Lucius Burckhardt Writings 2012

~ SpringerWienNewYork

SpringerWienNewYork

Jesko Fezer · Martin Schmitz (Eds.)

Lucius Burckhardt Wri t ings. Rethinking Man-made

Environments

Politics, Landscape & Design

EditorsJesko Fezer, D–Berlin/Hamburgdesign.hfbk-hamburg.de

Martin Schmitz, D–Berlinmartin-schmitz.delucius-burckhardt.org

We thank Annemarie Burckhardt (1930-2012) for her many suggestions and steadfast support.

This work is subject to copyright.All rights are reserved, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically those of translation, reprinting, re-use of illustrations, broadcasting, reproduction by photo-copying machines or similar means, and storage in data banks.

Product liability: The publisher can give no guarantee for the information contained in this book. The use of registered names, trademarks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and are therefore free for general use.

© 2012 Springer-Verlag/Wien

SpringerWienNewYork is a part of Springer Science+Business Mediaspringer.at

Coverphoto: Lucius Burckhardt painted a fly on a grape, in emulation of the artist Apelles. Is a realistic simulation of nature the very best art can do? Photo: Annemarie Burckhardt

Cover Design: Jesko Fezer, Martin Schmitz, Ekke WolfTypesetting: Ekke Wolf, A–Vienna, www.typic.atTranslated from the German: Jill Denton, D–BerlinProof reading: Andreas Müller, D–Berlin

Printed on acid-free and chlorine-free bleached paper

SPIN: 86094037

Library of Congress Control Number: 2012944424

With 32 figures

ISBN 978-3-7091-1256-4 SpringerWienNewYork

Content

Preface: The Work of Lucius Burckhardt 7

Urban Planning and Democracy (1957) 27

Ulm Anno 5. The Curriculum of the Ulm School of Design (1960) 35

Building—A Process with No Obligations to Heritage Preservation (1967) 44

On the Value and Meaning of Urban Utopias (1968) 63

From Design Academicism to the Treatment of Wicked Problems (1973) 77

Who Plans the Planning? (1974) 85

Family and Home—Two Adaptable Systems (1975) 102

Urban Design and Its Significance for Residents (1975) 115

Gardening—An Art and A Necessity (1977) 123

Why Is Landscape Beautiful? (1979) 133

On the Design of Everyday Life (1979) 142

Design Is Invisible (1980) 153

Dirt (1980) 166

What Is Livability? On Quantifiable and Invisible Needs (1981) 170

The Night Is Man-made (1982) 179

Architecture—An Art or A Science? (1983) 189

A Critique of the Art of Gardening (1983) 195

Fake: The Real Thing (1987) 204

Aesthetics and Ecology (1990) 212

A Walk in Second Nature (1992) 226

The Sermon (1994) 232

Strollological Observations on Perception of the Environment and the Tasks Facing Our Generation (1996) 239

Wasteland As Context. Is There Any Such Thing As The Postmodern Landscape? (1998) 249

On Movement and Vantage Points—the Strollologist’s Experience (1999) 264

Biography 281

Bibliography 283

Index 287

7

Jesko Fezer · Martin Schmitz

The Work of Lucius Burckhardt

Lucius Burckhardt was bold for he claimed that design is invisible.

He was exasperating for he asked why landscape is beautiful. He

was persistent for he doggedly asked who actually plans the plan-

ning. He was egalitarian for he addressed issues such as “livability”

and everyday life. He was provocative. He declared the night and

dirt to be a focus of his research. He was realistic insofar as he es-

tablished that to build or to design is a process. He was rebellious

for he made a science out of taking a stroll. He was far-sighted for

he claimed that care and maintenance are destructive.

Lucius Burckhardt published his writings in a broad range of

newspapers, magazines, anthologies, art catalogues and yearbooks,

and propounded his ideas also via other media, art events and lec-

tures. He thus reached people from all walks of life and areas of

expertise. His extensive repertoire encompassed a rich combination

of scientific research and formal intervention, expressed through

painting, drawing, walking, curating, designing and motoring. His

novel re-contextualization and interweave of various disciplines—

including some of his own invention—had an often, provoca-

tive and irrefutably, lasting impact. He radically and consistently

reflected on everyday man-made forms and structures, and made

those aspects generally ignored in the professional realm, and over-

looked by laymen, his core concern.

8

The Car and the City

Lucius Burckhardt’s first research interest was the mass motoriza-

tion of Europe after World War II. The so-called “Greater Basel

Correction Plan” of 1949 proposed that narrow roads in the gothic

city center be restructured to the benefit of motorists—despite

the fact that Basel, unlike many German cities at the time, was

still structurally intact. But the new means of individual transport

required accessible parking lots near shops and offices. The Cor-

rection Plan foresaw the demolition of entire rows of houses, so

Annemarie and Lucius Burckhardt in their office at the University of Kassel, in 1993. From the day they married in 1955, they worked in tandem. Photo: Reinhard Franz

9

roads could be widened to accommodate the new traffic system.

Politicians and urban planners were ill prepared for such challenges

and intervened often to the detriment of the city’s material and so-

cial infrastructures. The inhabitants of houses to be demolished “in

the cause of urban renewal,” were the most helpless of all.

Lucius Burckhardt was one of the very few to recognize the

drama of the moment. “Historic City Center in Peril” announced

his article for a student newspaper in October 1949, when he was

only 24: “Unfortunately, no critical voice has been raised in the

daily press, and traffic psychosis seems to have afflicted commen-

tators (insofar as their tastes have not already capitulated to cur-

rent economic demands—as in, suspension bridge!). If destruction

of the historic city center can be postponed until the first postwar

motor has ceased to sputter, if the development of public transport

can be put on hold for a little while longer, until good taste has got

back on its feet, until value judgments have been re-revised, until

the bomb damage in Central Europe has permeated the conscious-

ness even of Basel’s population—if the destruction of the historic

city center can be postponed say, for thirty years, the battle would

be won.”¹

From this moment on, Lucius Burckhardt set himself the task

of reflecting on the socio-cultural conditions under which architec-

ture, design, urban planning and landscape design operate—a task

he was to consider from interdisciplinary vantage points: as a re-

search fellow at the University of Münster’s Social Research Center

in Dortmund, as a lecturer at the Ulm School of Design, as editor

of the journal Werk, as a member of the “professorial sofa” (as op-

1 Lucius Burckhardt, “Altstadt in Gefahr,” in: Basler Studentenblatt Nr. 1, 31, Basel, October 1949, p. 12.

10

posed to the professorial chair) at the ETH Zurich, as a professor at

Kassel University, as chairman of the German Werkbund and, after

the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, as founding dean of the Design

Faculty at the Bauhaus University in Weimar.

Lucius Burckhardt began quasi as a simple citizen up in arms

about plans for his hometown Basel then proceeded to make criti-

cal civic engagement the basis of his life’s work. A first and funda-

mental step was to re-imagine planning and architecture in (and

for) a democracy. Publications such as Wir selber bauen unsre Stadt²

and achtung: die Schweiz³ analyzed the new conditions under which

architecture and urban planning operated in the 1950s. Burckhardt

studied under Edgar Salin and Karl Jaspers, and graduated in Basel

in 1955 with a thesis on “Party and State in the (Italian) Risorgi-

mento.” That same year he married Annemarie Burckhardt, with

whom he was to live and work until his death in 2003.

Democratic Urban Planning

In September 1957, a special issue of the Berlin architectural journal

Bauwelt was devoted to the opening of “Interbau,” an architectural

exhibition project in the Hansa district of West Berlin. A team of

authors convened by the new editor Ulrich Conrads and the urban

2 Lucius Burckhardt, Wir selber bauen unsre Stadt (We Build Our City Our-selves), Verlag Felix Handschin, Basel 1953; co-authored by Markus Kutter.

3 Lucius Burckhardt, achtung: die Schweiz (Look Out! Switzerland), Basel 1955; co-authored by Markus Kutter and Max Frisch.

11

Cover of the book achtung: die schweiz! Basel 1955. The authors Lucius Burckhardt, Max Frisch and Markus Kutter proposed people ignore Expo64, the national exhibition in Lausanne, and think instead about building a new city. They thus triggered one of the first public discussions about the true meaning of the term “planning.”

12

sociologist Hans Paul Bahrdt had plenty to say on the subject, as

the headline “Critical Material on Interbau”⁴ clearly announced.

Lucius Burckhardt’s article, “Urban Planning and Democracy.

Also a Commentary on Interbau”⁵ was presented (without further

explanation), as a preface to these sociologically informed surveys

and critiques. Burckhardt actually made no mention of the exhibi-

tion as such in his article yet he did ask, “whom we should blame for

present circumstances,” spoke of “a distinct sense of unease” among

“cursing citizens,”⁶ and thus hinted heavily at what he thought of

it. This was the first article in which Burckhardt outlined his view

of the city as an expression of social relationships. He thereby laid

the foundations for arguments he was to refine in later years, in

the course of his pursuit of a radical and democratic form of urban

planning and humane architecture. He strongly believed that the

tools and methods of structural planning were ill designed to deal

effectively with contemporary problems. His own critique began by

addressing the tangible circumstances of everyday (co-)existence,

and how people cope with them. He advocated a new concept of

planning as well as public participation in the planning processes

that shape everyday lives. Burckhardt’s basic premise, “the cityscape

is an expression of social relations,” led him to ask as early as 1957

whether we “may ever arrive at another form [of planning] by dem-

ocratic means.”⁷

4 Bauwelt 37, Berlin, 1957.5 Lucius Burckhardt, “Stadtplanung und Demokratie” (Urban Planning and

Democracy) in: Bauwelt 37, 1957, pp. 969–970.6 Ibid., p. 969.7 Ibid., p. 969.

13

Science and Design

In 1960, an article by Lucius Burckhardt was published in the Swiss

architectural journal Werk, of which he was soon to become edi-

tor. It dealt with the Ulm School of Design (HfG), where he had

been a guest lecturer for design theory—and it took a well-aimed,

sweeping blow at sectarianism, formalism and the naïve adulation

of science.

In Ulm, Lucius Burckhardt addressed the everyday and popular

dimensions of design as well as its political repercussions, an inno-

vative approach pursued with interest by students yet officially un-

heeded. For, although the HfG was in the throes of shifting from an

artistically driven to a more scientific understanding of design, elit-

ist academicism in a new guise remained predominant. Burckhardt

noted therefore, that Max Bill’s “Teutonic irreality” had ceded after

his departure to an era of “cynical pragmatism” and “the supremacy

of science.”⁸ The architectural historian Kenneth Frampton later

contradicted this, attributing to Tomas Maldonado, for many years

the dean of the HfG, the comment that the most extreme group of

methodologists “was led by a visiting professor at the HfG, namely

the Swiss national economist Lucius Burckhardt.”⁹ And it must be

said that the methodical approach developed in Ulm, in particu-

lar by Horst Rittel, had a formative influence on Burckhardt. As

a sociologist he advocated, on the one hand, a serious, scientific

8 Lucius Burckhardt, “Ulm Anno 5” in: Werk Nr. 11, Vol. 47, Zurich 1960, p. 37. Burckhardt was soon to become editor of this journal, a position he held from 1962 to 1972.

9 Kenneth Frampton, Archithese, 15, 1975, p. 30.

14

and methodological approach to design problems yet insisted, on

the other, that critiques should remain rooted in reality rather than

bow to formalist dictates. It was Horst Rittel of all people, in his

new role as a member of the School’s board, who penned an article

in the same issue, to counter Burckhardt’s attack.¹⁰ The HfG had

requested this opportunity to publish its response, and Rittel used it

to present his critical, methodological reading of planning; a read-

ing no longer unanimously accepted at the HfG even then, and

which was soon to lead to his departure also.

The State of Architecture

That a scientist from the “still little known field of sociology should

be appointed [in January 1962] to the editorial board of the Swiss

architectural journal Werk perplexed many readers.”¹¹ And the deci-

sion was indeed both crucial and pioneering. Werk was transformed

under Burckhardt’s editorship for, instead of simply reviewing real-

ized construction projects, it served as a platform for discussion of

the prerequisites and consequences of architecture, and other re-

lated issues. “Many viewpoints were accepted for publication, from

architectural theory to sociology, semiotics to heritage preservation,

and urban planning issues.”¹² Lucius Burckhardt left Werk in 1972.

10 Horst Rittel, “Zu den Arbeitshypothesen der Hochschule für Gestaltung in Ulm” in: Werk, Nr. 8, Vol. 48, Zurich 1961, pp. 281–293.

11 Fritz Schwarz in: Werk Nr. 59, 1972, p. 180.12 Ibid., p. 180.

15

The Process of Planning and Building

In collaboration with the renowned Swiss architect and artist Walter

Förderer, Burckhardt elaborated his trenchant critique of the profes-

sional design field—developed beforehand as a primary focus of his

work at the HfG, and published later as a pamphlet. As early as 1967,

both in a lecture given at the Werkbund in Karlsruhe, and at the leg-

endary “architectural theory” conference organized by Oswald Math-

ias Ungers in Berlin, Lucius Burckhardt had criticized architects who

strive to attain a specific form through the precise fulfillment of tasks,

and who therefore demand for this purpose a precise program, the

optimal solution to which (so expert opinion at the time), is a struc-

ture that corresponds precisely to that program. Burckhardt polemi-

cized by asking, “What does the designer or architect propose, when

faced with a problem? What does the apple tree propose, when faced

with a problem? Apples, of course; and the designer will always pro-

pose buildings; every problem leads to a building….” And he claimed

that such structural “solutions” often have precious little to do with

the highly complex problem to which they supposedly relate. Bauen

ein Prozess,¹³ a formative text in its day, is still fundamental to an un-

derstanding of the ways in which politics and environmental design

interrelate, and of planning as an interactive process.

The man-made environment deteriorates because it is unable to

adapt, Burckhardt believed, and also because it fails either to accom-

modate temporal dynamics, or to leave sufficient leeway for overlap

and blur. Burckhardt demanded that the planning process be limited

13 Lucius Burckhardt, Bauen ein Prozess (Architecture As Process), Teufen 1968, co-authored by Walter Förderer.

16

in scope and impact, claiming that “objectives should be formulated

and approached step by step […] and decisions postponed rather

than anticipated—despite the ‘visual’ outcomes for which the words

‘model’ or ‘master plan’ prime us.”¹⁴ He spoke in favor of “non-pro-

grammed” projects or “fuzzy programming.” He meant by this, not

non-planning but rather, a new form of open-ended planning,¹⁵ one

that caters for the liberties implicit in everyday use. His question

was “How little planning can we get by on; how little can ever be

planned at all?”¹⁶ And he proposed that as many decisions as pos-

sible be deferred, so as to better facilitate the collective decision-

making process. This collective process was the linchpin of Lucius

Burckhardt’s concept of planning,¹⁷ his means to deconstruct the

myth that planning is a rational, apolitical form of environmental

design. He identified a crisis in the decision-making process.¹⁸

“Capitalist Urban Development,” the legendary anthology

published in 1970, was the first endeavor in the German-speaking

countries to throw light from various perspectives on the commodi-

fication of urban space under advanced capitalism, and to thereby

criticize the role of architects and planners. “Political Decisions in

Structural Planning” was a key text, in which Lucius Burckhardt

underpinned the theses outlined in Bauen ein Prozess. It signaled

14 Lucius Burckhardt, “Schwierigkeiten beim Nachdenken über Leitbilder,” (Problems When Considering Master Plans), 1971 in: Wer plant die Planung? Architektur, Politik und Mensch, Jesko Fezer/ Martin Schmitz (Eds.) Berlin 2004, p. 69f.

15 Ibid., p. 42.16 Ibid., p. 38.17 “… all of these [concepts] ultimately lacked the very essence of urban planning,

namely an eye for the process of collective decision-making,” ibid., p. 30.18 Lucius Burckhardt: “Die Krise der Stadt” (Urban Crisis) 1961, ibid., p. 132.

17

Burckhardt’s steadfast commitment to architecture and urban plan-

ning discourse, and delivered further theoretical ammunition to the

student revolts underway since 1968.

The Citizen and the City

The range of urban utopias that had blossomed worldwide by the

late 1960s was functionalist, Burckhardt claimed, for it continued

to seek “neat solutions” with universal validity.¹⁹ Yet, in interpreting

architectural utopianism—as evinced over the previous decade by

the work of Archigram, Yona Friedman and the Japanese Meta-

bolists—as a cry for help from overtaxed architects, desperate for

dialogue with users, stakeholders and citizens on the subject of how

a city should be, he clearly ignored the architects’ intent.

“Thankfully—and with good reason—criticism of urban plan-

ning has become a common good.”²⁰ In response to deterioration

of the built environment, itself often a result of postwar infrastruc-

tures and reconstruction, public discussion of urban development

became widespread in the 1960s, not only in Germany. In delivering

fundamental analyses in the 1950s, Lucius Burckhardt had clearly

broken new ground in this critical debate. “A creative mind and

critic in the field of urban planning, an analyst and an admonishing

19 Lucius Burckhardt, “Wert und Sinn städtebaulicher Utopien.” (On the Value and Meaning of Urban Utopias) in: Das Ende der Städte? Reinhard Krämer (ed.), Stuttgart 1968, pp. 111–129.

20 Wolfgang Pehnt, Die Stadt in der Bundesrepublik – Lebensbedingungen, Aufgaben, Planung, Stuttgart 1974, p. 7.

18

voice, [Burckhardt] made an outstanding contribution to shaping

public opinion on architecture in Germany in the 1970s and 80s,

with quite singular impact.”²¹

Design Processes

From 1976 to 1983, Lucius Burckhardt was chairman of the German

Werkbund, an institution that had monitored the quality of indus-

trial products in Germany since the early twentieth century, and

driven campaigns to improve the environment. “In the immediate

aftermath of World War II, members of the Werkbund felt they

should first rid themselves of all the mental and physical debris of

the Third Reich then return to where development had been inter-

rupted in 1933; namely, to modern architecture per se, and to ‘good

form’ in the design field.”²² In publications and at conferences, the

Werkbund under Burckhardt’s chairmanship increasingly addressed

issues related not simply to material objects but also to processes.

Whether in the fields of design, planning, construction or appliance

manufacture, the spotlight now was not on the finished product

but on the decision-making process—and subsequently, also on the

social and physical prerequisites, and the repercussions of design

and planning decisions. “The Werkbund was the first body in the

Federal Republic [of Germany] to raise public awareness of the

21 Gottfried Knapp in: Süddeutsche Zeitung, 28.08.2003.22 Il Werkbund – Germania, Austria, Svizzera. Lucius Burckhardt (ed.), Milan 1977,

p. 6.

19

risks we now call environmental issues.”²³ As chairman, Burckhardt

provided a new theoretical foundation for the Werkbund’s objec-

tives, which he underscored by lecturing in Darmstadt on topics

such as Architecture and Participation (1977), Architecture as Language

(1978), Eco-Architecture (1978), Regionalism in Architecture (1979),

Technology-driven Design (1979), Dirt (1980), Architecture and Imagi-

nation (1980), Packaging (1981), Architecture for Everyday Life (1981),

The House in the House (1982) and Night (1982).

Invisible Design

“Design is invisible” was Lucius Burckhardt’s core hypothesis. It

meant all things are integrated in an invisible system that is also

designed, which is to say, man-made. Someone seeking a city apart-

ment is interested primarily, not in apartment buildings’ external ap-

pearance but rather, in invisible components such as the rent level,

the house rules and the residents. Lucius Burckhardt argued that the

“optimal design” for a tramway is when it operates at night. Behind

visible objects he saw the invisible social dimension that architects,

designers and planners must consider and shape. He likewise criti-

cized the “Good Form Award”²⁴ at the Basel Switzerland trade fair,

on account of its disregard for a design object’s specific context.

23 Ibid., p. 6.24 Max Bill, Die gute Form: 6 Jahre Auszeichnung ‘Die gute Form’ an der Schweizer

Mustermesse in Basel / Max Bill. Direktion der Schweizer Mustermesse in Basel/Zentralvorstand der Schweizer. Werkbundes SWB (Eds.), Winterthur 1957.

20

In 1980, the legendary “Linz Design Forum” used Burckhardt’s

“design is invisible” premise as the title for a book published to ac-

company an exhibition showcasing the comprehensive scope of

early postmodernist design. Burckhardt, well equipped with meth-

odological and theoretical tools, and skilled in explaining complex

issues in an illuminating and concise manner, once again felt ready

to break new ground in current discourse. He drew in several regards

both on Ivan Illich’s book Tools for Conviviality, and on the work

of Christopher Alexander, and thereby emphasized that design

not only has an invisible dimension but also is pivotal to human

relationships. And—as the design theorist Bernard E. Bürdek

later noted, disparagingly—he instantly created a new “trend,” or

“roundabout routes”²⁵ that students and young designers fell over

themselves to adopt. His theory of invisible design—and hence,

of hitherto overlooked systemic socio-economic dimensions—was

indeed a provocative and original contribution to design discourse,

and is still of relevance today.

Open-ended Teaching Practice

After Burckhardt began lecturing at the Ulm School of Design

(HfG) in 1959, he became deeply concerned about the state of pro-

fessional training for young architects, urban planners and design-

ers. In 1969, in the aftermath of student revolts, he conceded to

25 Bernhard E. Bürdek in: Der Fall Forum Design. Index zu einem Kulturprojekt, Martin Hochleitner/Gabriele Hofer (Eds.), Weitra 2010.

21

student demands by establishing at the ETH Zurich what was to

be a short-lived “professorial sofa” (as opposed to the interim pro-

fessorial chair), held first by the architect Rolf Gutmann, and later

by Rainer Senn and Burckhardt himself, in the role of sociologist.

This astonishing experiment addressed nothing less than the role

of the architect in society. Criticism of academic structures and the

architects they produced led to radical demands for democratic,

participatory structures, and their integration in teaching practice.

“A new image of the architect’s role was to underpin a reform of

professional education and training. The professorial sofa offered

its own response to both questions: transparency was called for, not

only in the day-to-day work of architects but also in the allocation

of grades.”²⁶

Kassel Polytechnic—today the University of Kassel—was

founded in 1971 as Germany’s first “reformed university,” as an

alternative to both classical universities and institutes of technol-

ogy. The student movement put its critique of society and urban

planning in the public eye. Mounting public pressure led the plan-

ning disciplines to acknowledge such criticism, and to allow the

humanities and, above all, the social sciences a more significant role.

An interdisciplinary degree course in architecture, urban planning

and landscape design was launched, and thus Lucius Burckhardt—

as of 1973, professor of “the socio-economy of urban systems”—was

able to put his stamp on what came to be known as the “Kassel

School,” in its entirety. “The University’s concept and structure

are characterized by a project-oriented course of study in small

groups, by direct exchange between students and teaching staff, by

26 Silvan Blumenthal, Das Lehrcanapé: Lucius Burckhardt und das Architektenbild an der ETH Zürich 1970-1973, Basel 2010, pp. 8–9.

22

practice-oriented course content, and by a critical, interdisciplinary

approach.”²⁷

A Problem-oriented Approach

From 1987 to 1989 Lucius Burckhardt was a member of the found-

ing commission of the Saar University of Visual Arts and, in

1992, following the fall of the Berlin Wall, the state parliament of

Thuringia appointed him founding dean of the Design Faculty of

the Bauhaus University of Weimar. In Weimar he amalgamated

three subject areas: fine art, product design and visual communica-

tion. A self-confessed detractor of the “classic” foundation course,

his rallying cry was: “Turn the Bauhaus inside-out.” Accordingly,

“…teaching [was] not only to be project-oriented but, first and

foremost, problem-oriented. Students [were to] learn to solve real

problems rather than prefabricated schoolbook exercises. This is

why their work [had] from the outset to address real issues and not

merely practice runs. This concept [necessitated] a break with the

traditional foundation course as well as with Bauhaus pedagogic

principles in their entirety.”²⁸

Before retiring from his post at Weimar, and at the invitation

of the university pastor, Lucius Burckhardt gave his “sermon” in

27 Johanna Stippl, “Nur wo der Mensch die Natur gestört hat, wird die Land-schaft wirklich schön. Die landschaftstheoretischen Aquarelle von Lucius Burckhardt,” diss., Vienna 2011.

28 “Ein anderes Bauhaus in Weimar. Gespräch mit Marie-Louise Blatter” in: Basler Zeitung (supplement), Nr. 13, 3.4.1993, pp. 1–3.

23

St. Jacob’s Church in Weimar, in which he succinctly outlined his

aspirations, both for the teaching profession and for environmental

design.

Everyday Culture

On Lucius Burckhardt’s sixtieth birthday, in 1985, the first compi-

lation of his texts from the period 1960–84 was published as “Die

Kinder fressen ihre Revolution.”²⁹ Burckhardt observed that partic-

ipants in the revolts of 1968 were in the process of abandoning their

ideals, by “[conforming] increasingly to the institutions criticized,

many of which have proved to be indomitable.”³⁰ This too, was part

and parcel of the different conditions under which European archi-

tecture and planning had to operate in the 1980s. The pre-1984 texts

had been compiled under catchy titles such as “Design is invisible,”

“Destroyed By Care,” “Minimal Intervention,” and “The Rubbish

Theory of Culture.”

Burckhardt’s aspiration in refining his basic concept of social en-

vironment as a complex system was to create closer links between

planning, design and the realities of everyday life. The bewildering

complexity and unpredictability of the actual state of urban systems

and their ongoing development constantly confronts planning with

29 Lucius Burckhardt, Die Kinder fressen ihre Revolution (The Kids Are Guzzling Their Own Revolution), Bazon Brock (ed.), Cologne 1985.

30 Wolfgang Bessenich, “Profis müssen das Stadtelend verantworten” (The Profes-sionals Must Answer For This Urban Misery) in: Basler Zeitung 30.3.1985.

24

the inadequacy of its tools. Lucius Burckhardt made it his business

to unequivocally acknowledge this fact, and to pursue new methods

of exploring reality and the dynamics of potential interventions.

He thereby turned the spotlight on issues of relevance to the man

on the street: on small, common, overlooked or unpopular issues,

or simply on everyday life itself; for, to his mind, these objects and

circumstances had a much greater impact on people’s lives than any

issues previously defined as fields of intervention accessible solely

to experts. For his “documenta urbana—sichtbarmachen”³¹ project

in 1982, he challenged artists, architects and also laypersons to think

about a number of pre-selected locations in Kassel, and to make

planning proposals for them.

Taking A Stroll

In the 1980s, it became increasingly clear that the borders be-

tween town and country in Central Europe were disappearing.

At the same time, commercial and political interests were rapidly co-

opting upcoming ecological issues. In 1982 for example, the National

Horticultural Show in Kassel—which Lucius Burckhardt criticized

heavily—showcased “biotopes” at the very spot where large-scale

destruction had turned a wild, luxuriant landscape into a leisure park.

Lucius Burckhardt had criticized the impact of using cars for

personal transport as early as the 1950s then, as motorization slowly

reached never before seen dimensions, he founded a new science

31 (documenta urbana—makingvisible).

