Early 1960s
more a locus of discontent than a tale of hope, due to the fact that most
of the new towns, or development towns as they were often called, estab-
lished in the first decade of Israeli statehood from 1948 throughout the
fifties, were all built according to the model of the garden-city or even of
the garden-suburb. And they mostly failed. Their misery was already rever-

Architecture
berating within professional and political circles in the late 1950s. Evidently,
the implementation of a spacious, porous, and vegetative (anti-)urbanism
was totally inadequate for the peripheral towns, which, on top of their
geographic marginalization, were further injured by the compulsory lack

Projects in Israel
of urban density and cohesion and the subsequent prohibition to develop
habitual street life. At least in some recorded instances, British postwar
new towns or garden-suburbs were simply replicated and transplanted in
the Israeli desert. So, from 1959 on, Israeli architects were trying to find
new paradigms, which would be denser and which would fit in a more
specific way, and this is when the Model Housing projects, like the housing
Zvi Efrat and Marion von Osten in Conversation experiment in the town of Be‘er Sheva, which claimed to articulate the
particular parameters of desert architecture, enter the local discourse
and praxis.

MvO: And the Department of Housing formed a group of young architects to

work on this solution.
200 An Architectural Overdose Zvi Efrat and Marion von Osten in Conversation 201

ZE: Yes, in Israel, housing programs after 1948 were initiated and sponsored ZE: Yes, a few went regularly, and they were definitely aware of the Team
almost entirely by government authorities, at that time by the Department 10 projects, which were quite famous in Israel. Urban and typological
of Housing at the Ministry of Labor. And just like the generic programs of concepts were readily flowing in and appropriated, always with a certain
mass housing, the more idiosyncratic model housing projects were also critical twist, adapting them to the local conditions and technologies.
motivated and controlled by the housing authorities. So, in fact, we are In retrospect, during such moments of instantaneous (mis)appropriation
witnessing experimental architecture, which presents a critique or even architecture becomes really interesting; it mutates.
negation of the state apparatus, endorsed by the state and promoted as
its highlight. MvO: And what was their model for a proper urbanism in Israel?

And yes, it was state bureaucrats who deliberately chose young architects, ZE: First I have to say something general about model projects. It is certainly
mostly Israeli born and trained (in the Technion in Haifa, the only local true that the Israelis were importing ready-made methods and formats,
school of architecture by then), bypassing the older generation of Euro- but more significant to our conversation is the fact that the notion of a
pean immigrants. Such top-down avant-gardism whereby the official sta- model project, or prototype-making, is not at all a new phenomenon of
te initiative would entrust twenty-eight- to thirty-two-year-old architects the 1950s, but may be regarded as the very essence of the Zionist mind-set
with a large-scale construction enterprise may seem peculiar, but for a since its inception in late nineteenth century. Zionism was always preoc-
state that venerated modernism or zeitgeist as its highest values, the cupied with planning and with setting and testing new urban layouts and
younger generation better represented the premise of migration of new building types. Since there were no particular indigenous Jewish or
ideas. The native Israeli architects were up-to-date and well aware of Hebrew building traditions or dwelling practices, and since Zionism was
experiments in North Africa, the Écochard project, the ATBAT Afrique, and born in the age of social and environmental reform, Israeli urbanism
the Casablanca carpet structures. They were critical of early modern could later imagine a tabula rasa (“a State without a people, for a people
architecture in Palestine, so-called Bauhaus Architecture, prevalent not without a State”), turn itself into a machine producing new towns, and
only in the cities of Tel Aviv, Haifa, or Jerusalem, but surprisingly also in base its scheme on the double-negation of the native Arab town and the
the Jewish rural settlements. For them, it was “architecture of migrants,” big industrial city. In this sense, the garden-city paradigm served Zion-
because it was not localized; it was too plastered, too white, too aesthe- ism perfectly and helped the European immigrants to adapt climatically
ticized. Somehow, their contemporaneous European style of Brutalism to the Levant but ignore it physically and culturally. Generally speaking,
seemed to them more authentic, contextual, and sincere, less generic, surviving the local conditions meant transforming them.
derivative, and superficial. Reiterating “white” Le Corbusier was now
contemptible, while venerating “grey” Le Corbusier and literally copying But here the model housing project in Be’er Sheva is an exception and
his latest Béton Brut style was considered a moral act. In spite of the signals a new sensibility. The chosen group of young architects came up
difficulty to travel abroad, they managed to be informed, and some of with a layout that seemingly, at least, had to do with what they studied
the international actors of the postwar discourse were in touch with this in Casablanca and other projects in North Africa, but also in Be’er Sheva
generation of Israeli architects. itself, the grid formation of the old city, which was ruined and abandoned
during the war of 1948. Ironically, the “old city” of Be‘er Sheva was in-
MvO: Thus they could only read about new discourses and projects in deed an Arab city but had nothing to do with an indigenous kasbah-like
magazines. formation. German planners designed the grid layout during Ottoman
rule at the beginning of the twentieth century. For the young Israeli archi-
ZE: There were three or four architectural magazines that were distributed tects, it was an authoritative model of desert urbanism. So the new
in Israel in the 1950s, certainly L‘Architecture d‘Aujourd‘hui and Architectural quarter of the model housing project emulates the old gridded city and
Design. Basically, they read the magazines that wrote about them. And subdivides it into smaller units; each would have its own public center
some traveled, not to North Africa at the time, but mainly to England and and tower to mark it. There was a main axis crossing the entire neighbor-
France. hood, connecting it to a commercial center and distributing public facil-
ities along it such as schools and synagogues. The architecture of the
MvO: As well to the CIAM conferences? housing was split between two main types: the block, or super-block, lo-
cated on the margins of the site to provide a protective wall, as it were,
202 An Architectural Overdose Zvi Efrat and Marion von Osten in Conversation 203

against desert sandstorms; and “mat housing” with their various takes ZE: Yes, habitat was a big word in Israel from the late fifties well into the
on the ideas of “urban textiles” and “patio houses.” Usually, mat housing seventies, and it is probable that it came directly from Écochard. However,
was two stories, and the top story hovered over the public pathway, in my opinion, it was largely hollowed of its anthropological reference
shading it. There was also an integrated backyard to these houses, pre- and social performance. In Israel, habitat assumed a mainly morphologi-
sumably allowing an expansion of the apartment. So a “patio house” was cal meaning. It became a general framework for geometric experimenta-
theoretically often also a “growing house.” tion, motivated, as it were, by the critique of modernist figure-ground
urbanism and generic architecture. If it signaled any paradigm shift (at
In retrospect, when we come to evaluate the Israeli experiment of model least in the eyes of its practitioners), it was a shift from the oversimplified
housing projects, we can definitely acknowledge the coordinated group orthogonal grid to the complex polyhedral matrices. In other words, it
effort and the genuine attempt to reach integrated urbanism, but there was not at all a new sensibility towards the vernacular, but quite the op-
is a heavy price to such professional solidarity: architecture becomes a posite, an attempt to cure the built environment through an architectural
flattened typology, and typology is reduced to a limited number of re- overdose.
curring building types.
Interestingly enough, it was possible to look at indigenous North African
MvO: The Be‘er Sheva patio houses from 1959 have almost the same ground building patterns but apparently not at the Palestinian village. That was
floor plan as in the Écochard grid built for Muslim workers in the outskirts of too close to see. The distant model could easily be turned into a formal
Casablanca in 1951. Michel Écochard appropriated the neighborhood unit composition and modified into an academic discourse. In fact, most of
concept for his large-scale housing projects. Did the international discussion the Israeli habitats had little to do with social housing. They could be a
about the neighborhood unit developed by Clarence Stein have an influence faculty building on a university campus, a military base, a resort, a city
on the Israeli planners as well? hall, or a lavish apartment building. In some instances, they were indeed
designed as social housing, but they performed so poorly as such that
ZE: Yes, but it had a local interpretation. In fact, the neighborhood unit they were soon turned into hostels for new immigrants or for orthodox
was the building principle of the new towns in Israel. Each neighborhood Yeshiva students.
unit was supposed to be self-sustaining and based on separating pedes-
trians and motor vehicle traffic, so children would walk free of the danger The main figure behind the habitat trend in Israel was Alfred Neumann, a
of cars. Each unit had its own small center of commerce and services, a former student of Peter Behrens and Auguste Perret. He became Dean of
few units had a major center, and so on. It was a hierarchical system ag- Architecture at the Technion in Haifa and had many followers amongst
gregating ostensibly autonomous units into urban clusters. The contours his students. Neumann formed one of the most creative firms in the sixties
of the units were biomorphic and supple to suggest a natural setting and together with two of his former students: Zvi Hecker and Eldar Sharon.
to counter the modernist orthogonal grid. There was not a straight axis For Neumann and his followers, notions of organic or spontaneous structures
or angle in these neighborhood units, and of course, no traditional street were catalysts for their so called “system theories” or “space packed
with typical mixed use. In many ways, we can identify in the neighbor- architecture,” which was equipped with promising rhetoric of open-ended
hood units a transposition of the concept of the kibbutz, the Zionist rural accumulative patterns and slogans such as “change, growth, and uncer-
communal settlement, which was based on zoning, separation of urban tainty.” Yet the result was not a kind of soft free-form architecture, better
functions, and no parceling of land into private lots. Yes, I suggest con- adaptable to specific geographies or ethnographies, but rather a very
sidering the Israeli new town not only as a derivative garden city but also rigid, formalized, and idiosyncratic clustered architecture with no material
as a blow-up of an entirely original, and rather radical, social and archi- elasticity and certainly no political agenda. I think that precisely because
tectural construct. it had no agenda other than formal, it remained an almost anecdotal
“avant-garde,” and it was readily appropriated immediately after the war
MvO: At the “Colonial Modern” conference in Berlin (2008) Monique Eleb stated of 1967 and the ensuing occupation of the Palestinian territories by the
that Michel Écochard would have invented the notion of the habitat for his builders of the large scale housing projects, especially in the “greater
new town plans in Casablanca to describe the concept of this new social Jerusalem” neighborhoods. Now, the agglomeration of ever-growing
housing program. I saw the habitat chapter in your book on development towns. modular clusters became very useful for expansionist policies. The refer-
I‘m very interested in how the concept of “habitat” developed in Israel. ence to the diversified organic community, so pertinent to the notion of
204 An Architectural Overdose Zvi Efrat and Marion von Osten in Conversation 205

habitat, was all forgotten and taken over by the passive-aggressive clus- historic process of industrialization and commodification of the dwelling
tered community. unit.

MvO: In an interview with Yona Friedman in Paris in 2011, he said it was highly
relevant for him not only to study vernacular architecture, but also vernacular
building cultures during his time in Israel. He was very much interested in
how a local community builds, not only morphologically, but also how the
building process is organized collectively. He was writing his doctoral thesis
on vernacular building practices of local Palestinian communities when he
was still in Israel, but his Technion professors did not agree on this approach.
Would you say there was a division between the people that were translating
the vernacular aesthetic on a formal level and a generation that was highly
interested in how communities were actually built?

ZE: Friedman may have genuinely been interested in vernacular building

practices, and so were a few other Jewish architects from the early de-
cades of the twentieth century to this very day. But, by and large, Zionism
was remarkably blind to vernacular building practices. Even the British
colonial work was more attuned to native traditions and to the local land-
scape. Such ideological blindness allowed Zionism to be highly innovative
and productive in formulating ever-new urban and especially rural typol-
ogies. These new types corresponded to original and often quite radical
social formations such as collectivist or communal settlements. Perhaps
Zionism’s preoccupation with novel and ideally planned social forms ex-
plains the rejection of spontaneous architectural traditions. What is left
then is the captivating image of natural complexity, and of course the
opportunity for the pre-fabrication of repetitive elements, randomly ar-
ranged, as it were, to form an artificial topography and a “beehive” com-
munity. The first to fully capitalize on this understanding and to fossilize
the ultimate habitat is, of course, Moshe Safdie with his “pavilion” for the
1967 Expo in Montréal.

MvO: This is certainly the most important example of its time internationally.

ZE: Yes, but I can see Safdie’s ideas developing within the peculiar context
of Israeli architecture. Paper habitats and built habitats produced by
Neumann and his disciples proliferated in the Israel of the early sixties and
inspired Safdie, as they have Friedman. I believe that Safdie acknowl-
edged the influence of Neumann’s ideas upon him.

As we discussed in the beginning of our conversation, some of the Israeli

habitats, especially the “mat structures,” expressed serious explorations
into site-specific conditions and indigenous traditions; others pursued
morphological complexity in itself and played their periodic role in the
And Crip
 Rob Imrie and Eva Egermann in Conversation 209

Buildings That
Eva Egermann: Your book, Disability and the City (hereafter DC), is an in-depth
analysis of the context within which the status of disabled people is experi-
enced, the interrelationships between disability, physical access, and the built
environment. It explores the socio-cultural and political processes around

Fit Society
the social construction and (re)production of “states of disablement.” Donlyn
Lyndon suggests that architecture ought to be a thoughtful structuring of
places to inhabit and that it should be enabling. His book, Rethinking Archi-
tecture, documents a collaborative project between design students and
people with physical impairments in Berkeley, California, initiated by the

The Modernist
architect and the disability rights activist Raymond Lifchez. While Lyndon’s
observations seem to point to the relevance of universal design and emanci-
patory architecture, he critically notes that architectural education’s primary
goal is “to educate people who will tend to the making of buildings that fit

Ideal and the

society,” and architecture therefore “handicaps those who are exceptionally
different in behavior or appearance or physical ability.”1 So, the perpetuation
of disablist space is linked to the socio-institutional practices of architects
and the wider design professions, as you also write in DC. How would you
describe these relationships?

Social Production Rob Imrie: My thoughts on these relationships have changed over the years
and the characterizations embedded in DC have been read by some as
implicating architects and other agents as the primary purveyors of disabling

of Ableist Spaces
spaces. In some ways this characterization holds, but only if one situates
such agents’ actions in the broader socio-cultural and political contexts
that shape, in a recursive sense, their dispositions, mentalities, and values.
Lyndon’s observations are well made and the very best architects under-
stand that the legacy of their work is dependent precisely on it enabling
human activities, and being part of a sociability that is defined by universal
Rob Imrie and Eva Egermann in Conversation values relating to shelter, habitability, and well being. However, architects,
and other design professionals, do not operate outside broader ideological
frameworks that disregard impairment and which, historically, have led to
the incarceration of many disabled people into separate contained spaces.
While the integration of disabled people into society has been much more
to the fore in recent years, design discourses are implicated in creating
barriered and bounded places that, while not state sanctioned places of
incarceration, have the effect of limiting where disabled people are able
to go to, who they are able to interact with, and how their rights to citizen-
ship may be experienced and curtailed.

