Anthony Averbeck
COMMODITY ARCHITECTURE
Complexity and Contradiction as Both Force for Good and Enabler of Externalities in the Global World System
INTRODUCTION
Architecture long predates our contemporary world system. Since Vitruvius, the primitive hut theory has held that humanity’s primordial need for shelter and protection from the elements created architecture “in the beginning” to enhance the human experience. If one accepts this Genesis view of architecture as elemental; as organic as our very human existence, then it logically follows that the profession should be able to hold its own against the changing currents of time. For centuries, architecture did just that, balancing socially and environmentally thoughtful design ideals with the necessities of commerce. As will be illustrated in subsequent sections of this essay, architecture has always served the dual purposes of balancing its ideals with the pragmatic necessities of profit, politics, and marketplace exchange. Nonetheless, the balance of power changed sometime between the sixteenth century and the present, as a force far greater than architectural ideals emerged that forever changed the making of architecture. That ‘force’ is defined by Immanuel Wallerstein as the “modern world system” as it operates in the global capitalist economy.[1] What makes the system so powerful is not that it is driven by a marketplace model of exchange—such a model of exchange and profit has existed in several forms throughout history prior to the contemporary world system. Rather, the power lies in its ability to co-opt whole infrastructures, including the built environment, as players in its high-speed, endless pursuit of capital. Instead of money existing to make architecture, architecture has increasingly been appropriated to make money. It has been demonstrated through several instances of system failure that socially responsible architecture is given little support in this world system. Ultimately, it seems that nothing short of revolution, or holistic change to the system, will reverse this trend.
[1] Immanuel Wallerstein, “The Modern World-system: Capitalist Agriculture and the Origins of the European Worldeconomy in the Sixteenth Century, Academic Press, New York: 1976: 2
THE OVERLOOKED FUNDAMENTAL
For the 14th International Architecture Exhibition at the Venice Biennale, Rem Koolhaas and the Office for Metropolitan Architecture curated an exhibition with the chosen theme ‘Fundamentals’. With the ambition of contextualizing the built environment, they explored the past, present, and future of architecture by distilling its essence to twelve fundamental elements, “used by any architect, anywhere, at any time”[1] Construed as an eternal, closed-loop system of repetitions in a self-contained logical set that we have come to call ‘architecture’, these twelve elements include universal building blocks integral to the creation of generic building X: floor, door, wall, ceiling, toilet, façade, balcony, window, corridor, hearth, roof, stair.
OMA’s physical exhibition appears to rely on the banality and repetition of the so-called ‘elements’, changing only slightly as they move from ancient, more recent past, current, and imagined future forms to respond to changing cultural stimuli. The twelve elements form a tidy set that, when combined, seem at to form a vessel set to sail. However, professor and urban theorist Reinhold Martin of Columbia University makes the case in response to Koolhaas’s fundamentals, that without an obvious but seemingly ignored thirteenth element, his vessel is sailing nowhere; that missing fundamental in the metaphor is the very water itself. For architecture, the medium that permits its existence in the contemporary world system is the real estate market; the land that literally gives its elements (whether they are defined as twelve, fifty, or one thousand) a ground on which to physically exist on today’s planet Earth.
In “Fundamental #13,” written for Places Journal in May 2014, Martin responds to Koolhaas’s exhibition by asserting that the real estate market’s rhythms ultimately determine and influence today’s making of architecture. “Architecture meets its contemporary world,” Martin argues, “in the international, transnational, translocal, global, and otherwise border-violating and border-producing system of real estate.”[2] Sometimes, he argues, this takes the form of socio-economic-political symbols, cultural monuments, shrines to shopping or leisure, or commodified transit stations. Always, he asserts, this involves an exercise of power that happens to use architecture as its vehicle.
