FRAGILE

CITY
 NOTES ON Every present is determined through those images
that are synchronic with it.

PHOTOGRAPHIC WALTER BENJAMIN, Arcades Project 2

I came across Elke Krasny and David Bergé’s

URBANISM: Le Corbusier’s voyage reORIENTed 1911-2011
project while they were still doing their research
IMAGES FROM in Istanbul. I was in the city for the conference on
Le Corbusier’s Voyage d’Orient. Afterwards, Bergé
THE VOYAGE and I travelled to La Chaux-de-Fonds (Switzerland)
in search of Le Corbusier’s photographs from this

D’ORIENT, 1911 trip in 1911. More than the photographs them-

selves (we both had seen several of them before)
the way we saw them was what made an impact.
T Ü L AY ATA K The digital copies of the photographs projected
onto a large screen in a dark room, one after the
Imagine all those pictures stitched together into other, made it possible to think of the photographs
a single image. In this ideal aerial view, neither in their entirety. This viewing enabled us to think
the pervasive violence nor the sometimes of them as discrete images and not as part of an
cloying prettiness would be visible. Conquest and entire œuvre or as missing pieces in the œuvre
sentimentality would both be irrelevant. In other complète of Le Corbusier. Instead, here they were,
FIG. 1 Glass Plate at Fonds Le Corbusier at the Bibliothèque de la Ville, La Chaux- words, the image might be like the “blue marble,” images related to the urban and territorial trans-
de-Fonds, Switzerland. photo by David Bergé photograph of earth taken from the Apollo 17
formation in the “Orient” of 1911. While we would
spacecraft in 1972. It’s our world, serene and
self-contained, seen in one glance. It’s not a not have had access to them this way had they not
view that excites us into plans for bombing our
enemies, for it includes us as well. It is a view that 1. New York Times, published and retrieved online, July 22, 2015.
2. N 3, 1, as translated and quoted by Samuel Weber, “’Streets,
reminds us of how mighty we are, how fragile, Squares, Theaters’: A City on the Move — Walter Benjamin’s
how delicately connected and how beautiful. Paris,” in Benjamin’s -abilities, Cambridge: Harvard
TEJU COLE, “The Unquiet Sky”1 University Press, 2008, 229.
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been connected to Le Corbusier (the fact that they Photographic urbanism is in this way something landscapes. Klipstein, a student of art history On the other hand, if previous trips provided
were preserved, archived and presented again was that is practiced more often — not as the conscious working on Byzantine Art and El Greco, wanted to a discursive map for the travellers, with similar
because they were related to the famous name), work of a singular genius — but by the observant, see a number of important art works. Jeanneret, itineraries and accepted points of interest, then
seeing them in this context and in relation to Bergé active urban dweller. on his way to becoming an architect, wanted to their traversal of landscapes and urban terrains
and Krasny’s work made it possible to consider see architecture and continued on to Rome at the would also be disciplined and maintain an ethos.
them more as documents, or as interactive records T R AV EL A S A SPAT I A L PR ACT ICE , end of the trip. Combining their different sensibili- This ethos was one of observation of phenomena
of a journey and places travelled. C A MER A A S A N INST RUMEN T ties, they planned the journey together, yet sought and environments that came from the writings
Much has been done on Le Corbusier’s reli- In 1911, the 24-year-old Charles-Édouard Jeanneret slightly different experiences.4 of John Ruskin and Hippolyte Taine.8 In addition,
ance on and experimentation with photography. undertook a voyage to the east of Europe, accom- Jeanneret and Klipstein’s travel can be under- Jeanneret and Klipstein would utilize and subject
This focus extends from those looking closely at panied by his friend Auguste Klipstein. They stood as a spatial practice relating cultures and themselves to the discipline of instruments, such
the photographs themselves that Le Corbusier took embarked on a journey, travelling through major cultural artifacts to each other. By travel as spatial as notebooks, sketchbooks, and cameras in order
(Gresleri, Benton), to an expanded definition of cities like Vienna, Budapest, Belgrade, Bucharest, practice, I am referring to James Clifford’s seminal to document and record their traversal of terrains.