There is no single actor or individual to blame for this state of affairs,

1 Donlyn Lyndon, “Preface,” in Rethinking (Berkeley: University of California Press,

Architecture. Design Students and Physi- 1987), xii.
cally Disabled People, ed. Raymond Lifchez
210 Buildings That Fit Society Rob Imrie and Eva Egermann in Conversation 211

although each individual, in their acting, ought to reflect on what the opted all over the world. A precursor was Ebenezer Howard’s conception of
sources and motivations of their actions are, and, in so doing, at least the “Slumless, Smokeless Garden City” which involved a construction of health
provide themselves with the possibilities of (self-)transformation. In and that assigned the “insane,” the “inebriates,” and the “epileptics” to segregated
of itself this will never be enough to create non-disabling socio-cultural places outside the main center. Urban problems, such as disease, crime, and
formations because of the embedded, and systemic, nature of ableism pollution were also addressed through the concept of “beautification.”
that, for its dissolution, will require a broader collective series of political
practices and actions to emerge. This is where Lyndon’s point about the In 1925, Le Corbusier developed the Modulor. Based on the proportions of
making of buildings that fit society is interesting. By highlighting archi- the human body, it represents a schema of human proportions to aid designers
tectural education as one of the sources of the socio-cultural (re)production in the design and construction of buildings. The Modulor outlines a series
of disablism in design discourses, the coercive power of educational of standard measures relating to the proportional relationships between human
practice in the (re)production of disciplinary fields is brought to the fore. beings and buildings. The measure for this schema is a strong, muscular
man standing upright with no sign of physical or mental impairment, 183 cm
What is interesting is that, already over 2000 years ago, the Roman architect in height.
Vitruvius was lamenting the paucity of architects’ engagement with the
materialities of the world. He suggested that those “who relied only upon Devising a certain “standard” was influential for the modern importance of
theories and scholarship were obviously hunting the shadow and not the function and, as Le Corbusier argued, essential to architectural forms, which
substance,” a comment about architects’ lack of knowledgeability and he defined as being “determined by the dimensions of man [sic] and the
engagement with the prosaic processes of construction.2 Fast-forward and space he occupies.”5 Buildings, in a way, became a site for teaching self-op-
the American architect Frank Lloyd Wright was saying something similar timization and standardization with the effect of the projection of normality
by exhorting trainee architects to learn about the building process in its as one of able-bodiment. Can the functional, moral, and economic imperatives
fullest sense as a prerequisite for good practice. As he observed about the underlying modern planning efforts also be termed “ableist social relations”
estranged nature of architectural knowledge: “go into the field where as they point to “standardization” that relates not only to spatial but also so-
you can see the machines and methods at work […] stay in construction cial settings?
direct and simple until you can work naturally into building design from
the nature of construction.”3 Indeed, Frank Lloyd Wright was scathing about RI: My original characterization of Le Corbusier’s Modulor man was,
the architectural schools of the time and the splintering of education perhaps, overstated. It provides a powerful, visual representation of the
into discrete, individualized parts, observing that “the educational fabric human body, and at first glance it appears to be reductive in projecting
has been so far departmentalized, over standardized.”4 a body type or typology of the body that is unable to capture the complex-
ities of bodily form and performance. However, the Modulor may be re-
The perceived irrelevance of much of architects’ education is also shaping garded as an “ideal type” or a representation to aid the design process.
the contemporary debate. I like to think there are parallels here with dis- It is not necessarily a definitive or absolute projection of bodies but rather
ability and design relating precisely to architects’ perpetuation of design an instrument or tool to guide how different body parts interact in com-
knowledge of/about building users that do not equate with, or respond to, bination with material artifacts. So, there are multiple interpretations that
the manifold possibilities of bodies’ spatial interactions. However, this is one can make about Le Corbusier’s Modulor man, although there is no
not an “architect thing” per se, but much more about the social relations doubt that, as a representation, it is static by providing no real sense of
of the design and construction process, insofar that only to target archi- the senses or the sensuous nature of buildings, spaces, and the materials
tects as in need of re-education is to miss the point and purpose of what that comprise them. This reflects a broader orthodoxy in architecture in
needs to be done. Indeed, one needs to challenge, and change, not only which the objective is filling in space with objects and connecting them
the pedagogic basis of society, but the broader systemic nature of dis-
ablism that is part of the social fabric of institutions and their practices.
2 Vitruvius, The Ten Books of Architecture 4 Ibid., 312.
EE.: There are several examples of the conjunction of formal, aesthetic, and (New York: Dover Publications Inc., 1960), 5. 5 Rob Imrie, Disability and the City: Interna-
3 Frank Lloyd Wright, Frank Lloyd Wright: An tional Perspectives (London: Paul Chapman
body-related concerns in urban planning. For example, the neighborhood Autobiography (New York: Longmans, Publishing, 1996), 81.
unit proved to be a persistent concept of modernist city planning. It was ad- 1932), 241.
212 Buildings That Fit Society Rob Imrie and Eva Egermann in Conversation 213

as geometric structures. important influences on the modern movement, and that the aesthetics were
So, my feeling is that Le Corbusier’s Modulor man is a tool or instrument relying upon an abstract purity of rational geometric forms and mass-produced
to aid designers to (pre-)figure dimensional standards, and that such industrial technology.10 You explain how the architectural styles of modernism
standards, if following the directives of the Modulor, provide scope to in- in particular are generating forms that seemed to deny differences in bodily
corporate a broad range of human-types or potentialities in relation to experiences and suggest that the modern ideal equates to an ableist space.
body-environment interactions. This is not to say that I am in favor of just
geometrical proportions as a means of defining and seeking to shape RI: There are many issues that are raised here concerning the relation-
such interactions or the delimitation of body-environment interchanges ships between styles of architecture and conceptions of the form and
solely by recourse to pre-set standards. In fact, however we delimit or performance of the human body. I think an important point is not to re-
standardize, it will not necessarily shape anything or pre-determine action duce ableist socio-spatial relations, in and of themselves, to something
or outcomes, because actions are what they are through their unfolding, we describe as “the modern ideal.” That the modern ideal may equate to
including the combinations of things that tend to make every interaction the crafting and (re)production of ableist spaces is not to sideline or dis-
of bodies in place unique in some way. We cannot escape from geometry count the interplay between other non modern design discourses and
either, nor should we seek to, because it is no more than one sense of the disabling nature of socio-spatial relationships. So, I would insist on
how materials connect to one another or are placed relative to each other situating the understanding of the “modern ideal” and its projection of
or in combination. the hetero-normative, able-bodied citizen within a broader historical cri-
tique of contrasting socio-cultural systems and their dispositions to-
Perhaps the reaction to the Modulor man is less the limits of geometry wards the body, environment, and society. There is much to be done to
and more the representation that it appears to be. The Modulor is an provide research about how far disabling design processes are evident
ahistorical, instrumental tool, devoid of context and seeking to propagate in cross-cultural and different historical contexts.
an image of the body that is at odds with what we all encounter daily,
that is, the diversity of bodies and the messiness of bodies-in-space. Here, As much as there is a need to document the cross-cultural nature of dis-
one can draw parallels with Pérez-Gómez’s6 observations about designers’ ablism, there is a need too to recognize that modernism is characterized
use of computer imaging as a decontextualized and decontextualizing by, potentially, a positive, forward-thinking conception of human sub-
experience or, as he says, “a complete disregard for history and embodied jects. The values of modernism were built upon a sense that buildings
consciousness.” In this respect, the Modulor is part of the broader, frag- ought to facilitate human action and be responsive to a perceived need
mented nature of modernism, where social experiences appear to be for efficient living. Modernist design values propagate a critique of soci-
divisible and discrete. Gellner describes this as characteristic of modern ety and provide a basis for political reform based on, arguably, a pro-
human agency, in which we are all constituted as “a Modulor,” seeking gressive betterment of society by improving the circumstances of human
to put together, in piecemeal fashion, different versions of ourselves. kind. At least this was the stated ambition of those who subscribed to
Kallinikos7 suggests that this is a “response to the demands raised by the modernism. While the anthropogenic focus of modernism is a cause for
distinct institutional realms of modern life.” concern, modernist values do not, in and of themselves, preclude the
possibilities of a liberating future for human beings. However, the difficulty
EE: Let’s come back to the term and discourse of “ableism” that constantly is the way that the potential humanism of modernism, or at least its
references and reproduces normativity. The Disability Studies author Lennard liberating possibilities, has been sidelined by social experiments that have
Davis8 notes that the social process of disabling arrived with industrializa-
tion and practices that are connected to late eighteenth and nineteenth cen-
tury notions of nationality, race, gender, criminality, and sexual orientation. 6 Alberto Pérez-Gómez, “Polyphilo’s thresh- 8 Lennard Davis, “Constructing Normalcy,” in
olds: alternatives for nomadic dwellings,” The Disability Studies Reader, ed. Lennard
Identities of the abled person have been reproduced throughout history and
in Transportable Environments, eds. Rob- Davis (New York: Routledge, 1997), 3.
within different fields, “whether it be the ‘species typical body’ (in science), ert Kronenburg and Filiz Klassen (London: 9 Fiona Kumari Campbell, Contours of Able-
the ‘normative citizen’ (in political theory), the ‘reasonable man’ (in law).”9 Taylor and Francis, 2006), 4. ism: The Production of Disability and
7 Jannis Kallinikos, “Work, Human Agency Abledness (Basingstoke, Hampshire: Pal-
and Organizational Forms: An Anatomy of grave Macmillan, 2009), 44.
In DC you describe how the modern “axiom of human domination of nature,” Fragmentation,” Organization Studies, no. 10 Imrie, Disability and the City, 80.
the domination of scientific values and of human rationality, have been 24 (2003): 597.
214 Buildings That Fit Society Rob Imrie and Eva Egermann in Conversation 215

propagated the discourse of scientism and the belief in technology and concepts, artistic and scientific production with the given conditions. As
expertism as the basis of/for social progress. We see this in the rise of you also mention, it would be unfair to characterize architects and modernists
the rehabilitation industries with the emphasis on the repair and rehabili- as “disablist” in as much that there was recognition of what was regarded as
tation of disabled people as part of a process to make them “normal.”11 the “subversive” potential of people.13 (Le Corbusier, for instance, said, “It’s
life that’s always right and the architect who’s wrong.”14) I would like to ask:
This is the perpetuation of a universal subject or a projected ideal of the In what sense would you say that affirmation of architectural forms and spaces
citizen characterized by social and physiological features that are coun- took place through the intervention of different “not normate” or disabled
terpoised to those that, so it is argued, disabled people lack. The fixation bodies?
of modernism with de-differentiation and the commonality of humanity
is the (continuing) basis for an assimilationist ideology to take hold, in RI: The messy and contingent conditions of human life provide one with
which the only deal for disabled people appears to be to fit their defunct sufficient reason to guard against claims that assert the determinate
bodies to societal norms, including putting up with inaccessible design nature of social actors and actions ascribed to them. Le Corbusier’s un-
or, otherwise, to accept their outside status as deficient and “not normal” derstanding of the interactions between everyday material life and the
beings. If one part of the “modern ideal” is the application of instrumental designed environment were realistic and echo what most architects are
rationality, what Schmitt describes as “a blind domination of nature,” one thinking, even if they don’t publicly acknowledge it. Some of the most
cannot be surprised by designed outcomes that are less than sensitive to influential architects have acknowledged the improbability of achieving
the manifold nature of the body. The modernist proclivity to the suppres- the synthesis of form and use, a sentiment expressed by Frank Lloyd
sion and domination of nature, often by the application of a technological Wright15 in relation to the design of furniture: “Soon I find it difficult,
apparatus, provides little scope for “not normal” bodies to be part of anyway, to make some of the furniture in the abstract. That is, to design
mainstream culture or to partake in daily undertakings. it as architecture and make it human at the same time—fit for human
use.” Recurrent throughout Frank Lloyd Wright’s work is the struggle to
This is evident in practically every aspect of the designed environment. create organic forms in which it was never a choice between aesthetics
This ranges from the standardized “fit out” of kitchens, where cupboards and use or usability, but about the total environment oriented towards
and tabletops are often placed out of reach of people who use wheel- the bodily needs of human beings. In echoing, and reproducing, some
chairs, to the re-engineering of street environments that encourage, in of the ideas of the Chinese philosopher, Lao Tzu, Frank Lloyd Wright
many European cities, a sharing of space between automobiles and pe- maintained that the essence of any building is not in the materiality of
destrians. A consequence of such space sharing in urban areas is that the roof, walls, or ceilings but is part of the lived spaces within.
this may create hazardous places for, for example, vision impaired people.
I have been documenting the spread of shared space design in England, Close study of architects and their practices show that they do not
and it reflects, in part, the mentalities of highways and transportation plan- necessarily propagate disabling and disableist design discourses. I have
ners in deploying an engineering rationality to influence the behavioral been spending some time in archives looking at the writings, correspon-
patterns of different street users. A top-down vision, expert-led, concerned dences, and drawings of Frank Lloyd Wright to gauge how far his design
primarily with creating efficiencies of movement and mobility in street conceptions were sensitized to the manifold interactions of bodies-in-space.
spaces and expecting people to negotiate the use of space through eye There is surprisingly little research of this type, and it is too easily assumed
contact with one another. This is nothing short of a dystopian spatial that architects are unthinking about the body’s emplacement in space.
formation, and it is no surprise that vision impaired people report disliking
shared spaces and feel that they are adding yet another “no-go” area in
the built environment.12 11 Barbara Gibson’s excellent work is exem- and Planning A 44, no. 9 (2012): 2260–77.
plary in deconstructing, and subjecting to 13 Imrie, Disability and the City, 86.
critique, the relationships between dis- 14 Charles Jencks, Le Corbusier and the Trag-
EE: This assumption that spaces are characterized by the constant interaction ability and rehabilitation. I recommend ic View of Architecture (Harmondsworth:
of different actors under unequal conditions implies another perspective of looking at her portfolio of publications. Penguin, 1987), 74.
agency. In our project we follow the assumption that the built environment is See http://www.hollandbloorview.ca/re- 15 Lloyd Wright, Frank Lloyd Wright: An Auto-
search/scientistprofiles/gibson.php. biography, 145.
not just simply built or lived in, but formed in and through interactions with 12 Rob Imrie, “Auto-Disabilities: The Case of
the political, social, technological, and economic conditions, public discourses, Shared Space Environments,” Environment
216 Buildings That Fit Society Rob Imrie and Eva Egermann in Conversation 217

The case of Frank Lloyd Wright may not be typical, but it does indicate technical activity, standing above and beyond politics or the murky
how one of the most influential architects of the modern era was influ- world of values. This is what Fry calls a delimited view, a focus on taste
enced by the interrelations between the building context, particularly the and style. The struggle then, as a precursor to developing non disabling
physical location and content of the site, and the potential for any archi- discourses in society, is a thorough politicization of design or what Fry
tecture to be human-centric and sensitive to sensory experiences. For Frank refers to as a “political ontology wherein politics becomes a lived mode
Lloyd Wright and other architects such as Alvar Aalto, what was para- of being that infects its institutional forms.”18
mount was precisely a multi-sensory architecture that contained the po-
tential to respond to what you have termed “not normate” bodies.