25

devoted to exploring the connections between mobility, perception

and design: the science of walking—or strollology, as it came to be

known. The sociologist bundled together all his research interests

under this one umbrella term, and the result was an extremely inter-

disciplinary mix.

To take a stroll is the most basic means to perceive the world. We

move through cities and landscapes then, once home, all we have

seen fuses in a single image, in our mind’s eye. But our mind’s eye

is preoccupied already, before we leave the house, by images from

advertising, film and literature. When Armstrong first stepped onto

the moon he spoke of the Grand Canyon… The motorist who tra-

verses the region of Burgundy in one afternoon claims, it is no lon-

ger what it used to be… Strollology—the science of walking—was

quick to develop a notion of architecture and urbanism, planning

and building, for the globalized world. It proved useful as an instru-

ment with which to render visible hidden aspects of the man-made

environment, and to challenge conventional modes of perception.

The most important demonstration of this science, “The Voyage to

Tahiti,” took place in 1987, in parallel to the documenta 8 in Kassel.

“Certain perspectives can doubtless be communicated by art alone,

for limitations on our respective viewpoints have become so com-

mon nowadays, that people no longer have the sense of perspective

necessary to see beyond them.”³²

Lucius Burckhardt successfully demonstrated that to apply the

tools of the science of walking both to urban and rural environ-

32 “Strollology als Nebenfach – Gespräch mit Hans Ulrich Obrist” (Strollology as a Secondary Subject – A Conversation with Hans Ulrich Obrist) in: Lucius Burckhardt: Warum ist Landschaft schön? Die Spaziergangswissenschaft, Markus Ritter/Martin Schmitz (Eds.) Berlin 2006, p. 8.

26

ments generates new insights and stimuli in the fields of architec-

ture and planning. “We are the first generation to have to construct

a new aesthetic, a strollological aesthetic. Strollological, for the

simple reason that the way or route to a place can no longer be

taken for granted, but must be reproduced in, or represented by,

the object itself. The multilayered message that a building or, in

another case, gardens or a cultivated landscape must deliver can

no longer rest on a flash of genius on the part of its creator. The

enterprising architect’s statement, ‘Where there is no place, I will

create a place myself ’ is no longer enough: there are enough such

aesthetic cactuses dotted about already and indeed, it is they which

have contributed so decisively to the much lamented deterioration

of the natural environment. Rather, what is required here is design

intelligence, intelligence that conveys a dual message: information

about the context as well as about the object in question.”³³

In recognition of his outstanding achievements in the fields of

science, ecology, and aesthetics, Lucius Burckhardt was presented

the State of Hessen’s Cultural Award in 1994, Germany’s Federal

Award for the Promotion of Design in 1995, and Switzerland’s

Design Award in 2001. This book assembles in chronological order

various texts from the period 1957–99, in which Burckhardt ad-

dressed the prerequisites and the repercussions of architecture, plan-

ning and design. By choosing this realistic perspective he developed

an understanding of the production of man-made environments,

which remains relevant, provocative and inspiring to this day.

33 Lucius Burckhardt: “Promenadologische Betrachtungen über die Wahrnehm-ung der Umwelt und die Aufgaben unserer Generation” (Strollological Obser-vations on Perception of the Environment and the Tasks Facing Our Genera-tion) 1996, in: ibid, p. 256.

27

Urban Planning and Democracy (1957)

Is it not actually rather strange, how little concern the public has

or, to be more precise, how little concern the public per se has for

the cityscape? For the city is the most public manifestation of our

shared life, the most visible representation of human activity. And if

someone were to dig us up in two thousand years, once all knowl-

edge of our written language had disappeared, the cityscape would

be the only thing by which we might be judged.

Don’t say the public has no interest in the city! To prove the

opposite one need only go onto the streets, or open one’s ears in a

tram: a strict judge comments there on every new construction, on

every change, and anything petty or tasteless is recalled with caustic

wit. What is lacking therefore is not public concern for all that is

going on around us but rather, the public expression of such con-

cern: a form or forum that would assure it public impact.

We must ask ourselves therefore, why all social opinion, why pol-

itics, sport and the arts must engage with a critical public, indeed

must measure their public profile virtually at every step while urban

planning must not—although it cannot be denied that eminently

expressive social opinion takes more concrete, enduring form in the

latter than anywhere else. What is missing, we reply, is a vantage

point from which public criticism of urban planning may be for-

mulated loudly and clearly in a public context. The matter of urban

planning is complex, and determined by factors both aesthetic and

extremely banal. So how might agreement be reached? How might

two people, one of whom has only praise for the proportions of a

square while the other is critical of its lack of parking space, not

reach agreement exactly—for that would be asking too much—yet

28

nonetheless find common ground on which to discuss the matter?

But let us leave the practical aspects aside for a moment, and stay

focused on aesthetics. Ask any group of people to judge a build-

ing—and a lively debate will ensue. Ask that same group of people

about how a row of houses hangs together, about an aspect of the

cityscape—and the result will be Babylonian mayhem. Here, the

public lacks all criteria by which the urban planning phenomenon

might be assessed.

The art of urban planning is an odd matter: odd on account of its

position mid-way between the intentional and the unintentional.

We notice this particularly when looking for the person respon-

sible, for the presiding instance at whose door we might lay the

blame for certain circumstances, or who might make a better job

of things. Every house in the city is an expression of intent; some-

one intended it to become exactly what it is; only the result, the

cityscape—or that which should be a cityscape but is not—was un-

intentional; nobody wanted it to turn out like it is. And yet human

beings built the city; it is an expression of conscious activity. So, can

the city be a matter of pure coincidence? Is it possible that the city

in its entirety has no meaning? Is it merely a tired cliché to claim

the city is an expression of social relationships, indeed, is the very

mirror of society?

This brings us to the question of what form our city might take

or, more precisely, of whether we might attain by democratic means

something other than a fully unintentional form, or formlessness.

For dictatorship lurks behind any uniform plan: the seamless mas-

ter plan is the outcome of a single will. It can never come into being

while real democracy is still at work. So already, as we see, the city

is beginning to show its political aspects. But let us pause here, and

take a look at the man shaking his head over the new buildings in

his city. Surely people have shaken their heads over every change

29

since time immemorial, owing to a natural conservatism that is,

after all, irrefutably human. Today however, man asks himself more

precisely what is going on. His astonishment over this or that is

no longer diffuse but is beginning instead to manifest as a distinct

sense of unease. The rising number of accidents, the city’s budget

deficit (despite its record revenues), land speculation, the building

mania that threatens soon to destroy our historical inner cities, the

increase in construction costs and rent levels, the changes on the

cityscape and the landscape, and the loss of green spaces—all this

shakes the citizen up, and puts the population of our larger cities in

a downright defensive mood.

The novel thing about this mood is that it has a focus—people

are now neither in the dark, nor willing to accept their fate. The

outraged citizen no longer perceives the city as an organic develop-

ment or, at worst, as rank growth but rather, as something in certain

respects tangible, and able to be steered; he perceives it, in any case,

as the outcome of conscious intent, and therefore as someone’s re-

sponsibility. Why is that?

The urban dweller lives today in rented accommodation. The

question of whether he is satisfied with this apartment is irrelevant.

Certainly, he personally would have built it quite differently. He

would gladly have done without a part of the kitchen, and added

it instead to the living room, or vice versa; he would have preferred

useful built-in storage units to a cloakroom, would have built a

workshop or spare room instead of the pathetic foyer that is no

more than an extension of the corridor, and so forth. But he pre-

ferred his apartment to ten others that resemble his own, like peas

in a pod—apart from the fact that his has a deep windowsill in

the living room, for flowerpots. He now believes himself to be the

proud occupant of an apartment he chose personally, and which

is therefore an ideal apartment—and ideal it may well be, but its

30

respective inhabitant is not ideal but a human being made of flesh

and blood, one who occasionally repairs his own furniture, or has

a god-child stay over, whose little bed has to be set up in the bath-

room. In short, the apartment intended to suit everyone actually

suits no one, and the style of dwelling imposed on us today—iden-

tical ideal apartments, provided courtesy of our social housing pro-

grams—was invented by no one, was built for no one, and no one

on earth intended it to look as it does.

The individual is as helpless with regard to housing programs

as he is with regard to development of the cityscape. The city is his

fate. It determines his lifestyle down to the smallest detail; every-

thing from his rent level to his route to work depends on urban de-

velopment. And yet the city too is an outcome of anonymous intent.

Apparently, no one intended it to look as it does. Apparently, it is

no one’s fault when the traffic gets out of hand someplace, and acci-

dents happen; or when businesses some other place go bust because

a street there leads traffic to a dead-end. All that can be put down

apparently, to fate, economic development and the course of events.

And now the cities destroyed during the war in Germany,

France, Holland and England must be rebuilt. The population in

other countries such as the USA, India and Sweden is to be relo-

cated to new cities, we hear. How do new cities come into being?

They do not come into being at all. Rather, they are built on the

basis of decisions taken. Any place cities do not come into being,

we can be sure that neither a government agency nor an industrial

consortium has resolved to build a city. One could also say, the gov-

ernment there has renounced any prospect of urban development,

has decided not to pursue urban planning.

It is clear that a newly planned city or a destroyed one can be

built one way or another. The planner here can weigh up alterna-

tives from the very start. He can allow the city to expand consid-

31

erably, can connect scattered settlements by building major high-

ways, or locate stores along a wide arc accessible to motorists. He

can make the city more compact, create a pedestrianized shopping

zone, and accommodate residents in a way such that they get by

without owning or using a car. Or he can combine these two ap-

proaches in various ways, create concentric districts, and locate only

the most important amenities in the city center. In any case, the

planner or the planning community has many decisions to reach,

countless decisions of very different sorts.

Unlike the previous city therefore, the new one will be dictated

by somebody’s will or—let us not mince words—people will know

then whom they should curse. And here, we must ask ourselves

whether it really is imperative that the city fathers and expert of-

“And this part of the master plan is intended to ensure people understand the need for the highway.” Drawing: Lucius Burckhardt

32

ficials prevail over the population “forcefully” and “with no regard

for collateral damages,” bear full responsibility, and subsequently

harvest either fame or verbal abuse. In other words, we are faced

once again with the question of whether urban planning can be

simultaneously intentional and democratic.

Everything we have said about the new and the rebuilt city,

about alternative resolutions and preliminary decisions, holds true

also for any existing city. Development in our cities today is so in-

tense and so decisive that the planning authorities and the popu-

lation are faced constantly with far-reaching decisions. If some

of our larger cities act as if no decision has to be taken, this too

amounts to a decision—to the decision namely, to leave growth to

market forces—and responsibility for this decision to do nothing

will be theirs nonetheless, even if they are not around to suffer the

consequences. Mostly however, these cities do not choose not to act.

They actually do reach endless decisions which—because they are

not part of an overall concept—lead, either individually or in their

entirety, to side effects that serve to establish the very opposite of

what was originally intended.

These cities would have done better to consult an expert rather

than have their politicians experiment with amateurish planning,

one might say. Yet failure generally lies not with the actual profes-

sional sector but with the political authorities themselves, insofar

as they fail to recognize the political significance of preliminary

questions.

Such preliminary decisions are necessary in order that the gen-

eral public may have its say in the democratic decision-making pro-

cess, and thereby rank its various demands in order of importance.

I must emphasize that, when speaking of democracy here, I mean

real democracy and not the kind where it is pointed out merely

that the people elected parliamentarians, who appointed officials,

33

who consulted experts, who then implemented this, that, or what-

ever. What is important in a real democracy is to clearly distinguish

between those things the public must decide and those the profes-

sionals must decide. The expert must fulfill competently the task

politicians entrust to him. The politicians’ task is to clarify what the

public wants, and to rank existing values and those yet to be created

in order of their importance. Initially, such public participation will

perhaps be voiced outside the established political parties. But if it

is to have any political impact it must be voiced through the par-

ties. That the parties seek to maintain their own position on urban

planning affairs is often perceived as ridiculous, and as irrefutable

proof of the non-viability of democratic urban planning. I take the

“Just sign here, please, on the dotted line.” Drawing: Lucius Burckhardt

34

opposite view, and believe that—if one regards the city as some-

thing more than just a mathematical traffic management issue, as

the visible expression of our shared life, and if one’s ultimate goal is

to seek to improve both that and the city—then engagement with

urban planning issues will give rise to new political alternatives, and

to new intellectual challenges for our parties. For what are political

parties but advocates of various social utopias? And what is urban

planning but an attempt to make such utopias visibly real?

35

Ulm Anno 5. The Curriculum of the Ulm School of Design (1960)

Germany 1955: lapsed development in the arts field since 1933,

and the need to make up for lost time had necessitated a review

of the situation of the early 1930s, and led to a veritable renais-

sance of Modernism. The sudden change in Germany, from his-

toric bankruptcy to commercial proficiency, proved to be last-

ing and lucrative. Then the first few turned up their noses at this

“Wirtschafts wunder”—they reeked of youth movement, and were

on the lookout for a new fools’ paradise. The choice of the Kuhberg

(Cow Mountain) district of Ulm rather than a location more apt

to provide cultural and industrial contacts pointed dangerously in

this direction.

Thus neo-Modernism, commerce and the tramp of sandals paved

the way to Europe’s first school of design. That these forces were

obliged to rid themselves of Max Bill, the first dean of the school,

and a man of a wholly other ilk, surprised no one. The ideology

used to do so was typical: just as Teutonic irreality cedes to cynical

pragmatism more easily than one imagines, the rallying cry now

was the supremacy of science. We shall deal here neither with the

superficial incidents surrounding the overthrow of Bill, nor with

the sub sequent interregnum that is expected to reach its end this

fall. These stories, although at times of downright Castrian fidel-

ity, are at a disadvantage vis-à-vis the ostensibly similar Bauhaus

gossip insofar as they are not backed up by the accomplishments of

the Bauhaus crowd. Therefore, those students in Ulm who are busy

creating a mini-archive in Ulm from gossip retrieved from waste-

paper baskets are wasting their time: Darmstadt will not buy it.

36

Given that 150 years of industry and 50 years of Modernism have

proved that the form of an object never follows merely from the de-

mands made thereon, and that the quest for a style that represents

freedom from style is nothing but a likeable yet misguided aber-

rance of human illusion, it is difficult to understand the following:

namely that, not in 1919, not in 1929 but in 1959, in the wake of the

Bill crisis, an endeavor was made yet again to re-establish the posi-

tivism of functionality, and consequently to criticize as “formalist”

every design that cannot be explained solely in terms of its technical

features. The outcome of such disregard for the style issue is that

almost all the objects created by Ulm students for their final exam,

unless they happen to be electric drills, evince considerable “formal-

ism,” and are strongly reminiscent of those aforementioned 1920s

and 30s. Lecturers too, when it comes to criticism, are confronted

with questions of form, which they resolve by resorting to design

coherency’s je ne sais quoi. An Italian visitor who pointed out this

discrepancy was fobbed off, insofar as he was understood at all, with

the retort that such attitudes are remnants of the Bill era. For it is

not permissible to admit that the consummate form evinced solely

by technical objects is a premise of freedom from style.

Paradoxically, the theory of technical expediency came to be

complemented now by a second theory that addresses the social

and sociological contingency of form. People discovered the social

aspect of the development of form and fashion. And as people in

Ulm live by their convictions, this had unexpected consequences.

Sandals were suddenly out, and stalwart Swabian ladies became

fashion conscious: they threw out the stocks of sack dresses already

written off as market flops, sank up to their high-heels when scal-

ing the clay of the Kuhberg then fluttered green-shadowed eyelids

in a mute cry for help. They failed nevertheless to draw the correct

conclusion from their masquerade, namely that form, whether it be

37

a style or a fashion, always possesses a degree of freedom indepen-

dent of purely technical factors. Ulm’s stock of forms proved just as

ephemeral as fashion: after all, the font Accidenz-Grotesk, shades

of gray, orthogonality, and the technological look now comprise the

luxury style of 1960. I have nothing against that. Yet one should not

allow one’s students to believe this alone will teach them absolute

design for all time. Once this fad has run its course—as it surely

will, for all of them do—then Ulm graduates will become slaves to

mere “styling” with even less reserve than everyone else.

Guests are not always welcome in the cloistered backwater Ulm,

for the less foreign matter arrives to ripple one’s retreat, the easier

it is to shape the world in one’s own image. Reyner Banham’s visit

occurred around that time. This ingenious and humorous architec-

ture critic defends the (here unduly simplified) hypothesis, that any

products of our era which the artistically-schooled eye is likely to

find lacking in taste—exaggerated automobile chassis, cinema ad-

vertising, pin-up girl magic—in fact constitute a kind of folk art:

applied art for mass consumption, which Ulm would ignore at its

peril, given that it has nothing itself with which to counter that

suddenly fashionable spoiler, the “consumability” of form.

Yet the “bündisches heart”¹—which continued to beat even in a

sack dress—could not believe our clever guest from Albion. People

shied away from this experimenter’s consistent realism: the idea

namely, that an ultimate outcome of the study of the sociological

contingency of form might be the capitalist entrepreneur who per-

sonally anticipates a market for the expressiveness of form, there-

upon begins to plan the course of fashion himself, and to heat up

1 The reference to the “Bündische Jugend” (as the German Boy Scout movement was called after 1914) here apparently implies loyalty and steadfastness.

38

or cool down conjuncture by recourse to design and in accordance

with demand.

A compromise was sought therefore, a social market economy of

design so to speak; attempts were made to reconcile two opposing

theories: the theory of absolute technical expediency, and that of

the social contingency and economic freedom of form—nothing

easier than that, in the land of Hegel. The resolution of opposites

was posited in an imminent era, an era already embarked upon in

Ulm, an era in which the fashionable marketing of form is united

with advances in production, an era in which every new form is

inspired by a new technical twist. The core of this belief was the

doctrine of the imminent worldwide demise of the American auto-

mobile industry, and the Fidel Castrian ascent of the legendary

Fiat 600.

Manipulation of the present is a far more difficult task than

any conquest of the dreamers’ realm since time began—the future.

Several Fiat 600s have been sold meanwhile in fact, even in the

USA. Likewise other objects of design have gained ground, even

those of Ulm provenance, the renowned Braun radio in particu-

lar. Dazzled by their vision of the future, people failed—despite all

sociological zeal—to notice that this development concerned only

a tiny percentage of the market: the only people buying belonged

to the class that had long since devoted itself to the “fine arts,”

good taste, and the beet juice of contemporary lifestyle. In human-

ity’s department store, Ulm has leased a stand in the Modernism

department to serve a small and wholly unchanging clientele of

not-all-too-angry young men and village schoolmarms. These are

vaunted as the face of the future while people keep quiet about the

other 97 percent of the population, whose natural need for varied

ornamental and showpiece forms keeps the wheels of the economy

turning.

39

Instead of indulging such dim outlooks, people prefer to preoc-

cupy themselves with a new theory, the theory of “human engineer-

ing.” Every object requires a user. A stove is of little use without

a cook. The actual cooking machinery might be said therefore to

consist of cook-plus-stove. Cooking is easy with this combo. Any-

one who builds such man-machine systems must recognize that

humans are unalterable and machines are able to adapt; until now,

misguided opinion held that man would surely learn in time how

to handle the machine. And we put everything else—color theory,

drawing theory and perception—at the service of this learning

curve. How much more easily we learn to pull a plug from a socket

when the plug is ring-shaped; for the ring shape graphically in-

vites us to insert a finger and to pull. Yet besides the metaphysical

accomplishments of “human engineering” there are physiological

ones: for instance, how we must cramp our fingers in order to grip

a fork! Calloused, crippled hands are the result. So the grip research

group is put into action. It studies the gripping operation, the act

of lifting the edibles, the path followed to the facial food slot—and

what is the result but a Modernist form of cutlery. And the lat-

est fad is a typewriter keyboard with sufficient space for the long

fingernails of the machine’s better half. (Needless to mention that

real “human engineering” in the USA is presently researching the

adaptability of surgeons.)

But now, misfortune is fast approaching. The number of lecturers

had declined rapidly in the meantime, and to such an extent that

operations at the school were under threat. When the school admin-

istration embarked on self-sufficiency, retaining recent graduates of

the school as teachers, students began to defend themselves. Their

threat to sue the school without further ado, for non-fulfillment of

its curriculum, proved highly effective; and this demonstrates which

state of affairs had transpired by this point.

40

But it was not our intention to report on details. In any case,

the dean’s supporters shrank in number so drastically that his re-

election was a matter of doubt, and he resigned so as to be on the

safe side. This paved the way for a new solution. At the start of

the school year (in October 1960), a new deanship took office: the

author Gerd Kalow, who became chairman, the Ulm native and

nestor Friedel Vordemberge-Gildewart and the mathematician

Horst Rittel. The fresh start will prove difficult, perhaps more dif-

ficult even than founding the school was, for much initial enthusi-

asm and goodwill has evaporated. It will succeed only if the future

remains in the foreground, not as a bizarre ideology but as a task

of education. Two things are top priority: firstly, to define and limit

the professional training offered in each of the four disciplines of-

fered at Ulm, and then to appoint a convincing staff.

Ulm justifies its existence solely by claiming to offer profes-

sional training courses that do not exist elsewhere. In those cases

where it must compete with existing state institutions—“visual

communication” (graphic design) is one such example—it is not

up to standard. On the other hand and despite all idiosyncrasy it

must not be allowed to produce a type of professional for which the

production process has no use. The Architecture Faculty threatens

to do precisely that. In our world, with its division of labor, quite

distinct professional training is required for the design of prefab-

ricated construction elements than for the planning of settlements

and urban districts, and their construction from prefabricated ele-

ments. It makes little sense to teach these two specialized areas to

one and the same student. Anyone wishing to pursue the first pro-

fession would require a solid foundation in construction, which is

not available in Ulm, for various reasons; anyone wishing to pursue

the second would need to be taught the modern methods of ratio-

nalization, construction site planning and logistics, installation, and

41

much more besides. For prefabricated construction will succeed not

on account of its ideological benefits but only if it proves economi-

cally viable.

In the other two disciplines at least, the “product formers” have

no problem when it comes to finding employment. Demand for

designers is high, and Ulm is still Europe’s leading school of design.

Almost all the work produced by students for their final exam is

commissioned by industry, and graduates are assured thus a spring-

board. Nevertheless a new border must be drawn here, in particu-

lar to delimit that which virtually makes Ulm purely an inventors’

school. When going through the students’ final projects, it is strik-

ing to find that almost every one of them is distinguished first and

foremost by a technical innovation, for the latter is of course what

students most enjoy, and it is gratifying also, so long as it proves fit

for production. Yet when a technical twist overshadows design in

practically every object, it does little to advance the cause of design

per se. If, as in Ulm, we reproach entrepreneurs for allowing their

“construction staff ” also to pursue design, we cannot simultaneously

train designers who wish only to construct things.

And, finally, the information department: if I am correctly in-

formed, Bill’s initial intention in setting up this department was to

train critics for the industrial manufacturing sector. Later, a more

general course aimed at copywriters came into being, whether for

print advertising, PR, radio, TV, film or whatever. In practice, these

branches require both a broad general education and strict spe-

cialization. The upcoming generation assumes its role and possibly

even becomes a “Doctor of ” by training on the job, with the sup-

port of specialized technicians—photographers, typesetters, sound

engineers and so forth. In Ulm one can provide neither an adequate

general education nor the skills and capacities required of a techni-

cian, and one must therefore ask oneself yet again, whether the pro-

42

fession created here actually fits into the existing division of labor.

Whereby the issue of training for a run-of-the-mill copywriter is

downright open-ended: that such a common profession can still be

pursued today by a circuitous route, and often as a result of failure

in other disciplines, is a waste of energy. Now that a lecturer in

“information” has been appointed dean in Ulm, it can be expected

that this course will be redefined. Did not Gerd Kalow once call for

a “poets’ school”?

By the time this article goes to print, we may perhaps know more

about the appointments this new deanship will be obliged to make.

Under the present circumstances, it will not be easy for anyone to

make a binding and long-term commitment to Ulm. The overly

exploitative methods pursued previously by Ulm are now making

themselves felt. Word is out about the instability of conditions

there, and about the fact that the Geschwister Scholl Foundation,

the school’s financial backer and hence also its adversary with re-

gard to contractual appointments, does not maintain the requisite

distance from school affairs. The situation on Ulm’s Kuhberg ac-

cordingly forces everyone to sever important links with professional

practice, with universities, and with a richly endowed library. We

must hope nevertheless, that the talent and idealism needed to take

up such a teaching position will be found, along with the fighting

spirit required for self-assertiveness. That is what talented students

are waiting for.

Should Ulm manage to extricate itself from its sectarianism

and intolerance, it will become a thoroughly indispensable insti-

tution. Firstly as a school: an industrial product poses challenges

of an interdisciplinary nature; it must simultaneously function, be

appealing, and be marketable. The designer must receive an educa-

tion somewhere between technical training, the art academy and a

trade school. Where else will he find that, but in Ulm? And sec-

43

ondly, as a place of reflection—for research into the violent dynam-

ics to which taste and hence, also the desire to consume are sub-

ject, is still in its early days. It must merge sociological, economic,

psychological, political and technological findings. Ulm is the only

institution that, on the one hand, addresses concrete design tasks

and thus maintains contact with professional practice; and, on the

other, keeps alive a consciousness of the theory that underpins all

such operations.

44

Building—A Process with No Obligations to Heritage Preservation (1967)

Ten hypotheses:

1. The deterioration of our man-made environment is due to

its failure to adapt. This has its roots in the way we think:

there is a connection between the concepts we create and ar-

chitectural issues. We have a tendency to devise identifiable

solutions to problems that ought to be dealt with strategically.

For example, in response to the problem of aging in today’s

society, we come up with “retirement home.”

2. Society overtaxes and abuses the designer (the planner or

architect), by letting him “solve” its problems. The designer

solves problems intuitively, by reducing their complications

to the so-called essentials. The sum of the supposedly, non-

essential factors, which is swept under the carpet during this

process, creates new, bigger problems.

3. The designer demands that his client provide precise pro-

grams. Indeed, he even “helps” him formulate these, and en-

sures they are implemented. To make a program as precise as

possible, the momentum of the problem to be solved is put on

hold, and a “permanent solution” then applied to this tempo-

rary state of affairs. But a tailor-made solution rammed onto

a problem blocks further momentum, and ultimately comes

apart at the seams.

4. Expert “solutions” are just what the local politician or private

entrepreneur is after. He needs simple issues, and he wants

implementation to proceed in specific, distinct phases that

end before a new one begins. Strategic planning and a pro-

45

cess-based approach are impossible when policy is oriented

to the race to get things finished, rather than to discussion of

potential alternative targets.

5. By meeting momentary needs one “solves” current problems.

Similarly, one plans for the future by anticipating a supposed

future present, and meeting its needs. One speaks of the “full

capacity development” of a community, solves the tasks this

poses by making “far-sighted” decisions, and thus predeter-

mines what the future will bring. For anyone who happens

(still) to be absent when decisions about the future are made,

it is simply tough luck: the unborn have no say.

