What People Want: Populism in Architecture and Design

MICHAEL SHAMIYEH (

and DOM Research Laboratory (Ed.]

WHAT PEOPLE WANT« Populism in Architecture and Design

Birkhauser -

Publishers for Architecture

Basel I Boston I Berlin

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Editor Michael Shamiyeh Copy Editing Raque l Macho Design ReklamebOro Lin z/Austria

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the Library of Congress, Washington D.C., USA Bibliographic information publish ed by Die Deutsch e Bibliothek Die Deutsche Bibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; Detailed bibliographic data is available in the Internet at http://dnb.ddb.de.

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Michael Shamiyeh Archit ect in practice and head of Design-Organisation-Media Researc h Laboratory. Grad uated with distinction as an architect from the Techn ical University of Vienna and has a Master in Architecture from Harvard University Graduate School of Design . He has done extensive research work in Jerusalem and Berlin. Together with the cultural theorist Thomas Duschlbauerhe is co-founder of the interdisciplinary Bureau for Architecture, Urbanism and Culture (BAUIKULTU R) that seeksto define new relationships - as much theoretical as practical - between a contemporary architectural production and a contemporary cultural situation. Thus, the firm is concerned with realising projects at home and abroad, teaching, consulti ng and investigation of cultural phenomena.

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Design Organisation Media Research Laboratory (DOM) DOM is based at The University of Arts and Industrial Desig n and run in close collaboration with the Ars Electronica Center, Linz. Point of departure for Da M is the assum ption that contemporary societal and technical changes have led to new conclusions in the field of urbanism, architecture and design. As a sort of independent Think Tank DaM attempts to help organisations to innovate, t o define early relevant topics, to show the need for action, and to formulate a set of future actions. Forthis purpose DaM closely operates with other institutions and experts at home and abroad, and organ ises international conferences and workshops. In presenting the results of investigations in a clear and understandable way DaM intends to bring in lasting impulses and fundame ntals for (public) debate.

TABLE OF CONTENTS ( 18 < Imprint < 22 < Acknowledgement 24 < Foreword < 28 < Speakers <

<

UNDERSTANDING POPULISM PANEL 1( Populism 34 < Introduction < Robert Pfaller 38 < Helmut Dubiel < The Populist Mome nt 46 < Robert Pfaller < How to Be and not to Pop 56 < Thomas Frank < What was the New Economy? 72 < Walter Dtsch < Pictorial thinking: symbolic forms, perception and internal pictures

STRATEGIES OF MOBILISATION PANEL 2( Media

82 < Introduction < Michael Shamiyeh 86 < Manfred Fassler < Home of the Public? Paradoxes of Urban Mediascapes 98 < Georg Frank < Mental Capitalism 116< Michael Shamiyeh < The Process That Ch anged Architecture 132 < Helene Lipstadt < Are Competitions Populist? A Bourdieusian Alternative Perspective 150
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STRATEGIES OF ANTICIPATION PANEL 3( Design 176 < Introduction < Thomas Duschlbauer 180
PANEL 4( Architecture (for People) 222 < Introduction < Ellen Dunha m-Jones 224 < Jose Miguellribas < BEN IDDRM . The reasons for success 236 <Jeffrey Inaba < Bust or Fold ? The New Cu lture of Control 248 < Christian Kiihn < Comp lexity and Po pulism 254 < Ellen Dunham-Jones < New Urbanism's Subversive Marketing 270 < Liane Lefaivre < "Pop ulism Re dux?" 288 < Liane Lefaivre and Alexander Tzonis < In the Name of the People; The Populist Movement in Architecture 306 < Jonathan Sergison < Working wit h appearancels]

PANEL 5(

320 324 335 358 374

Architecture (with People)

< Introduction < Dennis Kas pori < Dennis Kaspori < Towards an open-source architectural practice < Juan Palop-Casado <

Urban Planning*

< Marcos Lutyens < McSyn: Cross-Modal architect ural portraits

< Diller + Scofidio < Blur 390 < Afterword + Glossary <

ACKNOWLEDGMENT (

What PeopleWant is the first book on a series of DOM con-

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ferences that began with an idea in 2002 to establish architecture as the host of a cross-cultural and multidisciplinary discussion of architecture and cont emporary culture. To sustain such a project over the years has required the partic ipation and support of a multitude of institutions, sponsors, hosts, and, of course, ambitious architects, designers, theorists, historians, artists, philosophers, cultural theorists, economists and many others, who shared their work and ideas in discussions and books like this one, giving content and meaning to the project. Each year the project becomes bigger and for that reason, it is inevitable that someone might be inadvertently forgotten. Forthat omission I assume full responsibility. The indomitable and indefatigable Reinhard Kannonier, Rector of The Universityof Arts and Industrial Design, has to be thanked for his trust and for the initiation and establishment of DOM at The University. I thank Gerfried Stocker, Director of the collaborating Ars Electronica Center, who, from the first day,was excited aboutthe idea of cooperating with a laboratory operating with and in between both institutions. Without their ambition and tireless support, neither DOM nor the conferences, and subsequentlythis book, would exist. lowe a great depth of gratitude to my colleague and friend Thomas Duschlbauer, who, in endless discussions, helpedto achieve more profound insights on contemporary cultural phenomena . Due to his comm itment, intelligence and knowledge of this subject, he had a great impact on the development and success of the entire project. The extraordinarily efficient and emphatic Katrin Emler and Ellen Fethke assumed the fiscal responsibilities for the conferences and provided valuable expertise in managing them. Fu rthermore, I wish thank the following staff members of The University of Arts and Industrial Design, Linz as well as of the Ars Electronica Center for their great support: Gregor Traugott, for maintaining each year's website;

Siglinde Lang, for her support in press and communi cations agendas; Karl Schmidinger, Magnus Hofrnul ler, Horst Hartner,Helmut Hollerl and Dietmar Offenhube r for their technical support. Ulrike Ru h of Birkhaeuse r Publishers in Basel deserves special thanks as she has helped to lay the groundwork for this book. Her encouragement has meant a lot to the development of the entire project, which took shape, fir st and foremost, with the help of Claus Zerenko, Director of Reklamebuero. From the first moment, he committed himself to the project, financing and leading the complete design development of the book. His staff members, Ra iner Zerenko and Silvia Profanter, successfully managed the book's layout within an incredibly short production cycle and made the dream of this book cometrue. Mel Greenwald - a reliable contributor to DOM since the first conference - translated most of the articles. Argine de Ayala Ramos from Spain joined the translation team for articles by Spanish-speaking authors. The book's content would not be as rich as it is now without Lois Hechenbla ikner,who generously donated photos and Joachim Schnaitter who donated the cover image. Above all, one is constantly mindful of the generous confidence displayed by the State Secretary for the Arts and Media of the Federal Chanc ellery of Austria and the governments of the Province of Upper Austrian and the City of Linz who, since the beginning of DOM, have provided grants to help support the conferences and subsequentlythis publication. Lastly, the greatest contribution, the one for which I am most grateful, is the unwavering support of all the authors whose work appears in the following pages. Without their extraordinary commitment and energy, the project would not be as exciting and interesting as it is now.

Michael Sham iyeh

FOREWORD (

Populisttendencies in architecture are nothing new. Nevertheless, in the century just ended, two decisive factors enabled populism to assume far greater dimensions: on one hand,the market economy and the accompanying structural transformation or de-politicisation of society - i.e. the increasing freedom of each individual member of society - and, on the other hand,the media,which nowadays not only interlink everything, but also, above all, make a global transfer of information possible. Forthe DDM Conferences, which were conceived and developed to introduce non-architectural questions into architecture and thereby to question the role of contemporary architecture, we askedwhat the idea of populism might meantoday other than its political connotations.

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This book, then, is a structured map of answers to this question. Some 30 internationally renowned architects, designers, artists, project developers and cultural theorists from Europe, the US and Canada spent three days addressing and discussing this issue. We looked at populism primarily through two lenses: the strategies of anticipation and the strategies of mobilisation. Thesetwo formations helped not just to expand an understanding of populism and to recognise that there are tremendous differences in the way populism is considered in the US and Europe, but also to move beyond thinking about a political (demagogicl populism that makes use of emotions, prejudices and fears for its own purposes and offers supposedly simple solutions to problems, coming up to popular culture and ending with Pop, which somehow designateswhat pleases people without an interest.

LOOKING AT ARCHITECTURAL DISCOURSE IN THE SECOND HALF OF THE 20 TH CENTURY, THERE HAVE BEEN TWO WELL-KNOWN DIMENSIONS OF POPULISM IN ARCHITECTURE. The first fundamental populist position is the adoption of vernacular structural forms by experts in the field. That which gets built reflects, so to speak, either the context the vernacular forms are supposed to have originated in or the taste in architectural forms and the general public's sensibility with respect to them. This process of convergence comes about in despotic fashion (architecture without - albeit for - people). The second fundamental populist position - one directly connected to the first - is the exploration of possibilities to integrate the client or the public in the design process, and is thus one of an operative nature.

In a paternalistic way, the effort is made to develop concepts collaboratively with future users or residents (architecture with the people]. This dimension is familiar especially in connection with urban renewal projects from the '60s and '70s in which concessionswere madeto the populace that went beyond mere participation in the sense of a demo cratic mode of proceeding with a project. This approach is currently in the midst of a lively revival thanks especially to mem bers of the Dutch scene and the possibilities of interactive and integrative design processesthat the computer now renders feasible.

OF COURSE, THERE IS A THIRD DIMENSION OF POPULISM - NAMELY ANARCH ISM. In this case,people do what they want without the patronageof architects, a strategy recently deployed by Carel Weeber with his program on "Het Wilde Wonen." However, this dimension of populism does not concern us here. Architectural history has shown, that populism has never emerged as a single homogenous direction within the body of architecture such as Regionalism, Rationalism, Brutalism or Deconstructivism; rather, it is identifiable in many different architectural movements. At times, populism has led to modern appearances when its popular references legitimised a functional discourse; at other times, it has since led to conservative ones,the reason being that its references were considered as constant. Even today, we can observe this dichotomy of populism in the contemporary architectural landscape . To day, populism has assumed a far greater dimension in architecture due to recent societal changes. That is to say, architects have become subject to the conditions of the market economy and the accompanying worldwide tendency, currently evident, towards privatisation or the abolition of numerous governmentregulatory agencies and laws - for exam ple, the privatisation of governmental housing institutions that, since the early 1920s, had been a great source of legitimisation to the architectural profession - and are asked to conform their construction projects and urban designsto a populist market consensus. This means that they are being called upon, more than ever,to try to achieve "what people want," which, in this case, is usually equated with the will of the consume r. Tod ay,this is done by means of recourse to an aesthetically and typologically traditional repertoire such as the one evident in the concepts of New Urbanism. Simply put, the markettempts and encourages us architects and designers to become populists - to anticipate the will of the people. In an impressive address, US historian Thomas Frank madethe point that there has probably never before existed such a broad consensus on the role of the market. For years, this populist market consensus has been a major component in undertakings at the interface of culture and economics. Beyond "traditional" populisttendencies in architecture, a new populist dimension recently entered the "arena" of architecture, one that refers to the strategies of mobilising or orchestrating people. It has to do with the process by which archit ects themselves commu nicate with their clients and the public. It addresses the t erm popu lism in its casual context - name ly, the way in which personsor special int erest groups attempt to curry favour with the public. The point here is to understand that public education processes have long been systematically dis-

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torted by unequal opportun ities to acquire and process information. Nevertheless, a look at modern-dayWestern societies reveals that public consciousness is no longer some pliable material that can be shaped at wil l by a few strategic elites, since it has become obvious that improved techniques made available by mass culture to manipulat e public perception are being superseded by the public's own increasing readinessto articulate their own opinions and protest what they oppose. Archit ecture is at the mercy of precisely this unpredictable interplay of forces. In stark contrast to the always simplified conception whereby an architect plans a building which then easily goes on to be built, public cultural institutions or other big building projects of great interest to the public always come about in a field of tension in which the interests of three principal groups collide: the architect, the client - which, in the case of major construction projects, necessarily entails governmentagencies and political interests as well - and the public (or publics).

IN CASES OF CONFLICT, A SPECIAL ROLE IS ASSUMED BY THE MEDIA, WHICH BECOME AGENTS OF RECIPROCAL COMMUNICATION AND THE COORDINATION OF INTERESTS, AND ARE THUS IN A POSITION TO ATTRIBUTE PARTICULAR WEIGHT TO CERTAIN INFORMATION.

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Co nsequently, support from the media makes it possib le today even for individuals - and thus architects as well - to bring about key changes in the course of a construction project without a great deal of effort and with practically no risk. Deliberately deployed rhetorical populism is a favourite means of going about this. Recent realisations of large cultural buildings have shown that, beyond a formal populism, creating buildings that communicate uncondescending ly with a universal audience - particularly the use of an eloquent rhetorical populism creati ng simple and emotionally charged metaphorsthe average man can grasp - has helped architects to successfully pursuetheir endeavours. The electric and challenging speeches and panel discussions on these contemporary populist tendencies in architecture and design have been broughttogether in this book. Thus, the book is neither a coherent text nor a simple reader that merely collects various essays on that theme. Rather,the book develops along tw o axes: one tr averses certain features of contemporarystrategies of mobilisation, elaborated here by cultural theorists, project managers, artists, architectural historians, and theorists and others; the other axis is unfolding along contemporary strategies of anticipation, tracing even lines of development from the mid-20th century to the present. However, the book can be read in any way. One of the aims of this book is to outline the ways in which populism has brought about continuoustransformations of architecture and design in various ways. Another is to show how naiv e certain populist strategies are and what connotations adhere to this term. Thanks to the multicultural and interdisciplinary composition of the line-up of speakers, the book gives a comprehensive view of the concept of populism and offers powerful insights that are relevant to architectural practice. Michael Shamiyeh

SPEAKERS ( PANEL 1< Helmut Dubiel < Professor of Sociology at "Justus-Liebig-Universitaet" in Giessen, Germany. 1989-1997 Director of "Institut fuer Sozialforschung" in Frankfurt. 1973 Doctorate at The University of Bielefeld. 1978 Habilitation at The University of Bielefeld. Fe llowships: 1978-1979 ACLS -Visiting Prof. at UC Berkeley; 1988-1989 Jean-Fellowship at The European Univ. Institute Florence; 1999-2000 VisitingProf. at UC Berkeley. Areas of research: critical theory, political sociology, contemporary European History. Robert Pfaller
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Walter Otsch
PANEL 2< Michael Shamiyeh < Founder and Director of DOM . Graduated from the TU Vienna and Harvard University. He has done extensive research work in Jerusalem and Berlin. Together with cultural theorist T. Duschlbauer he founded The Bureau for Architecture, Urbanism and Culture (BAU IKULTUR) that seeksto define new relationships, as muchtheoretical as practical, between a contemporary architectural production and a cultural situation. Thus, the firm concerns itself with realising projects, research and publications. Manfred FaBler
Georg Franck ( Professor and Chair of the computer-aided architecture and planning at the TU Vienna . He studied philosophy, economics and architecture. Holding a doctorate in economics, he became a practising architect and townplannerin 1974. In addition, he was active in software developme nt and produced a planning information system that has been marketed since 1991. Besides this main responsib ility, he has been engaged in writing on the economy of attention andthe philosophy of time. Helene Lipstadt (Visiting Associate Professor and a Research Affiliate at the MIT School of Architecture and Plann ing. She was educated at the London Schoo l of Economics, llniversite de Paris I, andthe Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales in art and cultural history and anthropology. Author of numerous articles and publications. Currently, she is preparing a bookon Bourdieu and architecture for an American university press. Lipstadt is Director of DOCOMOMO US. Thomas Held ( Director of Avenir Suisse, a think tank for economic and social issues that undertakes analysis and prepares proposals for public debate on economic and social policy issues. Held earned a PhD . degreein sociology and German literature at the Univers ity of Zurich. He hastaught at the Universities of Zurich, Vienna, Stanford andThe Universityof California, Berkeley as a visiting scholar and lecturer. He is an alumnus of the Advanced Management Program of The Harvard Business School. MansWrange (Artist who works with long-term projects in which he explores socio-political strategies for changing society. His work has been widely shown inter-nationally, e.g. Manifesta 4-European Biennial for Contemporary Art, Fra nkfurt; We Are All Sinners, Museo Tamayo, Mexico City; Tele [visionl, Kunstha lle Wien; In Between Rooms, Moderna Museet, Stockholm and Incidental Alterations, P.S.1 Museum, NY. Since 1997 Wrange is Professor at Konstfack, University College of Arts, Crafts and Design, Stockholm.

PANEL 3< Thomas Duschlbauer ( Associate Member of staff of Goldsm iths College, London; cultural theorist and lecturer at the FH Hagenberg. Graduated in Science of Communication and Politics at The University of Vienna . Several research stays in the USA and UK. PhD in socio-cultural implications of new media from The University of Vienna and MA in Cultural Studies at The University of London . Pub lished "Medien und Kultur im Zeitalter der X-Kommunikation". Together with Michael Shamiyeh he is co-founder of BAUIKULTUR. Greg Van Alstyne ( Director of The Institute without Boundaries, an interdisciplinary design program offered by Bruce Mau Design and George Brown - Toronto City College . He joined Bruce Mau Design in 1987, working on projects for Zone Books, Frank Gehry, and other internationa l clients. In 1995, he founded the Department of New Media at The Museum of Modern Art. As Creative Director at IconNicholson, New York, he developed large interactive projects including the Prada Broadwaystore, with Rem Koo lhaas and IDEO.

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Bill Moggridge
PANEL 4( Jose Miguellribas < Sociologistwhose expertise is the territorial, urban architectural and touristic analysis and planning. Hewas chairman of Benidorm Advisory Council and directed work on the city's master zoning plan. Iribas has collaborated on more than 50 urban planning projects andworked together with municipa l planning departments. He is Professorof Sociologyat The University of Alicante and hastaught in numerous masters programs in the field of urbanism andtourism. Iribas has published 23 books.

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Christian Kiihn
Ellen Dunham-Jones < Director of the Archit ecture Program at the Georgi a Institute of Technology in Atlanta. She is an award-winning architect and frequent author on both contemporary architectural theory and contempora ry urban development patterns. A passionate advocate for alternatives to sprawl and retrofitt ing the suburbs, her writing focuses on the varied responses by architects to the everyday landscape, as well as on the resistance of avant-garde architect ural discourse to these ideas.

PANEL 5( Juan Palop-Casado


t ectura), Master in Design Studies at Harvard, where he was part of the research group

Project on The City, led by Rem Koo lhass. Teaches at The School of Architecture, Las Palmas and collaborates with the Stadelschule in Frankfurt. Co-director of Foro de Ciudades, a research organisation working on the emerge nt "urbanism of good weather" and bringing together significant people from the spheres of capital, ideas and politics.

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The Populist Moment

A SPECTER IS HAUNTING WESTERN EUROPE, THE SPECTRE OF IPOPULlSM". THE SPECTER, WHICH WAS INVOKED BY KARL MARX IN THE COMMUNIST MANIFESTO MORE THAN 150 YEARS AGO, HAD A VERY TANGIBLE REALITY AND "ALL POWERS IN THE OLD EUROPE" KNEW WHAT HE WAS REFERRING TO. BUT THE TERM IPOPULlSM" WHICH IS FREQUENTLY USED ALL OVER EUROPE TODAY IS A LOT LESS CLEAR. IT REFERS TO A NEW KIND OF PARTIES ON THE RIGHT, WHICH ARE NEITHER AN OFFSPRING OF OLD STYLE CONSERVATISM, NOR OF FASCIST TRADITIONS, EVEN WHEN SOME OF THEIR SPOKESMEN TEND TO FLIRT WITH THIS IMAGE.

Amazing at first sight is the ubiqu ity of populistparties, populist currents in traditional parties and populisttendencies among the populist class in general.There is hardly any country in EU-Europe and its prospective member-states which do not havethe popul ist problem: the first who should be mentioned is Jorg Haider, whose "FPO" joined the conservative coalition two years ago against the bitter resistance of the European Union. Ha ider turned out to be the master of right wing populism whose success apparently inspired party leaders in many other European countries, like Ca rl l Hagen in Norway, the Dutch Pim Fortuyn, who was murdered two days before the national elections, which made his party the second strongest in The Netherlands. Philippe Dewinter in the flamist part of Belgium got 30% of all the votes in his hometown Antwerp. An important pioneer of right wing populism in Eu rope was Le Pens Front National, which attracted to a large degree blue-collar and lower middle class people, which had definite leaning to the left in former elections. In local elections for mayor of Hamb urg, Germany a certain Ronal d Schill, got 20% of the votes. Berlusconi in Italy should not be forgotten on this list, although there is lot more to be said about him.

IF WE PAY ATTENTION ONLY TO PARTIES AND ELECTIONS, WE CAN EASILY OVERLOOK THAT THE VIRUS OF POPULISM HAS INFECTED PART OF THE POLITICAL ESTABLISHMENT. I am sure that we will discuss here whether Schroeders critique of US policy towards Iraq was populist, in substance or only in form. Surely populist were the antisemitic remarks, with which Mollernann tried to catch votes at the extreme right fringe of German society. Incomprehensible things happened in the week before the election: Two former social democratic ministers, towering figures in their party, leftists, indulged in comparisons of Bush and Hitler and in antisem itic sterotypes about the undue influence of Jews in America. Therefore it came as a great relief on election day,that a lot

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more voters were disgusted by this Nazi talk than attracted. All those parties and politicians are, in fact very different. Even the degree of their popu list orientation can be assessed only in putting them in national, regional and local context. But it is hard to deny that in spite of all their variety, they do have a common denominator. The political agenda of the populist parties and move ments reflect the anxieties of their voters: • migration • safety and crime • the democratic deficit of the EU • (eastern) enlargement and the influx of cheap labor

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No politician, at least in Europe, would call himself "populist". The term is always used to criticise your political opponent in the rhetorical battles of mass democracy. In its historical origin the word "populism"was a term in social history. It refered to a bunch of agrarian movements in the United States, in Russia and in South East Europe, movementsthat took shape between the midst and the end of the 19'" Century as a reaction against capitalist modernisation of agriculture and economy in general. A similar movement in LatinAmerica emerged in the late 20's of the 20'" century. The impoverished masses, which migrated into the big cities, became the potential, which Peron in Argentina and Vargas in Brazil used for their struggle against the established oligarchies. It was the movement in North America however, which provided the model for its theoretical and not historical usage in social science. Theterm "populism"is therefore a metaphorical adaption taken from this historical case. Duringthis time, manysmall farmers in the American south and south west became dependent on the newly constructed railway system. The railroad compan ies were able to demand excessive freight rat es due to their monopoly control, just as the banks were able to dictate usurious rates in the absence of any federal control over credit policies. In a certain sensethe

political aims of the populists could be described as social democratic: they sought state protection from the big carriers of economic modernisation .But it was much more the cultural style of their politics than the substance of their demandswhich bestowed its fascinating connotations on the "populist"concept. The essence of this political culture expressed itself (and this provides the basis for all its social perceptions) in a mistrust of politi cians, jurists, banks and big entrepreneurs, in short: The individual embodiment of those anonymous drivingforces, to which they hadfallen prey.

TODAY, THE WORLD uPOPULIST u IS USED AS A POLITICAL WEAPON. No politician, not even hard core populists Miillemann or Haider describe themselves with this word. "Populist is always the other". In the examples mentioned so far, the focus shifts between historical, geograph ical substantative contexts. If you, before this lecture, had somewhat a hunch what this word might clarify, you will have lost it now. Does it refer to parties, to social movements, to a political ideology the fragments of which are prevalent in many parties, a form of political behaviour or merely a diffuse anti-modernistic mentality? Above all - to make the confusion complete - in all examples, the narrative position of the person using the concept changes; somebody from the Liberals who is inclined to call Schroeder a populist, will hesitate to do so in the case of Mii llemann. But let's go back to less slippery territory. At the end of the 70's our concept advanced to key concept in two scentific camps, neither of which can be suspected of having anything to do with the other, namelyAmerican neo-conservatism and British nee-marxism. The term populism became a semantic minefield for controversial diagnosis of our times. The neo-conservative usage of the keyword "left wing populism" is directed against the environmental, feminist and radical democratic movements, which in our days are more and more unified in the anti-globalisation movement.

In the perspective of technocratic conservatives the fight for a globalisation of below is the same irrational fight against the windmill as it was the farmers fight against the railway. In the modern conservative mind there is only one trajectory to modernityand this trajectory is predetermined by the constraints of world economy, the imperatives of scientific technological developm ent and the rituals of state bureaucracy. The former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, somewhat the mother of all right-wing-populists, coined the memorable formula: "There is no alternative", which its critics have dubbed the "TINA"-principle. Towards the end of the 70t's the label "right-wing" or "authoritarian" populism was broughtinto the debate by British neomarxist social scientists referring to Margaret Thatchers' electoral campaign tactics. Since then you can hardly find a marxist journal in Western societies, which had not dedicated various issuesto the concept of "right wing populism".

THE QUESTION, WHY DO WORKERS GIVE ELECTORAL SUPPORT TO PARTIES WHICH FIGHT AGAINST TH EIR INTE RESTS, IS ANYTH ING BUT TRIVIAL FOR MAR XISTS. The struggle of the working class for universal franchise were accompani ed by the expectation, that the inclusion of workers in the liberal political system would enablethem to abolish capitalism by political means. Whoever looks at the 20th century with this 19th century expectation must explain how capitalism survived mass democracy. This questionwas raised in a dramatic way (esp. in Germany) in the 20's and 30's when a numbe r of facist regimes came to power in Europe by strategically exploiting the institutions of mass democracy. The present day manifestation of this political paradox, which the concept of "populism" attemptsto dissolve, can only be clarified against the backgrou nd of the Keynesi an political consensus which governed the economic policies

of nearly every Western Society in the post-war era. Such a policy envisioned the vigorou s expansion of the welfare state services, an anti-cyclical policy of stabilisation oriented to the interest of consumers, the expansion of public goods and services and finally the integration of the unions in the overall economic respon sibility. Thusthe state had the chance (for the first time in the history of capitalism) to present itself simultaneously as the agent of the common good as well as the trustee of private capitalist interests. Keynesianism combined the art of managing a nationa l economy and the social integration in one unified policy. The Keynesian paradigm died about 25years ago and dissolved in its separate elements. The task of managing the national economy and securing popular consent must once again be pursued by totally different political strategies. Forthe British sociologists who invented the term "rightwing populism" it is the catch-all concept for the nee-conservative and later on neo-liberal strategies of symbolic or ideological, integration which are required when welfare services, social assista nce and forms of monetary compensation are not available anymore to serve this function. A classic right wing populist style of argument is to equate the private house-hold with the states budget. From this perspective welfare state services appea r suddenly as an irresponsible squandering of wealth which citizens have not earned through work. A very telling material for right wing forms of mobilisation was provided by Mdllernann during the recent election campaign in Germany. In an interview given to the German weekly "DerSpiegel", he announced: "We have to raise problems, which for whatever reasons are declared to be taboo. The rift betweenthat what people think and that what the political class is talking aboutis enormous." We know what he said in the following weeks. His message was basically: Jews themselves are responsible for anti-Semitism, the Jews in Israel are todays Nazis andthe representatives of the German Jewry are arrogant crooks. Of course he did not explicitly put it this way. Mollernann is a master in populist talk, that is spea king in vague allusions, which appeal to the latent paranoias and anxieties of deeplyfrustrated people.

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THE POPULIST FORM OF POLITICAL MOBILISATION IS BASED ON RESENTMENT AND PREJUDICES, WHICH ARE A CONSEQUENCE OF EXCLUDING OF LOWER STRATA FROM POWER AND EDUCATION.

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The cultural signs of class domination became, so to speak, the means of its prolongation. In his analysis of facist agitators in The US, Leo Lowenthal was led by similar considerations to recommend the apt term "psychoanalysis in reverse" for this type of mobilisation. The right wing populist agitator approaches his audience with intentions exactly opposite of those of the analystvis-a-vis the patient. He seizes upon neurotic fears, cognitive insecurities and regression tendencies, systematicallystrengthening them in order to preventthe patient from achieving autonomy. The Populist Moment Even after some examples, the meaning of the term "populist" is still not very clear. Different groups of social scientists with different theoretical backgrounds are speaking about different phenomena for different reasons. When a neo-conservative intellectual speaks about "populists", he has in mind: social workers; left wing teachers with Birkenstock shoes; feminists; pacificists; environmentalist; anti-globalisers etc.; the remnants of the students movement andtheir children. Forthe British marxists the social carriers of populism are the downwardly mobile section of the lower middle class, skilled and unskilled workers and the self-employed . My point is now,that these two ways of speaking about socalled "populists" do have something in common . First it is evident, that it is a negatively charged term. Populism is regarded in both camps as a dangerous phenomenon, a political pathology, a threat to democracy. Second they have in common that they - albeit in different forms - presuppose a rationalistic scheme of political will formation. The rationalistic bias of the conservatives is expressed in the

assumption of unavoidable imperatives and necessities, sociallaws so to say which demand immediate compliance. Such a law is for example that bureaucratic forms of organisation are superiorto all other forms of social transactions. Division of labour, clear cut hierarchies and the absolute trust in science andtechnology are necessary conditionsfor "rational" outcome of collective activity.

THE RATIONALISTIC BIAS OF THE MARXIST SOCIOLOGISTS IS REVEALED IN THEIR IMMEDIATE CONNECTION OF "CLASS IN ITSELF" TO "CLASS FOR ITSELF". They had a utilitarianexpectation in mind, according to which, workers as a group are capable of rational insight in their econom ic situation and moreover, capable of acting according to this insight. Otherwise they would not have found it necessaryto explain why workers have often acted in contradiction to their objective class interest. Both anti-populist camps, the neo-conservatives and the marxists pretend to be able to distinguishvery clearly between cognitive and affective, rational and irrational elements in collective will-formation. They meet at a point of agreement, where emotions, moralsensibilities, anxieties, quests for collective self-identification are a priori perceived as a political pathology. But we all know just by every day life experiences, that political will-formation is deeply shaped by expectations of happiness, demands for justice and needs for social recognition. The nature of these needs is seen as a negative one. Negative in the sense, that they articulate a sense of collective misery, they express experiences of injustices and social dishonoUr. People do not say we want to be happy, we want justice and political recognition . In times where social change is frozen as occurs in culturally highly stabilised societies, these potentials of frustration, dissatisfaction and desparation are deeply embedded in traditional patterns. They become

politically significant however, when the cumulation of these (thus far pre-political) potentials approaches a threshold, after which they cannot be ignored any more. Lawrence Goodwyn has coined the term "The populist Moment" for such phases. In his book with the title "The Populist Moment" he describes a historical situation, in the course of which the pre-established balance between power-relations, forms of life and economic necessities is destroyed within a very short time. During such social moments, collective experiences of felt offence, status anxiety andfrustrated expectations are dislodged from established discourses and lie peculiarly opposite to the given spectrum of political traditions. The example Goodwyn had in mind was of course the construction of the railway system in the US. I am amazed by the parallels betweenthe historical discoursesin the midst of the 19th century and the globalisation discourse of our days. Populistparties, populist politicians and agitators are fighting among themselves and with the established political parties for the shortest connectionto the socalled "people". As you all know very well, the relationship between citizens and parties in all liberal democracies has deterioted significantly in the last years. It is an often noted paradox, that the model of liberal democracyis about to lose its attraction in the very momentof its nearly global triumph. And it fits in that the general resentmentcitizens (Demokratieverdrossenheit) refers to political parties,that are those institutions which pretend to mediate betweenthe peoples ' political will andthe institutions of the government. Contrary to the years between the wars and shortly after the second world war in Germany, only few political scientists cast doubt on the democratic maturity of most citizens. Dahrendorf made recently the often quoted remark: "After the war we had a democracywithout democrats. Now we have democrats without a democracy." Some politicians are still convinced of drilling successfully thick boards. But any honest and intelligent person, who knows the political business at the national level, will tell

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you that the range of action for transformative politics is very, very narrow, if not nonexistant. The constraints of global competition, the structural predetermination by transnational institutions, andthe tightly woven web of group interests, have largely absorbed the leeway politics might have had in former times. And on top of this: No generation of elected politicians in history was ever confronted with problems as complex and new as they are nowadays. Who knows the formula to secure peace andthe respect for human rights at the same time? Who knows the formula to make global capitalism democratically accountable. How to balance between the quest for global justice in the interest of european citizens to close borders .

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There is no lack of thick boards. As I said, they have never beenthat thick. But in spite of this or perhaps just because of this complexity, politics (in complicity with the media) is more and more degenerating into a mere simulation, in order to disguise the real impotence of traditional politics. That's why populism is becoming an endemic problem of modern mass democracies.

IT WOULD BE A GREAT MISTAKE IN SUCH A SITUATION TO REDUCE THE PUBLIC DEBATE, IN ORDER NOT TO PROVIDE POPULISTS WITH A STAGE. Political correctness, the declaration of taboos are widespread attemptsto reduce the public sphere wit h seemingly good intentions. But these attempts create the twighlight in which agitators flourish. The daylight of robust democratic culture however is much more effective in scaring off populists than any strategy of excommunication ... The public sphere in demo cracies is sensitive creature. Its pathologies can only be cured with home opathic medication, that is with more communi cation. Populism is a problem of mass democracies, and at the same time, a part of it. You sould never envisage a societywithout popu list moments.

IT IS ONLY IMPORTANT THAT CITIZENS KNOW HOW TO COPE WITH THESE MOMENTS.

ROBERT PFALLER (

Howto Be and notto Pop

Why are some populations populist and others aren't?

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POPULISM IS, FIRST OF ALL, A SORT OF REVERBERATION, AN ECHO. LISTENING TO A POPULIST SPEECH, WE USUALLY HAVE A HARD TIME TELLING WHO'S ACTUALLY SPEAKING, OR WHO'S SPEAKING WHOSE WORDS. This has to do with a complex interrelationship of recitation and repetition . Populist politicians, for example, purportedly take the words right out of the people's mouth; on the other hand, not everyone gathers around the regulars' table at their local watering hole and speaks in a way that their words cry out for parroting and lend themselves to rousing recitation.

What, then, are the political and cultural conditions that make some populaces receptive to populist politics and others not? How come the direction of some people's spontaneous "uprisings" is always "downwards"? Why do they get all worked up about, for instance, immigrants, welfare recipients and ambitiously unconventional modern architecture, but never discuss the realities of the allocation of wealth and power in society? What is the source of the perverse "reason" that suddenly leads people in certain countries to immediately "acknowledge" that it's high time for budgetcuts, privatisation or the reduction of taxes on corporate profits? In order to refute the impression that populism is a universal stockpile of malice that is unavoidable in highly mediatised societies and can be instrumentalised at any time by clever demagogues, I would like to go into more detail about its preconditions on the basis of five hypotheses. 1. Populism has a cultural precondition: it requires an anal culture. The sort of populism currently prevailing in many European countries, manifesting itself as racism towards immigrants and envy targeting those who are dependantupon government transfer payments, presupposes a particular type of culture. Its true character is revealed by its metaphors: populists like to talk of "order," but rather in a hygienic than in a judicial sense. That's why they always promise to "clean house" or "get things shaped up,"to prevent this order from being overwhelmed by the "freeloaders" and "parasites" they like to equate with vermin, various insects, microorganisms or rodents.

SUCH AN AGENDA EVOKES A POSITIVE RESPONSE ONLY AMONG PEOPLE WHO HAVE LEARNED TO CONCEPTUALISE THEMSELVES AS "POOR BUT CLEAN." Psychoanalytic theory has developed the term "anal character" (see Freud 1908bl for this imaginary regime, for this form of

organisation of passions. The traits that typify the anal character - extreme love of order, obstinacy and frugality - take shape as a "reaction-formation". They are forms of resistance against an intensively experienced, infantile, anal-erotic stage of sexual development in which a high value is ascribed to excrement - for example, in the sense of a gift that assures love and attention from parents and other caregivers. This early, affectionate attachmentto excrement in the analerotic stage is, in the reaction of the anal character, transformed into its antagonistic opposite - a passionate struggle against any form of filth. Indeed. But the reaction-formation itself, as Freud showed, is always made up of the material againstwhich it is directed. Thus,the love of cleanliness guaranteesthe anal character the same all-encompassing opportunityto encounter the filth that had been the individual's predilection during the former anal-erotic stage. Thus,the reaction-formation is a deeply equivocal form of resistance because the very act of defense is what facilitates the breakthrough of that which is being defended against.This is what makesthis formation so precious, since hidden within it is secret enjoyment.

AT THE SAME TIME, HOWEVER, THIS CAN AS A RESULT ALSO BE PERCEIVED AS UNBEARABLE. The permanently elevated state of arousal- for example, the constantly heightened attention paid to filth - is experienced as unpleasant by a psychic apparatusthat, in accordance with the "pleasure principle," strives to reduce excitement. In particular, the compulsive factor that is attached to the reaction formation due to its inherent compromise between mutuallyopposing endeavours, is, in most cases, suffered just as much as it is enjoyed by the person obsessed in this way. The upshot of this structure is populism's characteristic ambivalent nature - a "hot potato"with an extreme attractiveness that can suddenlyturn into repulsion - which opens up possibilities of overcoming populism. More about this a little later.

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2. Cultural anality is the result of a historical defeat. Whereas individual anal characteristics identified in clinical psychoanalysis have causes to be found in the subject's sexual development, anal cultures that are relevant to the theory of populism have collective, historical causes. The anal cultures that currently display populisttendencies are consequences of failed bourgeois revolutions.

IF AN ON-THE-MAKE SOCIAL CLASS OUTDOES THE ONE THAT HAD PREVIOUSLY ENJOYED SOCIAL PREEMINENCE, THEN IT CAN APPROPRIATE ITS PREDECESSOR'S ACHIEVEMENTS AS THE VICTOR'S SPOILS.

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If, onthe other hand, its upward strivings fail, it tendsto seek its identitysomewhere otherthan in relation to these achievements andto scorn precisely what would have been the fruits of victory - just like the fox in Aesop's fable about sour grapes. The European aristocracy of the 18th century was the bearer of a pleasure-oriented culture committed to carrying on the heritage of Antiquity, which the bourgeoisie proceeded to appropriate wherever it triumphed . Conversely, wherever it went down to defeat, it acquired forms of resistance to this Sybaritic lifestyle. This is the origin, for example, of what Norbert Elias analysed as the historically significant juxtaposition of "civilization" and "culture"in Germany where the bourgeois revolution failed (see Elias 1998, Vol. 1: 124 tt.). Through the operation of this German conceptual pair, the diametrical social opposition of aristocracy and bourgeoisie is transformed into a representation of the national differences between "superficial," "false" French civilization and "authentic" German culture, andthe historical difference between a victorious bourgeoisie and a defeated one transformed into an organic, national difference. The courtly lifestyle had been made accessibleto bourgeois Frenchmen as

a result of their triumph, whereas it rema ined off-limits to the bourgeoisie in Germany where it thus had to be denounced as a counterfeit. The aristocracy's lusty amorous adventurousness was likewise adopted by the French bourgeoisie and rejected bythe German one. This is the origin of the difference in the structure of French andthe German romantic novels identified by Friedrich Engels. 'The man ends up 'getting it' it: both: in the German novel, boy gets girl; in the French one, husbandgets cuckolded. roo'] This is why the French bourgeoisie was just as put off by boring German novels as the German philistines were appalled by their 'indecent' French literary counterparts." (Engels 1973: 81) In place of the civilized lust that remained inaccessible, what became established in Germany was an extremelyanal virtuousness to which the questionable term "culture" was applied. The accentuation of "internal" values like character and sensitivity in contrast to "external" qualities like charm, style, elegance and seductiveness revealsthe motif that is typical of anality: the asocial refusal to externalise or strong retentiveness that is also ultimately based on obstinacy and frugality, the detestation of indecency and, beyond that, the anal fear of relinquishing control.

AS WITH FORMS OF BEHAVIOUR AND ATTITUDES TOWARDS EROTICISM, THE CULINARY ARTS UNDERWENT A CORRESPONDINGLY DISSIMILAR DEVELOPMENT. The French nobility's cooks, who had been left jobless by the guillotining of their employers, had to markettheir skills via cooking courses offered to a bourgeois public and thus brought about the emergence of widespread connoisseurship. In Germany, on the other hand , the cuisine remained miserable but one took pride in the country's clean toilets and, later, the invention of the round, plastic waste receptacles that adorn the tables of hotel breakfast rooms. As far

as automotive culture is concerned,the PR polemics of German car manufacturers rail against the conveniences and elegance of French limousines with the typical anal category of "gap dimensions," whereby the competition's output is said to be "dirty". The act of resisting the pleasure-oriented lifestyle that had been adopted by a victorious bourgeoisie gave rise to an anal reaction in the "culture" of a subjugated bourgeoisie .

THE CURRENT TRANSATLANTIC DISGRUNTLEMENT AND SPITEFUL EXCHANGES BETWEEN THE US AND FRANCE MUST ALSO BE INTERPRETED IN THIS LIGHT. As Gret Haller has shown, the fundamentalist Christianity that is presently flourishing in the US is the reaction of an emigrant Protestant loser bourgeoisie that had no opportunity to adopt the aristocratic cultivation schooled on Antiquity and the corresponding materialist positions, distant to Christianity, which are typical of the French bourgeoisie . This is why it is preciselythe pleasure-seeking French culture that is a favourite target for the hostility of Christian fundamentalist populism in the US, much more so than the other cultures of "Old Europe" that harbour the same reservations about the policies America is currently pursuing. The ageold irreconcilability of the ideals of "Christian" and "gentleman" (Cf. Liiwith 1948) come across clearly here. Thus,these bourgeois classes' divergent histories are yet another instance of that "factor of hostility to culture" that, according to Freud, must have likewise been involved in Christianity's victory over heathen religions (see Freud 1930a: 2181. In the eyes of Bible Belt residents, the well-versed gentilhomme with his glass of red wine is like a matadorwaving his red cape in front of a bull. In contrast to the individual anal character that originates as a reaction to infantile anal eroticism, cultural anality is a reaction to a particular historical voluptuary culture, the failed

attempt at the acquisition of which engendered a culturally anal character. This is a general repudiation- not only of the anal form of pleasure but also of cultural pleasure entirely, which is typical of the unvanquished enemy class and is thus regarded or denounced as filthy.

3. The populist attitude is a form of resistance in which it is precisely that which is resisted that succeeds in achieving a breakthrough and is secretly enjoyed. The anal culture that constitutes populism's necessary precondition is based on reaction-formations. Populism is the political form of such a reaction-formation. As such, it can resist a certain form of pleasure only by simultaneously helping it to achieve a breakthrough. In going about this, it brings into existence not only this pleasure but also what it considers it to be: filth. Populism furnishes the self-styled upholders of decency the rare opportunityto get down and dirty with their own cleanliness. As sinister racists, as grumblers of social envy, as enemies of cultivation and urbanity, they can really get "low down" and, in the company of likeminded individuals, take leave at least for a spell of those social ideals and aimsthat they themselves acknowledge and do not call into question. That's why there is something carnival-like about populism, the structure of an intoxication necessarily limited in space and time. And this is the basis of a not inconsiderable problem for populism: the formation of more general structures and sustainable institutions. Its discourse is more suitable as a subtext than as a text, not as a law, but as that other, obscene, "unwritt en" side of the law whose operation has been analysed by Slavoj Zizek (see Zizek 19971. This is one of the reasons why someone listening to such a discourse is often hardly able to say who is speaking. At the same time,this is alsothe reason why right-wingers in contrast to leftists - regularly manage to profit even from their mistakes. That which, on the level of the public discourse, could never possibly be a presentable argument(for

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exam ple, Austrian presidenti al candidate Kurt Waldheim's past service in the SAl. mutates, as soon as it is deployed as a weapon by political opponents, into an obscene, highly libidinously infused pro-argument on the level of the "unwritten" populist discourse ("Now we're really gonnaturn out for him!").

POPULIST LEADERS MUST ALMOST ALWAYS DISPLAY SUCH AN OBSCENE QUALITY WITH WHICH THEY OCCASIONALLY VIOLATE EVEN THE RULES THEY THEMSELVES PROPAGATE. Pim Fortuyn, for inst ance, gathered Dutch xenophobes around him but simultaneously gave sporadic glimpses of the affairs he carried on with young Moroccan male prostitutes. And Jiirg Haider, at the height of his anti-art populism in Austria in the mid-'90s, appeared on giant posters whose backgrounds bore a strong resemb lance to modern abstract art.

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Thus,the "critical" revelation of such qualities that seem to contradict the party line damages the popularity of populist leaders only in the rarest of cases. Qu it e the contrary - the populist leader could hardly achieve success without such transgressive features; at some point, he has to keep his promiseto break the rules and signal that obscenity in which the populist masses enjoy their own occasional distance from accepted social standards. On ly in this way can he confirm his authority as leader that even allows him to disregard his own principles and to escape the danger of being looked down upon as a conformist weakling by his own followers. If it is true that these reaction-formations are the results of historical defeats, then it also becomes clear why there does not necessarily also have to exist a leftist counterpart to rightwing populism. After all, reaction-formations are by their very nature politically reactionary. As resistances to

cultural prey as well as against the striving for it, they serve to prevent an emerging, social-revolutionary impetus from reaching its goal. Thus, it is questionablewhether the diverse Green-alternative phenomena that have been termed "leftist populism" by the minions of the right are actually deserving of this label; they could also be either one or the other (Cf. Elff erding, in: Dubie l 1986: 183). If there exist lefti st variants that correspond to the structure outlined here, then they would no doubt haveto be found in the domain of the "filthy rites" investi gated by Stephen Greenb latt. These are situations that frequently occur in the history of many cultures - for example, the bizarre performances by American Indians of the Newekwe Brotherhood as reported by a 19th-century USArmy officer or the notorious Lecture Hall 1 action "Art and Revo lution" staged by the Viennese Actionists in June 1968 - in which members of oppressed classes, ethnic minorities or rebellious groups utilise excrement to perform certain "scatological rituals," extraordinary spectacles meant to be seen by their oppressors, whereby, as Greenb latt remarked, the insulting gestures energetically performed by these groups also always amountto "acknowledgment of their own subjugation" (Greenb latt 1995: 36).

JUST LIKE THE POPULISMS OF THE RIGHT, THESE ACTIONS ARE ALSO CONSEQUENCES OF A HISTORICAL DEFEAT, AND, AS REACTION-FORMATIONS - IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE WORD OF MARX - SIMULTANEOUS EXPRESSIONS OF MISERY AND PROTESTS AGAINST IT. In contrast to rightists' populist initiatives,though,these forms of compromise do not manifestthemselves as violence againstother, weaker groups; rather, they constitute forms of self-debasement by means of which humiliation previously suffered at the hands of others is meantto be both recalled

and banished. This leftist variety of reaction differs from its rightist counterpart in that, besides the interrelationships of repression, the excrement motif of nostalgie de merde (Greenblatt 1995: 35) also remains transparent.

4. The populist stance is a drama staged for viewing by someone else.This other person is supposed to be shocked by it. Clearerthan in the case of rightist populism is the leftist reaction-formations' quality of containing messages addressed to others. That which might initially appearto horrified witnesses as incomprehensible reality must always be understood as a drama that would not even be played out in the absence of these viewers andtheir aghast expressions (Cf. Signer 1997). The scatological Actionist needs his Babbitt just as the populist needs the politically correct liberal, and just as Marquis de Sade's libertine needsthe unsuspecting observer before whose eyes he eats excrement and whose horror is precisely what makes this act a delicious pleasure: "Mr. President, you have an erection," said the Duke. "Your rhetoric always brings forth such manifestationson your part." "Erect?" exclaimed the President. "No. But I am presently engaged in an effort to get Miss Sophie to shit, and I hope that her delicious filth will arousejust such an effect." "Oh, truly, more than I thought!" cried Curvalafter having devoured the stool. "By the God on whom I shit, my cock is beginning to come to life." (Sade 1979, II: 181) The speaker needs his uncomprehending , horrified witness (in this case, God or Miss Soph ie) in order for something dreadful that one would probably never do to satisfy ones own inclination to be endowed by the viewer's glance with the quality and the attraction of the sublime . On est bien dans Ie mal (the bad does him good), Jacques l.acan's formulation aboutthe libidinous economy of Sade's protagonists, must also be used to explain populist passions. The depths to which one descendswith involvement in populism are always

located beyond the realm of ones own pleasure-seeking inclinations. Nor are racists and people who harbour strong social resentments basically driven by cruel tendencies. Qu ite the contrary - they, like the tabloids favourably disposed by the populist media, tend to displaythe most sentimental forms of love for animals and children. Thus, the cruelty of the populist stance hasthe character of a maxim that asserts itself in spite of an individual's own tendencies and, as Lacan remarked, that is precisely what constitutes not only the characteristic of Kant's ethical thinking on moral duty (since duty alone is strong enough to enable the individual to disregard his basic inclination) but also the sexually charged feeling of autonomy on the part of Sade's protagonists (see Lacan 1991). The capacity to set aside ones own inclination before the eyes of a horrified onlookerfunctions as proof that ones own autonomy is greater than that of the other.

THIS IS WHY, WITH THE HELP OF THIS ASTOUNDED OBSERVER, EVEN SELF-DEBASEMENT CAN BE TRANSFORMED INTO SELF-AGGRANDISEMENT AND SOMETHING SHAMEFUL INTO THE SUBLIME. This not-necessarily-conscious way of thinking is shared by the populist movements' dirty apostles of cleanliness and the idealistic German philosophers, with Kant as well as Hegel, whose notorious "struggle for recognition" is, after all, a matter of the superiority of the one who is capable of showing scant regard for his own inclinations and his own safety before the eyes of others. Moreover, artists and cultural creatives are by no means strangersto this figure of thought. Theytoo have developed aesthetics in which they need the shocked onlooker. The aesthetics of ugliness and of kitsch are always based on the precondition of a cultivated, conventional taste that sets itself apart from naive bad taste and assesses the objects in

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question as ugly and kitschy. It is precisely this cultivated, conventional taste that makes possible the emergence of the elitist taste for ugliness and kitsch that takes sublime satisfaction from thesethings and thus creates a two-fold feeling of superiority - both over naive observers as well as horrified cultivated ones (Cf. Pfa ller 2000: 58 ft.). With this, it becomes clear that the better the arena made available to popu list gestures, the more successful and likelier they become . Since Western societies' liberal elites are themselves becoming increasingly anal - as evidenced by their indulgence in political correctness and abhorrence for filthy language crossing their lips - they are unintentionally making themse lves an ever-more-receptive audience for the filth of the populist upholders of moral standards.

THUS, THE INCREASINGLY PRUDISH HOSTILITY TOWARDS PLEASURE DISPLAYED BY THE HIGH CULTURES OF THE WEST CONSTITUTESSUSTENANCEFORTHE OBSCENITIES OF POPULISM AND GARNERS THEM ATTENTION IN THE MEDIA.

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When a system of ratings succeeds in banishing sex and promiscuity from the cinema, then the guests of talk shows wish to speak of nothing else.We have dumbed -down TV for the masses on one hand and an intellectually demanding, interesting but totally antiseptic Pub lic Broadcasting System on the other. And this bifurcation repeats itself in the art world with its attempts to oppose an idiotic spectacle culture by a politically concerned, hypersensitive and prudish initiatives like the German "documenta," the PBS of contemporary art. The partakers of the anal culture from which both opponents are, in equal measure, derived should therefore not be astounde d at the outgrowthsthat are engendered on this

culture's dark side. Intensifying the analityof a culture brings forth rightist-populist anal characters.

5. Populism's nature is that of a "hot potato." Those who are favourably disposed to populism don't want any part of it themselves. Since popu lism is a social interrelationship between a prudish observer and an anal persona lity who lets it all hang out for him, it also always contains a message from one to the other.

IN ADDITION TO THE MANIFEST LEVEL OF MEANING - "I'LL PLAY OUT FOR YOU WHAT YOU, WITHOUT REALISING IT, WANT TO SEE II THIS MESSAGE ALSO HAS A LATENT LEVEL - "LET ME OUTTA HERE!" This communicative facet of the phenomenon should not be overlooked since inherent in it are the possibilities of overcoming populism . The adherents of populism might seem to feel as happy in their attitudes as a pig in shit, but they still don't want to acknowledge being populists themselves. Pop ulism is an attitude that cannot be totally adopted by anyone. It circulates in a peculiar way betweenthe demagoguewho thinks he has to do all this for the benefit of his simple-minded fans, and the rank-and-file themse lves who secretly console themse lves with the thought that the program that finally gets implemented won't be as radical as the demagogue has been formulating it. That it's always the other guywho's the popu list, as Helmut Dubiel has remarked, not only has to do with the fact that the very word itself is an insult, but above all that this orientation, as with superstition or magic, always displays the structure of the obscene tailside of a coin whose head-side is an official, presentable stance. Onlyin this supporting role can it exist and be

maintained. As seductive as it might be to associate wit h a group that allows each respective member t o regard the others as the true believers (Cf. Pfaller 20021, the populist stance can just as easily become repulsive when it threatens to be hopeless and to revert primarily to oneself. And for this reason it is, like the proverbial hot potato, often suddenly dropped. This enables us to derive a method of intervening in opposition to populism. Explaining that populist positions are erroneous and using expert knowledge of a particular subject to refut e them usually just enragestheir proponents and fails to get the discussion moving. It's as futile as trying to talk a paranoiac out of his persecution mania; he then persists even more energetically, since, in spite of all the imaginary persecutors,there is indeed something real about what he is trying to communicate - namely, the emoti on of his aggression (which he wrongly perceives as being of external originI.

CONTRADICTION ENRAGES THE POPULIST TOO SINCE IT MEANS , FIRST AND FOREMOST, THAT HE IS BEING PERMANENTLY LINKED TO POPULIST POSITIONS WHEREAS THE SECRET AIM OF HIS STATEMENTS IS TO EVOKE THE APPROVAL OF OTHERS AND THUS TO BE RELIEVED OF THE BURDEN OF AN INTOLERABLE VIEW. After all, he didn't utter it because that's what he himself thinks; it's just the opposite - he said it so that he doesn 't haveto think it himself anymore. The more vociferously the populist voices his opinion, the more clearly he shows that he doesn't want to be the one holding it. He wants someone to get him out of there and take the hot potato off his hands. I'll close by illustr ati ng this point with an example: the intervention I once succeeded in pulling off, though on a very

small scale and, what's more, complet ely unintentionally. I was riding in a t axi in Linz when the cabbie noticed a female cyclist who was about to make a turn that would take her, illegally and dangerously, the wrong way down a one-way street. The taxi driver pointed this out to her rather rudely, and the shocked woman apologised . Then the cabbie started to tell me that cyclists in general were a hazard, but in the case of an accident the motorist is always to blame. And that in spite of the fact that bicycles, most of which were inadequately illuminated, were often hard to see - and it was even harder when the cyclist had dark skin. The incident was thus becoming increasingly absurd and more highly charged with dark passions. And as it did, I, who was tired anyway, was in less and less of a moodto contradict him. And then I came up with another line of response. I said that for me, a native of Vienna, it was really amazing how courteous the motorists are in Linz. In Vienna, cyclists are treated much less considerately. With that, the cabbie's face surprisingly lit up, and he told me that it was only since he had been driving a motorcycle that he realised how diffi cult the two-wheelers have it with their longer braking distance and so forth. Someo ne who just drives a car can't even imag ine that, he said. But this way, you can put yourself in the other guy's position, and then motorists learn to drive defensively in critical situations and "what have you lost, then?".

UNINTENTIONALLY, I HAD PROVIDED MY INTERLOCUTOR WITH A CHANCE TO EXIT HIS DISCOU RSE. MY REMARK HAD OFFERED HIM AN ALTERNATIVE, ON E THAT WAS NEW AND, FOR HIM, ATTRACTIVE. HE JOYFULLY ADOPTED THIS DISCOURSE POSITION OF GENEROSITY AND TOLERANCE, AND DROPPED HIS DARK REACTION FORMATIONS - IMMEDIATELY AND WITHOUT LOOKING BACK WITH THE SLIGHTEST BIT OF NOSTALGIA.

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Lacan, Jacques. Kantmit Sade. 1991. In: Lacan, Writings, Vol. II, Ed. Weinheim. Berlin: Quadriga, 1991: 133-164.

liiwith, Karl. Der christliche Gentleman. Uber die Schizophrenie eines gesellschaftlichen Ideals. 1948. In: ders., Semtliche Schriften, Bd. 3: Wissen, Glaube und Skepsis. Stuttgart:Metzler, 1985: 163-170.

Pfaller, Robert. DasKunstwerk, das sich selbst betrachtet, der Genul3 und die Abwesenheit. Elemente einer Asthetik der tmerosssivitst. 2000. In: Pfaller (Ed.): lnterpessivitst. Studien iiber delegiertes Geniel3en. Vienna: Springer, 2000: 49-84. Pfaller, Robert. Die /IIusionen der anderen. Ilber das Lustprinzip in der Kultur, Frankfurt/M.: Suhrkamp, 2002 de Sade, D. A. F. Die hundertzwanzig Tage von Sodom oder Die Schule der Ausschweifung. Dortmund: Die bibliophilen Teschenbiicher, 1979 Signer, David. Fernsteuerung. Kulturrassismus und unbewul3te Abhtingigkeiten, Vienna: Passagen, 1997 Zizek, Slavoj. Warum ist das cartesianische Subjektdas Subjektdes Unbewul3ten? 1997. In: Riss. Zeitschrift iiir Psychoana lyse, Vol. 12, Nr. 37/38, February/March 1997: 9-27. Zizek, Slavoj. Das rassistische Schibboleth. 1997a. In: P. Weibel/ S. Zizek(Eds.): Inklusion: Exklusion. Probleme des Postkolonialismus und der globalen Migration, Wien: Passagen, 1997: 145-170.

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WE AMERICANS LIKE TO THINK OF OURSELVES AS A "CLASSLESS" SOCIETY, BUT THIS ISN'T TRUE EITHER IN FACT OR, MORE IMPORTANTLY, IN TERMS OF OUR DOMINANT IDEOLOGY. WE HAVE PROFOUND CLASS DIFFERENCES IN AMERICA, AND A UNIQUELY AMERICAN WAY OF TALKING ABOUT THEM, TOO.

During the great boom of the last decade, the class divide in the US actually got worse. For most American workers, wages throughout the 1990s either fell or barely kept pace with inflation. But for top corporate executives they were unbelievably good years. According to Business Week, in the year 2000 American CEOs were paid 531 times what their blue-collar employees received. That's up from 85times in 1990 and 42times in 1980. The comparable numberfor Germany, by the way, was 25times- which is why the CEO of Chrysler turned out to be making 8 times as much as Juergen Schrempp - the man who fired him - when Daimler bought Chrysler back in 1997. And although it is less pronounced today, this still goes on. You've heard aboutthe chairman of the New York stock exchange who piled up $188 million, or about the CEO who got $45 million last year even though he only worked for 9 months. What was true for American CEOs in the 1990s was also true for the social classto which they belonged . In 1979 our richest 1% owned about 20% of the nation's wealth. By 1997, they owned 40%. Measured according to the various ways of measu ring wealth distribution,the U.S. in the 90s achieved levels of inequality that were both unique among industrialised nations and that had not been seen in the US since the 1920s. At the same time, thanks to the vigorous application of new management techniques and the country's backward labour laws, corporate America accomplished a Herculean economic feat: They detached productivity from wage growth. What does this mean? It means that, even while our economywas running at full throttle, and evenwhile productivity was growing by leaps and bounds, wages stayed flat: all the economic gain went to stockholders. This is not something that only I have noticed, either: This was the subject of boasting editorials in the Wall Street Journal, one of the things that was supposed to make the "New Economy" so new, so glorious, so worthy of being celebrated. Accompanying these developments was the intrusion of corporate power into more and more aspects of everyday life.

AVERAGE AMERICANS WORKED HARDER AND FOR LONGER IN THE NINETIES THAN IN PREVIOUS DECADES. They saw more ads on more surfaces than ever before; they took more personality tests and drug tests; they rang up ever greater household debts; they had less power than at any

time in the last fifty years over the conditions in which they lived and worked. The world of business, it seemed , was becoming the world, period. "Corporations have become the dominant institution of our time," FastCompany magazine boasted in 1997, "occupying the position of the church of the Middle Ages andthe nation-state of the past two centuries." That's the story of social class in America in the years of the New Economy. But to hear our media talk about the subject in those days, you'd get quite a different impression. In the aftermath of the last presidential election, for example, it occurred to commentators all across the media universe that our country was indeed split right down the middle by social class. You had the "red states" - the places that voted for President Bush - where dwelt the humble, patriotic, Godfearing common people andthe "blue states" - the land of the Democrats - where resided the wicked know-it-alls of the two coasts who affected foreign manners and steered their Volvos around their degraded boutique latte towns. That was social class in America. As for their politics, well, the elite blue-state snobswho were defeated were said to be the kind of people who put their trust in "government," while the common folk of the great plains, the prairie populistswho burned with such a righteous, Limbavian fire, were said to trust the people. Which meant, in the parlance of the day, that they trusted the market. And the manthey elected, George W. Bush, heardthe vox populi and saw that it was good and moved swiftly and surely to shower his corporate donors with favors of all kinds, to roll back workplace safety, to deregulate in every way, to privatise Social Security and to crack down on those labour unions. In America,when we talked about social class in the 90s, that's just how it was, that's just how we understood the terms. What the common people wanted was more power to General Electric. More power to Citibank. Theywanted to see the Dow Jones Average hit 36,000. They wanted another crack at that dot-com bubble. Theywanted to pile up their moneyat the feet of Bill Gates, or Larry Ellison, or Sam Walton, or whoever the hero-CEO happened to be this year. And should it turn out that they didn't want these things, if they were to go out there and protest or strike or vote for the wrong guy, then the op-ed pages stood readyto call them elitists - despicable, self-absorbed snobswho, by their failure to believe in the goodness of marketforces, were helpingto trample down the unfortunates of the Third World. And a thousand corporate PR departments stood readyto chime in, to insist that business was just an altruistic operation dedicated to raising up the people of the world.

