After Postmodernity: Non-Referential World tion—modernity sometimes fought against such

a label, the notion of “style” is a hallmark of moder-

We are living in a non-referential world that differs nity and postmodernity. It is important to realize
from the postmodernity of the last four decades of this because, as has been pointed out previously,
the twentieth century. Our society has undergone ~ the non-referential world is not only no longer
a second enlightenment in the past twenty years symbolical with regard to images of any kind, it is
_or so. However, this non-referential world is not also no longer historical in its nature.
yet widely accepted by the architectural commu- Society has gone through such fundamental up-
nity. The discipline of architecture still lingers in heavals that, today, it is not an overstatement to
essentially old doctrines of modernist and post- speak of a “second enlightenment” or a “new en-
modernist models to justify its work. Therefore, lightenment.” which confronts us in every aspect of
some explanation needs to be provided here to our lives every single day. Z 2
indicate the new societal streams on which non- When Venturi presented his apologia in 1966, he
referential architecture is based. did so asa modern architect who was steeped in
The key propagators and their key contributions the tenets of modern architecture. It was almost
have already been mentioned. We refer here impossible for Venturi, in his time, to conceive
again to Venturi’s Complexity and Contradiction in what it would mean to live and operate in a truly
Architecture because it is also a particularly good and thoroughly polyvalent world, one of the key
example of the argument that postmodernity is terms of his treatise. From his modernist foun-
locked in the paradigms of the eighteenth-century dation of a monovalent world, Venturi did indeed
Enlightenment, the same Enlightenment that also demand a polyvalent world but he did not know
brought about the architectural modernism of what it was. Therefore, Venturi was thinking mod-
the twentieth century. An important point in the ernism through to its end. He was the interface
context of our thesis is that modernity and post- that ended modernism and began postmodernism,
modernity were epochs of a world that had ideals yet the true paradigm shift was yet to occur. This
and believed in those ideals. Architecture was is also why Venturi’s call for a new framework
projected in reference to those ideals. As a conse- for architecture has something subversive to it,
quence of that dependency, for example, it made that is when he aims for a compositional plurality
perfect sense to call for one style or another, most and assemblages of cultural signage. He was the
famously the “International Style.” As a matter monovalent sleuth who detected the beginnings
of fact, despite the fact that—not unlike “history,” of a polyvalent world in architecture, but he did
the other distinctly modern and postmodern inven- not yet foresee a polyvalent society, probably
32 33
because it did not yet exist or because its full namely, the ubiquitous demand for context as the
effects were not yet foreseeable. This is the seemingly paramount moral value for architects
reason why his plurality largely played itself out in and their buildings.
the compositional realm of architecture. However, We live in a thoroughly heterogeneous, polyva-
his subversive credo did push open the door for lent, plural, decentralized, non-referential world in
a deconstructive movement that would, indeed, which everything is possible anywhere at any given
follow. Today, there is nothing subversive about point in time. What is fundamentally different to
claiming that we live in a non-referential world. the conditions that prevailed as recently as two
The non-referential world is the established world. decades ago is the fact that today everybody—and
Today, all of the subversive attempts of the 1960s we mean really everybody—knows about it. Our
to the 1980s have been absorbed and are ac- mobility and the way we communicate with each
cepted. However, it goes without saying that only other and how we inform each other are merely the
a handful of architects have fully integrated this most obvious and most recognizable differences
major philosophical and societal shift into their between now and twenty years ago. More signifi-
thinking. cantly than the impact of these technological inno-
The vast majority of the architectural profession, vations, we do not seriously embrace any kind of
along with many theorists, critics, and historians, firmament above us and solid ground underneath
have not taken the step, of which Venturi had us today.
a vague idea when he propagated his theory 50 It is now a little more than a lifetime ago since
years ago. More often than not, architectural broader philosophical discussions began to speak
discourse still lingers in a modernist orthodoxy of a “transcendental homelessness” and a fun-
and in a codex that is half a century or more damental “disenchantment of the world.” These
old. If you listen to how critics at architecture discussions followed the earlier Nietzschean
schools defend their arguments as to why certain pronouncement which observed that people had
projects lack this or that quality, you can observe “killed” the binding and meaningful firmament
how the tremendous changes that have occurred that had sheltered us from the brittleness of
have scarcely entered the architectural dis- cold nature for a very long time. The modernist
course. If you consider the windmill-like propaga- remedy for such laments was, of course, to place
tion of credos by critics, you would be forgiven itself in a quasi-demonic allure in which produc-
for having mistaken yourself to be still living in tivity was elevated to the status of old-time
the political climate of 1968—with possibly one religion, while at the same time the ever-increas-
identifiable addition to the critiquing of projects, ing complexity of the world induced an end of