6. This same disregard of the time factor is evident also in our

treatment of the past. Heritage preservation restores buildings

to their fictive original condition, possibly even by drawing on

artificial style concepts. In national parks, the landscape’s mo-

mentary, transitional states are pinned down as timeless, an-

cient landscapes. Each generation thus creates its own seem-

ingly timeless past by destroying the past of its ancestors.

7. To categorize “solutions” in terms of “issues”—a practice that

ensues from the current structures both of policymaking and

the construction industry—contradicts both rational usage,

and the nature of the city. The city does not require catego-

ries but rather, overlap and multiple uses. It is precisely the

fuzzy definition of uses, the versatility of urban institutions,

which creates structures that make the city both appealing

and viable.

8. Multiple uses and growth: the interweave of urban events

called for in hypothesis 7, must not go too far, or become

irrevocable, for the independent viability of individual uses

must be maintained at all times. Otherwise, the overlap that

was important initially may lead to blockages when growth

46

occurs, and these can be remedied only by destroying valuable

investments. Infrastructural elements must therefore be able

to accommodate various uses, phase by phase.

9. The modern aesthetic requires distinct design, attained

through precise task fulfillment. The future tasks are complex,

and only partially determined. Where does design potential

lie? In the future, similar elements are variously combined to

solve different tasks; invisible organization, not appearance,

determines how an object functions. What then, is the de-

signer’s task?

10. Design is a process accomplished within the triangle described

by client, designer and user. Currently, the designer dominates

the scenario. The client fails to analyze his problems properly,

and leaves them to the designer. The user is completely pow-

erless—he may not and cannot alter what does not belong to

him. Therefore, the goal of future “design policy” should be to

encourage the public or private client and the user to partici-

pate in the work in hand, so as to trigger a genuine decision-

making process.

This dual reality—man’s impact on the environment, and the en-

vironment’s impact on man—is our theme; whereby we must bear

in mind that we are simplifying things here a little: in reality, these

two factors are interwoven in a single system. We therefore need to

portray this system also as a process, as a mutual “learning curve”—

although we actually can expect man alone to pursue the latter; we

do not really know for sure, how the environment adapts.

Man alters the environment without realizing it. Whoever opens

his eyes, sees what is happening in agriculture. In the last ten years

man has created a new, different landscape in alpine locations.

Anyone who saw agricultural land in our medium-high mountain

47

ranges such as the Jura, ten years ago, has since witnessed a change

in the agricultural landscape: he now finds only pastureland and

cattle-raising there, but not a single field of crops.

It takes a lot however, for man to see such changes, and to regis-

ter them consciously. He only ever sees the individual factor. Every

farmer knows, of course, that he personally has abandoned a field,

but it takes a special perspective to see this change as a collective

act. What I have in mind now, primarily, is not the landscape and

agriculture, but urban planning: it takes a trained eye even to see the

city as such. The city actually exemplifies much better than anything

else what is meant by the proverb, “one cannot see the forest for the

trees.”

It is extremely difficult to see the city in fact, and for this reason

conscious urban planning developed fairly late, historically speak-

ing. Take, say, the famous stage-sets Serlio created for the tragic

and comic scenes that represent the city. We are compelled to re-

gard them as idealized images of the city, with no relation at all to

urban planning, for they depict simply buildings arranged in a row.

It took the absolutist violence of the Baroque to push through really

great urban plans, and that era too resigned quickly: the major

breakthroughs in Rome, and the extensive sites in Turin remained

isolated phenomena, and the later Baroque sought consciously to

accomplish its artistic urban planning far away from the city, in

smaller seats of royal or ducal power.

I can run through this only briefly, in telegram style so to speak.

Next came the industrial era, whose masses and agglomerations

swamped all the previous configurations of urban form; no other

form was available however, so one created sites and facilities, sym-

metries and compositions that were invisible to the human eye,

except on a map of the city. Squares dating from this era may be

symmetrical—yet it takes twenty minutes on foot to go from one

48

to the other, so one cannot appreciate their symmetry. However, no

one had yet come up with an alternative to symmetrical construc-

tion, to compositional arrangements.

All such old concepts of urban planning, and even the alterna-

tives proposed by Camillo Sitte, who dismissed grandiose symme-

try yet retreated to small irregular spaces, islands of design in what

amounted to an amorphous sea—all of these ultimately lacked the

very essence of urban planning, namely an eye for the process of

collective decision-making, be that decision political, or the sum of

individual decisions.

How are decisions reached?

Man and the environment do not come into direct contact or at

least, as our hypotheses show, not into direct contact exclusively;

but there is a third factor too, we have yet to mention. Let me call

it politics, for the time being. It is through politics that man has an

impact on the environment, and through politics that the environ-

ment has an impact on man. Now, perhaps we have something here,

which will occupy us for several minutes, a little model that we shall

put to the test. Imagine a town,

P = Politics, U = Environment (Umwelt), M = Man; Drawings: Lucius Burckhardt

49

an industrial town perhaps, in which public opinion maintains that

the town lacks a center, and that this so-called center should be

created. This drives policy. The politicians think about what might

constitute a center: perhaps something to do with culture, or the

like. An opera house, it is decided; an opera house will be built in

the city center. The town, the environment is enriched by a presti-

gious building with a facade—and with three sides that are not so

beautiful to look at, and which thus ensure no business will ever

open on a street bordered by the side facade of an opera house. And

this affects people such that gradually, they reach the conclusion

that this opera house is a total flop of urban planning.

So, the model seems to be working, from left to right. Let’s see,

if it also works from right to left. People imagine, one might park

in the city; consequently, one can no longer park in the city. In

terms of policy, this means that something must be done; and so it

is decided to construct an underground parking lot; consequently,

people imagine everyone else is now using the parking lot,

so they can park in the city; consequently, one still cannot park in

the city. Well, we seem to have found a workable model, so I would

like now to draw your attention to my ten hypotheses. In the fol-

lowing I shall use our little model, our little three-stroke engine, to

examine these hypotheses one by one, in order to see if they fit this

model.

Hypothesis 1 addresses the arrow running from man to politics.

Man has problems, and politics solves them. I must tell you that

50

this “solve” is something I always have to put in quotation marks,

and towards the end of this lecture, I will have only to mention the

word “solve,” and you will recoil in horror.

So, politics has the will to solve the problems that plague people,

and such solutions must somehow be able to be identified as simply

as possible, and at best in a single object. I cited one example: the

problem of aging crops up in modern society, and the “solution” is

the retirement home; or the problem of reintegrating former pris-

oners into society crops up, and the “solution” is a home for former

prisoners while actually, the way to deal with—note I say “deal with”

rather than “solve”—the problem would be to educate everyone

else, the rest of society, the non-offenders, about how best to handle

such people, and to use that leverage here, and elsewhere too.

There is another counterpart to the word “solve” but, significantly,

it does not derive from the language of civilians, where it occurs

only rarely: it is “strategy.” We must borrow it therefore from people

who have developed a rather clever way of thinking indeed, but to a

bad end. So the counterpart of direct problem solving would be the

introduction of strategies, i.e. the adoption of several measures that

lead in various ways, to the desired objective.

51

Overtaxed architects

We come now to the political arena, and we must add something

here to our little model. The political arena has a subsidiary so to

speak, an offshoot, namely the expert: the designer, architect, or

planner in his role of consultant. So here, somehow, we have to

add on someone, someone not integrated politically in the deci-

sion-making process, whose words of advice may amount to a not

entirely harmless expert assessment, and also have a considerable

impact behind the scenes on the course of developments.

So far, this consultant, this specialist—insofar as he was a plan-

ner, and insofar as the planner in the vast majority of cases was

formerly an architect—solved problems intuitively. This is perfectly

legitimate; one can do that. If a complex problem poses many un-

answered questions, and one can no longer overlook the unknown

factors in the equation then one has little choice but to solve it

intuitively—but one must know what one is doing.

What is this thing, intuition? It is somehow akin to installing a

filter in which the so-called minor problems get stuck. Well, this

method of solving matters on the basis of two or three essential,

or allegedly essential problems has led to the state of affairs we see

in our cities; the sum of all the secondary problems, of parking,

etc., has led to circumstances in which the major problem does not

appear now to be solved. This is not to dispute the role played by

this consultant, whom we need, but it calls into question the way

he is overtaxed, and put under stress, as well as the way the politi-

cian does not make decisions wholly on his own, but foists a part of

the responsibility on to this ancillary organ of the body politic, in a

non-political manner.

And now, another point—and this brings us to hypothesis 3—

52

about this relationship: the two instances, the politician and the

professional, respectively play the role of client and contractor; and

here, according to the good old orthodox principles of Modernism

and the Werkbund, a precise program is paramount. The architect,

so the theory goes, must have a precise program, and then his work

will be good. The question now is, whether this still holds true in this

form.

How did these good programs come into being? I am speaking

now about the supposedly simple case of building a villa for a client.

How does such a case evolve? The good program evolves something

like this: the architect goes to the client and says, “Do you not have

a hobby or the like, because I don’t have much of a handle on this

project? Do you not have a hobby, developing your own photo-

graphs, or breeding dogs, or whatever; something I could get my

teeth into, something precise, you know? Or perhaps you collect

art? Then I could design an art collector’s house, and it would be

published perhaps.” And then he notes the children’s ages: daugh-

ter, thirteen, son, nine, and a baby. Then everything is set up pre-

cisely. All my life, I have used a vanity that was installed 20 cm too

low. It was intended for my older sister, who was just nine years old

when the house was built.

Thus transferred to our example, “M” is defined first, so that “E”

can be designed accordingly; and that is a big mistake. For the

design of E has an eminent effect on M. Even if the client, prior

to the house being built, really did collect art or enlarge photo-

53

graphs himself, the great experience of building his home may

have changed him so radically that he is preoccupied now with

gardening. So, that is what I have to say on hypothesis 3, on the

precise program—the program that generally is not conceived

by the client but by the designer himself, who helps the for-

mer establish his requirements, in order then quasi to “solve” his

problems.

The quest for concrete individual successes

And now hypothesis 4: people in Germany are talking about the

sum of 40 billion Deutschmarks that is to be spent in the next few

years on building schools. I would now like to describe something

that happens en route from politics to the environment, from P to

E, yet belongs properly to P in fact, to the political arena. Politics

has a fragmentary, dismembering impact on the activities and pro-

cesses that ought be introduced into society and the environment;

more specifically, the politician would like simply to lay the foun-

dation stone, and give the inauguration speech; he is interested in

problems that begin and end at some point, any point, and in being

able to present a “solution.” He is not interested in talking about

difficult things for too long, or in initiating trends. He is therefore

not so willing to discuss two different possible strategies, or to com-

mit himself to one of them in a still largely open-minded manner

yet with the will to pursue this one direction over several years;

rather, he is just very grateful that his consultant, the architect, pres-

ents problems to him in the form of “solutions,” i.e. in the form of

individual objects.

54

This is not the fault of the politician alone; the fault lies also with

the world with which the politician has to struggle, namely with the

power of veto in various instances. It is easy to shoot down an ob-

ject, much easier than it is to set one up. Strategies such as I am call-

ing for here, are threatened by the fact that individual parts of them

can be shot down. A strategy—one for improving the inner-city

traffic situation, let’s say—could consist, for example, of lowering

trolley fares, staggering the opening times of institutions, perhaps

even pushing up the price of gas, or other similar measures. But

what happens when one such measure is shot down, when people

accept that trolley fares should be lowered yet the proposal to raise

the cost of gas is torpedoed by some powerful lobby or other—

which happens all too easily?

That strategies are vulnerable to the power of veto is a real prob-

lem. Holders of the power of veto, which is to say individuals or

organizations both within and outside the existing body politic,

play by the rule that applies when hunting partridge: one does not

shoot into the flock; one aims for a single target. And there we have

hypothesis 4 in a nutshell.

Disregard of development

Now, a word about planning itself: planning is the big buzzword

nowadays, and it seems to me that confusion reigns. We tend to

solve the problems of the future as if they were our current prob-

lems. We extrapolate a future, i.e. we say, a community that has 250

inhabitants now will have 13,728 inhabitants at point X in time or,

so the current jargon, at the time of its full capacity development.

55

We establish this, and then act as if this future circumstance al-

ready exists: we adjust the community infrastructure to this future

circumstance. So, any development that may occur between now

and then is ignored completely; planners actually believe they are

being far-sighted by already taking into account the 13,728 inhabit-

ants expected to be around by date X. That is simply unrealistic:

firstly, because this time period has yet to pass; it represents a de-

velopment; we only initiate the process; we are allowed to begin its

development, but we cannot complete it; and, secondly, this state

of affairs is extremely undemocratic because, of the 13,728 residents

who will be part of the community at some future date, only 250

are present now, and able to have their say; the rest will find mat-

ters have been settled in the way others thought fit. A phased ap-

proach is required here, so that decisions can be corrected at a later

date, and another direction be pursued if necessary, if people are

unhappy with past developments. Otherwise, the tiny minority, so

to speak, the people already present, hands the majority vote over to

the people who are not yet around. That was hypothesis 5.

The question must be therefore—and I am turning the tables

on the planners here, the planners’ tables—not how much must be

planned but rather, how little may be planned? How little planning

can we possibly get away with? This is not to be confused with an

absence of planning. I do not want anyone to imagine I am preach-

ing the “non-plan” here. I am talking rather, about a type of plan-

ning that asks: How might we limit planning such that desirable

developments are launched, yet the people who arrive on the scene

only later also have a say in planning, in the decisions still to be

made—hence, planning that does not invalidate either the passage

of time, or future developments?

And now I want to demonstrate with hypothesis 6, in parenthe-

ses so to speak, that past development is invalidated also. We have

56

a tendency to see the past, not as a development but as a matter

summarized, and transposed to our present era in a single moment.

Think of our heritage preservation programs, whose ultimate goal

is to restore a building to the state it is presumed to have been in

originally, when it was built. Any conversions carried out since then,

which may have been perfectly legitimate given shifts in the use or

purpose of the building—any such conversions are eliminated; all

that was added on is simply fake and abominable. We have no com-

punction about searching the archives for plans in order to establish

how it actually used to be, how the man who built it actually wanted

it to be. Restorers have sought to trace the history of certain build-

ings even further back than their construction date, because it has

been claimed that the client interfered with the architect’s original

plans. The past must accordingly be transposed to point zero, to our

here and now. Everything our fathers and grandfathers ever did to

such buildings was wrong, especially if they restored them in the

light of art-historical perspectives; and our sons and grandchildren

will consider that all we have restored is wrong too. This whole pro-

cess of invalidating the past, and all the passage of time has done

to buildings, is what gradually destroys the buildings. That was a

remark in parentheses.

Our demand: versatile uses

Here is another thing, en route from P to E, from politics to the

environment. It actually follows on from my rejection of programs

that overly predetermine things. Such predetermining programs

tend to lead to unequivocal uses, i.e. a building is considered to

57

be all the more correct, all the better, when it serves one purpose

to the exclusion of all others. If that were true—bear in mind the

above hypothesis on heritage preservation—then historical build-

ings would no longer be around; not a single building would survive

longer than twenty years, because all uses change in the course of

twenty years. Yet the quality of a building depends precisely on the

fact that it has not one predetermined use but several; it depends

on the fact that multiple use is possible, that the rooms are versatile

to some extent, because—I am thinking now of the urban planning

context—versatility alone facilitates that which makes the city what

it is, namely the overlap of different uses.

The street does not serve only one purpose; the residential street

has always also been a playground, whether one likes it or not, and

any larger residential street has always been a thoroughfare too,

and the thoroughfare a residential street. Different uses must be

able to overlap also in temporal terms: the parking lot used for the

store in the daytime is the theater’s parking lot in the evening. Only

such gradual overlap, or the potential for overlap gives rise to the

urban interweave, gives rise to that which makes the city what it

is, namely the market-like interweave of extremely diverse forms

of use.

Hypothesis 8 is an interpolation, so to speak, a means to rule

out any misunderstanding, as to whether this non-programming, or

merely fuzzy programming that I am calling for here constitutes a

non-plan. A non-plan is another thing altogether. For it is not bad

or weak planning that creates the good city but rather, the investi-

gation of potential blur, or fuzz, which is to say, of potential overlap:

this is the scientific form of planning we must pursue.

We need to plan for a degree of versatility, and for the freedom

to select alternative uses. There are systems that are more or less

open to change. Our systems, those we construct, are subject to

58

growth; and in the course of such growth—growth of the city for

example—it must remain possible, to revoke the overlap that we

introduced initially.

If, when engaged in planning a suburb, say, a suburban center,

our initial interest is to do whatever it takes to create a little den-

sity, overlap and interweave there, and we therefore allow for a

great deal of overlap—when we say, for example, schoolchildren

should pass through the center on their way to school, certainly,

so that housewives run into someone when doing their shop-

ping, and so that schoolchildren see their parents, or their moth-

ers, or other mothers, when school is out, when they make their

way home—if we allow these activities to overlap initially then

we must be prepared to give them more space, i.e. to reduce the

extent of overlap in a second phase, the phase when the popula-

tion has grown, i.e. we must thin out the density that we initially

welcomed, so that no accidents happen. It must remain possible

always, not only to interweave structures but also to revoke or dis-

band them. This is a precise requirement, and by no means a call for

disorder.

The shifting concept of design

Yes, and now hypothesis 9, which is the hypothesis dedicated to

the Werkbund actually, and it deals with appearance, with the

question of design. We come now to the relationship of politics

to the environment then back to man. That the precise program

ought to determine the well-formed object, however large or small

that may be, be it an ash-tray, or a city—“from the ash-tray to the

59

city” was once a slogan in fact—that the precise program ought to

determine the well-formed object is one of the Werkbund’s core

principles.

The question now is, how do things stand with the design of

fuzzy programming—the design of programming that vaguely re-

lates to the future, and to growth? If, for example, we construct the

city hall initially in a way such as to accommodate the city admin-

istration, but then move this elsewhere, and rent out the building

to businesses, we suddenly can no longer count on the city hall’s

symbolic presence as the “City Crown;”¹ we cannot seek tenants for

the “City Crown,” as that would surely cause a stir.

Hence the question: How might design develop under cir-

cumstances engendered by this demand for an open-ended style

of planning? I’ll extrapolate more extremely: How might design

develop if we were to decide that one actually ought to build mere

“urban space?” That is certainly utopian, but perhaps something to

think about! One begins by constructing urban space such as the

“nursery factories” one finds in England, which is to say, factories

for start-up manufacturers, which are built in anticipation of de-

mand, and then rented out to anyone who wants to assemble motor

cars, or some plastic object or other; in an extreme case scenario

therefore, one might construct urban space then see what happens:

see whether stores move in, or insurance companies, or whether

the process is sufficiently developed as yet; for perhaps no business

1 “Die Stadtkrone” (City Crown) is an urban planning concept put forward by German Expressionist architects in the early twentieth century, and champi-oned particularly by Bruno Taut. It was often conceived as an inspirational, crystalline form in the city center, on an impressive scale perhaps, or with a homogenous formal idiom; and it sometimes suggested subordination of the individual to the common good.

60

wants to move in, and the space is therefore used initially as resi-

dential accommodation.

That is the reason for this digression on design, here in hypo-

thesis 9. Yes, even when it comes to objects, we believe in the pro-

gram, and in the design it engenders, namely the famous Werkbund

door handle, or the fork and all that—but actually, those are objects

we really have no reason to get all worked up about. Surely, tech-

nical gadgets are the really important objects. And development

in this regard has run contrary to all our intentions, owing to—to

name just the catchword—the invention of the transistor, which

symbolizes all recent inventions so to speak. The transistor has cre-

ated a wholly new situation: the very same unchanging elements,

the very same unchanging tangle of wire have given rise to gadgets

that look alike, yet have quite different purposes. They can either

calculate, or play music, or whatever—how do I know what might

all be produced, when everything looks simply like a metal box

from the outside yet consists within of transistors and a tangle of

wire? Where is design in all this? Design very clearly lies in a very

specific element of the structure, namely in its knob. Thanks to the

knobs we must press, we can tell what kind of gadget a thing is; and

when we understand these knobs, and push them, we can operate

the gadget; if we cannot understand them, if they tell us nothing,

then the gadget remains something alien, and useless.

Now, the situation with this indeterminate space in the city is

perhaps quite similar; perhaps the knob here—hence, secondary

architecture so to speak—comprises design. Perhaps the prefabri-

cated houses and roads are distinguishable from one another thanks

to knobs, or signs, and these signs are able to change also, i.e. in

the course of the city’s growth the homely bar signs may cede to

the signs of major insurance companies and banks. So, the call for

fuzzy programming perhaps necessitates the separation of primary

61

and secondary (accessory) architecture; and solely this secondary

architecture can give expression to a conscious design.

Do not patronize the user!

Now, here’s another point about hypothesis 10, namely on the re-

lationship between politics and man, or, in the case of a private

commission, on the relationship between the client respectively the

designer, and the user. I am critical of the client’s behavior, be he

from the public or the private sector, because he leaves everything

to the expert, the designer, and hence permits the latter to dictate

both task analysis, and the solution. Executive designers every-

where, have their say in the problems in hand; there is no one so

familiar with the latest liturgical developments in our churches as

the architect. That is not his fault, but the fault of the client who

just postpones the solution. The architect simply cannot wait any

longer: he has already ordered the tiles, and must decide now on a

solution, before the tiles arrive. So he quickly reads, or hears some-

thing about liturgy, presents himself as a professional, and solves

the problem.

What does the designer or architect propose, when someone

presents him with a problem? What does the apple tree propose

when someone presents it with a problem? Apples, of course; and

so the designer or architect will always propose a building—every

problem leads to a building—and this brings us back to the start of

this lecture: nowadays, “solutions” take the place of strategies.

Usually, at this point, the user is not consulted, and he is conse-

quently powerless. The building, or object he uses does not belong

62

to him, and he is not permitted to alter whatever is not his. So the

bottom line, our demand, is that building must once again become

part of the overall process of changing and designing the environ-

ment. We must adopt

the triangular model outlined here, and apply it; and we must take

every player in the triangle seriously, and give each an opportunity

to become involved in the design process. It is possible to activate

the client and the user, but not by having them submit determin-

istic, predetermined programs. Rather, the extent to which each

should be permitted to formulate a plan must leave room always

for the next partner in the process, so that he too may have his say.

63

On the Value and Meaning of Urban Utopias (1968)

The utopian moment

All that is ever built is the result of decisions, and therefore also

of wrong decisions. At some point, a will to do a thing must be

expressed, and a limit set—in both the negative and positive sense.

One cannot want everything at once: certain objectives exclude

others. The more determined one is to attain one objective, the

more difficult it becomes to satisfy other criteria. Any design pro-

cess is insofar a process of reduction, of paring down a program to

its requisite objectives.

Modernist architecture raised this process of selection and re-

duction to a style motif. Functionalism demands a strict program,

a rigorous decision in favor of one as opposed to another architec-

tural objective. The so-called “neat solution” to a construction task

becomes a feature of the building; the allegedly, non-existent facade

of “Button in Ear”-brand¹ architecture can be seen from afar to

express a single architectural objective reduced to its extreme, to the

simplest solution. “Uncompromising” connoisseurs say, in praise of

such architecture: an architecture whose compromises are tailored

to a single architectural objective.

Is Modernist architecture functionalist? Probably not. Smooth

1 Burckhardt is referring to the traditional mark of quality the Steiff Company uses for its teddy bears.

64

surfaces, or those crisscrossed or roughened by some process or

other, are neither cheaper, nor more practical nor more durable

than ornamental surfaces; and cubic, or even organic forms are nei-

ther cheaper, nor more functional than classical or historical ones.

Without in any way disparaging the achievements of Modernist

architecture, we may admit that the functionalism of Modernist

architecture makes itself felt at the visual level, which is to say, its

“solutions” are above all solutions for the eye.

The Modernist architect plays the role of inventor nonetheless:

he reinvents a solution for every everyday task. In the absence of

an obligatory task he even invents one: classical architecture of a

pioneering epoch, named “Fallingwater,” or “The Glass House,” or

whatever. Such demonstrative problem-solving lends Modernist

architecture thematic interest: one scoffs at the rhetorical archi-

tectural styles of the nineteenth century yet creates buildings that

do nothing but “talk,” endlessly praising the brilliant way in which

they have resolved their respective tasks.

The resolution of specific tasks has an isolating character: every

building fulfills its appointed task by excluding every conceivable

secondary task. Never has a school been so much a school, a private

residence so much a private residence, a museum so much a mu-

seum as it is today. There they stand, juxtaposed yet disconnected;

all the secondary objectives apt to link them have gone by the board.

These secondary objectives, these inessentials now pile up, and pose

new tasks: Where can one spend one’s leisure time, or one’s old age?

Where can one park a stroller, or the car? And where can one meet

people? Whereupon our politicians and architects, who are little

inclined to assume the blame for this state of affairs, invent new

objectives: the leisure center, the parking lot, the shopping mall,

the hobby center, the old people’s home and social center… Splen-

did new tasks for fantastic solutions: and all that is disconnected is

65

lined up once again, disconnected. New secondary tasks go by the

board, and then turn into major objectives: new construction tasks

loom on the horizon. Functionalism triumphs.

The utopian moment arrived at the latest by the late 1950s. Let

us not kid ourselves: such utopias are the children of functionalism;

they are “neat solutions” to the universal issue. But one had learned

that the universal issue must also be resolved, between, as well as

above and beyond the objectives in question.

To create utopias is a legitimate means to search for the future.

The inventor too, takes a similar approach: he mentally pursues a

thing by clearing certain secondary factors out of the way, and by

temporarily separating these from their attendant characteristics;

which is to say, by abstracting. Later, admittedly, he must make a list

of all the factors he temporarily ignored. Utopians have generally

failed to make such a list—and insofar they are true functionalists.

Were utopias ever to be realized, they would share the same fate as

contemporary buildings: they would be isolated accomplishments,

and ultimately the outcome of mistaken planning in an era whose

objectives change rapidly, and therefore cannot be defined as rigor-

ously as functionalism would like. This, as we shall demonstrate, is

true also of those utopias that have adopted change as a major ob-

jective, and evidently no longer commit to anything for any length

of time.

As a child of Modernist architecture, utopia “speaks:” its forms

announce the solution to the problem it has set out to solve. But

these problems are different in nature; they are more fundamental.

In announcing the necessity of finding total solutions, utopia passes

judgment on the isolationism pursued by functionalism in the 1930s

and 1950s. It creates a formal idiom in which it is possible to reach

an agreement on urban problems. Insofar utopia is the first step

towards surmounting the consequences of functionalism.

66

Utopias 1958–68

Over the past decade, utopias of a more technological design have

evolved such that they now take more or less account also of social

processes. Yet the term “technological utopia” is ambiguous: most

technological utopias would be perfectly viable in technological

terms; perhaps quite expensive, initially, but rapidly more afford-

able, just as other technological utopias—air travel for instance—

have also become cheap, or at least affordable. No, these designs for

future lifestyles are not utopian in terms of their technology but in

terms of the decisions to be made: When will society be inclined to

live in this way?