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Every timethey busted a union in America, a worker somewhere cried out for joy. Today it's a little bit different, of course. Today the question is, how could anyone ever havefallen for that stuff? The fraudsthat were going on are now revealed to have beenso vast, and so widespread, that we no longer trust the corporate world at all. We haveturned against the New Economy, believing the worst and sometimes believing much worse than the worst. And yet, despite all the revelations, despite all the investigations and the exposes, we haven't even scratched the surface. We now know the New Economy was a fraud in terms of the cooked books and the accounting tricks, that it was a fraud in terms of the wi ld promises of the dot-corns, that it was a fraud in terms of the Wall Street gurus who put their clients into stocks that they mocked in private. But it was also a fraud in a deeper way than any of these. It was a fraud even before the dot-corns went bust and Enron fell apart, even before Martha Stewart was indicted and World Com fell apart.

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My argument is that the New Economy, from day one, was an ideological fraud, a fantasy where the politics came first and the numbers were madeto fit. The idea that held it all together was what I call "market populism." From Deadheads to Nobel-laureates,from paleoconsto New Democrats,American leadersin the nineties cameto believe that markets were a popular system, a far more democratic form of organisationthan ... democracy itself. In addition to being mediums of exchange, we were told, markets were mediums of consent. With their mechanisms of supply and demand, poll and focus group, superstore and Internet, markets expressed the popular will more articulately and meaningfu lly than did mere elections. By their very nature markets brought democratic legitimacy, markets took down the pompous and the snooty, markets looked out for the interests of the little guy, markets gave us what we wanted. One of the reasons market populism was everywhere in the Nineties was that it was a very useful doctrine. As business leaders melded themselves with the common people,they discovered powerful new weapons to use against their traditional enemies in governmentand organised labour. Since it was markets that expressed the wil l of the people, virtually any criticism of business could now be described as an act of "elitism" arising out of a despicable contempt for the common man. This was the word you always heard applied to critics of the corporate world: elitism. According to this view of the world, elitists were not those who spend

their weeken ds tooling about on a yacht or who fire half their wor k force and ship the factory south. No, elitists were alw ays the peopl e on the other side of the equation : the trade unionists and economists who believed that society could be organised in any way other than t he market way . Since what the market does - no matter how foolish - was the Will of t he People, any scheme to contro l it was unnatural ; a dangerous artifice; the hubris of false expert ise.

THIS IS WHAT WAS SO GREAT ABOUT MARKET POPULISM: IT STOLE THE LANGUAGE OF SOCIAL CLASS FROM THE LEFT. Businessmen and pro-business politicians have alway s protested the use of "class war " by their critics on the left ; during the nineties, though, they happily used the tactic them selves, always depict ing business as a kind of permanent soci al revolution in which daring entrepreneu rs toppled the lazy rich. The fat cat s with inherited money were alw ays being wiped out by the streetwise trading of some guy with a goatee; the buttoned-down wh ip- cracking bosses were being fired by the "change agents." The know it all experts from the fancy colleges were gett ing schoo led by the common people, who knew in their very bones that this was a new paradigm, that the dot-com stocks were really, truly worth fiv e t housand time s earnings or whatever. M arket populism wa s most immediately notic eable in the language of the late , great bull market. As we are all sick of hearing by now, the big development in the financial world in the 90s w as supposed to be the so called "democratisat ion" of Wall Stre et. The myth goes like this : Once upon a time the world of finance was a place of elites , of experts , of horrib le snobs, of w ealthy white men in dark suits, sneering at the common people and keeping this glor ious thing - the stock market - all to themselves. But the bull market of the 1990s, th is myth continues , was a great histor ical divide: This was a bull market of th e people, the opening up of Wall Street at long last. The common man was pour ing his hard-earned cash into mutual f unds and shares in down to earth companies like Krispy Kreme, grandma was day-trading from t he recr eation room, grandpa was buying and holding in the Nebraska corn, and the ever-rising Nasdaq was the symbol of the robust democracy of market s. To dramatise t his lesson, the various online brokerages ran some pretty shocking imagery: There was one for the Datek online broker age in wh ich a crowd of small investors are shown smashing down the doors of the New York Stock Exchange . Another to ld us all about the low ly mechanic who

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has won an entire island by trading online. A third gave us a troublemaking punk rocker who teaches his boss how to be a capitalist. The stock market was now a friend of the little guy, it was humiliating the squares, it was making average people into millionaires. The imagery was reflected in the popular investing books of the decade,too, which were all variations on the theme that the little guy knew better than the Wall Street expert. Peter Lynch, a famous mutual fund manager, wrote a series of best-sellers declaring his faith in the average investor,who stood pat with a portfolio full of beloved brand names while the foolish experts cut and ran. We had the Beardstown Ladies, with their investing advice scattered among recipes for down-home midwestern treats. We had the "millionaire next door," in which a rising wave of salt of the earth millionaires was wiping out the old snobbish millionaires.

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We had this long parade of hyper-optimistic media figures, these folks who were constantly bubbling up from the endless bullpen of New Economy thought and assuring us, based on this or that newly discovered economic law, not only that the market had much, much farther to go but that those who doubted the Dow were doubting the people themselves. We had James J. Cramer, who told us that stock options could be a tool of social equality,that the internet had eliminated the advantages held by the Wall Street pros. We had James Glassman, who told us that the common peoplewere undergoing a sort of financial enlightenment, realising that stocks were just as safe as bonds, and driving the Dow to 36,000. We had TV economist Larry Kudlow, who told us that the People wouldn't rest until their Dow hit 50,000. And we had Andy Serwer of Fortune magazine, who declared in late 1999 that "What we have here is nothing short of a revolution. Power that for generations lay with a few thousand white males on a small island in New York City is now being seized by Everyman and Everywoman ."

WHOEVER WAS DOING THE DESCRIBING, IT WAS CLEAR THAT THIS BULL MARKET WAS MORE THAN JUST A TIME OF RISING PRICES: IT WAS A GREAT SOCIAL CONFRONTATION, A REVOLUTION WHICH WOULD BRING WEALTH TO THE SMALL AND THE MEEK. And then, of course, we had the great Internet bubble, which, before it had the bad mannersto crash on us, was promoted as being the most democratic phenomenon of all

time. The Internet was overthrowing the experts, we were told, it was subverting hierarchy of all kinds, it was empowering the people, bringing information to the masses. Naturally we wanted to invest in it, profits or no: It was supposed to be a force of democratisation so profound we couldn't really even imagine it. There was a commercial that ran in those daysthat captured it all for me. It was a low-budget spot for a discountbrokerage called Suretrade, in which all that mattered was individual initiative and moral disdain for the establishment. "We're betting on ourselves," say the small investors pictured here. And in a screwy way, that's exactly what we Americans were doing. We were putting our moneyon companies that had sold themselves to us as populist institutions. There was no longer any need to show earnings or even a feasible plan for someday bringing in earnings: We would build these companies ourselves, by contributing our dollars and our sacred brand loyalty. We would create the wealth by acclamation.

OTHERS MIGHT CALL IT A PYRAMID SCHEME, BUT WE CALLED IT DEMOCRACY. WE, THE PEOPLE, WERE BETTING ON OURSELVES. In our belief that the expertise of the past was but effete elitism, we charged ahead regardless of the traditional measurements. And in an ecstasy of self-love We the People made economic history: In June of 1999 eBay was trading for 3991 times earnings - and for this there was no precedent in the entire experience of the world. There were doubters of course. But who cared? The central lessons of the nineties were that history didn't matter. That the experts knew nothing. The people knew the power of the Internet; they understood it instinctively; and to doubt the high prices people were willing to pay for shares was to doubt the wisdom of the peoplethemselves. Besides,this "New Economy" thing, they were saying on CNBC, had broken free from terrestrial understanding altogether! Right there in the Wall Street Journal they were announcing that not even Greenspan could bring the "New Economy" stocks back to earth! Plus, everyone - everyone - was enthusiastic about the Internet: the nation's largest computer, software and telecom corporations; the president,vice president and Speaker of the House; the successive directors of the MIT Media Lab; the right-wing foundations and thinktanks; and virtually every newspaper columnist in the land. The entire American establishment, with the exception of the military, puffed for this one all together. No effort had been spared to

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convince Americans that the Internet was something close, in miraculous effect as well as capacity for salvation , to a democratic second coming.

IT ALL ENDED BADLY, OF COURSE, WITH THE SMALL INVESTORS HUNG OUT TO DRY AND THE WALL STREET INSIDERS WALKING AWAY FROM THE WRECKAGE AS BILLIONAIRES. Turns out the Internet doesn't give you perfect insider information, as James Cramer once claimed . Had you put your money on the favourite stocks of those years, the companies that were said to be rewriting the rules and changing the world forever, you would have lost about 90% of your money. Now let's turn to the other side of corporate thought: Manageme nt Theory. Here, too, everywhere you looked were fantasies of liberation. They called it the "business revolution." Co rporate America wanted us all to know: It had changed . It had become cool. It had become sensitive, youthful, soulful. It had learned to dance,to sing. Business was no longer wearing pinstripes or tuning in to the old boys' network. In decades previous, maybe, business had rewarded the well-born andthe pompous, but now everything was different. In the Nineties business was a truthdevice; a friend of humanity; a warrior for the Third World; an enemy of pretense and arrogance. Business had declared war on the Western ruling class, on the very idea of social hierarchy. And the self-proclaimed revolutionaries liked nothing better than to tell us what fine subversive fellows they were. In 1997, Wired magazine ran a story on "Corporate Rebels" illustrated with knockoffs of Stalin-era Soviet art. In 1999, clenched fists seemed to erupt defiantly from ads and article illustrations wherever the new order was being discussed. Here's an ad for the "Revolutionaries' Ball," a meeting of the Great Soviet of the Co rporations sponsored last year by Fo rtune magazine. You will notic e that one of the featured speake rs is that great man of the people, Kenneth Lay of Enron. But what we can only hope was the limit of the fantasy was reached by software maker Oracle, which ran a commerc ial during the 1998 Super Bowl comparing itself to the Khmer Rouge, who were shown herding refugees before them and firing their AKs as they ushered in the new era. While the ad did little to inform the public what Oracle made or sold, it left no doubts about the market's victory over every other form of human organisation. This was Year Zero of the Business Revolution: Pol Pot was in the boardroom

andthe mundane stuff of historywas being finally rubbed out. But before we proceed further into the world of corporate fantasy, let's remember for a moment what was actually going on in the American workplace in the 1990s. After many years of war between management and labour, management had prevailed in nearly every conceivable way. Corporations in the 90s would stop at nothing to keep workers' wages low - on CEO wages it was a different story. It was a time of rampantde-unionisation. Of corporate departuresfor the low-wage South or for lower-wage Mexico. Of zero-benefits temps hired to do jobs once held by unionised workers with health benefits, contracts, etc. Of outsourcing via the Internet. Ofthe Taylorisation of the most unlikely tasks - of truck driving, of domestic work. Ofthe casualisation of even the most secure jobs. All the things, in fact, that are still going on today

WHAT THE NINETIES WERE ABOUT IN THE WORKPLACE WERE WORKER POWERLESSNESS. In management theory, though, what you read about was liberation, was empowerment, was the irresistible coming of democracy. "The new business paradigm," declared Fast Company, "is economic democracy." From dress codes to pension plans,the old rules were giving way to flexibility and empowerment. The great enemy, meanwhile, the old order that this revolution was supposed to be overturning, was the huge, vertically integrated corporation where people usedto work. Where you had a steady job for manyyears, a defined-benefit pension plan, seniority, healthcare, and a grey flannel suit. A place like IBM. Or General Motors. Or any company in France. This was the great villain, the hate object of the management theorists of the 1990s. Peter Senge, one of the greatest management theorists of the decade, called the old-style corporation an "authoritarian hierarchy"; its leaders smothe red initiative, they stifled the individual, they were sexist and racist, they hadn't a clue about what went on in the world and they spent their weekends playing golf with their former fraternity brothers who in turn committed the same offences against democracy at their corporations. And you know what? Who isn't againstthosethings? Who doesn't want democracy in the workplace? But the way Senge and the rest of the great gurus used the terms, they were merely symbolic. The real problem with the old-style corporation was that it was actually a shelter from the whirling winds of the free market. It protected all sorts of in-

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efficiencies within its structures; it paid its workers far too much; it offered all sorts of expensive job security and benefits. The real problem was that its leaders refused to deliver shareholdervalue, insisting on doing things in-house that they could easily outsource.

THEY WERE, IN OTHER WORDS, IIELITISTS,II PEOPLE WHO THOUGHT THEY KNEW BETTER THAN THE MARKET, AND HENCE THOUGHT THEY KNEW BETTER THAN THE PEOPLE. The corporation, in other words, wasn't capitalist enough. The fact that it was supposedly racist and sexist was merely symbolic of its elitism, a moral sin whose most important expression was the corporation's haughtyattitude towards the free market. This is why you were always hearing these glowing tales about heroic CEOs who refused to have a filing cabinet, since that symbolised the hoarding of knowledge; or who sat in a cubicle just like all the other membe rs of her team; or who permitted nerf basketball in the office or who rode their bikesto work. The new-style CEO was supposed to be a man of the people; Jeff Bezos of Amazon dot-com was so beloved of his workers that Tim e magazine ran a photo of him autographing his employees' hardhats. They called this "dotcommu nism." Meanwhile, the corporation was praising itself as the true friend of the working man. For manygurus the "business revolution " - by which I mean outsourcing , flexibility, and so on - was a sort of class revolt, a labour movement that management could cheer for. Workers weren't victimised by downsizing or outsourcing or casualisation; these were things they wanted, things they fought for, things they neede d in order to realise their authenticity, to escape from the corporate conformity of yesterday. The New Economy was helping people find themselves. The New Economy was helping workers to fight back against management. Tossing workers to the mercies of the marketwasn't an act of nineteenth-century cruelty; it was something you did because you cared about people . With the help of their friend the free market, workers were discovering that they could bargain all on their own and win every time; that they could move from company to company as they saw fit, lookingfor the job that suited them best. They could demand the salary and benefits of their choosing. They could bring their weird pets to work. They could evenwear jeans in the office. But what did the gurusmean by "workers"? Theydidn't mean

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the working class as you and I know it. Old-style blue-collar workers, were people who, as the expression went, "didn't get it." They didn't understand that their world was doomed, andthat they had to give up on things like labour unions and long-term employment. In fact, blue-collar workers were the objects of such contempt among New Economy theorists that uberguru Tom Peters was able to claim in 1997 that the dot-com millionaires andthe working class had switched moral positions, even going so far as to describe blue-collar workers as "parasites" freeloading on the heroic labours of New Economy managers.

talked about in the Nineties was how extremely soulful the corporation was, how, in manyways, it was more soulfulthan us.

No, the working class that everyone was talking about in the Ninetieswere the "knowledge workers," a.k.a . white-collar workers. Professionals, stock brokers, computer programmers, advertising copy writers and so on.

So maybe it was we who should be defining ourselves after the artifacts of business life. This was the overt message of Tom Peters' famous 1997 essay, "The Brand Called You ." "You are a brand," Peters wrote. "You are in charge of your brand." And there was no alternative to thinking about yourself this way, since your competitors- i.e., other people - were already doing it. "Starttoday," Peters wrote. "Or else."

WHAT WAS GREAT ABOUT THESE NEW WORKING-CLASS HEROES IS THAT THEY DIDN'T NEED ANYTHING LIKE LABOUR UNIONS OR LONGTERM CONTRACTS TO KEEP THEM FROM BEING EXPLOITED.

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In fact, according to the British management theorist Charles Handy, now that the proletariat was defined as knowledge workers, the Marxist paradise was basically here, since, as he put it, "the 'means of production: . . . are now literally owned by the workers because those means are in their heads and at their fingertips." According to the 1998 knowledge worker story that Fortune magazine choseto advertise with the words, "Yo, Corporate America!,"those sassy new proletarians were so empowered that they were dictating the terms of employmentto management. "Companies are no longer in the driver's seat," the magazine opined. "Employees are in control now."

This was the message of the short-lived New Economy idea of "the existential company." God may have died but the corporation lived on, potentially forever, free to find its own purpose andto act as it saw fit here on earth. A management best-seller from 1997 argued not only that "the company is a living being" but that since it was technically immorta l it was a higher order of living being than a human.

We were supposed to think of ourselves as brands, and to think of the corporation as, well, as a sort of deity. It was only naturalthat the closing years of the decade saw a boom in books about spirituality at work: workplace mysticism, corporate tarot cards and even a slim volume of "leadership prayers" which one of my colleagues picked up at a mega church in the Chicago suburbs. Here's a prayer on the subject of "succession":

HELP ME REMEMBER, GOD, THAT I CAN BE REASSIGNED, NEUTRALISED, OR ELIMINATED FOR A THOUSAND DIFFERENT REASONS AT ANY MOMENT.

AND THE DESTRUCTION OF JOB SECURITY WAS NOTHING TO WHINE ABOUT - IN FACT IT WAS "FREE AGENCY."

My leadershipis precarious, hanging by the silver thread of the people's trust in me. Countless things over which I have no control can break that thread ... and I will be gone. But they need a leader, and when I am gonethey must have others to turn to, others whom they trust, who can tell them the truth. Oh, God of mercy,don't let me stay in this job one day too long. And don't let this all fall apart after I leave. I will not last forever, God . Where are my replacements?

But the greatest goal of management theory has always been to clarify our relationship with the corporation, both as workers and as citizens. In the nineteenth century one of the most common attacks you heard on the corporation was that, while it was legally a person, it had no soul. But no one talks aboutthe "soulless corporation" anymore. What they

Yes, a lot of this is absurd . But it's absurdity with a purpose. When someone tells us that vertical integration is communist, or that the Dow is going to 36,000, or that newly discovered laws of nature mean we can't understand what is going on in the economy, let alone control it, they aren't talking about fact. Just as when someone says "God is a

Republic an," they aren't giving us practical advice for everyday living. What they are doing in both cases is making a political assertion. And this is what we missed about all the New Economy rhetoric - its fairly obvious political side. It's not a coincidence that nearly every single one of the New Economy thinkers - from Newt Gingrich to James Glassman to Larry Kudlow to Dinesh D'Souza - had some sort of rightwing pedigree. Think of the fake liberation on Wall Street. Whether or not small investors really made much of a dent in the market at all, Wall Street has a very obvious interest in courting them, in persuad ing the world to think of itself as an institution organised for the benefit of the common man. This is not only because they want to see prices go up, but because Wall Street is deeply afraid of a replay of the 1930s, of the government taking anothe r long look at what really goes on in those brokerage houses. It wasn't so much stock-picking as it was politics by other means. The same was true with nineties management theory. I'm not here to tell you that the advice of Guru X is better than that of Guru Y. The real object of the "revolutionary" management theory of the nineties was not efficiency or excellence or even empowerment but a far more abstract goal: The political and social legitimacy of the corporation.

LOOK AT WHAT WAS GOING ON IN THE 90S. UNIONS DECLINED; MANAGEMENT THEORISTS ASSURED US THAT THE NEW WORLD OF WORK WOULDN'T NEED THEM ANYWAY, SO FREE-WHEELING AND DEMOCRATIC WOULD IT BE. Big government declared itself "over"; management theorists told us that markets made the best government anyway, looking after society's needs and taking care of every imaginable problem . As corporations conquered the planet, management theory told us why the new world of work would be a pleasant one, a fair one, a democratic one, a soulful one, and even if it wasn't, why it was that you could do nothing about it. The real "resu lt" that much of the management theory of the nineti es aimed to secure, then, was not so much quality as it was quiescence; submission to the needs of the corporation, both in the workplace and in politics. And measured according to this standard the management theory of the nineties even with all its bullshit, its fads, its jargon- worked exceed-

ingly well. It was thanks at least in part to the hyperbolic prose of Tom Peters that so manyof the downsized agreed that what had happened to them was right, was justified; it was thanks to all those books aboutthe corporate soul that so manyleft the parking lots of their former employers in such an orderlyfashion, talking confidently abouttheir impend ing careers as "free agents." When wealth is being concentrated so dramatically, it seems almost predictable by some kind of Marxist literary determinismthat the genre most beloved of CEDs would insist upon understanding the corporation as a democratic deity far surpassing the state or the labour union in legitimacy and meaning .

AND IT'S JUST AS PREDICTABLE THAT THE BIGGEST MANAGEMENT BEST-SELLER OF THEM ALL WOULD BE A LITTLE BOOK CALLED "WHO MOVED MY CHEESE?" It's a parable of worker powerlessness, told in a style simple enough - and a typeface big enough - for third graders. You see, workers, a. k. a. "Iitt lepeople," are like mice in a laboratory maze . Theywake up every day and go off to find our cheese, i.e., do their work. But one day their cheese is no longer there, andthe "littlepeople" haveto decide what to do about it. One of them embraces change, adapts to the casua lisation of labour, and dutifully goes off in search of the new, low-wage cheese, and discoversthat the search is really fulfilling and soulful and all the rest of it. But another kicks and screams, and hollers "Who moved my cheese?" This, the book makes clear, is an error so transparent and an offence so grave that the person who says it deserves to be fired: You cannot question the prime mover, a.k.a. the market or the CEO . You can only submit. But this doesn't get the book very far. So then the author changes tone and does something that no other management book does: He shows us how useful his text might be as a tool of labour pacification. Hetakes us to a group of white-collar management types sitting around a table discussing this great and profound cheese story. You know, one of themsays, we've been instituting "change" in our workplace and a lot of the workers are pretty unhappy about it. I sure wish that cheese story came in a book, so I could buy copies of it and hand it out to my workers. The bookthen endswith a blank for bulk orders. And everywhere I've gone in the country, I've met people whose bosses have forced them to read this book, or watch one of the videos or decorate their walls with Who Moved My Cheese accessories. One guytold me his entire division was required to meet in a room and read the obs-

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cene thing aloud. Without exception, every person I've ever talked to about Who Moved My Cheese has hated it. While the New Economy mayhave had us dazzled for a little while, I think it's obvious that there is no social theory on earth short of the divine right of kings that can justify a five-hundredfold gap between manage ment and labour; that can explain away the concentration of a decade of gain in the bank accounts of a tiny minority. The market, the gurus tell us, is capable of resolving all social conflict fairly and justly within its walls. And yet what we desperate ly require in order to restore a sense of justice and fairness to the economy is not some final tr iumph of the market over the body and soul of humanity, but some sort of power that confronts markets, that refusesto think of itself as a brand, that won't confine its problemsto the search for authenticity. Because in the end it's not going to matter muchto the people on the receiving end of the "business revolution" whether the guy who downsizes them is wearing a blue serge suit or a nose ring.

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WALTER OTSC H (

Pictorial thinking: symbolic forms, perception and internal pictures

The exam ple of populistic social perception. How demagogues and their followers represent social reality

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POPULISM (IN A POLITICAL SENSE) CAN BE DEFINED IN MANY WAYS, COMMONLY BY POLITICAL IDEAS OR CONCEPTS 1< OR POLITICAL PROCEDURES, LIKE STRATEGIES OF MOBILISING PEOPLE.2< BUT A MAIN POINT IS, IN MY OPINION, A DISTINCT SOCIAL PERCEPTION ATTACHED TO IT. POPULISTIC IDEAS, CONCEPTS AND TACTICS HAVE THEIR BASIS IN A GENUINE WAY OF PERCEIVING PEOPLE AND GROUPS OF PEOPLE IN SOCIETY. POPULISTIC LEADERS ACT IN A SOCIAL WORLD (THEORETICAL VERSION OF SOCIAL REALITY) WHICH THEY UNDERSTAND AS GIVEN. ITS EVIDENCE STEMS FROM THE WAY THEY EXPERIENCE AND PERCEIVE SOCIAL GROUPS. UNDERSTANDING THIS COULD HELP TO UNDERSTAND SOME OF THEIR STRANGE IDEAS AND ACRINGS. 1< Pasteur 2002. p 45ft. 2< Reinfeldt 2000, p. 47.

1. Phenomenologyof perception Like many basic terms in science "perception" is not firmly defined.Within cognition sciences it is generally referred to as "coupling of the organism to functionally relevant aspects of the outer world".3< With this a given "outer world" is presupposed . But for example the perception of objects raises many questions, e.g. how to make"objects"defined units. (The ability of perceiving objects in their form is rarely a topic for neurological research.) 4< This question is also relevant for perceiving objects created by architecture. For example, the way a building is experienced by observers also depends on how objects are generally experienced by them. Perception of architectural objects has to do with perception of objects generally. Basically, what could be problematic with perceiving objects? Kant ascribed this process to the intellectual mind: the transcendental consciousness would synthesise by categorise the diversity of experience to perceptible units. The category of unity (of an object] is thereby defined as a necessary form of thought. It is an a priori condition of the possibility of experience itself. A subjective form of thought objective validity is attached to it, since it settles all concrete cognition. Objectiveness of the world (as phenomenon, not as a fact] yet provesto be an anthropological constant factor - perception of objects is a given factor of human mind.

perception itself: peoplethen had experienced self-evidently all objectsin a symbolic (with otherobjects) connected way.) 5<

Figure 1 6< If perception of objects is no given prerequisite but result of an individual and cultural development, we need a theoretical framework, which does not claim fixed structures of an "outer-world".

PHENOMENOLOGIC APPROACHES TRY THIS BY STARTING OUT FROM A REFLECTION OF ONE'S OWN EXPERIENCES IN PERCEPTION. According to Gernot Btihmethe basic act of experience is perception of atmospheres. It precedes perception of objects: "When entering a room I'm tuned by this room in some way. Its atmosphere determines my mood. Onlywhen I am within the atmosphere I will identify or perceive this or that object." 7< Hermann Schmitz describes atmospheres as emotionswhich are in space like forces or streams. They are experienced as corporal excitements. 8< In this sense atmospheres are undividedfields of perception, which are amodal (not divided into single senses). Here the experience of the own body forms the basis for the experience of objects.

THERE ARE NUMEROUS CONTROVERSIAL FINDINGS TO THIS ANGLE OF SIGHT, FOR EXAMPLE, IN DEVELOPMENTAL PSYCHOLOGY AND IN CULTURAL HISTORY.

ACCORDING TO MERLEAU-PONTY MAN EXPERIENCES HIS EXISTENCE BY THE PRESENCE OF HIS BODY, BY FEELING HIS OWN LIVELINESS.

According to Jean Piaget and his followers, each perceived structure, also the category of the object, owns its individual history of development. Children gradually learn to comprehend objects (figure 1) until they are able to understand the concept of an objective outer-world itself at the beginning of youth. In analogyto this, some cultural histories describe how, what cognition sciences call "out er-world", had grown historically. According to the thesis of historical relativism of perception, not only the categories itself had changed (for example, imagination of a three-dimensional room which had been unknown before the seventeenth century), but also the "senses" in an effective way. What may seemto us as objects, appeared "differently" to people of former centuries - the findings say. {One example is the symbolic character of all things in the early and late Middle Ages, not only as philosophical statement, but also as evidencefor processes of

The self-perception of the body (der Leib) plainly is the starting point for perceiving. In order experience himself as a unit man has to give himself a cover, he must surface his invisible back to make his bodyto a closed unity. Sensing the one body is the prerequisite for perception of single objects and single persons (and persons with difficulties in experiencing themselves as defined corporal units construct space and things in a strange way). The covering surrounding the body is the relating experience for experiencing the unity of objects and persons: atmospheres had condensed here, they are covered as a whole. In order to be able to recognise objects as units, one has to be capable of imagining covers emotionally and visually - even where there actually is no "surface" to see. Recognising objects requires (according to Merleau-Pontyl the presumed presence of an invisible back side: "something" is "wrapped" with a covering mentally

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(simulatively). This creates "an internal horizon for the object, in which other things surrounding the object become the horizon itself." 9( Seeing is an action with tw o faces.10( We experience a spatial horizon"around" something which "imbeds" the object (gives it a covering). "To look at something means to become homey in it and to behold all other things starting fromthe sides turned towards it. So each thing is the mirror of all others:" coverings next to coverings, which "build a syst em, a world".We see things by experiencing covers (by feeling them in some way). which see each other and every single is "quasi as spectator of their hidden views and as bailsman of its persistent being". The experience of the corporal covering (der Leib) corresponds wit h the experience of the object- covering: "If I say, a thing lies on the t able, I mentally always put myself in this thing's and the table's position and apply to both a t erm which originally comes from my bodyobject-ratio." 11<

2. "Thinking"

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The emotional-seeing imag ination of the body(the experience of a unity which at the same time is visualised as surface of a back side) as basis of the category of unity directly interlocks perceiving and imagining. Imaginations are the continuations of perceptions (without the existence of "external" tangible coats). perceptions are based on imaginations. Many abstract terms directly refer to the body. We could say, abstract t erms historically developed from the body, they own a corporal basis. Many abstract meanings are learnt with the body first. Children start counting things by touching them, hearing numbers and then pronouncing them and gradually placing all that into a simulated room of numbe rs. (The easiest imagination is the one of number-symbols on a line of numbers. Mathematicians had learnt, starting from the first "landscape of numbers" of the natural numbers, to mentally see a variety of symbolic rooms, to keepthem in a constant way and to "move" within them very easily. The mathematician and physician Roger Penrose speaks of "visually thinking", which manage s almost without internal verbal comment. Mathematicians see formal theorems, he says. Although a certain theorem might be visualised by different 3( Str ube 1996, p. 117 (own translation). 4( Acc. Zeki 1999, p. 86. 5( This thesis is illustrated extensively in Dtsch 2004d. Short cuts can be found in Dtsch2004a and b. Dtsch 2000c shows a similar argumentfor Hom er's lIias. 6( Illustrations in this paper are provided by Lucas Derks. 7< Biihme 1995, p.25. 8( Schmitz, Hermann: Die Verwaltung der GefOh le in Theorie, Macht und Pha ntasie, in Benthien 2000, p. 42. 9( Merleau-Ponty 1965, p. 28f,also see p. 92f. 10( p. 92f. 11< p. 126.

persons in a different way, this does not impair the capability of discussing it in a useful way.) 12( The transfer of corporal-sensual experiences into mental visual rooms can be described as metaphor. (The Greek meta means "beyond", phersin "carry"): Knowledge is transported from one context to another, new one beyond the original.13( The human system of perception principally works metaphorically:14(Knowledge from the corporal sphere is "translated" to mediate spheres,where the corporal reference is transparent only in a hidden way. According to Lakoff and Johnson thinking basically is determined by metaphors. Systems of thinking and terms are interweaved with metaphors referring to the body in the end. Thinking quasi is "embodied" (the embodied mind).15( Sentences like "It is difficult to express thoughts in words" for example, refer to the covering-experience of objects,thoughts are treated like objects here.16( Abstract statements often point out spatial facts, an "internal" room in analogy to the world "outside".

WE SAY, WE ARE UNDER THE INFLUENCE OF AN IDEA, WE FALL ASLEEP AT NIGHT, WAKE UP IN THE MORNING. Sentences of this kind activate preconscious spatial pictures. Facts are positioned spatially, an "internal" room spatially structured. Sometimes we are above-average, have control over our impulses, muse over a problem, put feelings aside, are close to each other, friendships break up and thoughts move in a circle. Many abstract statements refer to movement and touch, to experiences of the body. According to Merleau-Ponty words own a meaning of gesture:17( they express a corporal sense like gestures. Imaginary and spoken language only is a differentway of expressing "body-language", a way of the bodyto be in the world and to communicate with others. Spatial experiences are embedded in our thinking deeply. Unconsciously we use spatially oriented concepts constantly. Experiences and memories principally are experienced and reactivated in scenes. Scenes are occurrences "locked up" by spatial and temporal coverings (which combine with other scenes spatially and temporally). When we see a butterfly in a garden (or remember one or imaginethis) the covering "butterfly" is placed into the covering "garden", whereas its external borders are in the covering "landscape", etc.: coveringsin coveringsin coverings, like containers put in one another. 18( The movement of the butterfly follows the

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metap hor of the path, in which a moving object is experienced together with the surrounding space in one direction (with one starting and one ending point). The metaphors of container and path express basic experiences of the body. They lead to the categories of structure (the spatial relation of coverings in coverings) and process (the dynamic of coverings in coverings).

which spatial distance to whom) inform about the emotional relationship to these persons, who is "close"to us and to whom we are "distanced"("location equals relation"). Figure 2 shows the family panorama of a five-year-old girl, who represents her father tall, her mother short and often hasthe feeling she hasto defend herself against her two older brothers,who collect their parentstoo much.

3. Internal Pictures

Figure 2

Spatial metaphors deeply embedded in our way of thinking indicate the relevance of pictorial imaginations. Real ity (or at least parts of it) mentally is represented in the way of visual, auditive sensual, .. . "pictures", says the thesis of pictorialism. (A contrary thesis is the so-called descriptionalism: the opinion that reality is represented in the way of texts, i.e. by internal linguistic descriptions.) 19< Within pictorialism "thinking" is dissolved respectively returned into analog "pictures". "Thinking" of persons, events, topics, ... requires menta l "pictures", which "show" the content of thinking visually, auditively, .. . .

Social panoramas are internal pictures which own a certain permanenc e. They also reflect habitual attitudes a person has for a certain time. For example, someone who likes Spanish and is afraid of Chinese places the Spanish andthe Ch inese at different places in his social panorama , mentally gives them different colours and combines them with different feelings. According to Derks, it is principally possible to find out numerous social panoramas for every person (there are several methods in his book how to do this], to investigate their permanent features andto explore this person's social landscapes.

In this approach one can conclude from language to internal pictures. 20< The language, which someone uses, is not only metaphoric, but is based on a pictorial substrate. Forexample, when someone says "He places himself outside of our team", "I feel close to X" or "I have left this thought behind myself long ago", it is claimedthat corresponding internal pictures are behind these sentences. The speaker (consciously or unconsciously) gives information on what he sees in front of his mental eye, e.g. a team grouped in a circle and another person at a distanceto it.

IN THIS APPROACH SOCIAL PANORAMAS ARE DIRECTLY RELEVANT FOR SOCIAL PERCEPTIONS.

How deeply spatial metaphors soak our structures of thinking can be studied in many example s. There is an impressive result for social categorisations - how we divide people into groups and hierarchies. The language expressing this contains manyspatial associations. Social relationships are pictured in numerous ways in analogyto relations in space. When language is obtained as a kind of "mirror" of unconscious "internal" pictures, then the thesis suggests that the social principally is represented as spatial. According to this people imagine the social in the way of "psycho-geography". We can find reminiscence to this in manytherapeutic approaches, like the catathyme experiencing of pictures, in hypnotherapeutical technics or in systemic approaches, like family-sett ing according to Bert Hellinger. 21< Lucas Derks claims in his Social Panorama Model that we represent social facts in simulated landscapes. 22< For example, we are "thinking" of our family and see ourselves andthe family mem bers in a specific spatial arrangement (the "family-panorama"). The structural elements of the picture (who keeps

Actual sensual impressions are quasi "overlapped" by them: Persons appear according to the internal panorama -picture. Perception and the imagined (mostly preconscious) picture interact. We perceive persons according to their pictures in our internal social panoramas. The same behaviour(for example the Spaniard and the Chin ese say the same sentence) can be interpreted differently: it might sound friendly with the Spaniard, but threatening with the Chin ese. The (un- or preconscious! social panorama-picture (which obviously can be changed at any time) contributes to giving a different interpretation to external information systematically. What is perceived corresponds according to tendency to the inter picture; prejudices are quasi confirmed empirically. One sees on the outside what he knows unconsciously: that Spanish are friendly and Chinese threatening. 12< Penrose 1989, p. 418ff ., similar to Hadamard 1945 in his famous study about internal processes wit h creative mathematicians. 13< O'Hanlon 1995, p.83. 14< Lakoft and Johnson 1980, p. 3. 15< Lakoff and Johnson 1999.16< Lakoft and Johnson 1980, p. 10ff. 17< Merleau-Ponty 1965, p. 212ft. 18< SeeLakoft and Johnson 1999, p. 30ft. 19< Instead of descriptive it is also called propositional representations. According to the thesis, they are built up in a symbolic way. Not mental pictures but terms approximately corresponding to the words and relations between the terms are pictured mentally. As introduction see Friebel 2000, p. 17ff. 20< Lakoft und Johnson 1980, supply a wide interpretation of this thesis with many examples.21
4. Demagogic pictures Populistic discourses are designated by their own internal pictures and social panoramas. A special class are demagogic panoramas. They appear in all cases, where the picture of a deeplysplit society is evoked, in which a friendly group of "we" ("folks", citizens, democrats, the nation, "the little men", ... ) is opposed to a hostile group of "them" ("the ruling", "the system", "the foreigners, "the terrorists", .. . ) (Reinfeldt speaks of an agonal grouping-principle).23( Both groups are set as homogeneous, social world consists of two combating groups. The social panorama disintegrates in two divided areas with strict setting of the boundries. The bright swarm of "we" faces the distant swarm of the "others", plunged into dusky colours (figure 3). (In many cases this picture is completed by the figure of a "super-we", like a leader, a guru, a heroic statesman, .. . whom the positive characteristics of the "we" are ascribed in a superhuman extent).24( All places in the imagined social field are connected with intense feelings: feelings of love to the "we", of admiration (mixed with fear) to the "super-we" and of disgust and hate to the "others". Figure 3 In demagogic panoramas the "we" and the "others" distinguish like two biological species. Their members are mentally surrounded by morally imposed coverings. The "we" are morally superelevated, they are exclusively good, laborious, strenuous, democratic, etc. However, the "others" are only bad, despicable persons. One trusts them every crime. In extreme casesthey are denied all human characteristics (they are depersonified, represented as animals or objects). 25( Depersonified persons can be treated at will without feelings of guilt, their death is a negligible variable. (This can be observed in every war.)

DEMAGOGIC PANORAMAS DETERMINE SOCIAL PERCEPTION IN A REMARKABLE WAY. Each act of one of the "we" is classified as "good", each of one of the group of the "others" as "bad". Onlythe "we" are to be classified as victims, never the "others" - even if they are injured innocently (for example, the term collateral-damage). "Victims" of this kind are converted into perpetrators in the demagogic field (victim-perpetrator-changel. they cannot be perceived differently. Allocation of concrete personsto both groups in a demagogic panorama is arbitrary in the end. There are no clear oper-

ational rules, everyone may be "friend" or "enemy". This regulation does not happen in a rational discourse, but by an action. Demagogic movements necessarily are authoritarian. They need an authority (usually a person) who has the monopolyto set goals and actions and to adjust the distinction between "we" and "them" to requirements on a daily basis. (Therefore an organisation is neededwhich reminds on sects in essential features.) 26(

THE QUINTESSENCE IS THE CLAIM OF A CONSPIRACY: "THEY" CONSPIRED AGAINST "US", "WE" MUST DEFEND "THEM". Such a conspiracy theory as well as the demagogic panorama itself is almosttotally separated from so-called "facts". The less one knows, the more a conspiracy is confirmed, since the conspirers havethe power to keep all evidence secret. "Therefore", says RobertAnton Wilson in an encyclopedia of conspiracy theories, "nobody really can disprove crazy conspiracy theories, because all of them have a strange loop in their construction: each evidence against them at the same time works as evidencefor them, if you want to look at things like this." 27< The internal picture forms "reality": what you see confirms the (unconscious) model: actual perception is stronger than rational counterarguments. 5. Conclusion

DEMAGOGIC PERCEPTION POINTS OUT THE ENORMOUS FLEXIBILITY OF PERCEPTION-PROCESSES. What appears as aura or atmosphere of objects or persons can be shaped in a wide range. This opens a large field of possibilities for manipulating or self-controlling purposes. Advertising aims at internal pictures, places or products are symbolically covered with appealing pictures: their covering "unconsciously" reflects sensual contents of advertising messages. Advertising shapes internal pictures, it affects behaviour because it influences perception of objects for example. At the same time it is possibleto become aware of internal pictures and to change them. Many therapeutic approaches, which also influence modern coaching, base on changing internal pictures. If this succeeds, perception changes in an actual sense: one sees aspects of the world in a new light, new behaviour is possible. Examples are perceptions of

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other persons, who are involved in one"s conflicts (arousing fromthe practical application of the social panorama model for example), perception of time-processes (subjective experience of time], remembrance of the past or imagination of the future, which are directly relevant for behaviour. 28< Phenomenons like these are - at least in principle - "fluent", principally they can be changed conscious ly. One central aspect in this context concerns the self-image of people (quasi the cognitive-visual side of the bodv): how one sees himself inwardly, how one speaks with himse lf in internal dialogues and which feelings someone has for himself. Finally a few words about architecture.

ARCHITECTS PRIMARILY DO NOT DEAL WITH PHYSICAL BUILDINGS, BUT WITH INTERNAL PICTURES ABOUT THEM.

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Acceptance of a building also depends on its atmosphere : which emotions and imaginations it provokes. Obviously the aura of a concrete building is only limited impressionable by architects. They also construct themselves throughthe use of the building . Forexample, it also depends on the interpretation by the media, whether a building is tagged with positive or negative attributes. If a crime is committed in a house, its aura changes sustainab le. Maybe it is lost irretrievably, because it will always be connected with this act in the future. Positively considered events, like an impressing pop-concert or an important conference which decidesthe fate of a country, create a unique atmosphere for a building or a place, which can last for a long time. If a building is captured by a social group, for example as a meeting-point, as reloading-point for activities, ... its aura may generally change, also depending on the social esteem this group enjoys.

THE SOCIAL AURA OF THE GROUP TRANSFERS TO THE BUILDING, IT QUASI RADIATES IT. Socially occupied buildingswhich playa certain role in the public conscious like the tax office, the main office of the feared Police or the headquarters of a large bank might arouse an atmosphere mostly independent from the aesthetic of the object. The image of the function superposes the aesthetic of the object and shapes its aura. 23< Reinleldt 2000, p.47. 24< In Otsch 2000 I applied this approach to a modern variation 01demagogy, the FPD under Jiir g Haider.25< Derks 2000, p. 291. 26< See Kramerund Alstad 1993.27< Wilson 2000, p. 14 (own translation). 28< See the relevant keywords in Dtsch and Stahl 1997.

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Literature

Benthien, Claudia, Anne Fleig and Ingrid Karsten (ed.): Emotionalitat. Zur Geschichte der GefUhle. Kiiln, Weimar and Wien:2000 Bohme, Gernot. Atmosphere. Essays zur neuerenAsthetik. Frankfurt: 1995. Derks, Lucas. Das Spiel der sozialen Beziehungen, NLP und die Struktur zwischenmenschlicher Erfahrung (Including a foreword by Wolfgang Walker and a NLP-Glossary by Walter Otsch). Stuttgart: 2000. Friebel, Vo lker. Innere Bilder. Imaginative Techniken in der Psychotherapie. Dusseldorf: 2000. Good, Paul. Maurice Merleau-Ponty. Eine Einiiihrunq. Dusseldorf und Bonn: 1998. Hadamard, Jacques. An Essay on the Psychology of Invention in the Mathematical Field. Princeton: 1945.

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Hauch, G., Th. Hellmuth and P. Pasteur(eds.): Populismus. Ideologie und Praxisin Frankreich und Osterreich; (Studien zur Gesellschafts- und Kulturgeschichte, Band 12). Innsbruck-Wien: Studienverlag, 2002. Krame r, Joel and Diana Aistad: The Guru Papers. Masks of Authoritarian Power. Berkeley: 1993. Lakoff, George and Mark Johnson. Metaphors We Live By. Chicago: 1980. Merleau-Ponty, Maurice. Phiinomenologie der Wahrn ehmung. Berlin: 1965. Lakoff, George and Mark Johnson. Philosophy in the Flesh. The Embodied Mind and its Challenge to Weste rn Thought. New York: 1999. OHanlon, William H. Eckpfeiler. Grundlegende Prinzipien der Therapie und Hypnose. Milton Erikson, 2. Edition. Salzhausen: 1995. Otsch, Walter and Thies Stahl: Das Worterbuch des NLP. Oas NLP-Enzyklopadie- Projekt. Paderborn: 1997. Otsch, Walter: Haider Light. Handbuch iiir Demagogie. Wien:2000 (5. Edition 2002).

Otsch, Walter. Demagogische Vorstellungs-Welten. Das Beispiel der FPO. In: Hauch, G. , Th. Hellmuth and P. Pasteur (eds). Populismus. Ideologie und Praxis in Frankreich und Osterreich; (Studien zur Gesellschafts- und Kulturgeschichte, Band 12), Innsbruck-Wien: Studienverlag, (2002), 93-104. Otsch, Walter. Phiinomenologische Beschreibungenkultureller Wirklichkeiten: die Kategorie des Dbjekts. Duisburger Arbeitspapiere Ostasienwissenschaften 55/2004, 5-25 (Workshop Organisation und Ordnung der japanischen Wirtschaft IV, Themenschwerpunkt: Wahrnehmung, tnstitutionenokonomlk und Japanstudien, Werner Pascha und Cornelia Storz (Ed.). Duisburg und Essen: 2004a Otsch, Wa lter. "Muster kultureller Evolution im europeischen Abendland. Objekt und Auge'; erscheintin: Albertz, Jorg (Ed.): Evolution zwischen Chaos und Ordnung, Band 24 der Schriftenreihe der Freien Akademie. Berlin: 2004b. Otsch, Walter. "Obj ekte als virtuelle Hilllen. Beispiele aus der griechischen Antike"; will be published from the proceedings of the conference "Das Verbindende der Kulturen " of Institut zur Erforschung und Forderung iisterteichlscher und internationaler Literaturprozessse. Wien:2004c. Otsch, Walter. Ais der Raum die Menschen berithrte. Das Mittelalter in uns, ms 102pp., Linz: 2004d. Penrose, Rogers: The Emperor's New Mind. Concerning Computers, Minds and The Laws of Physics. Oxford: 1989. Reinfeldt, Sebastian: Nicht-wir und Die-da. Studienzum rechten Populismus. Wien: 2000. Stoller, Silvia: Wah rnehmung bei Merleau-Ponty. Studie zur Phiinomenologie der Wahrnehmung, Frankfurta.O.: 1995. Strube, Gerhard (ed.): Worterbuch der Kognitionswissenschaften. Stuttgart: 1996. Wilson, RobertA. Das Lexikon der Verschworungstheorien. Yerschwiirunqen, Intrigen, Gebeimbiinde. Frankfurt: 2000. Zeki, Semir. The Inner Vision. An Exploration of Art and Brain. Oxford: 1999.

MANFRED FASSLER

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Home of the Public? Paradoxes of Urban Mediascapes

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When was the last time you saw the public or perceived it in some way? How was it doing at the time? How were you? Odd questions, you might say. You'd be right. Nevertheless: What is meanttoday by "the public"? And where's this public realm supposed to be where the public manifests itself? Put in somewhat more incisive terms: Who's left to grant asylum to this hoary phenome non of political culture? Has the city becomethe public's ecological niche after having long since ceased to be the effervescent source of publics?

IS THE PUBLIC IN A DIASPORA?

With these questions, I don't wish to create the impression that the public is obsolete. Rather, I mean that the public realm is undergoing a structural shift involving media and information technology - that is, the public's channels, the organisations that represent it as a class or its political interests, its venues/settings, the structure of its presence, the significance of its presence, its locality, physical space, and its passive and active effective range are changing. And what is just as important: its target groups are changing . In this process of change, the importance of the economy as the direct addressee of user/consumer publics is increasing. All of this is the outcome of more intensive flows of information and temporally, economica lly and globally wide-ranging communication that preclude the possibility of reinstating classical models of the public realm. And the websites of political parties or politik.de. aren't going to accomplish it either. I maintain this is connected with a fundamental hypothesis:

THE PUBLIC SPHERE IS AN INSTABLE FORMALISM OF MODERN SOCIETIES. We haveto differentiate between two important structural levels:

source of information and a library and 17% as a shopping centre/bank, then this differentiation is still a surprise. It can be maintained only in the sense of a normative-ethical concept of the public - that is, subsumed under the commo n denom inator of political enlightenment. Considering that public knowledge is what we know from the media , then one must regard the construction of the formalism "the public" from the perspective of medial transformation. "Digital community property" (Lovink 2003, 23) at the interface of market and state, economy and politics, has to be decoded using med ia sociology. But I do indeed agree with Geert Lovink's assessment that the Internet still lacks its own class of global intellectuals active in the virtual realm.The question I'm posing here, therefore, is: What can be described now and for the future with the term "the public" and "the public sphere"? And: which scenarios, which structures are necessary to be able to launch processes at the interface of individualisation, personalisation, nation-state deregulation and globalisation. Thus, I'm not inquiring int o consciousness but rather into the struct ures for participation, informati onal self-determination, transparency and the illusion thereof, and int o the category of ever-greater importance: trust in the complex process of determination by external forces and trust in anonymous global, network-linked homelands. II.

1. The media (and in the classical form: print media) comprise the channel feeding individual points of view to the general public. Without media , this supra-local, supra-regional general public wouldn't function. 2. The legal system allows for express ions of opinion, associations representing opinions and int erests, debates about missions/aims, etc. as long as they fit into the political system . Co ncepts of security and punishment are formulated with reference t o face-to-face communication, territor iality, the fixed residence, printed matter and the hard-copy delivered by mail.

At present, we are experienc ing media developments that are generating massive changes in the conditions for opinion formation and expression, for individualisation and the formation of publics. We are also seeing that the classic concepts of the public sphere and politics are helplessly lagging behind, and even the most comm itted Int ernet critics have difficulties with the fact that with every form of media, the public displays a different inorganic composition . In "Da rk Fiber" by Geert Lovink - a book I highly recomme nd we read about the differentiation between the Internet and "the public realm" as if the Internet had not become a part of mankind's informational self-determination. If, as Geert Lovink writes, 45% of those surveyed consider the Internet a

PART OF RELATING THE HISTORY OF THE CONCEPT OF THE PUBLIC IS TO PLACE IT IN A CLEARLY DEFINED BOURGEOIS-HISTORICAL SETTING: IN THE CITY. Before the public sphere was formed by parties and institutions, the place in which the public was free to take shape was the city. The city was someth ing like the public-headquarters, a mega-machine for a participative, contradictiontolerant realm of opinion formation. Whether this was always the case is not something I wish to discuss today. The question is: is it true today? The answer is: No, at least in the case of those spatial agg lomerations that Saskia Sassen refers to as world cities and elsewhere are termed global cities. The metropolitan areas that take shape under the conditions of enormously concentrated power to administer economic affairs and information,the flexibilisation of the labour market and production, and the deregulation of the exertion of political-instituti onal authority are what Peter Marcuse calls "quartered cities."This situation gives rise to neighbourhoods featuring jobs demanding the highest qualifications and intensive professional face-to-face contacts,

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and those offering less demand ing jobs and pervaded by service-sector enterprises and curious trib alisations, by highrises in which toilets, kitc hens and bedrooms are stacked ten-fold or 1DO-fold on top of one another, tr aversed by elevator shafts and subway tunnels in which people don't say hello. I guaranteeyou: these are not breeding grounds for a happy or serious public. Fo r the last 10 years, this has been enhanced by interesti ng living and fertility conditions. The urban living space is increasingly populated - or what might be called "singulated" - by men and women living alone. In Stockholm, Cologne, Munich and other cities, this category already includes more than 60% of all residents. The neighbourhoods and their inhabitants have little if anything to do with one another. Their fluctuation rates are high - i.e. average duration of the residents' stays is short. But the empirical approach hinted at here doesn't take us very far. Flexibilisation, fluctuation and the daily conversion of urban architectural structures favours urbanity as a mindset. We'll have to take a closer look at whether the public sphere belongsto this urban mindsetting.

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Anyway, let's assumethat the city or the urban realm could be the setting of the public sphere. The question that arises is with what content - that is, with what political, technical and econom ic inventory - could the public make itself comfortable or become uncomfortable in the city? This isn't easyto answer. The reasons for this are to be found in what Lewis Mumford termed in 1966 the "range of collective communi cation"to thereby proclaim the demystif ication of urban life in tightly packed spaces by new systems of commun ication and information. The t olling of the hour by the church bell that used to synchronise city life and still provides it with orientation is now overlaid not only by noise from auto traffic in the streets and airline traffic overhead; the silent power of media networks, instantaneous information and a 24/7 online world have fundamentally changed the daily agendas of urban life, and thus the motivational economies for the public as well. III.

I ASSUME THAT NEARLY EVERY ONE OF YOU IS FAMILIAR WITH THE DIDACTIC SAYING: "NUN LASS MAL DIE KIRCHE 1M DORF " (literally: Let's keep the church in the village; i.e. let's ma intain a sense of proportion). And it usuallydoes staythere. Applied to a metropolitan setting, the saying would haveto

go: "Let's keep the space in the city." But the centering and orientation function of urban space has been annulled, is being irrevocably dismantled. In "Informational Cit y," Michael Castells speaks of the closer and closer interconnection among digital information technologies and digit al comm unications t echnologies in the economyof time, as well as among the forms of business (e-business, e-commerce, elearning) and the urban spatial, architectural and infrastructural organisations connected with them. Like amoe bas, spaces are constantly shifti ng wit hin a range defined by media technologies, economic forms and architectures. They're becoming ambiguous. Space has become a moving target of urban dynamics. There is nothing for which urban space constitutes a perma nent, continual home. Nevertheless, this is not the end of the city; instead, it means its reshaping into urban ensemb les and urban regions. Its neighbourhoods are linked up in networks with other neighbourhoods in other cities. Event networks overlay the cities: Love Parades, Christopher Street Days, concerts, LAN parties, music fairs, etc. complement economic, career-related networking.

OVER 40,000 NETWORKS ARE DRIVING THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE INTERNET. APPROXIMATELY 700 MILLION PEOPLE WORK DAILY IN DIGITAL MEDIA NETWORKS. Adding in private communication, we come to a total of about 840 million daily inhabitants of artificial digital doma ins. Their work is topic-centered and not architecture-centered;they move about in 20 or 3D, with or without agents, with or without the support of digital cameras, in computed spaces. These spaces haven't left the city because the city never contained them. They've arrived over the last 20 years and are being network-linked with the city's professional, everyday spatial patt erns, which are being reformulat ed thereby. Meanwhile, the city as central spatial model is suffused with networks of local and delocalised locations. This could be called re-urbanisation or the coupling of the centrality of the urban space with the dynamics of global artificial spaces. The city shifts to the edge of the global flows of information; it becomes Boundary City. A radically unique example of this is Banga lore, India, with its concentrati on of 140,000 computer scientists. Maybe N. Pressman was somehow right with his prediction in "Forces for Spatial Change" (1985) that future urbanity would be characterised by the following organisational forms: "the dispersed sheet, the spider web, the star, the satellite, a linear configuration, the ring, the galaxy and the poly-

centered net." The modules he conceived at least show one thing: the structures and organisational forms must uncouple from territory in order to maintain urbanity as a cultural program.

knowledge in books made omnipresent by letterpress publication) and the general public has long since lost some of its romance, but they're still a couple. There's never been more paper in circulation.

IV.

The general and the particular, this ideal coupling of the 18th and 19th centuries, has been rent asunder- at the very latest due to the application of the media's own Law of Large Numbers, which is to say the rule of merchandising in the field of newspaper production and radio and TV productions. Mass print media, audio media and audio-visual media with their propagandistic broadcasting structure (one for all) produced radically revised mechanisms of presence and representation. In the discourse about the "general public," "the people" and "the subject" were not lonely though they were by no means capable of mature judgment, but they did turn into the "lonely crowd,"1< into other-directed people as a result of social, military and media-propagandistic processes at work from 1870 to 1945. Murdering in the name of an ethnic and racial public, loneliness and existential crisis, Sisyphus and hopelessness and bloc-political exclusivities are the elementsthat form the basis of the public debates of the last 50years. "Communication is the Valium of the people," is how S. Moscovici put it 2( (1 986, pp. 233 ff) in his sharp criticism ofthe inadequate considerati on being given to the development of means of communication in political, cultural and social science research. Could this meanthat we're getting an obscure view of the public when we fail to take medial structures into account?

BUT, IN LIGHT OF THE ABOV E MENTIONED CONSIDERATIONS, WHAT DOES THE TERM "PUBLIC SPHERE " DESCRIBE? We know: The public sphere is a concept, a high-quality product of the political cultures of the West and the Enlightenment. By no means a high-gloss product; bloodstained is more like it, like so much in our cultures. At the same time, it's something int angible; it's a t erm referring rather t o a competence than to a particular place or definite structures.

SO THEN: ARE WE SUITED TO THE PUBLIC SPHERE. STILL? And where do you learn this stuff that has been the makeup of quite a few nightmarish claims to power - like referendums for the death penalty - or from which so much hope has sprung - like freedoms of expression and association? We know that the phenomenon of the public sphere has to do with the constitution, with rules and laws of commun ication and the exercise of power.We also know that the public sphere has to do with the economic, journalisti c and medial composition of a society, with free domains, free thoughts, with respect and representation, with egotism and int erests. Letterpress printing, publication, expressing opinions in writing and knowledge gleanedfrom texts constitute the historical source code of the self-organising interest groups of bourgeois societies. Nevertheless,the public sphere in the sense of "the voice from among the peop le" was initially of trivial importance. It was preceded by the representative general public, "the voice of the people," whic h characterises public debatesto this very day, though without any particularly convincing grounds in the political theory of democracy. The format of this representative general public is called politics. 'The people" became acquainted with "its voice" by means of typography, and it still is so, though this is hard pressed by other media. The love match involving typography (through

V.

DO WE KNOW WHERE WE HAVE TO SEARCH IF WE WANT TO LOCALISE THE PUBLIC? Hasthe public, in the past or right now, ever even had anything at all to do wit h location or locality? Or is what we with wide-eyed glee or a knitted brow describe as the public sphere not rather a reference t o media and human beings? Is the public sphere thus an attitude of expectation towards non-empirical st orage media, archives, participation rights and promises of transparency? We are currently experiencing a wave of changes, in respons e to which we must- and will- develop new languag es, motifs, interests and policies for the public sphere. The "gateway to placelessness" has been kicked open according to William 1< Riesman, David. Die einsame Masse. Hamburg: RoRoRo, 1958

Moscovici, Serge. Das Zeitalter der Massen. Frankfurt/M: Fischer Wissenschaft,1 986

2(

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Knoke in his "placeless society," and Joshua Meyrowitz was already speaking of "being elsewhere" years ago. In this connection, I have referred to media-based dissipative structures with which we have surrounded ourselves. The People's New Clothes - the digital media - cling to their bodies. They're the third skin (physiology is the first; social systems the second). They get under your skin in the sense of cyborg-ification. They grip those who don them with suction at escape velocity and produce the resistance of deceleration, of demanded moratoria, of reflexive pauses. Pauses!

Is that what remains of the public sphere: time for reflection, time for selection, for repositioning ? Does "the public sphere" have greater proximity to a moratoriumthan to digital search engines? Is a group-coordinated interest possible only under conditions of deceleration? If that were so, then the public sphere would have changed not only structurally but also substantially. But then it would not have been alone - we are currently witnessing a mass ive dismantling of traditional-modern institutions. Electronic networks are assuming the status of quasi-institutional functions. And under this influence, there has been a concomit ant shift in the chance for occasional participation - commonly known as the public sphere. With this, the formats of the public sphere have become disputed if not altogether invalid.

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VI.

IN POST-FASCIST GERMANY IN THE 19605 AND '70s, THERE WAS NO DISPUTE SURROUNDING THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE FORMAT OF POLITICAUCULTURAL SELF-OBSERVATION. One hungered for the public sphere - whether investigative or declarative, whether political-educational or objectively journalistic. The disputed issue was whether the public sphere can be used as a term in a general political-institutional cont ext or as one referring to the practical conduct of everyday life and the culture of a specific social class, whereby JOrgen Haberm as and Os kar Negt & Alexander Kluge can be mentioned as advocates of opposing views. Whether the controversy was very helpful remains to be seen, but it did leave behindthe question of whether the public sphere must necessarily be connected with the systematics of abstract, normative, communications-ethical legitimation processes or whether it is rather the manifestation of a way of life. Sothen: process or way of life? Another scholarly controversy seems important to me in

relation to the above-mentioned issue: the one involving generality and system, and thus between J. Habermas and N. Luhmann. In systems theory,the interplay of the particular and the general was replaced by the interplay of system and environment, whereby the system was unburdened of its origins and ontology and burdened with communication and self-organisation. In addressing the question of public spirit online, the mode of observation plays a decisive role: 1. Are media networks placed into a general referential con text, 2. are they depicted as systems, or are they, no matter how unexplained 3. a culture of their own?

I tend toward the last two positions. But this does not shift public spiritedness out of the picture. The question then becomes: how do the logics of origination and maintenance construct themselves out of general interrelationships in dynam ic information and communication environments? And which online and offline relationships, which transfer and carryover effects, can we and must we observe thereby? Enormous methodological problems are presented by medial patterns of individualisation, by the Laws of Large Numbers prevailing in medial networks, by non-territorial (i.e. non-national-territoriall communications communities, by the temporal patterns of data-based commun ications and by artificial immersive spaces. This applies not only to methodological but alsoto deep - seated cultural dimensions. It steers the inquiry into an (online) public sphere in artificia l medial spaces away from phenomena and towards more basic questions of the medial composition and constitution of post-industrial and post-bureaucratic communications str uctures. It appearsthat thematicising the public sphere neither as a process, nor as a way of life nor as a subsystem is sufficiently prepared to answer this question.

VI I. Let's take a closer look.

• The public sphere, like every level of culture, has always been a fictional reality. • Its structure always depend s on the powers that be: whether in a private-sector space like a cafe; whether in a so-called public space like a city square or street corner at which "the citizen" can speak his/her mind; or whether in a medium in which one may express ones opinion- in muted tones or at the top of ones voice - in writing.

