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FORMULARY FOR A NEW URBANISM
SIRE, I AM FROM THE OTHER COUNTRY
We are bored in the city, there is no longer any Temple of the Sun.
Between the legs of the women walking by, the dadaists imagined a monkey
wrench and the surrealists a crystal cup. That's lost. We know how to
read every promise in faces--the latest stage of morphology. The poetry
of the billboards lasted twenty years. We are bored in the city, we
really have to strain to still discover mysteries on the sidewalk
billboards, the latest state of humor and poetry:
Shower-Bath of the Patriarchs
Meat Cutting Machines
Notre-Dame Zoo
Sports Pharmacy
Martyrs Provisions
Translucent Concrete
Golden Touch Sawmill
Center for Functional Recuperation
Sainte-Anne Ambulance
Cafe Fifth Avenue
Prolonged Volunteers Street
Family Boarding House in the Garden
Hotel of Strangers
Wild Street
And the swimming pool on the Street of Little Girls. And the police
station on Rendezvous Street. The medical-surgical clinic and the free
placement center on the Quai des Orfevres. The artificial flowers on Sun
Street. The Castle Cellars Hotel, the Ocean Bar and the Coming and Going
Cafe. The Hotel of the Epoch.
And the strange statue of Dr. Philippe Pinel, benefactor of the
insane, in the last evenings of summer. To explore Paris.
And you, forgotten, your memories ravaged by all the consternations of
two hemispheres, stranded in the Red Cellars of Pali-Kao, without music
and without geography, no longer setting out for the hacienda where the
roots think of the child and where the wine is finished off with fables
from an old almanac. Now that's finished. You'll never see the hacienda.
It doesn't exist.
The hacienda must be built.
All cities are geological; you cannot take three steps without
encountering ghosts bearing all the prestige of their legends. We move
within a closed landscape whose landmarks constantly draw us toward the
past. Certain shifting angles, certain receding perspectives, allow us
to glimpse original conceptions of space, but this vision remains
fragmentary. It must be sought in the magical locales of fairy tales and
surrealist writings: castles, endless walls, little forgotten bars,
mammoth caverns, casino mirrors.
These dated images retain a small catalyzing power, but it is almost
impossible to use them in a symbolic urbanism without rejuvenating them
by giving them a new meaning. Our imaginations, haunted by the old
archetypes, have remained far behind the sophistication of the machines.
The various attempts to integrate modern science into new myths remain
inadequate. Meanwhile abstraction has invaded all the arts, contemporary
architecture in particular. Pure plasticity, inanimate, storyless,
soothes the eye. Elsewhere other fragmentary beauties can be found --
while the promised land of syntheses continually recedes into the
distance. Everyone wavers between the emotionally still-alive past and
the already dead future.
We will not work to prolong the mechanical civilizations and frigid
architecture that ultimately lead to boring leisure.
We propose to invent new, changeable decors....
Darkness and obscurity are banished by artificial lighting, and the
seasons by air conditioning; night and summer are losing their charm and
dawn is disappearing. The man of the cities thinks he has escaped from
cosmic reality, but there is no corresponding expansion of his dream
life. The reason is clear: dreams spring from reality and are realized
in it.
The latest technological developments would make possible the
individual's unbroken contact with cosmic reality while eliminating its
disagreeable aspects. Stars and rain can be seen through glass ceilings.
The mobile house turns with the sun. Its sliding walls enable vegetation
to invade life. Mounted on tracks, it can go down to the sea in the
morning and return to the forest in the evening.
Architecture is the simplest means of articulating time and space, of
modulating reality, of engendering dreams. It is a matter not only of
plastic articulation and modulation expressing an ephemeral beauty, but
of a modulation producing influences in accordance with the eternal
spectrum of human desires and the progress in realizing them.
The architecture of tomorrow will be a means of modifying present
conceptions of time and space. It will be a means of knowledge and a
means of action.
The architectural complex will be modifiable. Its aspect will change
totally or partially in accordance with the will of its inhabitants....
Past collectivities offered the masses an absolute truth and
incontrovertable mythical exemplars. The appearance of the notion of
relativity in the modern mind allows one to surmise the EXPERIMENTAL
aspect of the next civilization (although I'm not satisfied with that
word; say, more supple, more "fun"). On the bases of this mobile
civilization, architecture will, at least initially, be a means of
experimenting with a thousand ways of modifying life, with a view to a
mythic synthesis.
A mental disease has swept the planet: banalization. Everyone is
hypnotized by production and conveniences sewage system, elevator,
bathroom, washing machine.
This state of affairs, arising out of a struggle against poverty, has
overshot its ultimate goal--the liberation of man from material
cares--and become an obsessive image hanging over the present. Presented
with the alternative of love or a garbage disposal unit, young people of
all countries have chosen the garbage disposal unit. It has become
essential to bring about a complete spiritual transformation by bringing
to light forgotten desires and by creating entirely new ones. And by
carrying out an intensive propaganda in favor of these desires.