34 35
 (1) my Pe aa
“naive storytelling. The axiomatic summary of that and is also prevalent among magazine editorial
program was the modernist “disenchantment of boards, professional associations, and building
the world.” administrators working in the bureaucratic appa-
From our vantage point, all of this is part of our ratus of the municipal and state levels.
intellectual “mother’s milk” as administered to us in However, the “critical discourse” identified above
school and at the university. And, indeed, such an has diminished somewhat over the last twenty
interpretation of modernity still appears to serve as years. The fundamentally non-ideological and
our diagnostic tool, including such terms as alien- non-referential world, in which everything is pos-
ation and reification./This is also the ideological sible everywhere all of the time, has a far more
status quo that remains embedded in the academy. matter-of-fact and agile relationship with the
What its propagators have in common is that they prevalent forces that order our world than any of
these critical discourses could or allowed itself to
that the world somehow needs saving..A compila- have. Rather than critiquing the economic world
tion that subsumed that ideological stance and and its injustices, the non-referential world values
gained much traction in the architectural discourse its endless possibilities. For non-referential archi-
goes by the title of The Anti-Aesthetic. Essays on tecture, the old social ideals that made up the
Postmodern Culture, a telling designation given struggle of postmodernity of the 1960s and 1970s
>

the fact that it is supposed to define a discipline seem antiquated and have lost relevance in the
ayy?

that is fundamentally aesthetic, that is architec- world we live in today. The understanding that the
.) ture. For the benefit of the reader, it should be world is disenchanted, however, prevails, at least in
“* noted here briefly at least that the positions pro- part, because we simply cannot believe naively in
) posed within this anti-aesthetic largely stem from anointed authorities of any kind anymore, irrespec-
political ideas of the 1960s and remain far more tive of their persuasion or origin. The more recent
(2, entrenched in the discourse of architecture to notion of “populism” in established democracies,
the present day than we might be aware. That the again irrespective of its persuasion, is the most
concept of the “avant-garde,” with all of its partic- recent expression of a fundamentally polyvalent
ular political connotations, was still the subject of world in which long-fixated constructs dissolve.
serious studies in the form of new editions and Our constructs will dissolve even more. You can
© translations of Theory of the Avant-Garde in the “lament the dissolution of ideologies but, from
_{\mid-1980s and still lingers’in the standard dis- the vantage point of the non-referential world, it
\ course in architecture is also telling. The long arm is more productive to understand this process
Q of that legacy reaches well beyond the universities as something liberating, as a sense of freedom