[1] Office for Metropolitan Architecture, Description for ‘Fundamentals’ Exhibit for 2014 Venice Biennale,
[2] Reinhold Martin, “Fundamental #13: Real Estate as Infrastructure as Architecture,” Places Journal, May 2014, https://placesjournal.org/article/fundamental-13
ORIGINS OF A DOUBLE LIFE
Shiqiao Li notes that architecture seems to have always led a double life; on the one hand facilitating cultural production and social cohesion, and on the other acting as an instrument for profit and exchange.[1] This dialectic is instanced throughout history, with the building of Venice by bankers, the Dutch Golden Age and the expansion of cities that ensued, the physical proclamation of faith and power by big-spending Popes of 16th and 17th Century Catholicism, among other instances.[2] Despite also serving the interests of politics and profit, Li notes that architectural ideals such as utility, delight, permanence, sited-ness, and intellectualism were the primary forces of influence on the making of the built environment.[3] Money was a means to an end, and architecture’s relationship with finance was a symbiotic one in which money was utilized to facilitate architectural ideals. In turn, architecture both served the common good and provided a vehicle for the exchange of money. This condition would go virtually unchanged until the 20th Century.
Coinciding with globalization and the eventual rise of neoliberalism in the 20th Century was a pronounced shift in architecture as the world had known it. Suddenly, money no longer existed to permit the manifestation of architectural ideals. Rather, architecture was essentially commandeered to serve the ideals of the global economy. As evidenced in his case study of transit “terminal developments” in China, Shiqiao Li argues that the de-regulation of the financial markets coinciding with privatization ultimately led to the reformulation of architecture as simply “improvements on land.”[4] In other words, architecture became yet another commodity forced into servitude of the frantic exchange of global capital. Koolhaas’s twelve elements became commodified and fetishized. In the process, the values of the real estate system usurped the traditional values of making architecture. These new values imposed on architecture by the markets include such demands as visibility, standardization, and a focus on symbolic content instead of the inherent qualities of material, space, and structure.[5] In Shiqiao Li’s perspective, “money now colonizes the entire body of architecture.”[6] Thus, a once-symbiotic relationship has become parasitic, where the host (architecture) has seemingly become completely overtaken.
[1] Li Shiqiao, “Architecture and Finance”, World Contemporary Architecture, lecture, Charlottesville, VA, February 9, 2016
[2] Ibid
[3] Li Shiqiao, “Terminating Architecture: Mega Development in Hong Kong,” Theory, Culture, & Society 30, no 7/8 (2013): 278
[4] Ibid
[5] Li Shiqiao, “Terminating Architecture: Mega Development in Hong Kong,” Theory, Culture, & Society 30, no 7/8 (2013): 278
[6] Ibid, 279
PAY NO ATTENTION TO THE EXTERNALITIES BEHIND THE CURTAIN
In the process of becoming a commodity in the endless accumulation of capital, architecture has become fetishized. In responding to Koolhaas’s twelve fundamentals, Reinhold Martin notes a “distinct air of the sacred or magical” in the very act of compartmentalizing architecture into a set of what he describes as “utilitarian products stored on the shelves of history.”[1] Philosopher and cultural critic Adrian Parr asserts that commodity fetishism is ultimately to blame for preventing the appreciation of the true costs, or externalities, in a system.[2] The underlying system is rarely allowed to enter our consciousness, except when the system fails. In the case of architecture, it is when the demands of the capitalist real estate market inform design decisions that ultimately lead to demonstrable social, financial, or cultural problems. Several instances illustrate the role that architects have played in supporting the endless accumulation of capital in the real estate market at the expense of the common good. In many instances, architecture demonstrates an alarming sense of naiveté to the externalities they are either directly or indirectly contributing to.
In December 2014, Zaha Hadid walked out of a radio interview when questioned about the alleged death of 1,200 migrant workers related to the construction of the Al-Wakrah World Cup Stadium. The stadium is constructed as part of a larger system of oil money being converted to both physical real estate and political capital.[3] When questioned about the deaths, Hadid definitively stated that “there have been no deaths on our site whatsoever.” While it is true that no deaths can be officially confirmed on the physical site of the stadium, they are all indisputably related to the construction of infrastructure necessary to support the stadium. In a later statement to Dezeen, Hadid revealed that she feels no professional responsibility for the externalities resulting from the construction of her projects; even if those externalities mean human casualties.