We have already pointed out the need of constructing situations as being
one of the fundamental desires on which the next civilization will be
founded. This need for absolute creation has always been intimately
associated with the need to play with architecture, time and space....
Chirico remains one of the most remarkable architectural precursors. He
was grappling with the problems of absences and presences in time and
space. We know that an object that is not consciously noticed at the
time of a first visit can, by its absence during subsequent visits,
provoke an indefinable impression: as a result of this sighting backward
in time, the absence of the object becomes a presence one can feel. More
precisely: although the quality of the impression generally remains
indefinite, it nevertheless varies with the nature of the removed
object and the importance accorded it by the visitor, ranging from
serene joy to terror. (It is of no particular significance that in this
specific case memory is the vehicle of these feelings; I only selected
this example for its convenience.)
In Chirico's paintings (during his Arcade period) an empty space creates
a full-filled time. It is easy to imagine the fantastic future
possibilities of such architecture and its influence on the masses.
Today we can have nothing but contempt for a century that relegates such
blueprints to its so-called museums.
This new vision of time and space, which will be the theoretical basis
of future constructions, is still imprecise and will remain so until
experimentation with patterns of behavior has taken place in cities
specifically established for this purpose, cities assembling--in
addition to the facilities necessary for a minimum of comfort and
security-- buildings charged with evocative power, symbolic edifices
representing desires, forces, events past, present and to come. A
rational extension of the old religious systems, of old tales, and above
all of psychoanalysis, into architectural expression becomes more and
more urgent as all the reasons for becoming impassioned disappear.
Everyone will live in his own personal "cathedral," so to speak. There
will be rooms more conducive to dreams than any drug, and houses where
one cannot help but love. Others will be irresistibly alluring to
travelers.... This project could be compared with the Chinese and
Japanese gardens of illusory perspectives [en trompe l'oeiI]--with the
difference that those gardens are not designed to be lived in all the
time--or with the ridiculous labyrinth in the Jardin des Plantes, at the
entry to which is written (height of absurdity, Ariadne unemployed):
Games ure forbidden in the labyrinth. This city could be envisaged in
the form of an arbitrary assemblage of castles, grottos, lakes, etc. It
would be the baroque stage of urbanism considered as a means of
knowledge. But this theoretical phase is already outdated. We know that
a modern building could be constructed which would have no resemblance
to a medieval castle but which could preserve and enhance the Castle
poetic power (by the conservation of a strict minimum of lines, the
transposition of certain others, the positioning of openings, the
topographical location, etc.).
The districts of this city could correspond to the whole spectrum of
diverse feelings that one encounters by chance in everyday life.
Bizarre Quarter--Happy Quarter (specially reserved for habitation) --
Noble and Tragic Quarter (for good children)--Historical Quarter
(museums, schools)--Useful Quarter (hospital, tool shops) --Sinister
Quarter, etc. And an Astrolaire which would group plant species in
accordance with the relations they manifest with the stellar rhythm, a
planetary garden comparable to that which the astronomer Thomas wants to
establish at Laaer Berg in Vienna. Indispensable for giving the
inhabitants a consciousness of the cosmic. Perhaps also a Death Quarter,
not for dying in but so as to have somewhere to live in peace, and I
think here of Mexico and of a principle of cruelty in innocence that
appeals more to me every day.
The Sinister Quarter, for example, would be a good replacement for those
hellholes that many peoples once possessed in their capitals: they
symbolized all the evil forces of life. The Sinister Quarter would have
no need to harbor real dangers, such as traps, dungeons or mines. It
would be difficult to get into, with a hideous decor (piercing whistles,
alarm bells, sirens wailing intermittently, grotesque sculptures,
power-driven mobiles, called Auto-Mobiles), and as poorly lit at night as
it is blindinglylit during the day by an intensive use of reflection. At
the center, the "Square of the Appalling Mobile." Saturation of the
market with a product causes the product's market value to fall: thus,
as they explored the Sinister Quarter, the child and the adult would
learn not to fear the anguishing occasions of life, but to be amused by
them.
The principal activity of the inhabitants will be the CONTINUOUS DERIVE.
The changing of landscapes from one hour to the next will result in
complete disorientation....
Later, as the gestures inevitably grow stale, this derive will partially
leave the realm of direct experience for that of representation....
The economic obstacles are only apparent. We know that the more a place
is set apart for free play, the more it influences people's behavior
and the greater is its force of attraction. This is demonstrated by the
immense prestige of Monaco and Las Vegas--and Reno, that caricature of
free love--although they are mere gambling places. Our first
experimental city would live largely off tolerated and controlled
tourism. Future avant-garde activities and productions would naturally
tend to gravitate there. In a few years it would become the
intellectual capital of the world and would be universally recognized as
such.
IVAN CHTCHEGLOV*
October 1953