EE: A range of scholars have called for the development of a non-ableist, non-
essentialist sociology based upon the understanding of sensory feelings and
physiological impairments in their socio cultural contexts. Judith Butler, for
instance, argued that physiological impairments, in and of themselves, are a
constraint on specific types of action, and it is impossible to derive a social
theory which is dismissive of, and independent from, the situatedness of the
body of its pedagogical and/or physiological state, the historicity you referred
to before.16 What would a non-ableist theorization look like, in your sense?

RI: Non-ableist formulations require, as a principle, an openness to the

manifold interactions between bodies and the material world and sensi-
tivity to the diversity of ways in which people sense space and, subse-
quently, come to practice and know the world. What I find frustrating is
that there are data available about the interrelationships between senses,
spaces, and practice, yet much of it is ignored, sidelined, or rendered as
irrelevant by design practitioners. There is, therefore, a need to “main-
stream” knowledge of/about the body as a precursor to non-ableist prac-
tices emerging, and this will involve professionals’ exposure to a range of
learning environments. I would like to see much more inter-institutional
activities emerging as I see little evidence of design and building profes-
sionals interacting with, for example, people with dementia or those
with learning difficulties. Indeed, there appear to be few opportunities,
either in educational systems or design practice, for practitioners to
learn about the body’s manifold presence in space and the ways in which
it ought to be regarded as co-constitutive of the designed environment.

There have to be theorizations of ableism that unpick and explain the

different ways in which social relations (re)produce the impaired body as
an aberration and “not normal.” So, a non-ableist theorization of society
requires, necessarily, a theorization of ableism as a precursor to creating
progressive, non-ableist, conceptions of society and space. This task re-
quires a thorough transformation in systemic ideas, values, and practices,
and here I agree with Tony Fry, who suggests that this will require making 16 Judith Butler, Bodies that Matter (New 18 Ibid., 79.
York: Routledge, 1993).
design “overtly and proactively political.” 17 Urban planning, architec- 17 Tony Fry, Design as Politics (Oxford: Berg,
ture, and design is too often presented and understood as an aesthetic, 2011), 7.
218 Buildings That Fit Society 219

Literature

Butler, Judith. Bodies that Matter. New Jencks, Charles. Le Corbusier and the
York: Routledge, 1993. Tragic View of Architecture. Harmond-
sworth: Penguin, 1987.
Campbell, Fiona Kumari. Contours of Able-
ism: The Production of Disability and Kallinikos, Jannis. “Work, Human Agency
Abledness. Basingstoke, Hampshire: and Organizational Forms: An Anatomy of
Palgrave Macmillan, 2009. Fragmentation.” Organization Studies, no.
24 (2003): 595–618.
Davis, Lennard. “Constructing Normalcy.”
In The Disability Studies Reader. Edited by Lloyd Wright, Frank. Frank Lloyd Wright:
Lennard Davis, 3–19. New York: Routledge, An Autobiography. New York: Longmans,
1997. 1932.

Fry, Tony. Design as Politics. Oxford: Berg, Lyndon, Donlyn. Preface in Rethinking Ar-
2011. chitecture. Design Students and Physically
Disabled People. Edited by Raymond Lif-
Gellner, Ernest. Conditions of Liberty: Civil chez, xi-xv. Berkeley: University of Califor-
Society and its Rivals. London: Penguin, nia Press, 1987.
1996.
Pérez-Gómez, Alberto. “Polyphilo’s thresh-
Howard, Ebenezer. Garden Cities of To- olds: alternatives for nomadic dwellings.”
morrow. London: S. Sonnenschein & Co., In Transportable Environments. Edited by
Ltd., 1902. Robert Kronenburg and Filiz Klassen, 2–9.
London: Taylor and Francis, 2006.
Imrie, Rob. Disability and the City: Interna-
tional Perspectives. London: Paul Chapman Schmitt, Carl. The Crisis of Parliamentary
Publishing, 1996. Democracy [1923]. Cambridge, MA: MIT
Press, 1985.
Imrie, Rob. “Auto-Disabilities: The Case of
Shared Space Environments.” Environ- Vitruvius. The Ten Books of Architecture.
ment and Planning A, vol. 44, no. 9 (2012): New York: Dover Publications Inc., 1960.
2260–2277.
 Eva Egermann 221

Unlikely
Cripple, gimp, and freak as used by the disability community have
transgressive potential. They are personally and politically useful as a
means to comment on oppression because they assert our right to
name experience.1

Encounters
—Simi Linton

Introduction

in the Fog
Experiences of embodied difference are closely entangled with space, the built
environment and architecture. Authors from various fields have continuously
argued for a politicization of space and for a view of space that reflects its so-
cial production. In The Production of Space, Lefebvre describes that space

Crip Connections
and spatial politics are the expressions of social relations and react upon them.2
This notion implies “a socio-spatial dialectic,” so to speak, “which sees society
and space as mutually constituting material dynamics.”3

Disability Studies authors have pointed out that the social and cultural con-

Within the Project

struction of disability in the history of Western modernity functioned as the
projection of “normality” as one of “able-bodied-ness.”4 As Mathias Danbolt
states: “Ideologies of progression legitimized the containment of deviants on
a moral ground by presenting racial, gendered and sexual others as a threat

Model House
to the development of the society.”5 “Crip subjects” were seen as “slowing
down the progress of Modernity.”6

Assuming “able-bodied-ness” as the standard within social and spatial relations,

ideas, practices, processes, and institutions is termed “ableism,” a way of
thinking that constantly references and brings about normativity. Lennard Davis
Eva Egermann describes that “the normal” is a configuration that arose “in a particular his-
torical moment. It is part of a notion of progress, of industrialization, and of
ideological consolidation of the power of the bourgeoisie. The implications of
the hegemony of “normalcy” are profound and extend into the very heart of
cultural production.”7

1 Simi Linton, Claiming Disability Knowl- Laws: Disability in Public (New York: New
edge and Identity (New York: New York York University Press, 2009).
University Press, 1998), 17. 5 Mathias Danbolt, “Disruptive Anachronisms:
2 Henri Lefebvre, The Production of Space, Feeling Historical with N.O. Body,” in
trans. Donald Nicholson Smith (Oxford: Temporal Drag, eds. Pauline Boudry and
Blackwell, 1991). Renate Lorenz (Osterfildern: Hatje Cantz,
3 Brendan J. Gleeson “A Geography for Dis- 2011), 1986.
abled People?” Transactions of the Institute 6 Ibid.
of British Geographers 21, no. 2 (1996): 391. 7 Lennard J. Davis, Enforcing Normalcy: Dis-
4 See Rob Imrie, Disability and the City: Inter- ability, Deafness, and the Body (London:
national Perspectives (London: Paul Chapman Verso, 1995), 49.
Publishing, 1996); Susan Schweik, The Ugly
222 Unlikely Encounters in the Fog Eva Egermann 223

Conceptions of unproblematic geographic spaces have been further critiqued Departure: An Unusual Mapping of a City in 1910
with Parr and Butler: “space cannot adequately be conceived of as a mere
blank surface on which uncritically to map medical and deviant subjects.”8 On this map we can see a landmass with a peninsula and several islands that
Moreover, critical geographers such as Golledge and Gleeson have described either form archipelagos or stand on their own. At the bottom left are two
disabled people as creators of space who inhabit “distorted spaces,” for ex- mountainous islands, which are marked “Freedom” and “Utopia.” Large areas
ample.9 They are equipped with agency and “seen actively to transform the of sea and ocean (the “Sea of Isolation,” the “Ocean of Despair,” and the
general geographic landscape in their everyday lives and reproduce this as “Gulf of Doubt”) cover most of the map. Three different ferry lines serve to
their own experimental world.”10 connect the different places (the “Economic Line,” the “Pathologic Line”
and the “Psychologic Line”).
There are many different examples of the conjunction of formal, aesthetic, and
body-related concerns in the history of modernist urban planning. To see “crip The islands nearest the mainland are called “Orphans,” “Sick Poor,” “Disable
subjects” “as entirely subsumed by modernist ideology” would be “a terrible Isle” (at the center of the archipelago), “Insane Isle,” and “Old Age.” Together
mistake, offering them yet again no loop-hole,” as Susan Schweik explains later they are called the “Poverty Islands.” The nearest port to the Poverty Islands
on in this book.11 Likewise, different ways in which social relations (re-)produce on the mainland is Port Injustice. Next to the “Poverty Islands” is the isolated
the impaired body as an aberration and as “not normal” are revealed and dis- “Race Prejudice Isle” with its different towns, located opposite “Port Jobless”
cussed in a conversation with Rob Imrie.12 It requires “a theorization of ableism and “Port Injustice.”
as a precursor to creating progressive, non-ableist, conceptions of society
and space,” Imrie argues. And this again requires a transformation in systemic Also in the “Sea of Isolation”: “Vagrant Isle” with the cities of “Hoboville,”
ideas and values as well as making architecture and design “overtly and pro- “Bumtown,” “Trampie,” and “Beggar.” It is connected to Prostitute Isle and
actively political.”13 Criminal Island with its “Return City.” “Radical Island” is at the bottom of
the map and is separated from the mainland/”Richville” by the “Gulf of Doubt.”
Resistances, negotiations, the place of encounter, and the in-between are a “Freethinkville,” “Freelovetown,” “Crankly,” “Anarchy,” “Tolstoy,” and “Revolt”
focus of the Model House project. Architectural modernity itself is seen as are the towns on “Radical Island,” which is located closest to “Port Direct Action.”
conflictual terrain, with manifold connections and entanglements. Therein, an
understanding of the built environment as emerging from a set of conditions Three cities are located on the mainland in the right hand margin of the map:
is viewed as a relevant research approach. “The project chose for a praxeologic “Poor City,” “Middle Town,” and “Richville.” The towns are based on classical
perspective, assigning agency to all that is there.” (Model House) Questions class-based identities (i.e., working class, middle class and upper class). These
on embodied difference taken from Disability Studies and Crip Theory broadened areas form the “Land of Respectability.” The remaining mainland is identified
our discussion on Transcultural Modernisms. Architectural spaces were disas- as the “Peninsular of Submerged Hope” and is separated from the “Land of
sembled into single components such as the home, the street, the settlement, Respectability” by three different blockades or barricades: the “Courts,” the
the neighborhood—or the “habitat.” Throughout the research, we tried to pick “Press,” and the “Police.”
apart some of these spatial conceptions. Places and concepts such as the
Chinese danwei work unit, Le Corbusier’s Modulor, the 1950s neighborhood unit,
whose environment functioned to meet the industry’s needs, or its precursor,
Ebenezer Howard’s 1898 conception of the “Slumless, Smokeless Garden 8 Ruth Butler and Hester Parr, Introduction 11 See the conversation between Susan Schweik
to Mind and Body Spaces: Geographies of and Eva Egermann in this volume. “Search-
City,” and others were mapped out and clarified, as well as terms such as “ugli- Illness, Impairment and Disability (London: ing for the International Deformed Nation,
ness,” “beautification,” or “ableism,” among others.14 Routledge, 1999), 11. or ‘Too Loud in its Patterns.’”
9 Reginald Golledge, “Geography and the 12 See the conversation between Rob Imrie
disabled: a survey with special reference and Eva Egermann in this volume. “Build-
The following passages offer some further connections to the research project,
to vision impaired and blind populations,” ings that Fit Society: The Modernist Ideal
based on anarchist doctor Ben Reitman’s radical mapping of Chicago from Transactions of the Institute of British Ge- and the Social Production of Ableist
the year 1910. It documents repression against various deviant and “other” ographers 18, no. 1 (1993): 64. Spaces.”
subjects in the early twentieth century. Negotiations and resistance that took 10 Brendan J. Gleeson, “A Geography for 13 Ibid.
Disabled People?” Transactions of the In- 14 See glossaries by Amir, Hille, Linortner,
shape later on were already anticipated in the map. stitute of British Geographers, vol. 21, no. Kravagna, and von Osten on http://www.
2 (1996): 389. transculturalmodernism.org.
224 Unlikely Encounters in the Fog Eva Egermann 225

Several ports are found on the mainland coast. These are possible entry points, points relating to the exclusion of a number of groups in early twentieth-century
but also points of departure for the islands. “Port Injustice” and “Port Jobless” Chicago.
point towards ways in which people are excluded from the islands on the “Sea
of Isolation.” Lower down the coast, close to “Richville,” there are piers and Susan Schweik calls this period (1867–1920) “the era of the unsightly.”16 It was
points that provide ways and entry points into the “Land of Respectability.” the time in which Ugly Laws were drafted and introduced into most western
These are the formal and informal mechanisms of acceptance and affirmation and mid-western cities in the United States. Also known as the “unsightly
such as “Law,” “Religion,” “Tradition,” “Patriotism,” and “Conventionality.” beggar ordinances,” these statutes prohibited “unsightly” people, beggars,
and people with disabilities from visiting public spaces. “No person who is
diseased, maimed, mutilated or in any way deformed so as to be an unsightly
The “Outcast Nights” and the Context of the Map or disgusting object, or improper person to be allowed in or on the public
places in this city, or shall therein or thereon expose himself to public view.”17
The map shows Chicago in the year 1910 and was presented on November 17, Many states’ Ugly Laws were not repealed until the mid 1970s. Chicago was
1910 at the Pacific Hall on West Broadway, New York, at the so-called Outcast the last to repeal its Ugly Law, in 1974.18
Night, an event organized by Reitman himself. Tim Cresswell described this
event as follows: This period was also the era that saw the rise of eugenics. In addition, state
institutions concerned themselves with new pressures in respect of behavior
Anarchist intellectuals, including [Emma] Goldman, witnessed a discussion in the city, of the conduct of people in the streets and public places. “De-
of various types of social outcasts including hobos, prostitutes, ‘homosex- formed” people were “seen as problems that would have to be managed as
uals’ and criminals. The hall was crowded and the event attracted the press. much as architecture or street layout.”19 Modern urban planning and maps for
The audience was treated to a number of appearances by various outcasts the City Beautiful were developed. Besides being a site for labor unrest, re-
from Hippolyte Havel, the outcast psychologist, to Arthur Bullard, the out- formist progressive scrutiny, and the Ugly Law, Chicago became a main model
cast moralist, and Sadakichi Hartman, the outcast poet. At the end of the of modern city planning and important example of the era of the City
evening, Reitman took the opportunity to reveal his ‘social geography’—a Beautiful.
talk based on a large map.15
The City Beautiful Movement was a North American urban planning movement,
Whilst the text of the lecture was not found, the diagram—originally drawn on which began in 1893 at the World Columbian Exposition Chicago, had its
a bed sheet—is now preserved at the Reitman Archive at the University of Illinois, heyday between 1900 and 1919, and consequences that lasted until 1929. The
Chicago. concept of “beautification” was applied to tackle urban problems, which were
defined in terms of disease, crime, and pollution, as a reaction to the population
Ben Reitman was a social reformer, doctor, and anarchist activist in the United increase in North American cities in the nineteenth century. The idea of beau-
States in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. He was the founder tification was influenced by the neo-classical style of the École des Beaux Arts,
of the March of the Unemployed in 1908, organizer of Outcast Nights, and a which emphasized monumental architecture, large avenues, and parks. The
contemporary of the Chicago School of Sociology. Having been a hobo him- so-called beautification of a city can also be understood as an educational in-
self, he formed hobo colleges in Chicago and was jailed several times for stitution, since it was not intended for bringing about a better life for the
his anarchist activities. He was later trained as a doctor and opened clinics in poorer classes, but rather for teaching moral and civic values and increasing
Chicago for the treatment of venereal diseases, including syphilis. the productivity of the urban economy.20