“It’s not my duty as an architect to look at it. I cannot do anything about it because I have no power to do anything about it. I think it’s a problem anywhere in the world. But I think there are discrepancies all over the world.”[4]
When pressed further on where the responsibility might lie, Hadid suggested that the government should address the issue. “I think that’s an issue the government—if there is a problem—should pick up.”[5] In a sense, Zaha Hadid was admitting her powerlessness in the world system, and by extension, architecture’s powerlessness relative to the forces of the global real estate market. Reinhold Martin cites Hadid’s statements as revealing of the fact that power is conferred in the cultural realm (in this case, to architecture) in exchange for deference in the political realm.[6] Zaha Hadid and the institution of architecture, therefore is demonstrating what is perceived to be necessary deference to the externalities of the system, in this case the exploitation of migrant workers at the expense of the real estate system that will profit from their labor.
Similarly, in September 2015 Hadid announced the withdrawal of her bid for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics stadium design after the Japanese government scaled back the project facing sharp criticism for similarly feeding the externalities of the system. Critics held that the stadium would have both endangered culturally-significant Meiji Shrine Outer Gardens, while at the same time forcing public housing residents to re-locate. It was also alleged that the 130 billion yen (close to $2 billion USD) would be far too much for the government to manage while also trying to divert capital to relief efforts for the Fukushima nuclear plant disaster.[7] Hadid responded to the government’s recognition of the consequences of such an enormous project by essentially stating that the world system simply demands such a scale. Rather than addressing concerns over the true costs (including both the financial and social externalities), Hadid offered to simply value engineer a few “disposable” items out of the design, including air conditioning and an observation bridge. Said Hadid: “(Our proposal) is the only way to achieve value for money in the market.”[8]
Likewise, in several instances, star architects have been commissioned for branding projects, with the chief intention of increasing property and/or lease value for residential developments. Often, these projects contribute to the gentrification of not just a particular site but whole neighborhoods and districts. Notable 20th century examples of such developments include Richard Meier’s Perry Street Apartments, Mies van der Rohe’s Lake Shore Apartments, and Philip Johnson’s Urban Glass House. One recent instance is 8 Spruce Street in New York City. In 2006 Frank Gehry was commissioned by developer Forest City Ratner to design what would become the tallest residential tower in New York City. Even without the branding power that comes with Frank Gehry’s name, the scale of the 867-foot structure’s sets itself as a prime example of what Shiqiao Li refers to as “architecture as branding.”[9] Noted for its inflated budget and Gehry-designed folded façade aesthetic, the building feeds into what Columbia University’s Center for the Study of American Architecture cites as evidence of growing income inequality in the United States enabled by the real estate market. What makes the project particularly egregious, however, is the fact that it commands high rents despite having received significant tax abatements from the post-9/11 era federal Liberty Bonds program initially intended to encourage the development of affordable housing in the Financial District. The 8 Spruce Street apartments command an average rent of $5,000 per month, which requires a median income of $180,000, putting half of 8 Spruce Street’s residents in the top ten percent of earners nationwide.[10]
In a report entitled “The Art of Inequality: Architecture, Housing, and Real Estate,” the Columbia research team notes that across the globe, incomes are “diverging at an accelerated rate, and housing is increasingly unaffordable not only for those people on the (expanding) lower end of the spectrum.”[11] Outlining the specific problem with the market-driven nature of government “affordable housing” initiatives in the United States as opposed to more truly “social housing” in Europe, the Columbia report asserts that the income and price restrictions lack both permanence and true political gravitas. Moreover, the report asserts that since the 1970s the United States has increasingly given the private sector control over the development of public housing and taken power from the federal government, at the expense of the ultimate intentions of expanding access to affordable quality housing. Instead, development has predictably continued to favor the bottom line above all else in its endless accumulation of capital. Inequality in all arenas has grown coincidental with that in the housing market—including education, income, employment, and crime. The Columbia team points to externalities in the real estate market as principal perpetrator of externalities in other arenas:
“Property taxes collected annually on the assessed value of land and buildings are local governments’ single most significant source of revenue for supporting public services. Accordingly, local real estate values—and not the overall wealth of a city, state, or nation—are one of the clearest predictors of the quality of education, amenities, and safety in U.S. neighborhoods. In turn, the quality of those public services is the strongest predictor of the real estate prices.”[12]
Nonetheless, in rare instances, architecture has demonstrated an ability to recognize its participation in externalities of the world system. In 2008, Rem Koolhaas submitted a proposal for mixed-use development on a 1.5 billion square-foot manmade island off the coast of Dubai entitled “Waterfront City.” Playing on OMA’s decades-earlier concept of the generic city of repetitive buildings balanced by moments of bold uniqueness, the project acts as critique not just of the generic developer-driven city of the contemporary world, but of what the New York Times describes as “the growing use of high-end architecture as a tool for self-promotion.” In an interview discussing the project for Der Spiegel, Koolhaas cited the root of his interest in the project as going much deeper than the project itself, but rather an opportunity to reclaim the role of architecture as a force for good. “Under neoliberalism,” contends Koolhaas, “architecture lost its role as the decisive and fundamental articulation of a society…becoming a ‘cherry on the cake’ affair…I’m not saying that neoliberalism has destroyed architecture. But it has assigned it a new role and limited its range.”[13] For Koolhaas and his team at OMA, the branding of architecture or what they refer to as the “Bilbao effect” has “reduced cities to theme parks of architectural tchotchkes that mask an underlying homogeneity.”[14] The proposal almost aims to embrace the contradictions of the system and work the system against itself. Nevertheless, critics remain skeptical of the ability of one architect’s ambitions to counter the effects of the system. Architectural critic Nicolai Ourossoff contends that “whatever his social goals, Mr. Koolhaas will have little control over the makeup of this community, which if current development in waterfront Dubai is any indication, is still likely to serve a small wealthy elite.”[15] Nonetheless, Ourossoff gives Koolhaas credit where credit is due; that he is one of the few prominent architects willing to contend with the world system and take on the inequality crisis of the contemporary city.
[1] Reinhold Martin, “Fundamental #13: Real Estate as Infrastructure as Architecture”
[2] Adrian Parr, “The Wrath of Capital: Neoliberalism and Climate Change Politics,” 35
[3] Reinhold Martin, “Fundamental #13: Real Estate as Infrastructure as Architecture”
[4] “Preventing Migrant Deaths at Qatar Stadium Site “Not My Duty as an Architect”, Dezeen, February 2014
http://www.dezeen.com/2014/02/26/qatar-zaha-hadid-stadium/
[5] Ibid
[6] Reinhold Martin, “Fundamental #13: Real Estate as Infrastructure as Architecture”
[7] “Zaha Hadid Architects launches campaign to reinstate scrapped Tokyo stadium design”, Dezeen, August 2015
[8] Ibid
[9] Li Shiqiao, “Architecture and Extra-Systemic Capital”, World Contemporary Architecture, lecture, Charlottesville, VA, February 23, 2016
[10] Bernstein, Fred A. “New Gehry Tower Prepares for Renters,” New York Times, October 5, 2010, Accessed March 3, 2016. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/10/realestate/10posting.html
[11] Reinhold Martin, Jacob Moore and Susanne Schindler. “The Art of Inequality: Architecture, Housing, and Real Estate. A Provisional Report,” New York: Temple Hoyne Buell Center for the Study of American Architecture, 19
[12] Ibid, 30
[13] “Interview with Star Architect Rem Koolhaas: We’re Building Assembly Line Cities and Buildings,” Der Spiegel, December 16, 2011. http://www.spiegel.de/international/zeitgeist/interview-with-star-architect-rem-koolhaas-we-re-building-assembly-line-cities-and-buildings-a-803798-2.html
[14] Ourossoff, Nicolai. “City on the Gulf,” New York Times Architectural Review, March 3, 2008. Accessed February 29, 2016.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/03/arts/design/03kool.html
[15] Ibid
REVOLUTION
John Cary penned an op-ed for Good: A Magazine for the Global Citizen entitled “Why ‘the Death of Architecture’ Might Not Be Such a Bad Thing” in February 2012, reflecting the growing sentiment that architecture had largely lost its way in the contemporary world. In the midst of the construction downturn that followed the 2008 financial crisis and the ensuing loss of architectural projects and by consequence, jobs, Cary argues that the statistical decline of the profession may not be something to be lamented. Increasingly serving the interests of the moneyed class in the age of neoliberalism, architecture has, in Cary’s estimation, departed so far from its original dedication to advancing the public good, “exacerbated by the way architects have structured their practices, waiting for self-interested clients to come their way rather than actively seeking ways to improve the world.”[1] Divorced from its ideals, the profession has effectively sold its soul to the global market. In the process, it has become yet another commodity with an exchange value such that much of the global population cannot afford to purchase it. Argues Cary:
“More detrimentally for both the public’s perception and opportunities within the field, architecture remains a luxury available only to a privileged few. The field has long wrestled with its elitism; books have been written, conferences staged, and museum exhibitions mounted around estimates that architecture and good design are accessible to only a select sliver of the population. Yet architecture shapes everyone by creating the environment around us, impacting our collective quality of life.”[2]
While the dialectic present in the conflicted double life of architecture has produced inequality, the underlying contradiction inevitably has the opportunity to lead to revolution. Karl Marx applied the negative dialectic to the structure of capitalist society, as it inevitably produces a distinctness of the proletariat and bourgeoisie, which in turn forms an opposition and finally develops into a contradiction “with its starting point the complete impoverishment of the majority of this society, and this just as inevitably furthers the revolution.”[3] In architecture, the dialectic is the conflicted dual purpose of advancing the common good through its ideals in opposition with the demands of the private interests of the real estate market, which inevitably produces a distinct division of those who can afford design and those who cannot, which in turn forms an opposition and finally develops into a contradiction where the majority of the built environment becomes completely disadvantageous to most of society. If one applies Marxist theory to the situation, it seems that the increasing imbalance in this double life in favor of market demands is likely to produce one of two results; complete termination of architecture or revolution.
The revolution may have already begun to take shape in the form of the burgeoning public interest design movement, which seeks to return architecture to its fundamental ideals of protecting the health, safety, and welfare of the public. With the neoliberal commodification of health care (particularly in the United States) paralleling the commodification of architecture, a similar conflict has emerged in the medical profession. Public health has sought to break from traditional medicine by taking a more “systemic approach…focusing on policy and broad-scale community engagement.”[4] Similarly for architecture, public interest design has moved to eradicate the inequality inherent in the age of neoliberalism. Self-proclaimed public interest designer Bryan Bell cites a desire to find ways for the profession to serve the interests of the 98 percent who cannot otherwise afford to seek the services of an architect in the global marketplace. In “Good Deeds: Community Service through Architecture,” Bell proposes a radical transformation in the way that architects approach their work. In essence, he proposes something of a de-commodification of architecture by reversing model of moneyed client seeking architect/professional, with the architect instead seeking situations where the built environment can have a positive impact on individuals or communities who happen to hold less power and capital in the world system, and thus less access to architecture as commodity. “The general public, the 98 percent without access to architecture, often do not understand what we do or what we can do for them. Architecture has been put on the top shelf, out of reach to most.”[5] John Cary goes so far as to assert that public interest design is architecture’s only hope for long-term sustainability, and ultimately survival. While certainly a debatable assessment, it just might be the revolution that Marx would look for in such a situation of inequality. Concludes Cary:
“After a century and a half, architecture’s fate may be sealed, but the emerging field of public interest design stands on the brink of becoming a self-sustaining profession and making a tangible impact on the world. This is the moment that government agencies, foundations, generations of design professionals, and the public at large (whether they know it or not) have been waiting for. So let’s get to work.”[6]
Whether public interest design is the answer or not, one thing seems certain; architecture has become increasingly dependent on the economy of the global world system. As a result, it has entered into a delirious state of confused and oft-conflicted objectives. Many have rightly noted that it has lost sight of its traditional ideals of making a thoughtful, socially-conscious built environment for the common good. A new ethic is needed to end the madness. It is up to future generations of architects to recognize the enframing ideology of the world system, and cease the denial of architecture’s demonstrable role as enabler of externalities.
[1] John Cary, “Why the Death of Architecture May Not Be Such a Bad Thing,” Good, February 2012, online
[2] Ibid
[3] Peter Kerschemann, “Hegel’s Dialectic,” 164
[4] John Cary, “Why the Death of Architecture May Not Be Such a Bad Thing,” Good, February 2012, online
[5] Bryan Bell, “Good Deeds: Community Service through Architecture,” 24.
[6] Ibid