• Licensing and selection are from the very outset the institutional normative accompanime nt of this politically (over) determined realm of social communication . • The other pairing is individualisation and the formation of special interests. • This becomes interesting when one not only takes into account the fact that the public sphere is a format within a fixed set of institutional and cultural rules, but if one also considers the fact that every form of public sphere that we know of is medially determined, so that the result is a structure of conflicting forces seeking to establish dominance and control. • It appea rs that this system of tension and int erplay gives rise to completely new coalitions. The old ones involving the politica l order and medial structures are weakening and new cooperative relationships between media l structures and free associations of individual users are forming. • The extraordinarything about this is that these associations wit hin medial spaces are coalescing online. The public sphere - whether it's conceived as a customer conspiracy, as a bazaarwith connections to open-source communities or as a free network - is placed in a setting of the time regime of media usage and takes shape under conditions of dissipative, dispersed localities. • Underthese conditions, historically new structures are emerg ing in the public sphere. They are federative, unstable, trans-cultural, densely packed with information and constantly reassembl ing themselves. • This does not preclude an offline public sphere. Possibilities of meeting face-to-face, discussing, negotiating and preparing something, getting into the dynamics of real-real physical presence remain indispensable. • Nevertheless,this is no longer primarily a matter of (institutionalised) politics, broadcasting, mass-medial propagation structures, and informationally portioned publics, but rather of individualisation, de-localisation, real-time med ia and informati onal self-determination. • Converse ly, it is also the case that net-based publics have to date hardly made a dent in the hardened institutional colossi of party demo cracies and executive regime s. When net-based, net-coordinated groups- like attac, for instance - "t ake to the streets"for a "show of colors" or a "showdown" in the traditional confrontational pattern of a demonstrative public, then the absu rdity or, better formulated perhaps, the paradox of the public sphere becomes obvious. The old publics have no addressees any more since politics is no longer a national matter, and the new publics have no addressees yet since an institutionalized, directly legitimat ed global politics doesn't exist yet. • Sothen, what in the world to do with the concept of "the public" when it's already gone down the tubes politically

and economically and not even close to being provided for trans-culturalIy. • And in which direction is the public sphere supposed to go when the timeframesthat have demanded special-interestderived and partisan commu nication, influence, controversy and legitimation can no longer be maintained in this way? • And where is the idea of the influential local, regional or national public headed when the relevant information flows and decisions never reach their ears or eyes? • When the standardisation decisions for operating systems, network protocols, interoperability, interconnectivity, etc. are being made by multinationaltelecomm unications corporations beyond the purview of any sort of legitimation structures of Internet Society,WWW Consortium and Direction Genera ls 13of the EU, what's to become of the public? • Or are these old school questions? This occurs to me not infrequently. After all, isn't it odd that these old concepts of that which is "open to the public" that array themselves in oppositionto feudalistic exclusivity long for participation in that which is institutionally "closed to the public,"to get a piece of the pie that others are serving up? • What about a time when the degree of informational complexity has reached a level at which there is neither time for the gradual development of an informed public nor can it be expected that an association of individual groups sharing similar interests will lead to the formation of a "stable public opinion"? • For some time, we have seen ourselves confronted by nomadic special interests, although these are groups that no longer have anything to do with the catch-all public scenes of large-scale politics but rather with the greater degree of differentiation that the highly diversified global commun ications structures make a part of our daily lives and in the face of which the individualisation processes in highly modern and post-modern societies lead rather to minority voices in the globalisation process. • The public spheres of political enlightenment are losing their exem plary function to the same extent as this entire thematic complex is being unofficially outsourced to globally active shareholders. • So there you have it: the super-critical hypothesis. The optimistic one: public spheres fluctuate between economic interests and groups of well-informed actors, and become realms of association in which representatives of corporate citizenship meet with citizens of the net - not necessarily united nodes but united semi-locals, sometimes online, sometimes offline. • What if a well-prepared orator stood on some street corner - Speaker's Corner in London's Hyde Park, for example and nobody showed up.

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LIKE AN UNCLAIMED PARCEL THAT HADN'T EVEN BEEN ORDERED IN THE FIRST PLACE. Of course, listeners schooled in Media Studies or Journalism can add here that this is no different than what goes on in our legislatures. Not entirely, since the televised med ia do indeed come and fetch the lonesome speaker in an almost empty chamber and beam him int o the turbulent economyof medial attention. So then: is the public sphere to be found in gerontocratic t alk shows? Hopefully not. VIII. Perhaps it would help to turn the question around: do we need physical locati ons for the public sphere?

DO WE KNOW WHAT THEY COULD, SHOULD, MUST LOOK LIKE? I'm not too sure about that. Too often in old and new plazas, in old and new office buildings - regardless of whether they're built in a postmodern, deconstructivist or classicist style - I have the impressio n that they offer no features that make them suitable as sites of the public sphere.

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Where, then, are the physical settings that take into consideration the needsfor informati on and communication and the approach to entertainment and meaning of generations that have been completely socialised by the media and that are thus familiar with every channel of information ranging from comics to Nintendo, Sega, Playstation I and II, books, CO players, MP3, the Internet, TV and multifunctional mobile units. It's usually only two cohorts that are being served: skaters and sprayers, both involuntarily, and, at least the latter, pursued by the police right into their bedrooms .

The public, then? Slowly, there's a bit moretalk about this medially semi-stifled concept now that the middle-class intellectual variant has disappea red along with the celebrated public of the proletarian afternoon from which the talk show moderators with their impartial congenialities earn their pay. As you can see: the question of where the public sphere is located,where's their rendezvous, isn't as off-the-charts as it seems. It's a part of the canon of basic historical knowledge o To assoc iate the city with the public sphere, o To relate the origins of the public sphere to lett erpress printing, journals, and med ia competence,

To associate cafes, clubs, lodges as more or less open or closed spaces with it, o To presuppose political, economic and, in some cases, cultural policy interests, as well as o To associate the strategic positioning of special interests with it. To the extent that media landscapes first established themselves in the print domain and then in the fields of radio, Cinemascope and TV, and then brachiat ed and diversified furt her,there increasingly arose alongside the cooperative structure of print media and the forums for the discussion and formation of opinions of a public in the public sphere. There emerged a sort of business engag ing in the wholesaling of opinions, not infrequently carried on as a medial monopo ly of information and opinion. As a result, territories - that is, cities - lost their territory - that is, their function as evolutionary driving forces and their significance. o

IX.

NOWADAYS, THE NORMATIVE FRAMEWORK OF THE CATEGORY "PUBLIC SPHERE" HAS COME TO INCLUDE THE CATEGORY II PRIVACY. II This protected realm, in which the information gatherer and evaluator has been able to do or not do whatever he/she wants, is - surprise, surprise - likewise under strong pressure. Privacy traditionally meant a sort of recipient privacy such as the right the law grants t o an addressee'shome and mailbox. One can express an opinion, but this has seldom been connected with a transmitter's right of privacy. It has been only hesitantly that non-regulat ed telephony has been permitted, and broadcasting licenses for amateur radio and commercial radio and TV handed out. The broadcasti ng market wasn't deregulated until the 1980s. Thus, right up to these times, the protection of privacy has not been the protect ion of transmitters but rather solely legislative sanctions against burglars and encroachments on individual liberties by the police. But this is no longer sufficient. If we take time to reflect on the public sphere, then we also have to do so in the sense of according protection to individual transmissio ns - that is, as a politically guaranteed right.

NOW, ONE COULD SAY: WE, THE INTERNET USERS, ARE ALREADY DOING THAT. We don't bother ourselves with the fact that there are still

legal mattersto take care of in this area, and I think that's OK. Nevertheless, the other side of this coin is that there are approval and licensing procedures currently making excellent progress in abolishing the private sphere in favour of the state's new claim to informational hegemony. So, it could very well be that the big party to which the individual human being is invited to celebrate his/her elevationto the status of individuality turns out to also be a wake for the death of his/her private sphere.

X.

SO IT APPEARS THAT WE'RE GOING TO HAVE TO GET INVOLVED AGAIN IN TAKING CARE OF THINGS IN THE PUBLIC SPHERE. But how? It seems that: • What used to be called society has lost some of its territory. It's taking place elsewhere; • What used to be called individuality has reemerged in the pattern of human-computer interaction / human-mediahuman interactivity; • What usedto be called "the folk" has become a diffuse nominal value, resigned, and, at times, political-cr iminal fightin' words; • What usedto be called communication no longer takes place in uniformly-symbol ically navigated commun ities but rather is a process without fixed membersh ip. "The public sphere" under these conditions must be understood as a demand to take respons ibility for interconnecti ons and to expect neither fixed addressees nor high praise in return for these efforts. Are media-technological networks thus local and global sound-boxes for altered communi cations activities? Are they dispersed artificial spaces for the modified medial presence of the public sphere? Urban regions are increasingly coming under pressureto change that which is exerted by globalisation processes connected with the economics of finance, information and commun ications. Cities are becoming nodes in the global economies of knowledge, regions of distribution and integration of services, knowledge, informati on and innovations. They are becoming key regions of intensive local and wide-ranging mobility, of migrations and trans-cultural experiments. Economic knowledge, scholarly knowledge and design knowledge in dynamic sectors increasingly determine the metropol itan functions of cities. Cities are no longer primarily engaged in competing with or setting themselves apart from their rural outskirts.

CITIES HAVE TO FACE GLOBAL URBAN COMPETITORS. What is called for is to translate globalisation processes into local-regional conditions and these, in turn, into globalised brands.This becomes a precarious situation when structures produce entire bundles of modification logics and more and more people, systems and environments adapt and conform to them, as is the case with information technology and media networks. Outside observers form the field of econom ic theory describe this as the "Sixth Kondratiev."3( Media structures have been set up worldwide for about the last 10years and are being frequented by an increasing number of denizenswho are not there for business purposes only. More and more groups are constructing and expanding their communications environments in media networks, and the results are multi-directional flows of information and interrelationships. Human beings are no longer just users of a technology or simply viewers of interface surfaces. Peop le are forming "conspiracies of users"4( and artificial social regions in which they send and receive communiques concerning their amorous, existential, physical, social and economic options, and make appointments for activities both online and off. Internet cultures of diverse origins are taking shape locally, regionally and worldwide. Web regions of public spiritednesstoo?

THE FACT THAT CYBERLAW HAS LONG SINCE EMPOWERED THE VIRTUAL POLICE TO CONDUCT DRAGNETS IN THE NET AND ON THE HOMEPAGES OF ALL POLITICAL PARTIES RAISES THE QUESTION OF A POSSIBLE CONNECTION BETWEEN DISPERSED COMMUNICATION AND A SCATTERED PUBLIC. Whether "citizen" is the proper appellation for the inhabitants of this domain remains to be seen.5( The first place to seek an answer is among the online constitutions enacted by those who havetaken this responsibility into their own hands.

XI. One could say that the emergence of worldwide computerbased networks has been accompanied by powerful synchronization processes in specific areas of development. These transcend not only national borders; they also constitute a structure of globalised, geographically-nonspecific

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sectors of societythat have more in common with one another than they do with those rooted in a specific place. It can be expected that de-territorialised, de-materialised virtual communities will form temporally parallel to the territorially fixed societies. There has been hardly any research done todate on whether the two realms exist in a relationship of mutual differentiation, whether offline and online doma ins are becoming increasingly detached (e.g. normatively, ethically, and as lifestyles/ways of life). whether the patterns of behaviour and universal models are exclusive, or to what extent. Another open point is if evolutionary or integrative cooperation between the two might be possible? And if it is, how people might design this setup? In light of regionalised / localised globalisation impetuses and considerations with respect to netw orks and nodes, life online and offline, I suggest proceeding from a federative concept as a pattern of observation.

THE CONCEPT OF FEDERATION IS DISBURDENED OF DEMANDS WITH RESPECT TO IDENTITY AS WELL ASOFSTRUCT URALHEGEMON~

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It makes it possible to place these associations of communities into an interrelationship (networked link-up) that transcends individual groupings and topics but simultaneously takes into account the uniquetypologies and temporal modes of the individual nodes. And it also enables us to take a more sensitive approach to the obviously tense interrelationship between online and offline. The ideas of agreement, trust and unification that are associated with "federation" could allow those areas of globalisation, individualisation, and strategic cooperation to be considered in connection with instability and the dynamics of change. Thus, it would be possible to overcome the a priori European cultural determinants - continuity and identity - in accordance with empirical processes without dispensing with temporal continuousness. Accepting the rules of "federation" means: mutual commitment to the shared functions of the medially linked federative interconnections.

XII. Atthe G-B Summitheld July 21 -23, 2000 in Kyu shu-O kinawa, World Economic Forum (WEF) experts were invited to make recomm endations to politicians on how to go about turning the global digital divide into a global digital opportunity.6( The working group underscored the expectations that the global diffusion of the Internet and telecommunications would advance the global development of knowledge.

Paragraph 1 of the Nine Principals for the Global Digital Opportunity stated: "The G-Bshould take a leadership role by advancing, together with developing countries, a positive vision of the global digital opportunity and by organising a coordinated effort, backed by high-level support, to assist developing countries in its realisation."7<

"UNIVERSAL ACCESS TO EDUCATION AND TECHNICAL TRAINING" WAS CALLED THE DECISIVE FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLE FOR THE "TRANSITION TO A KNOWLEDGEBASED SOCIETY." This is also regarded as a condition for a "dynamic climate ... in which entrepreneurship can flourish." The WEF working group's respons iveness to the needs of business was assured by the participation of Microsoft, Yahoo, 3Com, Motorola, Novell and Hewlett Packard, corporations that are already organised either in the Internet Society, in the World Wide Web Con sortium or other initiatives. There was hardly any representation of those professional groups that develop knowledge (at universities, private sector R&D facilities, or in free-lance creative domains) or of the mediators of knowledge such as ministries of culture, schools and universities. In order to achieve and assure this "universal access", the G-B states ought to support the training of teachers and librarians, get schools and libraries linked up online, and set up tele-centers.

XIII. The efforts to establish globa l standards for information transmission (TCP-I P, for example). connectivity and operating systems in order to set up functional communications spaces are important, since they can help shrink the "gap of availability of Internet access." At the sametime, though, there is also the danger that an exclusively technological-economic strategy would have a negative multiplier effect: "an even more significant divide in critical areas such as education, job training, literacy, public health and economic prosperity," according to the Chief Executive Officer of Yahoo. Nefiodow, Leo A. Der Sechst e Kondratieff. Wege zur Produktivitat und Vollbeschaftiqunq im Zeitalter der Information. Sankt Augustin: Rh ein Sieg Verlag, 1996 4( K5hntopp, Kristian: Was ist das Internet? In: M. Ro st (Ed.): Die Netz-Revolution. Auf demWeg in die Weltgesellschaft, Frankfurt / M: Eichborn-Verlag, 1996, pp. 20-36, here p. 30 5( F a ~ler, Manfred: Die Exkommunikation des Burgers. In: N. Bolz, F. Kittler, R. Zons (Eds.): Weltburqertum und Globalisierung. Munich: Fink-Verlag, 2000, pp. 89-108 6< http://www.g8kyushu-okinawa.go.jp/e/index.html 7< Executive Summary of the St atement of The World Economic Forum Task Force, The G-8 Kyusho-Dkinawa Summit:http://www.weforum.org'/centres.nsf/ Documents 3(

The scenarios of global Internet diffusion fail to include considerations as to how the knowledge basis for digital media competency and computer literacy can be established in the respective national, professional or regional cultures of learning. How manyCPUs, how many people, which concepts of knowledge, which ongoing private- and public-sector economic initiatives are necessary? What is lacking is human-centered design, as Don Norman's critique rightly pointed out. "The human-centered approach puts people's needs first, technology second. It focuses upon human activities." 8< The critical element in the exclusively technological and infrastructural definition of "divide" and "opportunity" is the absence of qualitative, regional cultural and individual criteria. Also lacking are political-strategic qualifications as to what sort of culture of knowledge such efforts seek to attain. Which global divisions of labour are desirable in the technological, basic theoretical and pragmatic development of knowledge and which should rather be rejected (e.g. for national political reasons)? Which steps in the direction of a global knowledge infrastructure must be taken? And by whom?

XIV. It is no longer a matter of formulating a procedure for sharing knowledge and involvementin decision-making that is stable over time; it is still a matter of collectivity that leads via the material conditions of life to solidarity instead of to an abstract public sphere. Indeed, wide-ranging dat a, information and communication environmentshave already emerged and are providing a setting for intrinsically important social phenomena such as virtual neighborhoods, virtual classrooms,virtual corporate divisions, electronic information bourses, newsgroups and electronic forums. Now,

ONE SHOULD CERTAINLY NOT OVERESTI M ATE CERTAIN HUMAN ASSEM BLAGES IN THE INTERNET; THEY ARE, IN A SYSTEMATIC SENSE, SIMPLE SYSTEMS WITH NOT INFREQUENTLY BANAL THEMES. Nevertheless, juxtaposing to them as a control argument the history of single-purpose movements (for example, the opposition to constructing atomic power plants) and above all their significance for the political landscape,things start to look a litt le different. One-topic groups, even those in media networks, should not be underestimated (and this especially applies today to groups of racists, neo-Nazis and xenophobes). In general, these single-topic groups are elements that make

up a heterogeneous opinion landscape in which people no longer use individual medialfunctions but rather hyper-medial information environments. Some of the questions that call for closer attention are: • How can conceptions of public-spiritedness and the public sphere be realised in hyper-medial networks? • What should their architectures look like? • How differentiated and how sensitive t o origins and complexity must they be? With reference to the theoretical debates about the public sphere that have been conducted in the recent past, it can be said simply: the process of taking leave of an ethical, linguistic-pragmatic mode of proceeding and from a collective-pragmatic identity is underway. The widespread use of media-technological developments produces medial spaces of high informational density and communicative interactivity, and gives rise to transverse media fields that are positioned lat erally to previous functional differentiations. They make it possible, for example, for employees to send private e-mails from the workplace, to read a desk-top newspaper or to navigate in online game rooms- activities that, at any rate, are treated neither as theft of company time by their employers nor as non-cash compensation by the tax agencies. These are the origins of work and information environments in which virtually everyone can move about, obtain information and participate, and be radical, active members or read-only members.

XV.

NEVER BEFORE HAVE SO MANY MEDIA BEEN RESPONSIBLE FOR POTENTIAL PUBLICS. Nevertheless, this doesn't meanthat everything has become clearer and more comprehensible as a result. The changed media structure is simultaneously a different degree of complexity in patt erns of relationships, actions and information. This complexity has t o be learned anew. It remains in the realm of unobservable phenomen a and produces new unobservable realms: non-steady-states that are depicted as processing or storing to memory. This unobservabilitydemands revised modelsfor generating explanations and credibility. These models teach human beingsto understand modelness - a paradoxical formulation perhaps, but human beings learn only from models, from their status arrangements and operational configurations, from their explanatory range and power.

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How durable human interrelationships within med ia worlds will turn out to be and what they will come to consider durability to be for themselves and for others are not easyto describe. The "life expectancy" of communit ies in networks ranges from six monthsto possibly six years (which is quite a fullness of years). These communit ies and groups display no generational pattern of inheritance. Use, engageme nt and disengagement are individualised though presumably in accordance with a mode of behaviour that is quite compa rable wit h the level of large numbers. But is this the source of the public sphere? Yes, perhaps, if one considers the linkage to structures and a comprehensive, critical debate aboutthem as a possible source of a "generalised commons." If one expects more, then, aside from thoroughly efficient, private political information offerings, one wi ll find very litt le.

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The electronic networks do not yet display their own forms of culturally, individually, normatively or institutionally useful durability as is typical of programmed artificiality. They are, in their communications settings, grandiose machines for the destruction of society andfor simultaneously erecting society-like patterns of reliability and trust. Much of it is trivial, a simplistic system of direct relations; the illusion of community and transparence; fake for the economy's sake. The goodthing about it is that the general public loses its last ontological veil; what's critical about it is that (Iate-, post-, cyber-) Modern societies seem not to know that comm unication - that which is rich in data and information as well as computer-based and Internet-based - is all they have left to observe and maintain themselves. The institutional overdetermination operates like a burden inherit ed from the past, especially in Europe. A conflict looms on the horizon: between the old, steep institutionalisations with their references to the general public and the young, flat institutionalisations with their references to information and global scope. Public institutional media outlets, like those in Germany, whose mission is to guarantee basic informational provisioning are facing strong competition from addresses like politics.com and politik.de. That these lack a journalistic level featuring editorial commentis widely rumoured . These manifestations of media networks operate like quasi-institutionallevels of providing content - no longer broadcasting, but synchronous and asynchronous drop-off and pick-up communications. The public sphere as a service; the public spirit of enormous information density, of applicability, of design pragmatics, of short-term orientations. Diffused social relationships that hardly havethe time for strictly worked out orders of precedence and a dispersed public open up a field of political activity in which things

could get a bit choppy. The time-honoured traditions handed down from the past that I referred to at the outset have been called into question. The regulators built into mass societies are becoming questionable because they are no longer fulfilling their functions as archive, mediator,source of training and expertise, and control pattern. Is there a way out? Much depends on whether and where one expects democracy when one speaks of the public sphere. Is its appearance anticipated more in people, in institutions or in the dynamic communicative configurations? Institutions have rather been attenuating, system-maintaining (negative) control circuits of slackened feedback, whereas networks are upheaval-generating, system-modifying feedback loops. Among these are elites with very different senses of public spirit, and among them, a competition - if not a conflict - of elites goes back and forth. With this, the conditions for maintaining and developing the idea economies and knowledge-based societies take their place on the order of the day.

MONOMEDIAL PUBLICS CAN NO LONGER MAINTAIN THEMSELVES THERE; THE INSTITUTIONS ARE WASHED UP. And with them go the meaningfulness and explanatory power of research patterns that evoke the public as receptor-public, as N. Abercrombie & B. Longhurst do with their categories "behavioural paradigm (BP). incorporation I resistance paradigm (IRP)" and "spect acle I performance paradigm (SPP)." 9< No trace of modif ied communicative configurations of environments for perception and action. Which is a pity, actually.

XVI. Conclusion I'd like to close with a quote from the book "Collective Intelligence" by Pierre Levy: "It is not so far-fetched to imagine that in a few years, most households will also be equipped with terminals (with Cybergates) that are part of a commun ication setting that is structured according to the many-to-many space-forming schema . Citizens could then take part in a new socio-tschnical structure in which large collectives communicate with one another in real time."10< 8< Norman, Don: The Invisible Computer: http://mitpress.mit. edu/books/ NDRVH/chapter2.html 9< Abercrombie, Nicholas & Brian Longhurst (1998): Audiences. ASo-ciological Theory ofPerformanceandImagination. London- Thousand Oaks- New Delhi: Sage, 1998 10< Levy, Pierre. Die kollektive Intelligenz: Eine Antropologiedes Cyberspace" Mannheim: Bollmann,1997.

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GEORG FRANCK (

Mental Cap italism

99 EVERYTHING SMACKS OF PUBLICITY. WHEREVER WE LOOK, THERE ARE LOGOS, WHATEVER THE EVENT, WE ARE REMINDED OF SPONSORS. ADVERTISING FINANCES MASS CULTURE BUT, INCREASINGLY, HIGH CULTURE, TOO. CONSUMPTION HAS SHIFTED FROM PRODUCTS TO BRANDS. BRANDED GOODS ARE COMMODITY-SHAPED ADVERTISEMENTS. WE ARE WITNESSING AN INVASION OF BRANDS. BEFORE OUR EYES, CITIES AND LANDSCAPES MUTATE INTO ADVERTISING MEDIA. PUBLICITY SETTLES LIKE MILDEW ON EVERYTHING OPEN TO PUBLIC VIEW. IT DETERMINES THE SHAPE OF EVERYTHING INTENT ON MAKING A PUBLIC IMPRESSION: ALSO THE SHAPE OF POLITICS. POLITICAL PARTIES ARE ADVERTISED LIKE REGISTERED TRADE MARKS. THE THIRST OF POLITICS FOR PROMOTION OUTLAYS HAS REACHED A POINT WHERE IT CORRUPTS THE TRADITIONAL PARTY SYSTEM AND HAS BECOME A MAJOR SOURCE OF POLITICAL SCANDAL.

WHAT IS IT THAT ENDOWS PUBLICITY WITH SUCH POWER? IS IT TECHNOLOGICAL PROGRESS OR DOMINANT ECONOMICS? ARE WE CONFRONTED WITH A NEW PHENOMENON OR WITH THE CULMINATION OF OLD TRENDS? IS PUBLICITY A SYMPTOM OF INFORMATION SOCIETY? OR IS IT A NOVEL MANIFESTATION OF TECHNOLOGY AND SOCIAL ECONOMY?

can switch off TV but cannot forego facing advertisements. Wherever we look, wherever we run, advertising is in place already. The involuntary consumption of publicity amounts to a tax being levied on perception. This tax is irrational from the point of view of the rational consumer assumed in economic theory. It also contradicts the technological media's role as mind amplifiers. However, can a phenomenon of such overwhelming presence be explained by sheer absence of reason? Shouldn't we rather wonder whether our conceptions of economics and technology are too narrow? Could the omnipresence of advertising not be symptomatic for a dynamic of social change that so far has gone unnoticed in economics and media theory?

The publicity flood: symptomfor what? There are standard economic reasonsfor promotion activities. Expenditure on advertising pays where economies of scale can be exploited. Economies of scale are characteristic of Ford ist production. They are sizeable in the case of information goods since information products involve high overhead costs but negligible reproduction costs. In a communication network, both economic efficiency and attractiveness increase with the number of network participants. Accordingly, the role played by advertising in an industrial society expands in information society. Still, all those reasons do not sufficiently explain the penetrating force of publicity and its spillover beyond the limits of sales promotion . They may explain why the incitement, channelling and seduction of attention today regularly accompanies economic activity, but they fail to explain why the scramble for attention has turned into the overriding objective.

The contention that we are dealing with some profound change takes shape if we remember similar upheava ls in the past, like the ones that accompanied industri alisation. Industrial capitalism led to new ownership relations, to the transformation of common land into private property,to the growth of vertically integrated markets, to the enforcement of homogenous currency systems, and to the evolution of finance as a specialised economic sector. In the following, I shall elaborate on the conjecture that we are witnessing another revolution of this kind, taking place beneaththe surface on which advertising spreads. I suspect that we haveto do with a new kind of capitalism, a capitalism different from the one usually addressed as New Economy. Let me sketch this mental - kind of capitalism in the form of four propositions: 1. What we are witnessing is a new type of privatisation of public space: privatisation of the space of experience.

PUBLICITY DEPENDS ON MEDIA: MEDIA PRESENTING A MESSAGE WHILE ABSORBING ATTENTION.

2. The privatisation of this 'experience-space' is connected with - and promoted by - the emergence of new markets. New in the sense that it is not moneywhich is exchanged for information, but attention.

Electronic media are particularly well-equipped for presentation. Electronic ways of reproducing, multiplying and spreading patterns of stimulation have a clout in reinforcing presentation. At the sametime, distribution via technological channels facilitates the measureme nt of attention being skimmed off. The effective sales of information delivered by the med ia are measured via circulation figures, audience ratings, or number of visits to web sites. Together with todav's technological media,an infrastructure has sprung up which provides wholesale accessto entire populations while at the sametime continuously surveying demand . And yet: not even state-of-the-art information and communication technology fully explain the impertinence of publicity. We

3. Attention as such is not a means of payment. It only becomes a currency when it is measured in homogenous units and made to circulate via anonymous exchange acts. 4. The currency system of attention relies on specialised financial services. This banking and stock-exchange function is performed by the mass media. (ad 1) Privatisati on of public experience-space Advertising would not be ubiquitous if presentation were only taking hold of the technological media. Particularly striking, however, is the way in which public space in cities,

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or areas along traffic routes, and increasingly also the open landscape, are incorporated. Those kinds of space are epitomes of public goods. Even when buildings or land are privately owned, urban space or the open landscape keep their public, communa l nature.This public-good quality is the object of building and landmarkregulations. Precisely this public-good quality of public space is now being privatised. Public space is studded with billboards and installations serving as eye-catchers, it is transformed into an advertising medium. A lot is paid for utilisation as an advertising med ium - both by those active in the advertising business and those suffering from the disfigurement of public space. However, while the benefit involved is appropriated privately,the respective costs are borne by the general public. The same development can be observed in public television and in publicly financed culture. The existence of publiclyownedtelevision companies goes back to the same reasons that account for aesthetic commissioning in building codes and landscape protection regulations.

THEIR RATIONALE LIES IN DEFENDING PUBLIC EXPERIENCE - SPACE AGAINST THE BASENESS OF PRIVATE PROFIT-SEEKING.

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Qua lity standa rds are established and fees are levied, so that peoplewill have something decent to look at. But what will public television companies do next? They will maximise their audience ratings in order to use their medium as an advertising vehicle.They wi ll engage in the same racket as private television compa nies, perhaps hampered by a few inconvenient rules and standards. Their business, too, is the collection of as much attention as possible. Audience ratings measure the attention a medium attracts in return for the information it offers. This service of attraction is soldto the advertising industry. Private television lives entirely on selling this service, but public television profits from it, too. Both kinds of television companies thus feel encouraged to investigate what the public wants to see or hear in order to maximise the attraction of attention; this attraction can then be re-sold for money.

NOTHING DIFFERENT IS HAPPENING WHEN SPONSORS TAKE OVER THE FINANCING OF CULTURE. Sponsors, too, buythe service of attraction. Whatever culture is on offer, it performs this service of attraction; sponsors buy the service in order to plant themselves in the limelight.

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Financing via advertising always means that nominally public space is transformed into a market where, on the one hand, the information offered is paid by attention and where, on the other hand,the service of attraction is sold for money.

theory but on experience and informed intuition. Meanwhile, they have developed into a sophisticated technique. Mass attraction is staged with a high degree of professionalism and is the technological basis of advanced industries.

(ad 2) New markets

A concept of technology not encompassing the technology of attraction would be too narrow to account for the new economy. A narrow concept of technology would suggest that in information society social classes are differentiated by being "information-rich" or "information -poor"

The emergence of those new markets is crowding out traditional forms and kinds of public space. They are the new arenasfor culture and sports, for political debate and the struggle for power. One notices their operation by the pungentferment of publicity. The new markets are markets in the full sense of the term. They organise supply by testing preparedness to pay. Only, in this case, paymentis not effected in moneybut in attention. The attention paid is measured through number of visitors, audience ratings, or opinion-polls. By being measured , attention is homogenised . Attention, when taken as such, is not a homogenous measure of value. The value of attention we receive in inter-persona l exchange is thoroughly individual. It depends on our own esteem for the person paying attention to us, and on the appreciation conveyed by way of the payment. But when we measure the size of editions, number of viewers, or circulation figures, attention is reduced to sheer quantity. Anything individual in it is neutralised by homogenisation. Adaptationto sheer quantity lies behind the transition from elitist culture over to event- and rating-culture; behindthe invasion of brands; behindthe change of party democracy into media democracy. The consequences are even more profound . Attention as a means of paymentinduces further technological change and establishes a new slant between the rich and the poor.

SUCH A VIEW WOULD NOT JUST BE SIMPLISTIC, IT WOULD OVERLOOK THE CRUX OF THE MATTER. For, the wealth accumulated in the new markets does not consist of knowledge, poverty in them does not just mean unsatisfiedthirst for knowledge. The wealthy ones,those who are successful in the new markets, are wealthy in recognition. The poverty of those who are passed over consists in lack of recognition. Wealthy people in the new economyare those whose attention earnings are larger by orders of mag nitude than their spending. The poor are those who do not get enough attention to keep their self-esteem intact. This wealth of some and the poverty of all the others are interrelated: the amount of recognition available for distribution is not unlimited. The attention circulating in society is finite. Those who have can only be given if something is taken away from those who have not. (ad 3) From exchanged attention to psychic currency

IT IS LINKED TO COMMUNICATION TECHNIQUES, BUT DIFFERS FROM NETWORKS AND TECHNICAL EQUIPMENT.

Traditionally, it was the privilege of high birth, exceptional talent, or ravishing beauty to grow rich in attention. Today, anyone can become prominent. In the new economy, the office boy turned millionaire is the candidate in a casting show who rises to being a media star. The production of media prominence, progress in attraction technology and the growth of new types of markets are all different aspects of the same thing. They are possible because attention is minted into an anonymous means of payment. The overall effect is that the currency in circulation is expanding .

The technology applied to maximise editions, audience ratings, or circulation figures consists in certain methods of filling the channels. This form of maximisation relies on a technology of attraction differing from the technology of engineers. Traditionally, the methods of mass attraction were not even recognised as technology. They were developed in advertising agencies and film studios, by the mass media and in the world of fashion. They are not based on any

The volume of attention channelled off by the media and redistributed in the competition over ratings or reach is not identical with the total amount of attention circulating in society. What is circulating is both attention exchanged person-to-person and attention spent on mediatised information. On ly the latter kind is homogenised by quantitative measurement, thus assum ing the nature of an anonymous means of payment. Onlythrough unprecedented growth in

Technological change induced through the new markets is not limited to information and communication technology. Through competition for attention a very special kind of technologyhas entered the scene.

the volume of this currency could fortunes like media prominence arise. On ly the rise of mass business led to the eme rgence of a technology of mass attraction. The key to understanding the development of mental capitalism thus lies in answeri ng the question how the spending and earning of attention became a technologically advanced economy. Which growth factors were at work that turned the exchange of information for attention into big business? Provision of information in return for attention has been the job of culture since it was industrialised. Loo king for the driving forces at work therefore means tracing the mutation of cultural life into a mass business. The prerequisites for this mutation were the development of a technological infrastructure enabling mass distribution of information as well as the evolution of certain types of popular culture engaged in finding out what mass audiences want to see, hear, or read. A furt her, decisive influence sti mulating the unprecedented increase in the volume of anonymously paid attention was the existence of an internal circuit for the collection and reinvestment of attention.

ONLY THOSE GENRES OF POPULAR CULTURE SUCCEEDED IN BECOMING MASS MED IA THAT INVESTED A SUFFICIENTLY LARG E AMOUNT OF ATTRAC TION POWER IN BREEDING CHAMPIONS CAPABLE OF MASS ATTRACTION. Stars drawing large audiences cannot be created simply with money. Something else is needed . Talents haveto be offered presentation space or broadcasting time. Attention must be granted in advance. Only those suppliers of information that are known for reliably attracting vast amounts of att ention are capable of granting such credit. Media of this kind can sell services of att raction to the advertising business; but they can also reinvest their power of attraction to increasetheir magnetism. Gua ranteed attention can give talents a chance or can be used for piling up so much attention on successful personalities that they become known by everybody, and even become known for being known by everybody. The high technology of attraction works with this kind of self-reinforcing publicity. It works with known faces everybody wants to see because everybody knows that all the others also see them. What would become of cinema, sports, talk shows or soap operas without those stars? But not only the stars are profiting from all the commotion

around known faces. In fact, through their stars, the media presenting them become major earners themselves. A medium that invests in promoting a star will participate in the profit created with the credit it offers. The analogywith banks goes even further. Attention credit creates psychic currency in the same way that bank credit creates money. The moneysupply grows if bank credit surpasses deposits, and the amount of attention turned over by the media increases if it pays to expand presentation space beyond realised attraction capacity. (ad 4) The financial industries of mental capitalism That the med ia are functioning as banks is exemplified by their interaction with politics. Politics, like advertising, is pushing its way into the media . Politicians are no longer happy with just being shown, they want to be presented in the best possible way, by the most att ractive channels, during prime time. They demand the advance payment of guaranteed attention also granted to people whom that medium presents on its own initiative. Therefore, the conditions for receiving this financial service will depend on the politicians' personal performance in the medium. If a politician is likely to increase the attention paid to that medium, it will grant him attention credit. If the politician's presentation is not profitable, or not profitable enough, then cash will haveto be taken in hand. The media are financing the making of politicians in the same way that banks are financing business. Like business, politics is shaped by the respective financing conditions. Politicians will make an effort to present themselves in a way appreciated by the medium: they will not only watch out for their own image, but also for the ratings. If they are willing to act as carthorses for the respective med ium, they can maximise their credit and minimise the moneyspent on media presence. They will thus be interested in making use of professional attraction technologies

THEY WILL ENTRUST THEMSELVES TO ADVISERS WEL L VERSED IN THOSE TECHNOLOGIES AND ALSO FAMILIAR WITH THE CREDIT SECTOR OF ATTENTION. The transition from party- to media democracy is marked by politicians no longer being satisfied with their role as objects of reporting. They become the medium's business partners. In this new role, politicians use the media not only for selling their policies; they also serve the medium's selfinterest in order to get hold of as much advertising space as

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possib le. This change of role brings about a change in the requirements for and the patterns of political careers. Being telegenic is necessarytoday, but no longer sufficient. You haveto havethe makings for media prominence. A politician's typical career pattern will combine moving up in the party hierarchy with increasing affluence in media attention. Prom inence is that level of attentive wealth where the affluence becomes conspicuous and itself turns into a source of attention income. What doesthis co-operation wit h politics reveal about the media? It shows that the media, within the attention economy, are what the financial sector is in moneycapitalism. The media are capitalising attention: they receive attention with such regularity and certainty that they are able to offer it on credit as starting capital; they make use of fortunes by reinvesting attention wealth into attraction; they list the market value of fortunes by measuring their power of attraction. Just as banks are providing growing economies with an expanding moneysupply, the media are supplying expanding information markets with growing amounts of attention. Lastly, in the same way that financial markets have transposed the internal capitalisation strategy of companies to the macroeconom ic level, the media are transposing the capitalisation of attention from the level of personal dexterity to that of an organised public sphere.

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capitalism. In order to reverse the burden of proof, the four initial propositions discussed above wil l be tested against the following control propositions: 1.The term capitalist production relations signifies more than production for markets. Characteristic for those relations is the replacement of use value by exchange value. Hence, the replacement of differences in quality by differences in quantity ought to show up in cultural selfperception. 2. The successful establishment of capitalist production relations is heralded by the unprecedented unleashing of productive forces and by a hitherto unknown degree of creative destruction. This trait, too, would have to be discernible in mental capitalism.

3. It is characteristic for capitalist production relations that they are ideologically justified and beautified to camouflage unfettered commercialisation. Such ideological removal of all inhibitions would have to be noticeable in mental capitalism.

4. No capitalism without exploitation and social conflict. Capita lism in what is menta l would haveto manifest itself in a tendency for growing psychic destitution and in revolts against narcissistic injuries.

Is the conjecture of mental capitalism tenable? If the economy of attention has in fact assumed the stature of a capitalist system, the furnishing of experience-space with advertisements appears in a new light. Capitalism is an exceedingly dynamic, thoroughly mobilising and aggressively expanding economic system. A capitalist economy of attention mea ns that the struggle for attention becomes professional, technological and indispensab le.

ANYTHING THAT LIVES ON BEING NOTICED WILL BE DRAWN INTO THIS STRUGGLE. No selling without mind-grabbing; no social impact without strategic placement in public awareness. Admittedly, speaking about a new stage of capitalism is no small matter. Cap italism in terms of attention goes further than any apprehensions of cultural criticism. It culminates in the idea that the cultural supra-structure not only reflects the economic base, but that it has assimilated it. Such an assumption must withstand testing in the counter-current. It must satisfy all the criteria implied in the concept of

(ad 1) Qualitative difference dissolving into quantitative difference The arrival of post-modern ism marked a break in cultural self-perception. This not only meant noting that current production constituted a completely new era but also realising, in retrospect, that indications of change had been building up for a long time. Post-modernist discourse distanced itself from modernism, characterising it as an era in which rigid categorisation, binary dichotomies, searching for essential differences were dissociated from the historical background and cultural context. Accused of being typically modernistic, sharp distinctions between nature and culture, male and female, high art and popular art, the arts and science, economics and epistemo logy came under critica l scrutiny. Essential distinctions were replaced by systems of variation and differentiation, ontological distinctions gave way to varying social constructs. The borderlines between historical genesis and logical validity, between discovery context and justification context, between the invention of hypotheses and the discovery of facts began to be blurred. Everywhere one noted sliding scales, moving ratios, fuzzy interfaces, hybrid mixtures, opportunistic adaptations.

Deconstruction goes all out, knows no ultimate limits, does not respect anycentral core. If one takes it seriously as a way of perceiving cultural change, it is infact a reaction to the liquefaction and homogenisation processes actually taking place.

DECONST RUCTI ON UNDERMINES A PARADIGM THAT PARTITIONS CULTURAL LIFE ACCORDING TO BUREAUCRATIC DEPARTMENTAL1SATION; THIS OLD PARADIGM IS REPLACED BY CHAOTIC SELFORGANISATION. IN THE SOCIAL CONTEXT, SYSTEMS OF CHAOTIC SELFORGANISATION ABLE TO REPLACE BUREAUCRATIC ORGANISATION TAKE THE SHAPE OF MARKETS. Markets, in this most general sense, are decentralised bargaining systems whose firm structures consist in habitual exchange relations and established exchange values. If cultural life has, in fact, arrived at a stage to be described as capitalist economy of attention, this change of paradigm was indeed a highly sensitive reaction, even more remarkable since it took place outside the trodden paths of economic thought. In the econom ic sphere, the replacement of a use value-oriented regime by an exchange value-oriented one would have been registered. Under capitalism, factual validity assu mes the format of capital - capital in the shape of confidence, creditworthiness, reputation, whatever. The validity established and maintained by this regime is relative from the outset and remains in force only as long as it withstands erosion by constant competition and aggressive forces of dissolution. Whatever survives will do so only as long as it satisfies effective demand, i.e. if there is preparedness to pay - preparedness to pay attention, of course. The spearheads of deconstruction are targeting the status of scientific theories and facts. Proponents of the "strong programm e" in the sociology of science view scientific theories just as means of production used in the production of other theories that are fabricated to replace the preceding ones. Even scientific facts, they assert, are social constructs, valid only as long as they prove their productiveness through the construct ion of other facts. This extreme form of relativism affects the issue of mental capitalism for two reasons. First, it means that the scientific economy of attention must be taken into account. Second, it marksthe point where its provocation has had consequences. What happened was the declaration of "science wars".

(ad 21 Unleashing of productive forces Science is a closed economy of attention. Scientists invest their own attention to obtain at the attention of other scientists. They are not only intent on satisfying their own curiosity and their desire for exploration: what they also wish is to be reviewed and cited. Review and citation measure the value of scientific information. They measure the other scientists' preparedness to pay attention to a fellow-scientist's production. Scientists spendtheir own attention on the production of others in order to increase their own productivity. They are interested in prefabricated knowledge acting as means of production in the production of knowledge. The scientific economy of attention is a capitalist one. The major inputs in knowledge production are pre-fabricated knowledge and fresh attention. Scientific information, being a produced means of production, is a capital good. The market in which this kind of capital good is traded is called scientific communication. Supplytakes the shape of publication. Through publication the respective information becomes accessible for everyone, but it also establishes intellectual property. Permission to use somebody else's property as one's own means of production is obtained by acquiring a licence and by paying a fee. The licence for productive re-use of published information is obtained through citation, the fee takes the shape of attention which the citing author transfers to the cited one. Science is a model economy in the dual sense of the term. It is a model both with respect to its capitalist mode and because of its efficiency in production . It is characteristic for the capitalist mode of production to employ pre-fabricated means of production and to transform the heterogeneous assemblage of means of production into a homogenous good called "capital". Scientific information acting as means of production consists of theses, hypotheses, theories, theorems,facts - i.e. chunks of information that are factually incomparable and which, taken by themselves, do not contain any common - e.g. information-theoretic - measure . Forthis heterogeneous assemblage to be transformed into units of capital, it must be evaluated, i.e. measured by homogenous units. In the case of assets of production, this measurement is effected by their transformation into financial capital, i.e. by translation into shares entitling the holder to obtain some of the profit. In the case of scientific assets of production, no financial profit accrues (unless the assets are cast in the mould of patents; but by being patentedthe information completely disappearsfrom the capital market of scientific communication]. The profits negotiated in this market accrue in terms of attention. The respective measuring unit is the citation. The number of citations collected by a particular

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piece of scientific information is a measure for both the amount of its re-utilisation in production and for the attention income earned by the author. The list of citations is the functional equivalent of financial capital; scientific real capital must assume this form in order to operate as capital in the full sense of this concept. Scientists' personal accounts of citations represent the kind of wealth they are out to maximise. Personal wealth of this kind is called scientific reputation.

SCIENCE IS A CAPITALIST SECTOR OF THE ATTENTION ECONOMY, REGARDLESS WHETHER OR NOT THE REST OF THE ECONOMY IS ORGANISED IN A CAPITALIST WAY. Science is also an example for the unleashing of productive forces brought about by the introduction of capitalist production relations. The scientific economyof attention has been capitalist ever since the scientific division of labour became common practice and since scientific communication began to function like a market for published information. Scientific capitalism arose in parallel with industrial capitalism. Both these capitalisms were characterised by an unprecedented degree of productive destruction; they both revolutionised traditional production relations and were both accompanied by a new, ruthless style of rationality. They both ran into philosophical opposition- and have continued to do so until today. However, in contrast to industrial capitalism, the capitalist mode of knowledge production did not become the subject of radical economic criticism. From the very start, the scientific economy of attention was a model economy. If mental capitalism has in the meantime also become a category deserving critic ism, then this must be due to some fundamental change. The markets in which information and attention are exchanged must have assumed a new character.

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(ad 3) Economic baseand ideological superstructure Mental capitalism, manifesting itself in ebullience of advertising, actually serves a kind of marketthat differs from the marketof scientific communication . Scientific communication is a capital market. Here, producers offer means of production to other producers.The media, on the other hand, are marketsfor consumption goods. The markets for mental assets are small and refined. The attention earnedthere is limited in amount, but of superiorquality. It comes from people sharing the same interests, education and professional ethos. When this market opens up to the general consumer, then small, noble attention incomes become ordinary and large.

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The way in which this opening-up is happening has a visible effect on science itself. The potential customers of scientific information are now not only other scientists, but also the mass med ia and the entertainment industry. Scientists can earn hefty side-incomes of attention by running columns in newspapers, by appearing in talk shows or by going into the popularisation business in some other way. Scientists who succumbto such temptations, but also members of disciplines with a longer tradition of serving large markets,will enjoy the message that, anyway, what science is about is to cause a stir. Theywill be pleased to hear that hard boundaries between scientific and non-scientific communication are nothing but pretence, certainly nothing essential. The greatest hit for them would be if someone managed to unmask all hard scientific facts as social constructs. If one considersthe deconstruction of scientific objectivity from this perspective,the "science wars" are revealed to be classic cases of ideological debate camouflaging fights over market shares. Fighting is done on an eminently intellectual plane, but the battle heat is produced by solid economic interests. The opening-up of firmly sealed capital markets requires a certain absence of inhibitions, a loosening of restraints formerly imposed by strict professional codes of conduct. It is very helpful indeed when intellectuallibertinage and frivolity become fashionable. In order to establish that a connection between this observed loosening-up and some economic motive exists, it would be necessaryfor the deconstruction message to land exclusively where opening-up promises profits. And, indeed, actual battlefronts in the "science wars" run between disciplines that owe their exceptional prestige to their rigorous sealing off of internal scientific capital markets and other disciplines that are only able to enrich themselves through outside sources, not having enjoyed their rival disciplines' traditional prestige. Although the differentiation between capital goods markets and consumption goods markets is particularly sharp within

the scientific economy of attention, science is by no means the only sphere where such a differentiation is made. Wherever a clear slant between high culture and popular culture exists, this distinction can be observed . High culture is autonomous, guided exclusively by its own criteria and responding only to demands articulated from within. One's own personal criteria are the same as those of one's fellowproducers, demands arising within the sphere are formulated by members of one's guild. High culture is staged for co-producers and relies on judgementby colleagues. A brilliant example for this is literature, as described by Pierre Bourd ieu with respect to French 19th century literary writing.

THE ONLY PEOPLE ALLOWED TO EXPRESS ANY OPINIONS APART FROM THE PRODUCERS ARE, PERHAPS, CRITICS WHO ARE THEMSELVES GOOD AT THE TRADE. But even in the literary field one can today observe restrictions melting away. A prime example is the business of literature presentation on television. However, even without TV involvement, quite generally, the borderlines between cultural capital goods markets and cultural consumption goods markets are eroding . A clear indicator for the crumbling of those borderlines is the presence of advertising. One cannotfail to observe that the message of dissolution and liquefaction dominates wherever the lure of larger audiences works. Ideological justification andthe removal of intellectual restraints on profiteering are features not unfamiliarto mental capitalism . (ad 4) Exploitation and social conflict Conflicting economic interests hiding behindthe facade of post-modern discourse are nothing but internal struggles between different fractions of capital. Real conflicts in capitalism are something else. True and existential conflicts in capitalism are those between the class of capitalists on the one hand and the class of those feeding the capitalists on the other hand. At first sight one might think that mental capitalism, in this respect. is more harmlessthan financial capitalism. What we are confronted with is a blatantly unequal distribution of attention between those who appear in the media and those who do not. The masses behave as if they could never get enough of prominent people. However, taking a closer look, we notice signs of protest. Together with the invasion of brand names and logos have we witnessed the infiltration of graffiti. The sprayers have turned the tables. They react to the organised mass struggle

for attention by piercingthe onlookers' eyes. Early opposition expressed by graffiti developed into a protest movement againstthe brand s' occupation policy. Today, opponents of globalisation are protesting againstthis occupation not just in optical ways and no longer surreptitiously. Theyview invasion by brands as one example of negative globalisation. Another negative aspect of globalisation is economi c exploitation of low-wage workers and of low-wage countries - but this is not all. There is also the global export of Western mass culture. The protest movement is reacting with adequate sensitivity - but rather confused analyses - to the fact that exploitation is taking place at two different levels: the level of labour markets and the level of markets where information is exchange d for attention.

themselves and others that those who refuse to pay attention to them are unworthy of their own attention. Forced denigration of others whose lack of esteem one cannot bear is an ancient source of aggression between people. Under mental capitalism, it becomes a natural defence mechanism, as it were, of those who find themselves on the exploited side.

In the economyof attention, the units corresponding to national economies are differing cultures. Exchange goes on between cultures just like between national economies. Cultures export information goods and earn attention for them, or they import information goods and export attention for them. For exchange to be fair and profitable, trade balances need not be balanced for each individual exchange act, but they ought to be balanced on a global scale. However, if we consider t odav's global cultural situation we observe an extreme imbalance between the culture of advanced mental capitalism and the culture of the rest of the world. The most advanced - Western - cultures export information massively and import huge amounts of live attention for it, while the cultures of other regions export very modest amounts of information and accordingly earn littl e attention for it.

The form of self-defence typical of this kind of capitalism consists in denigrating what one desires, so one will suffer less from missing it. Misery because of lacking self-esteem may hurt just like physical destitution; thirst for recognition may render as aggressive as an empty stomach. The desire to humiliate those who refuse to pay respect to others needing that respect to keep up their self-esteem lies behind self-sacrific ing terrorist attacks on symbols of Western export culture. It also is the cause of resentments that new right-wing populist movements manipulate and it explains the demonstrative violence and Nazi symbols which the attention economy's lumpenproletariat use to grab some attention they will otherwise never receive. The split between social classes follows the dividing line between, on the one hand, the owners of cultural and social capital which is providing them with more attention than they can spend, and, on the other hand, the have-nets who can only pay attention to each other.

ALSO, IN THE SPHERE OF CULTURE - PERHAPS PARTICULARLY IN CULTURE - THERE ARE CLEAR WINNERS AND LOSERS WITH RESPECT TO GLOBALISATION. The world is submerged by Western mass culture, with the export culture barely camouflaging its predomin ance by int erspersed bits of multi-culture that are exported, too. The gap betw een cultures poor or rich in att ention is widening just like the economic gap between economically poor or rich countries. The cultural gap is no less ominous. One may not be able to make a living on attention income, but the attention one earns nourishes self-esteem. People's attention income determines how much feeling of their own worth they can enjoy. The self-esteem of both individuals and cultures depend s on the appreciation they receive. If their self-esteem is shaken, both individuals and countries may feel forced to resort to self-defence. They mayfeel forced to convince

THE KIND OF EXPLOITATION CHARACTERISTIC FOR MENTAL CAPITALISM IS THE EXPLOITATION OF LARGE NUMBERS OF PEOPLE WHO ALWAYS PAY ATTENTION BUT ARE HARDLY EVER RESPECTED.

Narcissistic culture

M ENTAL CAPITALISM IS HARD AND FRIVOLOUS. IT CONQUERS THE INNER CORE OF THE SELF AND INTERVENES IN IDENTITY-BUILDING. It is frivolous because of the unequal distribution of chances and because of the extravaganc e it engenders. Here, on this side,there are celebrities and sumptuously staged personalities bathing in attention; over there, people are starving and committing acts of desperation to get into the limelight just once. This inequality, as such, is not completely new. The innovation lies in the systematic way in which it is created. What is new is the sheervolume of attention being collected and redistributed; new is the self-organising economic regularity expressing itself through anarchic fights over dis-

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tribution; new is the determ inistic linkage between the wealth of some and the poverty of all the others. Publicity, a surface phenomenon of this economic sphere, becomes symptomatic . It is symptomatic for societies in which the desire for social status has overtaken the desire for material wealth. No status without attention. The general fight for attention leads to the mass production of means for inciting attention as well as to the development of means for the public registration of attention income. Publicity is the most direct, most mundane and least differentiated application of those means. Advertising facilities and slogans are products exclusively manufa ctured to attract attention. Their mass distribution is pungentto the point of giving offence and is, at the same time, a means of documenting the successful accomplishment of attraction.

SOMETHING WE STUMBLE ACROSS CONSTANTLY IS NOT ONLY PUSHING ITSELF INTO OUR CONSCIOUSNESS; AT THE SAME TIME IT TELLS US THAT EVERYBODY IS FAMILIAR WITH IT.

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With primitive but effective methods it conquers the status of prominence. Advertising, symptomatic for menta l capitalism, means producing prominence of things and symbols. Forthings and symbols, the via regia into subjective experience is their promise that consum ing them will make the consume r irresistible. It is clear that in a society where attention income becomes a major objective, consumption wi ll follow the pull of self-esteem. Consumption subjected to the pull of self-esteem means that labour is being spent on one's attractiveness. This individual labour opens up unexpectedly ample fields of action for publicity. Advertising assumes the role of persona l counsellor on individual attractiveness. It can now unfold its subtle qualities. The social psycho logist Christopher Lasch has described the cult around one's own attractiveness as an aspect of narcissistic culture.

THIS IS A SOCIAL EXPRESSION OF FRAGILE SELF-ESTEEM. When consumption style becomes a feature of this culture, products have to carry the prom ise of conferring fitness in the fight for attention. The nature of mental capitalism is such that advertising never tires of drumming out this message .

References

de Botton, Alain. StatusAnxiety. London et al.: Hamish Hamilton, 2004 Derber, Charles. The Pursuit of Attention. Power and Ego in Everyday Life. Oxfordet al.: Oxford University Press, 22000, 1979/2000 de Vany, Arthur. Hollywood Economics, London and New York: Routledge, 2004 Franck, Georg. Okonomie der Aufmerksamkeit(The Economy of Attention), Milnchen: Carl Hanser, 1998. Translation in parts available at http.//www.iemar.tuwien.ac.atipublications Franck, Georg. Scientific communication - a vanity fair? In: Science, vol. 286, 1999, pp. 53-55 Franck, Georg. The scientific economyof attention: A novel approach to the collective rationality of science, in: Scientometrics, vol. 55, 2002, pp. 3-26 Lasch, Christopher. The Culture of Narcissm, London: Abacus, 1979 Latour, Bruno. Pandora 's Hope. Essays on the Reality of Science Studies, Cambridge, Mass., and London: Harvard University Press, 1999 Latour, Bruno & Steve Woolgar. Laboratory Life. The Construction of Scientific Facts, Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press, 1979.21986

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>RBERT MUSCHAMP lsion on who will redesign Trade Center site is exbe announced later this h finalis ts , Studio Daniel and Think, a team led by ftoly. Frederic Schwartz.

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The Process That Changed Architecture

"WHATEVER PEOPLE WANT TO TALK ABOUT IS FINE. FROM NOW ON, ARCHITECTURE WILL NEVER BE THE SAME. THERE WILL NEVER BE A BUILDING WITHOUT PEOPLE TALKING ABOUT WHAT IS HAPPENING AND WHAT IT'S GOING TO LOOK LIKE. FROM NOW ON, ARCHITECTURE WILL BE AS INTERESTING FOR PEOPLE TO TALK ABOUT AS THE TASTE OF WINE. II 1< Daniel Libeskind

1< Libeskind, Daniel quoted in GaryYou nge "Winning trade centre design stirs pride of New Yo rkers." The Guardian 28 February2003,web archive: http://www .guardian.co.uk/september11 /story/0.11209.90 4651 ,00.html

Architecture that gets built in a modern democratic society is subjected to the interplay of several different forces reflecting the agendas of political leaders, the investors commissioning the project, the architects as planners and the general public, whereby, of course, the interests of the respective parties differ and each is assigned more or less priority in the confrontation process leading to a final decision. In the case of public cultural institutions and other proposed projects of great int erest to the public such as the plan for the redevelopment of The World Trade Center (Grou nd Zero), architects are, naturally, interested in projecting a favourable public image of themselves and their capabilities. The political protagonists involved in such projects have also recognised this instrument and learned how to score political points with it. Investors strive for maximum commercial exploitation of the available space, and the general public, supported by enhanced technologies of mass cultural consciousness formation and manipu lation in their heightened readiness nowadays to articulate their preferences and protest against deviations from them, finds a welcome opportunity for agitation. The media, whose influence upon the publiclsl has dramatically increased in recent decades, endow this sphere of tension and int erplay with a new dimension, since they rise to such occasions by functioning as an instrument of reciprocal notification and coordination of interests, and are therefore in a position to endow information with particular weight.

THUS, THE MEDIA - WITH SOME OUTLETS MOTIVATED BY THEIR OWN INTERESTS - CAN CREATE A CERTAIN, VERY SPECIFIC PUBLIC CONSCIOUSNESS. Since politicians today are dependentmore than ever on the climate of public opinion, and building projects are dependent on decisions made by political leaders, realising an architectural undertaking has become an unpredictable process.

MEDIA-ORCHESTRATED PUBLIC REACTIONS ARE INCREASINGLY CAPRICIOUS AND ERRATIC. The processes involved in bringing to fruition major Eu ropean building projects such as The Museum Quarter in Vienna or The Lucerne Cu ltural and Convention Center impressively demonstrate how it is possible today for even individual persons- with the media behindthem - to force changes in major projects without a great deal of effort and with practically no risk at all on their part. In the US, the roles played by the protagonists differ somewhat from those of their European counterparts - on one hand, in that political actors are overshadowed by lobbying interests; on the other hand, in that neither architecture that is, the design of the proposed structure including its respective functional program - nor the developers behind it are elevated to the status of items on the public agenda .2< This essaywill elaborate on the competition held in conjunction with the redeve lopmentof The WTC, which, with respect to the above -mentioned considerations, has brought with it immense changesfor architecture in general and for major architectural projects in the US in particular. For one thing, the events that had taken place here on 9/11 automatically attracted the interest of people far beyond the New Yo rk City limits andthus triggered a public debate about the future use of this piece of land.The understandably highly emotionally charged wish of the general public and the victims' family groups in particular to have a monume nt erected on this spot was suddenly at odds with the interests of the man who held the lease on the land, Larry Silverstein. In July of 2001 , The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey had granted him a 99-year lease on the parcel along with the right to 2<

See e.g. inter view w it h Richard Kahan, former Chief Executive of The Batte ry Park City Authority, New York: "W hen w e had architectura l competi tions f or big th ings in the past like The Ja vits Center of Battery Park City, there w as never any question who the develope r was and w hat was going to be built. All the commun ity w ork was done beforehand and the design was kept under wraps. It was all very centralised ." Ibid., E5.

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construct 929,000 m' of office space on it. 3< Even before a decision was reached in the architectural competition, The WTC United Family Group attemptedto prevent The Port Authority from erecting a bus terminal on Ground Zero, a location they compared to Pearl Harbor and Gettysburg in light of the historic eventsthat occurred there. And then there's the fact that even while the competition was going on, an architect turned it into a public campaign in which the views of the general public were accorded consideration to an extent that is usually reserved for the clients commissioning a project, and the approach that the architects took to the public was populist to a degreethat is usually reached only by candidates campaigning for public office.

THE UPSHOT WAS AN UNPREDICTABLE PROCESS IN WHICH DANIEL LlBESKIND UNDERSTOOD PERFECTLY HOW TO NAVIGATE THROUGH THE MAZE OF CONFLICTING DESIRES AND THEREBY ULTIMATELY TO BRING ABOUT A DECISION IN HIS FAVOUR. The Public Dialogue

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September 11 , 2001 : Terror attack on The World Trade Center. On January 3, 2002, The Lower Manhattan Development Corporation (LMDC) in close collaboration with The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey (PANYNJ) annou nced at an initial press conference that they would be redeveloping the lfi-acre site. Bythe end ofth e year,a viewing platform overlooking TheWorld Trade Center site (Ground Zero) opened to the public at Chu rch Street and Fulton Street.The interest of the public was tremendous. Hundreds of people lined up in the freezing cold to view the site.4< On May 22, 2002, the New York firm Beyer Blinder Belles (BBB) was commissioned by The LMDC to develop six different land-use options within two months. Those options

would then be narrowed down to three possibilities by November; the winning master plan would be selected by January 2003. All six proposed concepts entailed a setting for a permanent memorial, public open space, 11 million square feet of commercial office space, a hotel and 600,000 squa re feet of retail space, a transportation hub serving New York and New Jersey, cultural and civic institutions such as a rebuilt St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church, and new on-site housing. 5< The selection of BBB was not without controversy becauseThe LMDC had not solicited any substantive public input. When The LMDC and The Port Authority unveiled BBB's six concept plans for the future of The World Trade Center site and adjacent public areas on July 16, 2002, the public overwhelmingly rejected those designs.6< At the largest public urban planning dialogue of its kind - entitled "Listening to the City"7< - about 4,500 people attended a forum at Manhattan's Jacob Javits Convention Center to view and comm ent on the six proposals, which were criticised for their bland, boring structures dominated by office space.8< People called upon The LMDC to open up the process to additional archit ects and planners, and expressed a desire to see the planning of the memorial and the overall site planning more closely linked.9< In response to public feedback- which had been an immense backlash- The LMDC announced that it would scrap the BBB plans and undertake an international design competition called an "Innovative Design Study."