The Ugly Laws and the Managing of Deformed Bodies

15 Tim Cresswell, “The Peninsular of Sub- Municipal Code, sec. 36034 (repealed 1974).
Ben Reitman’s map depicts Chicago and we can see that the poor, the sick, merged Hope: Ben Reitman’s Social Geog- 18 Schweik, The Ugly Laws, 290.
the disabled, the insane, the homeless, the prostitutes, the non-white, the raphy,” Geoforum 29, no. 2 (May 1998): 19 Ibid., 67.
208. 20 Eva Egermann and Moira Hille, Beautifica-
old, the orphaned, and the politically radical, etc., all live on islands discon- 16 Ibid. tion, http://www.transculturalmodernism.
nected from the mainland. Here, “social geography” illustrates a series of 17 City of Chicago Ordinance, 1911, Chicago org. Accessed March 1, 2013.
226 Unlikely Encounters in the Fog Eva Egermann 227

Hence, it seems no coincidence that the Ugly Laws were introduced into most Contemplating Relations, Traces, and the “The Right to
western and mid-western US-American cities during the heyday of the City Opacity”
Beautiful Movement. Though it is clear that this idea of the ideal city was one
without “unsightly,” disabled beggars and other deviants on the street, histories Islands represent places of desire and figures of thought. An island could also
of urban development and the City Beautiful Movement have not yet addressed be defined as a place of movement, “whose historical documentation of mo-
the relationship to the history of the Ugly Laws, as Schweik emphasizes.21 bile patterns and vectors remain continually available,” notes Ottmar Ette.25
“In its occidental tradition, the history of the island semantically functions as
an ambiguous figure—on the one hand it stands for an island world spatialized
Radical Mappings and Unconventional Knowledge in its entirety and insularity […] On the other hand, the island also presents
itself as part of an island world, representing the fragmentary, the splintered,
Cartographies construct a territorial understanding of space, which assumes the mosaic-like, characterized by diverse interior connections and
the existence of borders and demarcation lines instead of social relations, constellations.”26
inclusions, or individual traces. There has been much critique of topographic,
scientific cartographies and their claims to objectivity. The cartographic gaze When looking at Reitman’s cartography, we can see other associations. The map
has been described by Peter Spillmann as with its connected archipelagos, the peninsula, the boat services that connect
the different cities and ports are reminiscent of the appearance and cartog-
a placeless perception of space, in which the vast reality becomes a man- raphies of existing islands and archipelagos. The Caribbean Sea and its islands,
ageable world surface, upon which each spot has coordinates and each for instance, were theorized by the postcolonial writer Édouard Glissant as an
object is recorded in an index. The cartographic view makes the arrange- open sea, full of encounters, traces, and relations. He described it as a place
ment of populations visible and tangible, populations as the composition, of permanent Creole reality with countless forms of hybridization. Based on
consolidation, and dilution of certain criteria, which emerge, for example, this perception, Glissant developed a concept of archipelagic thinking and de-
through different rasters or shaded colorings. The cartographic view re- manded the “Right to Opacity”:
veals borders as dotted, dashed, or drawn-out lines, as edges of colliding,
differently colored territories.22 If we look at the process of understanding beings and ideas as it operates in
western society, we find that it is founded on an insistence on this kind of
Ben Reitman’s cartography does not offer a definite, demarcating, and objective transparency. In order to understand and therefore accept you I must re-
perspective, but rather a very unconventional approach to connecting and duce your density to this scale of conceptual measurement, which gives
visualizing spatial politics and social relations. Reitman’s knowledge of the ex- me a basis for comparisons and therefore for judgments.27
cluded was itself excluded from mainstream social science. His depiction
differed from contemporary views of society in important ways. As Tim Cresswell In Glissant’s sense, understanding appears as the construction of the “other”
emphasizes, his mapping and social geography “points to post-structuralist/ as an object of knowledge, and opacity would therefore be a strategy of ac-
social geography of the 1990s, emphasizing marginalization, amplifying marginal tive resistance. “We must fight against transparency everywhere. […] We de-
voices, and pointing to the forces that produce marginalization in the first mand for all the right to opacity, the right not to be understood.”28
place. […] Reitman produced and advocated knowledge that led him into
conflict with scientific disciplines as he transgressed the boundaries of accept-
able thought and action.”23 21 Schweik, The Ugly Laws, 70. Vektoren. Versuch über die fraktale Insel-
22 Labor k3000 and Peter Spillmann, “Der welt der Karibik,” in Grenzen der Macht –
The Land of Respectability is a place signified by arrogance, ignorance, and kartografische Blick versus Strategien des Macht der Grenzen. Lateinamerika im glo-
Mapping,” in Grenzregime. Diskurse, Prak- balen Kontext, eds. Marianne Braig et al.
stupidity—“not a social space to aspire to, nor one that inevitably assimilates
tiken, Institutionen in Europa, eds. Sabine (Frankfurt am Main: Vervuert, 2005), 148.
all difference. It is a space which consistently excludes and rejects, creating Hess and Bernd Kasparek (Hamburg: As- 26 Ibid., 137.
islands of outcasts.”24 soziation A, 2010), 282. 27 Celia M. Britton, Édouard Glissant and
23 Cresswell, “The Peninsular of Submerged Postcolonial Theory: Strategies of Lan-
Hope,” 208. guage and Resistance (Morgantown, WV:
24 Ibid. The University Press Virginia, 1999), 19.
25 Ottmar Ette, “Von Inseln, Grenzen und 28 Ibid.
228 Unlikely Encounters in the Fog Eva Egermann 229

Claiming the “Crank,” the “Crip,” and the “Outcast” Literature

Gleeson, Brendan J. “A Geography for
Bhabha, Homi K. The Location of Culture. Disabled People?” Transactions of the In-
The history of embodied difference, as Homi Bhabha has conceptualized it, is New York: Routledge, 1994. stitute of British Geographers. New Series.
a story “not of unilateral domination but of uncertainty, hybridity and ongoing vol. 21, no. 2 (1996): 387–396.
Britton, Celia M. Édouard Glissant and
conflict and negotiation.”29 When looking at the map, we can see how impair- Postcolonial Theory. Strategies of Lan- Golledge, Reginald. “Geography and the
ments, injuries, and deviations—as well as appropriations and resistances—have guage and Resistance. Morgantown, West disabled: a survey with special reference
consistently acted as a countercurrent to dominant normative orders. Virginia: University Press Virginia, 1999. to vision impaired and blind populations.”
Transactions of the Institute of British Ge-
Butler, Ruth and Hester Parr. Introduction ographers, vol. 18, no. 1 (1993): 63–85.
One of the places on the map is of special interest to me. It is the “Town of to Mind and Body Spaces: Geographies of
Crankly,” situated on “Radical Island.” The word, which is derived from the Illness, Impairment and Disability. Edited Imrie, Rob. Disability and the City. Interna-
German word “krank” (Engl.: ill, sick), was used at the time for “odd or eccentric by Ruth Butler and Hester Parr, 1–25. Lon- tional Perspectives. London: Paul Chapman
don: Routledge, 1999. Publishing, 1996.
persons,” according to Susan Schweik, a derogatory term that was applied to
anarchists, freethinkers, and proponents of free love. On this map, I associate Cresswell, Tim. “The Peninsular of Sub- Labor k3000 and Peter Spillmann. “Der
the way it is used in a re-signifying manner—in the sense of claiming a degrading merged Hope: Ben Reitman’s Social Geog- kartografische Blick versus Strategien des
raphy.” Geoforum, vol. 29, no. 2 (May Mapping.” In Grenzregime. Diskurse, Prak-
discourse: claiming the “crank” (the ill, the feigning ill, the one who begs, 1998): 207–216. tiken, Institutionen in Europa. Edited by
and the collapse of the distinction between the three). Opacity and the “right Sabine Hess and Bernd Kasparek, 281–287.
to not be understood.” Blurring the borders and demarcation lines—or as Schweik Danbolt, Mathias. “Disruptive Anachro- Hamburg: Assoziation A, 2010.
nisms: Feeling Historical with N.O. Body.”
puts it: “Every space on this map, including ‘Disable Isle’ and ‘Crankly,’ is […] a
In Temporal Drag. Edited by Pauline Lefebvre, Henri. The Production of Space.
venue […] for political organizing toward the dissolution of out-casting.”30 Boudry and Renate Lorenz, 1982–1990. Translated by Donald Nicholson Smith
Osterfildern: Hatje Cantz, 2011. [First published in French in 1974]. Oxford:
Blackwell, 1991.
Davis, Lennard J. Enforcing Normalcy. Dis-
ability, Deafness, and the Body. London: Linton, Simi. Claiming Disability Knowledge
Verso, 1995. and Identity. New York: New York University
Press, 1998.
Egermann, Eva and Moira Hille. Beautifica-
tion. Accessed March 1, 2013. Model House–Mapping Transcultural Mod-
http://www.transculturalmodernism.org. ernisms. Accessed March 1, 2013.
http://www.transculturalmodernism.org.
Ette, Ottmar. “Von Inseln, Grenzen und Ve-
ktoren. Versuch über die fraktale Inselwelt Schweik, Susan. The Ugly Laws. Disability
der Karibik.” In Grenzen der Macht – Macht in Public. New York: New York University
der Grenzen. Lateinamerika im globalen Press, 2009.
Kontext. Edited by Marianne Braig, Ottmar
Ette, Dieter Ingenschay, and Günther Mai-
hold, 135–180. Frankfurt/Main: Vervuert,
2005.

29 Homi K. Bhabha, The Location of Culture

(New York: Routledge, 1994), 19.
30 Schweik, The Ugly Laws, 73.
 Susan Schweik and Eva Egermann in Conversation 231

Searching for
I got polio when I was three years old. I have two different-sized legs
[raises pants leg] and a limp. I am disabled.
Being disabled is a strike against you when you look for work. I ran into
trouble when I decided to become an actress…

the International
Actually there is a long line of disabled performers—beggars, fools,
freaks in a carnival sideshow—they all earned their living by
performing.
But the excitement of the performance was in the hump on the back,
the withered arm, the scarred face.

Deformed Nation
I am not a performing cripple. I’m limited on the stage by my limp. But if
I concentrate really hard I can sometimes walk without a limp. [demon-
strates walking and then does a somersault]
Did you notice? Did you notice my limp? [begins signing] But why

Or “Too Loud
should I hide it. I am disabled… The cripples are coming out of hiding!
I applied to a theater school in New York City. They refused to admit me
because of my limp. They said, ‘You could train to be a director … have
you ever considered costuming? … We need some help in the office.’
Actually I don’t blame them. If they had allowed me to perform they

in Its Patterns”
might have been breaking the law. It’s true—there is a law in some cities
of the United States today, which reads:
‘No person who is deformed or mutilated in such a manner so as to be a
disgusting object shall be allowed to display themselves to public view.’

Susan Schweik and Eva Egermann in Conversation —Passage from a monologue by the American performer Victoria Ann
Lewis as part of the US feminist theater collective Lilith, during a Europe-
an tour in 1980)1

Eva Egermann: As part of our research for the Model House project, we are
interested in influences and appropriations of architectural modernity, the
relationships and actors involved in the realization of planning processes.
The notion of the habitat indicates culturally defined dwelling practices. We
are looking at conditions and different agencies of actors whose contributions
were often underrepresented, e.g., workers whose labor made architecture
and urban planning materially possible, figurations and living beings whose
forms of production and supposed way of life became productive ideals in
certain contexts, and city-makers who adapted modernist urban spaces to
their needs through dwelling, working, or straying practices.

The character of modernist ideas is often described as “ableist,” as suggested

by its concept of functionality based on assumed “sameness” or “normality.”

1 Susan Schweik, The Ugly Laws: Disability

in Public (New York: New York University
Press, 2009), 13.
232 Searching for the International Deformed Nation Susan Schweik and Eva Egermann in Conversation 233