36 37
 {KY '
C)) DO Rude!
and a sense of new possibilities. It is precisely the note that this perceived vacuum is not an ideologi-
thinking based on ideological categories that was cal position that one person can share or not. The
the grand innovation of modernity and postmoder- absence of powerful coalescing ideals carried by
nity that has lost its coalescing societal power in powerful institutions, as was the case with the
our non-referential time. church and the state in the past, is all-pervasive.
However, these kinds of rationalizations and ex- This is not a moral verdict. Any attempt to turn the
pressions that we see today did not lead to the wheel back is futile. In any even semi-consequen-
complete disappearance of beliefs. After all, we tial discourse today, any voice that lectures us that
are also confronted with the upheaval ‘df Islamic our time is “rotten to the core” is not taken seri-
Manichaeism. Even the more enlightened people ously. The question as to whether we are headed
of the West or East are easily prone to indulging in in the “wrong direction” seems rhetorical at best.
new beliefs that are not so much of a religious or However, it allows us to ask those who believe in
political nature anymore but take on sociological old ideals what exactly they would like to resusci-
and ecological themes instead. Still, these theories tate that is respected by everyone or at least a good
usually only stir people’s imagination for a rela- many? The desire to reintroduce taboos and to
tively brief time and will be exchanged with other construct a moral argument is futile.
ever-new beliefs that flare up at rapid intervals. Of Therefore, it is said that we live in a pitiful, banal
course, these are symptoms which indeed convey world that does not know anything anymore that
that our society does not have ideals that are is bigger than itself. However, such desires for
convincing enough for a good many people to be a better world also raise the question: What would
able to subscribe to them. Instead, we are living in a non-disenchanted world look like as divisions and
a world in which there is no reference steady and ruptures and breaks of any kind do not have a place
strong enough to unite us. In place of relatively ina completely enchanted world? On the contrary,
fixed stars that make up the heavens’ tent and let us we are very conscious that it is increasingly the
orbit around them, our wonderment when we look hallmark of the non-referential world that there is
up to the sky is as exuberantly accepted and as no naive reading of not only sacred texts but also of
quickly forgotten as the flames of a firework. an authoritative dogma of any kind. The ambiguous
Nobody seems to be able to explain what kind of and the ambivalent have taken power. The ideal
ideal our world possesses today. We even freely way towards a single and sole truth does not exist
elect leaders who tell us that there is no ideal. The anymore; or to put it differently perhaps, the truth is
_world really does not know.a firmament-or-even only attainable in plural form. We have not become
something sacred any longer. It is interesting to polytheistic again but we have become polyvalent. K
38 39
It is not so that the world has not learned something liberty from being a vessel of some moral para-
from the loftiness with which self-critical reason digm, non-referential architecture can express—by
was enthroned and from the subsequent spectacle means of its form—not only something that exists
of a self-enchanted Enlightenment that brought in actuality but also something that is as general as
about scientization, specialism, and fragmentation. possible and as true as possible.
We have learned. The world has learned that all of
the ultimate questions cannot be answered in any
foreseeable time. We also ask ourselves whether
this situation is an exclusive characteristic of our
time. Is it not possible that people can live good
lives precisely because we do not possess vision-
ary ideas, which we have become so accustomed
to believing in that they have apparently made us
dependent on them like addicts? Is it not possible
that the interplay of magic, enchantment, disen-
chantment, and re-enchantment is much more
enduring and valid than we might think? And per-
haps also much more complex and not banal after
all? People that are accused of absolving them-
selves from their citizenship responsibilities might
be more comfortable with the non-referential: this
is not the case because of a disenchantment with
the world, but because of a disenchantment with
world-conceptions and world-views. At the very
least we can say that the non-referential world
has not descended into being completely non-
magical. Despite the scientization of our life, we
have not transformed into pure rationally operating
beings. The aesthetic has kept its fascination to
such a degree that the doors to the world remain
enigmatic in fundamental respects. With its inde-
pendence of extra-architectural contents and its