3< Hirschkorn, Phil. "New York unveils new WTCplans." CNN .com/US. December 19, 2002: http://arc hives.cnn.com/2002/US/Northeast/12/ 18/ wtc.rebuilding/index.html. 4< http://www.lowermanhattan.info 5< LMDC: htt p://www.renewnyc.c0 m/pIan_des_dev/studies/concepts/ defauIt.asp 6< WTC Plan Unveiled. CBS News.com. February 2, 2003: http://www .cbsnews.com/stories/2003/02/26/nati 0 naI/main542179. shtmI. 6 March. 2003. 7< LMDC . The Public Dialogue: Phase I. Preliminary Report October 24, New York, 2002: 2. 8< Ibid., WTC Plans Unveiled. 9< 64% ranked linking the planning of the memorial to the planning of the rest of the site as "very important." See LMDC. The Public Dialogue:

On August 14, 2002, The LMDC launched the global design study to aid in planning the future of The World Trade Center site and its surrounding areas.

OVER 400 ARCHITECTURAL TEAMS AND INDIVIDUALS REPRESENTING 34 NATIONS SUBMITTED APPLICATIONS TO BE SELECTED TO DEVELOP PROPOSALS . On September 26, 2002, six architectural teams including 27 different firms were chosen to develop new proposals for rebuilding Ground Zero: Studio Daniel Libeskind, THINKBan/ Schwartzi Smith/ Vinoly, Foste r and Partners, Meier/ Eise nman/ Gwathmey/ HolI, Peterson Littenberg Architecture & Urban Design, and United Architects. The design t eams were given a new, flexible program shaped by public comment. In particular, it included "preserving the footprints of The Twin Towers for memorial purposes" and the restoration of "a powerful symbol in the Lower Manhattan skyline."10< In mid-December, nine new plans for The World Trade Center site were unveiled. One firm, the THINK consortium, produced three different schemes, and an additional team lead by David Childs of Skidmore Owings & Merril was added as well. The LMDC called on the public to once again participate in the planning process and to comment by February 2, 2003. As LMDC spokesman Matthew Higgins put it: "The goal of the process certainly isn't to please everyone. We realise that this is impossible. I think our job is to grasp the public, listen to the diverse views and try to reconcile those different viewpoints."11< The LMDC initi ated a six-week public comment process entitled "Plan in Progress"- in which visitors were invited to view the models and submit writt en and electronic comm ents. The nine designs were put on display at The World Financial Center's Winter Garden, where the internationally renowned architects presented their creations and

could actively engage the press. As wil l be shown later, it was Daniel Libeskind in particular who immediately grasped the potential of the media and its impact on the selection process, playing straight to the public as if the citizens of New York Citywere the clients of the job. He was campaigning for his design like a politician fighting for public support. Over 100,000 people visited the exhibit and about 13,000 comments were collected. Many opinion polls such as the one at CNN.com 12< were conducted to gather public feedback.13< On February 4, 2003, The LMDC announ ced its selection of the two finalists in the competition to select a master plan for The World Trade Cente r site: Studio Daniel Libeskind and the THINK team. The two finalists were select ed after unanimous agreement was reached at a four-hour session that included representatives of The LMDC, Port Authority, and New York City and State.14< The plan of Studio Daniel Libes kind seemed to be convincing in regard to its memorial context and setting. Compared to his competitors, he received majority support for this aspect. (39%)15< The THINK team got nearly 42% support of the public for the skyline element in their plan.16< Furthermore, both plans provide connectivity to the urban fabric of Lower Manhattan, ensure an appropriate context for a memorial, and include structures that would become the largest buildings in the world. On February 27, 2003, after an excessive time of media campaigning , The LMDC announced the selection of Studio Daniel Libeskind as the team to redesign The World Trade

10< LMDC. The Port Authority of NY & NJ. The Public Dialogue: Innovative Design Study. February 27, 2003: 2. 11
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Center. The design scheme preserves, in part, the existing slurry wall of the World Trade Center foundation, creates a multi-faceted sett ing for a memorial, includes transportation and cultural centers, and is topped by a spire that reaches 1,776 feet, taller than any other building in the world. Campaigning for the public "I feel that something has changed. I don't know how to defin e it, but it's a sense that the city belongs to people, not to organizations or bureaucrats, and the people can direct its development. The public will never again look at any site and say, 'Let's just leave it to the developers. ' They will want to know wheth er it's something that's engaged in the full ness of life. "17< Dan iel Libeskind

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Libeskind's approach in the competition process for the redesign of Ground Zero is related in two ways to the theme populism. On one hand- and this is even out of the ordinary in Eu rope - he became active in the field of interplay involving politicians on one hand and the developer and the public on the other. It was he - the architect - who launched an aggressive public campaign addressing in particular the desires of the public, and he was the one who saw the project as requiring a back-and-forth process with the public as the ultimate client. Fu rthermore, he was offering not just an emotional response to collective tragedy by adopting symbolic forms in his plan for the redevelopment of the WTC as it would have been done by (traditional) populist architects; rather, his entire appearance, rhetoric and public persona were guided by populist strategies reminiscent of political candidates selling themselves to voters. Three main strategies can be identifi ed in Libeskind's approach: a) He was looking for opportunities to commun icate with the public. b) As a European architect who had lived in the US only during his childhood, he had to play the patriotic card in the race to secure the World Trade Center comm ission.

c) He had to make his deconstructive architecture understandable for a wider public. In the following remarks, these strategies will be discussed in detail: "Anybody who is doing anything in the city is automatic ally a public figure . An architect is not some pri vate person, sitting far awa y, making his designs and then saying 'Take it or leave it. ' An architect is a citizen first of all. It's not j ust about making models. One has to navigate through all of the confli cting desires that make New York what it is; then, like Odysseus, somehow get home to the original vision." 18(

Daniel Libeskind a) Looking for opportunities t o communicate wi th the public When Libeskind entered the final phase of competition, he had the help of his wife Nina, who had studied politica l science and held jobs in a congressman's office when they lived in Lexington, Ky., worked in the "Citizens Advice Bureau" when they moved to London, and is now running his Berlin office.19( Togeth er.they sought to make a public case for his scheme. The Libeskinds hired New York publicist Joanne Crevling to get airtime with Larry King, Conni e Chung and on "60 Minutes".20( For an extra boost, they hired a second publicist. Fin ally, he talked about his design in popul ar shows such as The Oprah Winfrey Show, The Ch arlie Ros e Show and other late-night television and radio shows, and he was profiled in various newspapers and magazines.21< As a serious-minded architectur al intellectual 17( Daniel Libeskind quot ed in Davidson, Justin. "New York's visionary Daniel Libeskind." New YorkNewsday.com. March 12,2003: http://ww w. newsday.com/news/locall manhatt an/wtc /ny-p2cover3167788ma r12.story 18( Ibid. 19( Liebermann, Paul. ARC HITECTURE: Building resolve; "Daniel Libeskind digs in as the contest to design the replacement for the World Trade Center winds down. It's a project calling for vision - and the will to ride out competitors' gibes." Los AngelesTimes. February 23, 2003: E43. 20( Joanne Crevling quot ed in Julie V. Iovine, "Turning a Competition Into a Public Campaign: Finalists for Ground Zero Design Pull Out the Stops." The New Yo rk Times February 26, 2003, The Arts: E5. 21< Show dates of The Cha rlie Rose Show: January 17, 2003 and September 27, 2002; show date of The Oprah Winfrey Show:

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who felt at home in professional discourse, he is most likely the first candidate for dean of Columbia University's School of Architecture to ever appear on The Oprah Winfrey Show.

SIMILARLY, HE WAS NOT AFRAID OF USING THE WEB, CHAT FORUMS AND E-MAIL CAMPAIGNS TO HIS OWN ENDS AND TO INFLATE PUBLIC OPINION. Shortly before the finalist was chosen, Libeskind 's Berlin Studio sent e-mails urging friends to vote for the Libeskind plan on CNN and other New York website polls.22( A second e-mail campaign backfired, in which the e-mail message called for a letter campaign of complaint to The New York Time s because of an article in the newspaper by architectural critic Herbert Muschamp23( praising the scheme of competitor Vinoly and criticizing Libeskind's. The e-mail got leaked, making the squabble a public one.24( Such aggressive tactics are not the norm among architects, for whom coming to t erms with decision makers and clients is more common than targeting the people directly. As Richard Meier, who worked with fellow New York architects Peter Eisenman, Charles Gwathmey and Steven Hall, put it: "We didn't promote. (... 1We thought it was about the work, not promotion."25(

the most serious-minded intellectuals,heading a new movement within the discipline and understood only by his fellow architects. However, from the momenthe began talking about his designs live on radio andtelevision stations,it became apparentthathe had changed. Always wearing a Stars and Stripes pin on his label, he never stopped convincing the public that he was a New Yorker even if he had not lived there for more than 25 years - and talking about his first glimpse of the Statue of Liberty from the ship that brought him to the Land of the Free as a teenage immigrant. "I never forgot that skyline and what it means to an immigrant, an American. It's not just a symbol. it's not just something up in the air. It's about the values that we all share," Libeskind said in the interview.27< He was surely the only competitor who dropped a neutral professional tone to use the "I" word: "When I first began the project (... 11 went to look at the site, to stand within it, to see people walking around it, to feel its power and to listen to its voices. And this is what I heard, felt and saw."28( This subjective element in architectural work is something new among architects, who rarely express their own feelings but rather tend to point out the functional or technical aspects of their project. Asked about his apparent change from a difficult, rational architectural theorist to a sort of populist showman, Libeskind confessedthat in New York it was essential to engage with the people and for this it was necessaryto change the language.29(

b) Playing the patriotic card Daniel Libeskind was born in Poland in 1946. In 1960, after studying music in israel, he moved to the United States to study painting and mathematics. In 1965 he received US citizenship and finished his architectural studies at the Cooper Union School in New York. He attended a postgraduate program in architectural history and theory at the University of Esse x where he received his degree in 1971. 26( Since 1985 he has resided in Europe. Within the architectural profession, he is regarded as one of

But it was not just the language. Libeskind changed . When entering into a public dialogue, he carefully adjusted his 22( Iovine, Julie V. , Ibid. 23( Muschamp, Herbert."Balancing Reason and Em otion in Twin Towers Void." The New York Times. February 6, 2003: E5. 24( Liebermann, Pau l., Ibid. 25( Iovine, Julie V. Ibid. 26( Libeskind, Daniel. Radix-Matrix : Architekturen und Schriftten. Munich, New York: Prestel, 1994: 184. 27< Caroll, Jason. CNN .com. February 27, 2003: htt p://www .cnn.com/2003/USIN artheast/02/27/wt c.architect/. 28( Libeskind, Daniel. "Introduction." htt p://www .renewnyc.org/plan_des _dev/wtc_sit e/new_design_pIansis eIectedJ ibeskind/dela uIt.asp 29( "Die Zukunft von Groun d Zero: Bachl" Geo Special: New York. Nr. 5, Oct./ Nov. 2003: 27.

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individual outfit and preferences depending on what people wanted. For examp le, Rolling Stone magazine asked him to come up with a list of cool things. He initially list ed Emily Dickinson, whose poetry he reads, and considered the Bible, but then he changed because he didn't want to be misinterpreted.30< In the style section of The New York Times, Libeskind was ready to discuss the merits of (his new) "cool" cowboy boots to savor a touch of American patriotism and to demonstrat e that he is not just an intellectual.31< Even his Berlin office was stunned when he walked into the office in the boots, he said. c) Making his deconstructive architecture understandable for the public "The design and the rebuilding of the World Trade Center site have to be a spiritual process, not only an architectural one. It 's not only finding the visible angles, but the angles in the soul. It's not only finding the external skin, but the internal equivalent to that experience. " 32<

the "Park of Heroes" andthe "Wedge of Light." Each year on September 11 , there will be direct sunlight on it betw een 8:46 a.m., when the first tower was struck by a plane, and 10:28 a.rn., when the second tower collapsed. It is also plannedto preservethe sunken "bathtub" of the site as a memorial space. An elevated walkway aroundthe perimeter of the site allows pedestrians to the memorial. The design also includes the glass-enclosed Gardens of the World, layers of plant life from allover the globe, which is meant to be a "confirmation of life." At press conferences and presentations, the project was always supported by eloquent, enthusiastic, ornate t exts spoken in a slightly foreign cadence, emotionally charging his design: "A skyscraper rises above its predecessors, reasserting the pre-eminence of freedom and beauty, restoring the spiritual peakto the city and creating an icon that speaks to our vitality in the face of dangerand our optimism in the aftermath of tragedy - life victorious," said Libeskind. 33<

Daniel Libeskind

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Libeskind's career began as an academic theorist. As such, he began to develop a highly individua l architectural language. In the architectural profession, he got to be known as one of the initiators of deconstructive architecture, a new architectural direction attempting to dissolvethe correlation between plan and section.

SO, L1BESKIND'S PROJECTS WERE HARDLY UNDERSTOOD BY THE PUBLIC . Eve n for people within this arcane sort of private professional discourse, it was difficult to follow his thoughts. At Ground Zero he sudden ly envisioned a spire of "vertical gardens" on the world's tallest building, which would rise to a symbolic height of 1,776 feet, a height that symbolizes the year of American independence. In honor to those who have become "heroes," he created two large public places entitled

AS A MASTER OF WOR DS AND OF IMAGE-LIKE FORMULATIONS, HE HAD BECOME TREMENDOUSLY EMOTIONALLY MANIPULATIVE. Every aspect of Libeskind's design was calculated to pull at the heartstrings of the public. His evocative design, which in a certain sense was capturing the fractured state of shock felt soon after 9/11, was offering an emotional response to a collective tragedy. Herbert Muschamp, architectural critic of The New York Times, even went so far as to argue that his "emotional ly manipulative exercise in visual codes" appears demagog ic. 34< 30< Lieberman, Paul, Ibid. 31
As in the final stretch of any campaign, the gloves came off as Libeskind used his populist eloquenceto defame the plans of his competitors. For example, in an online chat he publicly called Vinoly's tw o towers two "skeletons in the sky" and said that they do not "assert the vitality of New York or the courage of America."35( In a Los AngelesTimes interview, after being asked what he thinks about Vinoly's project titl e "World Cultu ral Ce nter," he answered that they remind him on the "Palaces of Culture" in every Eastern Eu ropean capital, "those Stalinist things in the middle of the city."36< Conclusion

L1BESKIND'S DESIGN AND APPROACH HAS PROVEN TO BE POPULAR. FOR THE MOMENT AT LEAST, HE WON THE SUPPORT OF BOTH BUREAUCRATS AND CITIZENS, PARTLY BECAUSE OF HIS DESIGN, PARTLY BECAUSE OF HIS MANIC CHARM, AND PARTLY BECAUSE OF HIS FAITH IN STORYTELLING. The success of his approach rests on the application of two strategies. First, on the combination of two sorts of (architecturally unprecedentedI popu lism: a formal populism creating a monument that communicates uncondescendigly wit h a universal audience, and an eloquent rhetorical populism creating simple and emotionally charged metaphors the average man can grasp. Considering the competiti on as one requiring a back-and-forth processwith the public and self-assuredly courting them guaranteed him majority support. Second, there is the fact that the intellectually credible architect fulfilled the requirements of both the needs of the developer and the desires of the public. Most aspects of the scheme closely matched the developer's and the public's

criteria: sufficient office and retail space, a fitting memorial, a tall symbol on the skyline, civic and cultural amenities, open space and integration with the neighborhood. However, from the very beg inning of the competition, he knew whomto address.

WHEN CITY AND STATE OFFICIALS FORMALLY ANNOUNCED THE SELECTION OF THE "GARDENS OF THE WORLD, II L1BESKIND'S PLAN FOR THE WTC - NOW BEING CALLED "MEMORY FOUNDATIONS" - IN A PRESS CONFERENCE FROM THE WINTER GARDEN IN LOWER MANHATTAN ON FEBRUARY 26, 2003, THE ARCHITECT AGAIN OFFERED HIS EMOTIONAL THANKS TO THE PUBLIC FOR TAKING PART IN THE DESIGN SELECTION PROCESS. "Most deeply and most profoundly, I want to thank the people of New York for the extraordinary comm itment and passion they have shown for the future of this fantastic city," said Libeskind. "That has been an experience that I have never had and never dreamt of the participatory experience of citizens in a civic processthat is exemplary on a world scale and on a historical scale. Without New Yorkers, the people of America and the people of the world, that soul and heart which represents this enormous site would not be there. It's really about the heart. Surely buildings are built out of concrete and steel and glass, but they are actually built out of the spiritual content of the heart and the soul of citizens."37< 35( Libeskind, Daniel. "A Conversation With Daniel Libeskind." Gotham Gazette. Dnline Chat. February 20, 2003: http://www.gothamgazette.eom/ rebuilding_nye/ehat/libeskindtranseript.shtml. 36< Libermann, Paul., Ibid. 37<"Libeskind Plan Chosen ForWTC Site." NY1 News. NYC's 24Hour Newsehannel Dn The Web. 26 Feb 2003: http://www.ny1.eom/ny/Seareh/SubTopi e/index.htmI1 &e0 ntBntintid=28221

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HELENE LIPSTADT (

Are Competitions Populist? A Bourdieusian Alternative Perspective

USING THE SOCIOLOGY OF PIERRE BOURDIEU AS A PRACTICAL AND POLITICAL MODEL, L1PSTADT EXTENDS DOM'S DEFINITION OF POPULISM.

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Applying Bourdieu's sociology of public opinion and of cultural fields to the competition that generated Eero Saarinen's "St. Louis Arch" (1948), she shows that the incorporation of media in the individual entries of postwar modernists (Kahn, Eamses, Noguchi) was an expression of an oppositional group consciousness. Kaspari's notion of new media as openware (Archis, 2003) is welcomed for its implicit acknowledgement of the field as the ultimate author. If joined to the recognition of the inescapability of collusion and competing drawn from Bourdieu's sociology, it provides an alternative perspective on design that is potentially emancipatory.

A Provocative Definition of Populism When planning the DOM conference, Michael Shamiyeh initially proposed a definition of populism that was much more of a provocation than a dictionary entry. Populism, in his words, has "something to do with how public consciousness is shaped [and] how influence is taken on in its formation." In architecture and urbanism, he contended, "strategies of anticipation" and "strategies of mobilization" do the shaping and the influencing. While both strategies employ media as a "tool of mutual commun ication and interest coordination:' strat egies of mob ilization are used specifically to direct an "insufficiently informed majority opinion...systematically" in support of or against an architectural intervention. He gave the speakers the general t ask of using the definition in their explorati ons of how they currently operate as architects, urbanists and designers and in their proposals for future "alternative perspectives" (Shamiyeh 2003l. My specific task was to was to do so for architectural competitions. Are competitions populist? Can they offer an alternative perspective? As designers, we can rightly expect competitions andtheir history to provide the answer. In March, 2003, one did not need to look very far to find a competition that was populist through and through. The competition for the memorial to Septembe r 11th on the sit e of the World Trade Center was assuredly populist in the ordinary sense of the t erm, i.e., involving, and appeal ing to a non-elite group,1< for it was open to all, without restriction as to nationality or professional training. It was populist in Shamiyeh's sense, for the organizers mobilized a public consisting of 5,201 individuals from 63 countries and 49American states to compete and mounted elaborate public information campaigns to help the "insufficiently informed" general public to follow and understand the competition. But precisely because the WTC memorial competition was so perfectly populist, one can not draw general conclusions about competitions from it. Such a conclusion is especially the case in Europe, where EEC member countries are far more likely to require that designer selection for major (and

in some countries, relatively minor) public buildings, sites, etc. be made using some kind of design competition. We need another example, one from which we can more easily generalize. But to generalize, one also needs a methodology. My example is the competition of 1947-1948 for a monument in St. Louis, Missouri, to President Thomas Jefferson and the settlers and pioneers responsible for "National Expansion" from which Eero Saarinen's design emerged as the winning entry. It was an ordinary competition with an extraordinary result. It was ordinary in that it had all the typical characteristics of the 'open' design competition: all credentialed architects were eligible, the entries were anonymous, the jury composed of architects who worked independentlyof the client, the USfederal government, and of the competition sponsor, a local civic group. It followed normal operating procedures so well that it was considered one of the best run competitions of its time. The ordinary competition had an important effect. Designs were submitted in which contemporary aspirationsfor a new, modernist, monumentality were actualized, and, pertinently for our concerns here, through the incorporation of that day's new media.

THE COMPETITION WAS WON BY AN UNABASHEDLY MODERNIST ARCHITECT, WHOSE DESIGN BECAME A SYMBOL OF THE AMERICAN PAST, AND IN THE MOOD OF POSTWAR OPT IMISM, OF ITS FUTURE. Saarinen's Arch, as it is frequently called, went on to become one of the rare works of modernist architecture to be widely popular and to be embraced as an icon of a city (Lipstadt 2001). The role of the competition in forging this surprising result - surprising, because satisfactory to all - is, however, often overlooked .2( Where better to examine the populism of competitions than

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And where better to look for a methodologyfor understanding competitions as shapers of public consciousness than in one which is both practically and politically suited to our endeavors? Such is the sociology of Pierre Bourdieu. It is a science of practice, in the anthropolog ical sense of what people do, say they do, and believethey do because they are members of a group, and of symbol ic power, which is the power to shapethe represent ations that transform social reality. Moreover, it is one that has addressed both the meaning of public opinion and the possibility of its mobilization within an emancipatory project. In fact, such a project brought Bourdieu to Austria in March 2000 to encourage its intellectuals to act as the "avant-garde of Europe" and to lead the opposition against all "idiotic nationalisms," at a time when other foreign intellectuals were abandoning Austri a to its regrettable democratically chosen fate and even equally "idiotic[ally]," calling for boycotts of Austria (2002 (2000), 438).3< Finally, it is a sociology of cultural production of demonstrable pertinence to architectural competitions, as I had proposed elsewhere (2003) without, however, having the occasion to draw conclusions for architectural practice from that proposal. The DDM conference offered the opportunity to bring together parts of that methodology that are rarely joined, and to apply them methodically and carefully to architecture - something that is also rarely done. The Bourdieusien Alternative Perspective

Bourdieu has argued, fir st, that there are multiple public opinions, which are those of "pressure groups mobilized around a system of explicitly formulated interests"; second, that these interests are often opposed; and, third, that "in real situations, ... relations between opinions are power relations between groups" (Bourdieu 1993 (1980), 157, 155). Bourdieu requires us to define group mobilization relationally. There is neither a single public nor one public opinion.

Group consciousness is a self-r epresent ation, that is, moreover, not entirely conscious. These self-representations are not only reinforced or weakened in ongoing struggles, but are, in fact, stakes in those struggles. By helping us understand the nature of "interested"public opinion, Bourdieu's sociology also helps us resist the view that there are conscious strategists of mobilization operating on a single, relatively passive, "public opinion." A logic that reduces social relations to this kind of simple dualism is one of those common places in which politicians, especially traditional populist ones, have a vested interest: us vs. them, class vs. class, and race vs. race, and an obstacle to resistance to that kind of populism. Bourdieu has proposed that his methodology allows everyone, members of the public and intellectuals alike, to break with the commonpla ce, with its false divisions, false premises, and false promises and to make the imagining of alternative perspectives possible. A relational approach to group mobilization and group representations has potential for liberation. To assert the primacy of multivalent and dynamic relations in opposition to the reductive dualism of mobilizer and mobilized opens the way to a self-reflective understanding of our own practice and our self-representations as equallyinevitably and inescapably relational, and thus, to the recognition that resistance lies in collaboration within these relations.

1< Just how populist can be judged fromthe reaction of the powerful art critic of the New York Times, Michael Kimmelman. In "Ground Zero's Only Hope: Elitism," he decried the populism of the memorial competition and demanded an "elitist" direct commission (Kimmelman 2003). For the 'act of resistance' that followed, see infra, n. 2. 2< As it was by Kimmelman, see supra, n. 1. In the int erest of the historical accuracy of the Times, which serves historians as the American "newspaper of record," I not ed the error in a letter to the editor. Although that correspondence was not published, a subsequent appeal to the Public Editor, or ombudsma n, of the Times resulted in the publication of the correction (Bovino 2003). and its incorporation into the online version of the article, see htt p:// query.nytimes.com/ gsUabstract.htmI?res=FA071 OFF345 EO C748C0 DA B0994DB404482&incarn, p=archive:search 3
Applying Bourdieu's views briefly summarized above to the competition of 1947-1947, we come to understand how architectural interests were mobilized and how the very act of competing was collusive, and thus collaborative, and to identify the collective opposition that arose within the individual acts of competition design. But, however interesting this result may be historically for understand ing the competition results and the emergence of postwar modernism, it does not have heuristic value unless it clarifies something about competitions in general. As mentioned, Bourdieu's sociology has already proven helpful in this regard (2000; 2004). A summary here of those results will allow us to move quickly to consideration of the alternative perspective that we seek.4< Bourdieu's sociology has enable d me to understand how architecture can resemble what he calls a field of cultural production, despite its embeddedness in the economic world. For Bourdieu, society is a space constituted by overlapping, competing fields to which individuals belong and in which they act, which operate as both fields of force and battlefields. A field is one of force, because any change shifts the positions of all the other agents and institutions in it and,thus, the extent and shape of the boundaries of the field.

FIELDS ARE ALSO BATTLEFIELDS, FOR THEY ARE CONSTITUTED BY ONGOING, NEVER ENDING, CONTESTS FOR AUTHORITY OVER THE FIELD ITSELF. WITHOUT THIS STRUGGLE, THERE IS NO FIELD. They are therefore often described as games with players, stakes and interests, albeit unorthodox ones. Structured by contests for domination or power, both symbolic and real, fields are arenas in which everything is always at playand up for grabs, including the shared principlesthat define the identity of the field and that are used to establish the boundaries that distinguish it from others, which are themselves matters

of perpetual dispute, and rarely fixed by law. In other words, the shape, internal configuration of the arena, rules governing access to it and to the playing field itself, and at certain moments in a field's history, the very existence of the arena are subject to challenge and to change. Fie lds are related to Bourdieu's other key concepts of capitals - social, economic, and cultural- habitus, and illusio, an investment or a "belief in the game." The player who is invested - in both the economic and psychoana lytic senseand committed to the game, perhapsreadyto die for its stakes, possesses an illusio. It goes hand-in-hand with an unconscious, invisible, collective collusion between all the other players, specifically, a collective decision to compete that makes and maint ains the game. Within social space, fields are dynamically and int eractively relat ed to each other, with no fixed ranking, because the relations between fields, and thus their boundaries, are also always in play. There is one field, however,that is unlike others, because it encompasses parts of all of them - the field of power. It is a space of competition between people and institutions that matter in all fields and recognize each other as mattering and therefore, as dominating, over the "dominant principle of domination" and the "legitimate principle of legitimation" of that domination (Bourdieu and Wacquant 1992, 76, n. 16) So great is the field of power's attracti on that every field's degree of autonomy is affected by its proximity or distance from the field of power: the greater the proximity, the lesser the autonomy. The field of cultural production is the one field situated in close proximity to the field of power that possesses some autonomy, although to be sure, it remains only relatively autonomous. It is distinguished from all other fields by virtue of the fact that in it, the law of ordinary profits that prevails in all other fields is denied, while disinterestedness prevails and is rewarded, forming a world upside-down.

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Disinterestedness exists whenever an action is taken in accordance with the field's own definition of its highest purpose, whatever the sacrifice incurred in doing so might be.

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How does the notion of "groups mobilized around...interests" work within Bourdieu's social space of continuous contests between competing fields? For Bourdieu, a group or an individual's place or position in social space is neither established nor achieved once and for all. Agents struggle to impose their group's construction and representation of the social world, their categories of perception or "principles of vision and division," and in that way to act on that world. These are contests to influence actions and minds, "communicative struggles" and "cognitive struggles" (1999, 337), which take place in the everyday realm and not merely in the political one. The "symbolic work [of] "representing, in all senses of the term" that is required to impose a group's vision of the world and of its position in it - its social identity - on others is thus multivalent and constant (2000, 96). Returning to the definition of populism provided by DOM, we can now see its potential. "Strategies of mobilization" that "shape ...public consciousness" are parts of a larger, continuous, struggle in which the representationsthat groups have of themselves are mutually shaped and the positionsthat they occupy are reciprocally determined, in relation to the others' success or failure to impose their schemata of vision and division. One does not need to be a topologist to recognize that it is extremely difficult to map entities whose bounda ries and surfaces are always in play. The task is facilitated, however, by a useful concept called the "field effect," which functions as a kind of field detector. A field maybe said to exists when it "is no longer possible to understand a work (and the value, i.e.,the belief, that it is granted) without knowing the history of the field of production of the work" (Bourdieu 1993,75). Using the device of the field effect, design competitions can be shown to operate in the way that fields of cultural pro-

duction do. Forwhile all members of what we call professions compete, only architects enter competitions that require a fully constituted projection of the work to come. Participation in traditional competitions, in which competitors are not compensated for their efforts, is an activity that would be incomprehensible to other professionals, to whom the competition's lottery-like odds and poor ratio of gain to effort would also appear econom ically irrational. Only by knowing the history of architecture and urbanism, in which competitions have played such a large part, can one comprehend this work, both in the sense of the effort, or the willingness to "do what no other profession would tolerate"(in the words of the British nineteenth century architect, E.M. Barry) and the design project (Bergdoll 1989, 43). When architects enter a competition,the field that is constituted resembles that of a field of cultural production, for traditional design competitions form an upside-down economic world. Membership in this world has its benefits, in fact, a distinct and valuable reward: autonomy from the right-side-up world.

ARCHITECTS WHO ARE PRIMARILY DESIGNERS OF BUILT WORKS DO

NOT ENJOY THE SAME AUTONOMY

AS AUTHORS AND PAINTERS DO.

Those who operate solely in the right-side-up world may gain some of the kind of the power valued there, but they do not acquire, to quote Bourdieu,the cultural producer's "right and the duty to ignore the demands or requirements of the temporal powers" and ability to enjoy "liberties and daring gestures...which would be unreasonable or quite simply unthinkable in... another field" (Bourdieu 1996 (1992), 221). However paradoxical it might seem, the activity of competing, which on the face of it would appear to be so disadvantageous to architects, constitutes a space where they can operate as if they enjoyed a very considerable degree of autonomy. They can take liberties and make daring gestures, and also

be rewarded for them, by a jury of their peers and by history, even if they do not achieve material gains. The history of competitions is rich in examp les of losers whose daring gestures led themto be declared the real winners, from Brunelleschi in Florence in 1401 to Le Corbusier in 1927 in Geneva to Koo lhaas in Paris in 19B9. Most architects are, of course,not rewarded, and yet they persist in competing. When Louis I. Kah n exalted the competition, describing it as an "offering to architecture,"he was both saying that competitions are moments where the logic of disinterestedness prevails and exhibiting his illusio of architecture in general as a field of cultural production characterized by such disinterestedness. The representational function of the competition in toto corresponds to what Bourdieu calls a "publication," meaning the process by which a work becomes a public object (Lipstadt 2003, 40B). In less abstract terms, he meansthat the meaning of the work originates in the objective relations surrounding its publication, and that each agent in the process introduces her relations to the work into the work, giving the single work many creators.

ONE MIGHT SAY THAT PUBLICATION MAKES PUBLIC THE FACT THAT THE WORK IS CREATED BY THE ENTIRE FIELD, AND NOT BY THE PUTATIVE AUTHOR. Thus, the competition makes a public performance out of the designer selection process that usually goes on unseen by the public. The public meaning created by the competition is simply this: architect ure is co-made, and co-made competitively. The design competition is a representation of the social conditions of architectural creation, recomposed as a public spectacle in whic h the conditions and vicissitudes of making architecture are choreographed in a scheduled performance. In a competition,the competitive interconnections that are always at work in architecture, including the competing within the commission (architect

vs. client) and for the commission (architect vs. architect). are not only more obvious,sometimes spectacularly so; but they are also officially present and presented to the interested publics. In short, a competition is both a media tion and a med ia presentation of that mediation. Combining Bourdieu's relational approach to mobilized groups with his methodology of fields of cultural production hasthus enabled us to see competitions as events or spaces in which architects (who, of course, believe they are competing individually for their own personal fame and gainl mobilize around their group interests and within which their group or collective representations are in play. The competition is also a space in which the collective representation of the architect in relation to the power field is also at stake, for these events are among the rare moments when architects operate with a freedom from economic constraints similar to that enjoyed by artists. With these concepts in mind, we can turn to the specific competition of 1947-194B.

An Ordinary Competition, Many Mobilized Consciousnesses The Jefferson National Expansion Memorial competition was the American modernists' dream come true, for it offered the opportunity to demonstrate their capacity for both architectural design and urban and regional planning to the federal government at a time when this all-important client had not yet embraced modernism as a viable solution to its vast building needs, and to do so in keeping with the tenets of ClAM principles. There were ClAM models for all of the program requirements, all, that is, except for the memorial at the heart of the project. Here, there could be justifiable anxiety. By1 94B, American modernists were certain that the traditional classical Beaux-Arts monument no longer presented a viable option, but as George Nelson pointed out, there was no evidence that they were ready or even able to design its replacement (Nelson 19441. Moreover,they had yet to disprove the contention that, in the words of the historian and critic Lewis Mumford, monumentand modern were a contradiction in terms (Mumford, L., The death of the monument, 1937).

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THE NEED FOR A NEW MONUMENTALITY By SIGFRIED GIEDION M otto: Emotional training is necessary today. For whom? First of all for those who govern and admin ister the people. INTRODUCTORY REMARK

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The complex competition programfor the 80-acre site on the Mississippi River (Jefferson National Expansion Memorial Association 1947) was prepared by Geo rge Howe, the designer with William Lescaze of the first modern ist skyscraper in the United States. He addressed the problem of the modern monument by incorporating into the program some of the premises of the so-called New Monumentality, specifically its proposition that architects create a democratic, collective, and expressive architecture. In 1943, Jose Luis Sert, writing with the artist Fernand Leger and Sigfried Giedion , had drawn up their now celebrated "Nine Points on Monumenta lity." They proposed that modernism abandon mechanisti c functionalism and provide for human emotions, and that it do so through an architecture that would satisfy the age-old need for monumenta lity by building civic and cultural centers supportive of collective life in the center of newly replanned cities. The new monumenta l buildings would be large-scale, sited, ideally, in large uncrowded open spaces, use the innovative materi als and techniques that had appeared during the war, offer artists opportunities for collaboration, and, while monumental, be light and mobile in form. They called for the creation of "vast surfaces" that could serve as projection screens for colored lights and publicity and propaganda messages (Architecture culture 1943-1968: A documentary anthology, 1993,30). Gied ion expanded the argument in the following year, maintaining that an architecture that furthered a new communal or public realm required a specific rejection of the epoch's new media. He wrote: "neither radio nor television can replace the personal contact which alone can develop commun ity life" (italics in the original). Such contact could only be generated by spaces for direct encounters, literal public gatherings, in which the public was gathered by means such as outdoor spectacles (1944, 556). In a text of the same year, Sert joined the New Monumentality to ClAM urbanism in a proposal for "human-scaled" civic centers composed of cultural and educational facilities, spaces for public gatherings that included the "main monuments" and "symbols of popular aspiration" (1944,404).

Howe had taken a comparable position in his wartime articles, promoting an architecture that encouraged public assembly and that thus expressed and encouraged political democracy.

THE OPENNESS OF MODERNIST ARCHITECTURE, HE HELD, RENDERED IT, AND IT ALONE, THE EXPRESSION OF THIS NEW DEMOCRACY (1942, 147) The New Monumenta lity and Howe's vision of a democratic modernism can be found in the program's requirement for a "living memorial," that would honor the spirit of Jefferson as man ifested in anyone of his multitudinous interests, including "international affairs, ...education,... architecture and the arts," and take the form of institutions of scientific and artistic research and the dissemination of information. The New Monumenta lity also found its way into the requirementthat architects provide areas for large assemblies of people, for spectacles and concerts; water activities; and restaurants (Jefferson National Expansion Memorial Association 1947, 13-16). The program also evoked themes and models that predated the New Monumenta lity. The themes of democracy and community, to choose but two examples, had pervaded the theater, literature, and public art created during the Depression, especially that provided by artists employed by the Federal government's work relief programs. The social and cultural programs of President Franklin D. Roo sevelt's New Deal were certainly new, even radically so, but, with the exception of housing, the New Deal's architecture was 'old deal', a stripped, or starved classicism. Nor was there anything new to Sert's human -scaled civic centers, which bore a close affinity to City Beautiful planning, as Eric Mumford has pointed out, and used the same techniques of wholesale destruction (Mumford, E., The ClAM discourse, 2000,151,152). Howe thus asked contemporary architects to provide an architecturethat was populist, in the ordinary sense of the term, i.e., involving, and appealing to a non-elite group,

and left spacefor responses that corresponded to a range of current notions of what the popular was and how it could be translated into architecture.

MODERNISTS WERE ENCOURAGED, BUT TRAD ITIONALISTS WERE NOT DISCO URAGED, FAR FROM IT. Correspondingly, the two stances were equally represented on the jury. Howe asserted his vision of an architecture for that place and time consistent with the represe ntations shared by different, and indeed, opposed holders of positions in the field. The competitors responded with designsthat expressed their positions,which here are illustrated by a necessarily limited choice of examples. The authors of these four modernist projects (out of the 172 submitted I responded to the program by introducing functions or forms that matchedthe different visions of populism to which architects had access during the Depression and immediate postwar years. Louis Kahn provided a design that favored public assembly and participation and,what is more, used new media to do so. In his living memorial, a Laboratory of Education, he drew on his political interests in communal participation and in the New Monumentality. The La boratory would facilitate communicati on through face-to-face discussion, but, in a departure from the New Monumentality, it would both use the new media and celebrate them, for a transmitter served as a monumental tleche (Gold hagen 2001,33-401. In their "people's park," Edward Durrell Ston e, Isama Nogu chi and Henry Billings also pursued the New Monum ent ality's goal of an architecture of public assembly for civic purposes through the incorporation of new media. Their project included a subterranea n radio station, whose transmission tower was a prominent, if not the most prominent feature, of their earthworks architecture. Charles and Ray Eames and John Entenza's project amalgamates the New Monumentality with the med ia of mass culture to produce the desired civic participation and

assembly. In fact, so central were the new media to the proposed Living Memorial that their proposal can be described as a prototypical Ars Electronica. The content of this media lab was provided by "the people" to whom it "reported," without the intervention of a sponsoring institution. It was entirely devotedto new and popular media, providing studios for animation, television, radio, and movies, but not for painti ng and sculpture. The institution translates a specific political vision that prefigures the Eameses' own office, in which Cha rles and Ray facilitated direct communication between government and citizens, on occasion under contract with the federal government(Lipstadt 19971. While the new media were absent from Saarinen's proposal, he did respond to the New Monumentality elements in the program, though without abandoning entirely the older notions of monumentality. In the Arch, detailed in stainless steel, he joined the aesthetics, expression, new technology and materials of the New Monumentality with the scale and traditional typologies of tradit ional monumentality that he had learned from his father, Eliel Saarinen, and that still shocked his contemporary modern ists (Lipstadt 2004, 23). The Arch displayed many of the characteristics of Sert, Leger and Giedion's New Monumentality, having the appearance, at least, of a "light metal structure," whose "elements," in this case, the stainless steel skin, could "constantly vary the aspect of the building" and formed a "new and vast facade" in a shape reminiscent of the "curved, laminated, wooden arches"whose use they had suggested (Architecture cultur e 1943- 1968: A documentary anthology,

1993,30). However innovative its geometry of the weighted catenary and triangular section, and however path-breaking its structural solution, it proudly declared itself an arch, a traditional monument. Saarinen's synthesis of possible solutions challenged each of the opposing alternatives, and, indeed the idea that the alternativewere opposing. Later in his careers, his departure from Miesian modernism would be denounced as an apostasy, or worse, as eclecticism (Lipstadt 2001).

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The Bourdieusien perspective has shown how a mobilization of architects engendered a response that was significantly varied and in opposition to both traditionalism and the modernism of ClAM, as represented by Giedion and Sert, and in keeping with the representations of these competing sub-groups of architects. The entries can be understood as instances of the "symbolic work" of representations of the emerging generation of postwar, American-educated, younger modern ists, and as an indicator of the place that it would soon occupy in the field of architectural production. It has helped us understand the context and content of their proposa ls for a postwar architecture of populism, and the oppositional value that should be assigned to the incorporation of media, one the one hand, or of a traditional typology, on the other, in their designs.

BUT CAN THE BOURDIEUSIAN PERSPECTIVE ALSO PROVIDE A POSITIVE PROGRAM? I believe so. The proposition that the new media foster a form of collaborative work that functions in the manner of openware has been made and was cited in the DOM program with approval by Diller and Scofidio. The quoted author, Dennis Kaspori, warns us that to work in any other manner than his proposed network, or "bazaar" model, is to "hark back nostalgically to past times, ...[to use an] existing (cathedral) model with the autonomous genius of the chief designer at the top of a strict hierarchy, [one that] is 'closed' and based on cornpetlinq]' (Ka spori 2003). From my Bourdieusien sociological perspective, I see this proposition that architects assert their market competitiveness through new media collaboration as a utopian assertion of an impossible autonomy for the architect, autonomy from his or her fellow architects, and a denial of the inevitability of collusive competing as a condition for architectural self-representation as a profession. But the fact that is entertained at all is welcome, for it is a rare acknowledgment, and even celebration, of

the inescapably collaborative nature of architectural creation acrossthe entire field, and thus an implicit acceptance of the field itself as the creator of the creators andthe condition of possibilityof creation itself (Bourdieu 1993 (1980)). My example of architectural competitions as products of the collusion of all those concerned reminds us of the inevitability of competing and of the place of collusion and competing in making architecture as much a field of cultural production as is possible for an activity so inherently economic and social. The competition process is a public acknowledgement, a 'publication' of the fact that co-making is inherent in the enterprise- social, economic, mental and artistic - of architecture. This is true, I believe for all architects, even those whose position in the field of creative architecture allows them to claim autonomy (Office of Metropolitan Architecture, Koolhaas and Mau 1995,646).

IF THE NEW MEDIA SPEAK TRUTH TO POWER ABOUT THE NATURE OF AUTHORSHIP IN ARCHITECTURE, SO MUCH THE BETTER. This will work to designer's advantage, but only if it goes hand in hand with the recognition that there is no escaping competing that it is, indeed, omnipresent. Then the new media will foster a new consciousness beneficial to all architects, in all domains. Knowing that autonomy is relative is a recognition of the principle of the struggle-based relational nature of social reality and strengthens those who possess that knowledge. Such a recognition can be a source of strength, for by accepting the inseparableness of autonomy and struggle, we may be able to envisage a collaborative approach that is neither expressively rosy nor utopian. Collaboration that recognizes its intertwining with competing, and, correspondingly, that recognizes the fragility of autonomy, is, I believe, the rupture that is needed, the break that can generate the alternative perspective we are all seeking.

Bibliography

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Architecture Culture 1943-1968: A DocumentaryAnthology. Ed & comp Joan Ockman. In collaboration with Edward Eigen. New York: Rizzoli International Publications, 1993. Bergdoll, Barry. "Competing in the Academy and the Marketplace: European Architecture Competitions." In: The Experimental Tradition: Essays on Competitions in Architecture, edited by Helene Lipstadt, 21-52. New York: The Architectural League of New York; Princeton Architectural Press, 1989. Bourdieu, Pierre. "But Who Createdthe Creators?" In: Sociology in Question, translated by Richard Nice, 139-48. London: Sage, 1993. - . "Espace social et champ politique." In Propossur Ie champ politique, by Pierre Bourdieu, with an introduction by Philippe Fritsch, 92-97. Lyon: Presse Universiatiresde Lyon, 2000.

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Kaspori, Dennis. ';4 Communism of Ideas: Towards an Architectural Open Source Practice." Archis (2003). Http./lwww.archis.orglarchis_oldlenglishlarchis_art_e_2003 l art 3b 2003e.html.

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Lipstadt, Helene. "Can 'Art Professions' be Bourdieuian Fields of CulturalProduction?: The Case of the Architecture Competition. " CulturalStudies 17, no. 314 (May 2003): 390-419.

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- . "Lokale Kontra Nationale Erinnerung: Kollektives Gedenken, Kollektive Erinnerung und der GatewayArch." In: Denkmale und Kulturelles Gedectnnis Nach dem Ende der Ost- West-Konfrontation. In Denkmale und Kulturelles GediichtnisNach dem Ende der Ost-West-Konfrontation, Akademie der Kiinste, conceived by GabiDottt-Bonekiimper and Edwardvan Voolen, 101-12. Berlin: Akademie der Ktinste/Jovis Verlag, 2000. - . '''Natural Overlap ': Charles and RayEames and the Federal Government, 1948-1978." In The Work of Charles and RayEames: A Legacyof Invention, edited by DonaldAlbrecht, 150-77. New York: Abrams/Library of Congress and Vitra Design Museum, 1997. Mumford, Eric. The ClAM Discourse on Urbanism, 1928-1960. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2000. Mumford, Lewis. "The Death of the Monument. " In Circle: International Surveyof Constructive Art, edited by J.L. Martin, Ben Nicholson, and N. Gabo, 263-70. London: Farberand Farber, 1937. Nelson, George. "Stylistic Trends in Contemporary Architecture [Stylistic Trends and the Problem of Monumentality]. " In: New Architecture and City Planning: A Symposium, edited by PaulZucker, 569-76. New York: Philosophical Library, 1944.

OEGFA, 2005. Umbau 22, "Competitions!". Office of Metropolitan Architecture, Rem Kootbees, and Bruce Mau. S, M,L, XL. Editedby Jennifer Sigler. New York: The Monacelli Press, 1995.

Sen, Jose Lluis. "The Human Scale in City Planning." In New Architecture and City Planning: A Symposium, edited by PaulZucker, 392-412. New York: PhilosophicalLibrary, 1944. Shamiyeh, Michael. "Topographies of Populism, Draft Program." Linz, 2003.

150

THOMAS HELD (

Creating Majority Support by not Compromising

151

REMARKS ON THE PROCESSES OF POLITICAL DECISION-MAKING AND COMMUNICATIONS INVOLVED IN THE GENESIS OF THE KULTURUND KONGRESSZENTRUM LUZERN (KKL, LUCERNE CULTURAL AND CONVENTION CENTER) DURING MY TIME AS MANAGING DIRECTOR OF THE FOUNDATION THAT BROUGHT THIS FACILITY INTO BEING. CONSTRUCTION COMMENCED IN 1998 AND MY TERM AS DIRECTOR ENDED IN MID-2000.

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156

Preliminary Remarks The Swiss press occasionally describes the construction of the KKL as a "miracle."Why? Decisive in this respect was certainly not solely the f act that the project garnered tremendous acclaim in Switzerland, but rather above all the facil ity's very high level of acceptance among , first and foremost, conductors - such as Claudio Abbado- artists and musicians. The international press as well was, to say the least,virtually unanimous in characterising Jean Nouve l's work as extraordinary. What are the essential factors that went into the success of this project? I want to elaborate on the following four aspects: 1)the project's financial background (public-private partnership); 2) program; 3) quality and 4) commun ications & mobilisation. Before addressing these points, perhaps I ought to first pose the following questions: Is the KKL actually a good case (in the sense of a case study)? What can be learned from this project's planning and execution? Are analogies to other projects even admiss ible and possib le?

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AFTER ALL, ARCHITECTURE AND PLANNING ARE ALWAYS MATTERS OF PROTOTYPING. Every construction project is one-of-a-kind in a certain sense . Ge nerally speaking, little is reproduced, and in most instances - above all in the case of a major project - project management custom-tailored to the specific situation is called for. In Lu cerne, for example, the political and economic environment was (and rema ins] relatively complex. And to be honest, I have t o confess that luck was also involved. Without the least bit of blissful nostalgia, we must admit t oday that we happened to catch what was probably a historic window of opportunity that favoured bringing the project to fruition. In retrospect, I would in a sense speak of a Mission: Impossible. Today, we would confront difficulties that would totally differ from what we encountered then. More about that t oo at the end. 1. Public-Private Partnership Even in light of the relatively high level of prosperity in Switzerland, the City of Lucerne (on its own) actually cannot afford an undertaking like the KKL. So then, let me say a few words about financial framework conditions. The project's

lead-in phase featured a fundraising drive that was, for Swiss circumstances, uniquely successful. Private donors contributed over 60 million Swiss Francs (SFI, whereby corporate sources accounted for less than half. Most funds came from 100-150 individuals and families. The Federal Government grant ed a modest SF3 million, a contribution rather of a symbolic nature. The canton's share of the financing - SF 25 million - was likewise of lesser significance. The bottom line is that the project essentially relied on municipal (SF 120 million) and private funding. 2. Program Eve n in the early 19th century, Lucerne was still a sleepy little country tow n, and today it remains a relatively small provincial city in the vicinity of the Alps. Annual municipal tax revenues come to about SF 200 million; per capita GOP is approximately SF40,000 - high in an int ernational comparison though far below Zurich and the neighbouring Canton of Zug. The proportion of the Canton of Lucerne's population engaged in agriculture is still about ten times that of the Canton of Zurich. And only 1% of all Swiss college students come from Lu cerne. Nevertheless, an important role was played by the widespread view that, before the turn-of-the-millennium, Lucerne would once again have to make an extraordinary investment in upgrading its tourism infrastructure, just as significant funds were invested in the 19th century in making this region conveniently accessible to travellers and creating a possibility to exploit the touristic pot enti al of its lakes and mountains. Lu cerne lives to a great extent from tourism, which accounts for 55-60% of GOP. To this can probably be added the fact that the people of Lucerne have always been a littl e bit "crazy."They love Baroque flights of fancy and the unfolding of Baroque splendour. In the 19th century - only four years after New York - Lucerne became the first Swiss city wit h an electrical grid and streetl ights, yet another investment that the city really couldn't afford at the time it was made. From the outset, it was also clear that without the appropriat e investment in a major concert hall, it would be impossible t o maintain the international Lu cerne Festival as a major draw in the t op-end tourist market. Consequently, the project's core element was Jean Nouvel's Salle Blanche. At the sametime, the facil ity's space utilisat ion program had to t ake into consideration the wishes of city dwellers, suburbanites and local associations. Doing so would assure that the program would be capable of attracti ng majority support, and this agenda manifested itself in the architecture's all-inone approach. Besides the concert hall, there's the Lucerne Hall, a convention center, an art museum and various restaurants and bars, all under a single, sweeping roof.

3. Quality

Bringing about credible quality calls for bringing the right creative people - the artists - on board. Espec ially decisive in this respect was the collaboration between Jean Nouvel and American acoustic expert Russe l Johnson. A key challenge was to motivate these two int ernational stars to work together. Also committed to long-term involvement were two mayors - onewhoseterm was aboutto end and his successor - who maintained direct contact with the creative people. On his inspection tours of the building site, Jean Nouve l also talked repeatedly with construction workers and, on the occasion of the topping-out ceremony, spoke beforethe assem bled crew. The future users and lessees as well as the director of the art museum were also regularly consulted. The fact that the creative people were constantly at the centre of things assuredthat they were also able to make good on their commitment to quality - not spinning off into the domain of crazy extravagance, if I may be so bold as to use this expression, and not in the sense of features that are not doable because they are beyond the econom ically reasonab le fringe, nor of elements that are out of the question because they cross the boundary of functional illogic, but rather that which remains within a range defined, as it were, by functional, legal and budgeta ry constraints. A brief anecdote about this aspect of quality and the wi ll to realise ones vision: The concert hall as originally planned by Jean Nouvel was to feature a complicated polychromatic colour scheme with bold patterns, but it turned out that the musicians and conductors were not especially taken with this idea. On the other hand, Nouvel also had some doubts of his own. One day, shortly after the interior walls had been plastered, Nouvel and his entourage arrived for an inspection of the work-in-progress. Nouvel's associates expressed the opinion that this still-virginal-white hall must by all means rema in that colour - and the Salle Blanche was born. No paint job was needed . Nevertheless, 60 m'were painted red and blue strictly on a trial basis, but that evening the colour scheme was revised. No doubt, the general contractor was not particularly thrilled about this, and from that point on those in charge of the construction work had certain difficulties living up to the terms of the contract.

4. Communication In Switzerland, a very small country with a strong system of direct demo cracy, public debt to finance such projects must be approved by the voters in a referendum in the respective community. We vote on kindergartens and schools, sports complexes and multi-purpose halls, administration buildings, etc., and these referenda are indeed votes on the architec-

ture itself. Laypersons can go to the polls and express whether a design appealsto them or not. In Switzerland, "restrictive marginal circumstances" playa not inconsiderable role in this connection, and they are essential for the formulation of a political communications strategy. Major construction projects are a public matter per se, regardless of whether they are publicly or privately financed. Thus, public approval is an absolute must. Furthermore, in Switzerland, NG Os such as environmentalist groups and associations to safeguard distinctive local cultural traditions have legally established rights to raise objections to such undertakings, and these rights have been continually expanded in recent years. This can reach a point at which, for example, a foundation set up to protect a high Alpine moor can block the construction of a stadium in Zurich - purportedlybecause the project including all of its ultimate appurtenances usestoo much energy.

NEEDLESS TO SAY, ZONING CHANGES AND URBAN RENEWAL PLANS MUST ALSO BE PUT TO A PUBLIC VOTE. The bottom line: anyone working on a major project is permanently confronted by all sorts of groups collecting signatures on petitions opposing it. Duringthe lead-up to the Lucerne referendum, a 1:500-scale rendering of the KKL construction plan was sent to each household (despite the fact that such a diagram is impossible to read). What do you do in a situation like this? Our strategic communications was based on four fundamental principles. First came mediation: we conducted a focus group to find out which program elements enjoyed broad acceptance and which did not, and to identify the "limits" of our space utilisation program . We discovered that it was, in many instances, minor features - like outfitting the facility with a tiny kitchen for use by various clubs - that were extremely important and had to be emphasised in our communications t o assure wide support. Indeed, such a mediati on procedure has to be accompanied by specialists.

IN ORDER TO PREVENT DECLINE INTO MEDIOCRITY, WHAT'S ALSO REQUIRED IS VISION. In the case of Lucerne, there was a small group of people who knew we wanted to build a world-class concert hall that would meet the standards of even the most demand ing classical music aficionado. Nowadays, setting an agenda like this is referred to as establishing a vision. In the last 10

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years, there has been a massive shift in medial weight from word to image,from press to TV. In order to advance such an agenda or vision, what is needed is leadership. This is a catch phrase currently in vogue, but what it means in the concrete case of Lucerne is that the effort was made right fromthe start to "deactivate"all the naysayers and malcontents and to keep them sidelined .

CRITICAL LETTERS TO THE EDITOR PRINTED IN NEWSPAPERS WERE NEVER PERMITTED TO GO UNANSWERED. We even wrote directly to letters' authors to go over the project with them, etc. We sought to neutralise, so to speak, elements aroundwhich resistance could crystallise. We paid personal visits to critics or invited them to inspect a model of the project. Needless to say,the creative peoplethemselves have to be able to commun icate their project. Authenticity is essential. In this communications process, we relied very heavily on vivid illustrations like mock-ups. Jean Nouvel referred to this at the time as "seduction by the model." Initially, we dispensed with 3D renderings in favour of artistically interpretative sketches, and we intentionally commissioned artists to do them. Today, this would presum ably be done differently, but in 1993 the software to generate a virtual walking tour of the facility and other such possibilities was still too expensive and too primitive. So we relied on a classical approach.We built a splendid urban integration modelthat made it possible to see that the KKL would fit harmon iously int o the cityscape and that the project's magnitudes and proportions were sound. Suddenly, people on the street were starting to speak in terms of scale and inclusion. With a photomontage, we showed that the view of Mt. Rigi from the railroad station plaza would not be obstructed. We used very deliberate wording in an effort to avoid negative terminology like "cost risk," although any expert naturally knows that cost risk exists in every case.

THE REFERENDA WERE TRICKY THOSE IN FAVOUR, FOR INSTANCE, SOMETIMES HAD TO VOTE YES AND SOMETIMES NO. The first vote decided whether to accept a well-to-do patroness' SF 700,000 contribution to carryon the process of drawing up plans. Then, the local Green Party launched a

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grassroots initiative opposed to the project; this called for a no vote. Fina lly, in the decisive referendum on the sum of SF 98 million, we achieved victory with 66% voting yes. This two-thirds majority was absolutely decisive. A referendum is not just a yes-or-no verdict. They are interpreted. If we had achieved only 55%, the facility would have been built anyway, but with less than 55% it probablywould not have been built. With 55%, we could not have had such a roof. With 57%, the concert hall would have been built differently; in this case, the architecture would have been much more reserved . The two-th irds majority was decisive. Lastyear, another KKL referendum was held in Lucerne - this time, on whether to reduce the debt burden to zero, and only 56% of the electorate voted in favour. The approval rating dropped from 66% to 56% when it actually should have risen. It is an ominous sign that the mobilisation that was successfully maintained from about 1989 until the opening in 1998for almost 10years- is no longer possible today. Concluding Remarks

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Since the opening of the KKL, Lucerne has experienced a sort of hotel boom. New facilities have been erected, older ones renovated or expanded, and local as well as foreign investors have put money into existing properties. Lucerne is the object of "envy" of other cities such as Zurich that lack a cultural and convention center of such charisma and uncompromising commitment to quality. Certainly, we haveto ask how sustainable the KK L is as a world-class venue in a small town.

EXCEPT FOR THE HIGH SEASONS DURING THE VARIOUS FESTIVALS,

THE CONCERT HALL CANNOT BE BOOKED TO FULL CAPACITY.

The temptation to use it for purposes other than the one for which it was intended is great. The Salle Blanche thus hosts events like steel band concerts that do not correspond to this edifice's structural-architectural personality. Another problem is that, in the wake of the departure of the "guardians of the temple,"the "petty-minded shopkeepers" are surfacing. The worst of these are the cleaning firms and their crews that are insidiously adapting the structure to their needs. An even more acute threat is petit-bourgeois horror vacui that insists on cluttering up every space with things that don't belong there. Here an "adornment," there a "decoration"a development that endangers the architectural quality of the work. Thistendency has been pretty much successful ly sup-

pressed until now, but the danger remains. I will conclude with a few remarks related to my current activities. The planning and execution of the KKL project permit certain political and economic conclusions to be drawn. In Switzerland, Germany and Austria, there is currently a sort of traffic jam preventing reforms from moving forward to deal with society's increasing proportion of senior citizens (ensuring social services). healthcare, the labour market,taxation, etc. In conjunction with the eastward expansion of the EU, there have even been radical tax reforms in Austria.

WITH RESPECT TO CORPORATION TAX REFORM, AUSTRIA HAS ALMOST BECOME A MODEL FOR SWITZERLAND. As for an analysis of the current economic policymaking situation, there is agreement ranging from the right wing all the way to the moderate left of the political spectrum that things cannot go on as they have in the past. But at the same time, we see little if anything taking place. And governments - Social Democ ratic and Conservative alike - that do attempt to effectuate changes and reforms are punished for their efforts. The task of bringing the KKL project to fruition took leadership, and that's presumab ly the way it is in politics as well. To implement reforms that are based on the trust of a majority of the population, the aim ought to be to minimise political compromises; otherwise, we will just end up back in a blockade situation. It would be highly advisable to proceed according to the maxim we used as our "campaign slogan" in Lucerne. From Day 1,there wasn't a speech, a statement or a press conference that didn't make reference to the words of Christian, Baron von Logau, the great 17th century aphorist: "Towards danger and distress, the middle way brings death." In my opinion, this wisdom still applies both to the management of projects and to the current political situation.

THOSE WHO OBSERVE THIS CREDO WILL ULTIMATELY OBTAIN SOMETHING "BEAUTIFUL," A TERM I USE HERE WITHOUT IRONY - FOR EXAMPLE, A MODERN CATHEDRAL, LIKE THE ONE THAT STANDS IN LUCERNE TODAY.

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brassI A monument w hich represents the average citize n Maria nne erected at t he main square of Simrisham n - an average Swedish t ow n - as a premature manifesta tion of Marianne's future polit ical signif ica nce . The bronze bust is th e result of inte nse lobbying and unlike other monuments, The Average Citize n monument is not per manent. Rather, the length of ti me the monument stands in the square is determine d by the residents Marianne statist ically represents; this it self is determ ined by reg ular ly conducted opinion polls.

Monument of The Average Citizen Marianne < 11999.35 x 35 x 172 cm. Bronze, granite and engraved

MANS WRANGE (

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THE AVERAGECITIZEN

THE TEXT PRESENTS TWO OF THE COMBINED THINK TANK AND CREATIVE STUDIO OMBUD'S PROJECTS: THE AVERAGE CITIZEN IS A SOCIO-POLITICAL PROJECT THAT AIMS TO CHANGE PUBLIC OPINION IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE OPINIONS OF A STATISTICALLY AVERAGE CITIZEN BY THE USE OF PROFESSIONAL OPINION-FORMING AND LOBBYING. Compromise House is an experimental house project in collaboration with architect Ro ger Spetz, which re-evaluates the often negatively considered concept of compromise and explores it instead as a positive and productive principle which is applied to every aspect of the house: from the design process itself to the aesthetic, spatial and social solutions of the building.