photography which includes the photographic tech- Istanbul and Athens, crossing villages and rural account of the role of travel as a discursive This recording had a deeper didactic aspect: Ritter,
niques and strategies that Le Corbusier employed and disciplinary practice within anthropology.5
throughout his work, including his publications, 3. Giuliano Gresleri, Il Viaggio in Oriente, gli inediti di Clifford’s analysis of anthropology’s spatial prac- 4. Giuliano Gresleri, “Auguste Klipstein” entry in Le Corbusier:
buildings and city plans (Tafuri, Colomina, Vidler).3 Charles Edouard Jeanneret fotografo e scrittore, Venice: tices is partly based on Michel de Certeau’s notion Une Encyclopédie, ed. Jacques Lucan, Paris: Centre Georges
Marsilio, 1984. where the photographs were published; Pompidou, 1987, 216.
Recent scholarship has shown that Le Corbusier Tim Benton, LC Photo: Le Corbusier, Secret Photographer, of space as discursively mapped and corporeally 5. “Spatial Practices: Fieldwork, Travel and the Disciplining of
may not be the sole author of the photographs, Zurich: Lars Mueller, 2013; Le Corbusier and the practiced.6 Instead of being accepted as a given, Anthropology” in Routes: Travel and Translation in the Late
opening further our understanding of them as Power of Photography, eds. Natalie Herschdorfer and this notion of space incorporates embodied prac- Century. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1997, 52-91.
Lada Umstaetter, London: Thames & Hudson, 2012; 6. Ibid. 54, and Michel de Certeau, The Practice of Everyday
documents. My goal here is to consider the photo- Le Corbusier, Aventures Photographiques, Paris: Editions tices and relations. Considering Jeanneret’s and Life, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984.
graphs as documents of urban transformation by de la Villette, 2014; Manfredo Tafuri, “Machine et Memoire: Klipstein’s travel as a spatial practice means, on 7. Giuliano Gresleri, “William Ritter” entry in Le Corbusier:
The City in the Work of Le Corbusier” (although Tafuri Une Encylopédie, ed. Jacques Lucan, Paris: Centre Georges
situating them in relation to an ethnographic defini- does not explicitly write about photography, his analysis
one hand, that their travel was based on previous Pompidou, 1987, 349-350.
tion of travel as a spatial practice and in relation to of the Beistegui house and the role that the periscope trips like the Grand Tour. Many of their sites, like 8. Ruskin’s Les Matins à Florence (French translation of
the places where they were made. The photographs pays is significant in contextualizing Le Corbusier’s work in Istanbul, Athens and Rome, were longstanding Mornings in Florence) and Taine’s Voyage en Italie were in
terms of avant garde and mechanical reproduction; Beatriz Jeanneret’s library. Especially Ruskin was very didactic about
point to what I refer to as photographic urbanism, Colomina, “Le Corbusier and Photography” Assemblage 4 “tourist” destinations. The two planned the what to observe, how, and even at what time of the day.
separate from their relationship to a viewer and (1987) and Privacy and Publicity: Modern Architecture as journey based on tips from William Ritter, the art He presented careful observation as an alternative to mass
what is viewed, but connected to the sense of how Mass Media, Cambridge: MIT Press, 1994; Anthony Vidler, critic and Jeanneret’s mentor at the time, who had tourism. See Tülay Atak, “Vieille Ville, Nouveaux Fondements:
“Photourbanism: Planning the City from Above and from l’Istanbul de Le Corbusier,” in L’Invention d’un Architect:
photographs are made and how they are uniquely Below,” in The New Blackwell Companion to the City, previously travelled along the Danube and down Le Voyage d’Orient de Le Corbusier. Paris: Editions de la
able to unfold architectural and urban space. London: Wiley-Blackwell, 2011, 656-666. to Florence, and was fascinated by Slavic cultures.7 Vilette, 2013, 257-267.