“Technological utopias” are the most direct descendants of Mod-

ernism. They generally consist of apartments or capsule dwellings

that are either conventional, or successors to that which was known

in the 1930s as the “Minimum Dwelling.”² What we can gather—or

abstract—from this is the progressive rise in living standards. Now-

adays, people’s existence minimum always exceeds the existence

minimum; and this paradox gives rise to a momentum that can no

longer be captured in narrow capsule dwellings. However that may

be, such capsule dwellings are now suspended in an emphatically

technological, or perhaps even in an expressionist manner, be it on

masts like television towers, or on cables and suspension bridges.

Let me reiterate: technology itself is not utopian but rather, the

notion that modern society will devote a considerable amount of its

economic resources to this type of dwelling.

2 The title of the second CIAM in Frankfurt/Main in 1929 was “Die Wohnung für das Existenzminimum,” or “Minimum Existence Housing.”

67

A number of technological utopias work with the Malthusian

argument, with the notion that living space must be created for

a global population that is reproducing itself a million times over.

Conventional materials and construction lots for such living spaces

are both in short supply: synthetic cells, mountains of cells some-

what like enlarged foam bubbles are hence, to rise up on the oceans

of the world, or even to burrow their way underground.—We do

not know the extent of the global population explosion, nor the

conclusions people will draw from it. Yet one may presume that

other shortages will crop up, long before accommodation grows

scarce: nourishment is an issue that can probably be resolved, but

politics and organizational issues give us food for thought.

Therefore “urbanistic utopias” are perhaps more utopian in a

technological sense, yet for us more real—for they take account

of organizational and social issues. The earliest of these utopias to

gain renown was Kenzo Tange’s urban plan for Greater Tokyo. In

consideration of the city’s growth, the contact networks thus ne-

cessitated, and the horrific traffic situation likely to ensue, Tange

dreamed up a city built on trapezoid stands on the Bay of Tokyo,

which was essentially a circulatory system. The terraced stands pro-

vide “construction lots” for workspaces and apartments. Their core

contains transport termini, garages, factories and offices docked

onto huge transport systems that guarantee a consummate circula-

tion system for all types of traffic throughout the entire city. The

city is a machine that can assure twenty million people the highest

possible level of interaction: every route to work, every visit under-

taken for the purpose of business or education can be completed in

the shortest possible time.

While the transit system and artificial construction lots are made

of concrete, the facilities for work and living there are more ephem-

eral. This promptly drew criticism from another Japanese—Fumi-

68

hiko Maki—who maintained that that which is constant, namely a

person’s apartment, is transient here, whereas that which develops

quickly, namely traffic, is fixed for all eternity. In any case, Tange’s

urban plan for Greater Tokyo in the late 1950s unambiguously

highlighted the preponderance of traffic, and defined the city as

the locus of comprehensive professional contacts. In this regard his

concept is Modernist; other aspects reveal a suspicious hint of latent

Japanese feudalism. The traffic stands with their artificial construc-

tion lots belong to the state, and the city thus virtually becomes

the state incarnate; the individual is allotted a small surface area

on which he may erect his small, disposable home. One is tempted

to cite Vogt’s question, “Who is the owner of this house?” and the

reply, “The Emperor, your grace—my lord and yours/ And held by

me in fief.”³

Another great urban utopia of those years is Yona Friedman’s

Spatial City. In difference to Tange, Friedman does not believe in

cities with twenty million inhabitants, and he limits the popula-

tion of his to circa three million. For this population he builds

four-tiered stands mounted on carriers into which modular living

cells can be inserted at will, or—because of how the light falls—in

specific arrangements. Everything flows; everything is free: where

there was once a cell there might later be a street, or an airspace

even; everyone buys or leases a cell for specific periods then moves

on. Contacts do not depend on a mechanical transit system but

develop as far as possible like a web: and the more widely dispersed

contacts are, the less likely breakdowns are to interrupt the transit

system. The entire system remains highly flexible: the cell is mobile,

the arrangement is mobile, and finally, the carrier structure itself is

3 The reference is to Friedrich Schiller’s drama William Tell (1804).

69

mobile. All arrangements are only temporary, all fixed features can

be dissembled, and all agreements can be revoked.

The system designed by the Tel Aviv-based urbanists Jan Lubicz-

Nycz and Donald P. Reay likewise draws deeply on tradition,

namely on the jubilee year of Mosaic law, in which one is acquitted

of all duties and freed of all guilt. But can this principle of acquittal

be transposed without further ado to our developed society? Does

not our economic system necessarily create structures that demand

permanence, and know also how to create permanence?

Not only that which is built but also the entire social system is

prone to consolidation. We know that from our cities: although

houses are demolished and renewed on average every hundred years,

the streets continue to exist for centuries, as if the house facades

would last forever. Wherever there is nothing solid to protect, im-

penetrable papery structures emerge: this man makes a contract

with that one, saying he will never do this or that; and the more the

state waives legislation, the more the web of private agreements runs

riot. The utopia of total mobility insofar bypasses reality, because it is

not walls that inhibit change. Yona Friedman’s city offers a flexibility

that will never be utilized, no more than cars in a parking lot can

move around, or the mobile stands at a market be freely arranged.

“Urban fiction” might be a good way to describe a category of

urban utopias that is essentially the brainchild of two English ar-

chitectural groups, Archigram and Clip-Kit. At the urban planning

level they endeavor to do justice to the demands of the urban fab-

ric and urban contacts, in a more sophisticated way. They thereby

seek a path mid-way between Tange’s total traffic installation and

Friedman’s total flexibility: the parts of the city are no longer homo-

genous but specialized.

Contact is assured partly by transport yet real contacts can be

established wherever necessary, by altering the urban fabric, by

70

resorting to “clip-on” or “plug-in” space modules. The initial spa-

tial arrangement is therefore not final; development and growth are

possible, without being foreseen completely, or catered to by built-

in flexibility. Conversions cater to anything unforeseeable.

The notion of unforeseeable demand for contacts is thereby

taken to an extreme: What happens for example, if it becomes ap-

parent that two distant cities need to enter into closer contact—for

instance, because the research pursued in the one is to be tested

in the other, which calls for extensive information flows between

numerous inhabitants? The cities themselves are equipped for such

a case with contact organs, and even with limbs, which allows a

degree of mobility.

As we see, visions of the future are highly realistic: the perfor-

mance and contact networks so pivotal to the city are extended and

analyzed. And yet Archigram and Clip-Kit succeed above all in

visual terms: in contrast to Friedman, who never sought to make his

constructions technically viable in order that no one might mistake

them for reality, the two English groups sought the future design

of the city, and thereby also facilitated thematic debate. For these

are primarily forms in which a person recognizes the novelty of

the new, and to which he must first become accustomed. That such

forms benefit, on the one hand, from various revivals and, on the

other, from Pop Art serves only to make them all the more acces-

sible, and hence all the more valuable to debate.

There is one final group of utopias I would like to describe as

“integrated.” Whilst the aforementioned utopias largely dealt with

the future into which we can peer as if through a window, the “inte-

grated utopias” address the transition from past and present circum-

stances to those of tomorrow and the day after tomorrow. Among

these I number Cedric Price’s plan “The Potteries Thinkbelt” and

Walter Förderer’s “Stadtumbau ohne Bodenreform” (Urban Rede-

71

velopment Without Land Reform). Both schemes are premised on

the continued and astonishing use of existing structures.

The “Potteries Thinkbelt” plan addresses a declining industrial

region whose extensive railroad network is no longer used to full

capacity. This railroad infrastructure is now used as a mobile uni-

versity that can deliver higher education to the densely populated

area. The railroad stations or better still the former marshaling yards

are in effect universities: they comprise fixed facilities such as ac-

commodation for students and lecturers, lecture halls, hubs where

one can switch from the trains to the lecture halls and laboratories,

as well as some mobile lecture halls, and a range of variously con-

figured spaces for experimentation, whose components are more or

less mobile, depending on the nature of the experiments carried out

there. Railroad cranes are used to maneuver the latter. The lecturers

and many of the students are constantly on the move; their presence

enriches the towns, for these acquire specialist skills. This facilitates

a close link between the disciplines taught in a city and specific

production sectors. The towns benefit from their connection to the

scientific transport network, in terms both of general education,

and direct contacts between research and production.

This utopia teaches us something about modern education policy,

which we will not further pursue here, as well as about development

policy per se. The exploitation of existing infrastructure for novel

purposes is an important element of progress; the era in which one

presumed oneself modern because one tore down traditional struc-

tures is over. Even in America, people now find themselves obliged

to resort to the good old standard-gauge railway.

Förderer’s urban development project likewise draws on exist-

ing structures, and intervenes in a real and very typical nineteenth-

century neighborhood. It comprises several residential areas, a small

park, and a factory within a chessboard-like system of streets. De-

72

velopment proceeds on an individual basis: whoever wants to build

can do so. Provisional flexibility is assured by permitting construc-

tion in the airspace above the streets. This is compensated by the

expropriation of inner courtyards at the first story level, which are

then interlinked in a network of paths that runs diagonally to the

street network. The street network now lies underground, and those

spaces opening onto the street serve as storage depots and load-

ing bays. Stores are located one story higher, and are oriented to

the pedestrian network. Above them are some offices and, mostly,

apartments. The factory is turned into a covered parking lot. Who-

ever lives in the street network and works outside it keeps his car

there. His experience of the city unfolds between the car and the

apartment; the parking lot therefore cannot be retained in its origi-

nal form. The parking lot takes on the city center’s former role; this

is where men shop on their return home, and have another drink

perhaps. Something provisional takes shape in the park: a hybrid

of funfair and hobby center. This site changes most rapidly, the

garage in the medium-term, and the residential district in long-

term phases. But the long-term structures, the walls and streets, go

unnoticed by the passer-by: he orientates himself to a more mal-

leable “secondary architecture,” to built-in features, or adaptations

of the building—including advertising—undertaken by the user.

These are the true keys to the complicated and hidden machinery

of the city. A utopia that largely does justice to the genuine urban

process is under development here. It says something about the ac-

tual behavior of the urban dweller, about his desire for conversions,

his need to shape his own world in the shantytown or allotment

garden and, ultimately, about his relationship to the car and the

parking lot. A realistic aspect of utopia is always that a virtue is

made of necessity: whatever already exists is not seen as a hindrance

but is used as a point of departure for whatever comes next. In place

73

of expensive demolition, and new structural engineering measures,

the entire city is raised above a story bequeathed to us by the nine-

teenth century.

Utopia and decision-making

In technical terms, nothing stands in the way of the realization of

the aforementioned utopias, in particular those of the “technologi-

cal” variety. If no utopian city has ever been built, then not because

this would be utopian but because society prefers to spend money

on exploring the moon and the like. It is perfectly feasible however,

that forces will one day rise up, to urge on the realization of a uto-

pian city, just as Chandigarh, Brasilia and Montreal’s Habitat ’67

have been realized. And one may presume that in this future case,

as in the three aforementioned cases, the wrong project will be real-

ized, and the urban planners will again find themselves looking at

a missed opportunity.

If one accepts for the time being the range of “technological uto-

pias” presented here, from “urbanistic utopias” to “urban fiction” and

“integrated utopias,” we are still lacking the one final design type

that actually represents the true and traditional utopian domain:

the social variety. Some architects have made a contribution to such

utopias: Yona Friedman has written a shrewd script dealing with

life in a future spatial city, and Eckhard Schulze-Fielitz has made

various statements on life in the near or distant future. This life is

depicted again as a faceless future that some day became the pres-

ent. Yet what we are lacking is a depiction of the processes that

bring about the future, that transform present-day society into the

74

future. No one doubts that certain aspects of the lifestyle described

by the aforementioned authors—the free circulation of goods, the

predominance of leisure over work, and increased social inter-

action—will at some point become reality. Yet we seek in vain any

notion of how, and by which measures today’s society might break

out of its daily cycle, and step into that of the future.

To describe this cycle, and to trace the few points at which the

desired change and development can begin, lies beyond the scope of

this article. Therefore only this, briefly and simply put: urban devel-

opment is a process that unfolds between urban planners, decision-

making authorities and their consultants, and the city itself, with its

inhabitants—in the same way quasi, that architecture is an interac-

tive process involving architects, clients and the outcome: buildings

plus those who use them.

The factors that stabilize the paths pursued in this cycle are not

of a material nature. It is not the walls of existing buildings that

hinder the renewal of urban development. When, under the watch-

word “redevelopment,” the authorities or speculators succeed in de-

stroying then rebuilding a neighborhood, the result is by no means

the “new city,” the utopian city, but at best a “new old city” and,

at worst, a “family-friendly building project with affordable rents,

public green spaces, sufficient parking lots and a shopping mall.”

As we described earlier, the designer/ planner dominates this

cycle: the client fails to analyze his problems, and leaves them to

the architect; the user is completely powerless—he may not and

cannot change what does not belong to him. The ostensible tasks

the designer/ planner sets himself give rise to ostensible solutions

that are largely of an aesthetic nature. Yet because they appear to be

logical solutions they have the tendency to become anchored firmly

in the minds of the client, and of the users even, and then can no

longer be easily dislodged.

75

The appearance of buildings and of the city is therefore the

stabilizing locus of the everyday course of things. A connection

exists between appearance and conceptualization. That which we

can name is something we can also reach a decision on, or destroy;

whatever has no “face” has no name, and consequently cannot be

debated publicly. In this sense, the needs of modern urbanism are

invisible. Urban planning as a system of abstract strategies largely

evades the decision-making process. One cannot talk about the

city’s hidden mechanisms in the way one can talk about the con-

struction of a new city hall, for example, or about an underground

subway designed to “increase public space at street level,” a pseudo-

measure particularly favored by city administrations.

Therefore, what the city needs most is not identical with such

“solutions” as the politician likes to air in public. He needs start

and completion dates for projects that take place within a single

legislative period, represent a unified whole, and call furthermore

for what is known as a “courageous decision.” When the politician

has dragged such a project through all requisite instances and to

its conclusion he can declare it “successful,” apparently with some

justification—for success is measured not in terms of a project’s

impact but in terms of its size.

The cycle of always reproducing more of the same rests not on

external constraints but on the preponderance of all that is visible

and identifiable over that which has never yet been seen. Redevel-

opment is accordingly commendable not owing to its new way of

satisfying needs but above all because of how it looks: a novelty is

all the more spectacular, the better it succeeds in dressing up the

banal fulfillment of traditional tasks in a new, demonstrative guise.

Utopia can render service here to the resolution process: it lends

a face to new principles of urban planning, so that these can flow

into the decision-makers’ political consciousness. The future, in ac-

76

quiring a face, becomes communicable and therefore conclusive.

In giving palpable expression to the solution of future needs, the

designer or planner of utopias renders the needs themselves visible,

and confronts the public with that which the future holds in store.

It would be dangerous if one were to mistake utopia for future

reality, and actually realize it. For all urban utopias that have seen

the light of day to date, are—insofar as they have a face—“solutions”

in the sense of the way architects set about solving problems. We

therefore understand utopias not as a call for their realization—for

they would then not be utopias—but as planners’ anguished plea

for society to free them finally from the dual burden of both for-

mulating and solving tasks. Architects want to awaken their partner

in the design process—the client and user—or even to completely

reinvent him. They want a counterpart who is open to discussion,

who doesn’t merely say yes or, if need be, no, but who expresses

his own will in discussions. To set in motion the wheels of a real

decision-making process would be to reconstitute politics in the

only arena in which politics is at all worthwhile: that in which we

formulate our future lifestyle.

77

From Design Academicism to the Treatment of Wicked Problems (1973)

However great the changes imposed by pioneers of modern archi-

tecture may have been, and however great the impact of the achieve-

ments of the 1920s and 30s on the whole of contemporary architec-

ture, professional teaching practice has remained unchanged. The

relationship of professor and student has remained the traditional

relationship of master and apprentice, and the students’ tasks con-

tinue, as always, to be those of abstracting from actual implementa-

tion; it is a case of designs for the portfolio, as one used to say in

the last century. Conventional design training continues to set the

task it has always set, namely to create a specific building on a real

or imagined terrain. In the course of the “Lehrcanapé,”¹ we called

such tasks the “Youth Center on Paradeplatz.” In the case of such

designs it is assumed the terrain is available, that the purpose of the

building is correct, and that both the client and prospective owners

unanimously welcome the proposed building program. Land prices,

traffic congestion, urgency and profit yield are all problem areas that

remain outside the scope of such design proposals. The student is

educated in an atmosphere of abstraction, at a remove from the real

world, which means he is in for a bumpy landing later, on the hard

facts of reality.

1 Lehrcanapé: the “professorial sofa” as opposed to the usual professorial chair, was the name given to a temporary professorship at the ETH Zurich, held jointly by the architect Rolf Gutmann and the sociologist Lucius Burckhardt, from 1969 to 1973. Cf. also Silvan Blumenthal, Das Lehrcanapé: Lucius Burck-hardt und das Architektenbild an der ETH Zürich 1970-1973, Basel 2010.

78

Any student of the conventional design method learns to take

a “trial and error” approach. He endeavors, in one way or another,

to put down on paper the task entrusted to him, and after a while

he fails, or assistants point out the non-feasibility of his approach,

whereupon he tries a new one. What distinguishes the master from

the student is the former’s so-called experience. Only rarely does

the master embark on paths that do not lead to a goal. The student

also takes note of this experience, and instinctively weighs up which

paths are relatively sure to lead to goals without demanding too

great an effort.

The design method born of experience born of intuition conceals

from the designer even essential features of the decision-making

process. One scribbles a few lines on paper, and dozens of questions

are already resolved: site development, the number of stories, per-

haps therefore the building materials as well as many things inside

the building even, which reveal themselves only later to be design

constraints. The design proposal fails because a disproportionate

amount of time and skill is expended from this point onwards,

on relatively unimportant individual factors. Finally, the semester

nears its end, the pace of design increases, and dozens of decisions

are once again pushed through in secret. The conventional architect

behaves likewise, particularly when it comes to competitions. Major

decisions are to be found in a certain sense in two pockets: hidden

at the beginning in a paper napkin, along with the supposed brain-

wave one suddenly brought home; and, at the end, in the bustle of

work that precedes project submission.

In the 1960s, the growing complexity of the planning and con-

struction fields made a new approach to training indispensable, and

led to a phase we call “enlightened academicism.” This posits that a

design be premised on a prior phase of analysis. Enlightened aca-

demicism believes that a methodical approach is assured by inte-

79

grating the following in the decision-making process, in an order

expressed in German by the acronym ZASPAK: goal identification,

analysis, synthesis, planning, implementation and control. This

approach overlooks two prerequisites of its successful application:

– Goals must be identifiable from the outset. However, in most

practical exercises the real goals come to light only during the de-

sign process.

– Synthesis is required so as to incorporate the insights gained

from analysis during the planning process. However, the planning

methods taught presently at our universities do not demonstrate

how such a large amount of data may be synthesized and incorpo-

rated in the planning process.

Enlightened academicism led thus to the now familiar two-part

task definition. Let’s say, the semester theme is the theater in Hin-

tertüpflingen. The analysis phase serves to determine what the city

of Hintertüpflingen needs most urgently; then the design phase

proposes development of a railroad yard in Hintertüpflingen in

order to obtain a platform on which a theater can be built.

A weltanschauung underpins the “enlightened academicism”

method: the image of a harmonious world, whose problems can

be solved through technological intervention. This is the world of

tame problems such as we learned to solve in school: the Greeks are

philosophers, the Romans statesmen, the Germans belligerent, and

the math teacher’s sums correct. The laws that rule this world are

supposedly eternal: whatever we learned in the past, we can apply

to the future. Basically, if we had Laplace’s cosmopolitan esprit we

could predict the future completely. Yet we lack such a wealth of

information, and so restrict ourselves to “essentials.”

However, to restrict ourselves to essentials, and to those facts

we currently find most relevant is precisely what has put an almost

80

unbearable strain on the resilience and tolerance capacity of our

real environment. The problems and limitations concealed by the

prosperity euphoria of the 1960s are now erupting on our horizon

at an alarming speed.

In the light of the above, we consider the premises in which

conventional and “enlightened-conventional” academic work is

rooted to be fatal. While schools demand that a solution be found

for a clearly defined problem, real life demands that the architect

map out the scope of problematic issues himself. What he must

learn therefore, is to deal with unsolvable, “wicked” problems. It is a

mistake to imagine that one’s experience and intuition are the best

guides in this uncertain field. Methods do exist in any case, for deal-

ing also with wicked problems. The study of such methods seems

to us all the more urgent, given that both the architect’s influence,

and its impact on decision-making bodies obliged to take decisions

on lofty goals, are intensifying exponentially. This is the reason

we named our approach, not “project training”—for conservative

academics also could lay claim to that term—but rather, “problem-

oriented training.”

Problem-oriented training and methodical design

The “Canapé” defined problem-oriented training as a form of

teaching focused on one or several issues of such complexity as to

be representative of real professional issues, as well as on solutions

that ideally evince an integrated, interdisciplinary approach.

This approach to training—and moreover, this goal of training—

served quasi as a lens through which to consider all other associated

81

goals and measures, be these endeavors to carry out methodological

design, or to handle problems within a team comprised of teach-

ers and students. This appraisal of professional design training led

away from the popular creative design topics such as a house on a

slope, or a weekend lakeside retreat, to more comprehensive issues

of socio-political relevance, which could not be solved by construc-

tion alone. These were, for example, the problems of education and

training for students and professionals.

Certainly, one result of this approach was that students at the

time received no training in “classical” design techniques. They

were confronted rather, with problems whose solution demanded

much broader understanding than is required when implement-

ing a structural solution to a spatial program. They were obliged

to acquire a problem-solving frame of mind, for this put them

in a position to solve problems that could be defined more pre-

cisely solely through a step-by-step approach. This capacity to

solve undefined problems, which is to say, the capacity to collate,

to process, and to apply relevant information in order to solve a

problem, we called the “problem-solving frame of mind.” Cer-

tainly, students were initially overwhelmed by this kind of “design,”

because it was very difficult for them to categorize the wealth of

information correctly, and to evaluate individual data with proper

regard for the problem at hand. This is evident from the data col-

lated during the far-ranging analysis phases, which was much too

extensive, dealt with unspecified issues, and thus later simply im-

peded a project’s progress. Yet one can still assume that the frame

of mind fostered here enabled students to deal with an issue, and

to arrive at a result, without knowledge of the habitual solution

strategies.

The “Canapé” considered its task was to heighten students’ ap-

preciation of the fact that social problems cannot be solved sim-

82

ply by a design proposal, or by fully implementing a construction

project, as well as of the fact that planning, if it is ever to produce

comprehensive solutions to identifiable problems, must encour-

age the formulation of alternative goals. For this reason we tried to

proceed methodically, that is, to use systematic reduction to gener-

ate the alternative solutions likely to attain previously formulated

goals.

To this end, and in addition to the regular semester schedule, a

methodology seminar was launched in order to teach students the

rudiments of design methodology. The seminar was divided into

two parts:

– The study of various design and evaluation techniques

– Application of these techniques to selected test cases

It must first be clarified what is actually meant by planning. We

premised our approach on A. Faludi’s definition: planning entails

the application of systematic methods to the task of formulating

social goals, and their translation into concrete action programs.

This definition provided a springboard for the presentation and

discussion of different types of design. This was followed by an as-

sessment of evaluation techniques, their effectiveness and validity.

The subjectivity of evaluation systems was the central problem. On

which factors does the result of an evaluation depend; how can it be

manipulated; and how much value should be attributed to it, when

deciding in favor of, or against an alternative? Given that most

problems in the field of planning are heuristic search tasks—hence

wicked problems whose solution depends crucially on the personal

value system of the person addressing them—the evaluation discus-

sion was broad in scope.

The first phase revealed that three key insights seem to have been

important for students:

83

1. Since we are dealing in the planning field with wicked prob-

lems, it is important to make the problem-solving process

transparent, which is to say, easily comprehensible. Various

techniques and methods can be used to meet this demand for

transparency; all of them involve the systematic production of

diversity, as well as the systematic reduction of this diversity

through the evaluation procedure.

2. The goal of all planning is to eliminate disruptions. To elimi-

nate such disruptions requires a very specific frame of mind,

a problem-solving frame of mind. It is a process that begins

with identification of the disruptive factor and ends with an

actual state of affairs: the “Ist-Zustand” that is the fulfillment

of the target state or “Soll-Zustand.” This process is ongoing,

because the demands made on the built environment are con-

stantly changing, and the limited adaptability of the built en-

vironment constantly gives rise to disruptions. Anything built

for a specific purpose (a school, a hospital, etc.), is generally

already outdated the day it opens.

3. Planning inevitably has a crucial political dimension. Every

evaluation gives expression to a system of values held by

an individual or a group. To construct an objective evalua-

tion system is impossible. For this reason, evaluation systems

should not be prescriptive—in the sense of laying down

universal laws—but should be used only to support an argu-

ment.

The second phase—application of techniques to various test cases—

was unfortunately not the success we had hoped for, as students

found this approach rather dry, and took part in these exercises only

reluctantly. It was planned to conduct a series of smaller test cases,

so as to be able to apply all that had been learned within the lecture

84

framework. Some seminar participants did work on the first two

test-case exercises, albeit quite half-heartedly. These were:

Exercise 1—To evaluate three different three-room apartments

Exercise 2—To design an apartment building for a specific con-

text, in line with the AIDA² method

Unfortunately the results of their work are available in fragmented

form only, and therefore cannot be documented.

2 The AIDA Reaction Model created by E. K. Strong in 1925 posits that the sales process has four phases—Attention, Interest, Desire and Action.

85

Who Plans the Planning? (1974)

Who plans the planning? This question is meant to highlight the

fact that planning does not take place in a vacuum but is deter-

mined by politics and implicated in a social system. How to plan

is something the specialist may know, although, as we shall see, his

“how” is not free of social constraints either; but what is planned

and what is not, and what one plans to leave to its own devices are

issues defined by political and social forces.

The city is full of problems, and not all of them become an ob-

ject of our planning provisions. Moreover, not every consequence

of planning is planned. And many a consequence, it has been de-

cided—decided by not taking a decision—will be ignored anyhow.

Today, there is much talk of environmental protection; plans are

laid to enhance or improve the environment. But deterioration of

the environment is also a consequence of planning: it is namely that

aspect of planning it was tacitly and unanimously agreed to leave

unplanned.

Defining the problem

The question, “Who plans the planning?” therefore means in the

first instance, “Who determines what is (and what is not) to be

planned?” Local authorities proceed by raising controversial ques-

tions or “issues.” From among the problems plaguing a city, the pol-

itician elects to make one of them his personal hobbyhorse. Prob-

86

lems and likewise the types of planning intended to solve them are

not easily comparable; the issue of whether the city should put its

money either into improving transport or into raising standards of

public health cannot be measured against any objective criteria. The

local politician takes up controversial issues as a means to compete

for votes. Elections are meant to end in consensus as to which prob-

lems the body politic should come to grips with. Yet it is blatantly

obvious that this method of reaching consensus is downright crude:

the voter has no say at all regarding either selection of the problems

to be addressed—for it is the politicians’ job to set the agenda—or

the means by which a problem should be tackled.