Asocio-political experiment that aims to change society in accordance with the opinions of a statistically average citizen

THE AVERAGE RULES

AS MY CONTRIBUTION TO "TOPOGRAPHIES OF POPULlSM " I SHOULD LIKE TO PRESENT TWO PROJECTS THAT RELATE TO THE GENERAL THEME OF POPULISM. THESE PROJECTS ARE THE AVERAGE CITIZEN AND COMPROMISE HOUSE. The Average Citizen The notion of an "average citizen" - that is, a fi ctive person supposed to statistically represent a larger group of people - has been one of the most influential ideas in the construction of the Swedish welfare state. By incarnating the modern project's dream of tr anslating a complex reality into a rational and transparent model, statistical averages and medians have laid the very foundation of the Swedish art of social engineering .1< The averages and medians produced form the basis of research, social debate and the authorities' planning in most of the social sectors that influence the daily life of the citizens - for example housing , infrastructure, education, health, and the care of children and the elderly.2( But other segments of society too, such as trade and industry, the media, advertising and the service sector, to a great extent adapt their products and services to the average preferences of the clientele on which they focus.3 ( Last but not least, the principle whereby an individual citizen is allowed to represent a larger population group in fact forms the very basis of representative democracy, inasmu ch as politicians are elected in general elections. But the present democratic system is facing a number of serious problems in Sweden (as in most other countries). Several studies shows that Swedish citizens feel that they have less and less influence on the daily politics. Election turnout - which has

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traditionally been high in Sweden - is decreasing, and poorly educated and resource-poor groups are voting less than well educated and well-off ones. A report on democracy in Sweden commissioned by the Swedish Government, Demokrati utredningen, states that the political involvement of citizens has diminished, and that the interest in politica l issues that despite everything does exist has abandonedtraditional partypolitics in favou r of "single-issue organisations". According to another democracy study by the think tank Swedish Centre for Business and Policy Studies, the established parties will be non-exist ent by the year 2013 if their mem bersh ip figures continue to fall at the same rat e as today. At the same time the political influenceof the corporate world and special int erest groups, as exerted through professional opinion-forming, has increased and the political parties are becoming more and more dependent on the media and on effective marketing to att ract any att ention at all to their political issues. In this development, the individual citizen's potential for getting his or her views out to the general public outside the established political organisations is quite minimal. True, as a citizen of Sweden one has the constitutional right to t ake part in an election every four years and thus to influence who sits in parliament and in the local and regional decisionmaking bodies.

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BUT BETWEEN ELECTIO NS IT IS MORE DIFFICULT TO EXERCISE ANY POLITICAL INFLUEN CE. As a private citizen one can, for example, write t o one's member of parliament in order to try to get an issue on to the political agenda. On e can also write lett ers to the newspapers or try to get one's views heard on chat shows or as t ext messages in certain discussion programmes on TV. But the influence of these channels is often more symbolic than real. To achieve media and, above all, political interest in an issue is, today, not just a matter of having practical opportunities or the formal right to put the issue on the agenda . It

is increasingly a matter of who and in what way and in what cont ext this is done. Similarly, it is often difficult for those in power to find out what their voters really think about different political issues. Since elections are held at relatively long intervals, opinion polls and statistical research are among the authorities' few ways of sampling the views of the electorate. Often it is also precisely to the average voter that they adapt their political programmes. Statistics and opinion polls thus already function de facto as fundamental and sometimes crucial criteria for political decision-making.4<

THE AVERAGE CITIZEN IS A SOCIO - POLITICAL EXPERIMENT WHICH TAKES ITS POINT OF DEPARTURE IN THIS DEVELOPMENT IN ORDER TO TAKE IT TO AN ABSURD CO NCLUSION. Inst ead of the citizens electing representatives in general elections on the basis of whether they think the candidates represent the views of the citizens, an individual is chosen to represent the citizens by virtue of statistica lly representing the whole population. This is a method that is independent of the statistically representative person's political contacts, social networks, media charisma and financial resourcesfactor s that are becoming increasingly determinative in Swedish politics. 1< Swede n has t he longest contin uous history of stat istical surveys, and no other cou ntry is as we ll mapped statistica lly. Tabellv erket, the predecessor of t oday's Centra l Bureau of Statis tics , was foun ded as early as 1749. 2< The cost of all Swedis h state stat istical wo rk has been estimated as 0.2% of th e nat iona l budget. 3< In avant-garde cult ure and philosophy, howeve r, "t he average person" has aroused litt le interest. On the contrary, thi nkers such as Freud, Nietzsche and Foucault have foc used on the margina l rat her t han the average, and t he avant- garde has t radit ional ly been conte mptu ous of the average human being - profanum vulgus. Nevertheless it has been dependent on her in order to define it s own specia l status . 4< For example Bill Clinto n's aide Dick Mo rr is tested all the Clint on admi nist ratio n's proposals in opi nion polls befo re they were presented to Congress.

The project The Average Citizen is structured as follows : with the aid of the Swedish Central Bureau of Statistics, a statistical "average citizen profile" has been created by collating the averages and med ians most frequently used by the Swedish authorities. Subsequently a headhunting firmwhose usual assignment is to find CEDs for major corporations - has been comm issioned to find a person who fit s this statistical "average citizen profile": female, 40years old, single, childless, living in a two-room-and-kitchen apartment, etc.5
THE AIM OF TH E PROJECT IS INSTEAD TO FOCUS ON MARIANNE'S VIEWS ON SOCIETY, AND TO DISSEMINATE THESE IDEAS BACK TO THE SWEDISH PUBLIC WHI CH SHE REPRESENTS STATISTICALLY. This will be done by giving Marianne access to the same sophisti cated methods used by politicians, special interest groups and major corporations to bring about changes in society: professiona l opinion-forming and lobbying. In cooperation with a political lobbyist, a dramaturg ist and an expert political consultant, a long-term strategy has been drawn up for how the average citizen Marianne's views are to be disseminated to Swedish society and in the longer term, influence public opinion. Marianne has been interviewed in depth on how society can be changed, and these views have later been gathered in a data bank of opinions. In collaboration with Marianne herself, a political speechwriter and a copy writer havesummarised andformulated her views in the form of brief, impactful slogans. A broad spectrum of Sweden's most influential persons from fields of activity with a high opinion-forming value - for example, politics, advertising, culture, the media and popular culture - have then

been contacted by the project group with a view to persuading them to cooperate with Marianne by using one of her views in a public context appropriate to each. As with all effective lobbying and opinion-forming, Marianne's views are presented indirectly so that the public is not aware of the identity of the originator of the views. As an example, one of her views has formed the starting-point for an editorial in one of the major morning newspapers; it has been presented as part of the dialogue in a popular TV series; it has been quoted by an influential politician; and it has appeared in a nationwide advertising campaign. The Average Citizen thus benefits from the legitimacy that these established channels of communication confer on views, as opposed to if it had been presented, for example, in a letter to the press. The opinion-forming strategy which has been set up for The Average Citizen project borrows its structure from "productplacement"which is used by the advertising industry by paying for having a product or a brand exposed in, for example, a film or a show on TV. Like most activities with the ambition to influence societyfrom politics to advertising - The Average Citizen will be able to objectively quantify and scientifically document the project's effect on public opinion. During the course of the project, regular opinion polls will be conducted before and aher a view has been introduced to the public, in order t o ascertain what specific effect Marianne's views have had on public opinion. When, for example, one of Marianne's views was stated in a line of dialogue in one of Sweden's most popular TV series, it was seen and heard by 28.6% of the viewing population in Sweden.

AN OPINION POLL COMMISSIONED BY THE PROJECT THEN ESTABLISHED THAT PRECISELY THIS VIEW HAD CONVINCED 6.2% OF THE SWEDISH POPULATION. Marianne's view had, in other words, brought about a scientifically documented change in public opinion.6<

5< Although Marianne in purely statistica l terms correspondsto a majority of average values in Sweden, and thus by definition represents the "normal". she

nevertheless belongs, as a single middle-aged woman without children, t o a relatively marginalised group in society. Marianne could in fact - paradoxically enough - be regarded as a threat to the value hierarchy of the t radit ional nuclear family which in many respects is still dominant in Sweden. 6< The project is being documented continuously and will be publicised in stages in the form of several exhibiti ons, a book, a CD-ROM and a fil m. The development of the project can also be followed on its website www.averagecitizen.org, where the visitor can exchange views with Marianne and wil l have the opportunity to influence public opinion through her. Finally, Marianne's future politi cal significance has already been commemo rated in t he form of a bronze bust of Marianne on the square of an averagetown in Sweden.

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The Average Citizen
M onument of The Average Citizen Mar ianne in Frankfurt at the biennia l Manifesta 4, 2002.

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Compromise House A compromise between an elitist and a populist ideal house.

In the Western cult of the individual - not least in the fields of art and culture - compromise tends to be considered as something negative; a concession to harsh reality.

BUT IN ALL SOCIAL SYSTEMS, FROM THE FAMILY TO SOCIETY AT LARGE, COMPROMISE IS ONE OF THE BASIC CONDITIONS FOR AN EGALITARIAN AND DEMOCRATIC ORDER. In Sweden especia lly, compromise has played a vital role in the development of the welfare state since the 1930s. The so-called "Swedish model" can for instance be said to be built on a number of decisive comprom ises: e.g. between capitalism and socialism, the individual and the collective, private and public. Compro mise House is an experimental house project which re-evaluates and explores the concept of compromise as a positive and productive principle which is applied to every aspect of the house: from the design process itself to the aesthetic, spatial and social solutions of the building.

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As research for the project, the antithesis of comprom ise - the ideal has been studied. A number of experiments with compromises between various architectonic and social ideals have resulted in new and unexpected solutions, whic h have formed the basis for the design of the building. To start with, the form of the house is a compromise between two ideal houses: the statistical average Swede's conception of an ideal house - a vernacular house with a saddle roof, a garret, a porch and a balcony and a visionary ideal house as proposed by the Swedish architect Sven Markelius in 1932. The two different ideal house types - the populist and the elitist - have then been merged into a strangely looking comprom ise where the front facade's wooden panelling and saddle roof gradually transform to a futuristic back facade with a crystalline form, horizontal strip wi ndows and a flat roof. The Compromise House is a dwelling-place for people who do not fit in to today's standardised solutions based on the needs of either single persons or nuclear families. Instead, the Co mpromise Building merges various traditional pairs of opposites such as single-family house and apa rtment house, radical and traditional, open plan and separate living areas, privat e and public, single and family, work and leisure.

THOMAS DUSCHLBAUER (

Searching for the 'everyday'

181 Within our 'cult ure industry' during the last 30 years a significant shift has happened . Due to different kinds of life-styles the so called 'everyday life' has become more and more important for the selling of products and services. Everyday life is now the source of inspiration, and with the help of casting shows, chat rooms and peer-to-peer marketing the traditional spheres of consumption and production have been imploded.

AS A RESULT EVERYTHING CAN BE REGARDED AS PART OF OUR POPULAR CULTURE, BECAUSE POP DOES NOT ONLY PICK UP ELEMENTS OF OUR EVERYDAY LIFE, OUR WHOLE EVERYDAY LIFE GOES POP.

Introduction The primary aim of The FrankfurtSchool was to save the individual from a world dominated by marketing and administration that eliminatesthe space of being oneself. Due to the fact that nearly all of our popular slogans in advertising - like "Just do it" or "Go create" - are suggesting the opposite, it is wort h making a critical analysis of the critical theory and "sales representatives" of The Frankfurt School like Theodore W. Adorno or Max Horkheimer. During their time, popular culture as a socio-cultural phenomenon was at its beginning. Although for examp le Adorno did not explicitly work with the term "popular culture"or "pop", his critique of the culture industry gave insights into its structure and made an analysis possible that can also be continued in our contemporary popular culture with all of its differentiations and a much huger dimension as during the 50s and 60s. Later on this critique and methodology moved very slowly forward and in different directions like the cultural studies. With the term 'culture industry' Adorno and Horkheimer made a judgement on mass culture. In their "Dialektik der Aufkliirung" (1947) or 'Dialectics of Enlightenment' the linguistic differentiation between the modernist mass culture and the culture industry - which was mainly an initiative by Adorno - made clear that this culture does not spontaneouslydescend from the masses like e.g. folk culture. While mass culture suggeststhat it is an authentic culture by the masses the term culture industry refers to something which is enforced and not genuine. Adorno obviously was aware that the sound of this term with its connection between 'c ulture' and 'industry' could also be regarded as polemic. Therefore, he emphasised that the term 'industry' should not be taken literally. It just refers to the fact of standardisation of the thing itself and to the rationalisation of the techniques of distribution, but not to the way of production. The dimension of the industrial relates to a technical rationality as inherent perversion of the enlightened thinking that seizes the fine arts and the spirit in general. Typical for this process are also former forms of ra-

tionalisation like the bourgeois novel or Lessings new interpretation of the aristotelic poetic for the drama. Theseforms are going along with the change of work of arts from cultic objects to pure commodities. Although the industrial should not be taken solely as relating to mechanisms of production but as a critique of standardisation, we should be aware that Adorno and Horkheimer often made use of exam ples of the Hollywood film industry in order to describe the phenomena of the culture industry. During this time, the production was increasingly based on the division of labour - like at Fo rdist production sites, which is the reason why an analogy to the industrial sphere suggests itself. (Behrens 134) Adornos critique of the culture industry is a major part of the "Dialektik der Aufkliirung" and can be regarded as a theory of mass media and mass culture, which is very much influenced by Marx (Kellner) because the artists autonomous disposal over the means as the articulation of the freedom of th art at least during the 19 century becomes substituted by the heteronomous power of the market that drives back this freedom and lets it appear as just a gesture within an apparatus of economy and administration.

NOT ONLY THE AUDIENCE BUT ALSO THE ARTIST LOST HIS/HER AUTONOMY. Exemplary for this is Kurt Cobain who became a cult figure with the help of the record industry. Even his spectacular suicide as an obstinate gesture of refusal has contributed to a profitable myth, and according to Adornos critique of the culture industry this change through enlightened reason gained autonomy of the art into myth is also part of the system. This reduction of the artistic message to a set of a few manageable codes can be regarded as the prizefor the fact that art becomes consumeable to the public and not only to some privileged people of the upper class.

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According to Adorno's and Horkheimer's points of view culture is seen as a system, whereas other approaches are speaking of a patchwork because instead of a standardised and uniform culture the co-existence of different cultures is still possible. Regarding the messages of artistic production there is not really a contradiction because it belongsto the nature of our culture industry to hide its standardisation in order to simulate diversity and individuality. Concerning this diversity and individuality, during the past three decades a significant change in our culture has happened that makes it necessaryto reconsider what we know from Adorno and Horkheimer about the processes within the so called culture industry. This cultural change is based on democratisation as well as on fragmentation.

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In this context, David Chaney critically observes: It is important for my overall interpretation of change that why and how everyday life is becoming more significant should be understood and appreciated in relation to two processes I call radical democratisation and cultural fragmentation. I use radical in relation to democratisation to both indicate how forms of populism have become dominant in public discourse , and to alert readers to the ironic possibility that this has not entailed any substantial popular emancipation. Similarly, by using fragmentation in relation to culture I do not mean to imply that culture is becoming less important, quite the reverse, but rather that the authority of culture is increasingly dissipated and discredited. Both of these processes have to be seen as aspects of a broader process of informalisation. This broader informalisation is then a blurring of many of the authority structures dominant in earlier phases of modernity. In terms of these processes the everyday is coming to dominate cultural discourse but is not thereby more 'transparent'. (Chaney 5)

Accordingly, maybe a retrospective analysis of this cultural change is able to makethese processes more transparent and to give some insights into contemporary phenomena of our everydaylife. The starting point for this retrospective

analysis is the generation of the young, urban professionals or 'Yuppies'.

All for one Although the use of popular terms like 'Yuppies', 'Generation X' or 'Bobos' can be regarded as a simplification when we speak about the cultural developments during the past decades,we can discover some significant phenomena that are also reflected by the products of everyday life. Typical for Yuppies, the neo-conservative generation dominating during the Bos, was that it grew up in a time of constant prosperity, and this period was also very much influenced by mass media like television, magazines and records etc. The basic needs and material demands had been satisfied and with TV-commercials, bill-boards and fashion magazines the rise of the symbolic in everydaylife began.

THIS DEVELOPMENT CAN ALSO BE REGARDED AS THE BEGINNING OR A FIRST PHASE OF THE INFORMATION AGE. For David Brooks, in this age classes are defined by their way of consumption: Shopping may not be the most intellectual exercise on earth, but it is one of the more culturally revealing. Indeed, one of the upshots of the new era is that Karl Marx may have had it exactly backward. He argued that classes are defined by their means of production. But it could be true that, in the information age at least, classes define themselves by their means of consumption. (Brooks 61)

The Yuppie is a hard-working and well-educated being who tries to reward itself not just by consuming but also via the possession of expensive and mostly branded goods in order to demonstrate success. The Yuppie culture is still a material based culture but the products have increasingly become a symbolic expression of social status. The fact that goods are

meansfor the articulation of ones position within society is nothing new,but from this time on it was a: possible for people descending from different classes and b: with commodities that are mass products. For the first time,the claim for exclusivity and individuality has been fulfilled with branded and standard ised goods that are meant for mass consumption. Part of the neo-conservative mythology was that everyone can achieve everything by hard work and therefore products should no longer only be associated with belonging to a certain class but rather to a lifestyle. Although classes still exist, for the promotion of branded goodsthe creation of lifestyles becomes more and more important because lifestyle is on the one hand able to dissimulate the limits of different classes and on the other it makes it possibleto simulate individuality. Accordingly,the consumer has to believe that all is specially produced for one. One for all Typical for the youth culture of the late 70s and the 80s was its differentiation into movements like Punk, No Future, New Wave, Metal, Pop, Goth etc. At first these movements appeared quite authentic and independent but lat er on they were discovered by the fashion (e.g. Vivian Westwood), music (MTV) and film industry (Dirty Dancing, Footloose .. .) which tried to promote and wrap up their products with the codes of these sub- and sometimes counter-cultural movements. The problem was that, due to this kind of repressive tolerance and the absorption of the sub-cultural codes by the industry, the young generation was deprived of its protest. Instead, this generation had been confirmed in its different habits, attitudes and conceptions in such a way that the former teenage values also became import ant for adult lifestyle. Consequently, during the 90s a huge diversity of lifestyles appeared . These lifestyles were represented by conformists, workaholics, fundamenta l ecologists, followers of New Age, convinced underachievers etc. This was also problematic for the same industry that had been promoting their values because from now on it was no longer possible to find homo-

geneoustarget groups or to create messages which were appropriate for a greater audience. The marketing gurus of this time have been completely helpless and the proof for their helplessness was the term 'Generation X'. This term gives evidence that no one was able to give this generation a proper namethat is able to describe its characteristics becausethe only characteristic was that it had a lack of characteristics. The huge diversity of lifestyles made it hard to find the right products and the right messages for the right target group.

THE FACT THAT THE IGENERATION XI APPEARED DURING A TIME OF RECESSION, OF OVERQUALIFICATION BUT UNDERPAYMENT AND OF Me JOBS MADE IT EVEN HARDER. Fi lms like "Reality Bites" and "Dazed and Confused" have portrayed the someti mes difficult way of life of the Generation X. One way to move along with this new development was to create at first the target group - later called community and then to implement a product that can be equipped with functional and symbo lic value according to individual lifestyle. Typical for this process was the so called "Stussy Tribe". As a surfer, the Californian founder of this fashion label descendsfrom a sub-culture. After designing boards he beganto print his motives on textiles and promoted his products within different sub-cultures. The distribution happened through professionals in the scenes like OJ's or well-known athletes. Although the lifestyles of Hip-hop, Rap, Jungle, House or Techno are quite different and sometimes conflicting and, although the people wit hin these cultures communicate with different codes, all the consumers of Stussyhad onething in common: they joined the StussyTribe. They are different but united under one labelthat is able to representtheir diversity e.g. through different motives on the front or back of a T-shirt. Simi lar to this was the successful story of Swatch. What Rolex represented for the Yupp ie-

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Generation became the simple Swatch in various designs for the Generation X.

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Stussy and other brands like Vision Street Wear did exactly the opposite of what haute couture did before: they did not make fashionfor the street they made fashion from the street. They used everyday life as a source of inspiration for products of everyday life because people on the street no longer want - and are able - to articulate their individuality just through expensive goods, but through a product that represents a complex set of values wrapped up in a certain lifestyle. As a product the best way to be successful was just to be something basic that could be upgraded with own taste; something that suggested individuality not as an expensive and highly valued product for consumption itself, but as a means of interaction and communication within a lifestyle community.

All in one During the second half of the 90s - when Amazon and E-bay were founded - a new highly qualified generation left university, and due to the booming information and communication technologies and the inflating e-commerce bubble, there were a range of good jobs. The young int ellectual elite in the USA and in Europe took advantage of these opportunities, but in contrast to the Yuppie-Generation of the 80s it did not spent lavish amounts of money on luxuries. Instead,they did something, which was not really possible for the Generation X: they protested and they articulated their protests against the establishment and a bourgeois society with the most powerful weapon they had: a new kind of consumption . The new young urban professionals of the late 90s began to cultivate their lifestyles in a very academic and professional way. Fo r example, they grew up with the certainty that advertising does not exist to tell always the tr uth, but to tempt and to entertain, and they made use of the med ia in a completely different way than their parents did 20 or 30 years before. Therefore, on this symbolic level, they were entitled

to havethe competence to pick out what was useful just for the sophistication of their lifestyles. They became connoisseurs for the things of their everyday life, because they made a science out of everything in which they are interested in. Although this way of life can be regarded as a revolt againstold bourgeois values andthe idea of superiority in comparison to other classes, it paradoxically leads to a kind of expertise that functions as a mechanism of disintegration too.

THIS IS WHY DAVID BROOKS INTRODUCED THE TERM 'BOBO' OR 'BOHEMIAN BOURGEOIS' TO GIVE A NAME TO THIS GENERATION. According to his definition, a Bobo is never vulgar and the way of consumption can be characterised insofar as s/he always buys useful and functional things. Shopping therefore is not something simply materialistic, it becomes a symbolic act. Brooks observes:

Marx once wrote that the bourgeois takes allthat is sacred and makes it profane. The Bobos take everything that is profane and makes it sacred. We have taken something that mighthave been grubb y and materialistic and turnedit into something elevated. We take the quintessential bourgeois activity, shopping, and turn it into quintessential bohemian activities: art, philosophy, social action. Bobospossess the Midas touchin reverse: Everything we handle turns intosoul. (Brooks 102) As a matter of fact, the products are stuffed with different functions. A car, for example, is not simply there to overcome the distance from A to B, and it is not just a symbol for ones prosperity. It is much more complex because it should be even able to go "wild" with all its gadgetsto survive. It should be equipped for every possible demand because only in this case it is worth spending a lot of moneyand it has nevertheless been regarded as a kind of understatement and not as vulgar. The Bobos car can be described as a sporty

limousine with huge luggage-space and off-road qualities. It should be a professional car for managers, for rangers and for commerc ial travellers as well. It should be something that one can instantaneously turn into something else because it has "inner values". Therefore, our everyday life becomes more and more sophisticated and even simple things can have different functions and be part of a nearly scientific discipline. About 30 years ago no one really cared aboutproducts like oil or vinegar. Today some consumers pay a fortune for certain vinegar produced in Tuscany or special oil from olives that are harvest ed and pressed at full moon . These phenomena might have something to do with a consciousness for quality but they are much more related to a concept for the expression of individuality. Even after 9/11 and the slowdown of the economy, this process of sophistication and professiona lisation is still going on, because it is in some ways independentfrom income or social status. Everyone is able to become an expert in a special field of consumption. Some have specialised in last minute trips, some in internet auctions and others are professional bargain hunters.

Conclusion From this point of view, individuality can not be seen as completely eliminated by a world dominated by marketing and administration, because more and more consumers have adopted a professional attitude towards shopping that can not be dismissed just as a mature judgement. Shopping is a complex and conscious way of creating ones own lifestyle or even a way for the articulation of "revolt" and "protest". Consequently, shopping can also be regarded as a productive activity. This is also valid for the producers of commodities and services which are absorbing this "protest" in order to create new productsthat confirm their consumers attitudes. Not enough,this kind of market populism or buttom-up economy is also able to prevent any difficulties if it leaves the

decision aboutthe things that will be produced to the consumers. For example, in Germany the audience was asked which subject the film of a famous producer should have. Afterwards he was able to convince his critic s by saying that "his" film was the decision of the vast majority and consequently he was not responsible for any complaints about the quality or about the discrimination of gay people in the movie . Similar ways are taken by casting shows and reality TV or, for examp le, by an E-bay auction where people have been able to bid for a part in a movie ('Wer ist Paul?") that will be produced by this company in order to show us not celebrities, but "normal" people in our everyday life.

IN THE NAME OF IIINDIVIDUALlTY II AND IN ORDER TO GET RID OF ANY RESPONSIBILITY AND TO COME CLOSER TO THE SO CALLED IIAUTHENTICITY II OF EVERYDAY LIFE, THIS TYPE OF MARKET POPULISM NOWADAYS TURNS THEIR CUSTOMERS INTO QUOTA-RANDY POPULISTS. THEREFORE, EVERYDAY LIFE ITSELF INCREASINGLY BECOMES A VALUABLE COMMODITY.

Bibliography: Behrens, Roger. Adorno ABC. Leipzig: Reclam, 2003. Brooks, David. Bobosin Paradise. The New Upper Class and How They Got There. Chaney, David. CulturalChange and Everyday Life. Houndsmills/New York: Palgrave, 2002. Kellner, Douglas. Critical Theory Today: Revisiting the Classics. http://homepage.newschool.edu/ -quigleyVvcs/kellner.html

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Yuppies

Generation X

Bobos

Mobility

Exclusive and sporty cars like a Porsche (often used in order to conceal being a nouvea u riche)

"Basic" cars like the VW Go lf (that was advertised in connection with the indication 'Generation Golf')

Sports Utility Vehicles (SUVs) like a Range Rover or multifunctional cars like a Citroen Pluriel

Fash ion

Exclusive brands like Hugo Boss, Armani or Lacoste

Streetvvear from Stussy or Vision

Functiona l clothing like from Caharrt or Caterpillar or something with Gore Tex fibres

Living

Living on the top to show social status - the penthouse

Living together - in a community or respectively in a shared apartment

Living in a flexible home - the loft

Diet

Nouvelle cuisine

Organic and exotic food

Functional food and plain cooking

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G REG VAN ALSTYN E (

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From Induction to Incitement: Inside the Massive Chang e Project

DESIGN IS, IN FACT, A CYBERNETIC PROCESS BECAUSE IT TAKES THE FUNCTIONS OF COMMUNICATION AND CONTROL FROM A HUMAN OPERATOR AND EMBEDS THESE (AS IN A MICROPROCESSOR), INTO THE THING ITSELF. DESIGN MAKES THINGS MOVE, BUT THAT IS THE LEAST OF ITS POWER. FOR THE TYPE OF MOVEMENT THAT DESIGN PROJECTS INTO OBJECTS HAS THE INTENTION TO MAKE OTHER THINGS MOVE. DESIGN MODIFIES OBJECTS SO THEY, IN TURN, CAN MODIFY THE WORLD. Sanford Kwinter "The Gay Science (What is Lifel." in Life Style,by Bruce Mau ILondon: Phaidon Press, 20001. 35.

Thus far in the conference, we have heard about producers and parasites, opinion and outrage. Yesterday everyone except Ms. Lefaivre seemed to feel that populism was manipulative and bad. Well, I come to you today as a populist. I'm going to tell you about a project that is optimistic, sincere, and unabashedly populist. And I hope you will agree it is someth ing good. I'm the Director of the Institute without Boundaries (lw B) and I'm going to take you inside the IwB, and its fir st project, Massive Change. We wi ll look at what this project can tell us about the media, and populism. The Institute without Boundaries is a new, interdisciplinary design program offered by Bruce Mau Design in partnership with George Brown - Toronto City College. It's a year-long program open t o post-graduate and post professional candidates from a wide variety of backgrounds- arts, sciences, social sciences, business, journalism, new media . The mission of the IwB is to produce a new breed of designer. We seek to create the kind of agent that R. Buckminst er Fuller has called the comprehensive designer: "a synthesis of artist, inve ntor, mechanic, objective econom ist, and evolutionary strategist."

Change the world. Our clarion call is brief but audacious. What's common to successful candidates is that they all demonstrate the desire to change the world, and the belief that design is one of the most powerful ways to do it. The IwB is a team-based program. Our design method is iterative and heuristic. The curriculum is project-driven, hands-on and thoroughly based in a " Iearn-by-doing" approach. We do have readings, seminars, and so forth, but the program revolves around researching and writing an ambitious volume of original content and designing it for a real public. The IwB team spends a year inside the BMD studio. We work very closely with Bruce Mau. Studentswork with each other,with myself as the leader of the team, with other designers in the studio. In partnership with the studio's international collaborators and clients, we are researching and building a "team-based thesis project" with high-stakes, concrete deliverables and goals. This last idea is most important. The team creates a huge array of real outcomes for real clients and partners. The outcomes are intellectually and sensually rich, embodying original research, content and design. The results are produced and distributed to the widest possible public audiences. They bear the name of the studio and the school, and must uphold the standards and values of both. Induction I want to explain the title of my presentation - " From Induction to Incitement"- because these terms and this progression characterize our relationship with populism. Why do I use the term "induction"? The term quite precisely describes our current stage within the Massive Change project; it describes our method; it describes our desired outcomes; and I think it offers an answer the question , How can we distinguish "good populism"? Induction may be defined as follows: 1.An initial experience: initiation 2. Inference of a generalized conclusion from particular instances 3. Process by which a body becomes magnetized 4. Sum of processes by which the fate of embryonic cells is determined and morphogenetic differentiation occurs 1<

1< Adapted from Mirriam-Webster Online, www.m-w.com

Induction is an "initial experience" - the initiation we are producing for the students and ourselves in the studio. (It is also the name given to the first scene in an early English play.) Last year, 2003, was our inaugural year. A small team of six created astonishing results. This year we have eight students, and next year in January we'll haveten for 2005. Induction is also our method: "the inference of a generalized conclusion from particular instances." Basically, it means looking at a thing, anotherthing, anotherthing, until a pattern can be seen and described with some confidence. Induction is the method of biology. In our research we scan for patterns. We are engaged in what Marshall McLuhan has called, " predicting the present." McLuhan is a great inspiration for Bruce Mau Design and the IwB. However, if we had to name a spiritual leader it might be Bucky Fuller, for he not only a theorist but also a practitioner, a designer - analyzing, communicating, and ultimately also doing it changing the world. We've been interviewing numerous thinkers and practitioners. The idea is to build a network, while understanding what is going on in the world.

TRIPS TO THE FIELD VERIFY THE OBSERVED PATTERNS AND DEEPEN THE RESEARCH, AS DO IN-PERSON, PHONE, RADIO AND VIDEO INTERVIEWS ORGANIZED BY THE STUDENTS. In addition to this empirical process, induction also means the process by which a body is magnetized. This is of course metaphorical but interesting. To see why we must look at the first project of the IwB: Massive Change. Massive Change is about the future of global design.We're looking at design not in terms of aesthetics, but in terms of capacity. Massive Change is a project that asks: "Now that we can do anything, what will we do?" Though we are not the first to ask this. One project that we view as a significant precursor to ours is Stewart Brand'sWhole Earth Catalog from the late 1960s. It states almost an identical thought "We are as gods and may as well get good at it." We began with a quotation from the great historian Arnold Toynbee, which is repeated by former Canadian Prime Minister Lester B. Pearson, on the occasion of winning the Noble Peace Prize in 1957 for inventing peace-keeping:

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The twentieth century will be chiefly remembered by future generations not as an era of political conflicts or technical inventions, but as an age in which human society dared to think of the welfare of the whole humanrace as a practical objective. Arnold Toynbee, as quoted in Lester B. Pearson, "The Four Faces of Peace," (United Nations Association in Canada, http://www.unac.org/en/ link_learn/canada/pearson/ speechnobel.aspJ] We realized that this - the welfare of the whole human race as a practical objective - is, in fact, the project of design. We wanted to investigate the future of design, but without the baggage of the traditional design disciplines. So we identified " economies," or systems of exchange, in which design is a driver of change in the world:

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• • • • • • • • • • •

URBAN ECONOMIES MOVEMENT ECONOMIES ENERGY ECONOMIES INFORMATION ECONOMIES IMAGE ECONOMIES MARKET ECONOMIES MATERIAL ECONOMIES MANUFACTURING ECONOMIES LIVING ECONOMIES MILITARY ECONOMIES WEALTH AND POLITICS

Looking briefly at a few key stories from our research, we may begin with what we call the living economies. When Crick, Watson and Franklin unlocked the structure of DNA, they opened a space for design that had remained a mystery, beyond our manipulation. By rendering the realm of the living as a system of informati on, they handed to us the design capacityto eng ineer every aspect of life itself, from biological systems and products, to new forms of intervention in medicine and genetic engineering. Golden rice, for examp le, is a genetically modified organism or GMD product that combines daffodil genes wit h rice to serve as a carrier of beta carotene intended t o boost vitamin A and thereby combat blindness in malnourished children. The protato is a GMO potato that has been designed to offer enhanced protein content. Its advocates are working in India to try to forestall the kind of protestthat could end the project before its benefits can be seen. John Todd - creator of "eco-machines" - has over 30 years experience building and studying the use of plants and other organismsthat operate within carefully designed aquatic fil-

trat ion systems, in order to tackle one of the world's most challenging problems: the production of clean, toxin-free water. The featherless chicken,the work of Avigdor Cahaner, is a product of old-fashioned breeding, designed to withstand heat and thus provide vital protein to the developing world where the heat is often extreme and the cost of airconditioned farm buildings is prohibitive. In the realm of urbanization, we are looking for indications that architecture is moving beyond the romantic notion of the singular. By embracing manufacturing techniques and acknowledging the reality of the plural, we wi ll move architecture and urban planning to closer to the goal of providing urban shelter to all who need it. Ourwork is looking closely at phenomena including prefab, modular, glamorou s green, and building up, or pure, vertical extrusion.

IN MANUFACTURING WE ARE LEARNING TO "CLOSE THE LOOP.II No longer do we need to make products that movefrom cradle t o grave, from manufacturing to toxic landfill, but from " cradle to cradle." Here, the work of green architect Bill McDonough and chemist Michael Braung art is leading the way. In the economies of moveme nt we're studying and celebratingthe work of Dean Kamen, inventor of the Segway HT and the iBot. Kamen's Segway is the most visible of a veritable "scatt er plot" of different solutions being applied to the problem of scalable, intra-urban tr ansportation - how to go to the corner on an errand without at the same time burning fuel to carry the weight of a heavy, noxious, vastly over-powered vehicle. Within the energy economies, the story of the biomass stove is a clear example of distributed problem solving. A network of peop le working in numerous corners of the world is striving to refine the stove's design. Given the widespread use of these stoves in many parts of the world, a small change in efficiency means an enormous reduction in fuel consumed and associated human health problem s. Each effort forms a small piece of the puzzle . As we develop increased consciousness of the process, we understand the magnitude of the pot ential effects. The work in these areas has the power to positively affect millions of lives through even incremental improvements. In materials science, what was formerly just a passive input to the design process is now the object of tremendous innovation and promise.

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FEATHER LESS C H IC KEN

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Looking at information economies, one astonishing story is the Earth Simulator. This s upercomputer - the world's fastest - is usedto visualize our planet's climate, by simulating the interaction of a staggering number of variables. We conclude our project with a topic called Wealth and Politics. One significant story we've been discussing is the work of the Rotary Club within the Indian subconti nent. Their program of inoculations has virtually wi ped out polio in this vast region,through a massive, synchronized effort that leavesthe disease nowhere to turn. The benefits are truly immeasurable. How does all this relate to populism and the media? This question brings us to the remaining definition of induction: "The sum of processes by which the fate of embryonic cells is determined and morphogeneti c differentiation occurs." The common thread I seem to be describing in both the Iw B program and the key stories of Massive Ch ange is the notion of distributed agency.

TO UNDERSTAND POPULISM AS A POSITIVE PROCESS, WE MUST SEE IT OCCURRING WITHIN A POPULA TION THAT IS A COMPLEX SYSTEM COMPRISED OF POLITICALLY EFFECTIVE AGENTS. When we see ourselves as citizens as well as consume rs, agents of change as well as passive recipients of media messages, then populism may be seen as an emergent phenome non. When this process brings forth messa ges that uphold humanist goals and further the aims of human developme nt, then we are witnessing the effects of positive, emergent populism.

I MAINTAIN THAT IN THIS LIGHT, "EMERGENT POPULISM" IS GOOD. In contrast, "designed populism" is suspect. To circumvent a condition of exploitation, populism should be understood as an emergent phenomenon, accessible through induction. When used to further humanist aims within a discursive and critically aware process, media technologies, especially those with "many-to-ma ny" or network topologies, may be used to ampl ify desirable messages and patterns, by incitement. What this means is drawing out what is already there. It involves collective action. Agency must rema in distri buted. But how are we to ensure that agency remains distributed? It begins with language . Within the Massive Change project, one ap-

proach that we've identified and applied is something we have called the "who is we?" problem. Technolog y =they In conversations about science and technology, what is the most common word used? The word is "they," as in "they succeeded in cloning a mammal" or "they can store t ens of millions of transistors on a chip." Emergent populism

=we

Within the Massive Change project, we're discovering what it means to use the word "we ." Popu lism is about "w hat people want". But which people? Is it about "they"? No, it's about "we." What "we" want. We the people. Massive Change Project Outcomes • 1500 sq m traveling exhibition • book published by Phaidon Press • feature-length document ary film • evolving web sit e • speakers series • weekly radio program • poster project for Venice Biennale • VR model for Digifest festival • line of product • more.. . Sowhat does all this look like when enacted through communications med ia? • The Massive Ch ange book is conceived as a tool, inspired by works like the Whole Earth Cat alog, and by Marshall McLuhan and Qu entin Fiore's resonant and popular paperbacks, such as The Medium is the Massage. • We are planning a Massive Change film that will be unabashedly populist in its att itude. We would like to secure U2 pop star Bono as the narrator. Ou r goals for the film include being screened in all major festivals and winning an academy award. • A speakers' series, featuring world-changing visionaries from across the disciplines, will mark the gala opening of Massive Change in Vancouver this autumn [October 20041. It will be hosted and moderated by Bruce Mau along with Emmy-award winning U.S. television personality, Charlie Rose. • We created a poster series, comm issioned by curators Molly

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Nesbitt, HansUlrich Obrist and Rirkrit Taravanija, for their project Utopia Station in the 2003 Ven ice Biennale. The tone and approach is the epitome of D.I.Y.

method is explicitly inductive, or step-by-step.

• The marketing for the Vancouvershow will use guerilla techniques, e.g., cheap posters on the street, campaignstyle placards in front yards, students enlisted to go to bars and start conversations that will be overheard and joined; and provocative coasters and coffee sleeves distributed in those same bars.

Incitement is being moved to action, stirred up, spurred on.1< This is the aim of Massive Change - being moved to action toward creating a better world for ourselves, and for the wider world. It is perhaps best captured in the words of a recent IwB graduate Lorraine Gauth ier, who along with fellow graduate Alex Quinto started a new companydedicated to social entrepreneurship: Massive Change changed us all. It gave us a window to the world of artists, scientists, inventors, biologists, four star generals, craftswomen in Africa and Israeli chicken breeders who are changing the world one person at a time. Co mmunicating with them inspired optimism that we expressed in posters for the Venice Biennale's Utopian Station project 'we will eradicate poverty' and 'we will provide energy to the entire world'. People asked 'who is weT El even months later, some of us concluded 'we' are we. Yo u'll find us at workworthdoing.com. Lorraine Gauthier, IwB 2003.

• To reach peoplewhere they really live - i.e. in the land of shopping - we're working with noted maker of homeware products, Umbra. Of course the product packaging will also be very clever, with captivating text, etc. • Among the early experimenta l commissions was a virtual reality project created for Digif est, a Toronto-based festival of digital culture. • Naturally we have an evolving Web site at massivechange.c om

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• One member of the 2003team, Jennifer Leonard, created a weekly one hour radio program which has been one of the most successful and populist vehicles of the project, attracting listeners from thousands of miles away. Massive Change Radio is available on the FM band in Toronto, around the world via Internet, and in MP3format from our Web site. • A 1500-square-metre exhibition is in manyways the centerpiece of the project. Commissioned and organized by the VancouverArt Ga llery, the show will open this Octobe r 2 and will tour internationally through 2007.

Incitement

I can imagine no more fitting answer to the central question of Massive Change:

NOW THAT WE CAN DO ANYTHING, WHAT WILL WE DO? http://www.massivechange.com http://www.institutewithoutboundaries.com

An interesting aspect of running a school inside a design studio is the problem of articulating the studio's method. There is a particular term that describes the studio's problem-solving method, as well as the pedagogical approach we are using with the IwB students.

IN FACT, ONCE ONE HAS EM BRACED THIS M ETHOD, GROWTH AND REINVENTION ARE INEVITABLE. The method, known as " heuristic: ' tends to proceed along an experimenta l or unknown route, employing exploratory problem-solving techniques and self-educating techniques including the continuous evaluation of feedback. Ourgoal is morphogenesis, or the birth of new forms, and the

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1< Designers seek t o answer the question, "What do they want?" referri ng to the people (or population] who will use the products, services and environmentsthat are being designed.

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2< Here is a deck of fifty-one methods to help designers discover relevant answers to that question. These "Methods Cards" have been developed by the human factors people at IDE O; I'll t ell you more about them later.

3< First, let me give you a little background about IDEO.

4< The best way to find out about us is to go to www .ideo.com.

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8< One of the features is aboutthe publication of "Extra Spatial", a bookthat shows examples

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of designs of interactive environments by IDEO. The cover is made of a thermally sensitive material, which becomes transparent when touched.

9< One of the examples inside is the Stanford Center for Innovati on in Learning. 10< A building in the old Quad has been re-designed to create both an environmentfor learning, and an environment for learning about how learning happens.

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11< Here is a crowd of IDEO peop le trying to learn to look in the same direction, with the aid of stereo glasses. 12< When we ask the question, "What do they want?" who are the "they" that we are talking about? 13
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14( "They" are sometimes very different from the designers at IDEO, for example this family who own and operate an ApproTEC Irrigation Pump in Africa.

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15( Or at the other end of the scale, the people who shop at the Prada store in New York. 16( Designs are directed at some future time, when the implementation of the idea is complete. How can we anticipate what "they" will want in the future?

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17< One technique is to create conceptsfor future products and interactions, as with this series of designs for the year 2010. 18< This POA has screens on both halves, operated by touch, stylus and voice input. 19< Here is a large interactive flat screen tablet, like a digit al drawing board.

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20< This communicator is small and light enough to be easyto wear.

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21< A hydrogel adhesive back fastens this sports watch and performance monitor directly to the skin. 22< The subtitle of this conference is " Populism and Media." What about the media? Here are some examples of designsfor new media.

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23< The design for this electronic bookwas acclaimed, but the closed architecture limited its success in the ma rketplace. 24< This electronic magazine is succeeding as an ext ension of the mag azine format across multiple platf orms, benefiting from open architecture. 25< In this examp le, a new medium is used to connect people in an office complex, who work on opposite sides of a lake.

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26< An int eractive cube is situated in the middle of the water.

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27< The people who work in the buildings can control the images on the cube from their mobile phones, selecting content and playing games.

28< Back to the main question, " W hat do they want? "

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32< Here are some examples. In the Ask category, the surgeons who participated in the design of this instrument identified strongly with the result, because they were part of the design process. 33< In the Look category, IDEO has a library of individuals from various walks of life, to help us remember that we are not the same as everyone else. Here is a fireman from San Francisco. 34< Here are his tools on the back of the fire engine.

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35< Here is his database. 36< This is a bicycle messenger, also from San Francisco.

37< These are her bicycles.

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38< It seems that she has had a passion fo r bicycles since she was a litt le girl.

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39< Here are her too ls f or mainta ining the bikes . 40< Here are her too ls for a night on the town.

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41< In the Learn category, this is a stroller designed for parent and child. 42< This " Affi nity Diagram" was prepared early in the projectto analyse the issues that could inspire the design. 43< In the Try category, this is a remote-control led underwater video camera. At the start of the project, the design team played a game to tryo ut the challenge of designing the controls.

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44< One player stood holding a video came ra, inside a room containing three chairs, one with a candy bar on the seat.The second playe r sat outside the room, in front of a mon itor displaying the image on the video came ra; they instructed the first playerto move the camera and themselves in search of the candy bar. This exercise made them quickly understand the difficulties of navigation. The image shows the final design. 45< I hope that these methods and examp les will help you to answer the question, "What do they want?" 46< Thanks!

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JOSE MIGUEL IRIBAS (

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BENIDORM . The reasons for success

THE PAST CENTURY HAS BEEN CHARACTERISED BY THE DEMOCRATISATION OF "ARISTOCRATIC" CONSUMPTION (THAT IS, THE PARTAKING OF GOODS AND SERVICES THAT HAD PREVIOUSLY BEEN RESERVED FOR THE NOBILITY). Benidorm represents a step in this direction, and can be assigned to that category of icons that embody the processof popu larisation and mass marketing: autos, inventions like the ballpoint pen, the light er or windsurfing, digital watches, the movies and TV, the transistor or pret-a-porter clothes. Benidorm is the "lusty" concretion of the social contract in the context of a welfare state, a man ifestation of the fact that paradise - albeit with interruptions - is real and attainable by the proletariat. It is a prize for the working class, one that guarantees the social peace in these spheres. As Henri Lefebvre put it: "the hard-earned pleasure of the slave." Cu lturally, Benidorm is justified as an effective, salutary ersatz for the rural folk festival that recreates the cycle of accumulation and dissipation by means of seemingly trivial but absolutely essential offerings. The preponderant alcohol, dance and furtive sex that constitute the basis of what Benidorm has to offer were the constant and indispensable elements of the Bacchanaliasthat began with Dionysian fasts and ranged all the way to the extraordinary folk festivals that we have carried on to this day. Benidorm is the ongoing industrial San Fermin, which was organised for those whom industrialisation had robbed of their right to hold such festivals.

FOUNDATIONS OF THE URBAN PLANNING PROPOSAL

The controversial urban model of Benidorm is the conscious result of a process of reflection on urban planning that was carried out from 1952 on and led to the 1956 Ge neral Urban Planning Plan, which proposed a garden city with four-storey buildings placed perpendicular to the sea.

The unsatisfactory result of the first buildings constructed according to this criterion brought about a continuous process of reflection that led to three planning instruments from 1958 to 1963. The 1963 revised Plan kept the original roads and the urban use planned for 1956, but it granted total freedom for the layout of buildings on each plot of land. Although there was no height limit, it was obligatory for buildings to be built with a separation of at least 14 metres.

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This model has shown an incomparable functional efficiency, although it has some disadvantages in the case of land with rough topography or in hillside occupations. The large numbe r of tall buildings has considerably reduced the cost of constructing and maintaining infrastructures, the dependence on cars, and horizontal mobility, and it has generated an extensive range of complementary activities. As a result, it has helped to solve urban engineering problems.

This model is especially suitable for charter tourism and for elderly customers, because it allows tourists to get around without a car. Furth ermore, this mod el has brought about an urban maturing processthat has led to a specialised use of spaces,ensuring high efficiency in urban engineering processes (producing citvl and defining an efficient spatial segmentation of tourist offer (product citv).

As a result, more and more tall, south-facing buildings were constructed. This volumetric layout ensured that a large area could still be used for ancillary uses (swimming pool,garden s, car park), which would later prove to have a critical function for the city. Furthermore, the layout of the buildings ensured that all flats received maximum sunlight.

This hygienist Saxon model encountered a basic problem: the discontinuity of facades made it difficult for the street t o become the most important urban element. This necessary objective was approached through the creation of the socalled businesstrays, but it was finally achieved through a tacit consent of the illegal occupation of land left by the obligatory separation between buildings for profitable, hotel, catering and business purposes.

However, the actual densityis less dramatic than what can be assumed a priori by looking at photographs. Without including the land housing Terra Mitica theme park andthe tourist complexes joined to it, that is, counting only the consolidated urban area, Benido rm now occupies a surface area of 9 squa re kilometre s and has room for approximately 370,000 people, of which only slightly morethan 50,000 are residents. This means that the popu lation density is just above 400 people per hectare, which is considerably below the figure for any multifunctional city. Densitystudies carried out for the General Urban Planning Pla n showed that a better use of urban land could have been achievedwith three-storey buildings between party walls.

However, what sets Benidorm off from other tourist destinations are its tall buildings. In fact, of a total of 200 skyscrapers (buildings of more than 75 metres in height) in Spain, 132 are in Benidorm, in contrast to 43 in Madrid, 18in Barcelona, and only 7 in the rest of Spain. Benidorm ranks third in Europe with regard to the number of skyscrapers, surpassed only by London and Milan.

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QUANTITATIVE ARGUMENTS Since 1973, Benidorm has been the most visited tourist desti nation in Europe. Furthermore, the advantage it has over its competitors wit h regard to visitor numbers continues to increase year after year. Th e number of tourists per year (excluding thosethat visit the city more than once) is now well above 5 million.

Benidorm has more hotel beds than any other city in Europe, apart from London, Paris and Madrid. However, once the buildings currently under construction are opened, Benidorm will move up to third position and will have many more beds available than Madrid. If parahotel accommodation (i.e. single-management apartment towers) is counted as hotel accommodation, Benidorm's dynamic offer greatly exceeds 100,000 beds, which is 2.5 times higher than the offer of accommodation in Madrid.

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With regard to the number of apartments offered, there is capacity for more than 220,000 tourists, and annual occupancy exceeds 70% . The ana lysis of water consumption indicatesthat Benidorm reaches a total of 370,000 inhabitants in August, of which more than 300,000 are tourists.

Over the last five years, hotel occupancy figuresfor Benidorm have surpassed the numbers for any other tourist desti nati on in Europe, including destinations in the Canary Islands. In fact, annual average occupancy figures have sometimes even exceeded 92% of available rooms.

No other notable tourist destination, either in the Iberian Pen insula, in the Canary Islands or in the Balearic Islands, has a better seasona l performance . An analysis of seasonal ity indicators shows that the average hotel occupancy is higher than 75%.

Benidorm has the largest number of second residences in the region known as Marina Baixa. These provide accomm odation for more than 150,000 peop le, and are mainly occupied by foreign residents. Every afternoon, 40,000 tourists accommodated on the rest of the north coast of the province of Alicante go to Benidorm in order to enjoy its offer of shopping and leisure facilities.

Benidorm offers a large number of very diverse complementary activities. These are concentrated in high density areas, especially appropriate for people who do not have a vehicle of their own.

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QUALITATIVE ARGUMENTS The main reason for Benidorm's success is its tourist offer, which is very well adapted to the real requirements of tourists. Therefore, in contrast to other successful tourist destinations, such as LasVegas, Benidorm defines its general offer model according to the needs of its customers.

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The structural balance of its accommodation offer and its excellent seasonal performance ensure the stability of staffing numbers, provide an elementof dynamism to the overall structure, and allow businesses to recover their investment over a considerably longer period (calculated in months of actual activity],

The dynamism of its offer of accommodation and the high level of customerturnover, together with the existence of a large numberof potential customers, has led to an urgent need for a very diverse and complex range of additiona l activities, which is higher thanthat of any other rival destination in Europe.

The existence of numerous complementary activities offered by Benidorm, as well as in the Marina Baixa region as a whole, is due to the fact that they haveto cater for the needs of many different types of tourists. This represents both the cause and the consequence of the success of the city and its capacity to adapt to a wide range of different customers.

The constant increase in the number of available beds has not reduced its extraordinary occupancy rat e, which lies abovethat of any other rival destination in Spa in and Europe.

Not only hasthe orientation of Benidorm towards masstourism not avoided the consta nt qualitative improvement of its product, but has also fostered the extension, renovation and improvement of its hotels and its offer of comple mentary activities.

The coexistence of different types of customers ensures the diversificati on of the city's additional services, but the preeminence of charter holidays in the overall income from tourism fosters a high rate of consumption of space and time, which is also favoured by the high rate of shortduration holidays and small groups.

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J EFFREY INABA (

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Bust or Fo ld? The New Culture of Control

IT WAS THRILLING TO RECEIVE AN INVITATION TO PARTICIPATE IN AN EXHIBITION AT THE ORANGE COUNTY MUSEUM OF ART (OCMA).I< AN INSTITUTION LOCATED IN THE NAVEL OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA'S PREMIERE SUBURB, IT SEEMED LIKE THE IDEAL VENUE TO PRESENT OUR WORK. WE THOUGHT WHAT COULD BE BETTER THAN TO EXHIB IT MATERIAL ON SUBURBIA IN SUBURBIA? WE HAD NO IDEA THAT, IN THE COURSE OF EVENTS THAT FOLLOWED, WE WOULD ENCOUNTER A NEW CULTURE OF CONTROL.

HThe 2004 California Biennial was held October 12, 2004 - January 9, 2005. Peter Zellner and I exhibited material we produced and curated as ValDes, a nonprofit organisation dedicated to examining suburbia.

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Muse ums like DCMA have an int eresting and timely challe nge: how to attrac t an art audience in subur bia. DCMA's curre nt answer results in a precarious and compromised high-wire act. To achieve an "audacious balance of curato rial innovat ion and populism:' it provides hip events and displays unobjecti onable conte nt. W hile music offerings by indie-bands pumps out an atmosphere of coo l, the w orks on the walls remain within overly wroug ht standards of propri ety out of fear of alienati ng the mainstream. We believe there's a bett er solut ion.

When we received word from OCMA's director that part of our contribution would not be displayed because it contained 'offensive material; we first thought it was a joke.The ensuing discussions with the museum led to the disheartening conclusion that life thus far had not adequate ly prepared us to negotiate in this perilous situation.

WHAT WE TOOK FOR GRANTED AS THE BASIS OF REASONING DISSOLVED BEFORE OUR EYES. None of our appea ls to include the work in the show registered as logical. They were met with bafflement, as if it was implausiblethat what was so clear to them as an uncontestable code of propriety, was beyond our grasp. Alas, the decision had been already made, determined by hard and fast rules of a new social order unfamiliar to us. Still, we wondered, in the daring and spectacular world of contemporary art, how could a work by a couple of (vanilla?) architects possibly be considered offensive?

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THE MUSEUM INFORMED US THE PIECE IN QUESTION WOULD NOT BE EXHIBITED BECAUSE IT INCLUDED A PHOTOGRAPH OF A BAREBREASTED WOMAN. Such nudity was deemed inappropriate for unwarned visitors. The director's reprimand to us was: "You should have known better... This is Orange County. If this were LACMA or the New Museum things would be different," (which we think meant, 'We can't show that here. This is not a museum in a big city like Los Angeles or New York']. Looking back on the whole experience perhaps we were naiv e to think that, on the contrary, more could be displayed in suburbia than in the big city. Less beset by the codified tastes of high culture, we believe suburbia to be a more open, porous context allowing for a greater range of aesthetic production. The overall looser criter ia in suburbia creates a social environment more accepting of creative endeavours that would potentially fall under the category of bad taste if judged by higher standards of discernment. Disenchanting as it was, we were informed by the museum that this belief was indeed "na'lve ."2< Our humbling experience led us to wonder whether the institutional worldview like that found in the DC imposes devastating limit ations on suburban museums. Are suburban based museums essentia lly fucked when it comesto defining 2< Being

deemed 'narve" outsiders bummed us out, since , both Peter and I, grew up in the suburbs.

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a cont emporary mission? How does a suburban institution program wit hout comprising its content in fear of alienating its local base? For OCMA, a museum that boasts an "audacious balance of curatorial innovation and populism," this is a particularly difficult high-wire act to perform.3< How wi ll it continue to seek critical respect nationwide while not offending 'Red County' patrons nearby? What is poignant to us about all this is that ironically, our withheld piece, entitled, "Taste is Waste" addresses the very issue of curatorial mission in suburbia. The unshown 12 ft. x 16 ft. banner asks if there is a productive place for the standards of high culture in the suburbs.

WE PROPOSE TO JETTISON, OR STRIP AWAY, 'GOOD TASTE' AS THE MEASURE OF APPRECIATION FOR THE AESTHETIC WORK GOING ON OUTSIDE THE CITY.

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Gett ing rid of highbrow values is a necessaryfirst-step to understand suburbia on its own terms. When evaluated from a refined point of view, a lot of suburban stuff may not seem like much. Yet when considered with cruder expectations, its social phenomena, forms of collective expression and patterns of development may very well appear more inventively progressive than their urban counterparts. (We believe the suburban nudist senior citizen comm unity depicted in Taste is Waste is one example of such a social phenomenon .) The irony for us is that, in an effort to foreground the aesthetics of suburbia, we were sidelined by suburbia's preeminent adjudicator of aesthetic taste. Rather than challenging the codes of high culture, museums like OCMA seem reckoned to impose an even more limiting criterion on content than those of urban venues. What is new about this culture of control is the institutionalisation of an aesthetic arena that until now was far more openthan that found in the city. Even worse, as an institution that aspires to be "at the forefront of the art scene," OCMA appears determined t o nudge its way frontward without taking advantage of things happening in its backyard .4< Will OCMA fold on its greatest asset: the potential to function as the leading platform for presenting the culture of suburbia - America's dominant social condition? Its resources and locale present a unique opportunity to raise the art institutional bar by asserting answers about the relevance of this suburban society. Forced to choose between exhibiting boobies, or institutionalising a new editorial policy on suburban life, we'll go with the boobies .

3< Cited from The New YorkTIme s by the museum's director at the Biennial's opening gala 9 Oct. 04. The New YorkTImes, 29Aug 2004; Section 2, Arts and Leisure Desk, ART, pg. 2. 4< Fromthe OCMA California Biennial Press Release at www.ocma.net

Wha t if w e st op trying to turn suburban wate r into urban wine? Inst ead aspiring t o meet the sta ndards of high culture, w hat if we made an eff ort t o acknowle dge and contribute to th e col lecti vity that is sprawl? Is the aesthet ic culture of subur bia ri cher in content and more inve ntive in media tha n the art exhibite d in suburban museums? Let' s low er th e bar of good art and apprec iate "bad t ast e:'

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CHRISTIAN KUHN (

Compl exity and Populism

THE TERM IIPOPULISM II ORIGINATED IN THE POLITICAL ARENA WHERE A POPULIST IS SOMEONE WHO UNDERSTANDS HOW TO INSTRUMENTALISE PEOPLE'S FEARS AND LONGINGS TO ADVANCE HIS OWN INTERESTS.

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In pluralist societies in which "the folk" has long since become a heterogeneous population, his typical target audience includes disadvantaged social strata. The populist amplifies their feelings of facing crises and threats, but simultaneously endowsthem with group cohesion and hope. In going about this, he does not address their rational faculties but rather their feelings, and simplifies complex problems until simplistic solutions positively leap forth. There is a historical reason why this term has decidedly negative connotations in Germ an-speaking Europe and is used nearly synonymouslywith demagog uery, incitement and rabble-rousing. In most other countries, populism is indeed considered a dubious politi cal tactic due to its extreme oversimplifications but not one that necessarily pursues mora lly reprehensible aims. Such simplification is legitimated by pointing out that the populist is, after all, not addressing the rationality of the elites but rather the political instincts of the unedu cated mass es.U 1< For a discussion of this in the context of South American populist regimes, see Dorna, Alexandre. Wer ist Populist? Le Monde Diplomatique: November 14,2003

The current architectural discourse - in German-speaki ng countries as well - increasingly tends to adopt a neutral, morally non-judgmental interpretation of the term.2( Architects, it is said, must take leave of the fantasythey have fostered since the heroic days of Modernism in whic h they bear responsib ility for the fate of the world, and finally accept that what is good is what is pleasing, The time is ripe, since architecture has never been as popular as it is right now. Buildings by Rem Koolha as, Herzog & de Meuron and other superstars are equally well received in the architectural scene as by the general public. Thus, architecture today has a historically unique opportunity to become a part of mass culture. Liberation from its elitist market niche would provide entree to a mass market comparab le to that of pop music with its subtly differentiated stylistic variations and diversified star system. As we all are aware, this call to show more consideration for the sensibilities of the general public is not new, What Alexander Tzonis and Liane Lefaivre wrote back in 1975 in their essay

"IN THE NAME OF THE PEOPLE: THE POPULIST MOVEMENT IN ARCHITECTURE" 3 <, WAS NO MANIFESTO FOR THE FUTURE BUT RATHER THE HISTORICAL ACCOUNT OF A MOVEMENT THAT WAS ALREADY PRETTY MUCH WASHED UP. Tzonis and Lefaivre did not identify the origins of the populist movement in the aesthetic reworking of popular culture as had been undertaken by Peter and Alison Sm ithson in the 1950s and Robert Venturi and Den ise Scott-Brown in the '60s, 2( W here as Issue 162 (20021 of A rch+ was sti ll dwel ling on t he " Temp-

t at ions of Populi sm: ' t he curre nt Issue 171 - under th e edito rial dire ct ion of IGMA Stuttga rt - rec ommends that t he crisis-s haken archite ct ural sector finally get away fr om t he natve pragmati sm of the maste r builder and exercise t he " pop opt ion." 3( Publi shed in German in Bauw elt: J anuary 1975

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What the two authors saw as determinative was rather the attempt in the '60s and early '70s to realise a people's architecture that went beyond elitist aesthetics and did so without the imposition of state power, in a participative way or even totally dispensing wit h professiona l architects. It was said that since the end of World War II, architects, secure as they were in their privileged position as an extension of the welfare state and in the spirit of a bourgeo is aesthetic, had been blue-printi ng right past the "true needs of huma n beings." This form of populism cast aside pseudo-scientific or artistically brilliant strategies in favour of the right of users to design their world themse lves. Architecture's flirtation with the hoi polloi was, however, a brief one. After a detour via the illusion of having discovered in architectural history aesthetic constants that transcend individua l classes and cultures, architectural Postmodernism ultimately brought about the return to elitism. "That populism had a liberating effect," Tzonis and Lefa ivre wrote at the end of their essay, "is beyond dispute. It succeeded in numerous instances in thwarting the intentions of an arbitrary, authoritarian and wasteful regime 's mode of dealing with buildings and human beings. At the same time, though, it cast a shadow over our society's prospects of coming up with architectural strategies to promote the commo n good and instead offered nothing but freedom of choice in a design supermarket and an increasingly fragmented and privatised world."

THE POPULIST MOVEMENT OF THE 19705 HAD BEEN VICTIMISED BY ITS OWN SIMPLIFICATIONS. Were the secret aesthetic codes of the professional architects all that had actually been standing in the way of correspondencebetween users' needs and artifacts?Wasn't it rather morethe case that these needs could form on their own, expressions of social dynam ics and symbols of power and difference? Populism that saw its sole objective in helping the "true needs of mankind"to achieve breakthroug h was so abstract that it paradoxica lly could neve r become popular. At first glance,the latest populist movement in architecture

cannot be accused of such naivetv. It lodges no claims with respect to the "true needs" of the great masses of users; rather, it deals with the problem of the great masses of architects who are no longer being provided space on the design superma rket's shelves, where the brand-name products of the Master Builders are increasingly being replaced by the investors' own generic line. From this is derived the recommendation to concentrate on the design of the labels and marketing concepts.