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as Le Corbusier’s mentor, wanted to ascertain the of the notebooks suggests that they were part of Aside from this specific instance where
journey’s pedagogical role and asked Jeanneret a series of attachments concerning what it means Jeanneret and his journey have become the subject
to write letters to him describing the topography, to travel and record.12 Indeed, Jeanneret used the of the photograph, and the camera has moved
the cities and landscapes he passed through as an same format of notebooks in the journey he took from one hand to another, the problem of author-
exercise to develop his eye as well as his writing in 1910 throughout Germany in preparation for his ship is one that remains intrinsic to photography
skills.9 Both Klipstein and Jeanneret kept diaries or book Construction des Villes.13 The notebooks were and its discourse. A technology that is related to
notebooks.10 Both turned the journey into a prac- here part of the discipline of travel, transforming reproduction, “what makes a photograph?” is a
tice by subjecting themselves to their instruments the journey into a spatial practice by imposing a perennial question with an uncertain answer: the
and producing a number of textual and visual consistent way of recording diverse places. In this photographer, the subject, the camera, the chem-
documents, spanning from diary notes and letters respect, notebooks made the travel possible. The istry of the film, light, the relationships of elements
to sketches and photographs. journey was there to collect material and Jeanneret
For Jeanneret, notebooks were critical instru- was there to fill the notebooks that would eventu-
FIG. 2 BALKANS. Charles- Édouard Jeanneret on a horse.
ments of travel: consistent in size and number LC-108-151
ally constitute the archive. When Jeanneret became 12. Bruno Latour, “Factures / Fractures: From the Concept of
Network to the Concept of Attachment,” RES: Anthropology
of pages, sometimes gridded, sometimes blank, Le Corbusier, he used several of his sketches (some and Aesthetics 36, special issue Factura (1999): 20-31.
the notebooks maintained a coherent way of him? Considering the author/form-giver status from his notebooks) as elements of his discourse 13. Le Corbusier, Les Voyages D’Allemagne Carnets, ed. Guiliano
recording the architecture, landscape and routines attributed to Le Corbusier, the question seems and practice. He revisited his travel notebooks in Gresleri. New York: Monacelli Press, 1995 On the book
Construction des villes, see Christoph Schnoor, “Munich to
of the journey.11 When one studies the notebooks, preposterous: he drew, thus performed the order to present this journey as the mythical begin- Berlin: The Urban Space of German Cities.” In Le Corbusier:
one realizes that there are techniques for how to action of drawing, and the notebooks were filled, ning of his architectural inquiries.14 An Atlas of Modern Landscapes, ed. Jean Louis Cohen,
use them: one could write or draw; one could passively. By following Bruno Latour’s theory of Similar questions pertain to the photographs. New York: The Museum of Modern Art, 2013, 84-90.
14. The first volume of Œuvre Complète began with the
rotate the notebook according to the orientation action and attachment, however, the consistency Who or what made the photographs and what did sketches from the journey. Œuvre Complète, 7 vols., Zurich:
of the drawing; one could use the double spread the photographs do? (FIGS. 1, 2) Tim Benton has chal- Editions d’Architecture, 1965, Vol. 1, 17-21. In several of his
books, Le Corbusier presented this journey as his discovery of
of two facing pages; one could add notes and 9. Marie-Jeanne Dumont, “Bucharest to Istanbul: With William
lenged the assumption that Jeanneret was the sole architecture, notably in L’Art Decoratif d’Aujourd’hui, Paris:
annotations when sketches did not suffice; some- Ritter in the Balkans” in Le Corbusier: An Atlas of Modern author of the photographs by carefully analyzing the Flammarion, 1996, 197-218.
times color could become a way of annotating. Landscapes, ed. Jean-Louis Cohen, New York: The Museum negatives, glass plates and the cameras.15 According 15. Tim Benton, LC Photo, 100-120.