The question as to who plans the planning has implications also

for the politician’s relationship with the professional planner. The

history of how humans formalize their decisions is also the history

of endeavors to guarantee the professional’s independence vis-à-vis

those in power—both in order to keep him neutral and resistant to

vested interests, and to obviate the professional’s own power. The

tradition of facultative “professionals” reaches from Israel’s prophets

to professors at independent universities, from the leading ranks of

military or economic associations to the institutes from which state

and economic bodies seek advice. Yet new ways to blend skills are

popping up all the time.

The consultant aspires to influence, and the policymaker learns

either how to deal with science himself, or to bypass the subject.

In the classical decision-making model, planning and decision-

making are kept apart. The government commissions the profes-

sional to produce research or projections; the professional presents

the results of his research or his various proposals to the govern-

ment; and the government decides which of them to act on—that is

the credo. Modern research into decision-making is devoted largely

to a critique of this formalist view of democracy. The skepticism

87

rests on several different aspects with which we shall deal in more

detail later: one is that the act of making a decision is actually never

so well defined as in the aforementioned model—except perhaps, in

the case of a ceremony, a parliamentary session for example, carried

out in accordance with resolutions passed in house; another is that

the persons involved cannot be divided exactly into “the experts”

and “the decision-makers.”

That planning—be it urban or regional planning—provides pol-

iticians with controversial issues is a relatively recent phenomenon.

For sure, an interest in urban planning procedures among con-

cerned parties, or perhaps even a “lobby,” has been in evidence ever

since municipal real estate became a commodity. But, for the time

being, interaction between urban planners and private initiatives

is minimal. In the first phase of industrialization, masses of peo-

ple rushed to take up new jobs in the cities. Private entrepreneurs

housed them as cheaply as possible, in areas hitherto scorned. Far

away from these developments, in the city center, the government

went about its business. This was the era when city walls were razed,

grand boulevards and impressive residential quarters were built, and

government and cultural institutions were erected on city squares

in the Classicist or Romantic style of planning—all of which hap-

pened not without the aid of speculation at times while, at others,

the price was financial sacrifice on the altar of urban development.

The merging of private and public interests was to prove even

more controversial when it came to the development of trams and

hence, to urban expansion. Some lots were upgraded and exploited

while others on the underbelly of development remained neglected.

Owing first to the electric tram and later to private automobiles,

city center land prices stagnated for several decades; urban planners

and private lobbies consequently remained largely inactive. It was

only when the service sector expanded that urban centers rose in

88

value, and the present-day scope of urban planning was established.

After World War II, congested streets served as a pretext to sell off

inner-city properties, although such lots were then put to intensive

commercial use, which led in turn to further congestion. In the late

1960s, when mass motorization led to gridlock, and widening roads

became largely obsolete, urban planning turned to the refurbish-

ment of allegedly slum districts, and formed a new coalition in this

sector with the construction industry and investors. The question as

to who plans the planning therefore leads us today, to a parallelo-

gram of forces between the officials in power, construction industry

speculators, civic stakeholders, and the people affected by the mea-

sures undertaken.

For a time, the planner within this parallelogram remained un-

named. It may be instructive to reflect at this point on the history

of the planner’s career. In pursuing this history we come across the

distinction between engineering schools and lofty academia and

thus—in terms of fields of expertise—between civil and structural

engineering and—in terms of job descriptions—between the en-

gineer and the architect. The distinction persists to this day and,

in fact, the issue of modern urban planning appears to be driving

renewed polarization. Initially however, at least from the 1920s

through to the 1960s, the planner was an architect. This was of no

little consequence, given that an architect’s training is based on in-

tuitive decision-making. Both his university and his profession set

him tasks with more variables than propositions: and intuition is

the means by which such tasks are solved. The architect is trained to

reduce to its “essentials” any problem presented to him.

Of all the types of decision-making methods, intuition is the

one that differs most radically from the planning process (see Otto

Walter Haseloff on this). Yet we as a society have designated as

planner a representative of the very profession we have hitherto

89

trained to reach decisions intuitively. The technique of reducing

complex, interrelated issues to their essentials was revealed thereby

to be specious. The deterioration of our environment is nothing

but the sum of all that is brushed aside as inessential during the

planning process. Recognition of this fact owes much to the in-

sight of architecture students in the years 1967–70. Their fight for

educational reform was dedicated to the introduction of contextual

planning, to dealing with the information that the real architect is

meant actually to neglect. Unfortunately, the university framework

appears to be allergic to such an attack: it indulges the cult of all

that is handcrafted and irrational, the cult of the architect as a her-

ald of celestial salvation. It thereby abandons the field of rational

planning to other professions, which may well be better trained in

90

dealing with complex information yet whose knowledge of other,

equally essential areas is possibly patchy at best.

Collective decisions

We must not overlook the fact that dealing with planning means

dealing with collective processes of decision-making. The decision

of every person involved is implicated in his social setting; his per-

sonal decision-making style—based on rational criteria, or based

intuitively on sublimated experience—is given only subdued ex-

pression. If we wish to study such collective decisions we must look

to the findings of those sociologists who study organizations, and

attempt to apply to public administration a branch of science that

was developed mainly in and for the commercial sector.

The usual planning report consists of two unequal parts: first

comes a detailed analysis of the status quo, comprised of statistics,

interviews and inventories. An analytical component of this sort

easily contains tens of thousands or, in the case of extrapolations,

perhaps millions of data that remain extremely disparate and not

easily comparable, even when summarized. The second part of a

surveyor’s report proposes “a solution,” the construction of a sub-

way, for example. If one studies the link between the report’s two

parts, namely the technique by which its author reaches his con-

clusion—i.e., digests a range of disparate information and makes

a proposal—the link proves to be rather weak. The planner bases

his argument on two or three supposedly “essential” factors, and

pays no attention to the remaining information. His decision rests

therefore at best on intuition, at worst on something whispered in

91

his ear by a third party, yet probably on a compromise that ensues

from an organizational dynamic.

This dynamic is rooted in the subjective decision-making pro-

cesses that unfold both in an individual person and in a collective.

The heuristic phenomenon is evident already in the individual: he

knows which path he should take and which variants he may dis-

miss as inessential. His attitude can be explained in two ways. Wal-

ter Isard provides a rational explanation. He shows that every de-

cision-maker sees before his mind’s eye a ratings chart with which

he can gauge the probability of a reward or fame in the case of his

being right, and of disgrace and liability in the case of his being

wrong. Faced with two measures, one of which is likely to fail, and

the other to succeed, the planner will advocate the former—for its

failure will assure him less disgrace than success would assure him

fame. If it is highly likely a measure will fizzle out mid-way between

success and failure then activity will bring greater honor than in-

activity, so taking action will be advocated, and so on, and so forth.

Other explanations are premised on the decision-maker’s attitude

to his professional situation. They demonstrate that the planner’s

highest maxim is to attain, not the optimal result but an agreeable

social climate within his organization. So decisions are always a

compromise between that which is actually needed, and that which

one may expect the members of an organization to deliver in terms

of innovation or non-routine activities.

Studies have shown that a decision-maker who is part of a col-

lective ceases to exercise choice, not at the optimal moment but as

soon as he spots a solution that meets, however superficially, the

criteria for his objectives, as well as the criteria for his own personal

situation.

His own psychology thereby plays him a trick or two: his view

of reality and the value scale are adjusted so as to accord with the

92

decision he has already foreseen in secret. Moreover, the decision-

maker maneuvers himself subconsciously onto a one-way street: he

makes sure that extraneous circumstances alone shrink the number

of variants down to one.

But all these explanations based on the decision-making subject,

even when they take into account the individual’s situation within

the collective, overestimate the decisive moment. The decision is

triggered in time. There is an element of free choice only for the first

decisions but, in reality, such beginnings are impossible to locate,

have passed by unnoticed, or been consciously obscured. It is these

imperceptibly unfolding decision-making processes that we shall

now examine more closely.

A first defining force lies in naming the problem. Whoever spells

out the existence of a problem for the first time, likewise specifies

the means by which to combat it. To name an issue is to give it con-

tours, and naming contains the seeds of the remedy. For instance, to

establish that too many traffic accidents occur leads to an improve-

ment in ambulance services; to describe the situation of the elderly

leads to the construction of old people’s homes, and not to a general

rethink of housing policy; the discrimination faced by less able chil-

dren leads to the creation of schools for children with special needs,

attendance of which thwarts their future social advancement.

The issue or problem selected by the body politic has unclear

contours, initially. The traffic situation on the railroad station fore-

court may be catastrophic, but the remedy is more likely to be found

on the city margins, or even further a-field. The politician who takes

up the issue of the station forecourt must set limits however—and

in doing so, he determines the remedy. His description of hordes

of pedestrians snaking their way among honking vehicles instantly

evokes a vision of an underpass. All former resolve to redirect traf-

fic on the city margins, and to prioritize public transport is now

93

forgotten: a station underpass is built, and everything else stays the

same.

Stumbling from one stopgap measure to the next occasionally

brings a planning organization into disrepute. In order to restore

its reputation in the press and the public eye, the organization then

sets its sights on a master plan. A specialist is brought in to compile

a package of measures, implementation of which will improve the

city’s situation. Following the specialist’s departure however, the or-

ganization itself can decide in which order it wishes to proceed: it

states which measures will be realized immediately, and which will

be postponed indefinitely. This method ensures a plan exists, and

can be held up for public approval; yet it simultaneously destroys

the plan; for the desired objectives can be attained only by imple-

menting the specialist’s strategy as a complete package.

The organization has both a formal and an operative structure,

and these assign specific roles to individual members, who hence

pursue different courses of action. Above all however, it is hier-

archies that determine access to information. Better information

generates more effective arguments, and hence heightens the likeli-

hood of seeing something through successfully. This explains the

advantages that governments have over parliaments, and that sub-

ordinate positions have over the government. Any decision thus

reached will be ritualized in accordance with the customary formal

order, either by taking a vote, or by putting the responsibility on the

most senior person possible, who fails to realize the implications of

signing on the dotted line.

The tools of reason deployed within organizations allow the de-

monstrable, which is to say the quantifiable factors predominance

over all others. Common urban planning objectives (“traffic lique-

faction”) are therefore quantitative in character and are treated as

benchmarks moreover, although they compromise the pursuit of

94

other, more important objectives such as livability. Despite the pre-

dominance of quantifiable targets, the planner is wary of ever as-

sessing how successfully (or not) his targets are attained, or even of

describing any syndromes to which his measures give rise.

Until now, in a sense, we have enumerated the technical difficul-

ties encountered in decision-making. Yet decision-making organi-

zations also clearly have vested interests, and mechanisms to ensure

their own survival. The organization has an interest in maintain-

ing the status quo and its own security. It is aware however, that it

must accomplish something itself, in order to guarantee its secu-

rity. Its past successes therefore set the pattern for future action. In

consequence, the organization’s aspirations to greater security do

not hinder its actions but force its hand. Its transportation systems

continue to tear apart our cities; alleged slum clearance programs

destroy the social fabric of poorer districts, and put real estate in

the hands of developers; cars lured into the inner city by a profu-

sion of roads and parking lots block the city center, and pollute the

air. Decisions are taken, work continues, but each measure is just

one more in a series of would-be success stories. The organization,

given its inability to adapt, must pursue the policies it has opted for,

although they can spell death for the city.

After all that has been said so far, it may look as if planning is

wholly in the hands of state agencies and a few companies or indi-

viduals with vested interests, such as civil engineers and investors.

Yet this state of affairs could never persist, had it not the support

of the majority population. In the growth-oriented and inflationary

ambience of the last two decades, large numbers of the middle-

class have learned that mere activism is beneficial also to them,

even without their direct involvement. In a relatively short time,

this class has abandoned listless conservatism in favor of a blind

faith in economic progress that certainly has nothing at all in com-

95

mon with political progressiveness. The naysayers have become yes-

men, and the morose critics applauding admirers of every material

innovation.

The bourgeois credo—that prosperity cannot be attained with-

out hard years of investment—is applied in turn to the hectic con-

struction and refurbishment programs underway in our cities. Our

cities have become construction sites accessible only via heaps of

dirt, planks, and hastily filled-in ditches, or by circumventing ex-

tensive barriers. The initiators thereby manage to persuade resi-

dents that this is nothing more than an investment phase, following

completion of which the cities will be much more comfortable to

walk or drive through—as if the respective traffic problem might

“be solved.” Locating public transport underground and thereby

freeing up the city streets for private traffic—plus the ring roads,

radial highways, and central underground parking lots that this

implies—only gives rise to a further problem, one that eats its way

persistently from the inner city outwards, gradually depleting then

completely destroying the livability of poorer neighborhoods on the

city’s former outskirts: yet this doesn’t bother the applauding class

at all, for it has long since put itself and its children at a safe dis-

tance, far away in the new suburbs; and it now uses the city only as

a stomping ground for business and pleasure.

The voices of the pawns on the drawing board

It is, to say the least, agreeable for planners to gain the consent of

at least some of the people affected by their plans. Implementation

of a plan may be menaced even, if objections pile up. The consent

96

of the people concerned must either be ferreted out—or manu-

factured. Ferreting it out requires that sociology be incorporated

in the planning process, while manufacturing consent relies on the

Human Relations methods, which is to say, on propaganda for a

more positive social climate, and on other, tougher means.

Human Relations methods seek to appear enlightened. They

are based on the notion that information is “neutral,” as well as

on democratic means of conflict resolution such as the press, and

political activism. Yet supposedly unbiased information is indeed

biased, all the way down to its harmless-looking scale models

built of Plexiglas, cardboard and little fake green trees. Among the

tougher methods we count the “advice” given to the parties con-

cerned, whenever state officials pay them a visit. The way in which

carrot and stick are applied in such cases is generally strictly off the

record, and may only be guessed at after the event. While Germa-

ny’s “Städtebauförderungsgesetz” (law on promoting urban devel-

opment) is designed to foster the compilation of data on attitudes

towards, and interest in participatory planning processes among

“landlords, tenants, leaseholders, and other authorized users in the

area of proposed refurbishment under consideration,” such laws

and regulations are generally of precious little use. Public admin-

istrations since the time of the ancien régime have known how to

manufacture public consent.

In recent years, sociological surveys or opinion polls have often

been put to grave misuse. Comprehensive literature is available on

the validity of opinion polls yet planners and planning sociologists

ignore such expertise, and experiment instead with primitive meth-

ods of questioning, along the lines of: “Are you satisfied with your

apartment?”—Yes! No! Don’t know! The results—satisfaction lev-

els of over 90 percent, mostly—are evidently meaningless. Proof

enough lies in the fact that the level of satisfaction is all the higher,

97

the worse the living standards are in the place the question is put.

This can be explained both in psychological and political terms.

Psychologically, it is a case of “dissonance reduction:” as a human

being cannot stand any dissonance between the (idealized) target

state and current reality of an intimate space such as his home, he

bridges the gap between his wish and reality by painting things

rosier than they are. And he heaps upon the interviewer the same

arguments he uses to convince himself. At the political level, it is

the lack of an alternative that leads to consent. For most people,

refurbishment means the loss of their apartment, relocation to a

new location, and a higher rent. So why on earth would anyone

ever hesitate to declare his satisfaction with his old, run-down sur-

roundings?

A further step towards addressing people’s problems is advocacy

planning, which has been discussed so far in German-speaking

countries mainly by the journal ARCH+ (issues 8–10, 1969–70). Ad-

vocacy planning at least dispels the myth that the planner might

make objective judgments, independently of all the parties con-

cerned. It is more likely that advocates of the concerned parties

will negotiate a decision on their behalf, i.e. consider consciously

subjective opinions. But weighty arguments that cast doubt on the

efficacy of advocacy planning can also be brought into play: for one,

it is questionable whether the advocate, a member of the academic

upper middle-class, can really get to the heart of the problems faced

by members of other social classes. So he may present them with

options that lie beyond their personal frame of reference. And,

thirdly, not even the advocate can guarantee complete transparency,

and the indirect consequences of interventions will reveal them-

selves only over time.

Some cities have followed Munich’s lead in setting up so-called

citizens’ forums, at which planners’ proposals are discussed openly.

98

Although only a fraction of the population attends such forums,

they do help raise public awareness of the impact of planning. The

public administration proved itself quick to learn in this case how-

ever: the funding that allows such forums to flourish is synonymous

with the destruction of their emancipatory potential.

Finally, it must also be asked, who these people concerned or

affected by planning actually are. The line can be drawn very clearly

in certain cases, for example, in the case of the inhabitants of a

slum “under development”—meaning, one about to be razed to the

ground. To deduce the composition of social groups that have yet to

be moved to an area is more difficult. Does “the people concerned”

in this case mean those already resident in an area, or those who

have yet to arrive? The latter may still reside in other towns, or be

minors, or not even born yet. This demonstrates that democratic

planning consists not in rash decision-making but rather, in the

planned postponement of any and all decisions that can be post-

poned, to the general benefit of residents who will arrive on the

scene only later, or with new needs. This methodical postponement

of decisions is an art in which those who plan the planning are

barely versed at present. It too, is no fast track to fame.

Demands for advocacy planning are underpinned by the notion

that underprivileged social classes are unable to articulate their own

concerns. As long as it is not a case of false consciousness—and ad-

vocates are the last people who might rectify this, if it is—the ability

to voice one’s own terms and conditions is universal. Any difficul-

ties that arise are rooted in translation issues: those “planned” live

in their own reality, just as those authorized to plan do. Subjective

reality—the way any individual claims to see reality—is a conse-

quence of his education in society and hence, a social construct.

99

Planning is not autonomous

We now need to deal with planners themselves, and hence to

consider class-specific interpretations of the environment. These

originate in one’s family, social class or schooling, but also have

a professional dimension in that they are points of view learned

or unlearned in the course of one’s studies or on-the-job training.

Very often a third factor comes into play, namely “experience,”

which many of those authorized to take decisions gained actually

in the course of a military career, or even in wartime; and which

imparted to them not only a quite peculiar view of their fellow

men but, most importantly, allowed any deed or decision taken

rashly, on their sole responsibility, to be presumed automatically to

be correct. To assume sole responsibility that cannot in reality be

borne is part and parcel of the planner’s sense of reality. Yet such

responsibility is a blank check, for misjudged planning cannot be

reversed; and urban residents driven out of their old districts can

no more be returned there than victims of war can be brought back

to life.

The attitude to life expressed by the middle-class proverbs—“A

man forges his own destiny,” “Whoever dares, wins,” etc.—acquires

a particularly volatile dimension in the public arena. While the pri-

vate individual vouches with his person and property for his profit

and losses, success in the public arena brings more fame than failure

brings liability, for failure can be covered up, blamed on someone

up the ladder, or brazenly recast as a success story. Urban planning

therefore proceeds from measure to measure, with no regard for

the strategic planning that a city actually requires. Careful main-

tenance of a historical district is not on the decision-maker’s hori-

zon; demolition and new construction on the other hand appear to

100

be perfect solutions. The “redevelopment” of the Dörfle district of

Karlsruhe is a case in point: a misconceived bypass road isolated the

district, and its roadside margins became inhospitable slums. The

city believed it had to intervene, to purchase and tear down every-

thing along the roadside. In consequence, the next row of buildings

became a slum, and so was purchased and torn down, just like the

first; and this continued until there was a gaping hole in the inner

city. Neither local planners nor politicians were prepared to admit

that they personally had created the problem they were so busily

attempting to solve.

The urban planner’s sciences and auxiliary sciences—urban ge-

ography, urban sociology, planning theory, planning methodology

and planning strategy—have made advances in recent years. Yet

how they are applied depends always on the character of the per-

son doing the planning. That we are unable to distinguish clearly

between the planner and the apparently superordinate authorities

to which he is answerable has already been stated. Insofar, planning

is not autonomous but part of a social system; and members of a

collective or other organization carry it out.

We are currently seeing planning theory and the participatory

concept make steady headway, side by side. Planning theories feign

objectivity, and thereby tempt the authorities to suppress public

participation with all its shifting unpredictability. The authorities,

on the other hand, are probabilistic: as human beings they are adap-

tive, egocentric, comradely, or otherwise “falsely programmed;” they

work in an organization that has its own specific group dynamics,

and their decisions are not ascertainable but float freely in time.

Technical planning is insofar hemmed in on two sides: on the one

side by democratization and participation or, expressed in techno-

cratic terms, by the will to see things through; and on the other, by

the decision-makers.

101

Planning therefore comprises not only that which technicians

plan. To reflect on urban planning means therefore, not (only) to

study the newest theories on housing density or traffic manage-

ment; it is primarily a matter of giving much broader consideration

to the ways in which local authorities make plans to change their

environment. That this process is nourished by objective knowledge

is to be hoped; that it will become a science is an illusion.

102

Family and Home—Two Adaptable Systems (1975)

It is impossible for the average human mind to harmonize two mo-

bile systems without recourse to tools. Therefore, in each design—

whether we are designing the type of family and lifestyle we want,

or our apartment—one system must be fixed so that we can keep

the other mobile. For most people, the apartment is the fixed sys-

tem—what they find on the housing market is an apartment with

specific dimensions and walls—and the family alone is mobile. And

so they are obliged to design a way of living together in their apart-

ment that can be pursued without the family suffering any damage,

or falling apart.

Mobile and fixed

A select few exist also, who believe they have the freedom to deter-

mine the ground plan personally. They have the architect come by,

and they order a villa—just like in a picture book. Then the other

system, namely the family, is shut down. The architect inquires

about the size of the family and its hobbies—stamps or racing

pigeons—then asks how old the eldest daughter is, and the second,

and the third. The ground plan is adjusted subsequently to meet the

family’s needs precisely. But by the time the family moves into the

house, it already has a different form than when the architect took

notes.

103

I intend to challenge the myth that says, the precise program

gives rise to good architecture based on precise wishes, and precisely

expressed needs. This myth pulls the wool over the eyes not only of

those who build villas, but also of those responsible for the architec-

ture of the entire welfare sector—of all those, in a word, who know

so precisely what other people need.

Building allegedly solves problems

By way of contrast, I wish to point out the importance, firstly, of the

dynamic processes of adjustment that set in once a building is com-

plete, which I’ll call for now the post-construction processes (What

happens in a house once it is a fixed structure?); and, secondly, of

the pre-construction processes (Why was this particular building

program selected? Why was it decided to build a house at all?).

Many buildings come about, not because a building is required but

because construction allegedly solves problems. And these prob-

lems floating around in space have the strange tendency to suggest

to people at certain moments, they would be solved if something

were built. When one talks about these processes, which always

have a temporal aspect, one can do so in terms of the following:

—in terms of formal and legal relationships: housing is an in-

stitution;

—in terms of actual indications, i.e. what happens within the

group inhabiting an apartment, and what external relationships

does it have; housing is a language;

—in terms of the housing market (i.e. economics): housing is a

system.

104

Housing is an institution

I would like the word institution to be understood in a sociological

rather than a concrete sense. Of course, one does think of walls first

of all, of the building itself, but that is not the essence of an insti-

tution. Rather, a network of relationships is its essence: the legal

principles, patterns of behavior, and expectations with which people

are confronted. That is essential. A hospital is an institution yet it is

a stone structure only in the lesser sense. First and foremost it is a

network of relationships, in which people expect certain things of

one another. It has a different hierarchy than other places do; peo-

ple in white coats are in charge there; and this applies only within,

not outside the institution.

Housing is also such an institution. We can use a current slogan

(if we view housing as one of our most important environments):

“Environments are invisible.” Our environment does not consist of

all that we can see but of legal relationships or, for example, of a

residential location’s “good reputation” (one needs a “good address”),

and then of the neighborhood, and its institutions. Then the lease is

also a part of that invisible institution “apartment,” as is its appendix

of house rules defining things one cannot see: whether and when

one may enter certain spaces, for example. These are all important

factors in our invisible environment. They determine our lifestyle

just as radically as walls do.

Moreover, the inner life of the apartment is also an institution.

The group of residents there may be described as a network of

mutually attuned behavior patterns. And the group must settle in

now, in conditions dictated once and for all by the existing walls,

rooms, doors, corridors and fixed usages. The family molds its shape

to fit the ground plan; it tries to find a form of existence that is

105

viable under the conditions the ground plan imposes. Certain be-

havior patterns crystallize immediately, in order to facilitate the

“survival” of the old family in its new situation.

The wrong home set-up

The phenomenon of families seeming to set up home wrongly must

be mentioned here too. The way they install themselves and their

belongings reveals the difficulties they face in adapting the com-

plex institution “family” to the conditions imposed by a specific

ground plan. What we may call the “wrong” set-up in the home is

the group’s only possible form of survival when compelled to reside

in a design that is patently unsuited to its needs.

A typical indication of the institutional character of the fam-

ily, or of any group of inhabitants, is how rarely they rearrange the

furniture. In German and French at least, the word for furniture is

related to the word “mobile,” so one could be excused for thinking

furniture was meant to be moved around. But that is not so simple,

and even less so when it comes to that which architects praise as

the pinnacle of modern living, and on which they would be willing

to expend very large sums of money, namely mobile walls. The few

trial apartments built with mobile walls have had a sorry outcome

(sorry for the person who paid for, or built them): mobile walls are

moved only very rarely.

106

Truce

It seems to me that the failure to make use of built-in flexibility is

rooted in the strongly institutionalized relationships of a group, for

a group is not a peaceful structure but one ridden by permanent

conflict, owing to the fact that its members develop and change:

children grow older, criticize their parents, and face strife. The

group struggles to maintain its fragile balance, and must therefore

declare a truce of sorts. And in order to maintain this truce it needs

the constancy of the home environment. Here, a wall may be as

flexible as it likes but it will still be extraordinarily difficult to tell

the daughter, we are going to move the wall a meter to the left so

you will have four square meters less, for you are home only rarely.

Your brother, on the other hand, has begun to study, and now needs

four square meters more. So hands on, everybody; let us lift the

wall, and move it. This causes a huge row of course. So one prefers

to suffer discomfort for a while, and an only rarely used room, in

order to maintain the group’s dynamic equilibrium a little longer,

and not threaten it by making changes.

Similar problems arise in connection with those well-meant,

additional facilities in housing situations known as “extensions of

the apartment:” the corridor forecourt, the stairwells, gardens and

parks, and the hobby room in the basement.

107

Now use the hobby room

Why doesn’t anyone use the hobby room? Why doesn’t anyone step

on the lawn, even though he is allowed to? Also when it comes to

these semi-public institutions, which belong neither to the public

nor the private sphere, one senses other people’s expectations, or

criticisms of one’s behavior, and refrains therefore from laying a

claim to the semi-public sphere; from grabbing one’s toolbox one

fine day, for example, and retreating to the hobby room to build

oneself a table while everyone looks on and thinks: Well now, there

goes Burckhardt, off in broad daylight to the hobby room with his

toolbox, and stepping on the lawn while he is at it! These are the

difficulties we face in connection with the semi-public spaces that

were touted as an upgrade of our housing.