But different bodies and deviations—as well as appropriations and resistances— terrible mistake, offering them yet again no loophole. In the end, what
have also acted as a countercurrent to dominant normative orders. Your interests me most is the loophole in the knot of disability.
book The Ugly Laws. Disability in Public examines bodily norms in the public
sphere, architecture, and culture much earlier. Did disabled people and people EE: In 1911, Chicago ratified the Ugly Law being introduced in many American
with physical differences in history solely serve as a kind of negative definition western and mid-western cities. It included the quote by Victoria Ann Lewis
to modernist ideals, and to what extent did “crip” subjects have agency within above. The Ugly Laws: Disability in Public is an evocative examination of disability
transcultural modernism? norms in the public sphere, municipal law, and culture by way of analyzing the
phenomenon of the Ugly Law (or unsightly beggar ordinance) that prohibited
Susan Schweik: As you can tell, I like stories and examples better than diverse abject groups from appearing in public space and public view.
generalities. Down on the streets of the orderly modern city, beneath the
“logic of the grid” (in James Scott’s great phrase), people lived their lives Many authors emphasize the conjunction of disability and poverty. Rosemarie
and found their ways, developed their—I love your words—dwelling, Garland-Thomson notes that the most enduring form of segregation for dis-
working, and straying practices. My favorite guy Arthur Franklin Fuller, abled people has always been economic and that “the history of begging is
the great disability street historian, offers numerous examples (he went virtually synonymous with the history of disability.”2 How did this law enforce
around the country collecting stories of agency as well as of oppression this and criminalize people’s lives?
from fellow “unsightly beggars”). For instance, here’s his account of his
conversation with a man named Kaase in Trinidad, Colorado about how SuS: Let me take one example I didn’t have space to include in The Ugly
Kaase negotiates the grid of the city’s modern built environment, legal Laws, except for a brief reference in the chapter on “mendicant literature”
landscape, and bureaucracy: (my favorite chapter). That chapter was the place where I tried hardest
to trace a history of agency and protest on the part of the subjects of the
He was partially reclined in a wheelchair. He could not walk, wash, or unsightly beggar ordinances. The “crip” contestations there (as we might
dress himself. He showed lack of care. His hair was gnarled and face now call them, following Robert McRuer) take more conventionally and
unshaven. His hands and limbs and back were twisted. His affliction visibly political and activist forms than elsewhere in the book, where the
had been rheumatism, followed by arthritis deformans. He could sit up, harder, messier, stranger truths of the situation dominate: that is, that in
had good eyes, a fair education … “I see you sell gum, laces, novels, and general it didn’t take arrest under the law to cripple a “cripple.” Was it
pencils. Do you have any trouble getting to work as you travel from hard for people to fight back against it, hard for people not to take it in,
place to place?” “More every year. Cripples are not supposed to have hard for people whether or not they ran directly afoul of a cop and a
anything else to do but run around getting permits,” he returned. “Do judge, just plain hard for people? Yes.
you ever have people ask you why you don’t give it up and enter some
of the places provided for people such as you?” I asked. “Yes, I get The example I’ll offer here is a story of a woman—as Gayatri Spivak famous-
that every once in a while. It makes me wild, too. They cannot know ly put it, within her “effaced itinerary [...] the track of sexual difference is
what they are talking about or else are heartless.” doubly effaced.” Disabled writer Kitty Smith wrote a mendicant autobio-
graphy, Yours Truly Kitty Smith, that reduplicated those effacements.
Then there are several pages of transcription of Kaase’s testimony about Born “of poor parents” in 1882 in Chicago, at the heart of the Ugly Law,
abusive and dangerous conditions in almshouses and county hospitals Smith lost her arms as a child when they were burned against a hot
and inmates’ unsuccessful struggles to stop them. Fuller’s interpretation stove so badly they had to be amputated. Smith’s alcoholic father was
rounds it off: “So, kind reader, you see the purpose of modern legislation charged with having deliberately held her against the stove, and she was
is to fix it so there is no technicality, no loophole, no chance for an un- removed from the home by Children’s Aid officials. We know this from
fortunate [...] The Law is ready to refer you to the places provided—to the surrounding documents, not from her. In her “little history,” illustrated
the charities and the poor house or county hospital.” He concludes by with photographs (“The position of my feet when I write”; “These two
quoting an English friend: “If this thing is not lawful, it is certainly AW-
FUL, which makes an ’ELL OF A DIFFERENCE.” Telling their stories, pass-
2 Rosemarie Garland Thomson, Extraordi-
ing them on, Fuller and Kaase are making their own kind of difference— nary Bodies (New York: Columbia Universi-
to see them as entirely subsumed by modernist ideology is, I think, a ty Press, 1996).
234 Searching for the International Deformed Nation Susan Schweik and Eva Egermann in Conversation 235

views show how I handle a saw. I can saw a board in two almost as rapidly Hence it seems no coincidence that during the heyday of the City Beautiful
as others can with their hands”), Smith exposed herself to public view planning movement the Ugly Laws were introduced, as you emphasized.
“to aid myself in securing a modest and humble living,” asking people to “Deformed” people were made to “embody what was wrong with the city, all
buy the book to support her. In Spivak’s landmark essay on the subal- that stood in the way of its greatness, its efficiency, its health, or its visual
tern, “speech” at its most urgent is bodily, nonverbal, the story told by a appeal,” and they would have to be managed as much as architecture and
woman’s menstrual period: “Bhuvanesari attempted to ‘speak,’” Spivak street layout.3 Chicago, which became a model of modern city planning and
writes, “by turning her [menstruating] body into a text of woman/writing.” an important example of the era of the City Beautiful, also became an impor-
So, too, the exposed bodies of the subjects of the Ugly Law “spoke,” and tant site for the Ugly Laws, labor unrest, and reformist progressive scrutiny.
Smith presented her photograph (“The position of my feet when I write”), The idea of the ideal city was one without “unsightly,” disabled beggars and
turning herself into text: woman/cripple/writing. But like Spivak’s famous other deviants on the street.
Bhuvanesari’s, Smith’s writing took place under circumstances that ren-
dered it largely illegible. The sensational narrative of the stove-burning “Ugliness and beauty.” Modernity as controlled appearance and “Ugly ordi-
and paternal abuse is—can be—neither confirmed nor denied by this au- nances epitomized how modern bodies were and must be seen as they en-
tobiography, which exhibits so much else. Like the sati stories about gaged with city spaces.”4 The Ugly Laws targeted something “that appeared
which Spivak writes, Smith’s story of her burning is choked by two sen- vulgar, dysfunctional, and too loud in its patterns,” too loud in its patterns—
tences that get imposed upon her by a history of repression. Between an expression that I especially like.5 What are the genealogies of contempo-
“benefactors are saving poor girls from poor men” and “I am my father’s rary body politics and aesthetic discourses?
daughter” lies an unwritten narrative. I did my best in the chapter on the
autobiographies of disabled street people to show how much they had to SuS: Let me offer one recent example of the way the story of this anti-
say about their situation, but Kitty Smith’s story shows the ways in which quated law resonates with today’s examples of body politics and their
Spivak was right: the unsightly beggar cannot speak. Within my book, aesthetic components. I have been thinking in the last year about the re-
the moment I think that most clearly illustrates how profoundly, how per- lation between “disability” and “obesity.” Here is a news article from the
vasively, and how subtly the Ugly Law ruled the land for disabled people, San Francisco Chronicle from April 16, 1910. I found out about it after I
whether it was enforced or not, is a citation from another woman’s auto- finished The Ugly Laws book.
biography: deaf, working class writer Pauline Leader’s And No Birds Sing.
I’m glad to mention this book, because I think it deserves a place in dis- Detective Tim Riordan made the biggest capture in police annals yes-
ability studies curricula. Leader describes how her mother would make terday. It was Jolly Trixie, otherwise known as Miss Kitty Plunkett, who
up stories telling her “of the policeman who said that I must not be allowed tips the scales at a disputed 625 pounds, whose hips measure 92
out.” She knows the stories are made up, but still, she says, “They enter inches, bust 84 inches, and calf 36 inches. She was arrested for alleg-
me.” How did this law work? It entered people. Of course, as Leader’s writing edly violating the Penal Code, and is accused of being deformed and
shows, people also found exit routes. exhibiting her deformity [...] “This lady does not appear deformed to
me,” said Judge Shortall [...] Two physicians testified that Miss Plun-
EE: Disease, crime, and pollution were addressed at that time through the kett was perfectly symmetrical and was by no means deformed. “Obe-
concept of “beautification.” The City Beautiful Movement was a planning sity is not deformity,” said one of the medical heights sententiously.
movement in North America from 1893–1929. The idea of “beautification” “Thank heaven for that,” muttered Detective John Collins [...] “The
was influenced by the neo-classical style of the École des Beaux Arts, which case will be continued for advisement,” said Judge Shortall. ”I am far
emphasized monumental architecture, large avenues, and parks. The archi- from convinced that this lady is anything but charming.”
tectural planning of Chicago as the “ideal,” “alabaster,” and “White City” was
developed. The beautification of a city can also be understood as an educa- Kitty Plunkett, also known as Jolly Trixie, was a nationally known American
tional institution; it was not intended to bring about a better life for the poorer “Fat Lady” on the sideshow circuit. (She’s been written about in Sharon
classes, but rather to teach moral and civic values and to increase the pro- Mazer’s essay in the Bodies Out of Bounds: Fatness and Transgression an-
ductivity of the urban economy.
3 Schweik, The Ugly Laws, 69. 5 Ibid., 88.
4 Ibid., 86.
236 Searching for the International Deformed Nation Susan Schweik and Eva Egermann in Conversation 237

thology published in 2001). Her day in court gives us a clear set of terms others—was so hard to see. It’s as if, in very real ways, where appearance
divided by a supposedly firm line: symmetry and charm on the one hand, norms and the maintenance of “bodies of distinction” are concerned, we
deformity and disgust on the other. Unbeknownst to Kitty Plunkett, she had continue to waver in the space between disgust and charm, deformity
landed at the epicenter of the Ugly Law (San Francisco’s was the first exam- and symmetry; we all live in continuance, under advisement. As I wrote
ple of the city ordinance that swept the United States in the nineteenth and recently, we need to seek an (international) DEFORMED NATION—in the
early twentieth century). As Kitty Plunkett’s case illustrates, the law was original sense of the word deformed: from the medieval Latin “dis-forma,”
one way of punishing women whose appearance violated aesthetic norms “of diverse forms.” Let’s recognize honestly and value systematically and
of femininity. What’s most striking to me about the news story here is that creatively the global, deformed nation and the dis-formed people that
the judge “continued” Kitty Plunkett’s case “under advisement.” Today the we are.
Ugly Law seems almost quaint in its extremity of oppression. But discrimi-
nation—casual and legalized—against people with anomalous bodies in our EE: A librarian from a Chicago archive treats the Ugly Law as an urban legend.
post-Ugly era is still remarkably widespread. Although his archive contains the Ugly Law documents and traces, when
approached he says quite confidently that the ordinance is a myth. How would
I recently testified about the uses of the Ugly Law against people labeled you explain that reaction?
“obese” at a hearing of the California Fair Employment and Housing
Commission, which is considering amending its disability regulations in SuS: Good question! Let me answer it in the manner of so many “unsightly
ways that will have a deep impact on the civil rights of fat, disabled peo- beggars”: sidelong and kind of deviously. Aside perhaps from civic pride,
ple in California—and eventually elsewhere if others follow California’s my first thought is that that librarian’s repudiation has something to do
lead. The question at hand was whether “obese” people should now be with the way in which the idea of fakery haunts the history of the law at
required to prove an underlying medical/ physiological cause for their every turn. For the story of the “fake cripple,” there has to be a mock ar-
weight-related impairment in order to be covered under the FEHC’s man- chive. An urban legend about that legendary urban con. It can’t be the
date to protect people against disability discrimination. No other individ- stuff of a serious historical record. It’s got to be fake all the way down.
uals identified as disabled have had to prove an underlying cause in order After all, the obscure place where the real collides with the fake is the
to be protected; evidence of impairment, not of approved forms of Ugly Law’s turf.
causality, has been sufficient. The point is not that “obese” people are
“disabled”; the point is that people disabled by weight shouldn’t be de- In a way, though he set himself up as objecting to the false stories of the
nied rights—for instance, the subject of our discussion here, the right to masses, that librarian was simply offering up one more set piece from US
the city, access, accommodation—because of stigma, because of judg- popular culture. The dynamics of the Ugly Law—the identification, repu-
mental assumptions about the reasons for weight gain.6 (It’s important to diation, abjection, exclusion, arrest, punishment, and incarceration of
note that we know very little, scientifically, about what causes greater unsightly beggars—become the stuff of twentieth century American
weight—but that too isn’t the point). The wonderful lawyers spearheading popular story precisely when faking is at stake.
the attempt to block the FEHC’s proposed change make the key point
that the extra burden of proof that the commission would demand would For instance, what faint traces I found of the Ugly Law in fictionalized
disproportionately affect women and lesbians, because those groups memory showed up only in pulp fiction and popular films that depicted
statistically have high rates of “obesity”—and I would add poor people the Doctor’s and the other “faker bars” I described in the book where
into the mix. “for-real” and pretend disabled people pooled their begging profits. That
makes sense, because the sheer ugliness of the Ugly Law could simulta-
The confusion at this hearing on this question was striking. For instance, neously reveal itself in lowlife settings and veil itself in plots of fraud
there was a risk that the commission’s “obesity exclusion” might be
backed by some fat rights activists worried (understandably) about an
absolute equation between obesity and disability—even though the 6 Disabled by weight through social exclu- equal level with others due to physical and
exclusion might mean, say, that a child whose weight prevented access sion. The DPI (Disabled Peoples’ Interna- social barriers.” Dan Goodley, Disability
tional) defines disability as “the loss or Studies: An Interdisciplinary Introduction
to a local elementary school might be denied accommodation. The simple limitation of opportunities to take part in (London: SAGE Publications, 2011), 8.
truth—that fat disabled people might be denied protection afforded to the normal life of the community on an
238 Searching for the International Deformed Nation Susan Schweik and Eva Egermann in Conversation 239

exposed and foiled. In these fictions, as in Charity Organization Society opened up a potential space of self-consciousness regarding celluloid
discourse, fakery justified the unsightly beggar ordinances or other disability.
forms of police harassment and control.
But that’s the grand height of representation of disability fakery. The low
By the way, though, in pulp stories about “fake cripple” beggars the plot story is all around and much cruder. With all this faker-begging going on
unfolded more unevenly; there are lots of gaps and twists. My favorite is for decades, why wouldn’t the Chicago librarian think the Ugly Law was
a story called Street of the Forgotten Men by George Kibbe Turner (1922), all made up?
made into a marvelously corny silent film by Herbert Brenon, starring the
hunk love interest Percy Marmont, in 1925. Brenon’s The Street of Forgotten EE: In the history of “getting Ugly” in public space, different subjects inter-
Men self-referentially thematized the special effects of disability impos- twine. You describe how within the texts of the Ugly Laws the language of freak
ture—but it didn’t do that, finally, to call filmic sham crippling into question. and beggar, “street and stage,” intersect. Freaks and freak shows provoked
The film’s reviews by critics all emphasized one feature: how “real” it all the question of “human and/or animal” (“the human-faced donkey, the three-
“seemed.” Even post-production, the film provoked border skirmishes legged rooster, and the deformed hen and the leopard girl”).7 Furthermore,
between real and fake. In a news story a year after its release, “Speakeasy the fear of the unsightly beggar emerged concurrently with the fear of the
Equips Beggar as Cripple: ‘One-Armed Soldier’ Reveals Scheme When tramp, and resistance to the execution by police officers of the Ugly Laws
Detectives Find an Arm Under Bandages,” police interviewed by the re- was taking place through the formation of ugly crowds on behalf of poor
porter attributed the resurgence of the “cripple factory” where disrepu- people. Immigration screeners spotted unsightly beggars, and the Ugly
table people costumed themselves as fake deserving disabled people to Laws in practice functioned “to sort people on the streets by race as well as
the inspiration of Brenon’s The Street of Forgotten Men, and another disability.”8 What are further intersections of subjecthood and affiliate rela-
begging crackdown on the New York City streets ensued—one that, as tions in the context of the law’s meaning?
usual, rounded up for-reals with impersonators. The police in this case
blamed actor Lon Chaney, whom they mistakenly thought played Street’s SuS: There are so many intersections and—I like your phrase—“affiliate
faker, for giving beggars ideas, in a triumph of fetishism of this sort: “I relations.” I touched on the conjunction of obesity and disability already.
know it is a fake cripple influenced by Percy Marmont playing a faker Here’s another example, a linkage I only barely touched on in the book, a
playing a real cripple, but even so it is the Hunchback of Notre Dame.” connection between the issues I explored there and transgender body
politics (and also the politics of war) that centers in the word “maimed,”
Making and unmaking quasi-disability was Lon Chaney’s specialty. The one of the terms of the Ugly Law (“No person who is diseased, maimed”).
New York policemen who thought Chaney played the faker in Street of “Maimed” is linked etymologically to the word “mayhem.” We tend now
Forgotten Men may have been confusing that film with yet another to think of mayhem as chaos or havoc (I’m fond of the definition in Web-
Chaney story of disability imposture, The Miracle Man (1919). That movie ster’s Third, which glosses “mayhem” as “needless or willful damage, as
was based on Frank Packard’s 1914 The Miracle Man, another text in in literary criticism or editorial activity,” an explanation that links maim-
which pulp fiction met the Ugly Law. The novel concerns an unsightly ing with transgressions of writing). But “mayhem,” as Nikki Sullivan has
beggar who involves himself in a complex scheme to bilk visitors to a pointed out, emerged first in early modern England as the specific crimi-
faith healer, a con in which he fakes first disability and then healing. In nal act of evading military service by mutilating oneself. English mayhem
the film this scene became a legendary set piece; Paramount preserved statutes sought to deter and punish those who might deliberately cut off
it as Chaney’s greatest acting moment, one duplicated later in Man of a a hand or toe or any body part necessary for waging warfare; the crime
Thousand Faces when Jimmy Cagney played Lon Chaney playing an was a capital offense.
imposter playing a healing cripple. Chaney’s sham cripple roles called
for him to shift repeatedly before the eyes from normate to deformed In recent years these statutes have been cited primarily in discussions of
or maimed and back again, in ways potentially as illuminating (though not whether doctors might be charged with mayhem for doing transsexual
any less problematic) for Disability Studies as his famous Hunchback of surgeries. The king “had a law enacted,” Harry Benjamin commented in
Notre Dame. In the figure of Quasimodo, who is proven “real” by contrast
with the film’s imposter beggars, Hunchback mystified and essentialized
impairment; but Miracle Man, at least until its ending, demystified and 7 Schweik, The Ugly Laws, 98. 8 Ibid., 167.
240 Searching for the International Deformed Nation Susan Schweik and Eva Egermann in Conversation 241