40 A
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Genealogy of Architectonic Ordering Systems

| foremost. Therefore, if an¢ architeot attempts to
understand a building, the formal attributes of the||
The purpose of this chapter, “Genealogy of Archi- ‘ building are what must be studied. We can surmise()
tectonic Ordering Systems,” is to introduce how that the formal space-constellation of buildings
non-referential architecture is studied. It is an contains everything that is necessary for an archi-
introduction to how to “read” architecture, under- tect to understand a building. The statement that
stand architecture, and how to interpret archi- the space-constellation contains everything that
tecture. As architects, we want to study and learn needs to be understood is also an acknowledg-
from existing buildings and we attempt to make ment that not everything about a building can be
sense of them. How do we conceptualize a build- conceptualized. The realization that not everything
ing? What is important for us when we encounter that we could possibly study about a building is
a building and decide to study it? How an architect | particularly meaningful for the architect is perhaps
studies buildings and which questions an architect “=. even more important. To study the formal space-
asks about buildings tell us about how an architect ~ constellations of buildings is to study the inherent
‘approaches their own work. architectonic of a building. It brings us closer to
The above-mentioned title suggests that buildings ~what a building is basically about than any other
are analyzed—for a lack of a better architectural possible aspect of a building that we also could
term—genealogically. This is in stark contrast to analyze and draw conclusions from, such as the
analyzing and understanding buildings socially. historical and representational contents. Studying
The genealogic analysis of a building, we could this fundamental basis of a building is important
also say metaphorically, the analysis of its deoxy- because when we study buildings, it is not about
ribonucleic acid or DNA, is the analysis of its the generaldeciphering of social history so as to
> space- -constellation. It may be stated that the understand the world-conceptions of one or other
space-constellation—this is essentially space, how historical people. This is not the architect's task
it factually exists—is the DNA of a building. With nor does it inform them much if the aim is to
space-constellations, we refer to rooms but we learn something about how to conceive buildings.
have chosen to use the term space because we are When we point to the genealogy of architectonic
referring to not only more or less enclosed cham- ordering systems, the focus of the study is the
bers, the typical definition of a room in architec- building because the responsibility of the architect /)
ture, but to all kinds of exterior and interior spaces towards society is the building—the architect's “
that form the totality of a building. We argue that competency is the building. This is not an argument
if we study buildings, we study their genealogy for narrow-minded architects but one enabling

42 43
 the architect to focus on what they can control. constellations of buildings are best studied without
The building is the architect’s expertise and it is any consideration whatsoever of the “biographical
through the building that the architect can make information” about who erected them and why.
the broadest possible contribution to. society. @ With this in mind, it is often advantageous for the
To clarify this approach: buildings are not to be architect if nothing is known about the civilizations
studied primarily through the extra-architectural that erected a given building. It is actually better
lenses of the historical and social, as is customary - for an architect to not know who commissioned
in academic courses on the history of architecture a building, why it was built, and what program and
at universities. Buildings should be studied formally function it served.
SSIy In other words, a buildingis _
and, thus, timelessly. ia There is an important difference between gene-
~—studied as an object that does not have a time. For
cceniomtonidiapaatash,
alogy and history. Sometimes genealogy is labeled
example, the chronological study of the course of an auxiliary science without which history cannot
architecture is rather unimportant if the aim is for be properly conducted. However, historians remind
the architect to learn about designing a building. us correctly that genealogy is important but that it
There is no objection to students of architecture is not history. History, the much younger of the two
enrolling in courses on the history of architecture, disciplines, is anew branch of inquiry that emerged
and to enjoying them and learning a great deal as in the late eighteenth century and then established
long as there is no misconception that such histor- itself fully throughout the nineteenth century. His-
ical and social studies of buildings generate under- tory’s objective is not the study of the accumulated
standing of what is important and helpful for the information per se; instead, it requires a “critical
design of buildings by the practicing architect. approach” to the sources with a view to enabling
There is no implication here that the practicing the presentation of cause and effect. With respect
architect should not study buildings from the past. to the study of a building, the historical method
On the contrary, the architect learns an incredible is less concerned with the actual formal attributes
amount by visiting and studying buildings from of the structure and focuses more on the inter-
the past and they should do so often and in detail. pretation of these attributes. However, genealogy
However, the practicing architect does not gain remains useful for history because history cannot
much at all from studying buildings as a represen- be conducted without it; it is its foundation, a fact
_tation of something outside themselves, namely, that is also important for the high esteem with
from studying buildings as an abstraction of an which genealogy is held in this tract. While gene-
extra-architectural concept, such as religious, alogy was considered “only barely a science,” it
state, or private ideals. For example, the formal is also noteworthy that genealogical studies hold
44 45