Housing is a language

The second perspective to consider is not wholly unrelated to the

aforementioned one. Housing is a language. Or: to dwell is to speak.

The polemic here seeks to dispel the assumption that to dwell is

simply a means to satisfy needs. To dwell some place does indeed

satisfy needs, but it does so largely, above and beyond the physio-

logical minimum. We do not spend our nights under the arches. We

live in apartments. To live this way expresses a lifestyle: it is a lan-

guage. We consider ourselves prisoners of convention, and we look

at other nations, nomads in tents for example, and imagine they

have no such conventions. Ethnologists report that the conventions

108

there are even more rigid than anywhere else, and language, the

expression of dwelling, more strictly defined.

A sewing machine in a symbolic grid

A research report on Mongolian yurts (round tents) discussed the

symbolism of space distribution in their interior. Modern objects

are assigned a precise place, even before they are purchased. When

a nomad buys a sewing machine, for instance, she knows exactly

where she must place it in the tent. A symbolic, two-dimensional

grid runs through the tent’s interior: the space from the entrance

through to the rear becomes increasingly ceremonial while the

transition from male to female space runs from left to right. The

sewing machine is therefore placed on the right-hand side of the

central zone. Such symbolic zoning can be called language.

Another example: in an apartment, we experience a room height

of 3.80 m as beautiful and agreeable. Others consider it unreason-

able; to them, nowadays, given that 90 percent of us live in newly

built homes with a room height of 2.50 m, high-ceilinged rooms

symbolize decadence. If a low, suspended ceiling has not yet been

installed in such a house, it is impossible to live there. This is a

purely linguistic problem.

109

I sit here when I read

None of us live in spaces as large as we would like. Housing is

reduced in any case; it is a compromise between the full extent of

whatever we would like to show off, and the actual area that we

have leased or purchased. In an experiment with young people aged

between 17 and 19, they were asked to draft their dream apartment,

regardless of size and cost. I admit such experiments may be some-

what questionable. But it was remarkable, how space was “occupied

symbolically.” These young people drew one large area then devoted

a field within this living space to a single activity. They said: I sit

here and listen to music. Then they circled a different field: I sit

here when I read. And next to that: We go here when friends drop

by. One might also overlap these pastimes. But they spread their

activities over the surface area.

This demonstrates that reality compels us to provide for overlap

in the apartments in which we live. The history of the middle-class

and the working-class apartment is a history superimposed on the

old, upper-middle-class house with its dining room, drawing room,

parlor and kitchen. In modern housing we overlap all that: we make

compromises. However practical these may be, they have an impact

on language, on the statement an apartment makes. The field is no

longer described precisely; it is occupied by several activities. Lan-

guage in its pure form is no longer present. Those overlaps such as

are suggested to us by welfare sector architects, on the premise that

they know how we shall live, endanger, obliterate or breach that

which I call the language of dwelling, namely our sense of what

should be where. They breach “popular domestic culture,” to resort

to a dangerous term; breach the expressive dimension that people

have come to agree on, in allotting certain activities to certain rooms.

110

Presentation of self in everyday life

One’s housing is a means to express oneself: one wants to present

oneself to one’s self, to the group and to friends. This presentation

of self in everyday life must have an action margin. This is also the

reason why functionalist endeavors in the 1930s, to create housing

on the basis of an existence minimum, were ipso facto failed at-

tempts. For housing’s potential as a means of expression goes hand

in hand with the inalienable right to a living wage. Particular fea-

tures thereby play only a limited role. We know that many features

of living are highly substitutable. We need those features that exist

beyond the existence minimum—but exactly which of them we

need remains uncertain. When looking for an apartment, bad heat-

ing may be less important than a beautiful balcony—or vice versa.

We have the choice between endless apartments that offer some

advantage, i.e. a plus; but which also have drawbacks, deficiencies.

Apparently, deficiencies and pluses—things that have nothing at

all to do with one another—are highly substitutable, because they

exist beyond the existence minimum level, and allow us a margin

of self-expression.

Speechlessness

What our modern welfare sector architecture offers today is the

destruction of this language, of the potential for self-expression

inherent to housing. This leads to speechlessness. New apartments

remind me of the alienated language the playwright Kroetz has his

111

actors spout: one converses only in prefabricated phrases derived

from TV and advertising; ones plies these fragments, these shreds

of language, and is hence speechless, and therefore indecisive too,

and incapable of communication. The effect of all this—an effect

known to anyone who ever pursued sociological research—is that

people everywhere are always satisfied with their housing, which is

to say, they are speechless on the subject of housing. Every hous-

ing construction company therefore has a report in a drawer some-

where: a report on an expensive survey, which states that all the resi-

dents of new housing estates are satisfied with their housing. This

satisfaction certainly has many roots. People are afraid of change—

and rightly so. In older housing they are afraid of modernization.

They believe its results would be worse than their present situation.

Some are afraid also of being given notice to leave. Ultimately how-

ever, such satisfaction is “real” satisfaction insofar as any expression

of discontent has been rendered impossible—by the destruction of

housing’s potential as a means of expression.

Housing is a system

Modern architects say the apartment is a technical commodity, like

a car. This comparison is admissible indeed, because the housing

sector is comparable to the car industry. It is a complex of things

that happen now to be this way, or that. And because they are this

way, or that, they cannot be changed. Cars imply roads, gas stations,

the oil trade, oil sheiks, the civil engineering lobby, and politicians

who want to build roads. It is a system in which we are enmeshed,

and from which we are unable to extricate ourselves. If this triangu-

112

lar system comprised by the car industry, fuel production, and road

construction is affected at any one point, the alarm bell sounds at all

three of its points. It is impossible to change anything in this sector.

This system intersects with aspects of the housing sector too, insofar

as more expensive housing is being built now beyond the city limits,

and inner-city housing is being demolished; and this is also a result

of road construction, and of the excessive development of urban

terrain. Almost all new satellite cities are built in the very locations

where no one ought to live. It seems to be a rule of urban plan-

ning that non-designated land be used nonetheless as residential

land, and vice versa, i.e. that as far as the bigger players in housing

construction are concerned, any greenfield site earmarked for resi-

dential development, and reasonably accessible by public transport,

does not come into question for development; whereas any land the

city planners may have earmarked for green or recreational pur-

poses is now where the larger suburbs are built. And these are then

accessible by car. Here, the two systems clearly intersect.

Carpet dealers

A great deal depends on the housing system. The apartment build-

ing is a strange bundle of assets. It consists of durable assets such

as walls, and very short-lived assets, such as carpets. The new hous-

ing construction companies are virtually carpet dealers. They sell a

short-term asset fully integrated in a long-term asset. The carpet

trade is quasi part and parcel of the housing system.

Domestic infrastructure comprises a further subsystem that can-

not possibly be altered. Everything is as it is. Everyone knows that

113

it could be made accessible to the user. To personally install and

alter electrical circuits and plumbing is a perfectly feasible proposi-

tion. But the impossibility of accessing these amenities oneself is

a characteristic of the system—and also assures the high income

of those who do so on one’s behalf. For example, one could design

water pipes able to be interlinked, like a garden hose, by carabiner

clasps. Nor do I need 220 volts, for I would drop dead if I were to

touch those circuits. In the car I have 6 or 12 volts, and just as much

light nevertheless. It is a characteristic of the system that the user is

not allowed to touch it.

The legal system is likewise integrated in the housing system.

Anyone who alters something in his apartment is punished. If he

maintains his house in good repair, the money he invests is lost to

him. A prudent man therefore lets his apartment rot. That is the

reason practically the entire housing stock built before World War I

is now falling apart: the inhabitant would be an idiot to lift a finger

to save it. This is something that could be changed, but it is integral

to the housing system.

Where does one find greenfield sites?

Architectural training is also largely an integral component of this

way of thinking about buildings. The conventional task students are

set is to construct a new building on a greenfield site. Where does

one find greenfield sites? One either buys land that has not been

earmarked for development, or one tears down old houses. This

approach encourages students to destroy resources, and to create

new, superfluous objects. In this regard, professional training is an

114

appendage to the housing system. To inhabit a house is a process-

based affair. It is based on the adaptive processes that occur both

within the group of inhabitants, and in the apartment itself. This

process has a systemic character; like all complex systems, it can

become blocked. At certain points I can proceed no further. The

systems are too large, and too interdependent.

115

Urban Design and Its Significance for Residents (1975)

People would be hard put to come up with a word to match our

German word “Gestalt.”¹ It says a great deal, and veils even more.

Its implicit assertion, that “the whole is greater than the sum of

its parts,” is fruitful; yet it fails to convey that to make a whole of

various parts is not a natural process but a social act, an act which

reflects history, culture, hegemony and education.

How modern this concept of the city as a conscious design, as

a planned object or cityscape is, and how tightly interwoven it is

with our—possibly Romantic—way of seeing becomes evident

when we try to glean from the historical travelogues of Montaigne,

Felix Platter, or even of such a late author as Madame de Staël,

something of the appearance of the cities they visited. We learn the

name of the city as well as that of the river on which it stands—

both are traced back to their Latin roots perhaps—then we learn

about the churches. Some Roman antiquities are sure to be men-

tioned and, before we know it, we are on nodding terms with sev-

eral more or less famous personalities. The cityscape corresponds to

the pictograms of an artist such as Matthäus Merian. His etchings

appear to render urban form visible; in reality they collate informa-

tion about the actual location, fortifications, major churches and

curiosities of a place. Baedeker takes a very different angle: human

1 The German word “Gestalt” has several meanings, among which number design, form, guise, cast and stature.

116

beings vanish, except when in the guise of the typical “Volk” or

commoners. Buildings and streets, especially historic ones, acquire

importance. It is they, taken as a whole, which constitute the pic-

turesque and photogenic city—which admittedly encompasses

only the inner city. Actual residential areas, villa districts and so-

cial housing projects, to say nothing of supermarkets, are not yet

an object of “urban design,” or part of the cityscape as such, even

today.

The cityscape as seen by the city resident is a construct too, which

is to say, an image engendered by learning processes that unfold in

a social setting. The resident’s city differs from that of the tourist

presumably inasmuch as the resident processes a greater amount of

information to a lesser degree of picturesqueness. The resident has a

more precise knowledge of the city than the visitor, but he feels no

need to distill what he knows into a souvenir image. It is more likely

that familiar features—the street he lives in, his workplace, local

shops, his Sunday excursions—are fixed in his mind’s eye solely for

the purpose of getting about the place, in a skeleton framework

whose extreme form is the subway map. A series of research proj-

ects on this theme have shown that a resident takes his bearings

from features of relevance to him personally, i.e. those that foster or

prohibit his activities. Conspicuous landmarks that play no part in

his personal sphere are registered consciously, only when no other

pointers are available.

Beyond this personal experience of the environment, the resi-

dent’s cityscape is no different than that of the tourist. He describes

his city by drawing on those very clichés established by the local

tour guide or tourism office. The familiar hometown, which one

tends a priori to regard as nothing out of the ordinary, is imbued

with flair thanks to foreign forces, and to the slogans coined to

market it: “The City of Gorgeous Gables,” for example, or “The

117

Ruhr District’s Showcase.” A resident adopts such slogans, even

if he has no personal experience of the feature in question but has

heard simply, that other people set great store by it.

This leads to an important insight. The resident observing parts

of his city is unsure how to interpret them whenever he comes

across phenomena that have no relevance to his own life, which is

to say, no social relevance. Picturesqueness alone, combined with

existential irrelevance, is not conducive to legibility. Such parts of

the city or architectural structures are read more easily in terms

of secondary characteristics, which are more indicative of the so-

cial background. A residential street lined—from the connoisseur’s

viewpoint—with striking nineteenth-century buildings, let’s say, is

judged by any passer-by one cares to ask, in terms either of the

make of car parked in front of the buildings, or the matter of how

well-kept, neglected or full of trash their front yards may be. And

it is such secondary characteristics, in fact, which tell us something

about the street’s current social significance.

For any city resident unbiased by knowledge of art history the

objects in question are significant, not as architectural monuments

but as institutions. The city resident’s visible environment is there-

fore only of secondary importance; the invisible circumstances that

shape his environment are of much greater relevance. What types

of people live here? How high is the rent? Who owns the house?

What are the house rules? Are children allowed to make noise?

Are the local shops affordable? Will the street be considered a

good address when I apply for a job? This sort of information out-

weighs by far the fact that the street was built around 1880, or that

its style reflects English Neo-Gothic of the 1840s, which derived

in turn from certain Tudor revivals in eighteenth-century English

castles. Given this primacy of the “invisible” dimension, the appar-

ently contradictory insights acquired through primarily sociological

118

research (such as that of Herbert J. Gans),² and primarily cognitive

research (in Kevin Lynch’s sense of the term),³ seem to me to lead

to the same results.

If we acknowledge, in consequence, that the city resident’s envi-

ronment is first and foremost a social environment, and that urban

design has a role to play only insofar as it conveys social informa-

tion, and hence a sense of social belonging, we can now hazard

certain conclusions that perhaps throw some light on what has hap-

pened to our cities and their residents over the last two decades. We

all know the score: land not earmarked for construction became

the most sought after location; residential buildings shot up like

mushrooms on cheap land in places neglected by public transport

planning; and the state reneged on its lovely plans, namely by open-

ing up undeveloped land between major traffic arteries to private

traffic, and neglecting public transport in the already built-up areas.

The repercussions for the city center were catastrophic. The areas

devoted to traffic tore apart the inner cities to an extent such that

the center, hitherto a compact destination, completely fell apart;

and all that remained was parking lots and department stores, along

with some older apartment buildings on odd lots, which have long

since been in the hands of speculators and are leased generally to

immigrant workers. What information does a city in this condition

convey to its residents?

From 1957 to 1967, that decade of planning and economic opti-

mism known also as the Golden Sixties, public applause for such

2 Herbert J. Gans, The Levittowners: Ways of Life and Politics in a New Suburban Community, Routledge & Kegan Paul, New York 1960/ Random House, New York 1967. For more on Gans and Lynch, cf. also the paper “On the Design of Everyday Life.”

3 Kevin Lynch, The Image of the City, MIT Press, Cambridge MA 1960.

119

development was still forthcoming. Profiteers were numerous,

and only a very few felt the damage, namely those young married

couples or new arrivals in town in search of an apartment, who

ultimately had to move into the most expensive and least favorably

situated housing developments. Anyone who already had an apart-

ment still paid a low rent, and benefited moreover from the wage

raises that had to be granted, given the higher rent levels in the

growing number of new apartments on offer.

Only in the late 1960s, the era of youth revolts, wildcat strikes,

and environmental shock did this state of affairs begin to change.

Large sections of the population were affected by developments,

because either their apartment had been demolished, or their street

was threatening to turn into a slum, or to drop considerably in value

owing to the amount of traffic whizzing by. The city had become

the enemy. In London, under the rallying cry “Let us be,” ad hoc

residents’ committees marched in protest against every new initia-

tive launched by the authorities. In Turin, in the summer of 1967,

workers at FIAT rose against the city authorities, and were bloodily

beaten down by police on the Corso Traiano. In 1968, the city of

Paris was brought to a standstill for more than the month of May.

Youth revolts in German cities, which were partly the outcome of

social disintegration, simply strengthened the resolve of other city

residents to turn their backs on the city. Like it or not, the city

resident realized that urban life is a viable proposition even without

setting foot in the city. In the triangle between suburban residence,

shopping center and workplace ghetto, a form of existence came

into being, far removed from anything the aesthete still imagines

“urban design” to mean.

The question of urban design consequently took a back seat to

the question: Will cities even continue to exist? Optimists in the

fields of technology and media development had envisaged that

120

information systems would take the place of cities, quasi as a nat-

ural progression. They believed city life would be possible in the

future also in isolation, for social contacts would be able to be main-

tained successfully, regardless of one’s location. However, we have

seen no signs as yet, to suggest the media are developing as tools of

democratic debate. It is truer to say, they continue to represent the

one-way street of indoctrination, permitting a response only when

it suits their agenda. Moreover, the car-free Sundays introduced

during the oil crisis in the winter of 1973–74, illustrated very clearly

this new, rural “urban dweller’s” lack of independence, and the level

of isolation he suffers once the trade in motor cars, to which public

transport has been sacrificed, shows its true face.

Meanwhile, however, given the menaced, slum-ridden city cen-

ters wrecked either by the economic boom or by its counterpart, the

crash, we face the grave problem of preserving the city. Preserving

the city in the first instance implies landmark restoration, which is

to say, the care and maintenance of cultural heritage. How worthy

of preservation a building is deemed to be, depends on art histori-

cal factors as well as on its picturesque context, or anecdotal city

history. Landmark restoration insofar accomplishes only a fraction

of what actually needs to be done, namely to preserve the city also

as a place fit to live in. The issues therefore are, for one, to save the

still quite considerable reserves of comfortable and affordable liv-

ing space in our inner cities and, secondly, to put this preservation

strategy on a firm footing, by creating social conditions that make

the city viable not only for extravagant bachelors, student couples

and immigrant workers, but also for average members of the popu-

lation with their normal age and family structures. We showed at

the start of this paper, that the prerequisites of doing so lie only to a

limited extent in the visible dimension, which is to say, in “physical

planning.”

121

If, in this regard, we assert that the legibility of the environment

has little to do with architecture per se, but a great deal to do with a

building’s current function—viz., that an imposing building may be

redundant in social terms, and a modest one currently of major im-

portance—the question arises as to why anyone ever strives to cre-

ate good architecture? Or, in other words: What is design? Archi-

tectural and social significance have coincided at certain moments

in history, perhaps purely by fluke. Such good fortune in any event

allows us a brief glimpse of Paradise; what becomes visible is the

ideal of a society rid of conflict and living in harmony with its self-

built environment; without history, certainly, but happy (perhaps).

In our constantly shifting society, such buildings immediately be-

come monuments; they become historical because history refutes

the supposedly happy moment, and exposes its contradictory foun-

dations. So buildings of the past, thanks to their design and frag-

mented condition, make us aware of the shifts in power relations

that lie behind us, and of those that lie ahead.

To recapitulate briefly: urban design as such does not exist; rather,

it is a construct, the outcome of how we have learned to interpret

whatever we see. For the eye schooled in art history, visible elements

merge in a certain design; for the average city resident, social rela-

tions constitute the environment. The latter primarily reads this, his

own environment, not in terms of architecture but in terms of the

secondary characteristics that inform him about the current use and

ranking of streets and neighborhoods.

The destruction of cityscapes has progressed to an extent such

that large sections of the population who pursue an “urban” lifestyle

no longer experience the city—or experience it only as a stomp-

ing ground for commercial activities, or for male indulgence in vice

and danger. Family life between the private suburban residence, the

workplace, and the shopping mall is no replacement for the city

122

however. To preserve and revive the city is therefore primarily a

matter, not simply of caring for historic buildings but of creating an

urban environment that fosters a strong sense of community.

123

Gardening—An Art and A Necessity (1977)

Gardening is an art—and so as to not discourage anyone we must

immediately declare that gardening is Everyman’s art! Gardening is

an art even when the artist is unaware he is making art: in allow-

ing a plant to prosper here, pruning one there, and tearing up that

one by the roots in order to plant it elsewhere, or to trash it, he

is not merely composting but composing too: composing a three-

dimensional image, his garden.

The philosopher Immanuel Kant considered “pleasure garden-

ing,” as he called it, the supreme art. For it best fulfilled the demand

he made of art: to portray a thing purposefully, to no purpose. The

ostensible need for a well-tended garden—and this includes also

any garden kept in meticulous disorder—appears purposeful, even

if there is no harvest (for admittedly, Kant was not speaking here of

the kitchen garden).

This view of the garden as art instantly poses rather difficult

questions, namely as to what a garden actually portrays or, to be

more precise: as to what representation is, and as to what is repre-

sented? Probably there are as many answers to that as there are

epochs. The urban dweller with a yearning for nature today portrays

something other in his garden than the urban dweller did in medi-

eval times, for the latter fled nature to seek protection in a walled

city. And a French nobleman living off his land at the time of the

ancien régime, had another sort of garden laid out before his palace

than the English banker of today, who makes his money in the City,

and whose property is sheer luxury. It is this latter “English” Garden

that Kant probably had in mind, when he ascribed to it “purpose-

124

fulness, to no purpose.” The English garden represents agriculture,

without actually being any such thing.

In any case, the major concern seems always to be how to depict

a natural wilderness in its tamed state, or to make tamed nature

look wild—whereby a little of both is shown generally: a mix of

artifice and naturalness, rather than just the one extreme. Rous-

seau, who is generally held to be the prophet of naturalness, also

noted how artificial an image of nature the New Heloise¹ conjured

in her overgrown garden wilderness: “Such great endeavor made to

conceal endeavor…” utters an astonished guest in the New Heloise,

after being shown the two palace gardens by the lord and lady of

the palace—and this attests to Rousseau’s mocking yet discerning

eye for the paradoxical nature of naturalness. In front of the palace,

the Baron has transformed a former stately garden into a kitchen

garden by replacing chestnut tree-lined avenues with a grove of

mulberry bushes. Behind the palace, the Baroness has transformed

the kitchen garden into a nature garden by allowing clematis to

clamber in profusion over the fruit trees, and by diverting a natural

spring to create a pond. Neither garden bears any trace of the effort

its creation had required…

The official art of gardening is stuck with this same dichotomy

still today, although several stories down, in cultural terms. For

years if not decades, all public and otherwise emblematic grounds

and gardens have alternated between two styles that commingle

in manifold ways: the painterly style, which is a variously blended

legacy of the English respectively the Japanese respectively the

Romantic garden; and the architectonic style, which is an equally

1 Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Julie; or the New Héloise, Marc-Michel Rey, Amsterdam 1761.

125

eclectic offspring of the Baroque garden, flowerbeds, and the early

Romanticism of Art Nouveau gardens, with a dash of the “kidney-

form style” of the 1950s, on which Mexican landscape artist Burle

Marx modeled his flowerbeds. In most public parks and grounds

moreover, one finds elements of two other special gardening genres:

the botanical garden with its rare plants, and the farmer’s garden

with its plump, excessively fertilized flowers.

A common characteristic of these two styles of public garden,

the painterly and the architectonic, is that they are made for the eye,

not the feet. They are not at all user-friendly, and hostile even, if the

users happen to be children. This is true not only of those parts too

delicate to be walked on: the stroller often finds no charming spot,

even at points where he is permitted to leave the path. A persistent

feature of the painterly style, for example, is to plant a ring of bushes

around a tree so as to suggest the pseudo-natural edges of a forest.

Yet to be able to sit beneath the tree would be delightful, especially

in summertime. An even worse habit is that of planting flowers

beneath trees where, shaded and parched, they are bound to perish

before the year is out. The modern “art” of gardening has a remedy

for that too: at the Federal Horticultural Show in Mannheim in

1975, the lawn beneath the trees was dotted with flower tubs…

While the display of such primitivisms in representative public

grounds and gardens is rather annoying, the true dilettante’s primi-

tive garden has a magic all its own. To experience this, one need

only stroll past a row of allotment gardens, and decipher the dif-

ferent message of each. Bernard Lassus, who is introduced in this

issue², has taught us the code: the gardens contain symbols of dis-

2 This article was first published in the Basler Zeitung’s supplement, Basler Maga-zin, Nr. 21, 1977.

126

tance, designed to transport their owners from a shuttered existence

to a larger landscape with new horizons. One dwarf is therefore a

captain, his binoculars trained on a flowerbed in the form of a ship;

and some birdseed has been scattered on the model of an aircraft

carrier lying by the fountain, so that aircraft will land…

Let us now forget for a moment the gardening trade, and the

official art of gardening pursued in city parks and company head-

quarters, and consider instead a trend currently emerging in land-

scape design, that is, in the design of exterior spaces. Admittedly, no

examples of this in Switzerland can be named at present.

Lately, a whole string of designs and several completed projects

have proposed strict observance of the principles of architectonic

gardens. All of them cited the typical features of a classical garden:

symmetries, clear borders, terracing and no flowers. Generally how-

ever, an equally monumental disruption was included in order to

break the projects’ symmetry—a diagonal canal, for instance, at odds

with the parallel axes and perspectives of the site. What message

does garden art of this sort convey? It reflects an attempt to reify big

emotions in a simple form. Elementary symbols of magnificence,

gravity, symmetry, grief and joy are instantly clear to every one. Yet

this does not mean the message can be consumed at first glance.

The gardens here are ingenious gardens, and strolling around them

evokes all different kinds of information: memories of gardens in

Rome or Paris, certainly, as well as more modern things such as the

way in which architects in the 1920s laid out their gardens with

naivety and optimism; or the way dictators built during World War

II, with the shadow of defeat hanging over them. Should one seek

to create gardens ingeniously?—At the least, one should provide an

opportunity for experiments to be made, and to be judged. Actually,

that should be the purpose of any national horticultural show.

127

The necessity of dealing with nature

Should we also discuss “land art” here, a discipline in which art

is writ large, and the garden almost incidental? “Land” connotes

large-scale artistic experiments materialized using earth, sand, veg-

etation or rock. These initially appear to be the opposite of garden

art insofar as they do not depict nature but alienate or indeed, rape

it. Yet they thereby critique and reflect our current approach to the

earth, or lead us to think about the utopia of a nature fully subjected

for better or worse—for this is perhaps how we should read works

such as “Graben, der um die ganze Welt führen könnte.”³ Nature

here appears to be misused in order to represent mere ideas; yet

these ideas in turn indicate the necessities of dealing with nature.

This leads us a priori to a quite contrary trend in garden art, one

born of ecological concerns. Conventional gardening, even when

it yields nothing, requires work, plants, soil and dung, first and

foremost, four fifths of which will drain into the groundwater. Yet

nature is designed in such a way that large tracts of it, if handled

correctly, can be kept in a fine condition without human main-

tenance, without waste, without polluting the groundwater with

dung, without artificial irrigation, simply by allowing natural cross-

fertilization and everything else to run wild. The gardener should

work with nature, not against it. A major botanical discovery of our

day—the discovery of plant societies—put us on to this truth. A

single plant must be tended, protected, sown or planted; a plant so-

ciety, if selected correctly for the site in question, is resistant, robust

3 “A ditch that might lead around the whole world,” an as yet unidentified refer-ence.

128

and wholly self-sufficient. To garden with naturally self-propagat-

ing plant societies is a new departure; there are few people special-

ized in the field, and mixed seeds are still hard to come by. Evidence

of this trend at Federal Horticultural Shows has been puny to date,

and by no means up to standard on the robustness scale: for the aim

is to produce flowers as resilient as the weed families that overrun

our railroad embankments, gravel pits and trash heaps.