his landmark The Transsexual Phenomenon, “that forbade depriving a Literature

soldier of any part … necessary for his defense [...] To visualize the male Benjamin, Harry. The Transsexual Phenom- Scott, James. Seeing Like a State. New
genitalia in this category is difficult.”9 Difficult, but not impossible, for as enon. New York: Julian, 1966. Haven: Yale University Press, 1998.
Sullivan explains, the amputation of any “healthy” body part constitutes
Fuller, Arthur Franklin. Fifty Thousand Miles Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty. “Can the
a kind of symbolic decapitation of the king, a serious threat to “the body Back-Ridden. Fort Worth, Texas: Anchor, Subaltern Speak?” In Colonial Discourse
politic and its members, one which affects confusion, disorder, disability, 1915. and Post-Colonial Theory: A Reader. Edited
the loss of integrity, the violent dismembering of bodies of flesh, bodies by Patrick Williams and Laura Chrisman,
Garland-Thomson, Rosemarie. Extraordi- 66–111. New York: Columbia University
of knowledge, and social bodies.”10 This symbolic dismembering links
nary Bodies. New York: Columbia Universi- Press, 1993.
the (sham) cripple and the trans. ty Press, 1996.
Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty. A Critique of
Crimes of literal, statutory mayhem crop up now and then in the discourse Goodley, Dan. Disability Studies. An Inter- Postcolonial Reason: Toward a History of
disciplinary Introduction. London: SAGE the Vanishing Present. Cambridge, MA:
of the unsightly beggar, particularly when the stories concern other Publications, 2011. Harvard University Press, 1999.
countries than the United States—Italian children injured by sinister padrones
in order to increase their begging capital, the stock manufactured cripples Imrie, Rob. Disability and the City. Interna- Sullivan, Nikki. “Integrity, Mayhem, and
tional Perspectives. London: Paul Chap- the Question of Self-Demand Amputa-
of India or China, etc. Far more common in the culture of the Ugly Law, man Publishing, 1996. tion.” Continuum: Journal of Media and
however, is that state of near-mayhem we find in those faker bars that Culture Studies, no. 19:3 (2005): 325–333.
occupied so much space in my book. Next to an imposter, a for-real Leader, Pauline. And No Birds Sing. New
York: Vanguard Press, 1931. Wilson, William H. The City Beautiful
maimed person becomes the very model of bodily integrity. Imposters
Movement. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Uni-
dwelled in the realm of twice-maimed maiming, of maiming on the Schweik, Susan. The Ugly Laws. Disability versity, 1989.
verge of mayhem. The havoc they created is sufficient to delight a literary in Public. New York: New York University
critic. But we have to remember, too, that disabled people, like trans Press, 2009.

people, bore the brunt of the backlash against mayhem.

9 Harry Benjamin, The Transsexual Phenom- 10 Ibid., 229–30.

enon (New York: Julian, 1966), 94.
Epilogue
 Gabu Heindl 245

So Many
The young Alexander conquered India.
/ Was he alone? / Caesar beat the Gauls.
Did he not even have a cook with him?
—Bertolt Brecht

Reports, So This is a selection of questions Bertolt Brecht poses in his 1935 poem “Ques-
tions from a worker who reads.” After posing a number of productively naïve
questions, he concludes the poem with: “So many reports. / So many

Many Questions
questions.”1

Brecht’s “Questions from a worker who reads” are about colonization and he-
gemonic historical narratives. The questions repeatedly contemplate actors

For Instance:
who have remained unnamed (like the cook), but by being ostentatiously sin-
gled out as individuals, they suddenly appear out of place. In today’s research
landscape, this Brechtian style critique is quite familiar. Nonetheless: at least
in the field of architecture, people still snicker when (to use an example
whose significance will soon be apparent), for instance, the notoriously naïve

Is There Such
detective Columbo, in an episode (“Blueprint for Murder,” 1972) of the TV series
of the same name, asks a cocky architect “Hey sir, did you build that?” gesturing
at the presentation model of the building project. Columbo’s friendly question
“only” refers to the model, prompting the architect to reply: “No, one of my

a Thing as
staff did.” Had the architect believed Columbo had meant the building rather
than the model, he certainly would have proudly answered: “Yes.”
What may appear a joke in a smaller fictional context is no joke in the greater
scheme of reality. To this day, star and signature architecture à la Frank Gehry
renders those who collaborate with architects invisible, making it seem as if

Postcolonial
they have no name or play no part in the discourses surrounding architecture
or the production of cities and spaces. It is not uncommon to hear that the
star architect not only “built” the Guggenheim Museum, but he also put the
city of Bilbao itself (back) on the map. Was he alone?

Critical Planning? “Who or what builds a city or a city district?” Like Brecht, the authors of the
interdisciplinary research project Model House pose this question on the first
page of their web cartography http://www.transculturalmodernism.org. The
project and the question deal with urban planning and architecture during
Gabu Heindl the time of decolonization in the 1950s and 1960s in North Africa, Israel, India,
and China. The answer is not “one architect,” but a multitude of human and
nonhuman actors, many of whom have been left out of classical architecture
history: women, political constellations, nonhuman actors, materials, etc. The

1 Bertolt Brecht, “Questions from a worker Michael Hamburger (New York: Routledge,
who reads [Fragen eines lesenden Arbeit- 1979), 252.
ers] (1935),” in Poems 1913–1956, trans.
246 So Many Reports, So Many Questions Gabu Heindl 247

program here is the relativization and examination of hegemonic historical the CIAM X architects: in these naturally evolving informal structures they
narratives as well as the subjectification and equal recognition of actors and saw a possibility for architecture to develop a new language; they hoped the
resistance movements: “The result of this constellation is a polylogical and vernacular architecture of colonized cultures would offer new input: “This
multiperspectival narration by a number of speakers.”2 It’s not about creating work has allowed for a new architectural language to develop that had initial-
a “grand” historical and linear narrative, but about bringing together different ly been created by the structures of inhabitation.”3 Maintaining a close prox-
histories, found objects, intertextualities, empirical detail studies, and narratives imity to power and to the market—these architectural perspectives have re-
on the same map, which raises many new questions; some I will address in mained in place—from the era of colonialism and decolonization until today.
the following. So many reports, so many questions. As the colonies began to crumble, the new sensibility for local contexts made
sure Western architects continued to have access to the market. Their pur-
ported knowledge about specific ways of life was used to justify racialized
Habitat Chart: Why Not Charter? Why a Map and Not a boundaries as well as the construction of segregated neighborhoods and
Master Plan? class-based gated communities.

Let’s start with form. Designing a master plan or postulating a new charter To add a further critique to the critique, the (self-)criticality of postcolonial
would go against the grain of the critical approach of a postcolonial endeavor. studies also comes into play here: within an academic context, postcolonial
Using cartography as a form of notation, Model House maps the relations studies may be emancipating and sensitizing, e.g. in light of democratization
among the transformations of the afore mentioned (post)colonial spaces at a processes, but they are not part of a radical, de-colonial liberation movement.
time when architectural discourse is largely concerned with questioning the While we may not share the de-colonial impetus to separate the two, we are
dictates of modernity and countering universalizing claims by taking a closer conscious of the fact that empirical and archive-based research perpetuates
look at regionalism, local contexts, culture or climate. Part of the project’s certain colonial structures: for example, the fact that European researchers
comprehensive online database is the “Habitat Chart,” which consists of a use European research funds to do (self-)critical research on the history, spac-
cartography of discourses, projects and projections surrounding postcolonial es, and discourses of colonization and the potentials of decolonization, to
urban planning and its habitat concepts—modern concepts that change ac- conduct “field studies,” which, due to the practical research conditions, are of-
cording to local and political contexts. ten too short and constrained by language and translation difficulties. Often,
this does not allow for what Anthony King defines as an important premise for
At the time the “Athens Charter” was passed in 1933, it presented a universal Postcolonial Studies: “knowledge of the local pre-colonial society, knowledge
set of guidelines for urban planning under the assumption of worldwide uni- of the colonizer’s society at home, and that of the colonized society.”4
versal and equal conditions. With regard to new questions of the habitat and
a growing critique on modern urbanism the Congrès International d’Architec- When addressing the issue of planning such (self-)criticality can also be em-
ture Moderne, CIAM IX in 1953 and CIAM X in 1956 pursued the idea to draft ployed to conceive of a more substantial notion of democracy within plan-
another Charter: the “Charter of Habitat,” an undertaking which, however, ning, particularly since “social sustainability” now plays such a tricky key role
never came to fruition due to the strongly contrasting positions within the within planning discourse. It is again particularly within the context of post-
group, which also ultimately led CIAM to disband in 1959. The seminal act of colonial architecture, that a certain type of discourse reveals itself so clearly.
creating another charter would have meant laying a foundation not everyone To bring in an example: for nearly ten years now, the university project “SARCH”
was willing to build upon. With historical distance, the Model House project’s (Social Sustainable Architecture) has been building “necessary communal
“Habitat Chart” does not attempt to make up for the charter that was never facilities in squatter settlements in developing countries,” and the homepage
written but instead seeks to map out the circumstances and discourses that
made the charter impossible and to offer a set of guidelines for understand-
2 Fahim Amir, Eva Egermann, Moira Hille, (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1968). Quoted
ing the relationships and backgrounds of existing structures, employing post-
Johannes Köck, Jakob Krameritsch, Chris- in: “Dwellers,” http://www.transcultural-
colonial and postfundamentalist critique in the process. Critique of the critique tian Kravagna, Christina Linortner, Marion modernism.org. Accounted May 1, 2013.
is inevitable in this context, seeing as some positions that sought to critique von Osten, and Peter Spillmann (2012): 4 See Jean-Louis Cohen, “Architectural His-
modernity did so on the basis of naturalizing and nostalgic notions of culture “Who or what builds a city or a city district?”. tory and the Colonial Question: Casablan-
http://www.transculturalmodernism.org. ca, Algiers and Beyond,” Architectural His-
(culturalization) derived from colonial observations. The informal ways in Accounted May 1, 2013. tory, no. 49 (2006): 349–68.
which non-expert inhabitants utilized and defined their living spaces inspired 3 Alison Smithson, ed., Team 10 Primer
248 So Many Reports, So Many Questions Gabu Heindl 249

informs us that “European students” and the “local population” are working And yet it would also be too simplistic to claim architects are “merely” part of
together on the projects. Within one semester, architecture students learn the system, or henchmen of those who commissioned the architect in the first
about the needs of people in “developing countries” or the architectural mani- place. What’s more: often times the commissioners are not so easily identifiable.
festation of the “necessary” development. (The project defines itself as “Vienna’s In the reception of architecture in which power relations are obscured and the
contribution to the development goals established in the UN Millennium decision-making processes untransparent, planners come in handy in terms
Declaration: eradicating poverty, encouraging sustainability and establishing of giving a “face” to the design that is seen as exerting and representing dom-
universal primary education.”5 “Knowledge” of the “users’” ways of life and ination. Making architects the only ones accountable for the built form affirms
needs is an attitude imminent within the discipline of architecture. Even in a concept of absolute, hierarchical authorship (as if the form-building “masters”
cases where planners are more familiar with the situation and the predomi- were the only ones responsible for built environments) that also fails to address
nant language surrounding their project, there are still translation difficulties power structures, capital relations, decision processes.
or misconceptions concerning users and inhabitants, who are often neither
listened to nor understood, despite a shared language. These situations are The anti-colonial resistance of the bidonvilles dwellers, the protests against the
based on an understanding of the planning process that divides it into plan- construction of Chandigarh as well as against urban planning based on segre-
ners with “knowledge” and users with “needs.” By contrast, within the context gation form the basis for yet another chart of Model House: “Dwellers,” which
of democratic participation in planning, democratization consists of “democ- maps different forms of resistance practiced by the dwellers, such as self-building,
racy education” that takes place in these schools in which tools are devel- rebuilding, repurposing, self-organizing. It also includes reports of mosquitoes
oped for “interfering” in elitist planning practices or of the opportunity to for- and malaria, of cows eating the plants of Chandigarh’s landscaping, of donkeys
mulate demands and debate planning and construction budgets in public disrupting construction. It talks about how the dwellers of the North African
forums (such as the participatory budgeting in Rio Grande do Sul and Porto bidonvilles were used by Candilis-Josic-Woods as living “research objects” with
Alegre).6 All of these are themes currently, once again, being discussed within which to study everyday urban life, and later by CIAM X architects who observed
the field of critical architecture in the “West.”7 local routines and appropriations for their modernist plans of Casablanca
(Carrières Centrales, Cité Verticale/Horizontale, 1952). These reports also lead
to more questions: how problematic is a strategy of appeasement that continues
Is Architecture Fundamentally Undemocratic? to obscure the West’s/modernity’s unbroken dominance? How generalizable or
resistant are local contexts? To what extent is modernity renewable and adapt-
The above-mentioned points of critique prompt us to contemplate who com- able? How capable of appropriation are city districts that were planned to include
missions architecture. Which political structure makes which design possible? appropriation processes?10 How dominant is architecture?
Why does Nehru commission Le Corbusier to plan a top-down master plan for
Chandigarh, as the symbol of a new democratic India, in 1947? Because (only) Is Architecture not Fundamentally Colonizing?
Nehru wants it that way? Who invited him? Who pays for it (both figuratively
and literally)? What is ordered? Who builds the walls? Model House doesn’t Architecture is an art form that cannot be eluded,11 as Margarete Schütte-
answer all these questions—we do however learn, among other things, about Lihotzky, a modern architect who plays an important role in the Model House
the architect Minnette De Silva, who has thus far not been considered part of
the architectural history of Chandigarh,8 about the transcultural influences or, 5 http://sarch.twoday.net. Accessed May 1, 2013. http://www.trans-
about different actors and debates in South Asian modernity. 6 Bernhard Leubolt, Staat als Gemeinwesen. culturalmodernism.org.
Das Partizipative Budget in Rio Grande do Sul 10 For more on the appropriation of the “ap-
und Porto Alegre (Vienna: LIT Verlag, 2006). propriated” housing settlement, e.g., the
Back to the “face” of the tabula rasa planning of Chandigarh: Le Corbusier. 7 Gabu Heindl, “Solidarity. How do demo- Cité Verticale, see Marion von Osten, “Ar-
The notion that one architect is given credit for the planning of an entire city cratic spaces come into existence?” Lec- chitecture Without Architects—Another
ture series curated for the Österreichische Anarchist Approach,” e- flux, no. 6 (May
is not only diametrically opposed to a radical understanding of democracy; it Gesellschaft für Architektur (2011/2012), 2009), http://www.eflux.com.
is also a far cry from any sensitivity for “collective planning.” Also within post- http://www.oegfa.at. 11 From a conversation with Margarete
colonial critique, the image of the “evil” planner emerges—architects who ex- 8 Moira Hille, “Minnette De Silva: A Modern Schütte-Lihotzky. Christina Linortner,
Regionalist Architect,” Accessed May 1 2013. “Bamboo and the Courtyard House: Mar-
ert their power over the design in an authoritarian way. Though such cases
http://www.transculturalmodernism.org. garete Schütte-Lihotzky in China,” http://
exist, ultimately, architects never have absolute power within architecture or 9 Fahim Amir, “Dwellers and Strayers: Multi- www.transculturalmodernism.org.
in urban planning. (Even “the Chandigarh Masterplan had many masters.”)9 species Criminality in Postcolonial Worlds,”
250 So Many Reports, So Many Questions Gabu Heindl 251