BUT WITHOUT THE MISSION OF SAVING THE WORLD, THE POP ARCHITECT CAN'T GET BY EITHER. Consider, for examp le, the position that theoretician Gerd de Bruyn takes in the issue of Arch- dedicated to the "Pop Option": "The architect of the future must relinquish the burden of highly specialised knowledgeto the extent that he concentrates on coming up with a design concept that aims at improving the world not only in the sense of technical optimisation but also of all-encompassing human isation. It is this claim that enables a building to become useful and popu lar at the same time."4( Here, the old longings for allencompassing human isation of the world by architecture as an alternative design to technical optimisation by the dark forces of the establishment quietly, surreptitiously maketheir return known. A few pages later in the same issue of Arch-, Stephan Tubv shows that at least he is aware that the architect is once again being exalted as Obermensch thereby: "Become a sort of Master Builder to the tenth power. Feel responsible for every aspect of life. Become the consummate link in the value-added chain and construct an unbroken sequence of interconnected allusions in which fashion refers to jewellry, jewellry to perfume, perfume to religious promises of salvation, religious promises of salvation to manne rs of speaking, manners of speaking to magazines, and magazines to buildings."5( Indeed, for this Supreme Master Builder 4( de Bruyn, Gerd in conversation with Friedrich H. Dassler. Besser von den Menschen denken, als sie sind? arch- 171 : June 2004, p. 48 5( TOby, Stephan. Absolute Architekturbeginner. arch- 171 : June 2004, p. 71

too, the only hope is heroic failure (though heroic nevertheless). But the other alternative - "sensibly, being an architect" today - is relegat ed to the boredom of specialisation, from which one "can make quite a good living, but no more than that." TOby sees no third way between specialist and Grand Master of Total Architecture, unlessone's aim is "to die as a criti cal regionalist."6< It is rewarding indeedto pursue this tossed-off reference. As we know, critic al regionalism sought to establish a distanced connection to approaches that blurred the boundary betw een high culture and popular culture and made it permeable without abolishing it completely. Tzonis and Lefaivre, who coined the term in the early '80s,7< alluded thereby to the critical theory of The Frankfurt School. Whereas regionalism normally attempts, through the invocation of tradition, to magically transform a way of life from the genuine into the faux, critical regionalism is not a matter of tradit ional, regionally rooted forms but rather of the wil lingnessto take up a particular local situation and to take it as the st arti ng point of an architectural work.8< The origins of this attitude go back to the 1950s and have proceeded parallel to acceptance of the trivial and the popular as this was propagated by the Independ ent Group in Londo n and Team X. "Traditionally, the fine arts have been depend ent upon the vitality of the popular arts," is how Alison and Peter Sm ithson began their 1956 article

"BUT TODAY WE COLLECT ADS" IN WHICH THEY DEPICTED THE POWER OF ADVERTISING'S VISUAL VOCABULARY AS THE STANDARD FOR A CONTEMPORARY APPROACH TO DESIGN. 9( As would later be the case with Venturi and Scott-Brown, popular culture for the Smithson s remained an inspirati on and challenge, though without high and popular architecture compl etely blending together thereby. The critical apparatus of professional architectural practice does not utilise popular

mat erial without first processing it: rationalising the system of structures that have grown up around it, creating new interrelationships, adding complementary elements andtransforming it. The irony with which Venturi and Scott-Brown deploy popular codes cannot be equated with contempt for them. It does indeed modifythe level of reception - irony does not convey itself purely emotiona lly; rather, it always presupposes the use of reason. The notorious gilded TV antenna with which Venturi and Scott-Brown crowned their Guild House in 1963 can only then be understood as irony when one interprets it as a commentary on life in a home for the aged in which the television has become the centerpiece of social life. And this ironic allusion came through loud and clear, even if the residents and management construed it as a manifestation of the architects' cynicism and quickly had the useless symbo l removed . This irony was often groundsfor architectural Postmodernismto be charged with an elitist attitude - for inst ance, when Moshe Safdie referred to it as being nothing more than "privat e jokes in public places."10<

THIS ACCUSATION MAY BE VALID IN CERTAIN CASES, BUT FUNDAMENTALLY IT IS UNJUST. After all, this ironic refraction at least theoretically enables the user to glimpse behind only seem ingly familiar surfaces and discover additional levels of meaning. When this irony finally disappeared from Postmodern ism, all that remained was a neo-conservative populist current as manifested in tt1e 6< Ibid., p. 70 7< Tzonis, Alexander and Liane Lefaivre. Die Frage des Regionalismus. In: Andritsky, M. et al.: Fur eine andere Architektur, Frankfurt a. M, 1981 ; Kenneth Frampton popularised the term - wit h a slightly different orientation - in his 1985 book " Modern Architect ure: A Critical History." 8< Tzonis, Alexander. Introducing an Architecture of the Present. Critical Regionalism and the Design of Identity. In: Lefaivre, Liane, Alexander Tzonis. Critic al Reg ionalism. Archit ecture and Identity in a Globalised World. Prestel: 2003 9< Smithson, Alison & Peter. But Today We Collect Ads. In: Modern Dreams: The Rise and Fall and Rise of Pop. Cam bridge, Mass: MIT Press, 1988. pp. 52ff. 10< Safdie, Moshe. Private Jokes in Public Places. Inland Architect , 9/ 1981 ; pp. 20-27

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New Urbanism in the US today.ll< A problem that politi cal and architectural populism share is writing off the customers as bigger suckers than they really are. Nevertheless, in spite of the tremendous effectiveness of simple slogans and superficial images, politics and architecture ultimately have just as much to do with reason as they do with emotions. This holds true not only for the aspect of political and architectural implementation, whic h, in the absence of rationality, would succeed in accomplishing nothing concrete at all. (And when it comes down to the nitty-gritty, even radical populists gladly summon the help of "experts": for populist politicians,the spin doctor; for developers, the star architect.) Nor do the members of the group these messa ges target want always to be addressed solely on the emotional level. Politics and architecture are media in which social interests are formulated and the resulting conflicts played out. When there's no room left for this task amongst the popu lists' shorthand communiques, the clientele eventua lly loses interest.

The masses of the public, though, seemto be in a position to recognise such qualities and, more and more often these days, to demandthem.

THE PREREQUISITE IS THAT ARCHITECTURE NOW AND IN THE FUTURE NOT (OR AT LEAST NOT PRIMARILY) BE UNDERSTOOD AS A WARE AND A PRODUCT, BUT RATHER AS AN ARTISTIC MEDIUM THAT CRITICALLY REFLECTS ON THE COMPLEXITY OF A SPECIFIC SITUATION INCLUDING ITS SOCIAL, ECOLOGICAL AND ECONOMIC ASPECTS. The simplifications of populism have nothing to contribute to this.

THE PUBLIC'S CURRENT INTEREST IN THE ARCHITECTURE OF HERZOG & DE MEURON OR REM KOOLHAAS IS NOT, AS PROPONENTS OF NEW POPULISM IN ARCHITECTURE LIKE TO MAINTAIN, CONNECTED WITH SHIMMERING SURFACES AND A VISUAL KICK. The new Allianz-Arena in Munich by Herzog & de Meuron is not an engineering achieveme nt prettily packaged by architects any more than Rem Koolhaas' Embassy of The Netherlands in Berlin can be reduced to its beautiful shell. These structures owe their popularity, in no small measure, t o the capability of the architects to respond in innovative ways to the respective functional,formal and technological tasks they faced. The conceptual effort and t echnological competence that are preconditions of such achievements might be unreasonable demands for the great mass of architects.12<

1l< New Urbanism is a perfect example of architectural populism- the threat scenario is simple (sprawl. which was ranked as the second most serious nati onal threat in a survey conducted in the US before 9/11);the solution is simple (return to the traditional cityscape); decisive for success is the emotional message (hometown America and security in a traditional settinq]. On this subject, also see Ellen Dunham-Jones' remarks in this volume. 12< The current populist tendencies in architecture seem to constitute a case of autosuggestion by a sector in dire straits, one that has fallen into the trap of its own ego trip. It intensifies the feelings of crisis and threat held by the disadvantaged classes of the "creative economy," but simultaneously imparts group cohesion and hope.The Supreme Master Builder may properly experience his apotheosis through diffusion into popular culture and, thus, in the end, allow his impact to unfold and bring the gift of redemptionto all spheres of life.

Target Market Groups
Empty Nesters mId Retirees

Traditional and Non-Traditional Yowlger Singles and Couples Families

Metropolitan Cities The ur ban establishment Rowho use retirees

Small Cities/Edge Cities Middle-class move-downs Active retir ees Blue-collar retir ees Hometown retirees

Metropolitan Suburbs The social regist er No u vea u mone y Post-war subur ban pioneers Affluent em pty nester s Blue -collar bu tton -d owns Middle-American retirees Grey -collar co up les

Metropolitan Cities

Metropolitan Cities

Full-nest urban ites Mu lti-cultu ral famili es Black ur ban fam ilies La tin o ur ban famil ies In-tow ners

Urban elite e-typ es Urban ach ievers New bohemians Soul city sing les Young La tin os

Small CitieslEdge Cities Cosmo politan families Unibox transfe rees Mainstream fam ilies Sma lltow n d owntown ers Newcome r Latin o famili es Around-towners

Metropolitan SlIhllrhs

Town & Countrv/Exurb«

Full-nes t suburbanites Kius ' r' us Blue -collar familie s

Mains tream retirees Retired miners and millworkers

TOlVn & COllntry/Exurhs

Agrarian/Rural Back cou ntry seniors Rustic elders Agin g farme rs Sout hern country seniors Hardscrabble senio rs

Small CitieslEdge Cities 'lwentysornethings Un iversity / college affiliates

Metropolitan Suburbs The VIPs Fast-track prof essional s Suburban strivers Genera tion X

Agrarian/Rural PC pio nee rs

Exur ban elite Full-nes t exurb anites New -town families Pillars of the comm uni ty Middle-Am erican families Young homes teaders Blue-collar ruralites Military affiliates Factor y fam ilies No rma Rae-Ville

Agrarian/Rural Heart land fam ilies Small-town fam ilies Rustic fam ilies Farm tow n fam ilies Rural families

Nole: Most ma rket group name s ar e un ique to Zim merma n /Volk Associ ates p roprietary target mar ket meth od ology; the few gro ups with little or no data aug menta tion retain the Cla ritas PRIZM cluste r names .

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ELLEN DUNHAM-JONES

<

New Urbanism's Subversive Marketing

There are certain subjects that architectural discourse tends to avoid. These include: the suburbs, the middle-class, marketing and New Urbanism. Perhaps their associations with commerce, mass production and business are what make them so dist ast eful to those who prefer to focus on architecture as an art-practice. Architecture has always operated as both an art with an elite discourse, and as a service and trade with a more direct impact on public and private life.

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ARCHITECTS HAVE HAD TO JUGGLE THEIR ASPIRATIONS FOR THEIR WORK'S CONTRIBUTIONS TO PERCEPTIONS OF THE PUBLIC GOOD, WITH THE NECESSITIES OF MEETING MARKET DEMANDS. Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown's populist trading between high-culture and low or pop-culture, is but one means of foregrounding, if not resolving, this inherent t ension. Nonetheless, despite such examples, there is sti ll tremendous resistance to cross-contaminating the worlds of contemporary theory (or high-culturel and contemporary development, the everyday landscape of the suburbs, sprawl, the market and the middle-class. As someone who t eaches contemporary architectural theory but lives with contemporary suburban development, I'm convinced both desperately need each other. I'm not sure if that makes me a populist or simply an architect ural educator who wants to see her students more effectively realise their ideas, a citizen who wants to see more alternatives to the destructive aspects of sprawl, and an architect who's appalled that our discourse focuses on that minute percentage of construction that we're actually proud of and ignores the vast - and atrocious - majority of what we're building. So, as an urbanist, I'm on a mission t o bring together designers, critical theory and public policy with the suburbs, sprawl, and real estate development.

Sprawl - a populist landscape? The 2000 census confirmed that fifty percent of the U.S. population now lives in the suburbs. Frankly, one might have assume d it was even higher given that the suburbs have accounted for over seventy-five percent of construct ion over the past thirty years, and almost ninety-percent todayH As home to the majority of the nation's baby boomers, the target market for all consume r goods- including housing the suburbs have seen considerably more construction activity than rural areas or even the revived and gentrifying downtowns.2< However, while new downtown office towers and high-rise condos are highly visible in situ and in the med ia, the low-density spread of suburban development, most of it residential, has grown at a far faster, if stealthy, pace.3<

THE MAJORITY OF COMMERCIAL AND RETAIL SPACE IS ALSO INCREASINGLY IN THE SUBURBS, NOT IN THE CITIES. Twenty-six percent of office stock was in the suburbs in 1979. By 1999, the suburbs accounted for 42% of office space most of it in "edgeless" locations, New York and Ch icago were the only metropolitan areas with the majority of office space located in their primary downtowns, while the majority of office space in Phi ladelphia, Atlanta, Washington DC, Miami and Detroit was in their suburbs. 4< The so-called "New Economy" is sometimes referred to as "the exit- ramp economy" since so much of it, like Silicon Valley, is based in suburban office parks. Similarly, the amount of ret ail square feet per person continues to climb in the U.S., most of it in malls, strip malls and big box power centers.5< In contrast to urban retail, these building types tend to be auto-dependent, short-lived and require vast footprints.6< How is this ubiquitous landscap e produced? It is an example of our highly-specialised disciplines at work - each operating according to its own logic, more or less independently. This kind of development is in fact exactly what our regulations and our financing practices encourage. It usually beginswith the transportation engineers laying out what they consider to be a rural road. (To this day,the infamous "Green Book" that dictates design standards for all U.S. Departments of Transportation, bases level of service on a sliding scale between access (for urban conditions] and mobility (for rural conditionsl, with little consideration of suburban conditions or pedestrians. The assumption is that rural roads between cities should be designed to maximise traffic flow, so speeds are high, pedestrians are discouraged, and intersection in-

tervals and curb cuts are limited. Walkability is not a factor to be considered in what is defined as a rural road.

HOWEVER, THE NEW ROAD'S ACCESS TO CHEAP LAND BUILDS DEVELOPMENT PRESSURES AND THE PROSPECT OF TAX REVENUES. These, in turn, prompt local governments to grant commercial rezoning requests along the entire length of the new road. Then, the easiest thing for the developers to do is propose a stand-alone building that conforms to one of the 19 standardised real estate products regularly financed by the Wall Street Real Estate InvestmentTrusts (RE ITS) - the principal source of real estate financing today.7< The REITS do not care much about long-term value, let alone a building's contribution to local placemaking. They care more about predictable performance in the short term (so they can be traded on Wall Street just like pork bellies or any other comrnod itvl. Conseq uently,the more standardised the strip mall or self-storage facility or other single-use building, and the more well-known the lease holder (chain retailers are preferred over unpredictable Mom & Pop local stores], the easier it is to finance. The same logics apply to construction loans on residential development. The banks basetheir appraisals on comparables and extrapolations of existing trends. They wi ll only loan money at good rates on building types that have already sold well. As a consequence, sprawl continues to be monotonously reproduced as so many individual subdivisions plugged onto the supposed ly rural arterial road. Eve ntually you end up with a traff ic-clogged commercia l strip. Since every trip now has to funnel through it, the road no longer functions well for the through traff ic it was designed for or for the numerous destinations that now line its sides. The litany of problems associated with this kind of growth are familiar: traffic , social segregation, lack of public space, jobs/housing imbalances, disinvestment in cities and firstring suburbs, and unsustainable environmenta l impacts to wildl ife habitats and air and water quality. A recent study by American Forests states that U.S. cities have lost 20% of their trees in the last ten years primarily to urban sprawl and highway construction.N The low-density development pattern creates automob ile dependence and has resulted in such dramatic increases in vehicle use that exhaust emissions from automobiles have replaced smokestack emissions from factories as the principal source of leading toxic air pollutants in the U.S.9< Similarly, runoff pollution from developed land is now the nation's leading threat to water quality.l0< Almost one hundred American cities now suffer

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with chronic lack of compliance with Clean Air and Clean Water standards. And, it is not only environmenta l health that is affected. Recent studies suggest a correlation between urban sprawl and human sprawl health. Obesity is now an epidemic in the US and, while much of it is caused by our eating habits, the physical form of our habitat is also an important factor.11< Peop le living in suburban environments tend to lead extremely sedentary lives: they work in offices or learn in classrooms - sitting, they drive everywhere - sitting, they watch many hours of television - sitting - and snacking. Despite the suburbs' reputation as a family-friendly healthy environment, people in cities tend to walk more and be healthier. Despite all of the problems with sprawl, it rema ins the predomina nt model and is imme nsely popular. Is it therefore appropriateto concludethat this landscape is what "the people" want. Is this a populist landscape? I'll return to this question. The Market and The Public Realm

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In a very good analysis of discourse on "the everyday" and its recent popularity in architectural theory, Dell Upton proposesthat everyday architecture - with a littl e a - is the Other of high-design Architecture - with a capital A.12< To take this observation further, I would argue that sprawl, the bulk of contemporary building, is repressed in highArchitecture discourse.

WHY? PERHAPS, BECAUSE IT REMINDS US OF OUR FAILURES. Our failure to produce a popular modern urbanism other than sprawl13< and our failure to convince "the people" that social progress is dependent, in part, on building "progressive" environments. While most architects remain motivated by a veiled Zeitgeist imperative that modern design is necessary to usher in progressive lifestyles and a progressive society, most consumers simply view modern versus traditional as a decorating choice.14< Perhaps most of all, the suburbs remind architects of our failure to convince the majority of the public of the value of Architecture, capital A, for their everyday lives and their personal investments. High-design Architecture is valued for the cultural message it sends about a place and is welcomed generally for culturally significant building types, but the evidence surrounds us that Architecture with a capital A, with intellectual thought about advancing societal agendas is not deemed a worthwhile investment for the majority of homes, office parks, retail strips, etc. Nor have architects abilities t o

accommodate individual desires while contributing to collective, communal interests been called upon in the design of sprawl. Does this mean that "the people" don't want a public realm? Don't care about design? Don't care about the environment?

DON'T CARE ABOUT COMMUNITY? 1< Formoreelaboration, see Dunham-Jones, Ellen "Seventy-Five Percent:' Harvard Design Magazine, Fall 2000. 2< Df the 5518.6 billion dollars of construction activity in the U.S. in 2003,5278.1 billion, or 54% was detached single-family homes, most of it suburban and very little of it designed by architects, (source: McGraw Hill Dodge Construction.) However, there are signs of shifts back into urban areas and denser living patterns. The National Association of Realtors reported that in 2003, more condominiums sold than in any other year, sales volume is growing faster than single-family homes, and for the first time, the price midpoint for condos topped that of detached single-family homes. Reported by Thomas A. Fogarty, "Condo Sales Dutrun a Fast Market", USAToday, February 17, 2004. 3< There are various ways of defining, let alone measuring, the extent of sprawl. The 1997 National Resources Inventory produced by the U.S. Departmentof Agriculture claims that between 1982 and 1997 the United States (minus Alaskal lost 24.8 million acres to development, the loss of rural land grew 34% and per capita land consumption increased 16%, (accounting for 48% of the loss of rural land, wit h the other 52% attributable to population growth). The Massachusetts Audubon Society released a report in 2003 , "Losing Ground: At What Cost?" that claims the state lost 40 acres per day to new development between 1985 and 1999. Nearly nine of every 10 acres lost went to residential development, with 65% used for low-density, large-lot construction. Jim Miara, quoting a study done by the New York Times, in "Visiting Sprawl," Urban Land,July 2001, p.76, claims that 17,000 square miles of land that were rural in 1990, reached suburban or urban densities in 2000, Ian amount more than twice the size of New Jersev]. This rate of conversion is a slight decline from the 1980's. 4< Lang, Robert. "Office Sprawl: The Evolving Geography of Business", October 2000, The Brookings Institution. 5< The U.S. currently has nine times more ret ail space per capita than it did in 1960. F. Kaid Benfield, Jutka Terris, Nancy Vorsanger, Solving Sprawl: Models of Smart Growth in Communities Across America, IWashington DC: Island Press, 2001.1 p.99. Between 1992 and 1994, 55 percent of all new retail space in America came in the form of big-box superstores; in 1994,80 percent of all new stores fell into this category. ibid., p.59. 6< Malls and power centres typically require 50-80 acres and are built for a 5-15year lifespan. 7( Leinberger, Christopher B. & Robert Davis. "Financing New Urbanism", Thresholds 18. Cambridge, MA: Massachusetts Instit ute of Technology, 1999. REITS limit their investment recommendations to 19 standard real estate products, 17of which are explicitly stand-alone, sprawl contributors. Along with the secondary mortgage markets preference for uniform real estate products, this is one of the major factors fi guring in the reproduction of sprawl. B< Reuters, September18, 2003, published in several newspapers and reported on CNN . 9< Total vehicle use more than tripled between 1960 and 1995. Benfield, Solving Sprawl, p.3 10< ibid 11< There are several recent studies on this topic. See Frumkin Howard, Lawrence Frank and Richard Jackson. Urban Sprawl and Public Health. Washington, DC: Island Press, 2004 12< Upton,Dell. "Architect ure in Everyday Life". New Literary History, 2002, 33;709. 13< Ironically, sprawl's land-use pattern of functionalist single-use zoning connected by highways is a direct legacy of ClAM's Corbusian principles - perhaps the most repressed of modern architecture's legacies, and that with the highest impact. 14< For further elaboration of this point, see Dunham-Jones, Ellen. "Stars, Swatches, and Sweets: The Role of Design in the Post-Indust rial Economy". In: Thresholds,vol. 15,Fall 1997, Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

las Colinas
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<

Residenti al Air port outside Chicago There are approximately 400 residential airports in the U.S., an extreme response to th e long commutes mandated by resident ial developments that are now ofte n 40-60 miles out from the urban core. This example, the Naper Aero Club on the outskirts of Chicago has a modified Radburn plan wit h the runway down the centre, and streets w ide enough to accommod ate planes taxiing from driveways to the runway. Source : Robert Cameron, Above Chicago (Cameron & Company, San Francisco, 19921.

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<

land Uses Converted to Developed land, 1982·1997 Between 1960 and 2000, urbanised population grew by about 80 percent and urbanized land area grew by 130 percent resulting in urbanised land density dropping from 3,100 persons per square mile to 2,400. Between 1985 and 2001, America added 19 million housing units but 8 million or 40 percent of them were on lots of more than one acre (U.S. Census, 1985, and 2001). And while population grew about 20 percent during this period, vehicle miles travelled grew more than 50 percent. (Arthu r C. Nelson, "Tow ards a New Metropolis: The Opportun ity to Rebuild America ", A Discussion Paper prepared for The Brookings Institution Metropolitan Policy Program, December, 2004) Source : U.S. Department of Agr iculture , Natural Resources Conservation Service

Suburban Cafe
Homebu ilding is a big business in the U.S. and unlike in Europe, is almost entirely market-rate, with public subsidy coming in the form of after-sale tax deductions of mortgage int erest. In 2003, 1.8 million new homes were constructed, the highest number in 25 years.15< Most of the contractors on those homes belongto the National Association of Home Builders, an organisation that attracts 75,000 membe rs to its annual convention. They come because, even more than the developers or the designers, they want to know, what do "the people" want? Ultimately, it's the builders who haveto sell the houses and they cannot afford to be left holding unpopular designs. They rarely invite architects to show them what the architects think would be good design improvements. Instead,they invite the market researchers.

WHAT KIND OF DESIGNS AND FEATURES SOLD THE BEST LAST YEAR AND IN WHAT MARKETS? What do surveys of consumer preferences indicate wi ll be next year's hot products?The results can have a profound influence, such that up to 30% of a year's new housing will be slight variations of a single winning floorplan presented at the previous years homebuilder convention.

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The Homeb uilders' surveys have consistently revealed a strong preference for "the American Dream," a single family detached house in a traditional style on a relatively large plot. While American consumers have embraced contemporary designs for products like Nikes and iMacs, their architectural tastes remain very conservative, especially those of middle-class homebuyers. They tend to look for traditional signifiers of status and stability, perhapsto compensate for the middle class's declines in both in recent decades,16< but certainly to aid in the re-sale value. The average American household moves every five to six years. While this might seem to support a will ingnessto experimentwith modern, evolving styles, it has the opposite effect. Today's middle-class by and large, associates modern architecture either with office buildings, the poor, or the asbestos-filled tract homes their parents bought and lost money on. Instead, there is a marked preference for easy-to-sell conventional styles on the biggest house and the biggest plot one can afford. Despite continued demand for "the American Dream", there is also growing recognition that each new house contributes to traffic and land consumption, and consequently, movements resisting growth have increased in popularity. Voters have significantly supported public investment in public transit and the protection of open spaceH<

Several pre-September 11 polls found that Americans ranked traff ic and urban sprawl as their number one local concern, tied with crime and ahead of jobs and education.18< Yet, at the same time, the market for low-density development continues to be strong. In essence, each individual wants everyone else to use transit and live in a condo and get off the road and out of their view of the countryside! Collectively, "the people" have clearly said that they do not want sprawl. However, their individual purchases continue to support it. In fact, the entire industries of market researchers, contractors, and realtors have helped produce this landscape geared solely to the satisfaction of private desires. As a consequence we have been building pathetic public spaces that we collectively compensat e for with fantastic, if also inherently compromised, private spaces. Instead of comm unal theatres and Olympic-size natatoriums,we get home entertainment systems and sma ll backyard pools. Instead of the traditional "good" populist concerns with collective action for some notion of a public or common good, sprawl shows us the degree to which "what the people want" is no longer considered in collective, populist, or public terms. It is solely measured in terms of individual desires. In this sense,the market now substitutes for the public, and what "the people" want individually has been severed from what "the people" want collectively.

SIMILARLY, MARKETING HAS REDUCED ANY CRITICAL NOTION OF COUNTER PUBLICS AND MULTIPLE PUBLICS SIMPLY TO "NICHE MARKETS."

15
The marketing of this lifestyle presumesthat "what people want" are: "community" out their front door and "nature" out their back door. Joel Garreau facetiously claimed that one of the rules of contempo rary development is to name your project after whatever species you have forever eradicated from the site: Ea gle Ridge, Fox Run, Pin Oak Preserve .19< The references are almost exclusively to nature, or to quaint sounding British villages, but never to anything urban. Ever since Thomas Jefferson's anti-urban lauding of the gentleman farmer,Americans have historically been suspicious of cities. Despite our myths of melti ng pots, most individual homebuyers still think of "diversity", "density", "urban" and even "public" as dirty words or inferior categories. As a consequence, most developers, bankers, contractors, and even public planning boards, strongly resist the factors that might mitigate sprawl such as mixed-use, mixed-income, transit and compactness .

that recognizes that the suburbs are where the bulk of the market is, but that valorizes cities and urban living. A new urbanism of transit- oriented development instead of parkand-rides, of neighbourhoods inst ead of subdivisions, and of Main Streets instead of malls. A new urbanism of mixeduses, mixed-building types, mixed-lot sizes, mixed-incomes, multi ple modes of transportation and multiple interconnected street types. A new urbanismthat celebrates the public realm and trades large lots each with its own patio, pool, and swing set for nearby sidewalk cafes and neighbourhood parks and playgrounds.

This situation puts architects and urban designers in a dilemma. Should they design for "the market"(individual int erests) or for "the public" (collective interests}? Des igners have long understood their obligations to both, to serve the individual client's needs while also contributing to generally accepted understand ings of the public interest. But, rarely havethe two been so diametrically opposed. The benefits of sprawl accrue to individuals, while the costs are borne collectively by society. Given the strength of private property rights in the U.S., and the minimal role of public development, (except roadbuildinql, there have been very few successful challenges to sprawl.

A new urbanismthat rejects ad hoc, incremental, low-density development in favour of regional planning that targets areas both for conservation and for higher density growlh including reinvestment in infill sites and central cities.

AND YET, IN FACT THERE IS A SIGNIFICANT MARKET FOR ALTERNATIVES TO SPRAWL. Several studies show that between 30-40% of homebuyers are frustrated with the lack of choices available to them.20< Although several American cities experienced revivals in the nineties, the residue of decades of disinvestment in cities have made most homebuyers reluctant to consider urban living. Limited to locating in the suburbs, their only choices have been varied flavours of single-use subdivisions - even though market studies show a sizable market wi lling to pay a 5-25% supplementfor living in mixed-use, compact, walkable, neighbourhoods. 21<

New Urbanism: Alternative to Sprawl Market demand combined with public interest in alternatives to sprawl is fueling int erest in a new urbanism that reveals the market for urbanism within the suburbs. A new urbanism

A NEW URBANISM THAT RECONCILES BOTH PRIVATE AND PUBLIC INTERESTS, THAT IS BOTH MARKETABLE AND MITIGATES SPRAWL.

Unfortunately, according t o the current system, such a new urbanism is largely illegal and almost impossib le to finance. The need for fundamental reforms to the current system, to at least allow for alternatives, prompted the formation of the Con gress for the New Urbanism, (CNU ). It got started in 1989, when six architects got together who had been working at the scale of urban design.22< The meeting included Andres Duany and El izabeth Plater-Zyberk of Miami (the designers of Seas ide, Florida with its focus on community building around public spaces and streets designed like outdoor rooms), and Peter Ca lthorpe of San Francisco, with his strong interest in the environmental benefits of transit-oriented development.

THEY RECOGNISED THAT THEY SHARED A COMMON ENEMY: THE REGULATIONS THAT REPRODUCE SUBURBAN SPRAWL. In 1991 they invited 75 of their like-minded friends in related disciplines to meet, critique each other's work, and discuss their shared frustrations with contempo rary development patterns. They decided to call themse lves the Congress for the New Urbanism - a deliberate reference to the Congres d'Archit ecture International Moderne, (ClAM), in that they t oo planned to hold annual congresses and write a charter. However, their charter is aimed at replacing ClAM's modern urbanism with a new urbanism (inspired by pre-ClAM

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planning) of healthy regions balancing growth and conservation; compact, mixed use, mixed-income, neighborhoods of walkable street netw orks with transit; and attr active, focal public spaces, including the streets themselves, framed by buildings that are responsive to place and climate.23( CNU has been developing such a new urbanism along three simultaneous trajectories. On the one hand,the members of the organisation and staff have collectively been working on changing the systems that reproduce sprawl to allow for developmentthat is more in keeping with public goals. They have written a Charter wit h 27 principles, model codes, devised new transect-based standards for finer-grained linkage of land-use, tr ansportation, building types, and niche markets; engaged in educati ng diverse professionals involved in the built environment and formed partnerships to influence policy with key federal agencies, (HUO and EPA) and strategic organisations (AlA, AlAS, APA, ULI , Fa nnie Mae, USGBC, ITE).24(

ON THE OTHER HAND, THE M EMBERS OF THE ORGANISATION HAVE BEEN WORKING AS INDIVIDUAL PROFESSIONALS DESIGNING AND BUILDING OVER 600 NEW URBANIST DEVELOPMENTS.

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In the twelve years of CNU's existence, the projects have evolved from an initial focus on Gre enfield TOO s and TNO s, to greater concern with urban infill, brownfield and greyfield projects, (especia lly the morethan 100 Hope VI public housing projects that have been built according to New Urban ist guidelines) and increased attention to both regional design and environmenta l considerations. The obstacles to implementation remain significant and most projects have suffered compromises along the way, often being forc ed to lower densities or limit the number of affordable housing units. However, many of the projects have been extremely successful economically, improving the movement's reputation and opportunities. The third trajectory, the sharing of strat egies and development of a transdisciplinary discourse, is also responsible for much of the evolution of new urbanism. CNU is a forum not a formula. In addition to the annual congresses, CNU now has a newsletter, awards program, regional chapters and council meetings where projects continue to be presented and critiqued, successful and failed strategies are shared, design techniques honed, and ambitions ever elevated. The New Urbanists' bold claims set them up for criticism, which has been ample and from both sides of the political

spectrum. They have been criticised as naive for enthusiastically presenting New Urbanism as the free market solution to all of the world's problems, or worse, as corrupted by the market, offering little more than aestheticised sprawl. Conservatives and libertarians bark at new urbanism as socialist governmental int erference with private property, while left wing academics decry new urbanism's nostalgia for more unified, traditional commun ities as reinstalling the patterns of patriarchy, squelching the expression of dissent that is criti cal to democracy, and appealing to the worst kind of xenophobic populism. The nee-traditional styling associated with both the architecture and the urbanism is particularly controversial, provoking deep feelings of connection among st admirers and charges of disneyfication and social regression from detractors. Ironically, the focus on the surface appearance of New Urbanism reveals how distant both tr aditional and modernist architects have come from seeing architecture in relation to solving larger societ al and placema king issues. The leading New Urbanists use style very strategically, both to connect to popular, climate-appropriate, regional building traditions and to maskthe more radical (and unpopular) aspects of their projects: mixed uses,mixed incomes, compact lots and transit. In what could be seen as subversive marketing, New Urbanist projects tend to use pleasing, traditional, familiar, unthreatening imagery, precisely to build market acceptance of these progressive, public goals.25( 19( Garreau, Joel. Edge City. Life on the New Frontier. New York: Doubleday, 1991 20( The National Association of Rea ltors' 2001 "Community and Housing Preference Survey" found t hat one thir d of home-buyer respondents have a strong preference for "new urbanism" housing options, and up to half may be att racted to these options once they see them. Similarly, the SMARTRAQ preferences survey of 1466 Atlant a metro area residents found that approximately one in three current inhabitants of conventional suburbs would prefer to be living in a more walkable neighbourhood, 53% prefer connected streets and 3-mile drives over cut-desacs and 15-18 mile drives, 56% would sacrifice having a larger home if it meansalways havingto drive, although 60% would still prefer a detached single family house over living in the tow n center. Frank, L., Levine, J., Chapman, J. 2004. Transportation and Land-Use Preferences and Atlanta Residents' Neighborhood Choices - Implementing Transit Oriented Development in the Atlanta Region. Georgia Regional Transportation Authority and Georgia Department of Transportation, Project CM-OOO00(339)m 0.1 . # 0000339. 21< Eppli, Mark J., and Charles C. Tu. Valuing the New Urbanism : the Impact of the New Urbanism on Prices of SingleFamily Homes. Washington, D.C.,: ULI - The Urban Land Inst itut e, 1999. 22 ( Dan Solomon, Elizabet h Maule and Stefanos Polyzoides were the other CNU founders at the meeting, invited by Judy Corbett, head of the California Local Governments Commission. 23( I missed the first tw o congresses, but have been to the past ten. From 1996-2000 I was cochair of the CNU Edu cators Task Force and attended numerous board meetings.What I may lack in objectivity, I hopeI make up for in direct experience and knowledge of what the aims and discussions have been about. 24( For more information, visit www.cnu.org. 25( In the terms of this conference, these clearly fall into the more politically suspect category of "strategies of anticipation". New Urbanism also makesextensiveuse "strategies of mobilisation", principally in the use of 7-10day charrettes involving stakeholders in the designof the project.

SUBURBAN SPRAW L

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TRADITIONAL NEIGHBORHO OD

Conventional SuburbanDevelopmentversus Traditional Neighbourhood Design
Alternati ve Development Scenarios
I I I I I I T R A NSECT I I I I I I I I I I I I I U R B A N

I URBAN TRANSECT ZONES

I DISTRICTS

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The Urban-Rural Transect < Andres Ouany's diagram of seven zones along an urban-rural t ransect differentiates environments at the scale of the region or at the scale of a neighbourhood. It serves as a New Urbanist placemaking and community-building tool for re-sisting the monocult ure developments of crude landuse designations by linking finely graded zoning, street types, building types and design guidelines to each other.The point is not necessarily to produce seamless gradations between transect zones, as t he diagram implies, so much as to establish coherent differences between centres and edges such that a range of households and needs are both accommodated and interconnected. Source: Andres Duany, Duany PlaterZyberk & Company

GAIHl f.RSBURG ARTS COUr-;CIL (KENT rAM U~ Y MANSION) :-ITIGHBORH OO D GREEN

$299.953 $286,450 $292,000

21 UNITS ON J.4 ACRE S

KENTL ANDS

Mi xed·lncome, Mix ed Building Types at Kentlands, Maryland
GAITHERSBURG, MD

Prospect, Colorado <Approximately 60% of the New Urbanist commun ities in the U.S. are "Greenfield" project s, meaning they are built on undeveloped, often rural, land. Regulatory obstacles and NIMBY ("not in my back yard"l resistance from neighbours make these projects much easier to develop than infill sites and they are where the moveme nt got its start. Masterplanned by DPZ, this greenfield TND outside Denver has more modernist architectur e than most and ironic street names like "Incorrigible Circle". Source: Dwell magazine, April 2002

Mixed-Income Public Housing in Cincinnati, Ohio
Kendall, Miami: Before and After <Municipalities in search of economic developmentsolutions for dead or dying brownfields and grayfields often turn to New Urbanism. "Brownfields" are former industrial sites and "Grayfields" are suburban sites dominated by parking lots. This grayfield TOO designed by Dover, Kohl & Partners and Ouany Plater-Zyberk and under construction, inserts parking garages, a street grid and mixed-use liner buildings into the parking lots separating an existing suburban office park and shopping mall. The new development provides a street face to these inward-oriented building types, makeswalkable streets, and connects the neighbourhood to the existing, but neglected, canal and a new rail station. Source: Dover, Kohl & Partners Town Planning

Del Mar Station, Pasadena, Calif ornia < To reduce auto-dependency, New Urbanists encourage the sensitive integration of transit and new mixed-use development, as in this TO O designed by Moule & Polyzoides. The station welcomes users to Pasadena with a public plaza, retail, underground parking, and affordable housing whose varied massing both establishes private courtyardsfor residents and strong urban corners in scale with diverse existing conditions. Source: Moule & Polyzoides,Architects and Urbanists

268 Envision Utah, Quality Growth Strategy - composite map
Is this nostalgia or is it just a pragmatic way of overcoming suburban resistance to a more sustainable form of development? In the end, some of the high-design community's knee-jerk disdain for New Urbanism may be because it has picked up the modernist torch of social reform abandoned by todav's neo-avant-garde. In addition to employing subversive marketingtechniques, are the New Urbanists subversive modernists? New Urbanists and Rem Koo lhaas: Subve rsive Marketing or Marketing Subve rsiveness?

IS IT TOO MUCH OF A STRETCH TO PRESENT THE NEW URBANISTS AS SUBVERSIVE RADICALS?

269

Are their interests in the suburbs, marketing, and development practices just too middle-class, too bourgeois to drive real change? Rem Koolhaas studies suburbs, marketing, and development practices too and enjoys an avant-garde reputation. His writ ings on bigness and generic citi es and his work on the Harvard Gu ide to Shopping are similarly concerned with the systems that reproduce contemporary development. Hetoo is interested in architecture not just as an art-Bild practice, but as the intersection between art, business, money and culture. His work engages this int ersection at the elite levels of Prada and the Guggenhe im, whil e the New Urbanists operate at the more everydaylevel of production builders and traditional ideas of civic art. But, both share an interest in the big picture behindthe surface and beyond the more narrow concerns that have dominated architect ural discourse.

BOTH ARE BRINGING LARGER DEVELOPMENT PATTERNS AND PROCESSES INTO ARCHITECTURAL DISCUSSION. Koolhaas, even more than the New Urbanists, recognises the degree to which the market now substitutes for the public. However, it is difficult to draw connections between his research and his design work. Disdainful of moralising positions, he deliberately refrains from making judgements about the effects of the market, preferring only to express a certain admiration for how its power and effectiveness has eclipsed that of architecture and planning. There is much the New Urbanists could learn from Koolhaas. His designs are formally more interesting than the New Urbanists and juxtapose innovative forms, with thrilling spatial manipulations, bold and intelligent graphics, and unconventiona lly-

used materials around circulation systems that privilege chance encounters and open-ended possibilities.26< Yet, beyond a preference for an urbanism of dynamic juxtapositions, he deliberately avoids establishing a prescribed public agenda for his work.27< In comparison, if New Urbanism is nostalgic, it is not for the gingerbread architecture, but for an engaged public realm, for charrettes with public involvement, for public debates on laws, and at professional congresses. In the New Urbanist work, retail and shopping are vital to the mix, but are still used to frame "civic" space, not to completely substitute for it. Highly critical of sprawl and the systems that reproduce it, and eager to change those systems from within, the New Urbanists' strategies negotiate between the market and the public, between architecture (little a) and Architecture (capital A). and between serving "the people" and advancing "the discipline" of urban design.

THEY OPERATE MOSTLY IN THE MIDDLE LANDSCAPE OF SUBURBIA. As a middle course, New Urbanism is inherently not avantgarde, (at the leading edge). although in my opinion, its quiet engagement in fundament ally altering the laws, regulations and financing practices that reproduce sprawl, is both more radical and producing far more profound changes than the sexy restylings of most of our architectural elite. Interestingly, high-theory and high-design may also be moving towards middle grounds. The shift towards the post-critical, or what W. J. T. Mitchell, editor of Critical Inquiry calls "Medium Theory"28< as well as Koolhaas's middle course between the market and art-practice, offer hope that more designers will begin to engage the suburbs,the market, the middle-class and New Urbanism.

26< The multi-direct ional ramp at Koolhaas' Rotterdam Kunsthalle or the intersecting movement systems in his masterplan for Euralille are examples of what, in the context of this conference, might be called "strategies of mobilisation". 27< This could be understood as an effort to respect the multi plicity of publics using his spaces, but also likely stems from his strong distrust of moralising positions. See"Lit e Urbanism", Rem Koolhaas and OMA, S,M,X, XL,lNew York: Monacelli Press, 19951 28< Mitchell, W. J . T. "Medium Theory". Critical Inquiry. Winter 2004, Volume 30, Number 2.

270

LIANE LEFAIVRE (

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"Populism Redux?"

POP "IN THE NAME OF THE PEOPLE; THE POPULIST MOVEMENT IN ARCHITECTURE" WAS FIRST PUBLISHED IN 1975 IN THE GERMAN ARCHITECTURAL MAGAZINE BAUWELT AT THE INVITATION OF THAT ISSUE'S GUEST EDITOR, THE SOCIOLOGIST AND CONCEPTUAL ARTIST, LUCIUS BURCKHARDT, THEN REPUBLISHED IN THE DUTCH FORUM IN 1976.1< THE ESSAY INTRODUCED THE CONCEPT "POPULIST ARCHITECTURE " TO DESCRIBE WHAT SEEMED TO BE ONE OF THE MOST INNOVATIVE TENDENCIES OF THE POST WORLD WAR II PERIOD, DEPARTING FROM A CRITIQUE OF THE TOP-DOWN ClAM IDEAS OF THE PRE-WAR PERIOD.

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Tzonis, Alexander and Liane Lef aivre. 1m Names des Volkes - Die Entwi cklung der heutigen populistischen Bewegung in der Architektur. Bauwe lt: 10. Jan uar 1975. 66., pp. 10-17. It was also published subsequently in English and Dutch, in the Dutc h Forum. A firs t version of this paper was wr itten during our stay in the Instit ut d' Architecture et d' Urbanisme of Strasbourg in the autumn of 1972 and has been published in Bauwe lt (Germani Ja nuary II, 1975 and in Forum (Dutch) No 3, February 1976. We wo uld like to acknowledge our debt to Etienne de Coint et, Direct or of the Inst itut during this time w ho asked us to give an evening facu lty seminar on this topic and for his support and hospita lity.

The essay was concerned with the phenome non of pop architecture. There was nothing novel aboutthis by 1975. Reyner Banham had already coined the term "Pop Architecture" in 1962 2
took popto new heights of exube rance by the mid-sixties, with Peter Cooke's Plug In City (1962), Mike Webbs' Cushicle, David Greene's Living Pod, Warren Chalk's Ca psule, Dennis Crompton's Com puter City (all from 1964). Pop architecture had its visionary, conceptual pop works in Italy, Superstudio and Archizoom, not t o mention Austria, with Hans Hollein, Coop Himm elblau, Haus, Ru cker & co, Zund Up, Salz der Erde and others.

IN 1965 BANHAM PUBLISHED AN ARTICLE CALLED liTHE MISSING MOTEL. II

In 1943, the Kawneer Metal and Aluminum Construction Company, for example, co-financed a competition in the magazine New Pencil Points for shop fronts. Among the architects who participated included no less that Walter Gropius, the Dean of Harvard, with an entry for a jewellry shop, Pietro Belluschi, the future dean of MIT, with a beauty parlor. By 1945, Frank Lloyd Wright had alreadyjumped on the bandwagon of popular mass consum ption, with a lowly laundry mat. By 1947 he had designed a car show room, and in 1956, a gas station. About the same time, Kevin Lynch and Georgy Ke pes at MIT received a Rockefe ller grant t o carry out a photographical survey of Boston and Environs between 1954-56. It included as themes scribbling, signs, daytime; signs night-t ime, Traffic signs, subways, supermarkets, cartoons and traffic intersections among others. 6< In a similar vein that cannot but have influenced Venturi and Scott Brown, J.B. Jackson wrote in the winter issue of his magazine Landsca pe of 1956 that both "lighting and display" "cry out for intelligent and artistic handling. .. Our neon lights, capable of expressing genuine poetry, have so far only been taught to PEPSICOLA, CAFE, STOP .. . I like to believe that the merits and charm of the highway strip are not so obscure but that they will be accepted by a larger public." 7<

Written in the form of a humoroustirade, it lampooned the current exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art entitled Modern Architecture USA. Only prestigious architects - Mies van der Rohe most prominently- had been featured. "Missing"was the real "American scene": the "motels, supermarkets, bowling alleys,filling stations, hamb urger stand s, even private houses."The time had come,he exclaimed, for the MoMA to present projects like The Istanbul Hilton, Martini Heaven and Ute Valley Ski Lodge. These buildings "cry out for investigation and understand ing; the quality involved is too big for it to be ignored."When confronted with this criticism, Arthur Drexler, the curator of the show, had been dismissive. Real people actually "might build such things," he had conceded to Banham, and they might even be "culturally significant" but, since his museu m had always preferred t o set a "high valuation" on "quality," he felt entirely justified in ignoring them. 4< Our essaywas not intendedto be a complete overview of the pop phenome non in architecture. It did not include, for instance, any examples of pop architectural design. The list by then was long. Today it is common ly assumed that the pop sensibility in architecture, like its equivalent in painting, began in Europe and was imported to the States in the sixties. 5< The European projects are well known: Alison and Peter Smithson's molded plastic House of the Futu re (19561 along with lonel Schein's Maison tout plastique (1956), and Venturi's Baseball Hall of Fa me (1967). It was followed by Cedric Price's Fun City (1959-61), Ernti Goldfinger Entryfor a competition for a shopping centre at ElephantCastle, London, (1960). Their students atthe AA who made up Archigram

BUT IN FACT THERE WERE A NUMBER OF PROJECTS THAT WERE INFUSED BY POPULISM, SOME MUCH EARLIER, IN THE US, AT THE DAWN OF THE TRUMAN ERA.

2< Banham, Reyne r. Towards a Pop Architecture. The Architectura l Re-

view. London: vol. 132, no. 785, July, 1962, pp. 43-463< Alloway, Lawrence. Letter to Alison and Peter Smithson. Architectural Digest: 1958. The literature on pop art is enormous.See- especially - Robbins (ed], David. The Independent Group: Postwar Britain and the Aesthetics of Plenty. Cambridge : MIT Press, 1990. 4< Banham, Reyner: The Missing Motel. The Listener: October, 1965, pp. 13-14. All quotations in this paragraph are from the article. 5< Beret, Chantal.Une Architecture Pop?Les Annees Pop. Centre Pompidou : 2001, unnumbered pages. 6< The archive of these photographs are held in the slide library of the department of Architecture at MIT. 7< Jackson, J. B.: Other directed houses. Landscape: Winter, vol. 6, no 2, 1956-57, pp. 34-35.

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Of all the products of architectural folksiness, the most remarkable is the Cantor Drive-In Restaurant, designed between 1945 and 1950 for a highway on the outskirts of Indianapolis. Ironically, the architect was none other than the fabled 'quality' architect, Mies van der Rohe. Mies is one of the most studied architects of the post-war period, yet not one of the books in this bibliography has given Ca ntor's Drive-In Restaurant the attention it deserves. They have focused, like Arthur Drexler and the MoMA before them, on 'quality' projects: Farnsworth House, Tugendat, Brno, Barcelona Pavilion, Crown Hall, Seag ram Towe r. One of the rare acknowledgeme nts of the project by a scholar is in the halfpage project description by Mies's biographer, Franz Schultze in the Garland Architectural Archives, but his Mies biography passes it over in silence. 8( Mies himself did look down on the Cantor Drive-in Restaurant, far from it.

IN FACT, HE SEEMS TO HAVE BEEN OBSESSED WITH IT.

279

Fa rnsworth House occupies only 83 pages in the Garland edition of the Mies Archive. It covers 229 pages. He was even attached enough to the project, although it was never built in reality, to have a model made of it 9( and included in his 1952 exhibition at The Museum of Modern Art. When the Ca lifornian journal Arts and Architecture ran an article on him the same year, he made it a point to present the drive-in alongside the Lake Shore Drive Apartments,The Farnsworth House, the Promontory Apartments and Alumni Memorial Hall at liT in Chicago. 10( Mies was not above designing bowling alleys for that matt er. That is what Joseph Cantor, the client, had initially approached Mies to design, and Mies had travelled by train from Chicago to Indianapolis to discuss the possibility. The Mies Archive has been gone over countless times by historians. Yetno one seems to have notice d that it contains a complete series of Brunswick 6-lane bowling installation catalogues, besides some National Theater Supp ly brochures for drive-in Theaters, and a catalogue of current soda fountains and ice-cream parlours. The file also contains sample menusfrom existing drive in restaurants. Clearly Mies did not see a contradiction between being the architect of campuses and the architect of soda fountains. 11< In fact he was the only architect of repute who accepted to be in the jury for the Kwaneer store front competition. He even allowed himself to be photographed for their advertisements. This is crass comme rcialism at its most unabashed . For a drive-in, this was one classy joint.

But more importantly, this was also the birthplace of Mies's most important architect ural innovations: so-called "universal space:' the concept that is most associat ed with his transition from a European architect to an American architect. It resulted from a clear span structure depending on the supportive outside element of the building for its sole support, wit hout any internal load bearing elements. The first built projects where he implements the idea in reality is in Crown Hall in Chica go (1 952-1956) and in The Mannheim National Theater (1 952-531. the first tw o in a series of highly prestigious commissions including The Seag ram Tower (1954-1958) and The New National Ga llery in Berlin (1962-1968). Scholars have been loathe to give the project the attention it deserves. They have preferred to search high rather than low for the origins of Mies's American architectural persona, identifying the origins of Miesian universal space in more upscale projects such as his "Museum for a Small City" of 1942. 12( That project is not a pure example of universal space because there are structural elements inside the building. It is not until the Ca ntor Drive-in that Mies imagines a pure space box, with all the structural elements placed outside in an exoske letal manner. It would seem that the reason the Cantor Drive-In Restaurant has been overlooked for so long is its lowly origins. Scholars seemto have been loathe to admit that one of the hallmarks of Mies's architecture was born on a highway in Indianapolis, in the world of fast food, mass consum pti on and brash advertising. Schultze, who has written most extensively about the conditions and details of its design, points out that Ca ntor's Drive-In is the first example in his project description but neither he nor any other scholar go back to the point.

YET, THERE IS NO MISTAKING IT. With its clear span structure, a systemthat depend ed on locating the supportive element of the building outside its main volume, this is the first conception of the unitary 'universal space' supported by an external truss. In its finished form, the building would have been a completely glazed box surmounted by two large 152-foot-long overhead trussesthat spanned the restaurant longitudinally and that were equal in height with the restaurant below. The roof would have been suspended from the trusses, which were supported in turn by wide columns erected outside the main 68-by-135-foot volume of the building. 13( Not only was universal space It is only mentioned in Franz Schultze's classic biography of Mies, Mies van der Rohe, Chicago,1985, on p. 236. The publication it does appear in is The Mies van der Rohe Archive, 19 vols., 1986-1992, vol. 13, pp, 184-414,in The Garland Architectural Archives, A. Tzonis Genera l Editor. 9( Mies Archive, Ibid., vol. 13, p. 185. 10( Arts and Architecture, March, 1952, pp. 16-31. 11< The Archive, box devoted to the Ca ntor Drive-In. 12( See Schultze, pp. 8(

born in a drive-in restaurant, it issued forth from the world of advertising and neon signs, of what Banham called "Gizmos." 14< From Mies's drawings, it is clear that the tr usses supporting the load of the glazed box appeared to him fundamentally as a place to hang a showy neon sign. There are 15 conceptual drawings for it as such as opposed to as a construction solution. It would explain why there are two longitudinal trusses extending across the width of the building instead of a sequence of more discreet latitudinal ones, as in Crown Hall.

WHAT WAS LOST IN ELEGANCE AND UNDERSTATEMENT WAS GAINED IN ADVERTISING SURFACE. Ironically, for all its importance in shaping the universal space of the final design, even if the Cantor Drive-In Restaurant had become a reality, his roof top sign would not have, as Schultze points out. It was rejected by the client in favour of vertical signage,to the side of the restaurant. But by then the deed had been done. In the final project, represented in the model, the truss remains even though it no longer bears the sign. The idea of suspending the box of the building from overhead trusses was formed in his mind, and he stuck to it, transferri ng it to his design for Crown Hall, the next project worked on. Characteristically, eventhough the design of the new neon sign was a menial job, Mies again took up with the same fastidious care he typically lavished on all his work. We still have 11 working drawings of it from the Mies office. 15< If the question of where to place the advertisementwas a precipitating factor in the birth of universal space, universal space was something that Mies had been gestati ng for a long time. 16< Mies's concept of an endlessly flow ing space and spatial dynamism goes back a long way. 17< He had already proposed an open and flexible space for Friedrichstrasse 18< and at Weissenhof, his apartment house used skeletal steel for the first time, dispensed with the use of bearing walls, permitting him to emp loy columns instead so the rooms could be defined by movable partitions at the discretion of the tenant. Mies had famously said to Hugo Haring "Make your spaces big enough man, that you can walk around in them freely, and not just in one predetermined direction! Or are you all that sure of how they will be used? We don't know at all whether people wi ll do with them what we expect them to. Functions are not so clear or so constant;they change faster than the building". 19< As Schultze points out, however, other architects in the pre-war period had left more of a mark in relation to the issue of spatial dynam ism. Behrens had already mentioned his own

interest in universal space in 1912, and Le Co rbusier's open plan presented at Weissenhof was more impressive than Miss's and drew more commentary. 20< It is not until Mies arrives in the USthat he makes a mark in this area.

ITS VERY RADICALNESS LEAVES THE OTHERS BEHIND. The fact is, decades before Venturi and Scott Brown were learning from LasVegas, here we have the Ludwi g Mies van der Rohe faced with a commission for a building on a superhighway on the outskirts of Indianapolis, responding t o the hard edged lyricism of the new post-war American landscape. While the up-tight, pin-striped old boys at the MoMA were bending over backward to out-europeanise the Euro peans, Mies, a new American immigrant, was serenely doing the opposite. He was exploring the low for the last time in his career. In the process, he had one of the most creative moments of his life. Aher this, his reputation as a prestigious architecture was sealed and architectural historians and critics turned a blind eye to it. But it is int eresting to speculate what other directions his architecture might havetaken if he hadn't let himself get reined in and elevated once and for all to the Olymp ian heights of "qua lity" design. To return to the matter at hand, our essay, it also left out the pop buildings that had already been materialised, such as Venturi and Short's Grand's Drugstore of 1961 , Buckminst er Ful ler's Dome at Montreal's Expo '67 World's Fair with the interior design by the Cambridge 7 of 1967, and Piano and Roger's Ce ntre Pompidou of 1971-77. There are pop elements in many of Hans Hollein's work at the ti me, in particular in his Retti Candle Shop of 1965with its space ship and his Austriennale exhibition at the Milan Triennale in Milan in 1968. Hollein's Richard Feige n Gallery (1967-69) also useswhat can be seen as pop architectural devices. True to the popular fascination with interplanetary space travel in the wake of Sputnik, for examp le, its buffed stainless steel bathroom was straight out of Buckminster Fuller's single shell design for a plug-in Dymaxion toilet, and was expressly intended as an emulation of something out of an interplanetary space capsule. 21< Even the ceiling of the bathroom, made of screens of small, parabolic polished stainless steel mirrors which filtered the light above, conferred a strangely lunar, space13< Mies Archive, Ibid. 14< Banham. The Great Gizmo. In: A Critic Writes: Essays by Reyner Banham. Berkeley: Universityof California Press, 1996. 15< Mies van der Rohe Archive, vol. 19. 16< Eiffler-Conrads interview. Quoted in Schultze, p. 109. 17< Schultze, p. 144. 18< Ibid. 19< Schultze, p. 142 20< Schultze, p. 137.21< Interview of the author with Hans Hollein, June 2004.

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ship-like atmosphere. Hollein also used the same lighting on the ceiling of the gallery's viewing room, conceived of as another, this time semi-circular-plan chamber, its exterior clad in stainless steel. Besides int ergalactic travel, Hollein also tapped Marshall McLuhan's Guten berg Galaxy and other prophetic writings on the future importance of the new information technology and digital media in a wi red world to fuel his design in placing what he called a "Media Spine", a shaft running along the ceiling of the top floor of the gallery. It carried telecommunications and lighti ng cables that could be plugged into at any point. 22( Then there was the commercial vernacular. Like the neon light sculptress Ch ryssa, Hollein also quoted freely from the language of street advertising, using the bare fluorescent tubes in circular and wiggling patterns on the ceiling of the ground floor.

Right-on Populism What our article did aim to do, however, was to place the concept of pop architecture in its historical context, retracing it to the writings of Banham's successors, such as Gordon Cullen, Douglas Haskell, early Charles Moore and Philippe Boudon .

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IN ADDITION, IT LOCATED POP ARCHITECTURE IN THE CONTEXT OF A WIDER PHENOMENON, WHAT WE CALLED POPULIST ARCHITECTURE. There was more to this moveme nt than taste, for all its extraordinary formal ingenuity. Pop ulist architecture also involved social and politica l issues. By "popu list architecture," we did not mea n "pop architecture"- or, rather, not only. Pop architecture, whether in the writings, visionary designs and materialised buildings that att ended it, was an optimistic, feel-good, up-beat cultural movement, tapping the groundswell of the taste preferences of an unparalleled phenomenon of upward mobility. Architecture beganto be practiced in a completely new way, not only formally but also socially and politically. Architects began to get off their high horse not only as the stewards of good taste, but also the upholders of good function. In the latter case, they abandoned their traditional, pre-war, ClAM role as experts began to interact with "the people."The architect abando ned the stance of a ClAM modeled, Le Corbusier-like, all knowing, all powerful sage, in order to become a public servant in the service of the user. What this political facet of populism shared with Tast e Populism can be summe d up succinctly. On one hand, a rejection of approac hesto design that were felt

to be "high" and elitist, and on the other an emb race of "right on, brother," popular values. The origins of this other political and social side of populist architecture have much the same origins as Pop architecture or taste populism . They both go back to the post-war bottom-up "Humanist Rebe llion" against the regimenting, authoritarian ClAM generation of Le Corbusier, van Eeste ren, Gropius. Te am Ten's members, in particular Aldo van Eyck, Alison and Pet er Smithson, Jaap Bakema. Shadrach Woods, had as early as the beginning of the 1950s espoused a new approach to architectural and urban issues. This approach took different forms. In van Eyck's case, it was materialised above all in his designs for the Amsterdam playgrounds, the first "participatory" architectural practice of the post-war period. Indeed, each one of the over 700 playgrounds he designed for the city was the result of popular demand. Indeed, in order to have the city implant a playground, the neighbourhood made a request to the Public Works department. 23( Not surprisingly political populism in the US, as opposed to the European situation,focused onthe private sector rather than the public one. Herbert Gans, for example, looked positively at the new working class suburban reality of Levittown, finding in it a healthy locus of community. In The Urban Villagers, he celebrated Boston's ethnic Italian working-class neighbourhood, the North End. 24(

POPULISM GRADUALLY TOOK ON A MORE ASSERTIVE AND POLEMIC TONE. By the 60s, its representatives were noticeably angry. Jane Jacobs was the first to t ake on in a highly pugnacious fashion the elitism and authoritarianism not only of ClAM but also ClAM's traditional opponents, Lewis Mumford and the American Regionalist movement. 25( As the 60's advanced, the tome got more polemical. The most extreme revolt against the top-down, elitist approach to planning was probably that of Robert Goodman's After the Planners and Michael Harrington's The Other America. 26( But along with the heightened polemics, political populism, under the title of "participation architecture" or "advocacy planning" opened up a new area of expertise. In fact it opened a whole new set of techniques on how to create community given the new reali22( Interview of the author with Hans Hollein, June 2004.23( Lefaivre, Liane and Alexander Tzonis. Aldo van Eyck, Humanist Rebe l. Rotterdam: 01O,2000 .24( Gans, Herbert. The Levittowners. New York: Pantheon, 1967 and The Urban Villagers. New York: Norton, 1964. 25( Jacobs, Jane: The Death and Life of GreatAmerican Cities. New York: 1969. 26< Goodman, Robert. After the Planners. Harmondsworth: Pelican books, 1972 and Harrington, Michael. The OtherAmerica, Povertyin the United States. Baltimore: Penguin Books, 1962.

ties of the post-war city, where the old typologies were being replaced for new ones: the commercia l reality, infrastructure, the strip, the mall, the parking lot, the drug st ore, the gym, the slum, the street. 27( By the late 60's, political populism was probablythe leading tendency in architectural schools.

IT MADE STRANGE BEDFELLOWS . Amongthem was Seag ram heiress Phyllis Lambert who joined the radical lawyer Saul Alinsky, in turned her professional attention to social and political issues in the Afro-American urban neighbourhoods of Chi cago in the mid- t o late60's. Soon Christophe r Alexander joined their ranks, with works like Peopl e rebuilding Berkeley (1974). 28(

Populist Critique. The letting down of top-down. Ou r 1975 article presented post-war populism as, above all, a critique of a regimenting, technocratic welfare state, which, in its top-down way, ironically, let "the people" down in failing to meet its needs. Alex Tzonis was situated at a particular vantage point when we wrot e the article: The Harvard Graduate School of Design in the early seventies. 29( This goes a long way in explaining the background that prompted the writ ing of the article. By the mid seventies, pop architecture had evolved since the time when Banham had writt en his article.