We can spot a third trend among those garden artists who have

taken a leaf out of the farmers’ and allotment garden leasehold-

ers’ book but have not yet lapsed into the primitivisms of the of-

ficial gardeners’ flower-trimmed battlefields. The art here consists

in translating the individual symbolism of a single allotment gar-

den into a universal symbolism, of finding metaphors that have an

archetypal impact on everyone. I like to call this type of garden

Where does the landscape begin? In 1985, Parisian artist Paul-Armand Gette used the “0 m mark” in Kassel’s Wilhelmshöhe Park to put this question to the public.

129

Whatever we see lying or growing or crawling in front of us is not yet landscape, but a stone, a plant or a bug, and can be defined more precisely by attributing to it a scientific, mineralogical or zoological name. Raise ones gaze, and at some point everything one sees becomes a landscape… Of course, the beginning of a landscape is in the eye of the beholder. Annemarie and Lucius Burckhardt in 1987, on the Furka Pass.

130

the mysterious garden. The Romantic garden was once mysterious

and full of surprises: a stroll would lead one from cheerful symbols,

garden houses, panoramic rotundas and glades to sad, mysterious,

melancholy spots, stalactite-filled caves, mock graves, well shafts,

natural springs, and ruins that invited the beholder to reflect on

mortal transience. Such symbolism was for many years the object of

derision; it survived only in private gardens, above all in allotment

gardens. Today, we have come to appreciate popular art again; at first

we had nothing more than a wry smile for garden dwarves, then we

came to adore them, and now, once again, we are learning from

them the art of creating a garden full of surprises: a truly mysterious

garden, in which kids’ dreams and distant memories of childhood

books revive and render palpable our fear of the deep pond, of seek-

ing refuge in the hollow tree stump, and of the fathomless well, as

well as our joy in a dull echo. Admittedly, the official gardening

journals make no mention of these trends in garden art—they are

too busy discussing new concrete slabs for garden paths; or even

larger varieties of tulip and rose, which require more dung than

ever; or new chemicals that can rid the lawn of weeds at last.

It appears that the problems of garden art today are too big and

too various to be entrusted any longer to gardeners. I can draw on

two examples of current and future landscape planning to demon-

strate what I mean: when “Grün 80”⁴ arrived on the scene in Basel

there was much talk of the urban horticultural show, and of “green-

ing” districts. Today we know that the G 80 essentially comprises

a quite literally limited, which is to say enclosed arena on the city’s

outskirts, where a park and a well-tended farm existed previously. It

4 The urban garden development project “Gartenschau der Stadt” or “G 80” was launched in 1980.

131

is evident therefore, that the task of gardening in and for the city is

by no means being fulfilled.

Consider this analogy: we all are familiar with the green lawns

that one finds between apartment buildings. The caretaker mows

them regularly. It is not forbidden to step on them, but nobody, at

least no adult, does so voluntarily. These areas for leisure and sport,

which featured so prominently in the ground plans, and were so

highly praised on the day the key to your apartment was handed

over, serve now only to mark the distance to be maintained between

respectable neighbors. There is one way these areas could be utilized

at no extra cost, namely by selling them as private lots to sitting

tenants. Yet this would create inequalities. Tenants’ participation in

caring for these areas would require a measure of collective organi-

zation—and who on earth has time for that? Certainly not the gar-

deners, and the landlords won’t even give it a thought. For sure, the

tenants can do nothing on their own. So here we have a landscape

maintenance task of quite a new kind.

A similar problem is posed also beyond the housing estates, in

what may properly be called urban public space. The city could be

lovelier and greener: yet the effort and expense of having the City

Department of Parks and Recreation make it so would be huge. We

know there are people who would love to do a spot of gardening,

and who have been on the waiting list for an allotment garden for

years already. Yet not only the law books but also the unspoken rules

of urban co-existence prevent them from shouldering their spades,

and bedding a few clematis plants on the Heuwaage, or casually

sowing a few mullein seeds when walking by the trash heap in

St. Alban’s Valley. Here too, public willingness to participate needs

to be revived, organized and steered intelligently.

132

Creating robust, extensive landscapes

The second, equally grave problem in landscape planning reveals

itself beyond the city limits, in the open countryside. So much work

and—let’s not kid ourselves—such huge subsidies are ploughed

into agriculture in Switzerland that undeveloped wasteland is ex-

tremely rare. Yet fallow or unused land is virtually characteristic of

modern Western Europe, as are monocultures. If we test our skills

in futurology, we quickly come to suppose that fallow land will

become a suitable and likely landscape, on the one hand for eco-

logically sustainable cultivation and, on the other, for our densely

populated Central European region. But how do these plots of

fallow land look? For these too, as with our urban parks, the De-

partment of Parks and Recreation has a design style at the ready.

Today, in places where landscape design is applied on a large scale,

to the rehabilitation of disused open cast mines for example, the

newly configured, old-fashioned farm is considered a “charming

landscape.” Whoever plans large-scale landscape design thus plans

precisely that which cannot survive elsewhere, and will turn into

wasteland. There are two things to be learned here: firstly, any avail-

able land must be given over to the purpose of leisure, must be dedi-

cated to a culture of leisure that is a source of pleasure and causes no

ecological damage; and secondly, any non-privatized areas should

be turned into the kind of landscape on which plant societies can

establish themselves solidly, and thus stand up to picnics, sport, and

children’s games. On broad expanses of land that were once left fal-

low, as well as on the city’s neatly parceled lots, we are awaiting new

impulses from gardening, impulses moreover that will far exceed,

both in technological and social terms, the scope of the conven-

tional planning applied to our parks and public spaces.

133

Why Is Landscape Beautiful? (1979)

This paper begins and closes with a discussion of what exactly

“landscape” is. Which parts of our visible environment are included

in that which we call landscape, and which other, equally visible

phenomena are excluded? For we agree unanimously on this much

at least: the cow pats in Vrin belong to the landscape while tin cans

tossed aside by a tourist do not.

So the basic idea here is that “landscape is a construct.” And what

this terrible phrase conveys is nothing other than that the landscape

is to be found, not in environmental phenomena but in the mind’s

eye of those doing the looking. To espy a landscape in our environ-

ment is a creative act brought forth by excluding and filtering cer-

tain elements and, equally, by rhyming together or integrating all we

see in a single image, and in a manner influenced largely by our edu-

cational background. Was our trip to Vrin therefore only the begin-

ning of a journey through our minds? Naturally we had given this

matter some thought during previous discussions. Consequently, we

arrived in Vrin with two scenarios in mind. The first went some-

thing like this: when we picture a landscape, our mind’s eye draws

on the full range of phenomena found in our environment—colors,

structures, identifiable natural contexts and signs of human inter-

vention. The environment here resembles the artist’s palette. Yet this

comparison, like all good comparisons, is not altogether steady on

its feet. The phenomena that make up this palette are too differ-

ent from one another to be juxtaposed easily, in a single plane. In a

sense, it is truer to say that the landscape consists of many differ-

ent layers: the merely visual layer of colors; a more complex layer

134

comprising the first hints of natural or technological production

infrastructures; and a layer in which social aspects and hence, also a

temporal dimension can be identified: an abandoned farmhouse, an

annoyingly modern building, or—evidence of an era when farmers

were still self-sufficient—a field full of a certain variety of grass.

And then our second scenario: the landscape constructed thus

on the palette, from various phenomena, is oriented to the ideal of

the “locus amoenus,”¹ the “charming place” upheld by painting and

literature since the time of Homer and Horace, through that of

Claude Le Lorrain and the Romantics and, lastly, by our tourism

brochures and cigarette advertisements. To identify a landscape as

charming is insofar synonymous with the endeavor to “filter out”

whatever we actually do see in the place visited, so as to be able to

integrate the outcome in our preconceived, idealized image of the

charming place. The more the walker sees that matches his expec-

tations—the fountain at the city gates, the quiet shore of a lake,

Conrad Ferdinand Meyer’s white peaks²—the greater his degree

of satisfaction.

Do these two hypotheses—the “palette” and the “charming

place”—stand up? They do and they don’t. What follows is an at-

tempt to cover the key points in a debate the class held on the final

day of its trip to Vrin.

Does everyone have the same “charming place” in mind? If it is

indeed the case that each person viewing a landscape picks out cer-

tain elements and filters out others in order to paint his own picture

1 The term has been used traditionally to denote an idealized place of safety or comfort, which incorporates trees, grass and water, lies usually beyond the city limits, and is suggestive hence of a natural paradise untrammelled by the dic-tates of urban civilization.

2 Conrad Ferdinand Meyer (1825–98) was a Swiss poet and historical novelist.

135

of a charming place, the outcome is doubtless highly individual:

every person applies different criteria. To identify a charming place

is to rediscover one’s past youth, to rediscover impressions garnered

from the parental home, from books, from older people’s recollec-

tions, from pictures on the walls of one’s childhood bedroom or

classroom, or those inspired by favorite books. None of us is able to

look at the landscape through another person’s eyes. Yet common

ground does exist: the virile thing to do at holiday time is to take

to the mountains, the lakes, the high seas; individual variations in

taste are therefore subordinate to that collective entity we describe

as “culture.” And culture in this regard might best be described as

the collective memory of anything we perceive as a charming place.

But places that in no way correspond to the conventional image

of a charming place are also beautiful. Some tourists find the desert

appealing, or the northern tundra, while we, for our part, take plea-

sure in the scree slopes in the high mountains of the Vorder Rhine

Valley. Opinions in our class were divided, so this phenomenon

could not be explained unanimously. One group said that the un-

usual landscape, the desert or scree slope are a source of pleasure to

us also because we “rediscover” them; through the books we read as

children—tales of Red Indians and other adventure stories, as well

as romantic travelogues penned in bygone times by explorers—they

have become for us quasi charming places.

Utility and beauty

Other members of the class took a different view, namely that the

impression of beauty one has when looking at a desert, factory sites,

136

or scree slopes ensues precisely from the contrast between those

places and the conventional, idealized charming place. Any pleasure

the viewer takes in such a panorama derives from the great sense of

accomplishment he feels after having integrated it in this concept of

“charming.” Or, in other words: in a truly charming place the viewer

need accomplish very little. Aesthetic pleasure is assured him, no

doubt, but he learns nothing new. The further removed the place in

question is from his ideal—so long as it matches the ideal to some

extent—the greater the amount of information he can garner from

the situation. And this gives rise to the question we were able to

explore experimentally, also through drawing or painting: at which

point does an experience of the beauty of a landscape cease? When

is a landscape so alien or strange that it is no longer perceived to be

a landscape and hence something charming?

One point that preoccupied us for a long while was this: what

role do natural objects such as plants, animals and stones play in

constructing a landscape for the person who never bothers to ac-

quaint himself with them; to look up their names in a reference

work, for example, or find out something or other about them? In

other words: who sees the landscape as landscape—he who breaks

it down into identifiable components, or he who simply enjoys its

appearance? At this point, we came to discuss the signal effect of

certain combinations of natural phenomena. We noted the way

we ourselves subconsciously looked to vegetation for orientation.

Where might one park a car in the village? Clumps of nettles are

the clearest sign of all that nobody has an interest in a field. Where

can our group take a seat in the open air without robbing the farm-

ers of something? Where can we make a small fire? The meadows of

the Allmende—the commons—clipped short by cattle, the loosely

demarcated edges of the forest (which also serve at times as pas-

ture), and the squat hedges of alpine roses all signal the absence of a

137

private land lease and hence, of a potentially aggrieved leaseholder.

A subconscious knowledge of plant societies steers even the urban

dweller to an appropriate site for a picnic. Are such places lovely

primarily, and accessible only incidentally? Or has our own sense of

beauty latched onto places unsuited to production because we are

driven off the others? Plant societies also alerted us to changes in

the village. It seemed to us that weeds and nettles covered unusu-

ally large areas between the houses in these highland communi-

ties. Trampled grass indicated paths still taken in the daily round

of outdoor labor. Yet many outdoor activities associated with the

traditional, multifaceted, collective mode of agricultural production

are no longer pursued today. Paths and squares between houses in

Vrin are considered private property. A right of passage is assured

The Landscape Trap (1986), a limited edition by Lucius Burckhardt, for the Galerie Eisenbahnstraße in Berlin. At the opening, he spoke on a nearby bombsite on the theme “Landscape Exists in the Mind’s Eye.” We fall into a trap when we confuse landscape with nature.

138

yet they are not public streets. The trodden paths are as broad as

their use demands; and the weeds encroach upon those areas that

have fallen into disuse. So, vegetation here informs the viewer not

only about the richness of the soil but also about the shifting modes

of production and social circumstance.

This led us to the question of the relationship between utility

and beauty. Is the abandoned landscape lovely, or the one currently

in use? It was clear to all of us that only city residents would ever

debate such a matter; only city residents see agricultural land as

landscape. Only someone removed from nature and from agricul-

tural production can look upon agricultural production and natural

growth, and label them landscape. In Vrin, terraced slopes and cer-

tain types of plant society on the alpine pastures attest still to till-

age, the former mode of production. For it is only in the last twenty

years that our highland economy has shifted from self-sufficiency

to a dairy monoculture.

Monoculture was another problem we failed to get to the bot-

tom of in the course of our discussions. Initially we assumed that

diversity and hence also self-sufficiency look “more charming.”

Then images of extensive monocultures cropped up: fields of grain

in aerial photographs from the Swissair calendar. Does their beauty

lie in the spatial remove? Or in their geometry, revealed most

clearly to the pilot? Dairy production in Vrin implies blossoming

pastures—so far. Yet pastureland in some areas of Switzerland is no

longer allowed to bloom at all, but is mowed incessantly. The result

is an impoverished but still green landscape that cannot yet be said

to be ugly. Those monocultures developed in countries where the

agricultural economy faces stiffer competition on the global market

than ours does are quite definitely ugly however. Wherever cows

and pigs are housed in huge industrial stalls, and fed on hay and

grain grown elsewhere, wherever surplus dung is dumped on land

139

formerly used to raise cattle, the marriage of beauty and utility is

well and truly over.

Does that mean however, that our sense of beauty yearns for an

old-fashioned style of cultivation, for those production modes re-

cently abandoned and no longer viable? By the time Horace wrote

his Arcadian pastoral poetry, Arcadia no longer existed but, rather, a

Sicily where masses of slaves produced cereals to feed metropolitan

Rome. Is our quest for a beautiful landscape therefore also a quest

for recently abandoned production modes—a quest for fruit trees

on a pasture near Basel, for example, a pasture of the type made

increasingly rare by the rise of the electric lawnmower?

The role of ruins

This led to questions about human input in general, about techno-

logical intervention and “disruption” of the landscape. Of course,

potential mischief has the artist just itching to turn the church

tower into a cooling tower, to sketch a nuclear power station along-

side the sanatorium, and to draw a highway leading to the heart of

Vrin. Nobody will ever find this type of disrupted landscape beauti-

ful. And yet such interventions are relative; today we so readily

accept older interventions of a violent nature as to enjoy them even,

as indispensable landscape features. Or were the military fortresses

of Grisons Canton not once perhaps a terrifying sight? Is the wind-

mill on a landscape painted by a Dutch Master not a modern form

of energy production, analogous to our power stations? And did not

the numerous viaducts built for the Rhaetian Railway aesthetically

enhance entire valley formations?

140

At this point we discussed the passage of time and the role of

the ruin. Technological accomplishment in its derelict form has

not only become an integral component of the charming landscape

but virtually its emblem: wherever a ruin signals past history, the

walker’s anticipated and actual images are reconciled. Eighteenth-

century English gardeners who placed artificial ruins in their arti-

ficial landscapes did not do so in vain: ruins symbolized the past

and hence, reality. The ruin as a symbol can be read therefore also

as dissatisfaction with our contemporary and in a quite other way,

ruinous world.

By way of contrast, the actual ruin of the landscape—erosion,

in a word—did give us pause for thought. The ruin attests to past

usage and, even had no ruined castles existed in the region we were

studying, traces enough of earlier husbandry were evident in the

abandoned terraced slopes, and enhanced the beauty of the land-

scape. Admittedly, “wounds” is the word that springs to mind for

the region’s deserted farmhouses, often razed to their stone foun-

dations. Naturally we gave some thought also to the laborious pur-

suit of agriculture on high mountain slopes, and in particular to

wild haymaking there. Agricultural production and the preserva-

tion of alpine flora are closely intertwined here, and the problem of

the farmer as “landscape gardener” is one we of course really ought

to discuss at length yet will not touch upon here, for the moment.

Erosion speaks of the disuse or misuse of nature in a most extreme

form, yet one that is not wholly without appeal for tourists, espe-

cially in the Vorder Rhine region. Actually, it was at the eroded

spots that we—admittedly with a paintbrush and palette, not with

words—were best able to pursue the focus of our research: the

question as to how far one might distance oneself from the ideal

image of the landscape without destroying the message, “This is a

landscape.”

141

We painted landscapes, and noted how the very composition

and structure of a painting help convey the message “landscape.”

If we painted a valley in the foreground, and allowed a mountain

range to rise against the sky in the background, it was practically

impossible to not produce a landscape. No color, no drawing is so

far removed from reality as to destroy the impression of a landscape.

“Non-landscapes” could be produced in any case, only by departing

from conventional ways of composing or framing the image. Land-

scape in artistic terms appears therefore to be a construct comprised

of conventional visual structures. To our astonishment, our experi-

ments failed in one respect: we did not manage to produce a single

ugly landscape. That annoyed us very much, for we had undertaken

initially to publish the sort of tourism brochure that would discour-

age other groups from following in our footsteps to Vrin.

142

On the Design of Everyday Life (1979)

I do not intend to deliver solid theory in this lecture, just some

speculation to stimulate you—and it will be easy to attack what I

say. If things go well, we’ll end up with a new job description, one I

would call “the integrated designer.” My intention is to identify the

organizational context of designed or planned systems, which is to

say, the rules that govern usage and actually comprise our environ-

ment—in other words, to correlate the invisible part of our lives

with its planned, visible, physical dimension.

To make that perhaps a little less abstract, I’ll tell you first about

something I have observed. I usually spend my vacation on a farm

where the mailman used to stop by each day. He never knocked

on the door, just opened the door so loudly that one could tell he

was in the house. He then put the mail on the table, and waited

expectantly for someone to come talk to him a while. Then he went

to the next farm. Then the post office decreed that farms should

install a mailbox on the road, in order to save the mailmen’s time: a

beautiful design task. We therefore acquired a mailbox, a yellow one

trimmed in black, with very distinguished-looking metal moldings

flat enough to let the rain pour in, and we installed it. After that,

we noticed that our farmer and all the farmers in the area no longer

had any information, as the dissemination of information in rural

areas does not take place through letters. Namely, neighbors do not

write to one another; they tell their stories to the mailman, who

passes them on at the next farm. The post office actually had no idea

of how it conveyed news. It believed it transported letters contain-

ing news. In reality however, an invisible system was at work, which

actually conveyed news in a most appropriate way.

143

We who are interested in visual culture have partly forgotten

to reference the organizational, social dimension, as well as other

dimensions that we will deal with later. If we take modern architec-

ture to begin with, I must point out immediately that this dimen-

sion was not overlooked initially. Modern architecture of the 1920s

certainly had a social dimension insofar as it strove to reorganize

society. It strove perhaps to do so in a way we would no longer

pursue today—the Frankfurt kitchen—by regulating daily life in

a very rigid yet nonetheless, well considered way. That this stimu-

lus (or this mission) turned into a style that subsequently allowed

context to fall into oblivion is another matter. The paradoxes of this

non-ornamental style then gave rise to all sorts of other approaches.

The endeavor to make architecture more expressive by integrating

elements of everyday life in it was pursued in theoretical terms—

Learning from Las Vegas, Advertising is Beautiful, etc.—yet these

did not address more than the purely visual realm.

I would like to examine a different strand of development,

namely the growing appreciation in the 1960s of the fact that this

form of architecture and design cannot save the world. Then, some-

time around the mid-1960s, we began to hear terms such as “livabil-

ity” or—negatively—the notorious “inhospitableness of our cities”

(Mitscherlich): hence terms that appeared to integrate the visual

context, namely the house or the city, as well as the invisible dimen-

sion: How does one use this? Are there rules that hamper its use, or

make its use impossible? Does not the housing question imply that

one ask also who owns the house, whether the janitor is a nice man,

what the house rules actually are, who has the authority to lock the

house, etc., etc.? The 1960s also witnessed the emergence of a word

with very far-reaching connotations: “environment”—environment

as something with a systematic character, with carefully balanced

properties, and self-regulatory capacities that we have evidently

144

disrupted. I do not wish to discuss here the extent to which this

reading may be tenable; rather, I want to cite it as a further example

of the endeavor to integrate the visible and invisible dimensions, i.e.

the physical environment and rules.

The 1960s introduced a remarkable new approach into the archi-

tectural field, yet one that could be read in two ways. I mean Kevin

Lynch’s approach in The Image of the City,¹ in which he asks: “How

do people actually see their city” and “What do they see of the city?”

Lynch observed that people do not see urban planners and archi-

tects’ input in the city. When someone asks the way to the railroad

station, he is not told in reply, “You must go to the beautiful house

designed by Le Corbusier, then take a right, then comes a building

designed by Mies van der Rohe, then you go straight ahead, and

you’ll be at the station!” He is told rather, “You must go as far as this

roadsign then, if no one is looking, you just cut through the flower

bed, go past the tobacconist’s, and right behind that is the best way

to the station!” So people see the city from their everyday perspec-

tives: Where is the short cut? Where can I buy cigarettes? Where is

there a slot machine? And so forth…

Lynch’s theory was understood in a dual sense, or misunder-

stood, whereby one cannot be too sure whether or not Lynch

misunderstood himself—if that is possible. For he, or at least his

successors, called for the construction of expressive buildings by

which people could orientate themselves, whereby actual observa-

tions suggest people are orientated not to forms per se but to forms

plus usages, which is to say, to everyday signs rather than aesthetic

signs.

1 Kevin Lynch, The Image of the City, MIT Press, Cambridge MA 1960.

145

Herbert J. Gans’ book The Levittowners² was published like-

wise in the 1960s. The author asked himself, why people live in or

buy houses in Levittown, in those monotonous settlements made

up of detached houses that are built moreover, in a strange, old-

fashioned colonial style, with terrible lawns out front that one is

not allowed to use, and so forth. So these detached family homes

have everything the architect or initiated layman abhors—yet they

sell like hot cakes. Mr. Levitt & Sons are doing good business,

and the buyers are satisfied. Herbert J. Gans also bought such a

house, spent two years there, studied the phenomenon, and ascer-

tained that the people’s environment there is not the visible en-

vironment; rather, the Levitts succeeded in creating an invisible,

social environment that perfectly suited a certain class of income

and social standing. Such people find there what they need, namely

families of the same age, who have children who also want to go

to schools that lead to university, and who also belong to certain

churches of certain denominations, churches that offer a social as

well as an ecclesiastical perspective; families in similar professional

positions. Levitt pitches people’s environment correctly, because his

plans are based on a classification system in which the house itself,

its lawn, its garden, its driveway and all the things we find so hor-

rible, rank very near the bottom, whereas invisible factors rate very

highly.

Finally, let me name a very different discovery made by Ivan

Illich, namely that properties with a social character are inherent to

objects. Illich expresses this thus, in his striking manner:

2 Herbert J. Gans, The Levittowners: Ways of Life and Politics in a New Suburban Community, Routledge & Kegan Paul, New York 1960/ Random House, New York 1967.

146

Everything that moves faster than 20 kilometers per hour is

undemocratic. I do not agree with that. I think the railroad—it

is democratic—should have a special permit. Yet we must take

advantage of the discovery itself. There are objects that create

liberties, and there are objects that create dependencies; there are

objects that foster social relations, and there are objects that foster

isolation.

What we are looking for here, is—to use my term of choice—an

integrated or integrative theory of design or planning; one that in-

corporates regulatory systems as well as the visible dimension of our

environment. Until now, architects and designers have said: Spaces

regulate life—regulate where entrances are, what shape rooms are,

and how objects look. Then there is a profession that says: laws reg-

ulate life. And then along come the sociologists and say: no, behav-

ioral patterns and systems of relationship regulate life. And since

these professions go about their business so perfectly in parallel,

the architects build their buildings; they build schools, and rave on

the opening day about how this school will be a community cen-

ter, a hub of the neighborhood; and they never suspect (or perhaps

already suspect), that it will never become a community center, not

because any architectural failing precludes this possibility but be-

cause the janitor locks up at 8 p.m.—which is good for business of

course, for the construction of a community center can be commis-

sioned next. Traffic is approached in a similar manner, namely as an

isolated phenomenon. It is calculated how many people will move

to an area. A basic presumption is that growth will be continuous. It

is then calculated how many people have a car nowadays, and how

long it will take until the last baby also has a car. Then road width is

adjusted accordingly. Here, the English term “self-fulfilling prophe-

cies” should be taken quite literally: the roads will full-fill, i.e. will

fill until they are full, because once roads have been built, they are

147

used, naturally, for this kind of extrapolation of course forces peo-

ple to use a car to get around. That other possibilities exist, that

one might move beyond full capacity calculations, for example by

introducing staggered work schedules and the like, can never be

grasped—simply because the expert in this field is not available.

Now the built, physical world certainly has defining properties.

There is a saying in German: “We cannot go through the wall.”

Therefore a door must exist. But hidden doors and non-doors exist

too, namely laws and prohibitions. And walls are not as important

as dos and don’ts are. The tram stop I have to use each day is or-

ganized in such a way that I miss the tram whenever I use the

cross-walk with traffic signals that leads to the tram stop, because

the tram can drive off the exact same moment the cars do. And I

cannot board the tram at that moment, because the cars do not stop

for me when they have a green light. So, if I don’t want to miss my

tram, I have to jump over the flowerbed that lies outside the traffic

signal zone. What is decisive here is not the physical access point

per se but rather, the regulation. A tram stop is thus an integrated

system comprising design, laws and regulations—and it obviously

cannot find its designer.

I would like now to speak about an important aspect of non-

physical organization, about time. Time and temporal rhythms,

timetables and transport schedules: these are the things that govern

our lives. I was recently sent a book from France, Anne Cauquelin’s

La ville la nuit.³ Can one write a book about the night? The night

is a natural phenomenon of course, yet since electric light was in-

vented we can light up the night, at least as far as we need to. But,

says Anne Cauquelin, the night is an institution. It is determined,

3 Anne Cauquelin, La ville la nuit, Presse Universitaires de France, Paris 1977.

148

not by the fact that nature creates darkness and light but by rules.

When are lights turned on? When are they turned off? In conse-

quence, public transport ceases to operate at a particular time for

example, and bars close—hence, infrastructure is not used to full

capacity, and our freedom to do as we like is restricted: the freedom,

for example, to spend an evening having a drink with friends, then

return home by public transport with alcohol in our blood. We can-

not do so, because public transport does not run after midnight. In

Hamburg’s City Nord district, or in the City of London, there are

restaurants that close in the evenings; other restaurants in more

outlying districts open only in the evenings, because people in the

evening go to other places than they do at midday. The institution

night necessitates a dual infrastructure.