project research on China, repeatedly pointed out.12 In this respect architecture Back to the period the research in Model House focuses on: after decolonization,
is dominant. Generally speaking, the architectural history of economic-political “development” discourse took the place of the notion of “occupation.” Both
spaces is a history of power and committed social politics—especially regard- are modernist concepts: the logical step after “occupying” a space imagined
ing mass housing projects.13 In a Gramscian sense, in non-dictatorial forms of to be empty was the modernist idea of “forwards”—progressing towards
government, successful architecture politics are almost automatically “hege- modernity (paternalistically supported by modernity experts from the West).
monic,” because they are based on a consensus that creates and affirms dom- Developing, developers, development: these are all terms that are quite familiar
inance. While architects help to appease and “pacify.” However, the moment within the architecture sector. In the architecture world, the expertocratic
an environment is (re-)designed or “simply” re-modeled, something else is al- project development of a building far outweighs concerns of the inhabitants’
ways destroyed, the space is occupied in another way, becomes “colonized.” use. Since fewer projects are being contracted due to the recent financial
crises, architects gladly take on the role of developers themselves, initiating
What does colonizing mean in this context? Building settlements, creating projects themselves that are geared toward the free market. Part of such
policies to populate certain areas, land grabbing are all concepts that are still initiatives is acquiring government funding for creative or economic projects
familiar parameters of action for (colonizing) city planning, even if they are where they can engage in urban or architectural developments (moderniza-
not defined as such: from the violent exploitation of economically “underde- tion) in “developing countries.” North-South or “West and the rest” relations
veloped” regions to global capitalism profiting from gentrification projects— demonstrate architecture’s inherent paternalism, which persists to this very
“here” as well as “there.” Just as forms of colonialism persist in postcolonial- day. Why have such projects remained so attractive for Western architects
ism, planning practices remain colonial after colonialism—though under new (aside from reasons of wanderlust and exoticism)?
political circumstances. Their discourse remained Eurocentric both within
and following the CIAM X architects’ attempts to create a new sensibility—in
how Michel Écochard dealt with the informal structures of bidonvilles as di- In What Way is Architecture’s Dominance Particularly Obvious
rector of Casablanca’s city planning office, or how, in the early twenty-first in (Post)Colonies?
century, Rem Koolhaas and his students at Harvard, much in the vein of the
CIAM X “learning from” approach, researched precarious market economies Tabula rasa—the realization of the pure form of a new urban master plan—is
in Lagos and described them as “working” economies.14 In the film Koolhaas contingent on the circumstances surrounding property for it to be a possibili-
Houselife about Rem Koolhaas’ Maison à Bordeaux, the filmmakers describe ty at all. Modernist urban planning is contingent on receiving access to vast
how the camera follows the housekeeper Guadalupe Acedo “and other peo- stretches of land. New towns, carpet settlements, “habitat for the greatest
ple who look after the building.” And further: “This experiment presents a new number”—all large-scale, mass residential construction projects—are difficult
way of looking at architecture and broadens the field of its representation.”15 to realize without an incredible amount of land available, even today.
Here, only one of many actors who have a part in (re)producing the space is
given a name and a voice—only because she is beneficial in terms of a new It was not only the land conditions that made colonies “testing grounds”
representation of the architecture. for Fordist mass residential construction projects or for ways to structure
massive urbanization. A cheap workforce enabled these to be carried out
Actors involved in building, rebuilding, using, and cleaning the space remain based on Taylorist organizational structures—at least as long as access to
excluded from the network of representative architecture discourse. At the construction workers and dwellers was ensured.16 With regard to his cri-
same time, also architects are struggling to be recognized for their efforts; tique that such urban planning projects are however all too quickly labeled
while descriptions of new buildings in architecture magazines often cite the “testing grounds,” new ideas or “laboratories” for experimenting with de-
name of the photographer and the commissioner of the project, there is rare- velopment (in the modern linear sense), Jean-Louis Cohen notes that
ly any mention of any other names of people involved in the project. Recently, “evaluations” of such projects are rare.
one of the largest commissioners in Austria responded to the question of why
in their publications architects are not named by saying, “if we did, we would 12 Georges Teyssot, Die Krankheit des Domizils. 14 http://www.koolhaashouselife.com
have to mention everyone’s name involved in a project, even the person who Wohnen und Wohnbau 1800-1930 (Braun- 15 Cf. the film by Harun Farocki, Zum Vergleich
schweig: Vieweg, 1989). (In comparison), Germany/Austria, 2009.
lays the tiles.” (This was meant as a self-explanatory argument, as in: “Nobody
13 Rem Koolhaas and Edgar Cleijne, Lagos: 16 Cohen, “Architectural History and the Co-
could possibly want that!”—so much for acknowledging multiple actors within How it Works (Baden: Lars Müller Publish- lonial Question.”
the building sector.) ers, 2008).
252 So Many Reports, So Many Questions Gabu Heindl 253

The charge that the metaphor “laboratory” is brought into play too hastily ap- and lifestyle habits, also CIAM X architects working on mass housing projects
plies to architecture in general, seeing as it is one of the few disciplines that “for the greatest number” within postcolonial contexts continued to plan in a
does not have its own evaluation process methods, although in reality, proto- fundamentally colonizing and paternalistic manner. The fact that the minimal
types are the only things being built.17 Building large-scale habitats without existence home and the housing settlements in Carrières Centrales ultimately
previous testing and thus performing trials of residential concepts on a one- remained unaffordable for those in need 21 and for whom they had initially
to-one scale does not require too much justification or explanation if it is “Not been built—at least according to the planners—is not only a farce, but inher-
in My Backyard” (NIMBY). The physical distance between the Western plan- ent to the system. Then and now, “social housing” means building for a mid-
ning centers and the colonies not only plays to the NIMBY mentality, it also dle class with civil rights. In “Fortress Europe,” social housing is available for
maximizes the application of a “bird’s eye perspective” for top-down planning those with citizenship rights who can afford “social” housing. While it is un-
or “North-South recommendations” the outcome of which can be seen well certain how many, a great number of sans papiers are “here [in Europe], be-
looking down from an airplane on the way to a vacation. By paying attention cause we were there” (and still are), and yet, (star) architects are still planning
to daily routines and taking them as a foundation for new architecture, e.g., and building for authoritarian regimes or private clientele on the neoliberal
floor plans assigned to specific users, à la “European-style habitat” or Hous- capitalist market. Rhetorically savvy and along deconstructivist critique, Rem
ing for the Arab population, it is once again clear how “identifying a target Koolhaas justifies his involvement in projects in China by claiming that the
group” naturalizes and racializes an entire population—which is also reflected CCTV headquarters in Beijing (Koolhaas’s iconic building for Chinese state
in discussions around social housing for migrants in the West. television) could serve to foster greater democratization. This interest in de-
mocracy seems contradictory when critics rave about the building, emphasiz-
Perhaps the most salient point in terms of dominant forms of urban planning ing how it successfully “dominates” the city’s skyline.
is that (post)colonial planning does not encounter any obstacles through
democratic circumstances. “Zones for experimentation […] were only possi- Speaking of dominance and urbanism: Nezar AlSayyad writes that dominance
ble because local power structures hardly left any room for democratic de- is “not exclusive to colonial cities, but [that] the use and manifestation of
bate.”18 This could also be viewed as an “ideal condition” for realizing any dominance in the colonial context is particularly blunt.”22
(modernist) building project. The inevitable fact that, within a democracy,
there is always the possibility that demands may be raised to participate in Another contemporary example of the “bluntness” of White dominance up to
the project; along with the concern that some would veto the project or that outright cynicism, is the planning discourse surrounding New Orleans. Entire
opposition, objection, resistance could prevent or delay the construction of- “colonial” tracts of urban land were flooded and destroyed by Hurricane Katrina,
ten results in planning being done in secrecy, in untransparent contracting especially black neighborhoods located in stretches that were cheap to build
procedures and in information being provided to the public for the shortest on due to the high risk of flooding. The flood of projects initiated by architects
time legally possible. By speaking of an intervention as being “technically from around the world to develop architectural solutions/answers for rebuild-
necessary,” criticism is staved off and the fact that any intervention, any plan- ing the city ranged from architecture spectacles, to Brad Pitt’s housing initia-
ning is political, and thus contestable, is concealed.19 tive “Make it Right,” to cynical “white-washing” projects. The flood areas that
had previously been home to a mostly African American population were

Why Continue Developing Housing for the Middle Class

While There Are Still Sans-Papiers? 17 Cohen, “Architectural History and the Co-
lonial Question,” 356.
20 Von Osten, “Architecture Without Archi-
tects—Another Anarchist Approach”.
18 Ironically, planning policy in a city with a 21 Nezar AlSayyad, “Urbanism and the Domi-
During the financial crisis of the 1920s, architects bundled their creative ener- paternalistic policy style like Vienna cur- nance Equation: Reflections on Colonial-
gies to build minimal existence housing (“Wohnung für das Existenzmini- rently includes demands for democratic ism and National Identity,” in Forms of
participation, at a time when the financial Dominance: On the Architecture and Ur-
mum”), thereby proving to the market and to the modern residents that it was and budget crises don’t allow for much banism of the Colonial Enterprise, ed. Nezar
indeed possible to build housing on most minimal space (shown, for example, planning let alone building. AlSayyad (Aldershot: Avebury, 1992), 1–26.
at CIAM’s 1929 exhibition in Frankfurt). While this rendered the “minimal exis- 19 Giancarlo De Carlo, “Architecture’s Public” 22 Yates McKee, “Haunted Housing: Eco-Van-
[1970], in Architecture & Participation, guardism, Eviction, and the Biopolitics of
tence home” acceptable, according to architect Giancarlo de Carlo (also part eds. Peter Blundell Jones, Doina Petrescu, Sustainability in New Orleans,” Grey
of CIAM X), it did so without questioning the social circumstances that and Jeremy Till (London: Taylor & Francis, Room, no. 30 (Winter 2008): 84–113.
caused this “minimum.”20 Despite their sensibility towards context, climate, 2005), 3–22.
254 So Many Reports, So Many Questions Gabu Heindl 255

“white-washed” by the construction of ecological parks (backed up by the ar-

Literature
gument that it was time to finally build “with nature”). What then emerged, in-
stead of rebuilding the black neighborhoods, was a rhetoric of ecologically AlSayyad, Nezar. “Urbanism and the Domi- Leubolt, Bernhard. Staat als Gemeinwe-
motivated “technically necessary” measures, which, in effect, made it impos- nance Equation: Reflections on Colonialism sen. Das Partizipative Budget in Rio
and National Identity.” In Forms of Domi- Grande do Sul und Porto Alegre. Vienna:
sible for many who had lost their homes to return to their neighborhoods.23 In nance: On the Architecture and Urbanism of Lit Verlag, 2006.
a critical study on the range of ideologies of the different projects, art critic the Colonial Enterprise. Edited by AlSayyad,
Yates McKee differentiates a few critical projects as dissent-friendly, such as Nezar, 1-26. Aldershot: Avebury, 1992. McKee, Yates. “Haunted Housing: Eco-
Vanguardism, Eviction, and the Biopolitics
“Mobilizing Shame,” an activist project by the Yes Men, or Laura Kurgan’s “Justice Brecht, Bertolt. “Questions from a worker of Sustainability in New Orleans.” Grey
Mapping.” Kurgan and her students at Columbia University had already begun who reads [Fragen eines lesenden Arbeit- Room, no. 30 (Winter 2008): 84-113.
mapping New Orleans before Katrina. Their “Million Dollar Maps” survey and ers] (1935).” In Poems 1913–1956. Translat-
ed by Michael Hamburger, 252-53. New Smithson, Alison (ed.): Team 10 Primer.
illustrate how much (or little) budget is spent on public infrastructure per city York: Routledge, 1979. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1968.
block and set this in relation to the total amount spent on the incarceration of
residents living on a given block. In the maps, by overlaying physical parame- Cohen, Jean-Louis. “Architectural History Teyssot, Georges. Die Krankheit des Domi-
and the Colonial Question: Casablanca, zils. Wohnen und Wohnbau 1800–1930.
ters (topography, city planning traits, volumetry, figure-ground ratios, public
Algiers and Beyond.” Architectural Histo- Vieweg: Braunschweig, 1989.
functions and infrastructure, etc.) with otherwise invisible data, it becomes ry, no. 49 ( 2006): 349–68.
clear that an interrelation exists between the neighborhoods’ location and de- Von Osten, Marion. “Architecture Without
sign and the parameters mentioned above, and that there is a direct correlation De Carlo, Giancarlo. “Architecture’s pub- Architects—Another Anarchist Approach,”
lic. [1970]” In Architecture & Participation. e- flux, #6 (May 2009). Accessed May
between a lack in infrastructure and an increase in incarceration—providing a Edited by Peter Blundell Jones, Doina 2009. http://www.e-flux.com.
starting point for thinking about “justice reinvestment.” Here, cartography is the Petrescu, and Jeremy Till, 3-22. London:
tool that enables a critical assessment. This is one current example of social Taylor & Francis, 2005. http://www.e-flux.com.
http://www.koolhaashouselife.com.
engagement through architecture which, from a postcolonial (self-)critical Koolhaas, Rem, and Edgar Cleijne. Lagos: http://sarch.twoday.net.
approach, demands that a just distribution of means be a fundamental part of How it Works. Baden: Lars Müller Publish- http://www.transculturalmodernism.org.
postcolonial planning, in the sense of deconstructing existing conditions— ers, 2008.
before and after the disaster, before and after colonialism. To return to the
Model House web-based data-map: Where parameter “North Africa” crosses
parameter “Theory,” we find Jean-Louis Cohen’s text “Architectural History and
the Colonial Question: Casablanca, Algiers and Beyond.” His credo reads: “The
first condition of any fruitful work in this domain [analysis of colonial territo-
ries] is mistrust vis-à-vis any political narrative, consisting of idealizations still
bearing an imprint of colonialist relics, whether of the superiority of imposed
models or of a natural suspicion of anti-colonialist discourse against all forms
of cultural imposition.”24 Acknowledging suspicion in this way is a fruitful
point of departure for numerous other (self-)critical inquires; for this paper, it
is a (provisional) conclusion.