of Modern Art, 2013, 94-100. 16. While the bibliography on this questions is extensive,
Diverse buildings, artifacts, rituals, and urban 10. A typescript version of Klipstein’s journey diary is held at
to Benton, the variety of negatives suggests the the work of the “Pictures Generation” is seminal. See for
environments could cohesively come together the library in La Chaux de Fonds and Tim Benton quotes use of more than one camera and more than one example the questions Rosalyn Deutsche raises in response
between the covers of the notebook. some passages from it in LC Photo: Le Corbusier, Secret author. For instance, in fig. 2, it is Jeanneret who is to James Welling’s work, in “Darkness: The Emergence
Photographer. of James Welling” in James Welling: Abstract, exhibition
Yet, was it Jeanneret who drew in the note- 11. Voyage d’Orient Carnets, ed. Guiliano Gresleri, London: on the horse in the center of the image, therefore catalogue, Brussels, Toronto: Palais des Beaux-Arts and Art
books, or was it the notebooks that were drawing Phaidon, 2002. someone else, maybe Klipstein, shot that picture. Gallery of York University, 2002.
96
inside the frame, or how the image relates to what “a conversion of [his] perspective that required a T ER R I TOR IES IN T R A NSFOR M AT ION ranted against the erosive impact of the railroad
is outside the frame?16 In the context of Jeanneret genuine change of [his] senses.”19 This duality of If photographs are part of an attachment that define in the places he and Klipstein had encountered.23
and Klipstein’s journey, if the notebooks consti- the collapse and expansion of distance may have what it means to travel at a certain moment, then The train brought the outside, industrially produced
tute a kind of author — one can trace the lines been intrinsic to photographic discourse at least we might shift our interest from the authors of kitsch that would replace local folklore, and
and claim originality in the notebooks — then since Walter Benjamin, who effectively explained the photographs to what they document. Rather Le Corbusier was convinced that cinema would
the photographs place this author into question. that mechanical reproducibility’s destruction and than the self-discovery of Le Corbusier, the photo- complete the work of the railway by bringing
What kind of travel, then, do the photographs reconstitution of aura (“the unique phenomenon graphs portray a territory which is disintegrating outside images, impossible to ignore. At the same
constitute, or what does photography do to travel? of a distance however close [an object] may be”) and reassembling. In Origins of Totalitarianism, time, in Voyage d’Orient, there is a conversation
Susan Sontag and Pierre Bourdieu attributed are at the center of the experience of modernity.20 Hannah Arendt wrote of the period before the First with an architecture student from Prague about the
contrasting roles to photography in travel. Sontag Thus in Jeanneret and Klipstein’s journey, World War as a time when nation-states, which aesthetics of iron bridges, in which Klipstein and
associated photography with the rise of tourism: photographs had begun to destabilize authorship. had appeared on the stage of history when peoples Jeanneret defend the “beauties of modern engi-
“As photographs give people an imaginary The camera expanded the field of documentation had acquired a consciousness of themselves as neering” and the importance of infrastructure that
possession of a past that is unreal, they also help from landscapes and urban spaces to architectural cultural entities and of their territories as home, had brings different places closer together.24 (FIG. 6 IN
people to take possession of a space in which corners, otherwise unseeable details and ethno- dissolved into either imperialism or tribal nation- THE PHOTO ESSAY) Thus physical and social transfor-
they are insecure.”17 Easing the anxiety of travel graphic encounters. Photography of the journey alism. She identified tribal nationalism as the nation- mation was one of the main topics of conversation
and of modernity, photographs make the trav- shifted the emphasis from the authors/voyagers alism of the peoples which had not achieved the for observant travellers and their interlocutors.
eller feel at home by capturing and so subduing to the temporal and spatial relation between the sovereignty of a nation-state, the case for Austria- In Voyage d’Orient, Budapest becomes the
an unfamiliar space, according to Sontag. If body holding the camera and the terrain. Hungary at the turn of the twentieth century.21 example of a city of uncontrolled urban growth
photography collapses the displacement of travel, Amidst a history of changing boundaries and migra- and transformation:
the camera also can introduce distance. For 17. On Photography, as quoted by Karen Burns in tions, tribal nationalism became a “portable private
instance, photography sustained Pierre Bourdieu’s “Topographies of Tourism: ‘Documentary’ Photography and matter,” rather than a matter of public concern.