MOREOVER, POPULIST ARCHITECTURE WAS ABOVE ALL AN AMERICAN PHENOMENON. One of the places this evolution took place in was Cambridg e, in particular The Harvard -MIT Center for Urban Resea rch. Cambridge had been, along with Yale - where Alex had been a student and t eacher, associated with Serge Chermayeff - , University of Pennsylvania and Berkeley, one of the major think tanks where this populist movement, in the larger sense of the term, that is embracing both the formal and political aspects of populism, had t aken shape. 30(

Golden Age The most striking thing about the Populist is that there was no perceived contradiction between the aesthetic and the social missions of architecture, no great divide between formal invention and political intervention. It was a time when future Pritzker prize winning architect like RobertVenturi could design Guild Hall in Philadelphia, the first multi-cultural social housing for the elderly in the US.

In retrospect, Populism was a kind of neo-Vitruvian moment, when the profession was evenly distributed between issues of pop-venustas, pop-firmitas and pop-commoditas, or a neo-Albertian instance of all embracing concinnitas. In addition, it was characterised by what one might call a cybernetic combination of populist"bottom up" with a public sector "top-down" approaches. Open any architecture maga zine of the 60's - Domus, Architectural Review, Casabella, The Record, Architecture d'Aujourd'hui - the excitement is palpable even today. You just know people eagerly awaited every new issue. There was an exuberant cross-disciplinary, an intellig ence, a vitality, a sense of caring and respons ibility. It was a true golden age, bursting with possibilities.

So what happened? What happened ? The mid-seventies, that's what. That is when the post-partem economic blues of the 60's happened and, to recall the title of James O'Conno r's best selling book of the time, the "Fiscal Crisis of the State," occurred. 31< From one day to the next, public sector funding, that had supported a good many of the populist social experiments simply stopped. Of course, there were also other factors, and we have gone into them elsewhere. But this, along with the heating up of the Cold War, when social concerns beganto be looked on as Bolshevist, was probably the most important. It was decisive. And the impact on the populism was devastating. With the new reality hitting home in the mid-1970's, the profession did a complete about-face and changed its tune fast. It st arted belly-dancing like mad to the faint strains of the market economy in the US and of a populist-unfriendly public sector in Europ e. Almost immediately the profession went off into a lopsided course, a course it has been on ever since. Formalism and elitism took over from the Vitruvian golden age of balance. We called the resulting development Narcissi sm. 32(

27< See our article "On Planning and Tomatoes:' Casabella, 1996. 28( See Lambert, Phyllis. Advocacy Planner of the 1960s, an int erview with Liane Lefaivre. Harvard Design Magazine: Spring 2004. Alexander, Christopher. People rebuilding Berkeley. In: Grabow. Steven. The Search for a new Paradigm in Architecture. Stocksfield: Oriel Press, 1983. 29( Alex Tzonis joined the faculty of The Graduat e School of Design in 1968 and stayed on the faculty until 1981. Liane Lefaivre was a research assistant of his from 1972 until 1977. 30( Lefaivre, Liane, Alex Tzonis and Richard Diamond. Architecture in North America since 1960. Thames and Hudson, 1996 and Lefaivre. Liane and Alexander Tzonis. Planning and Tomatoes, or What Thoughts I have of you Tonight, Walt Whitman. Casabella, 586-587,1992, pp. 46-48. 31( O'Connor, James. The Fiscal Crisis of the State New Yo rk: Bant am, 1973. 32( Tzonis, Alexander and Liane Lefaivre. The Narcissist Phase in Archit ecture. The Harvard Architectural Review: Volume 1, Spring 1980, pp. 53-63.

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Looking ahead Why did we write the article? Populism was under threat, but perhaps it wasn't so clear that it was over. Fact is it was over. It was swiftly followed by the neo-conservative movementthat was its antithesis, post-modernism. The change came surprisingly fast. In the bat of an eye populism's aesthetics and political aspirations vanished from the stage. The cutesy, silly, oversized stuccoed-pink columns, capitals and pediments, and other pseudo-historicist paraphernalia were rolled out from the wings and took over the scene. The advent of post-modernism can be seen as a last ditch attempt to return to "high" architectural culture, either in its classical or in its pre-war Corbusian forms. It failed lamentably, however, giving a ridiculous, cartoon version of the original works they were mimicking.

of the profession's brain. From a certain point of view, it doesn't matter much because, anyway, no-one really listens to architects the way they did in the 60's, they have lost their standing and relevance. Even architecture maga zines are dwindling. Like Oliver's Sacks story, this dysfunction is sad. It is also bad for the profession and for the public. The present book, put together by Michael Shamiyeh, based on the conference he organised, Topograph ies of Popul ism, may be one of many signs of change in the making.

THE IM PACT ON THE IVY LEAGUE ARCHITECTURE SCHOOLS, WHERE POPULISM HAD BEEN NURTURED, WAS DRASTIC.

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Take Harvard's Graduate School of Design, for example. Once one of the major laboratories for populist architecture, fueling The Harvard-MIT Joint Center for Urban Studies, over night it abandoned it's program of planning and retreated into post-modern formalism. Almost thirty years on, the situation that was responsible for the demise of populism has only got more extreme. The fiscal crisis of the state has given way to something even more ominous and frightful, what Noreena Hertz has called "The Silent Takeover." 33< The state no longer exists. It has been replaced with big corporate power. The major players in the economic and political decision making are the giant corporations.

THE TROU BLE IS WIT H TH E LOPSIDEDNESS OF ALL THIS. In contrast with architectural form, the discourse by architects about the city has not fared so well in the last thirty years. It has grown increasingly vacuous and strange because it has lost the knowledge and expertise developed by the generation of the populists. Like "The Man who mistook his Wife for a Hat," 34< the story of a man who thought his wife was a hat and tried to put her on his head, architects don't even know what they don't know anymore because they have a serious professional case of misconception, agnosia that has severed their links with history. They look at the city with a bizarre case of mis-seeing, as if through the loss of a specific visualising function that was once an integral part

33< Hertz, Noreena. The Silent Takeover. Global Ca pitalism and the Death of Demo cracy. London: Heinemann, 2001 . 34< This is the title of a book by Sacks, Oliver.The Man who mistook his Wife for a Hat and other Cli nical Tales. New York: Harper and Rowe, 1987.

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J="ORUM Y(l(llt~i"_\lf~""""fl" - --.·__ .-.r Qll;~~c""'rr".n... -

ALEXANDER TZONIS

IN DE NAAM VAN HET VOl K

-IN THENAME OF THE PEOPLE -

LIANE LEFA IVRE

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ALEXANDER C. TZONIS AND LIANE LEFAIVRE ( In the Name of the People; The Populist Movement in Architecture

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BY THE END OF THE SECOND WORLD WAR, THE ARCHITECTURAL PROFESSION SEEMED TO HAVE ATTAINED A STATE OF RELATIVE EQUILIBRIUM AND PEACE. THE LONG STRUGGLE, BEGUN IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY BY A FEW VISIONARY ARCHITECTS AND THEORETICIANS AGAINST THE CONSTRAINING TRADITION OF ORDERS, PROPORTIONS AND DECORATION, HAD ENDED. THE FINAL TRIUMPH BY AVANT-GARDE FIGURES SUCH AS WRIGHT, LE CORBUSIER, MIES AND GROPIUS WAS UNIVERSALLY ACKNOWLEDGED. MODERNIST ARCHITECTURE WAS "ESTABLlSHMENT, II AND POLEMICS A THING OF THE PAST. THE TASK THAT NOW LAY AHEAD WAS THE BROAD IMPLEMENTATION OF THE NEW PRINCIPLES. A first version of this paper was written during our stay in the Institut d' Architecture et d'Urbanisme of Strasbourg in the fall of 1972 and has been published in Bauwelt (German) January ii, 1975 and in Forum (Dutch) No 3, February 1976

Yet, just over two decades later, at the end of the 1960's, architectural practice was the target of more criticism, invective and discredit than it had ever known before. For a time the stress was so great that total collapse seemed imminent. The aim of this essay is to discuss whether these developments were the result of a structureless disintegration leading nowhere or whether there is a pattern underlying them. A few criticisms were raised even in those early post war years of optimism. One of the first was that of Gordon Cullen in the May issue of Architectural Review of 1949. In an article on 'Outdoor Publicity' he criticised architects bypassing street advertising as a source of inspiration. Because, he wrote, this type of design had not been produced by 'professionals' and failed to conform with the 'universal visual order.' architects regarded it as a part of the general squalor of the sprawling metropolis, it' s creator - the public - having lacked the basic training necessaryfor good design. Cullen called architects' attention to objects that had been avoided or shunned in the past in an 'act of gentilism reminiscent of the days when the designer ignored everything that did not fall into line with his own private taste.' Cullen's article is accompanied by several drawings and photographs of American cityscapes that served to document the anomalies which were to confront the norms of offic ial architecture. Neon signs creating a 'nightscape in suspend ed animation.' flashing lights: 'parking here' and 'open all night': this was 'Broadway: vulgar and vital.' It was obvious that Cullen was bowing to the authority whose design decisions, opposed to the architectural standard, had been labelled 'incongruous.' 'vulgar.' 'degrading' and 'destruct ive.' In Cullen's article they were exemplary. It was not the anomalous design products that had to be transformed, he explained, but the principles of architecture that had to be adapted in order to meet the specifications of popular design. 'Publicity has to be accepted as available aid.' And the reason for this?

A FORCE THAT EMANATED FROM POPULAR DESIGN, A ·VITALITYI THAT HAD TO BE PRESERVED. Architectural values had often undergone similar transformations in the past. Objects that had been considered external to architecture proper had been assimilated, producing modifications in the idiom of the discipline and to varying degrees, identity crises to practitioners.

The rustic cottage, the acqueduct, the silo, the steamsh ip were relatively recent acquisitions and had shakenthe old prototypes of the design profession. They had changed the norms of design, affected the form of the product and the methodology of production. These were changesthat the profession had absorbed and survived. In the opinion of Peter and Alison Smithson popular design did not pose a threat to design practice at all. To justify this view they invoked past cases of change and adaption in the practice. 'Groplus, they argued, wrote a book on grain silos, Le Corbusier one on aeroplanes, and Charlotte Perriand brought a new object to the office every morning; but today we collect ads.' Others, however, were terrified . The scandal over the introduction of the idea of a 'sovereign' public in architecture might have further implications because it challenged the very existence of the profession.

ALTHOUGH CUllEN AND THE SMITHSONS ADVOCATED NOTHING AS EXTREME AS THIS, THEIR CONCLUSIONS WERE RATHER OPEN ENDED: IIlET THE PUBLIC EXPRESS ITIS VULGARITY, THE PUBLIC AND ITIS VULGARITY Will IMPROVE TOGETHER. II But years later, it would be the turn of the 'public and it' s publicity.' with all of it's 'incongruity.' to improve the architect: in his article 'Architecture and PopularTaste.' Douglas Haskel was in fact to defend the 'common' and 'ordinary' people accused by 'prestigious critics' of creating a dreary, corrupt, scornful, infantile and hopeless environment. "These people are attacked", he would say,"for no other reason than the 'strangeness' or the 'novelty' of their creations." The situation, as he saw it was not unlike that when the machine had been introduced into the practice of architecture. "Now the problem is...the adaptation...an era of popular mass consumption," he concluded. 1< Haskel 's illustrations include not only Times Squa re but Disneyland and San Francisco Honky-Ton k. With the 'schmaltz' and 'prett iness' of popular taste, the 'make believe' of 'fairy tale buildings', the 'false fronts', high gables painted with daisies' and 'Santa Claus Villages, complete with Silent Night on the loudspeakers.' Haskel enlarged the category of architecture. A splendid future was in store according to him, with 'new and different kinds of architectural places... reduced to the barest suggestion of scaffolding to support

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the real show that goes on...popular yet wonderfully abstract.' Haskel thought he was beholding the triumph of the 'democratic wi lderness.' Indeed,the impetus of the 'popular movement' was irresistable for a time. Even Tom Wolfe, the american journalist soon joined in enthusiastically. In his article 'Learning from LasVegas ' he compared Las Vegas to Versailles as 'the only two architecturally uniform cities in history.' Very soon, Reyner Banham, acknowledging the popular disrespect of the architectural norms compla ined that "motels, supermarkets, bowling alleys, fil ling stations, hambu rger stands, even private houses," which have been conceived through what he called 'emotional engineering,' had been missing from the exhibition under way at The Museum of Modern Art in New York City entitled Modern Architecture,

USA.2(

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This "unexplored territo ry accounts for perhaps 95% of all buildings put up in the United States... We can no longer refer to such a fact as an exception to the rule." The products of "frank and pleasureable emotional engineering ... do not answer a purely stylistic definitation of 'quality' but 'the quality involved is too big to be ignored.'" Banham asked who the creators of the new architecture would be. "Who knows what they look like, or if they exist? ..Even those who seem to think they understand it, still admit how littl e they know." This question however was of great professional interest, for if a new need for the so called emotional engineering products was arising, then surely someone would be needed to fill that need.

CONCERN BEGAN TO STIR IN THE HEARTS OF MANY. It was finally Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown who put these ideas into practice. They proposed as a design project to their students in the School of Architect ure at Yale Unive rsity a study of LasVegas and an educational trip to the city was organised. 3( They documented and analysed Las Vegas in search of possibilities for future design products. Their efforts both shocked and intri gued. Their lectures and articles of the sixties were unique for the wit and for the acuity with which they exposed the abuses and contradictions of functionalism and international style clearly showing the principles of a 'universal visual order' to be not only incoherent as a system 1< Haskel, Douglas. Architecture and Popular Taste. Architectural Forum: August 1958. 2( Banham, Reyne r. The Missing Motel. The Listener: August 15'", 1965. 3( Vent uri, Robert. Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture. 1966; Venturi, Robert and Denise Scott Brown. Learning from Las Vegas Architectural Forum: March,1968.

but inconsistent with everyday reality. They most adamantly arguedthat functionalism and international style were unable to provide an architecture acceptable to the general public because they refused to 'look downward...to the commonplace' and to 'the commercial vernacular' of the mass of people who were, after all, the real users of architecture. In a subsequentstudy,focusing on Levittown, a development that combined commercial standards wit h a concern for user tastes, Venturi and Scott Brown found that the success of Levittown was based on its ability to cater above all the fantasies of its inhabitants, an ability lacking in functionalist and international style projects. Unfortunately, their search was limited by their desire to find a new 'scale' and an appropriate system representation, a new norm able to contain the emerging anomal ies. This led them back where they started from. The iconoclastic slogan "Las Vegas is to the strip what Rome was to the piazza" instead of challenging the theoretical foundations of traditional modernist architecture, merely fortif ied it by expanding it' s repertory of visual styles. It shifted the focus from one architectural model object to another. Because Venturi and Scott Brown insisted in approaching the architectural object as a purely visual or stylistic phenomenon, they succeeded in providing neither a deeper analysis of the meaning of norms in architecture, nor any insight into what a new theory of design might be. By praising the architectural aberrations of Las Vegas, they simply enclosed them within the bounda ries of accepted architectural expression.

IN A SIMILAR VEIN, PHILIPPE BOUDON STUDIED THE PESSAC HOUSING PROJECT DESIGNED BY LE CORBUSIER IN THE THIRTIES. His book is an account of the changeswhich the users put to original buildings. For Boudon the outcome is a happy combination of the point of view of architect and user. "La

relation entre Ie charactere individuel au depart de certaines maisons et les alterations et transformations consecutive, met en evidence, transposee au niveau de I'ensemble du quartier, Ie caract ere fortement individualise de ce dernier. C'est un petit mondparticulier- clos et ouvert- possedant une individualite, qu'il nous a ete donne d'etudier. Inversement, Ie fait que les maisons ou les zones les plusimpersonnellesdu quartier aientdonne lieu a des alterations beaucoup moinsmarquees, nous fait prendre

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conscien ce de ce qu 'un habitat collectit, au lieu de susciter la reaction individuel/e, risque de I' etouffe r." 4<

Similar proposals for an 'open' or 'indet erminate' architecture had been provided during the late fifties and early sixties by several architects, in particular by the members of the Team X group. 5< The attempts of this group were not so much aimed at coming to terms with phenomenon of the commercial strip as it was with the question of housing. As in the documented case of Pessac, these architects saw the solution in the creation of a so called 'double scale' architecture. 6< Decisions concerning the structure and service framework were to be taken by the architect. These decisions bound the user to a certain extent but he was in turn free to decide on such matters as the proportioning of his own living space and the determining of paths of general circulation and access to supplies.

WITHIN THESE CONSTRAINTS, THE USER WAS FREE TO CREATE AN ORDER ALL HIS OWN.

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The role of the architect was symbolically reduced in this fashion to a 'minimum structure' while that of the user was to increase proportionally. A compromise between the idea of the universally applicable set of architectural norms and of the idea of user sovereignty proved impossible because of the difficulties involved in drawing the line between the jurisdiction of the architects and that of the user in a rigorous manner. A common element in the above cases was that the hypothesis of universal norms and the legitimacy of the institution of the architectural profession were undermine d although no alternatives were put forth to take their place. It was another group of young designers and planners who, having broken away, from the orthodoxy of the profession and working towards the creation of a fundamental social change, finally succeeded in providing a framework for a redefinition of the role of the architect. Whereas the strip had captured the imagination of Haskel, Banham,Venturi and Scott Brown, this group of apostate professional and student architects and plannersturned their attention to the slum and the housing conditions of the poor. Architecture began to be seen not as a phenomenon of growth and change, but as one of injustice and decay. Although the strip and the slum belonged to totally different worlds, both were stumbling blocks for the functionalism and international style

theories of design. The slum, like the strip, cast doubt on the hypothesis of a universally desirable and socially good set of architectural norms. As Venturi and Scott Brown had goneto LasVegas and Los Angeles,those wanting to study the slum left schools and offices to experience life in Harlem-NewYork, Mantua, Philadelphia and the South End of Boston. This, they thought, would rid them of the 'professional filter ' which had been blurring their vision. In 1963, a young American planner Chester Hartman mad e an issue of the great disparity between the needs of the poor and the norms implemented in their housing. "Physical factors alone have been stressed in the evaluation of housing conditions and in the planning for improved residential areas. Physical factors are important, but they have no invariant or 'objective' status and can only be understood in the light of their meaning for other people's lives, which, in turn, is determined by social and cultural values." 7< Hartmann claimed that the projected norms of the architect 'related to middle-class values' instead of the 'working-class orientations and life-styles' of the user.

AS A RESULT, ARCHITECTS DESIGNED PRODUCTS THAT WER E NEITHER 'MEANINGFUL 1 NOR 'GRATIFYING ' TO THEIR USERS. The trouble is that working-class housing is designed 'for the worker, not by the worker' complained B. Brolin and J . Zeisel, a young architect working with a sociologist in an article published in 1968 by the Architectural Forum entitled 'Mass Housing: Social Research and Design.' The authors argued that: 'the official approach of architects to housing had a dehumanising and degrading effect." While "unplanned housing built by the inhabitants themselve s" expressed the social values of it's users, planned housing designed by professionals imposed 'new ways of life' on the inhabitants and these were dictated by the designers. Mass housing designed by professionals might be 'technically adequate ', 4< Boudon, Philippe. Pessac de Le Corbusier. 1969.5 < Team X, Report. Published in: Architectural Design: December 1962. Also several articles published in this Forum during the period extending from 1958 to 1962. 6< See Habraken, N.J.: Supports: an alternative t o Mass Housing. 1972. Dut ch edition 1961. "A support structure,' he wrote 'is quit e different matter fromthe skeleton construction of a large building, although to the superficial spectator there may appear to be similarities...The more variety housing can assume, the better...' 7< Hartman. Ch est er. Social values and Housing Orientations. Journal of Social Issues: April 1963, vol. XIX, no. 2.

Brolin and le isel argued, ..much along the same lines as Hartman, "but it is nevertheless often 'socially inadequate ' and 'culturally alien to it' s users." It "puts up barriers to their way of life." Examples from all over the world were cited in the article of slum tenants who preferred their old and poorer dwellings to technologically superior housing conditions. Having pointed out these and other disservices of architecture, Brolin and leisel proposed an alternative to the design decision process. They proposed to limit the power of the architects and to int egrate the user in the conception of every plan. However, they insisted this was only feasible as long as the operation involved the help of an applied sociologist. His duty would be to intervene as arbitrator betw een user and designer, supplying information on the living pattern and 'lat ent social structure' of the future inhabitant. The sociologist would obtain his information 'by repeated observation and the use of other technique surveying attitudes, informal interviewing, counting how often people do things.' According to Brolin and le isel user needs could neither be understood through intuition nor satisfied through the blind application of arbitrary and standardised formulae.

THEREFORE THE INTERVENTION OF A SPECIALIST TAKING THE ROLE OF A DETACHED AND IMPARTIAL OBSERVER WAS INDISPENSABLE IN THE DESIGN DECISION MAKING PROCESS. But, how could the sociologist remain detached and impartial if he was responsible to the sponsor of the plan, even in the case where the sponso r happened not to be the user of the product, as in the case of mass housing ? Some other young archit ects and students proposed a solution. They were inspired by the advocacy movement in planning which required the planner to be an 'advocate' of the community where he worked instead of an outsider. The advocate planner was responsible to his client and sought only to express the user's views. The advocate architect produced his plans with the community. The people would become incorporated in this fashion into the design process to prevent infiltration of alien values. Part of the advocate designer's job was to present and explain his plans regularly to the users to insure that the desire of the users had been correctly met and properly implemented. Furthermore, he would present those plans to the sponsors or potential sponsors of the project and defend them as legal cases. Whether the sponsor was an entr epreneur or a government official, the main concern of the advocate designer was to

defendthe freedom of the user to decide on the final product of the design process. At approximately the same time, a more extreme position was taken by a British architect, John Turner, who had been studying the barriadas in Lima, Peru, a form of urban squatter settlement. 9< Although these result in slumsthat are really a 'health menace,' they offer a 'good fit' or 'response' to user needs. Upto this point, Turner's argument seemsto coincide with the previous observation on advocacy design. But Turne r went one step further. The freedom to shape one's own environment resulted not only in providing economic and social benefits, but also provided an 'exist ential value.' Whereas housing until then had been accepted as an 'object or a product,' he suggested that housing might be seen as a 'process which the users themselves must be free to manipulate through the support of institutionalised services.' Thus, self help design was seen not only as a means by which to achieve more satisfactory products, but also as a goal in itself. 10< Another version of this idea was put forth by Herbert Gans, who found that the fundamental faults of the design process lay in it's total disregard for the opinion of the user and the method by which it imposed 'class norms and aspirations' of the architect onto the user. He offered a counter proposa l whereby all users sharing the same 'norms and aspirations,' - in other words, all 'subcultures' or 'classes' - would be free to express their needs and demand satisfaction. 11< He argued that in an egalitarian democratic society, the design product must reflect the values of the user in a manner consistent with pluralistic principles, not only those of the elite.12< A sufficient quantity of products for everyone must be provided along with a variety of qualities which correspond to the standards of each group and each user. As there are many standards of utility and different "tastes of beauty," there oughtto be 'architecture and architects for each taste culture.'13< It was undemocratic for an architect, according to Gans, to impose his point of view on the user because 'the architect is not a political representative and he is not accountable to any electorate or other constituency.' He had 'no right to decide (what) people oughtto be' and the fact that the architect did just that made his action illegitimate.

9<

Turner, John. The squatter Settlement; an architecture that works. Architectural Design: vol. 38, August 1968. 10< Turner, John. 1971. Unpublished paper given at the Centre Intercultural de Documentation Cuernevaca, Mexico. See also Turner and R. Fichter. Freedom to Build. New York: London 1972. See also the experience of Fathy, Hassan. Gourna a Tale of two Villages. Cairo: 1969. 11< Gans, Herbert. Poverty and Cu lture. In: Gans, H. People and Plans. 1972. 12< Gans, H. The Balanced Com munity. Journal of the American Institute of Planners: XXVII, no. 3,1969 and Gans, H. op. cit. Preface, p. XII. 13< Gans, H. Some Dbservations: 1972.

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a Pelican Original

After the Planners Robert Goodman

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Although Turner, like Gans and all those we have seen so far in our rapid survey of writings, present a certain degree of individuality in relation to one another, they are united by a common feature: discontent with the traditional role of the architect and with the structure of the design process in architecture. The proclaimed goal of what we shall call the populist movement was to transformthe architectural profession, in response to new and steadily growing social issues. The populists wished to cast aside the architectural practice based on visual and functional regimentation in favour of an activity centered around the needs of the individual user. The user was to become the official mentor, if not master, of the design decision. Whether these writer s favoured the low brow and popular visual expression on the strip, or the implementation of user participation and self-help design in the slums, they urged in all cases that the design process should be carried out 'in the name of the people.' Popu lism was widely criticised.

THE LITERATURE ON THIS SUBJECT IS EXTENSIVE.

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Most criticism, however, was aimed at matters of implementation focusing on trouble points in the overall theory. The major reservations were chiefly related to problems of conflict resolution: 1)What if the information available for each usergroup were not the same? 2) What if the bargaining between groups were not facilitated by the political process? 3) What if the willingness to cooperate were not equal for all parties concerned? Popu lists responded by introducing more rigorous definitions into the design process and by adding the following functions to the designer's activities:

11 To generate and diffuse information concerning the satisfaction of user needsto all groups. 14<

21 To change or restore inequalities deriving from the 31

existing political process and affect legislation act by techniques of persuasion and demonstration of size. 15< To creat e a situation of arbitration over small issues between the various conflicting groups where the dissent is not extreme and then to gradually bring in the import ant issues where the major conflicts exist. 16<

The presuppositions behind the concepts used by populists however were never examined. It was diffi cult to open any

debate on this subject as some populists went so far as to state that everything which was not 'down to earth' was an 'abstract,' 'ideological' ruling class endeavour to mask reality. Given the complex problem facing the poor, plans premised on ideologies are...harmful to the specific interests of the poor, for they represent unreal, ohen misplaced, abstract ions ...17<

WITHOUT REALISING IT POPULISTS HAD ADOPTE D A PRECISE TH EORETICAL STAND, AS CONS ISTENT AND AS DETERM INED AS ANY PREVIOUS MOVEMENT IN DESIGN. This is where populism draws it's coherence as a movement regardless of individual differences in empha sis and style among its proponents. These essenti al points of departure give to populism not only the coherence of a movement but also confine it within certain boundaries. We must trace these fundamental concepts in order to assess populism both as an alternative to'the theories of the past and as a desirable approach for the future. The functionalist theories t o which the populists were so vehemently opposed had started t aking shape during the period of the enlightenmentthrough the writings of Lodoli, Laugier and through the visionary projects of Boulee and Ledou x. It was they who first introduced into architectural thinking the concepts of the humanly 'essential' and the universally 'necessary.' These two concepts were not unique to architecture. They becamethe tenets of what was gradually 14< 'The power to conceptualise is a power to manipulate,' Peatt ie, Lisa. Reflections on Advocacy Planning. Journal of The American Institute of Planner: March 1968. For the developed techniques of decision making which t ake into account differences in the amount of information available to the participants and their attitude with regard to cooperation see lsard, Walt er and Smith TE. et al. General Theory, Social, Polit ical, Economic and Regional, 1969. 15< See Burke, George. Citizen Particip ation Strategies. The Journal of The American Institute of Planner: Sept ember 1968. 16< See Priven, Francis. Proceedings of National Conference on Advocacy Planning and Pluralist Planning. Urban Research Center. Hunter College and Peatt ie, Lisa op. cit. for further details. For a comparative evaluation of models relat ed to the case of advocacy planning see Bleecher, Earl M. Advocacy Planning for Urban Development, 1971. Daniel Patric k Moynihan, Maximum Feasible Understanding gives a very interesting description of the 'professionalisat ion' of the rights of a class. The professional formulates values to finally propagate his own interests and not those of the class he is representing. Onthe contradiction between the designer and the user, of the design's class is not t he same as that of the user: see Advocacy Planning, Progressive Architecture, September 1968. On the size of groups as a factor in the process of bargaining and arbitrati on, see Buchanan, J. M. The Demand and Supply of Public Goods, 1968 and also Olson, M. The Logic of Collecti ve Action, 1965. Problems also arise where it is impossible to develop 'pure and homogenious groups'. 17< Marshall Kaplan. I Advocacy Urban Planning. Social Welfare Forum, 1968.

to take shape as The Welfare State approach not only in architecture but in other institutionalised professions such as medicine and education. The Welfare State approach to architecture reached its fullest expression with its twentieth century heirs: Le Corbusier, the designers associated with the ClAM-group during the 1920 and 1930's, and the proponents of Functionalism and the International Style. The approach was based on a small number of general statements which characterised not only architecture, but, as has been already said, all of the professions affected by Welfare policy: first, there is a valu e syst em composed of 'common, identifically calibrat ed measures' or of 'int erpersonally comparable cardinal utilities' according to which design objects were determined, and; secondly, a value system reflects inherent human needs dictated by human nature.

AS HEALTH BECAM E IDENTIFIED WITH A NORM OF HYGIENE AND EDUCATION WITH A NORM OF LITERACY, IT WAS ONLY NATURAL THAT ARCHITECTURE SHOULD HAVE ITS OWN ESSENTIAL, NECESSARY AND SOLID NORMS. We could refer to the demand of Lodolithat 'in architettura tutto ha da nascere dal necessario' 18< r or Laug ier's statement "Les parties essentielles...(sent)...introduites par besoin.' 19< The goal of The Welfare State was to uplift the standard of health, education and general welfare related to architectural matters when and where found to be lacking. It was thus necessary to establish a series of norms defining minimum standards or levels, to objectively measure the gap between norm and actual state, and to appropriat ely compensate. Scientification in architecture, as well as in all the professions was necessary for the norms to be accurately and authoritatively defined and as effectively met as possible. The more Welfare State architects became obsessed with the rationality and verificability of their arguments, the more science seemed essential. The "scientific" list of 'necessary essentials' related to architectural normswas short. Although a real consensus was never reached by architects, their proposa ls did not vary to a great extent. The documents of the 'Congres International d'Architacture Moderne', the writings of Le Corbusier, and of Gropius, the manifestoes of the modern ists in the Soviet Union, the magazines or the curriculum of the Bauhaus and the other Ava nt Garde schools of the time, all attest to the fevered search by architects for scientific rigour and to their spectacular failure at reaching it. Whether these architects dealt with the organisation of activities in the environment

with the dimensions of built form or with spatial arrangements, they read very much like catalogues of 'necessary supplies' in times of war. The fact was that they were very much inspired by war studies. In addition, the List of PrimaryForms of the International Style was reminiscent of an elementary geometry primer. This was because it was based on such primers. Such simpleminded ness combined with a few metaphysical abstractions were elevated to the status of universal theory by several notable welf are architects. To quote Carlyle's reference to Jeremy Benthams view of utilitarian man, halftruth now defined "the completedness of limited man". 20< Needs and perceptions that had been moulded by history were henceforth considered as human nature and subject to rigorous scientific definition and satisfaction through enforced norms. Twentieth century architecture schools tended to divert their attention from historical considerations, preferring such courses as Anthropometrics and Visual Perception . Thewelfare approach failed, for it neither succeeded in turning design into a rational process nor architecture into a science. It did however establish a belief system which legitimized the actions of the architect for a certain period and accommodated the economic system in which it was rooted. It helped The Welfare State to be, for a time, sound, rational, and collectively desirable. 21< With the crisis of The Welfare State in the 1960's, new concepts were needed to revitalise and legitimise the role of the architect in the emerging economic reorganisation, and to support the developmentof new economic trends. Welfare architectural theory came under attack and out of thesegra dually emerged counter proposals, all finally tending towards a coherent populist stand. Although populists aimedtheir criticism at welfare architectural theory as a pure theory of design independent of social considerations, their criticism was intimately related to the fact that, as a belief system, the Welfare architectural theory was beginning to lose it's credibility, it's capacity to manipulatethe perception of reality in a manner consistent with the new direction of the economy. The following sections of this paper will deal with the analysis of the fundamental concepts on which the populist movement is based and try to connect them to the historic conditions out of which they arose. We will first analyse the concept of the designer. Whether the populists embraced the strip as a visual ideal or the slum as a social cause, the major issue at stake was the desirability of the architect's role as the upholder of an apparently arbitrary set of norms on the manmade environment. In other words, the populists

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refused to conform any longer with The Welfare State related norms, as did his counterpart in education and health. The Welfare State designer, whether a planner or an architect, was an 'elitist' prejud iced by his own privatetheories againstthe taste ofth e 'user.'

HE WAS INDIGNANT WHEN PEOPLE WISHED TO HAVE FUN AND A BUREAUCRAT OBLIVIOUS TO USER NEEDS. He was a peer-oriented professional imperialist. 22< Populists saw designers as a class: a class of experts who, because of a total occupational involvement with pure design or because of their own middle-class origins, had developed a private way of looking at the manm ade environment. In general, they saw designers as assuming the power to impose their views on the other classes unjustly. They were a class of professionals oppressing the class of laymen.

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The populists also criti cised the chain of command existing in The Welfare State architectural practice. If this chain of command had originally been implemented t o distribute in the most efficient manner the greatest amount of utilities to the largest number of people, the realities hardly conformed to this ideal any more. The 'bureaucratic' system was in all evidence socially inequitable and, from the populist point of view, The Welfare State was merely a structure which had allowed a 'professional elite' to 'do it' s thing,' imposing opinions on other classes of people and frustrating the real needs of the user. The designer thus 'oppressed ' the user by dict ating the shape of his environm ent and by denying him the right to free self-expression. The populist proposed several alternatives to the traditional 'pyramidal' design decision making process. A 'matrix 18< Published in Milizia, F. Arte di vedere nelle belle arti del disegno, 1781. 19< Laugier, M. A. Essai sur I'Archit ecture, 1753.20< Quoted by Mill, John Stuart. Bentham, London and Westminster I Review: August, 1838.21< An accurate description of the gradual genesis of the welfare approach in architecture and it's concepts will not be found in the writings of the Modernist architects such as Gropius and Le Corbusier who claimed it as being 'all there own,' but instead in Cesar Daly's Revue Genera le de l'Architecture et des Travaux Publiques during the years between 1847 and 1870. See especiallythe VI'" volume, 1845-46 and the articles on Worker's Housing on the Struggle between workers and entrepreneurs by Perreymond, the debated about the Ecole de Beaux Arts de Paris, on the profession of the architect. 22< Gans, Herbert. Some Observations and Proposals on the Role of the Architect in Today's America. 1972. Unpublished paper delivered in New York, at a conference in the MOMA on architectural education in the USA.

organisation' was developed to take its place. It was to be an organisation within which conflict between architect and user, bureaucrat and activist, elitist and layman might be resolved through an equalisation of classes. 23< "It is not for the planners," said P. Davidoff in an article in the Journal of AlP, "to makethe final decision in transforming the values into policy commitments. His role is to identify distribution of values among people, and how values are weighed against each other." 24< With the populists then, the emphasis passed from an ideal, in architectural values, of 'order' and 'expertise' to one of 'freedom' and 'pluralism.'

IN ORDER TO IMPLEMENT TH ESE, THE POPULISTS PROPOS ED TO INCLUDE, AS WE HAVE ALREADY MENTIONED, CONFLICT AND ARBITRATION WITHIN THE DESIGN PROCESS. As Richard Sennet wrote: 'The fruit of this conflict...is that in extracting the city from preplanned control, men will become more fully in control of themselves and more aware of each other.' 25< In general, it can be said that while for The Welfare State the aim, in Kenneth Arrow's words 26<, was to identify a common identically calibrated measure for all individuals in an ideally homogeneous society, for the populists the task became to create new models which represented individual differences, expressed subjectivevalues and reflected the diversity of a truly democratic society. With the acceptance of such subjective and irreducible values, the project of identifying ideal plans for the manmade environment, of applying them to design products was abandoned, and the scientific model of the design decision making process cast into doubt. Whether this criticism was correct or superficial will not be discussed at this time. The fact is that populists felt that this model of design had to be refuted and a new one developed in its place. The populists' approach rests on the definition of the design decision making as a political process. As every desig n decision had, in the past, been a reflection of class values,in a truly democratic societythe weight of every group's opinion must be equal and represented in a pluralistic decision making process forming a 'vector sum ' of all the collective pointsof view - an idea that went backto Condorcet's attempts to shape a democratic voting process duringthe French Revolution. 27< To take only one point of view into accountwas for the populists a case of totalitarianism in architecture.

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For populists, the concept of designer and of the design decision making process rested on a particular definition of "class". Populists opposed Welfare State architecture because class values of the user had been disregarded in the traditional design process in favour of those of the designer. Populists defined class on the basis of observa ble facts, according to the apparent 'norms and aspirations', to use Herbert Gans's phrase, of each group of people- thus reducing class distinction almost to a matter of differing taste. This partial vision of the social organisation led to hasty conclusions: The Welfare State designer infringed on the sacred rights of the user by imposing his opinions in such matters as colour combination , furniture arrangement, room layout, window spacing and so forth and reduced the user to a position of dependence. The selective amnesia with which populist writers overlooked the historical conditions which fost ered these 'norms and aspirations' gave an autonomo us status which otherwise might have been equivocal. On ly by disregarding the history of these class-values were populists able to assert that they were the spontaneous expression of 'human nature.' 28<

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Herbert Gans, in one vague allusion, accepts class 'norms and aspirations' as the result of economic and other conditions...responses to situations to which people (have had) to adapt (and which have been) internalised and have become behaviour norms.' Therefore the satisfaction 'of these 'norms and aspirations' must be sought after since they had 'not provedto be socially or emotionally harmful.' This historical analysis of the populists went no deeper and thus they proned as the right of every group and every 'class,' 'social' or 'cultural', to freely express its values through the design of the built environme nt.

But freedom of choice in matters of consumption does not guarantee the independence of a group, and the movement of the user-oriented design offered nothing but an illusory freedom. The disregard for the means of production in the determination of dependence in society and the exclusive reliance on the aspect of consumption characterise not only the view of the populists, but that of the designers of The Welfare State as well.

THE DEFINITION OF DESIGN AS A SCIENTIFIC PROCESS AND AS A POLITICAL PROCESS WAS EQUALlY LIMITED. While Welfare State architects saw the designed environment as a well ordered regiment, populists envisaged it as well serviced supermarket. 29< People seemed to acquire from shelves what they needed, without control, supervision or bureaucracy. If only the cashier's desk were taken away from the entrance, Herbert Read once observed. This vision of reality was not only partial, detaching, as it tried to do the sector of consumption activities from the reality of production that determines the real dependencies behind that little cashier, but it also created a falsely optimistic vision of the function of design and of design products in the organisation of power in society. Let us, as the populists did, consider for a moment the satisfaction of utilitarian needs as paramount in the overall scheme of 'social change.' Let us supposethat our society is suddenly able to deliver enough design products to everyone. Why indeed would the cashier have to be retained?

THIS STAND ON THE PART OF THE POPULISTS IS, AT BEST, NAIVE. The bias resulting from the implicit acceptance of this positivist view of society was considerable. If class was defined solely on the basis of observab le norms or values, then social 'oppression' could be equatedto dependence in matters of consumption. But the study of the developme nt of values of a social group shows them to be the outcome of the relationships of dependence of this group to the other groups. This definition of 'norms and aspirations' rested exclusively with effects and led them to conclude that the acquisition of products by a group designed according to its own norms and aspirations' altered its dependence on other groups or classes and eliminated 'oppression.'

23< See Argyris, C.Today's Problemswith Tomor row Organizations. Journal of Management Studies, vol. 4 no. 1. 24< Davidoff, P. and T. A. Re iner, A. Choice Theory of Planning. Journal of the American Institut e of Planners, vol. 28,p. 108 1962. Reim, M. Social Planning: The Search for Legit imacy. Journal of the American Institute of Planners, vol. 35, 1969. 25< Sennett, Richa rd. The Uses of Disorder, 1970.26< Arrow. K. Social Choice and Individual Values. 1963. Minas, J. S. and R. L. Ackoff. Individual and Collective Value Judgment. In: Shelly, M. W. and G. L. Bruyan (eds]. Human Judgement and Optima lity. 1964; Coombs, C. H. A Theory of Data, 1964. 27< A concept at least as old as Condorcet. See Essai sur la Constitution et les Functions des Assemblees Provinciales, 1758. See also Wolfe, R. P. The Poverty of Liberalism . 1968.28< For an elegant demonstration of how values related to the built environmenttook shape in the mind of the French industrial working class of the 19'" century. See Raymond, M. G. La Politique Pavillionaire, 1966.2 9< Woodcock, George Herbert Read . The Streamand the Source. 1971.

The major preoccupation in such an affluent society, to use the term of J.K. Galbraith, would be to match design products to the needs of each individual. But this situation would only change the distribution of design products in society and would leave intact the organisation of domination and dependence. Populists assumed that the acquisition and the use of design products would satisfy the users because of 'utilities' in the products themselves. The task of the designer was therefore to determine products that maximise these utilities. The assumption was that products gratify because of certain properties inherent to them corresponding to certain needs also inherent to human nature. This concept of the design product was taken for granted both by The Welfare State designers and the populists. That different qualities seemed to be satisfactory at different times in history was somehowinterpreted in both schools of thought as a phenomenon relating to the 'plasticity of human need'. But behind the reality of the 'plasticity of human needs' the design product assumes a value which is dictated by the role it plays as a signifier of power.

AS A SIGNIFIER OF POWER, THE VALUE OF THE OBJECT IS RELATED TO WHAT IT REPRESENTS RATHER THAN TO HOW IT IS MADE. The gratification it offers is not the result of a material property, but of the social function that it fills. What is pleasing in the object is not the object itself, but the social relation it signifies. This view of the role of design products was put forth three hundred years ago by Claude Perrault, scholar, doctor and theoretician of architecture. Perrault saw that the value we assign to design products is dependent on a 'Connection which the Mind makes of two things of a different nature, for by the Connection, it comesto pass,that the Esteem where with the Mind is predisposed for some Things whose value it knows, insinuates an Estee m also for others...and insensible engages it to respect them alike. This Principle is the natural Foundation of Belief.' Perrault arguedthat architecture, functioning as a belief system resembles the 'Things in Fashion or the Ways of Speaking used at Court.' Theseforms were respected because of the 'Regard we have for their Merit and good Graces of the Court.' 30( But with the exception of Perrault's shrewd analysis, design theory has bypassed this kind of investigation and has taken for granted that the design product is desirable because of a gratifying faculty contained by it. In other words, it has con-

sidered only the fetishistic quality of the design object which masks the human relationship of dom ination and dependence behind it. In this manner, the structure of dependencies has remained hidden behind the phenomenon of possession. Even a superabundant supply of custom-ma de design products cannot create equality of power. The real organisation of power and dependence in society is concealed in the 'code' which uses design products as its 'medium'. In this code, social inequalities relate to the possession of consumer goods, as Bernstein has pointed out. 31< An alteration at the level of this code does not automatically lead to a correspond ing change in the distribution of power in society. The model of design as an autonomous political process assuring the 'liberation' of the user through a direct participation in the design process, rests on the idea of the design product as a source of social power and on the hypothesis that values are autonomo us from the overall development of the social organisation.

ARISING IN OPPOSITION TO THE TENDENCY OF THE WELFARE STATE PLANNER AND ARCHITECT TO DOMINATE THE USER, POPULISM TENDED TOWARDS A COUNTERAPPROACH OF 'LIBERATION' FOR THE USER THROUGH SELF-HELP DESIGN. However, even with the most 'user-oriented' and 'self-help' project, the user is bound to a relationship of dependence. This relationship becomes apparent when the user realizes that he does not possess the materials and the resources necessaryto build his design object and that he lacks the economic power to obtain them. The user wi ll haveto face the realities of the status of the consumer, be it only of raw materials, and will be forced to accept a status of dependence in the production sector where he will haveto acquire the remuneration by which he will be able to consume and acquire the needed material and then 'create.' Even more, his dependence on the production sector will increase as a 'free' consumer, his desire to consume will be int ensified. 30( Perrault, Claude. Ordonnance des Cing Especes de Colonnes, 1683. See also Herrmann, Wolgang, Claude Perrault and Alexander Tzonis. Towards a non Oppress ive Environment, 1972, chapter on "Arbitrary Beauties of Perrault." 31< Bernstein, B. and O. Henderson. Social Class Differences in the Relevence of Language to Socialisation. Sociology, vol. 3,1969; and Bernstein, B. Elaboratedand Restricted Codes,'American Anthropologist', vol. 66, no. 6, 1964. And Douglas, Mary. Natural Symbols. 1970.

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Thus, the liberationfor the user demanded by the popu lists is restricted and cannot be accepted in a sense of a universal condition of liberation,since it could lead to a heavie r underlying state of dependence for the user. Populism can be viewed simply as a movement which responded to a new economic framework. But. in addition, it pointed out the basic shortcomings of The Welfare State approach, attacked the totalitarian fetishistic nature of the 'norm' in the design object, the authoritarian treatment of the user by the architect and the wastefulness of The Welfare State bureaucratic structure. Populists succeeded in demystifying the 'scientific' discourse of the architects of The Welfare State by proving to be arbitrary, with 'little impact on the behavioural patterns...of people,' a response of the elite group in society to, in Gans's words, the 'threat which...immigrants, and urban industrial society generally represented to the social, cultural and political domina nce' which they had enjoyed before. 32< The Welfare State approach to design can also be seen as a response to a certain economic situation. It adaptedto a developing industrial society, a population which was of agricultural principally origin (changingthe mentality of prerational man of the pre-market economyinto the rationality of production in a market economy) and transformed an existing population of pauperised urban proletariat into consumers.

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In both cases, The Welfare State responded to changing conditions in the socio-economic system: the advancement of technology which was to revolutionise production, the intensified level of capital accumulation and the dangers of social upheavals in a concentrated mass of dependent urban populations. To meet these new conditions and the constant demand for accumulation of power into tighter concentrations, The Welfare State took upon itself the following tasks: integration of all groups into the economic system with high characteristics of stability and the expansion of consumption sector of the economy. Thus, The Welfare State abandoned the early policies of enforced domination through the limitations of income for the dependent group because, to quote Frederic Eden in the 18th century, 'the only thing that can render the labouring man industrious is a moderate quantity of money.' The Welfare State thus accepted a new mode of socio- economic organisation, one which permitted through higher compensations the increased distribution of property to 'labourers'. 33< It was thought that this new organisation would place the working class not in the old 'abject or service condition,' but in a state of 'easy and liberal dependence'. 34< The distribution of more goods, among which

were design products, services and compensating income distributed by The Welfare St ate outside the wage system of private entrepreneurship, was made possible in part through the antic ipation of a new reorganised socio-economic system, characterised by more st ability and a restructuring of power into smaller and tight er concentrations. Thus the distribution of 'bonuses' by The Welfare State tended to be more normative in aim than philanthropic.35< It was this normative goal of The Welfare State, the preparation of an economic, social cultural base necessary for a new economic organisation which gave to The Welfare State architects and designerstheir comm on identity and their techniques. That populism had a liberating effect there can be no doubt. It managed to foil, in many cases, an arbitrary, authoritarian and wasteful regiment ation of objects and people.

BUT IN THE PROCESS, IT ALSO LIMITED THE PROSPECTS IN OUR SOCIETY FOR ARCHITECTURAL POLICIES BENEFICIAL FOR THE GENERAL INTEREST, OFFERING NOTHING IN THEIR PLACE BUT FREEDOM IN A DESIGN SUPERMARKET AND AN INCREASINGLY FRAGMENTED AND PRIVATISED WORLD.

32< Gans, Herbert. The Goal Oriented Approach to Planning. 1958; 1958; People and Plans, 1972. 33< Sir Eden, Frederic. The State of the Poor. 1797. 34< Rapkin, C., L. Winnick and D. Blank. Housing Market Analysis: A Study of Theory Method. 1952.35< Indeed for several wr iters, especially theorists of organisation, 'participation' has very different reason for being applied. 'Closely related to the issues of cooperation and protest absorption is that of participation in decision making. A long line of social psychological experiments in laboratory and field settings has emphasisedthe importance of participation as a positive factor in the acceptance of decision outcomes.' Gamson, W. The Management of Discontent. In: Thomas, J., W. Bennis. Management of Change and Conflict, 1972; see also Coch, L., J. French. Overcomi ng Res istance to Cha nge. In: Proshansky, H., B. Seidenberg. Basic Studies in Social Psychology, 1965. And Verba, S. Small Groups and Political Behavior, 1961. For these authors, problems occur not so much out of the reality of the structure of power as out of the perception of it that different groups have. 'In trying to explain or control the behaviour of people, we are not concerned with determining whether t heir interests are really in harmony or conflict...but how they perceive these interests. It is now a well established uniformity of organisational behaviour that whenever groups of people occupy widely differing positions in a hierarchy and carry out different activities, they are bound to see their interests as being different.' White, W. F. Models for Building and Changing Organization:' Human Organization:' vol. 26no. 1-2, 1967.

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SERGISON BATES (

Working with appearance(s)

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This paper investigates an interest in working with notions of the 'everyday' and 'ordinariness' through the building projects of Sergison Bates architects. It catalogues the sources of this preoccupation starting with the arch itects' writings on cities, papers written in the early 1990'sthat soughtto unravel the forces that act on the making of urbanity in terms of convention, cultural and social conditions. The paper then explains the interest Sergison Bates have with consciously working with image and type This is illustrated through a number of built projects, a public house in Walsall, a reworking of the semi-detached house, and an end of terrace urban block .

In 1999 we wrote a paper entitled 'More tolerance', which addressed our interest at the time in working with building forms. We wrote: 'An important aspect of our work to date has been to critically reinterpret forms; such forms that are embedded in cultural memory, are understood to be familiar, regarded as part of the commonplace; some might say of the everyday. Form interests us because it affects appearance, embodies signification and generates a building's presence. Our work therefore involves an exploration of the experiential and associative dimension of forms and the way in whic h construction may articulate these conditions' (February 2000) .

ONE MIGHT SAY ALL ARCHITECTURE TO A GREATER OR LESSER EXTENT CONCERNS ITSELF WITH THE EXPLORATION A 'FORM LANGUAGE'. When re-reading these words I am reminded of our interest in working with the familiar appearance of things. Not only what something looks like but also how it might be understood when seen againstbuildings forms that are deeplyknown in our collective human condition. In other words, our own investigations explored the conventions of type. When I reflect on our own production as architects in practice, I am reminded of the set of conditions we found when setti ng-up office. The early 1990's had been a period in England when, as a young architect, it was diffic ult t o build anything. The economy was in recession and the profession was under assa ult from many quarters - including royalty. Although this was a period of anxiety, it was also of critical importance because we had the time to think, discuss ideas and develop a critical position. Every Sunday morning for a period of almost two years, I was a member of a loosely formed grouping of architects, artists and cultural theorists. We would meet and develop our own position through conversation. This was possible because none of us were too busy during this time, although most of us now have established practices. In the early ninetieswe were meeting weekly

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to present papers developed on subjects collectively agreed in advance . Unfortunately, the papers we wrote were never published in the manner we intended, partly because the work situation had improved and commissions began t o draw us away from this collective enterprise. We were however invited to exhibit our work together as a group in August 1995, in an exhibition at the Architecture Foundation Ga llery in the Econom ist building. Ou r (Sergison Bates) contribution to this exhibition was a project for a house in Andalucia designed for an English actor. Before describing this project I would like to return to the content of two papers we wrote as part of the 'Papers on Archit ecture' enterprise. Both papers addressed subjectivity and were concerned with urban conditions.

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SOME TIME IN 1994, THE ARTIST MARK PIMlOTT HAD POSED A QUESTION THAT HAS REMAINED USEFUL - 'WHAT DO I SEE WHEN I lOOK AT SOMETHING?' We looked at Lon don, the city we live and work in, in order to develop an understanding of how cities are formed and organise themse lves and how the resultant physical conditions affect human behaviour. Our two study papers consisted of a detailed examination of a London neighbourhood, and a sweeping European survey in the attempt to understand and situate our work as architects in this wider cultural context. We were looking at ordinary conditions, not 'high' architecture. Our interest was in the commo nplace, in conditi ons that are closer to the vernacular. In our first built projects we were happyto work with familiar building forms for two reasons. Firstly, it connected to our evolving theoretical position inspired by the early work of Venturi and Scott-Brown and more particularly that of Alison and Peter Smithson, such as The Sugden House. Secondly, it was a device enabling us to combatthe prevailing conservatism at the time in terms of Plann ing Control, the building industry and patronage.

By the mid 1990's we wanted to produce buildings, not more papers, and we recognised that the form of research that most suited us was in learning from making buildings. Many of the ideas behind our early built work can be found in the Andalucian house I have already referred to. The site for this project was impressive - a hilltop overlooking the small tow n Casares, with views beyond to the rock of Gibraltar, the Mediterranean Sea and Morocco. We spent many months considering how to locate a new house in a manner that respected this powerful place. Ourfi rst impulse was to open the entire house to the south-facing view, but in time we realised that the design would benefit from a more selective, measured approach. An essential aspect of our work first developed in this project is the interest in using a simple form and allowing it to be modelled by the forces of the particular situation. Here, the sense of adjustment was the result of the particular topography and geological conditions of the site, a landscape of rock with small, patchy coverings of topsoil. The sett ing out of the project was determined after careful consideration of the levels and ground conditions.

OUR AMBITION WAS TO DISTURB THE GROUND A LITTLE AS POSSIBLE - AN ECONOMIC AS MUCH AS CONCEPTUAL CONSIDERATION. The form of the house drew inspiration from our investigations into the local vernacular: white painted walls, large shallow pitched roofs covered in pantiles, sometimes virtually flat. The contrast between the stark white walls and earth-coloured tiles against the strong Mediterranean landscape is an image of domesticity culturally deeply rooted in this part of the worl d and we did not feel empowe red to challenge it. Another aspect of this project that worked wit h an idea of continuity was the construction language we used. Our

distance from the sit e made us anxious about proposing building techniques that would challenge the skills of a local contract or. To avoid disappointm ent we were happyto work with the cont emporary vernacular of concrete frame, block infill and render to the outside. A construction that worked with thermal mass was considered but not pursued for cost reasons and insulation was introduced to compensate. Working with an engineer in London, we developed a flitch beam as a way of achieving the clear structural span we required for the first floor space. Although unusua l as a solution it did not seem too challenging to propose a hybrid of steel and timber acting composit ely to provide a more efficient span. Ourvisits to local builder's yards confirmed that we were not being too ambitious with such a proposa l.

THIS CONNECTS TO THE VALUE WE HAVE FOUND IN TH E WOR D 'TOLERANCE' , MEANING 'PERMITTED VARIATION' OR, ONE COULD SAY, A MEASURE OF LOOSENESS. A week before the project was due to start on site it was put on hold because of a change in local government. The agreements previously negotiated with local planning agencies were dismissed by the new regime and the delay in renegotiating them led to the abandonment of the project. It was only in 1996 that we formally set up in practice as Sergison Bates architects. Ou r first new build commission was for a public house in Walsall (a city 10miles north-east of Birrninqhaml. This project was a component in a competition winning masterpla n developed by Caruso St John architects. The most important building in this masterplan was the new Walsall Art Gallery, also designed by Caruso St John. When we began working on this project we started to ask ourselves what a new build public house should look like. The pub is an essentially Victorian building type. The publicness inferred in the way that it is popularly referred to is inconsistent with the social codes that were introduced in

its making . Very often the glass in the facade would not permit views inside. Furthermore etched glass screens would offer privacy to the users of the pub and different areas or space would offer different atmospheres for drinking. Pubs were popular in terms of their numbers but drinking was not considered as an activity that was consistent with Victorian moral values. The number of pubs that are currently still in use is a considerably less that a century ago and it follows that this is now a very unusual commission. As a building type, pubs were most commonly part of the built fabric, on street corners or within terraces, but rarely stand-alone structures. Considering these issues, made us realise our commission contradicted many observations about the conventions of the type. Our concept was to make a 'public house', and explore the theme offered by these two words. We wanted the building to be like a house and we wanted it to be public, accessible and spatially generous. The plan of the building is square with an 'L-shaped' drinking area and the service elements of the brief are arranged in one corner. A first floor flat for the landlord was introduced where the roof is highest.

ON TH E OUTSIDE THE BUILDING WAS CONSIDERED AS A LARGE BLACK MOUND. When studying the site we were drawn to the predominantly black buildings associated with industry in this part of Britain. The site had previously been used as a coal store and we imagined our building resembling a coal heap. The geometry of the site impacted on and adjusted the square plan that we had proposed in a manner similar to the Spanish house. Coupled with the offsetting of the roof ridge, this distorts the form in a mannerthat was considered in relation to the character of each elevation. The east facade encountered as one approaches the building from the main shopping street in Walsall, is low and inviting. The south elevation is similar to it. It is composed of hinged or sliding doors and windows that open onto the canal basin. In contrast, the west eleva-

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tion is much more closed, clad in tiles with a loose arrangement of windows. This aspect anticipated the relationship it would have with the gallery behind it. Finally, the north elevation deals with a difficult relationship with a busy road. This elevation is made of a dark brick and few window openings. The shape of this wall is distorted by the adjustment in plan that has been described before. One large 'picture window' was introduced to align with a pedestrian crossing and offer a clear view into the building.

THE INTERIOR OF THE BUILDING WAS PROPOSED AS A WARM, LIGHT - FILLED COUNTERPOINT TO THE DARK ABSTRACTNESS OF THE EXTERIOR.

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It is clad mainly in Oouglas fir timberwhich is used as cladding or structural components for walls, ceiling and floor lining, complementing the furniture. Over time we have been able to revisit this building and documentthe changing patterns of life that occur within it. We are happy to see the way it is used as a place to meet or be alone. At certain moments it has been the best location to watc h an important sporting event on large screen television or act as an extension to the neighbouring gallery for private view receptions. We believe that a part of the success of this project can be attributed to its feeling of familiarity and warmth internally. Our interest in exploring 'the familiar' as an architectural device is perhaps mostfully explo red in the pair of semidetached houses we designed in 1998-99. We worked on this project during a period when we were increasingly drawn to suburbia as a place that we felt had been overlooked by architects. The photographerthat we worked with in documenting the pub in Walsall, Ro lant Dafis was also interest ed in recording suburbia as an urban phenomenon . His photographs are revealing, questioning and at times humorous, but never cynical. We found them useful tools for our own

research and were often drawn upon to illustrate our writing on the subject of suburbia. The double house project in Stevenage was won in a national competition whose brief invited new interpretations on the semi-detached house. Ourinvestigations into this type led us to conclude that the original houses built in the twenties andthirties were, and still are, a very successful typology. Three million of them were built in Britain during this period andtheir success can largely be att ributed to the way in which they have been able to accommodate the chang ing and increasingly complex social demands placed upon them.

WHAT WE ALSO RECOGNISED IS THE STRONG NEED FOR THE OCCUPIERS OF THESE HOMES TO ANNOUNCE THEIR INDIVIDUAL OWNERSHIP. The semi-detached house reads as one building under one roof but here the sense of uniformity is challenged by differing painting regimes, extensions, garden arrangements, changes to the doors or windows and any number of other adjustments that are a declaration of the individual within the collective whole. These observations led us to propose a pair of houses that attempted to appear 'house-like'. The decision to join two house forms together was intended as an acknowledgement of the forces we saw at work in the former type. The decisionto change the colour of the tiling was a further announcementof the individuality of the combined wholeness of the houses. We chose to place the entranceto the houses side by side to encourage neighbourliness, but with a dividing screen to ensure a degree of privacy. The positioning of the doors also means that circulation is either side of the partywall with services spaces also in this zone, so that the main living spaces and bedrooms were not proneto noise disturbance. In this project we undertook an extensive investigation into issues of sustainability and questioned the accepted con-

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ventions of the British housing industry. Our client funded most of the innovation in construction we proposed . This is an aspect of our work that would require considerable explanation and this does not seem appropriate here. One thing that is noteworthy is the great overall wall thickness, resulting in deep window reveals that give a sense of protection reminiscent of older vernacular masonry structures. The positioning of the windows is intended to be loose and relaxed in a manner described in other projects. At the time we were completing this project we were invited to enter a competition for another housing project, this time near the centre of London. In 1994 we had designed, in a speculative way, a house for a vacant plot close to the site we were looking at in 1999. This earlier project had begun an investigation into employing the characteristics of an architectural languagewe find very compelling, that of Georgian architecture. We enjoy the manner in which this architecture employs abstraction and repetition. The materiality of Georg ian houses appears as a very particular reaction to climate and puritan social values.

IT IS AUSTERE AND STRICT. The most public elevation of these houses conforms to the conventions of classical ordering and dictates the activities that happen in sections behind the fa/fade; servants spaces in the lower ground and upper floors, reception rooms on ground and first floor. The project we had designed in 1994 was never built, but five years later it provedto contain useful research in terms of how to extend and complete a Georgian terrace. The terrace we were looking at in the second project was a Victorian 'Georgian'-style terrace. Our brief was significantly different from the uses originally assigned to the Georgian house, although interestingly enough very few are now used as single family homes. Most are divided into flats and sometimes other types of use can be found, educational, commercial etc. On the ground and lower ground floor we needed to house a family with a severely disabled daughter. On the first and second floor we

needed to design two two-bedroom flats. The sale of these flats paid for the project.