23 Cohen, “Architectural History and the Co-

lonial Question,” 356.
24 Ibid.
256 Biographies 257

Fahim Amir is currently visiting professor for Brazil. Her current research targets anti-
Biographies philosophy at the University of Art and vivisection ideas in modern Brazil; partial
Design Linz (Austria) and finishing his PhD results were published in “De ratos e outros
“Pigeon Visions,” which deals with mod- homens: resistência biopolítica no Brasil
ernist aesthetics, urban practices, and vi- moderno” (In C. Lépine et alii (orgs.) Man-
sions of posthumanist critique. Amir’s last uela Carneiro da Cunha: O lugar da cultura
publications include: Die Arbeit der Form/ e o papel da Antropologia. RJ: Ed.Beco do
losigkeit. Ein ästhetischer Einwand gegen Azougue, 2011.)
die Affirmation der ›Unsichtbarkeit‹ oder
›postrepräsentationaler Politiken (with Gabu Heindl is a Vienna-based architect,
Johanna Schaffer, 2012) and Animals and/ urbanist, and architecture theorist. She
in/on Alcohol (2013). Furthermore, Amir was graduated in Vienna and Princeton and
scientific director of the Live Art Festival has been teaching at universities in Delft,
2013 “ZOO 3OOO” in Hamburg, Germany. Graz, and Vienna. Her building work focuses
on public buildings/infrastructures ranging
Zvi Efrat, architect and architectural historian, from schools and kindergartens, to reper-
was head of the Department of Architecture toire cinemas (e.g. Austrian Film Museum,
at the Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design, Vienna) and urban public space. Her re-
Jerusalem (2002–2010). He has taught at search deals with spatial aspects of work/
the Technion Institute of Technolgy, the education under neoliberalism and with
Tel Aviv University, and the Hebrew Uni- approaches to critical urban planning (in-
versity, among others. He has lectured volving insights from feminism, left-wing
worldwide, published extensively in various modernisms, and radical democracy theory).
periodicals and books, and curated numer- She is, among other things, guest editor of
ous exhibitions in Israel and in Europe. Just Architecture!, ERA 21 #1 (2012), and
His book The Israeli Project: Building and the editor of the volume Arbeit Zeit Raum,
Architecture 1948–1973 was published in which deals with images and built struc-
2004. tures of labor in post-Fordism (2008).

Eva Egermann is an artist based in Vienna. Moira Hille is a Vienna-based artist, perform-
She is currently a PhD candidate at the er and researcher with a focus on the rela-
Academy of Fine Arts Vienna, and was in- tionship of space/architecture, body/move-
volved in the Model House–Mapping ments, camera/film, and the critique of
Transcultural Modernisms project, re- representation. Currently she works at the
searching relations of urbanism and dis- Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna at the PhD
ability/crip theory. Her most recent publi- in-Practice program as artistic research
cations include the Crip Magazine (2012) staff and as a lecturer at the Institute of
and Regime. Wie Dominanz organisiert Art Theory and Cultural Studies. Since 2009,
und Ausdruck formalisiert wird (co-edited she has been performing at the queer
with Petja Dimitrova, Tom Holert, Jens feminist show Club Burlesque Brutal.
Kastner, and Johanna Schaffer; Edition
Assemblage, 2012). Rob Imrie is professor of geography at King‘s
College London and principal investigator
Nádia Farage is senior lecturer at the Depart- of a European Research Council funded
ment of Anthropology, Institute of Philos- project (2013 to 2016) about the significance
ophy and Human Sciences, University of of universal design in shaping designed
Campinas, São Paulo, Brazil. She special- environments. His most recent publica-
izes in North-Amazonian ethnohistory and tions include Accessible Housing: Quality,
correlates aspects of social memory and Disability and Design (Routledge, 2006)
rhetoricity. She is the author of As Mural- and The Knowledge Business: Critical Per-
has dos Sertões: os povos indígenas no spectives on the Commodification of Urban
Rio Branco e a colonização (1991, Paz e Research (Ashgate, 2010).
Terra/ANPOCS) and articles on North-Am-
azonian Amerindian history and ethnogra- Monica Juneja is professor of Global Art His-
phy. In the last decade, she has been coor- tory at the Cluster “Asia and Europe in a
dinating research on animality in various Global Context“ at the University of Hei-
ethnographical and historical contexts in delberg, Germany. Before her assignment
258 Biographies 259

in Heidelberg, she was visiting professor California, Berkeley. She has published quarterly journal of architecture, art, me- Study of Beijing in Its Form, Shape &
at Emory University, Atlanta, USA. She has widely on modern Chinese architectural dia, and politics published by MIT Press Meaning” at PGCHS at K.U.Leuven, Bel-
been professor at the University of Delhi, and planning history. Her recent publica- since Fall 2000. In addition to publishing gium, in 2000. With the help of the IRO
India, and has held visiting professorial tions include Remaking Chinese Urban numerous articles in journals, magazines, scholarship from K.U.Leuven in 2002, she
positions at the Universities of Vienna and Form (2006, 2011) and Third World Mod- and edited anthologies, her book, Archi- completed her doctorate dissertation ti-
Hannover. Her areas of research span the ernism (2010). She serves on the editorial tecture or Techno-Utopia: Politics After tled “Socio-Spatial Transformation in
fields of European and Indian studies. boards of Traditional Dwellings and Settle- Modernism, was published by MIT Press in Mao’s China: Settlement Planning and
They include practices of visual represen- ments Review and Architectural Theory 2007, and Living Archive 7: Ant Farm, ap- Dwelling Architecture Revisited, 1950s–
tation, the disciplinary trajectories of art Review, and chairs the International Com- peared on ACTAR Editorial in 2008. She 1970s.” In May 2011, Dr. Zhao started
history in South Asia, the interface be- mittee of the Society of Architectural recently completed a book manuscript en- teaching as an associate professor at the
tween Christianization, religious identities Historians. titled Cartographies of Drift: Bernard Ru- Department of Architecture, College of
and cultural practices in early modern dofsky’s Encounters with Modernity, and is Architecture and Environment, Sichuan
South Asia. Monica Juneja is editor of Anoma Pieris is an associate professor at the working on a book entitled Outlaw Territo- University and was appointed the assis-
Transcultural Studies, an electronic jour- Faculty of Architecture, Building and Plan- ries: Environments of Insecurity/Architec- tant dean of the college in September
nal of the Cluster Asia and Europe. ning at the University of Melbourne. Her tures of Counter-Insurgency, 1966-1979 to 2012.
most recent publications include Hidden be published by Zone Books.
Christian Kravagna is professor of Postcolonial Hands and Divided Landscapes: A Penal
Studies at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna. History of Singapore’s Plural Society (Ho- Marion von Osten is an artist, writer, and ex-
He is the editor of the books Privileg Blick. nolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2009) hibition maker. She is a founding member
Kritik der visuellen Kultur, Berlin 1997; and Architecture and Nationalism in Sri of the Center for Postcolonial Knowledge
Agenda. Perspektiven kritischer Kunst, Lanka: The Trouser under the Cloth (Rout- and Culture (CPKC), Berlin, the media-col-
Vienna/Bozen 2000; The Museum as Arena: ledge, 2012). lective Labor k3000 Zurich, and kpD-
Artists on Institutional Critique, Cologne kleines post-fordistisches Drama, Berlin.
2001, and Routes: Imaging travel and mi- Vikramāditya Prakāsh is professor of archi- Together with Kathrin Rhomberg she was
gration, Frankfurt 2006. His curated exhi- tecture and adjunct professor of land- the artistic director of the research and
bitions include “Living Across: Spaces of scape architecture and of urban design exhibition projects “Projekt Migration”
Migration,” Academy of Fine Arts Vienna, and planning at the University of Washing- (2003–2006) and “In the Desert of Moder-
2010; “Planetary Consciousness,” Kunst- ton in Seattle and the Director of the nity. Colonial Planning and After” (2007–
raum der Leuphana Universität Lüneburg, Chandigarh Urban Lab. His published 2009), and co-edited (with Serhat Kara-
2008, and “Migration: Globalisation of books include Chandigarh‘s Le Corbusier: kayli & Tom Avermaete) the reader
Cultural Space and Time,” Max Mueller The Struggle for Modernity in Postcolonial Colonial Modern: Aesthetics of the Past,
Bhavan, New Delhi, 2003 (with Amit Muk- India (University of Washington Press, Rebellions for the Future, 2010. She was a
hopadhyay). He is artistic director (with 2002), A Global History of Architecture curator at Shedhalle Zurich (1996–99),
Hedwig Saxenhuber) at Kunstraum Lake- (with Francis DK Ching & Mark Jarzombek, professor for Artistic Practice and re-
side in Klagenfurt, Austria. John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 2006) and Colo- searcher at the ZHdK, Zurich (1999–
nial Modernities: Building, Dwelling and 2006), and professor for Art and Commu-
Christina Linortner studied architecture in Architecture in British India and Ceylon nication at the Academy of Fine Arts
Vienna and Delft, and Research Architec- (co-edited with Peter Scriver, Routledge, Vienna (2006–2012). Since 2013 she has
ture in London. She is based in Vienna and 2007). been teaching at the Universities for Art
works transdisciplinarily within the fields and Design in Geneva and Lucerne, and at
of art/ architecture, urbanism, and theory Susan Schweik is a professor of English and the Center for Curatorial Studies CCS at
with a focus on housing culture and mi- associate dean of Arts and Humanities at Bard College. She was the head of the
gration, transcultural studies, and haunted UC Berkeley. Her most recent book is The Model House–Mapping Transcultural Mod-
houses, among others, in Nigeria, the Ugly Laws: Disability in Public, published ernisms research project funded by WWTF
United States (California), and China. She in 2009 by New York University Press. She (2010–2012) and worked on the case study
has been involved in the artistic research is now working on a book tentatively titled From/To Casablanca - Be‘er Sheva.
projects Model House–Mapping Transcul- Lost and Found: How a Ward of Women in
tural Modernisms at the Academy of Fine a State Institution Taught Us to Teach to Chunlan Zhao received her bachelor’s degree
Arts Vienna and, Eden’s Edge at the Uni- the Test. in architecture and master’s degree in ar-
versity of Applied Arts Vienna. chitectural design and theory from Tianjin
Felicity D. Scott is associate professor of ar- University, China, in 1995 and 1998 re-
Duanfang Lu is associate professor and asso- chitecture and director of the program in spectively. She received the VLIR scholar-
ciate dean of education in the Faculty of Critical, Curatorial and Conceptual Prac- ship from the Flemish government and
Architecture, Design and Planning at the tices in Architecture (CCCP) at Columbia obtained her advanced master degree in
University of Sydney. She holds a BArch University’s Graduate School of Architec- architecture of human settlements with
from Tsinghua University, Beijing and a ture, Preservation and Planning. She is the thesis titled “Fengshui’s Impact on
PhD in architecture from the University of also a founding co-editor of Grey Room, a Traditional Settlements in China: Case
260 261

Acknowledgments Arya Amir, Isabella Amir, Tom Avermaete, Anette Baldauf, Mark Crinson, Ashley
De Vos, Helga de Silva, Karel Dudesek, Noam Dvir, Zvi Efrat, Michaela Glanz,
Michael Gross, Gabu Heindl, Ute Hölzl, Kumari Jayawardena, Ma Jia, Feng Jiang,
He Jintang, Serhat Karakayali, Johannes Köck, Eduard Kögel, Matthew
Kohrman, Kateřina Kolářová, Elke Krasny, Susanne Leeb, Tarun Mathur, Ralo
Mayer, Kobena Mercer, Robert McRuer, Vikramāditya Prakāsh, Ariane Sadjed,
Madhu Sarin, Hadas Shadar, Susan Schweik, Susil Sirivardana, Gang Song,
Daniel Weiss, Ashley de Vos, Ye Yanfen, Shmuel Yavin, Lu Yuanding sen., Lu
Yuanding jun., Zhao Xintien Vida, Zhang Fuhe, Zhang Jie, Zhang Qiushi, Zhi
Heng.
 Publication Series of the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna VOLUME 12

Transcultural

Transcultural Modernisms
Based on the findings of an interdisciplinary research project, Transcultural
Modernisms maps out the network of encounters, transnational influences, and
local appropriations of an architectural modernity manifested in various ways

Modernisms
in housing projects in India, Israel, Morocco, and China that served as exemplary
standard models, not only for Western societies. Three case studies of modernist
architectural projects realized in the era of decolonization form a basis for the
project, which further investigates specific social relations and the transcultural
character of building discourses at the height of modernism. Rather than build-

Model House
ing on the notion of modernism as having moved from the North to the South—
or from the West to the rest of the world—the emphasis in Transcultural Modern-
isms is on the exchanges and interrelations among international and local
actors and concepts, a perspective in which “modernity” is not passively received,

Research Group
but is a concept in circulation, moving in several different directions at once,
subject to constant renegotiation and reinterpretation. In this book, modernism
is not presented as a universalist and/or European project, but as marked by
cultural transfers and their global localization and translation.

(Ed.)
With contributions by Fahim Amir, Zvi Efrat, Eva Egermann, Nádia Farage, Gabu
Heindl, Moira Hille, Rob Imrie, Monica Juneja, Christian Kravagna, Christina
Linortner, Duanfang Lu, Marion von Osten, Anoma Pieris, Vikramāditya Prakāsh,
Susan Schweik, Felicity D. Scott, and Chunlan Zhao