‘The Stones of Venice’, Assemblage 32, 1997: 22-44, 25.
shift from philosophy to sociology in Algiers in 18. Picturing Algeria: Pierre Bourdieu, ed. Franz Schultheis and
Voyage d’Orient and Le Corbusier’s other 21. Hannah Arendt, Imperialism, The Origins of Totalitarianism,
1956 by introducing a method of observation and Christien Frisinghelli, New York: Columbia University Press, books contain several references to the social Vol 2, New York: Harvest, 1968, 107-123.
“finding a way to approach a particular subject.”18 2012, 12. transformations that he and Klipstein observed 22. “Vernacular, Modernism, and Le Corbusier” in Vernacular
19. Ibid., 32. Modernism: Heimat, Globalization and the Built
As he explained in an interview, instead of 20. “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction” during their travels. As Francesco Passanti has Environment, ed. Maiken Umbach and Bernd-Ruediger
looking straight at the subject, he looked through in Illuminations, New York: Schoken, 1968, 217-251, 222. shown, the journey was as much the discovery of Lueppauf, Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2005, 141-156.
his camera — a Rolliflex with a through-the-top See also, Samuel Weber, “Mass Mediauras, or: Art, Aura vernacular for Le Corbusier as it was the discovery 23. Under the heading: “Le Paysan de Danube Opta” in L’Art
and Media in teh Work of Walter Benjamin,” in Mass Decoratif d’Aujourd’hui, 57.
view-finder — in an unobtrusive manner. By Mediauras: Form, Technics, Media, Stanford: Stanford of the impacts of modernization.22 In 1925, when 24. Le Corbusier (Charles-Edouard Jeanneret), Journey to the
enabling detachment, the camera affected University Press, 1996. writing L’Art décoratif d’aujourd’hui, Le Corbusier East, trans. Ivan Zaknic, Cambridge: MIT Press, 2007, 42.
98
 What should I speak of Budapest, since I neither In contrast to the expansion of Budapest,
understood nor liked her? She appeared to me the photographs of constitution celebrations in
like a leprous sore on the body of a goddess. Istanbul portray a different aspect of modernity.
One must climb to the citadel to see the irrep- Here, camera records a social transformation
arable condition of this aborted city. One is and its new public spaces. (FIG. 4 AND FIGS. 2 AND 3
surrounded by a vibrant organism of palpitating IN THE PHOTO ESSAY) The horses are riding across
mountains. A generous outpouring of nacreous
what seems to be an open plain in a military
fluid rises up slowly from the plain. The Danube
encircles mountains, condensing them into a
parade, one of the festivities of the late Ottoman
powerful body that faces the boundless expanses Empire attempting to modernize itself. The
of the plain. But over this plain, there spreads constitution of 1908 and the establishment of
a dull black smoke into which the network of a parliament were part of the efforts to reform
streets disappears. Eight hundred thousand inhab- the state. Political and military gatherings like
FIG. 3 HU NG A RY. Esztergôm Cathedral. LC-108-57 this began to occur more regularly along with FIG. 4 ISTA NBU L . Turkish army cavalry (possibly constitution
itants have rushed here in the last fifty years.” 25 celebrations). LC-108-358
the construction of monuments to commemo-
The passage demonstrates an aspect of spatial prac- described above. Instead of recording what could rate important events.28 These activities would
tice: the travellers climb to a higher point in order simply be an illustration, the travellers recorded their comprise examples of modern, that is national public spaces of the complex during May Day
to obtain a sweeping view of the city. The aerial specific approach to the city from the Danube. (FIG. 3) public space in Istanbul in 1911 — very different just as the parade enters the building.29 It is
view would become a fascination for Le Corbusier, than the mosques and cemeteries of before. the architectural response to modern mass
not only as an inspiration but also as a means of Could this open plain, the site of a military movements like the military parade captured
25. Ibid., 39-40.
presenting an apocalyptic perspective of the world.26 26. “From the plane there is no pleasure but a concentrated parade, a new ground in an old city, antici- in the photographs.