FROM THE OUTSET WE SOUGHT TO ARRANGE THE ELEVATIONS IN A MANNER THAT WAS CONTINUOUS WITH THE TYPOLOGICAL CONVENTIONS OF THE TERRACE WE WERE EXTENDING. The front elevation is controlled and orderly, and yet consciously deviates from the building next door in a number of ways. The floor-to-ceiling heights in our building are all the same in acknowledgementof the activities that happen behindthem i.e. they are intentionally more democratic. In an attempt at materially unified effect, the white rendered 'rustic' base is replaced by calcium silicate bricks. This zone also describes, on the front elevation,the zone of the maisonette. We also usedthe samewindow type and size although this is rotated in the zone of the staircase. The side elevation facing south is composed in a looser manner. Completing a terrace is something that Georg ian architecture does not offer a fixed solution to: Sometimes it is completely blank, sometimes the rhythm of the front elevation is extended round the corner or is more random. We pursued the last of these strategies attempting to addressthe neighbouring park and offer distant views up the street. The rear elevation adopts the looser window arrangementthat is consistent with the language of not only the neighbouring houses, but all terraced housing in England . The decision to makethe other brick used in the project dark was the result of a desire to make an approximation of the blackened brick of Georgian architecture. In the older houses London stock bricks were used andthen sooted to acceleratethe process of blackening that would have occurred in time due to pollution. All of these projects share a number of common factors. Firstly, they work to some extent with the particularity of the plot shape and are happy to absorb this into their plan arrangement. In other words, the plan is the result of the

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existing topography. Second ly, all these projects propose a looseness or distortion of window arrangements. Thirdly, they refer to the materiality of local architecture, not imitating but approximating it in a form of 'new vernacular'. Finally,these early projects were a component of a research into working with 'familiar' images. Our intention was to challenge and push things in a quietly question ing way. We were asking questions about how buildings should be assembled andthe qualities a plan should haveto support the patterns of habitation we had obse rved. These are big ambitions andwe recognise that we were asking questions that most architectural production does not concern itself with.

THE REACTION TO THESE PROJECTS WAS SHOCKING.

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Our approach is more strongly supported outside Britain rather than in our own professional community, and it is no accident that we are now working in Belgium and Switzerland. In Britain, in many quarters, we are considered reactionary and many architects seem affronted by the projects we show. There is also a following for this work and we are learning valuable lessons from building. These projects are however quite distant from where our interests currently lie and their relevance lies in the way everything contributes to an evolving study. We are not interested in a restless search for a radically new approach to every project in a manner characterised by certain contempora ry practices.

OUR APPROACH IS MORE REFLECTIVE AND THIS IS WHY I HAVE INDULGED MYSELF IN REVISITING OUR PAST PRODUCTION.

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No wonder they th ink you' r e insane J You act ua lly expe ct people to live like th is? But maybe we can work this sh it out! We'll make a glass facade over there... build a ramp over here ... Maybe get Jan des Bouvrie to do t he int erior,..

DEN NIS KASPORI (

Towards an open-source architectural practice

POPULISM ESCAPES ARCHITECTURE. TALKING ABOUT POPULISM IN ARCHITECTURE IS RATHER PROBLEMATIC. IT LOOKS LIKE POPULISM ESCAPES ARCHITECTURE TIME AND AGAIN. MOST OF THE TIME IT'S THE 'RETROACTIVE MANIFESTO' THAT TRIES TO PULL POPULISM INTO THE FIELD OF ARCHITECTURE. LEARNING FROM POPULISM IS ONE THING, DESIGNING IT IS ANOTHER.

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Therefore it might be more interesting to talk about a democratisation of architecture instead of a popularisation. It's not only a logical step in a world of ever increasing consumerdriven production but a necessary organisational renewal for a discipline that could use a little more sense of reality. Architecture, once at the heart societal progress, is more and more reduced to mere sceneryfor a world on the move. The role of the architect in the building process would seem to have been reduced to that of a visagiste. The complete absence of any architect in the recent parliamentary enquiry into fraud in the construction industry in The Netherlands should probably not be seen as evidence of their irrefut able morality, but as proof that they play hardly any part in Dutch spatial planning . The architect is happily doodling away indoors while the big boys are outside building huts.

THE ARCHITECT'S AUTHORITY HAS COMPLETELY DISAPPEARED. He or she is at the mercy of the market and that means only one thing: everything is affected by risk management. And so, everything that is new is automatically problematical. There is vast innovative potential which is primarily evident in competitions and an endless stream of publications disseminated by an ever-expanding propagand a machine of publishers, The Netherlands Architecture Institute and a never-ending list of local architecture centres. But there it would seem to end. The influence of that potential on the building industry is margina l. That is the paradox currently facing Dutch architecture. The situation for architects has seldom been so hopeless and yet so favourable . On the one hand, Dutch architecture is praised for its pragmatic inventiveness, its ability to give a twist to everyday banality. On the other hand, humdrum problems do not diminish as a result. Spatial issues concerning mobility and safety, the stagnating house -building sector and the enormous spatial demands for both red (urbanization) and

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green (greenspacel development must be solved.While the country has big, important social problems, crying out as it were for intervention from architects and mediation from architecture, Dutch architecture continues to bask in the glory of international success. But this cannot go on much longer. It is high ti me Dutch architects applied their famous pragmatic inventiveness not only to their designs but also to the organisation of their practice, and regained a significant role in spatial planning. In recent years, a great deal of effort has been expended on 'doing something different' within the narrow margins of the over-regulated Vinex housing task. The result is a practice in which architects try to rediscover the wheel with every new project. It is time to abandon this method and to look for alternative models for spatial design. This calls not for solo operations but a collective (preferably interdisciplinary) approach.

ACCORDINGLY, ARCHITECTURAL PRACTICE NEEDS TO BE TURNED INSIDE-OUT.

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Architects should no longer look inwards in search of the essence of architecture. They should also cease harking back nostalgically to past times, when the architect was still a master builder. Architecture must look outwards and forwards, in search of the countless opportunities offered by these turbulent times of political and economic instability. The search for the essence of architecture will haveto make way for the question of what architecture can mean for the contemporary network society. It is time for a collectively organised renewal of architectural practice.

after all, the main commodity of today's economy: 'Concepts, ideas and images - not things - are the real it ems of value in the new economy. Wealth is no longer vested in physical capital but rather in human imagination and creativity.1< For an organisational renewal of architectural practice it is essential that knowledge be interwoven with every tier of the organisation and every step of the process. This is sometimes described as a learning organisation. Knowledge ensuresthat organisationsstay alert to change.

THE LEARNING ORGANIZATION IS A MODEL FOR A SYSTEM THAT IS ABLE TO RESPOND TO DEVELOPMENTS, THAT CAN ADAPT AND COLLABORATE. Using this model, an outward- and forward- looking practice can be developed. That is to say a practice that is open to external influences, that is capable of identifying developments at an early stage and responding accordingly. From this perspective it is interesting to consider developments in other professional fields. It is worth noting that there are scattered undertakingswhich suggest interesting paths for renewal in architectural practice. Examples of collaborative practices can be found in fields as different as art and software engineering . Each of them offers an alternative model in which innovation is achievedthrough the active participation of all parties. Ideas and products are no longer developed in a closed production process organised around the autonomy of the artist or the company, but evolve out of the pragmatism of usage. That is the motor of innovation.

The learning organisation An outward-looking practice offers far more scope for making the mostof the opportunities. But to take advantage of social developments requires different competences. Knowledge is the prime competitive advantage in the network society. It is,

I< Rifkin,Jeremy.The Age of Access. The New Culture of Hypercapitalism where all of life is a paid for experience. New York: Penguin Putnam Inc. 2001, p. 5.

Open source The new organisational model in software engineering that is based on the pragmatism of usage is called the 'open source' movement. Open source means that the source code of a software program is freely available to all and sundry. This has enormous consequences, for once the source code is public knowledge, anybody can in theory alter the program or develop it further. That is also the reason why Microsoft has never been willing to divulge the source code for its Windows operating system. Microsoft and the opensource movement consequently exemplifytwo entirely different approaches to software development. Eric S. Raymond , appointed by the open-source movement as its 'minist er of propaganda', described the two organisational structures as the cathedral and the bazaar. The cathedral is the model for software like that of Microsoft which is protected by copyright. It is a business model with a distinctly hierarchical structure. The opposite of this is the bazaar- a seeminglydisconnected but functioning web of relationships on which the open-source movement is modelled. To his amazement Raymond finds himself forced to conclude that this 'great babbling bazaarof differing agendas and approaches' appearsto work and 'at a speed barely imaginable to cathedral-builders'. 2<

ACTUALLY, THE OPEN-SOURCE MOVEMENT IS FAR MORE THAN A PARTICULAR TYPE OF SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT. It stands for a particular attitude to rights relating to the ownership and use of knowledge . The movement has its origins in use. Oavid Garcia: 'The digital revolution thoroughly upset prevailing Western ideas about intellectual property'. Thanks to the Internet there is an extensive network in which ideas are not so much protected by copyright as developed collectively. Ownership is not what counts, but use. 3<

Open -source software is developed in response to an individual need for a specific solution. If it proves interesting for others, a group of users quickly forms who pass on and improve the software. The open-source movement has always been closely linked to the academic world, where such an interchange of ideas (peer-to-peer review) is customary. An important principle in this respect is the need for software to evolve 'in the presence of a large and active community of users and co-developers'. 4<

OPEN SOURCE IS A MODEL THAT HAS MEANWHILE PASSED BEYOND ITS OWN FRONTIERS. In 'The Political Economy of Open Source Software', the political scientist Steven Weber concludes that the idea of open source is far morewidely applicable: 'The key concepts - user-driven innovation that takes place in a parallel distributed setting, distinct forms and mechanisms of cooperative behaviour, the economic logic of "anti-rival" goods - are generic enough to suggest that software is not the only place where the open source process could flourish. 5< In a recent article, the media researchers Felix Stalder and Jesse Hirsch advocated 'Open Source Intelligence'.6< Open source favours free access to information and thus affects the foundations of the knowledge economy. It implies a reversal of a wide range of topics relating to the concept of property. Open source offers an alternative model for the development of new knowledge with considerable legal, economic, political and social consequences . Steven Weber covers all these aspects in his summary of the applications of open source. In his view open source is: • a particular methodology for research and development • the core of a new business model (free distribution of software meansthat new mechanisms for compensation and profit need to be created) • the social essence of a community, a defining nexus that binds together a group of people to create a common good • a new 'production structure' that is somehow unique or

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special to a 'knowledge economy' and will tr anscend or replace production structures of the industrial era • a political movement. 7<

Consequences for architectural practice In short, open source requires a shake-up of established ways of thinking and a different interpret ation, both socially and econom ically, of the concept of innovation. The existing [cathedral] model with the autonomous genius of the chief designer at the top of a strict hierarchy is 'closed' and based on competition. That competition has proved to be an important generator of innovation, but also leads to enormo us fragmentation. The bazaar model, on the other hand, is based on cooperation. It conforms to the network logic of an effective distribution of ideas, as a result of which these ideas can be tested in different situations and improved . It makes use of the 'swarm intelligence' of a large group of users and/or developers.

TH IS SWARM INTELLIGENCE PRESUPPOSES A LARGE USER BASE WHICH IS ACTIVELY INVOLVED IN DEVELOPMENT.

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Open source is not a closed community. The sale requirement for this type of cooperation is the same as for all other types of community, namely a shared interest. That interest leads to knowledge being shared between different disciplines and also between professionals and hobbyists. The identification of this user base is accordingly an important step in the development of an open-source architectural practice. The user group transcends the profession and also encompasses other disciplines. In view of the leading role played

2< 2. Raymond, Eric S. The cathedral and the bazaar.

http://www.catb.org/- esr/writings/ cathedral-bazaar/. 3< Garcia, David. Kopieer dit. Metropolis M, no. 5, 2002, p. 37. 4< Raymond (see note 7). 5< Weber, Steven. The Political Economy of Open Source Software. p. 40. Webpaper at: http://r epositories.cdlib.org/ cgil viewcontent.cgi? article=l 011 &context=brie. 6< See: http://amsterdam.nettime.org/ Lists -Archives/nettime-I-0206/msg00030.html. 7< Weber, p. 3 (see note 10).

by government in the country's spatial planning , it should certainly take an active role in stimulating this approach. And then there are the 'end users' (the occupants) of architecture. Theytoo could have a role in the process. The fact is that the open-source process can also be an important stimulus for greater participation by residents in the spatial planning process. The only condition that needs to be met in order to produce an actively involved community is a reasonable promise: 'It can be crude, buggy, incomplete and poorly documented. What it must not fail to do is convince potential co-developers that it can be evolved into something really neat in the foreseeable future'. 8( Thus, open source provides an organisation model for the collective development of solutions for spatial issues involving housing , mobility, greenspace, urban renewal and so on.

THESE ARE ALL COMPLEX ISSUES THAT PRESUPPOSE AN INTERDISCIPLINARY APPROACH; IN FACT THEY CAN ONLY BE SOLVED WITH COOPERATION. Open source presupposes that these ideas are disclosed and made available to others, who in turn can improve on them. In this way, design changesfrom a one-off action into a kind of evolutionary process. However, a shared knowledge base like this does not mean that the open source model is based entirely on a barter or gift economy. The development of the Linux operating system in particular has by now demonstrated that open source is certainly economically viable. To clarify this, a distinction needsto be made between knowledge and design. Knowledge relates to charting developments and furnishing modelsto take advantage of it. Design relates to advising on and implementing such models in concrete situations. 8( Raymond (see note 2)

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The open-source movement has already provedto be perfectly capable of developing economically viable activity. The businesses concerned are mostly specialised in advising on and implementing open-sou rce software. By providing this support they have also made an important contribution to getting this software accepted and distributed in the professional and demanding business environment. Open source would seem to be an attractive model for an architectural practice wishing to revive its pro-active role in spatial issues. Cooperation and the exchange of ideas give rise to a learning organisation that is able to evolve by reacting alertly t o change. This sounds easier than it is. As suggested earlier, the idea of a collaborative practice presupposes a complet e reversal of the existing organisational model of a discipline that is very keen on its autonomy and the concept of copyright. The first step towards an opensource practice in archit ecture is t o develop a broad-based awareness that cooperation and the opening up of architectural practice to input from outside are important requirements if an effective contribution is to be madeto the evermore complex spatial processes.

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Open source is not a model to be developed and rolled out on a large scale. It must have a chance to evolve gradually. It ent ails an experimental process of adjustment. Open source is a process of growing awareness, a turn-around in thinking about the fundamenta l organisational principles of architectural practice. It is important to depict architecture not only as an aesthetic object or showpiece, but also as a learning process and a subject for discussion. Two case-studies To make this a little more concrete it is worth looking at present-day practice for where a number of ventures launched in recent years have the makings of open-source practice. Two experiments I would like to discuss are 'Wilde Wonen' (consumer-led housing) and a game called 'Stedelijke Aandelenmarkt' (urban stock exchange). These are attempts to develop alternative models for spatial planning and

housing construction. The ideas are widely applicable and not restricted to a specific form. Wilde Wanen Wilde Wonen 9< r which allows greater end-user input, challenges the copyright-protected practice of house building and arose, like the open-source community, out of an attempt to protect rather than limit users' rights (by means of aesthetic controls, for example). As a result, Wilde Wonen has acquired considerable awareness among the general public though it seems to attract hardly any attention from architecture circles. It could be quite different. Especially now that Wilde Wonen seemsto have been reduced to the distribution of private development plots, it is important to ensure that it continues to evolve.

ULTIMATELY WILDE WONEN IS A CALL FOR A FAR-REACHING DEMOCRATISATION AND DIFFEREN TIATING OF DUTCH HOUSING. It's a concept that is in a state of continuous evolution and is open for change and extension. The best way to do it is to open the process of invention and discussion to a wi der audience of experts, both professional and non-professional. The website of 'Wilde Wonen' is developed as a public forum for a thorough reorganisation of Dutch housing. The website consists of two parts. The first part is a newslog (Wilde Wonen Weblog) which combin es relevant news about Wilde Wonen and Dutch housing in general with a public forum. The second part is a database with small extensions that are under a special (less strict) regime of regulations. It's called Nationale Dakkapellen Database (national rooftop extension database) and functions as a kind of market for information and images of small extensions.

9< See: htlp://www.hetwildewonen.nl

Stedelijke Aandelenmarkt (SAM) SAM is a virtual urban stock exchange. 10< It's a concept of an online trading game that could generate useful data for urban planners and architect s. It works as follows. A city is divided into recognisable areas (neighbourhoods). The value of these neighourhoods is based on a set of demographic and spatial factors. Everybody that lives, works or otherwise relates to the city can get registered. After registration everybody receives a virtual budget that can be spend on urban shares. These shares can be exchanged at will. The value of the shares is based on (1) a number of urban indicators like the amount of houses for sale and recent crime figures (2) factors related to a short questionnaire to be filled in at registration and (3) daily transactions of shares at the stock exchange. The shares are a fictive value-indicator and the urban stock exchange is a dynamic display of the qualities, risks and experiences of specific neigbourhoods and new developme nts.

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+ URBAN PLANNING * + Urban planning tries to achieve urban ergonomics.

ERGONOMICS IS INTERESTING BECAUSE OF ITS AMBITION TO LINK USER DEMANDS WITH MACHINE LOGIC . In its origins, ergonomics was only concerned with increasing machine output. The interests of this science have evolved and now include parameters relating to the well-being and enjoyment of users. This study applies the ambiti ons of ergonomics to the practice of urban planning by exploring concepts and techniques that allow a response to new lifestyles through the creati on of competitive and healthy urban environments.

* +Urban planning (Las Palmas: DACT Publicaciones, 20041is an academic research conducted by lectur ers and second-year students of Urban Planning at the School of Architecture in Las Palmas. This research has been developed and edited by Vicente Mirallave, Flora Pescador and Juan Palop-Casado. The texts included are part of the contribution of the author of t he book, wh ich he has also co-ordinated and co-edited.

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Viviendas Guanarteme

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+ AT EASE

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Guanarteme District

(Las Palmas de GC)

Som etimes, citizens are smarter than urban planners. This is the case in the neighbourhood of Gu anarteme, in Las Palma s de Gran Canaria. At first sight, nothing points to functional problems in the neighbourhood. Its planimetry shows a more or less regular grid of streets perpendicular and transverse to the beach bordering the neighbourhood. However, neighbours complain about the lack of parking spaces. The real situation is that longitudinal streets are favourite among drivers for parking, while transverse streets are avoided. Thi s denies the idea that the grid is the perfect example of spatial non-hierarchisation, the isotropic organisation par excellence, the equal distribution of the virtues of the housing development. Fascinat ed by this strange mut ation, we asked neighbours. The answer was very simple: transverse streets channel trade winds, and their moisture causes cars to rust. Once again, popular logic teaches a lesson about urban logic.

NEIGHBOURS HAVE UNDERSTOOD WHAT URBAN PLANNING OFTEN FORGETS : THE SYSTEMIC RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN THE ENVIRONMENT AND PUBLIC SPACE.

Tipologias de Vivie d s: demanda vs. ofe a*

+ HAPPY During our research, we had access to the preference rates of the local population with regard to the different types of residence. According to statistics, 27% of the population wish to live in a detached house, although only 3% manage to do so. The ratio is higher in the case of semi-detached houses: 50% succeed in living in one.

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Ap~rtamento

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FINALLY, ONLY 25% OF THE POPULATION WISH TO LIVE IN A FLAT, ALTHOUGH NEARLY 75% LIVE IN ONE. Obviously, we do not suggest a linear response of urban planning to this statistic. But we do believe that, to a certain extent, we are obliged to interpret it. Actually, each type of residence encodes a set of popular values and demands. If the two most voted types are decoded (i.e. detached and semi-detached houses). we find the desire for individuality, identity, a parking place next to the house door and the chanceto have a private garden. Once popular tastes are decoded, there would be no harm in urban planning adding some of these demands to urban environments.

+ MONUMENTS

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If monuments are a break from routine, it would be nice to have some more monuments in our cities. The concept of monuments as something extraordinary has two readings. The morphological reading builds monuments in formal t erms. The bigger and more eternal, the better. This is the point of view of architecture. The functional reading builds monum ents on extraordinary features. The more enjoyable, the better. This is the point of view of urban planning. Nature has an enormous potential for monuments. Enjoying a beautiful view, a sunset or, simply, the infinite horizon can be an extraordinary urban event. The t en-kilometre coast of the city of Las Palmas is full of excellent views. How ever, it is surprising to realise how diffic ult it is to contemplate the horizon for free.

EXCEPT FOR SOME TOPOGRAPHIC MIRACLE, THE VERTICAL SECTION OF THE CITY IS COMPLETELY PRIVATISED. IN LEISURE TERMS, LAS PALMAS IS A FLAT CITY.

20011/ It has an excess of morphology and lacks a horizon.

+ TOGETHER We must try to put everything together again. Not more compactly, but more organically. City blocks were a great invention. Undoubt edly, city blocks created significant relationships between built full spaces and urban empty spaces. Their secret: to design empty spaces with full spaces. Pure determinism. This is what some people call urban project.

IT IS A PITY THAT IT HAS SHOWN TO BE SUCH A RIGID TECHNIQUE. In fact, w hen other full spaces have been invente d, the system has stopped wo rking. How ever, the "other" full spaces, i.e. blocks and towe rs, have proved to be very efficient. They are more flexible. They allow what city blocks prevented: orientations and economies of scale. The price to be paid for it has been empty space. In other words: an architectura l success and an urban-planning failure. With these full spaces, it is no longer possible to design empty spaces. They simply appear. There are two options. On e of them is resistance. Turning back has always been an option. But I do not think that current production and consumption conditions allow it. The other opti on is to start again. Full spaces are no longer enough to createstimulating spatial sequences. Empty space has to be recognised as a project category.

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+ DESIGN Unlike other industries associated with design, such as the car industry and fashion, contemporary urban planning has failed to link demands related to emergent lifestyles with the production of a new urban substance. The desires for space, offer, flexibility, individuality, nature... have provedto be incompatible with a bureaucratic and conservative way of building cities, which is far away from the needs and wishes of its users.

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Paradoxically, only peripheral areas located beyond urban areas have been able to respond to the new demandsfor leisure and residence. As a result, vast nature areas have been extensively colonised by a shapeless mass of semidetached houses, shopping centres and road infrastructures, with an unprecedented public success. No spatial model like the suburban model has ever been so popularly successful and so environmentally devastating. And deadly in islands.

WHAT SHOULD BE DONE? POPULISM OR THE ENVIRONMENT. But there is still an alternative: to rebuild the notion of urban, not as an a prioriform, but as the criti cal assembly of spaces and uses linked to new lifestyles. And we still have to recover the concept of urban design, not as mere propriety or the expression of good taste, but as the spatial solution to the many logics (environmental, economic and social logics) that converge in the area.

+ FUN Manifesto for Platforms Squares cause certainty. - Platforms manage uncertainty. Squares are historic. - Platforms are contemporary. Squares are dialectical. - Platforms are autonomous. Squares are for pigeons. - Platforms are for citizens. Squares are small. - Platforms are large. Squares are static. - Platforms are dynamic. Squares are pictured in postcards. - Platforms are pictured in newspapers. Squares produce fresh air. - Platforms entertain. Squares are a result of architecture.- Platforms are a result of urban planning. Squares are respectful. - Platforms are irreverent. Squares are institutional. - Platforms are civil. Squares are sophisticated. - Platforms are brutal.

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SQUARES vs. PLATFORMS

SQUARES HAVE TO BE EMPTY. PLATFORMS ARE DESIGNED FOR BEING FULL. Squares are symbolic.- Platforms are pragmatic. Squares belong to the past.- Platforms belongto the future. Squares are designed by architects. - Platforms are designed by politicians. Squares are structures. - Platforms are simple infrastructures. Squares talk with architecture. - Platforms could not care less about architecture. Squares are monuments. - Platformstoo.

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+ TRIBES

Tribes are heterogeneous social groups identified by a lifestyle. A society organised by tribes is quite the opposite of a society organised by classes. Social classes are the result of understanding and organising societies by income strata : the higher your income, the higher the class you belong to. Therefore, the more expensive, the higher the class.

THAT MEANS THAT THE LOWER THE INCOME, AND THE CHEAPER, THE LOWER THE CLASS.

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In any case, a class belongs to each price, and each individual belongsto his class. There are lower-class, middleclass and upper-class houses. And the same applies to holidays, cars and shirts. You are what you earn. There is no other option. Lifestyles suggest an alternative to you are what you earn. Fo r new urban tr ibes, you are what you think. Econ omics surpassed by politics. Politics in its broad sense . Each lifestyle is defined by a particular understanding of what relationship we should have with other people, with the environment and with God (whichever idea you may have of God ). There are several lifestyles: sportspeople, environmentalists, hippies,yuppies, bourgeois... You are not born with a lifestyle, you choose it. You even choose it several times throughout your life. And you generally experience a serious trauma: you haveto change your girlfriend, your clothes, your car and even your neighbourhood .

The design industrytargets the different lifestyles in its work. Fash ion and car manufacturers are in the lead. Eve rybody, except for urban planners. Cities continue to be organized by social classes. A neighbourhood, an income level. That is why cities are so boring. We do not talk with neighbours any more. What are we going to talk about, if we only share with them the value of our mortgage? Paradoxically, the more urban planning there is in a neighbourhood, the more boring that neighbourhood is. Only neighbourhood s that avoid urban planning escape being boring. For instance, tradit ional neighbourhoods. These neighbourhoods bring many lifestyles together. Tribes living in them share certain values. There are rich and poor neighbourhoods. That is not the question. Living there is often a life option. Until the neighbourhood is renovated . Each urban renovation is done at the expense of a lifestyle. We have not learned to plan lifestyles yet. Cities continue to be organised by social classes. And this is frustrating.

CV: Juan Palop is an architect and urban pl anner, and he obtained a Ma ster in Design Studies (MdesS) from Harvard University, where he was a member of a research group known as Harvard Project on the City. Palop is a lecturer in urban planning at The School of Architecture in Las Palmas. He is the head of Instituto 20Q, a non-p rofit organisation that studies urban planning in good w eather. He is a co-author of Harvard Guide to Shopping (New York: Taschen, 2002). Currently, he runs the professional office of LPA (Laboratory of Planning and Architecture, S.L.).

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MARCOS LUTYENS

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McSyn : Cross-Modal architectural portraits

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THROUGH "CROSS-MODAL ARCHITECTURAL PORTRAITS" WE INVESTIGATE HOW THE FABRIC OF THE CITY CAN CHANGE FROM A HOLLOW, DISEMBODIED SHELL TO ONE THAT DEFIES STEREOTYPING, AS IT CONSTANTLY MORPHS AND MODULATES TO THE INNER PULSE OF THE CITY'S INHABITANTS.

McSyn McSyn is a project that uses synesthesia to multi-sensorially and cognitively map the urban spaces around us, and McDonald's in particular. In a world of increasing global standardisation we propose an angle of resist ance through the singular filter of personal experience. The synesthete ideates the world through an involuntary crossover of sensory and cognitive inputs, and thus builds a portrait of the surrounding landscape that defies the flattening stamp of corporate hegemony. Synesthetic perception is the rule, and we are unaware of it only because scientific knowledge shifts the centre of gravity of experience, so that we unlearn how to see, hear, and generall y speaking, feel. Ma urice Merleau-Ponty 1<

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When we look at the urban fabric around us, we see a technological, social and cultural gravitation towards homogeneity, much as Jeffrey lnaba and Pet er Zellner have pointed out in their project "Va ldes," 2< which is an insidiously ambiguous "celebration" of suburbia. This homogeneity is achievedthrough media and coagulates like cholesterol in the landscape around us in the form of "MediArchitecture," complete with its addictive pull on habit and behaviour. This Mediarchitecture has a direct influence on patterns of behaviour through the conscious mind: you see a billboard advertisement for Pepsi on the side of a building, so you buy the drink. Some of this bombardment filters down through the conscious to the unconscious, and directs behaviour at a more automatic level. This happens all the time, as very rarely do we respond imm ediately to corporate consumer cues: information grazed from the mediated landscape enters our minds and builds up int angibles such as product recognition or social consensus. Of course there is a sliding scale operating here:

MEDIA SEDUCTION AS SOFT SELL, MEDIA CONTAGION AS HARDCORE MARKETING, MEDIA INFESTATION AS SUBLIMINAL ADVERTISING AND MEDIA COOPTION AS BRAINWASHING. Perhaps the most globally extended symbol of cultural uniformity embodied in architectural form is McDona ld's, which operates in 11 6 different countries, with over 30,000 branches, and in which consistency is the core doctrine not quality. McDonald's recently released their new slyly worded "i'rn levin' it" global packaging campa ign, which translates as yet another flatt ening mechanism on the horizon of cultural di-

versity. "It is the first time in our history that a single set of brand packaging, with a single brand message, will be used concurrently aroundthe world." said Larry Light, McDonald's Executive Vice President and Global Chief Marketing Officer. Our McSyn "challenge" was to find a personal angle of approach towards a monolithically homogenous corporate imprint, in other words, could a given McDonald'sfranchise be experienced by the individual as a singular and unique experience, despite its strict uniform programmatic code? If one asked a hundred people to describe the McDonald's logo they would most likely describe the same thing: yellow logo on a red background . Their spectrum of experiencewould have been very narrow indeed. Not so with a synesthete, who experiences an involuntary crossover of cognitive and sensoria l perceptions. Synesthesia is an involuntary mental phenomenon that primarily occurs when there is a cross-over between any combination of the five senses. Some synesthetic couplings occur more often than others: sound-sight synesthesia (coloured hearing), is common whereas combinations involving taste and smell are quite rare. Not only do the senses become entwined, but in many cases there is a cognitive/ sensory linkage in which synesthetes automatically assign certain colours to letters and numbers, or even map data inside or aroundtheir bodies, in a kind of extended proprioceptive matrix. There are many different theories on why synesthesia occurs, ranging from the "inhospitable" hypothesis that claims that a migration of sensory functions takes place from one part of the cortex to another due to some local damage, the "neonatal" hypothesisthat pin-points synesthes ia as developing in the uterus as a result of minimal sensory differentiation that later on leads to this cross-modal condition, as well the "cognitive fossil" theory, that suggeststhat synesthesia stems from a sensory systemthat once proved adaptive, much like the phenomenon known as "blind sight." Recently, and possibly what seems the likeliest explanation, Hwai-Jong Cheng and Elva D. Diaz, researchers in neuroscience and pharmacology at the University of California, Davis have discovered that synesthesia may be linked to a process they call "axonal pruning." Once connections in a developing brain have been made, excessive branches must be removed or "pruned" away: Synesthesia, it appears, happens when alternative branches are pruned. 1< Merleau-Ponty, Maurice. Phenomenology of Perception an Introduction Taylor & Francis Books: May 2002. Ltd : 0415278414 2< VaIDes http://redcat.org/galiery/chat.html

Colour-letter syn

One of the participants in our study, a colour-letter "synner," Monica, was quick to point out that the colours of the McDonald's logo were "wrong." To her mind, the letters should be coloured according to the logo shown below, and hence McDonald's should be called the "Red Arches." It is important to emphas ize that this is not an aesthetic, poetic or whimsical choice but an involuntary predisposition of her mind to see certain lett ers as given, constant colours. As a colour-letter synner Monica's white "0" coincides with most other colour-letter synners who almost universally experience "0 " as white or transparent. Other letters such as "rn" and "d' differ in colour among the "syn" population.

THE SIMPLICITY OF THE FONT GENERALLY ELICITS A STRONG AND CLEAR SYNESTHETIC RESPONSE FROM SYNNERS. Having said that, the letter "M" in the logo is more of a "grapheme" (hence the "arches" metonymy) than a neutrally transmitted lett er as in the case of an "m" in an Arial or Helvetica font. The McDonald's "M" does, however, maintain its "rn" redness in Monica's case even though the letter is arch-like, and may elicit other structures, shapes or metaphorical forms and hence colours. This colour-letter syn also raises the question of how, from a subjective standpoint, we experience shapes and letters not just as standard ised symbols, but as an objective code transmuted into "qualia." the personal experience of sensory input. In this case, the subjective response to colour sensation almost certainly varies from person to person (nonsynners included) as a result of the cross-activation of sensory signals in a part of the brain called the "fusiform gyrus" which trumps more primary visual processing centers 3<. Through observing this type of syn, we can begin t o elucidate how mea ning, sound and symbols int eract within the mind, and thus generate singular subjective experiences despite exposureto a mono-cultur al homogenous input. There is also evidence that the colour seem ingly embedded in each letter does not happenthrough the "reti nal" confusion of the colour receptors in the retina, or indeed the colour processing centers such as V4, but in other parts of the brain, that are not directly linkedto the visual apparatus. As an example of this, V. Ra machandran (Director of the Center for Brain and Cognition and professor wit h the Psychology Department and the Neurosciences Program at the University of Ca lifornia, San Diego) worked with a

colour-blind patient who could nevertheless experience colours when he saw letters.

THE PATIENT DESIGNATED THESE COLOURS AS "MARTIAN COLOURS,.. AS THEY APPEAR TO BE GENERATED PURELY THROUGH MENTAL PROCESSES. There is no doubt that colour impacts fast food chain design, and whether it is urban myth or calculated consumption strategy,yellow and red have been rumoured to provoke hunger, acti ng on a kind of associative synesthesia rooted deep wit hin the unconscious. The following is an extract from Eric Schlosser's revealing study of fast food engineering "Fast Food Nation: What The All-American Mealls Doing To The World." Studies have found that the colour of a food can greatly affect how its tast e is perceived. Brightly coloured foods frequently seem to taste better than bland-looking foods, even when the flavor compounds are identical. Foods that somehow look off- col our oft en seem to have off tastes . For thousands of years human beings have relied on visual cues to help determine what is edible . The colour of fruit suggests whether it is ripe, the colour of meat whether it is rancid. Flavour researchers sometimes use coloured lights to modify the influence of visual cues during taste tests. During one experi ment in the early 70s people we re served an oddly tinted meal of steak and French frie s that appeared normal beneath coloured lights. Everyone thought the meal tast ed fine until the lighting was changed. Once it became appare nt that the steak was actuall y blue and the fries we re green, some people became ill. 4<

Aud itory-proprioceptive syn

Another core memb er of the group, Laurie, is an auditoryproprioceptive synner, which means that she internalises sound within her body as a tactile experience. Shefelt the sounds inside McDonald's in a particularly singular and quite unsett ling way, as the ambient noises of the space pierced, penetrated and punctured their way beneath her skin. Reading this description, one can't help feeling being imme rsed in some kind of force-feedback video-game, such 3< Ramachandran, V. S. and E. M. Hubbard. Neural cross wiring and synesthesia. Cent er for Brain and Cognition, UCSD , La Jolla, CA, USA: December 2001. ISSN 1534-7362 4< Schlosser,Eric. Fast Food Nation: What the All-American Meal Is Doing to the World. Penguin Books: 2002. ISBN: 01 41006870

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as the Japanese video game REZ, 5( in which sounds reconfigure the landscape as each sonic explosion sweeps through the senses. Appropriately,the REZ video game comes equipped with a vibrator to stimulate inner sanctums, delivering the first-of-its-kind simulated and voluntary visualsound -kinesthetic experience. Laurie @ McDonald's "I walked under the ceiling speaker near the cash register, and this created less fuzzy, more velvet spike fireworks inside my chest and upper-back, in tempo to the music. My upper arm and hands were ringing, maybe from all the voices surroundin g me of customers and employees. Occasional screams of children were like domed fabri c that went through one side of my torso and out the other. A man's ringing cell phone moved more angularl y about inside my shoulder and side of my torso."

Then later:

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"The order counter was exciting . My heart rate sped. The coins dropping and being shuffled in the cash register made lots of precise hard sensations moving inside in my torso and arms, like they were geometric." "It was annoying and ticklish . Its motion was fast, like an instant sw arm of big hard polygon carpenter bees or rats. (Ma ybe I don't feel it in the legs so much, because I am standing or walking. When I am sitting on a chair or lying in bed, I feel more leg sensations, though they are not as frequent as in torso, back and hands). There were two types of ringing (to alert servers that food was cooked). One of the rings hurt, it went inside my head like a cone, then shrunk and jumped into my neck, clavicle, upper right chest and arms, in seconds. The other ring just shuddered my head and back, in a softer, indescribable kind of shock. There were more shocks from metallic sounds of metal cookware and utensils being dropped on cooking counters and more." "The music coming from the speakers was more noticeable but, because I was not directl y below them, it felt more like soft and liqui d columns inside my torso. I was getting more arm, hand and some back buzz drone sensation s from voic es. As I was eating my burger, biting, chewing, tasting and sw allowing took pre cedence, as it was instantly calming and pleasurable, and my tactile synesthesia perception became irrele vant and less noticeable." "When I was done, we walked outside and the sounds immediatel y felt differen t. It was like changing channels . Like coming out of a swimming pool, it took a minute or two to adjust."

Data-to-extended-proprioceptive syn

Perhaps the most curious of the syns, was that of Colleen who has a data-to-extended-proprioceptive syn, in other words, she projects data around her body, in a matrix of lines, shapes and vectors, including such information as tv channels, spatial dimensions, days of the week, months of the year, etc. She is known as a "higher" synesthete as her syn is driven by numerical correlation and not just sensory appearance alone. This highly unusualtype of data-syn was originally noted by Francis Galton, 6( a cousin of Charles Darwin. In Galton's time, data-type synesthesia must have seemed to be curiously akin to the voluntary constructs of Simonides of Ceos and his method of loci, or science of memory 7<. Currently, this type of syn seems to mesh with anticipatory visions of sci-fi neural worlds, such as in The Matrix, Johnny Mnemon ic, Tota l Recall. This syn may also remind us of William Gibson's seminal Neuromancer cyberpunk-novel, in which characters channel a "...sea of information coded in spiral and pheromone, [the) intricacy that only the body, in its strong blind way, could ever read." 8( In another scenario I have been working on, this psychotopographical data-mapping approach was used in CvchoPolis, a project in collaboration with Dan iela Frogheri. Our aim was to map the city of Cagliari, Sardinia from a vantage point that was uncontaminated by externally formed, mediated ideas.

30 ENGINEERING STUDENTS IN THE CITY OF CAGLIARI WERE ASKED TO EMOTIONALLY EVALUATE THE TERRAIN DIR ECTLY FROM THEIR UNCONSCIOUS. The students were divided into groups and asked to choose 6 different points in the city of Cagliari. Each point corresponded to one of 6 different categories: commerce, circulation, public spaces, public buildings, private spaces and green spaces. Each student then listened to a short Rez. Genre: Actionc-Shooterc-H ail Designed By: UGA54KB Memory. Dual Shock, Dual Shock2, Trance Vibrator 6( Galton, Francis. "Colour Associations." In: Baron-Cohen, S. and J . Harrison (Eds.). Synaesthesia: Classic and Contemporary Readings. Oxford, En gland: Blackwell, December 1996. Pp. 43-48. Blackwell Publishers ISBN: 0631 1976487< Williams, Linda. Teaching for the tw o-sided mind. Tou chstone: May 15, 1986. Reprint edition ISBN: 0671622390, 8( Gibson, William. Neuromancer (Remembering Tom orrow). Ace Books: May 1, 1995. Reissue edition. ISBN: 0441569595 5(

hypnotic induction in the selected locations. The audio hypnotic induction allowed the students to undergo a temporary lapse of acquired knowledge and memo ry, followed by commands to open up the senses to the location: in essence these engineering students were cast into an unconscious synesthetic mode. In trance, the students drew, or imprinted their impressions on paper, and upon awaking, precisely described their experience. Although the individual experiences were interesting in themselves, often revealing surprising and synesthetic or narrative emotiona l textures of the locations, what we were most interested in was finding common patterns, or emotional nodes or vortexes throughoutthe city. In order to build up a psycho-senso rial map of Cagliari, we asked the students to evaluate each location according to the four basic parameters of experience as established by Ca rl Jung: sensing and intuition, feeling and thinking, as well as whether the experience seemed embedded more in the past or the future.9( The students were also askedto grade the impact of their experience on a scale of 1 to 10. This gave us an enormous set of data which could then be mapped back into the city of Caglia ri.

WE BEGAN TO SEE THAT CERTAIN AREAS OR ZONES ELICITED A STRONG, INTUITIVE RESPONSE, WHEREAS OTHER AREAS OR ZONES SEEMED TO AROUSE FEELINGS. In this way, the map of Cagliari begins to distort itself, with larger values or topographical "humps" emerging where students responded most strongly, and locati ons of weaker psycho-sensorial response begin to shrink. This type of mapping seemsto mirror the idea of the "homunculus" (homo + unculus =litt le man], or the mapping of the senses onto the cerebral cortex. Just as hands and feet have more processing power devoted to them in the brain than, let us say, the shoulders, and as an extension our hands and feet occupy a larger sensorial terrain than our shoulders, so our mapping of Cagliari, inaccurate to the eye of the surveyor and the theodolite, seems a more accurate measure of how the city is experienced. This way of mapping the world according to the weighting of experiences is what I call the "Geunculus" (geo + unculus = little world). When transferring this data-mapping approach back to the McSyn project, we rendered the "geuncular" topologies from Colleen's experience at McDonald's by processing the data

into a projected, invisible, yet tangible domain . The image shows how Colleen involuntarily sensesthese invisible and yet almosttangible vectors around her body: a date line or calendar wit h relevant moments of int erest, a weekday map, and a number line that includes prices, the McDonald's street address and the dimensions of the restaurant. Perhaps these syn portraits of an extremely familiar urban setting are too singular and bizarre to be used in general design processes, and yet they hint at the fact that even the most standardised space can be experienced in a myriad of unfolding "perspectives," or perhaps more precisely "persensives." There is also evidence to suggestthat a form of synesthesia exists in all of our brains, lending a transferability of this "syn-formation" to a general assessment of the topographies that surround us. For instance, there seems to be a fundamental cross-over between smell and taste, and it is not uncommon to assign a taste to something that we would not naturally consume, such as when we describe acetone or nail varnish as sweet. As V. Ramachandran points out: "This would make sense functionally - e.g., fruits are sweet and also smell sweet like acetone. But it also makes sense structurally, becausethe brain pathways for smell and taste are closely int ermingled and they both project signals to the same parts of the frontal cortex during sensory processing". This cross-sensing spills over into the gestural and verbal worlds, as for examp le when we say that someone disgusts us, and accompanythat with a sour expression on our face. According to Ra machandran this is probably due to the evolutionary pressure of rema pping lower vertebrates' frontal lobes of smell and taste with emerging social modalities such as territorial marking, aggression and sexua lity. 10( This mental restructu ring may actually have led to humans being able to develop the sense of abstraction, as the different senses come together within a part of the brain called the "angular gyrus," and thus enabling high-level associations to form. Perhaps an unscrambling of the processes of the angular gyrus could form the Rosetta stone of equivalence between visual art, music, architecture and other creative practices. One can envision a training camp for non-synners called "the Syn Lounge" in which trainees become syn-responsive, and later reincorporate themselves back into the urban landscape and dissolve the oppressive uniformity of the Medi9( Collected works of C. G. Jung, Volume 6: Psychological Types

Bollingen Series ISBN: 0691097704 10( Ram achandran, V. S. and E. M. Hubbard. Neural cross wir ing and synesthesia. Centerfor Brain and Cogn ition, UCSD, La Jolla, CA, USA: December 2001. ISSN 1534-7362

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Architectural hegemony. The Syn-Lounge, partially inspired by the hyper-excitation of Nigel Coate's book"Ecstacity,"11< is a boot-camp for multi-modal experience and its mission is to embed cells of syn-corporated people back into the urban fabric.

THE SYN-LOUNGE IS A SPACE IN WHICH TEMPERATURE, TASTE, SMELL, SOUNDS, RHYTHMS, LIGHT ETC COME TOGETHER TO EXTRUDE THE SENSORIAL HORIZONS OF THOSE WHO TAKE PART. The different environments wit hin the space cycle through extreme scenarios pushing the emotional palette of the visitor to such an extent that involunt ary sensory crossover beginsto take root.

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A compleme ntary approach is Second 2kin, a project developed by Tania Lopez Winkler and myselfthat aims to generate an architecture that mirrors the inner self. Second 2kin is a project that involves architecture students and professionals from around the globe with the aim of generating a new approach to architecture. The project began in June of 2001 as an expe rimental project with some students from the Architectural Association in London, and has extended to workshops, exhibits and performances most recently at Millenium Point in Birmingham, UK, which was organised by the Fierce Festival and RIBA.

thought processes, such as contamination from media or indirect peer pressure, they are asked to extend their consciousness to envelop a "Second 2kin." The Second 2kin is an architectural space that corresponds to an enlarged self, that comprises aspects of memory, brain function and deeply rooted notions of protection and shelter. Essentially, Second 2kin usesthe processes of mind as a model for architectural approachesthat resist the tendencies towards global standardisation and at the sametime uses archit ecture as a metaphor for housing the collective "space of mind." The data is then fed into a "fitness function" program that sorts the collective results into a general architectur al approach that is drawn from within the self, rather than endlessly self-replicated through cookie-cutter culture. Ulti mat ely, whether through the examination of multi-modal synesthesia or through measu ring the pulse of the unconscious mind, it is imperative to find an angle of resistance to the psychological and behavioral template imposed on us by what I earlier termed "MediArchitecture." In both cases, whether examining natural syn or induced syn we can begin to find clues as to how to retain a persona l "umwelt" or "self world" a notion that was first defined by the scientist and philosopher Jakob von Uexku ll, 12< The only way to do this is by prioritising the corporal over the corporate. Special thanks to Laurie Buenafe, Daniela Frogheri, Oliver Hess, Tania LopezWinkler, Colleen Silva.

SECOND 2KIN STARTS BY EXAMINING PATTERNS, QUALIA AND STRUCTURES SEATED WITHIN THE UNCONSCIOUS THAT RELATE TO CONCEPTIONS OF SHELTER AND DWELLING. Fo llowing Jung's ideas on unconscious archetypes,we flesh out what could be t ermed "intratypes." Intratypes may be defined as recurring dynam ic patterns of our unconscious interactions and mental programs that give coherence and structure to our experience, and manifest as conscious thought, intelligence and actions. These modules of mental processing are coaxed out through an application of a hypnotic induction technique and projected into the terrain of architecture. Fo llowing suggestions of amnesia (lack of memory) and agnosia (lack of knowledge) which disengage the subjects from conscious, mediated tendencies to apply filtered external conceptions to their

11< Coates, Nigel. Ecstacity. Princeton Architect ural Press: 2003. ISBN:1568984243, 12
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Blur

BLUR IS A REACTION TO THE OVERSATURATION OF VISUAL MEDIA IN RECENT NATIONAL AND WORLD EXPOSITIONS THAT, MORE AND MORE, HAVE BECOME COMPETITION GROUNDS FOR STATE-OF-THE-ART IMMERSION TECHNOLOGIES AND SIMULATION EXTRAVAGANZAS. THESE LARGE SCALE EXHIBITIONS FEED OUR INSATIABLE APPETITE FOR VISUAL STIMULATION WITH EVERGREATER DIGITAL VIRTUOSITY. IN CONCERT WITH CONSUMER CULTURE, SATISFACTION IS MEASURED IN PIXELS PER INCH. HIGH DEFINITION HAS BECOME THE NEW ORTHODOXY. BY CONTRAST, BLUR IS DECIDEDLY LOWDEFINITION.

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Blur is an architecture of atmosphere. Its lightweight tenseg rity structure measures 100m wide by 65m deep and 25m high. Its primary building material is one indigenous to the site, water. Water is pumped from the lake, filtered, and shot as a fine mist through a dense array of high-pressure mist nozzles. The resulting fog mass changes from season to season, from day to day, hour to hour and minute to minute in a continuous dynamic display of natural versus manmade forces. A smart weather system reads the shifting climatic conditions of t emperature, humidity, wind speed and direction, and processes the data in a central computer that regulates water pressure to an array of 31,500 nozzles. Blur is unpredictable yet has certain tendencies: high winds reveal the leading edge of the structure and produce long fog trails; high humidity and high temperatures expand the fog outwards; high humidity and cool temperatures makes the fog fall to the lake and roll outwards; low humidity and high temperatures has an evaporating effect; air temperature cooler than lake temperature produces a convection current that lifts the fog upwards.

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THE VERB IBLuR" MEANS TO MAKE INDISTINCT, TO DIM, TO SHROUD, TO CLOUD, TO MAKE VAGUE, TO OBFUSCATE. A BLURRY IMAGE IS CAUSED BY A MECHANICAL MALFUNCTION IN A DISPLAY OR REPRODUCTION TECHNOLOGY. BLURRED VISION IS CONSIDERED A VISUAL IMPAIRMENT. BLUR HAS NEGATIVE CONNOTATIONS. There are, however, positive ways to think about Blur. The motion Blur was a virtue for Futu rists photographers who sought to express physical movement in time. Blur is a standard feature in digit al Photoshop programs. Camera lenses in Japan are rated according to blur coherence, or bokeh. Blur is a productive way to produce de-emphasis. The Blur building is an experiment in de-emphasis on an environmental scale. The long ramp from the shore terminates at the media

platform. Upon entering the fog mass,visual and acoustic references are erased, leaving only an optical "white-out" and the "whit e-noise" of pulsing fog nozzles. Unlike entering a space, entering Blur is like stepping into a habitable medium, one that is formless, featureless, depthless, scaleless, massless, surfaceless and dimensionless.

ON THE PLATFORM, MOVEMENT IS UNREGULATED AND THE PUBLIC IS FREE TO WANDER, ENGAGING THE "S0CIAL RADAR." From the platform, the public can ascend a stair to the Angel Deck at the summit. Emerging through the fog is like piercing a cloud layer in flight. Fro m the deck, the public wil l have a panoramic view of Expopark and the lake. Water is not only the physical context and the dominant archit ectural material of Blur, it is also a source of culinary pleasure. Submerged one half level below the Angel Deck, is the Water Bar. The bar offers a broad selection of bottled waters including spring waters, artesian waters, mineral waters, sparkling waters and distilled waters from around the world that will satisfy the most discerning water connoisseur. The public is invited to drink the building.

BLUR IS AN ANTI-SPECTACLE. The word "spectacle" privileges vision but vision is the central dilemma of Blur. From the shore,the cloud is a visual icon, but from within: there is little to see. The assemb led audience typical to spectacle is dispersed. Focused attention, dramatic buildup, and climax - all normal to spectacle - are replaced by an attenuated attention sustained by a sense of apprehensionthat comes with disorientation. (A point of reference is the way fog is usedto build suspense in the Victorian noveL) Blur is an immersive environment in which the world is put out of focus while our visual dependence is put into focus.

Social Rada r

World's Fai rs and National Expositions, like urban entertainment zones, are competition grounds for state-of-the-art immersion technologies, multi-media night spectacles and simulation extravaganza s. Like broadcast and print media , these large displays of t echnological prowess feed the public's insatiable appetite for images of greater and greater technological virtuosity. This visual over-stimulation, however, has a de-sensitising effect: the more stimuli before our eyes, the less we see. Blur is a responseto the visual noise around it. From the outside, the fog mass is undoubtedly a seductive visual icon, but from within the immersive environment, nearly all visual references are erased. The project challenges our dependen ce on vision as the dominant sense - the sense that governs everyday activities from navigation to social interaction. What is put on display in this exhibition pavilion is vision itself. Typically, vision dominates our behaviour in public space and establishes the basis of social relations. We use vision to assess identity; a quick glimpse of another person allows us to identify their gender, age, race and social class. Norma lly, this visual framework precedes any social interaction. Within the cloud, however, such rapid visual identification is not possible. The foggy atmosphere, combined with visitors in identical raincoats, produces a condition of anonymity.

IT WILL BE DIFFICULT TO DISTINGUISH A 25 YEAR OLD JAPANESE FASHION MODEL FROM A 13 YEAR OLD INDIAN BOY FROM A 70 YEAR OLD RUSSIAN GRANDMOTHER. The project focuses on socialising this atmosphere through a technological experiment. Interpersonal commun ications typically rely on language, either spoken or written. Visual comm unication such as facial expressions and hand gestures

constitute a less conscious yet expressive arena of suppleme ntary communications. Involuntary actions and reactions such as body language, blanching from shock and blushing from embarrassment have great commun icative power particular ly when conventional language fails. What if these wireless technologies acquired more intelligence to expand tele-communications beyond conventional language, spoken or written?What if they could transmit emotions, expressions, persona l attraction, aversion or embarrassment? The Blush

The project introduces proxi-communications: a telecommun ications network recalibrated to a human scale and usedto enhance commun ication in our immed iate surroundings. As the visitor in Blur is deprived of the clues typically usedto gauge both the physical environment and social relations within, the med ia project compensates with a social communication system that extendsthe body's natural system of perception. A prosthetic skin in the form of a raincoat, equipped with a sixth sense, allows each visitor to navigate the cloud and interact with other visitors without speech. This new form of "social radar" produces a condition of anonymous intimacy. As the human skin is a sensory organ that picks up and also broadcasts involuntary reactions beyond an individual's control such as blushing from embarrassment or goose bumps from the cold, cannot this prosthetic skin do the same? All visitors to Blur-Babble enter at the Log -In station at the base of the entrance ramp and are given a questionna ire while they wait in a queue. Answers to the questions will be usedto produce a response profile for each visitor that is continually added to a database. Each visitor is also given a "braincoat," a smart raincoat with embedded technologies in its skin. Thesetechnologies include an imprint of the visitor's response profile that enables the coats to communicate with one another once the visitors reaches the med ia platform. The basis for this commun ication is the cumulative database. This multi-dimensional statistical matrix comprises a data cloud that compliments the fog cloud.

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The questionnaire is an integral part of the creative project, and is conceived in collaboration with a fiction writer.

VISITORS' RESPONSES (THEIR PROFILES) ARE COLLECTED IN A MULTI-DIMENSIONAL DATA MATRIX THAT GOVERNS THE EXPERIENCE OF THE PROJECT. To ensure proper interpretation and statistical correlation we worked closely with a psychological profiler and a statistician. Though each visitor responds to only twenty questions there is a question set of severa l hundred . With the aid of a clustering program used for web profiling, such as Firefly, visitors' profiles can be compared and evaluated by establishing correlations among the entir e range of questions. Near the Log -in station visitors are each handed a PD A preprogramme d wit h a series of questions on successive screens. The visitor answers the questions at whatever pace he/she chooses. The PDA is then passed t o an attendant who links it with the central database and synchronises the visitor's profile with his/ her coat. We also considered a mobile phone and the braincoat itself as input devices.

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The Braincoat attributes include the following: it must be knee-length and have a hood; it must be mad e of translucent fabric or plastic that is both heat resist ant and waterproof; it must be easy to put on and take off; the material and fastenings must be durable - the coat must survive five dressings/ undressings per day for 180 days; it should be unisex and available in 4 sizes, S, M, L, XL; it must be easy to dry and should have a removable lining or method of disinfecting; it must have waterproof pockets for hardware that has to be kept accessible and remova ble for repair; batteries must be accessible for re-charging; wiri ng must be sewn in and flexible; the hardware must be well balanced across the body, left to right and front to back. The braincoats have the capacity to display three types of

responses. First, a visual response . As visitors pass each other on the Blur platform, their coats can compa re character profiles and change color indicati ng their degree of affinity, much like an involuntary blush. When stimulated, the chest panel of the translucent braincoat displays a diffused coloured light that glows in the fog. The coat functions like a sophisticated Lovegetty, a mat chmaking device popular with Japanese teenagers. The colour range is coded so that a shift toward cool bluegreen represents antipathy and a shift toward warm red, affi nity. The degree of color shift intensifies in proportion to the strength of the match.

THE COAT CAN ALSO RENDER AN ACOUSTIC RESPONSE.

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With know ledge of visit ors' profiles, the communication netw ork can identify visitors that have the highest affinity and assign each visitor a statistical mat ch. An acousti c pulse, like a sonar pinging , sounds from a speaker embedded in each coat. The pulse is audible only to the weare r. Like sonar, as matched visitors approa ch one another the steady pulse accelerates, reaching a peak when they are very near. Slow or rapid, the sound pulse constantly identifies the relative location of this statistical match. Each visitor may choose how to navigate with this social sonar by either avoiding encounter, by tracking his/her mat ch or by remaining indiff erent. There is also a t actil e response.

OCCASIONALLY, VISITORS IN BLUR MAY HAVE A 100% AFFINITY. To register this rare occurrence, a th ird response system is integ rated into the coat. A small vibrating pad, modelled after the vibrating motor of a pager is located in the rear pockets of the brain coat. Whe n two perfectly matched visitors encounter one another in the fog, the motors send a vibration through the coat , mimicking the tingle of exc itement th at comes w it h physical attraction.

This project was to be made in collaboration with IDEA of Palo Alto. It was never realised because of the loss of our sponsor, a tele-commun ications company after a corporate takeover.

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AFTERWORD (

The limits and virtues of architecture

Michael Shamiyeh & Thomas Duschlbauer

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The Glorification of the Profession

Pop
THIS ARBITRARINESS HAS NO VALUES TO BE DEFENDED ANYMORE BUT BECAME, JUST LIKE INDIVIDUALITY WITHIN THE CAPITALISTIC SOCIETY, A VALUE FOR ITSELF.

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It does not exist anymore for reproduction, but for pleasure and consumption although, the old values do not work anymo re, capitalism has not only kept up the old system of seduction but has also refined it. The present pop culture with its arbitrariness is the culture of the liberal markets and, at the same time, the only globally successful culture. Architecture cannot be excluded from that - despite ideological resistance of architects and their associations. Similar to a pop concert in the seventies, architect ure is not only presented by the media - it rather became a medium itself, a popular means of commu nication for cultural and commercial experiences. It satisfies the preferences of t odav's society that is hungry for adventure and creative distinction. The pop program matic is characterised by a significant change in the role of social groups in cultural life. Until now, only professionals like architects, designers etc. have been recognised as trendsett ers and as a style-creating circle - precisely because they have been considered to have more specific knowledge as other groups in certain fields of life. This situation is changing completely today: Due to ever growing home and building suppliers chains (such as IKEAl and other "educating" institutions, the increase of leisure time and growing spend ing power,as well as the better access to cultural information through mass media, much more people are becoming upholders of civilisation.

Top ofthe Pops
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Star cult works similar to a pyramid game.The broader the base, the more important it is t o show that there are some people that made their way up to the top. Capitalism is nurtured by these differences. The more standardised products are offered on the market,the more individuality is suggested to the consume r. The more global players are present on the market, the more national identity and regional nearness appears.

THE MORE PEOPLE ARE FED WITH HOPES ON SUCCESS, THE MORE EXCLUSIVE AND ADVENTUROUS HAS TO BE THE INDIVIDUAL STORY OF SUCCESS. In this respect, Rem Koo lhaas,for instance, refers to his counter-cultural past as a society-critical journalist too.

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Reality
HOWEVER, THE CONTEMPORARY SITUATION OF ARCHITECTURE HAS ALSO A VERY POSITIVE AND LIBERATING PERSPECTIVE. It bears the opportunity to open up the fields for more extensive activities beyond the compulsion of always having a physical structure for all and everything ready at hand.

Michael Shamiyeh, Thomas Duschlbauer, 2002

All images copyright by M. Shamiyeh

The essaywas first published in German in Archit ektur & Bauforum No. 219 July / August 2002 and in Span ish in Arquitect ura Viva Nurnero 92, Septiembre-Ocubre 2003.

GLOSSARY Standardisation ( Every kind of pop culture is related to industrial standard isation, in order to make as fast and as cheap as possible their artifacts accessible to huge target groups of customers. The realisation of this growing standardisation, in particular the process of creating architectural typologies, does not ultimately require the expertise of architects anymore . Rather, architects are being replaced by construction companies as they have a more comprehensive scope of services to cope with the tasks. Staging ( An essential tool of pop culture is the event and - closely connected to it - the event culture, which intends to abolish tediousness and thereby the distance between customers and products. An event, a moment, constantly demands new stagings and themes, which is completely opposed to the static character and the current aspiration of architecture. Commercialisation ( Commerce is an inseparab le part of our pop culture. Due to pop culture, commerce has infiltrated nearly all areas of our Lebenswe lten (living environment).

NOTHING IS SACRED TO COMMERCE, BECAUSE COMMERCE ITSELF IS SACRED. It finds its salvation in permanent change, a dynam ism that criticises, parodies and creates new interpretations of all traditional and manifest architectural forms. The architects are no longer the high priests - they are only the ministrants of a solemn vulgarity, which can be reduced to the psalms "Typical Plan" plus "Bigness". Vergeschmacklichung ( (= the process of making something tasteful) Today, architecture is subjected to judgements of taste. Similar to the choice between sushi, fast food and plain cooking, we choose between different architectural styles. Everything that pleases us, that is famous and that brings quota and frequency is considered to be good. All surprises that the industry of taste and demand holds ready for us are goodtoo. Democratisation ( More and more architecture rests on majority votes. A majority can bring architecture to fall before it has been built at all. The architect's presumption that his design meets all requirements of a pluralistic society along wit h its variety of demands, is now confronted with the sum of innumerable individual presumptions.

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Branding

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Branding surrounds a label with a specific aura and enhances proximity between customer and product. Therefore, the messages of pop culture are similarly product messages that determine the cultural discourse at present. The topoi of brands is advertising - the biggest, most perfect and continuous surface of the world, which turns architecture into a scaffold and urban planning into a means for the expansion of brand identity.

Privatisation <

PUBLIC SPACE BECOMES MORE AND MORE PRIVATE SPACE ALTHOUGH IT IS PUBLICLY ACCESSIBLE. There, other rules are valid as up till now: Pop culture is equally a trash culture, which produces trash architecture and is able to advertise e.g. a branch of 'Tasco's" - decorated with cardboard and bulky refuse - as a "cosy" pub. Trash architecture is architecture wit h limited (Iife)time - and time is money.

Globalisation

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THE WORLD OR THE "WORLD-WIDE", RESPECTIVELY, HAS BECOME A FETISH.

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Alongside the process of globalisation a concentration on essentials takes place, which are to be easily identified by consumers on every place on earth. Different forms of language are being replaced by a language of forms - those of the brands. Inst ead of flying to New York and Tokyo, I do my shopping at Prada or Gucci. Architecture is not excluded from this tendency: What really counts is the simple mast ering of global standardised building processes with CAD, associated with a special fondness for rational and simple constructions. In this context, there is no place for an architecture that attaches value to tradition or local identit ies.

Virtualisation

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In opposition to common places like the marketplace or the arena, the Internet enables the construction of communities along optional categories. Virtuality also means diversity and sometimes chaos,whereas architecture in its traditional meaning should create unity and until now has suggested a failure of plurality (like in the myth of the tower of Babel).