The passage contains an acknowledgement that mournful meditation” in Aircraft, as quoted by Kenneth pate the designed public spaces of modernism?
they are not the only ones travelling and moving Frampton in Le Corbusier, London: Thames & Hudson, 2001, For instance, the inclined plane designed by
111.
through this territory. An “arrival city” that grew by 27. See Douglas Saunders’ study of migrations to the city in Le Corbusier and Pierre Jeanneret (Le Corbusier’s 28. Alev Erkmen, Geç Osmanlı Dünyasında Mimarlik ve
absorbing immigrants, Budapest displayed a unique Arrival City: How the largest Migration in History is Reshaping cousin and business partner) for the Palace Hafıza: Arşiv, Jübile, Abide, Istanbul: Akin Nalca Kitaplari,
our World, New York: Vintage Books, 2012. On Budapest’s 2010. Based on Erkmen’s account of the making of the
rate of growth for Europe (twice the rate of Vienna urban growth in the second half of the 19th century,
of the Soviets competition in 1931 connected Liberty Monument between 1909-1911, the site where the
and three times the rates of Paris and London) in see Budapest and New York: Studies in Metropolitan different spaces of gathering from the parking photographs were taken could be in Şişli looking across to
the second half of the nineteenth century.27 Yet what Transformation, 1870-1930, eds. Thomas Bender and Carl to the auditorium. A drawing submitted to the Kağıthane. In 1911, this was a highly symbolic site where
E. Schorske, New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 1994, 2-3. a military barrack had been established to control the
is striking is the lack of a photograph that shows The book presents the unique culture of the city at that competition imagines a system of wide ramps 31 March Incident in 1909.
the “swelling” of Budapest, the aerial view that is moment in history. and horizontal planes connecting the different 29. Kenneth Frampton, Le Corbusier, 99.
100
 transformation and its movements.30 Jeanneret across urban terrain after the event of the fire
and Klipstein’s photographs probe buildings and further dissects the spaces of the city taken apart
spaces. In a series of photographs of the Selimiye by the disaster. Later, Le Corbusier used one of
Mosque in Edirne (former capital of the Ottoman these photographs in a book and wrote that in the
Empire, near Istanbul), the camera aproaches aftermath of the fire, the houses of regular people
the building from various angles and from had become palaces.31 Both the photographs and
smaller streets as if to study the relation of the the “monumentality” they capture resembles the
building to the city and its topography. (FIGS. 5-6) spaces in Werner Herzog’s Lessons of Darkness,
Photographs of the Hagia Sophia present view- portraying Kuwait’s landscape after the first Gulf
points where the space surrounding the building War (1992). In both Herzog’s movie and Jeanneret
gain as much significance as the architecture itself and Klipstein’s photographs, the camera records
(FIGS. 9-11 IN THE PHOTO ESSAY) . From these photo- a terrain filled with what they perceive to be monu-
graphs, it becomes apparent that it is not only the ments. (FIG. 7 AND FIG. 56 IN THE PHOTO ESSAY)
building that dominates space, but there emerges These photographs show the embodied prac-
FIG. 6 EDIRNE. Street around Selimiye Mosque. LC-108-197
a possibility for other bodies to occupy it as well. tice of the two travellers moving through cities
The fire in Istanbul literally highlights that and landscape, observing and recording territo-
modernity is arriving in unexpected and disas- ries in transformation. (FIG. 8) What the camera
trous ways. The city’s skyline, backlit by flames, seems to have enabled is a way of distancing
becomes a case study for the urban silhouette. oneself in urban space, detaching the photogra-
(FIG. 1 IN THE PHOTO ESSAY) The camera moving pher from the viewed subject and exploring the
space around buildings. This “space between”
30. In writing about the role of the aerial view in urban planning,
is perhaps a precursor to Le Corbusier the archi-
Anthony Vidler has coined the term “photourbanism” and tect’s urban spaces, a space of distant views, but
described how it has been an aspect of French discourses on also a space that presupposes a body.
the city. According to him, photourbanism is situated at two
FIG. 5 EDIRNE. Street around Selimiye Mosque. LC-108-327
poles. One is the aerial view which has dominated modern
Here we can speak of a photographic
urbanism and, has become a tool of city planners and social urbanism, which instead of focusing on surveys
PHOTOGR A PHIC UR BA NISM scientists as well as of architects. The other is the street view,
the critical tool of surrealists, returning to the real to subvert
Photographic urbanism may be one way the hegemonic. See “Photourbanism: Planning the City from 31. Une Maison, Un Palais: À la Recherche d’une Unité
of recording and visualizing this territorial Above and from Below.” FIG. 7 ISTANBUL. Destroyed areas by a fire. LC-108-373 Architecturale, Paris: Éditions Crès, 1928.
102
 terms of the discourses surrounding the pictur-
esque.34 Architectural promenade, if it were
to be considered as a spatial practice, is both
a discursive activity as Bois has shown (intel-
lectually mapped onto previous understandings
of the picturesque) and an embodied one,
requiring lived experience.
Thus, the photographs taken during Jeanneret
and Klipstein’s Voyage d’Orient allow us to disso-
ciate these ideas, like architectural promenade,
from a single author and situate them in travel-
ling bodies — not only the bodies of the travel-
FIG. 8 Group of women and farmer on a street (possibly
in Bucharest). LC-108-561
lers but also those of other passers-by, migrants,
newcomers to cities (like those in Budapest). The
photographs remind us that the ground on which
and surveillance, is based on a moving body travellers are moving is not necessarily static, but
with its trajectories and different speeds. Such is constantly changing as well. In shifting the focus
an urbanism captures temporality to a degree. to that ground, they remind us how transient the
A concept that Le Corbusier later coined as an urban, how provisional a monument, and how
“architectural promenade” also involves photo- fragile a city may be. Then and now, from one
graphic urbanism. As he described it, the archi- image to another, photographic urbanism unfolds
tectural promenade corresponds to architecture the spaces of a city.
unfolding as a body moves through it.32 While
the architectural promenade is by necessity 32. Œuvre Complète, 7 vols., Zurich: Editions d’Architecture,
1965, Vol. 2, 24.
related to surveillance and surveying, to power 33. On the characteristics of this movement, see, Stan Allen,
and discipline, it is also more than this. It is an “Le Corbusier and Modernist Movement: the Carpenter Center
attempt to capture the experience of the street for Visual Arts, Cambridge, MA” in Practice: Architecture,
Technique and Representation, Amsterdam: G+B Arts, 2000.
without the specificity of the street corner.33 34. “A Picturesque Stroll around Clara Clara” in October 29
Yve-Alain Bois has analyzed this experience in (1984): 32-62.
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About the authors Additional credits

DAVID BERGÉ’s practice approaches photography in an almost ELKE KRASNY is a curator, cultural theorist, urban researcher FRAGILE CITY WAS PRODUCED BY: The text- and photo based installation Le Corbusier’s
immaterial way. His work is concerned with the physicality of and writer; Professor at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna; voyage reORIENTed 1911-2011 by Elke Krasny and
urban space and the built environment, as well as with the notion 2014 City of Vienna Visiting Professor at the Vienna University Platform 0090, an artist driven sustainable international platform David Bergé was exhibited:
of how it is to survive as a “body” within the urban today. His of Technology; 2012 Visiting Scholar at the Canadian Centre for multi-disciplinary contemporary art production and research.
practice brings forward a variety of non-object oriented formats for Architecture in Montréal; 2011 Visiting Curator at the www.0090.be – at Kunsthaus Mürz, Muerzzuschlag, AT, from nov 24,
such as Silent Walk Pieces and time-based photo installations. Hongkong Community Museum Project. She co-edited the 2012 – jan 27, 2013 as a 3-channel synchronized digital
These have been presented at various international art centers volume Women’s Museum. Curatorial Politics in Feminism, PHOTOGRAPHIC EXPANDED, an artist driven structure that photo projection and text installation on wall.
including The Body Arts Laboratory Gallery, Tokyo (2012); Education, History, and Art. Curatorial works include: the 2011- produces the work and research of photographer David Bergé Ursula Horvath (organiser), Nanna Neudeck and Alexandros
NETWERK Center for Contemporary Art, Aalst (2012); SALT, 2012 project Mapping the Everyday. Neighborhood Claims and others. Maganiotis (set design), Alexander Schuh (graphic design),
Istanbul (2011); Maison Particulière, Brussels (2014); Goethe for the Future with the Downtown Eastside Women’s Centre www.davidberge.be Hannes Gellner (programming).
Institution New Delhi (2011); TanzQuartier Wien, Vienna (2010); and the Simon Fraser University’s Audain Gallery, Vancouver;
Extra-City kunsthal, Antwerp (2015); Artefact festival at STUK the research and exhibition project Hands-On Urbanism 1850- – at Artefact festival, Kunstencentrum STUK, Leuven, BE,
arts center, Leuven (2013); and Kaaitheater, Brussels (2009). 2012. The Right to Green at the Architecture Centre Vienna; Fragile City received additional support of NETWERK center feb 13-24, 2013 as a 2-channel synchronized analogue
Bergé’s work has been developed through residency programs the 2012 Venice Architecture Biennale; and the 2015 Suzanne for contemporary art, Aalst and David Bergé’s part was created photo- and text projection.
such as the Cape Cod Modern House Trust in Wellfleet, USA; Lacy’s International Dinner Party in feminist curatorial thought while in residency at Kunstenwerkplaats Pianofabriek Brussels Pieter-Paul Mortier (curator), Alexander Schuh (graphic design)
Haus der Kulturen der Welt in Berlin; the BOZAR in Brussels; exhibition. (2014-2015). and Ludo Engels (programming).
Shrishti school of art Bangalore (2015) and CAC Vilnius (2015).
www.elkekrasny.at The intial research and travel that led to this book was – at BINA, Belgrade International week of Architecture, Kulturni
www.davidberge.be supported by Kunsthaus Mürz (2012), The Flemish Government Centar Beograda, Belgrade, SRB, april 18-30, 2013 as a 1-channel
(2010-2011), WP zimmer (2012), CIVA (2012) and TanzQuartier digital photo projection and 80 panel text installation on wall.
Wien (2012). Mia David (organiser), Alexander Schuh (graphic design) and
TÜLAY ATAK is an architect and an architectural historian Georg Eckmayr (programming).
who teaches at the Cooper Union and Pratt Institute in New A research lab took place in Vienna from february 8-12, 2012,
York City. She received her Bachelor’s degree in architecture at among Tülay Atak, David Bergé, Geert Goiris, Elke Krasny, – at Public Space in Progress festival, Chania, GR, june 7-9, 2013
METU in Ankara, Turkey and pursued her PhD at the University Karen Lambaek, Sandra Noeth and Pelin Derviş, hosted by as a 2-channel synchronized analogue projection.
of California, Los Angeles with the dissertation, “Byzantine TanzQuartier Wien. Lina Manaroli (organiser), Alexandros Maganiotis (set design),
Modern: Displacements of Modernism in Istanbul,” which Alexander Schuh (graphic design) and Ludo Engels (programming).
considers the agency of Istanbul’s urban and architectural
culture in modern architecture. Her writing has appeared in
journals and edited volumes such as Future Anterior, Invention
d’un Architecte: Le Voyage en Orient de Le Corbusier, and
Byzantium/Modernism: The Byzantine as Method in Modernity.
She has curated exhibitions at Cornell and the Boston Society
of Architects and taught at SCI-Arc, Cornell, and the Rhode
Island School of Design.

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