Let us stick for a while with this issue of time and temporal

rhythms. The history of labor struggles, of safety at work, and of

the acceptability of labor, also includes the struggle for a shorter

working week. But one gets the impression that those responsible

on both fronts in this struggle, or on its three fronts—the state, the

employers and the unions—do not think the temporal rhythm con-

cept through to its end. Their hitherto legitimate struggle therefore

enters a new phase, for we are obliged now to consider how to use

leisure time. I’m not talking here—and I should stress this three

times over—about the problem of leisure per se. That does not exist

in any case. Everyone is convinced that everyone else has problems

with leisure, but no one believes he himself does. If only everyone

would admit this once and for all, it would put a stop, not only

to all this talk of the problems with leisure but also to the leisure

facilities that are built in order that other people spend their leisure

time properly.

So, that is not my issue here. Rather, I am concerned with the

issue of how these temporal rhythms determine our lives, namely

149

the daily rhythm, the weekly rhythm, hence also the weekend, the

annual rhythm, vacation time and the rhythm of life—at what

age do we embark on our working lives, and at what age do we

retire? We really ought to know more about the consequences these

rhythms have, as well as about how life can be organized under

the conditions imposed by temporal rhythms. I consider this really

is an issue when it comes to designing our lives. It is moreover,

also a visible problem: the daily rhythm leads to congestion on our

roads, the annual rhythms to congestion in our tourist resorts, etc.

In France at the moment, the planners’ watchword is “desynchro-

nization,” by which they mean that the masses’ working day, and

likewise their weekend and vacation schedules, should not follow a

uniform temporal rhythm. It is hoped that desynchronization will

render redundant the famous July announcements that tell us on

certain Friday evenings and Saturday mornings, that roads from

Paris to the South have become impassable. Of course, this is func-

tionalism once again: traffic becomes jammed, and so organization

is called for; yet this is far from being a redesign of the problem.

I would like also to make a passing reference to the other places

where such invisible, organizational problems crop up. I already

mentioned Ivan Illich and his discovery that objects have a certain

authority, and are discriminatory. They can create dependency, for

example on power supply systems. Some objects are created such

that one has to buy a further object if one wishes to use them; then,

when one has done so, one realizes one needs to buy yet another

object in order for them to function. In addition, objects have pro-

duction histories. They may be the product of inhumane labor oper-

ations, obtained through exploitation of nature or people; but they

may also be made from recyclable raw materials.

It is not difficult nowadays, to give the car a beating. We generally

think the car is to blame for the destruction of society, namely be-

150

cause it is discriminatory. There are areas that can be reached solely

by motorists, or that cannot be reached on Saturdays and Sundays

because public transport provides no service. Another form of social

destruction is the isolation that ensues from the fact that the major-

ity population is sitting in cars. The minority population, which is

not protected by steel and speed, no longer risks using the roads,

roads that previously were considered safe, because previously there

were always enough people standing around or walking by, who

were able to rush to a person’s aid, or to fetch help. When everyone

is sitting in his tin can, and only one person is unprotected, that

person feels unsafe: actually unsafe or potentially unsafe. This is not

an argument for pedestrian zones however. I consider the impact

of pedestrian zones on peripheral areas to be a disaster. But that is

another matter.

I would like to examine the social characteristics of objects, such

as exemplified here by the car, in reference also to other objects. A

year ago we talked about building technology, and the issue of the

individual’s access to building technology. Our power supply is not

just a physical phenomenon; it is also wrapped up in regulations.

We are not allowed to fiddle with it, firstly—officially; everyone

does fiddle with it however, and can buy everything that is out-

lawed in any department store. But, given our high voltage, it is not

entirely safe to do so. Why cannot a part of our power supply run

at a lower voltage, one that wouldn’t kill us if we happened to touch

it? That is impossible, the experts say—yet in the car it is possible.

The car headlights are as bright as our lamps, have 12 volts, and

anyone can fiddle with them. But that, apparently, is impossible in

the home.

Nor are we allowed to fiddle with our water supply. Licensed

tradesmen must do that; and everything must be installed, and

under lock and key. The fittings are such that a wrench of the sort

151

we can obtain is unable to open them; only fully trained tradesmen

have the right type of wrench to repair our wash basins and replace

the seals—whereby that really is something just anyone could do.

But, we are told, it is impossible for safety reasons, and we would

all have drowned already, and our houses been swept away, if any

Tom, Dick or Harry had access to the water pipes. I too believed all

that, at least until we bought a washing machine; for then suddenly,

everything was allowed. A rubber hose serves as a drain; we hang it

over the washtub when the machine is running, and otherwise we

hang it on the wall. The water functions here pretty much as it does

when we use it in the garden: it arrives through a hose and leaves

through a hose. Evidently the washing machine lobby has political

power enough to break the rules and return to common sense, to

the common sense we could all do with actually, when it comes to

house building. Then we could namely help ourselves. It would be

more fun too.

I would like to mention a further arena—the sickness system—

in which an institutional context should be integrated, although

this notion initially may seem rather alien. We think of disease as

something contagious that flies at us, out of the blue. But it has

a highly institutionalized aspect. When one is sitting around at

work, tired, it may happen that the boss arrives and says: So, please

make up your mind, whether you want to be sick or healthy! Ap-

parently one can decide such a thing. There are two rituals: either I

decide, although I am sick, to be healthy, and carry on as before; or

I embark on the ritual of being sick, and tell my boss, “Yes, I would

be very grateful if you would call a cab for me, then I will call from

the hospital, to say how bad it looks.” This, although there’s noth-

ing wrong with me today that a cup of tea and a couple of hours

peace and quiet wouldn’t put right. But I have triggered the sickness

system already—doctor, nurse, and the whole caboodle. I decided to

152

be sick, and must consequently accept sickness as a context and an

institution. And the hospital is also such an environment, designed

by architects and managed by organizers, and these two things do

not go together. Let’s not broaden the topic even further: I could

show you the points where organization does not work, because the

context is not designed properly.

So, we evidently live in systems that are partly visible but also

contain some invisible reference systems, regulatory systems or

temporal rhythms. The transitions between these systems are a type

of invisible door, namely the rules that facilitate or assure this tran-

sition. At some point our work is done and we may go home. The

next question might be, whether we can still go shopping, whether

our working day, our company’s closing time corresponds to the

stores’ closing time. Some stores close a little later than our com-

pany, if we are lucky, and perhaps we can make it to the post office

too, although, naturally, it is too late to go to any other office. These

institutional doors govern how we organize our everyday lives. It is

evident therefore, that we are surrounded by an invisible functional

system of sorts, which is integrated in the social system comprised

of our participation in working life, in our circle of friends and in

hierarchies.

And now, the final question: Who actually designs this environ-

ment by combining the organizational aspect and the visible as-

pect? Who has even a clue as to who designs what, and as to who

determines the regulatory aspects of our environment? Allow me

therefore to reiterate the provocative challenge: be an integrated

designer! For only then will you be a true designer of everyday life

or an architect of everyday life.

153

Design Is Invisible (1980)

Design objects? Of course we can see them: the whole gamut of

designs and devices, from a building to a can opener. The designer

gives them a logical, ready-to-use form, premised on certain exter-

nal parameters: in the case of the can opener, on the structure of a

can. The designer of cans, for his part, considers how a can opener

functions. That is his external parameter.

So we can perceive the world as a realm of objects and divide

these, for example, into houses, streets, traffic lights, kiosks, coffee

makers, washing-up bowls, tableware or table linen. Such classifi-

cation is not without consequences: it leads namely to that con-

cept of design which isolates a certain device—a coffee maker, let’s

say—acknowledges its external parameters, and sets itself the goal

of making a better, or more attractive one; that is, of producing the

type of thing likely to have been described in the 1950s as “Good

Form.”¹

But we can divide the world up in other ways too—and, if I have

understood A Pattern Language² correctly, that is what Christopher

Alexander strives to do. He does not isolate a house, a street or a

newsstand in order to perfect its design and construction; instead,

1 Max Bill’s book Die Gute Form (1957) decisively shaped the criteria propounded at the time, for functional yet aesthetically pleasing “timeless” design. The Ger-man Ministry of Economics and Technology awarded the “Federal Prize for Good Form” for the first time in 1969. Since 2006, it has been presented annu-ally under the name “Design Award of the Federal Republic of Germany.”

2 Christopher Alexander, A Pattern Language. Towns, Buildings, Construction, Oxford University Press, New York 1977.

154

he distinguishes an integral composite such as the street corner

from other urban composites; for the newsstand thrives on the fact

that my bus has not yet arrived, and so I buy a newspaper; and

the bus happens to stop here because this is an intersection where

passengers can change to other lines. “Street corner” simply tags

a phenomenon that encompasses, above and beyond the visible

dimension, elements of an organizational system comprised of bus

routes, timetables, magazine sales, traffic light sequences and so on.

This way of dividing up our environment also triggers a design

impulse—yet one that takes account of the system’s invisible com-

ponents. What we need, perhaps, so that I won’t miss my bus while

scrabbling for change, or because the newsagent is serving another

customer, is a simplified method of paying for a newspaper. Some

people instantly dream up a new invention—an automatic maga-

zine dispenser with an electric hum—while we imagine interven-

ing somehow in the system: selling magazines for a round sum,

or introducing a subscription card that we can simply flash at the

newsagent—in any case, some kind of ruling to tackle magazine

distribution and that institution “the morning paper.”

What are institutions? Let us forget Christopher Alexander’s

street corner in favor of a clearly identifiable institution, the hos-

pital. What is a hospital? Well, a building with long corridors, pol-

ished floors, glossy white furniture and little trolleys loaded with

tableware for mealtimes.

This view of the hospital takes us back to the traditional design

brief: the architect and the designer are called upon to plan hospi-

tals with shorter corridors, more convivial atmospheres and more

practical trolleys. As everybody knows however hospitals are now

bigger, their corridors longer, the catering service more anonymous

and patient care less caring. That is because neither the architect

nor the designer were allowed to intervene in the institution per se,

155

but only to improve existing designs and devices within set external

parameters.

So, let’s describe the hospital as an institution. Despite all its vis-

ible features, it is first and foremost a system of interpersonal rela-

tionships. Interpersonal systems are also designed and planned, in

part by history and tradition yet also in response to the people alive

today. When the Ministry of Health decrees that hospital catering is

not the responsibility of medical staff but a management issue—or

vice versa—this ruling is part and parcel of the institution’s design.

The hospital owes its existence above all to the three traditional

roles of doctor, nurse and patient. The nurse’s role evokes a myriad

of associations, from the Virgin Mary through to Ingrid Bergman,

and appears to be clear-cut. In reality it is far from clear-cut, as it in-

corporates a great number of more or less vital activities. The doctor,

historically only a minor figure on the hospital stage, shot to the top

in the nineteenth century, on a wave of scientific claims swallowed

whole with religious fervor, and perpetuated to this day by TV and

trashy novels, with the result that a formidable whiff of heart trans-

plants now permeates even the most backwoods county hospital.

And what about the patient? He has no role to play at all, you say?

He simply falls ill, through no fault of his own?—Come now, please

make up your mind whether you want to be sick or healthy!—Evidently

there is an element of choice in the matter. We can—and must—

decide one way or the other, otherwise we will irritate our boss—

our boss at work, or the hospital boss. A patient lies down—in

Chodowiecki’s day he used to sit—or ambles gratefully around the

park, convalescing. He resigns himself in any case to the three-role

spiel, although it has long been due for an overhaul; but more of

that later.

Do other similar institutions exist? Yes, indeed: the night. Yet

night is a natural phenomenon, you say? The sun is shining on the

156

Antipodes and so it is dark in our neck of the woods? Anne Cau-

quelin was the first to posit that the night is artificial. And there

is no disputing that human behavior shapes the night one way or

another, in line with various man-made institutions. In Switzer-

land I can work undisturbed after 9 p.m. then go to bed. To give

someone a call at that hour is considered impolite. In Germany my

telephone is quiet all evening then springs to life at 11 p.m.—for the

cheap-rate period begins at 10 p.m., whereupon all international

lines are immediately overloaded, and it takes around an hour to

get a connection.

Thus the night, which evidently originally had something to

do with the dark, is a man-made construct, comprised of opening

hours, closing times, price scales, timetables, habits and streetlamps.

The night, like the hospital, is in urgent need of redesign. Why does

public transport cease to run at precisely the moment people drain

their last glass in a wine bar, leaving them no option but to take the

wheel? Might not a rethink of opening hours make the streets safer

for women obliged to return home on foot, late at night? Are we

going to live to see the day also in these climes, when car ownership

is the sole guarantee of a measure of safety?

Let’s take another institution, the private household. For the

traditional designer, the household is a treasure trove of appliances

clamoring to be planned. There are endless things here to invent or

improve: coffee makers, food mixers, and dishwashers, to name only

a few. The planner deploys novel means to ensure everything stays

the same. Moves to reform the household were made around 1900:

early mechanization fostered collectivization as well as untold ex-

periments with canteens, public laundries and built-in, centralized

vacuum cleaners. Thanks to the invention of small motors these

amenities were reinstated later in the private household. Kitchen

appliances save housewives’ time, you say? Don’t make me laugh!

157

The war on dirt is a subsystem within the institution, private

household. What is dirt? Why do we fight it? And where does it

go after we emerge supposedly victorious? We all know the answer.

We just don’t like to admit it. The dirt we fight along with the deter-

gents we use to do so is simply environmental pollution by another

name. But dirt is unhygienic, you say, and one cannot avoid a spot of

cleaning? Strange! Because people used to clean, even before they

knew about hygiene. And besides, the filters used in vacuum clean-

ers are not fine enough to contain bacteria effectively. Which means

that vacuum cleaners merely keep bacteria in circulation. What a

shame for the vacuum cleaner, the designers’ favorite brainchild!

Then how do people clean in hospitals, where hygiene is truly

vital? Hygiene in hospitals rests as far as I can see on three pillars.

The first pillar is purely symbolic—for sparkling white surfaces and

the shine on polished (which is to say, wax-smeared) floors are con-

sidered the epitome of cleanliness. The second is antiseptics—tox-

ins, in other words: an endless flow of new disinfectants designed to

kill bacteria. Any success in these stakes is unfortunately short-lived

however, for resistant strains never cease to develop, and are engen-

dered selectively in fact, by these very toxins. And the third pillar is

vacuum cleaning. In contrast to the domestic vacuum cleaner that

releases dust back into the same room it was captured, hospitals’

centralized air conditioning and vacuum-cleaning systems spread

dangerous spores all over the place. Is there a remedy for such un-

propitious circumstances? Of course—but it falls neither in the

designer’s brief nor within his external parameters! The key to the

problem is to redesign the health care system, above all by promot-

ing decentralization.

Let’s name one last institution: the production site. A lot could

be said on this topic but let us stick to one point only: workplaces—

by which we mean jobs—are also man-made design objects. We’re

158

not talking here about making chairs at work more comfortable, or

about cheering the place up a little, with fresh wallpaper and a few

potted plants. The object of design in this context is that particular

part of the production process assigned to each individual laborer,

and the degree of energy, knowledge and skill, respectively of igno-

rance, boredom or mindlessness that must be invested at any par-

ticular point in the production process. This applies not only to pro-

duction sites in the narrower sense of the word, i.e. to factory jobs,

but also to administrative and clerical work. Workplaces—jobs—

are designed ostensibly for productivity; yet productivity of a sort

akin to counter-productivity. Automation, as it is called, destroys

jobs that have hitherto been a source of satisfaction while other

jobs in the manual sector, which could and should most urgently

be rationalized, remain unchanged. Here we can touch only briefly

on the problem, without offering concrete evidence of our claim.

Yet the main point is this: jobs are also designed; not only in the

traditional sense of design but in terms of the way the production

process is broken down into various types of task, which actively

demand or render redundant the laborers’ skills range, and foster or

hinder cooperation.

The previous comments were intended to show that design has

an invisible component, namely an organizational-institutional di-

mension over which the designer always exercises a certain influ-

ence yet which, given the way we classify our environment in terms

of objects, tends to remain hidden. Insofar as the world is divided

into object categories, and the invisible dimension acknowledged

only marginally as an external parameter, the world too is designed.

Furthermore, institutions’ resistance to change—especially given

the wealth of technological objects now under development—is

also a form of design: radiology equipment is designed for the use

of nurses in radiology.

159

In the following we wish to consider whether these insights are

of any use to us, or simply sad proof of the fact that the world is

badly designed.

Whenever we think about design, we must address two phases:

the phase of actual design or planning through to production; and

the consumption phase, up to and including an object’s disposal on

the trash heap, or in a museum. Let us take a look first at the estab-

lished hypothesis on each:

– On design: the objective is a functional object, whereby one

might discuss endlessly whether functionality per se is identi-

cal with beauty, or whether the designer must add beauty as

an extra.

– And on consumption: technology and technical devices are

neutral; their misuse stems from people’s villainy. The Werk-

bund Almanach (Almanac) from 1914 featured warships as de-

sign objects while the journal Werk from April 1976 described

the cooling towers of nuclear power stations as an appealing

venture for architects.

And now, two contrary viewpoints, as a possible premise for a new

way of describing the two processes, design and consumption:

– On design: objects owe their form to the interactions inherent

to the design process.

– And on consumption: such objects in turn exert influence on

social interaction; objects are not neutral; Tools for Convivi-

ality³ exist (asserts Illich!), as do their opposite, objects that

impede social interaction.

3 Ivan Illich, Tools for Conviviality, Harper & Row, New York 1973.

160

And let us test a third hypothesis while we are at it, a hypothesis on

counter-productivity:

– Every new invention that is put to use effects change, and

such change in turn necessitates new inventions. If all the

problems that successively arise are dealt with conventionally,

namely one by one, as isolated phenomena, the outcome is

counter-productivity. Here is a brief example: a central heat-

ing system serving several apartments allegedly gave rise to

the need to monitor each individual tenant’s energy consump-

tion. Gauges based on the evaporation of liquid were installed

and, as a result, each tenant now turns off his radiators when-

ever he goes out. However, each tenant also wants his apart-

ment to be warm the minute he turns the radiators back on.

Consequently, water in the heating system is kept at such a

high temperature that every tenant, even the most thrifty,

ultimately pays more for heating now than when heating costs

were split between tenants, without individual monitoring.

Let’s begin therefore with the design process. Here, as we observed

in our opening remarks, the designer classifies the world in terms

of object categories rather than problem categories. This rests on

linguistic determination, for to name a problem is simultaneously

to identify the appliance that can remedy it. When I complain that

my electric onion chopper may indeed save me a moment’s work

but then takes ten minutes to clean, what springs to mind is not so

much a return to the simple kitchen knife but a design for an ap-

pliance able to clean my onion chopper. The objective, once named,

becomes an instant remedy, and supersedes any general endeavor on

my part, to cook more efficiently when time is limited.

A further effect of this direct link between naming and remedy

is the suppression of secondary considerations: with the exception

161

of the appliance to be designed, no technical or organizational

changes should be necessary. Whatever can be integrated in exist-

ing systems, however overloaded these may be, is considered suc-

cessful: a waste disposal unit built into the sink drainage, an oven

The Triumph of Good Form. Drawing: Lucius Burckhardt

162

that self-cleans through pyrolysis, etc. This type of troubleshooting

is rooted in the designer’s position within policymaking bodies: his

job is to deliver ideas—but he bears zero liability.

In the late 1950s, the Ulm School of Design was the first pro-

fessional institution to recognize that industrial design is counter-

productive—yet the solutions it proposed were technocratic. They

were based on a radical analysis of the desired outcome but failed

to consider that outcome in its broader context. Students in Ulm

were hence likely to submit papers that began something like this:

“The exercise consists in raising ten to twenty gram portions of

semi-solid substances from a dish circa thirty centimeters in diam-

eter then transferring them horizontally to an open mouth, where

a movement of the upper lip relieves the supporting structure of its

load…” The result is not Charlie Chaplin’s eating machine but a

fork with a Modernist profile.

In the meantime, of course, it has been recognized that objects

that have great symbolic value yet require only minimal inventive-

ness—cutlery, for example—do not fall into the design field. Con-

versely, those things yet to be invented, or at least their technical

aspects, are too complex for designers. So design must broaden its

scope and embrace socio-design: a way of thinking about resolving

problems that results from coordinated changes made both to roles

and to objects. One example may be to design a kitchen so inviting,

it inspires guests to help the host chop onions…

Before leaving the field of design to consider aspects of con-

sumption, I want to slip in a comment or two on shopping and

its “hidden persuaders.”⁴ Of course, the marketing and advertising

4 Vance Packard’s book The Hidden Persuaders (David McKay Co., New York 1957) was a pioneering and prescient work that revealed how advertisers use

163

professionals who use depth psychology to sell either soap powder

or instant cake mix designed to make a mother feel she is breast-

feeding the whole family, have not yet thrown in the towel. But the

hype in the design field has pretty much died down: I now buy a

new refrigerator when the old one breaks down, not simply because

I want one with rounded contours. Rearguard action continues on

the car market, where revivals are a flourishing trade, and the avant-

garde has already discovered the flea market for other retail sectors.

The flea market will be the place dwindling numbers of throwaway

consumers meet the swelling ranks of post-industrial society.

This is not to say that progress—in its positive as well as its

counter-productive guise—has come to a standstill. But the sector

in which progress is still being made is straightforward. Progress

holds sway in production for the white (official) market but gray

market trading, moonlighting, self-sufficiency, barter systems and

informal mutual aid are on the rise too. White trading is still scor-

ing points also in these areas: DIY hobby products have slipped

onto the shelves among the detergent battalions. Yet these might

be fleeting epiphenomena on the road to greater self-sufficiency.

Whether we should welcome all this wholeheartedly remains un-

certain: it panders to lower middle-class aspirations, and harbors a

threat of social isolation; but perhaps a retrograde step or two is the

price society must pay for a springboard to new realms of experi-

ence.

With regard to usage and consumption, we wanted to point out

that objects are not neutral. Is there such a thing as evil objects?

Goods are harmful when they foster our dependence on systems

psychological methods to tap into unconscious desires in order to “persuade” the consumer to buy promoted products.

164

that ultimately pillage our resources, or desert us. Without doubt

we are all attached to such systems, and this makes us liable to

blackmail. However we can still influence the extent of our depen-

dency. We should avoid those objects that compel us to buy more

accessories. We should distrust media that provide a one-way flow

of information, even though we can no longer do without them.

We should exercise restraint in buying and using any goods that

isolate us. The car is a major case in point, especially as it tends also

to foster inconsiderate behavior in its user.

The car has destroyed not only our cities but also our society.

One can commission as much research as one likes as to why juve-

nile delinquency is on the rise, why more women are attacked, why

districts are becoming derelict, or slums, or no-go areas by night. As

long as the defense against motorized crime is a motorized police

force, as long as the pedestrian is advised to use his car, the solution

can be named without any need for further research: motorization

based on private car ownership has abandoned the non-motorized

populace to greater insecurity, and to an increasingly uncompetitive

mass transit system.

This leads to our last remark: on counter-productivity. We al-

ready mentioned the example of monitoring heating costs. That is

only a minor aspect of the outrageous counter-productivity of the

central heating system, every failure of which has been countered by

a new remedy that subsequently proved to be a failure, to the point

where we now use our electronically controlled, overheated and, in

terms of air hygiene, unhealthy central heating system in devastat-

ingly wasteful fashion, as a boiler; and the central heating system

is being superseded now by an even greater evil, air conditioning.

Counter-productivity, as we have said, arises when inventions are

used in such a way as to cause a break in the overall system, a break

that is patched up in turn by a further isolated invention. The sum

165

of these successor-inventions equals the counter-productivity of the

overall system.

To return to the car: since the average inner-city speed for cars

has been lowered to match that of cyclists, or pedestrians even, au-

tomobile manufacturers are pursuing research into the automobile’s

successor. And what are they developing? A car fitted with an ad-

ditional gadget that allows the car to be steered to its destination by

an electronic short-wave remote control system, whenever it enters

the city limits. Or to return to the vacuum cleaner: since the pub-

lic has grown aware that vacuum cleaners are all the more damag-

ing the more efficient they are, i.e. the more powerfully they can

whizz bacteria through the filter, the industry is looking at a suc-

cessor gadget—and guess what that may be? You’re right: a vacuum

cleaner with a built-in bacteria filter!

Invisible design. Today, this implies conventional design that is

oblivious to its social impact. Yet it might also imply the design of

tomorrow—design that consciously takes into account the invisible

overall system comprised of objects and interpersonal relationships.

166

Dirt (1980)

Dirty and clean, as you can read in the work of Mary Douglas,

are anthropologically determined values. We find cats cute, rats

disgusting. Gypsies eat hedgehog meat while other ethnic groups

shudder at the thought of roast rabbit. Would you enjoy the taste

of roast fox, a favorite dish of alpine farmers? Why did people bury

horsemeat for centuries then begin in the nineteenth century to

process it, in specially built slaughterhouses? What makes butter-

flies appetizing and flies repulsive? Opinions regarding spiders are

divided, and an earwig too, depending on where one encounters it,

provokes outrage or indifference. During World War I, the zoolo-

gist Auguste Forel tried to eat earthworms, but ultimately failed to

slip them down his throat.

And how do things stand with dirt per se? Drat! There’s a grease

spot on my tie, and my shoes could urgently use some polish. And

what about feces? In the case of cats, it is hardly worth a mention

while dogs have free reign outdoors, and human beings nowhere.

Italians are a dirty nation; our housekeeper is Italian. White linen

needs to be laundered more frequently than colored does.

Dirt, which we believe we recognize precisely on account of the

disgust it prompts, is evidently a relative and, moreover, a contra-

dictory matter. The social system, the upper classes and majorities

dictate standards as to what is dirty and what is clean. In conse-

quence, the lower classes and minorities are dirty—or squeamish;

for the standards set and the form discrimination takes may also be

reversed. “We are not so squeamish,” says the Count, and personally

guts the rabbit that so disgusts the cook.

Dirt is not something we can dispose of completely however.

167

The endeavor to impose increasingly high mandatory standards of

cleanliness is a brainchild of the detergents industry—and it is pol-

luting our environment. The fact that standards of cleanliness are

relative creates some leeway in the design process. We must each

regain a clearer sense of cleanliness, one that will not lead us to

socialize disgust at the expense of air and water.

People always cleaned, even long before they knew the reason

why. Today, any child knows that dirt contains bacteria, and can

therefore cause sickness. Yet long before this discovery, certain as-

pects of the material world were treated as inferior, as dirt, in par-

ticular when they cropped up in places other than those assigned

to them.

However, knowledge of bacteria turned the spotlight on the in-

visible dimension of dirt; visible dirt is only the basis on which

bacteria apparently become active. So, can we be sure there are no

bacteria lurking on the freshly waxed and polished floors of hospital

corridors? In any event, we continue to fight dirt only in its visible

dimension.

“And so, was the water that drained away dirty?”—“Of course it

was dirty, that day. But the worst of it is, that the water was never

completely clean.” Just who is talking here? You guessed it. The

water in question is that used to cool down a nuclear power plant,

and what is called dirt here can be measured only with a Geiger

counter. New dirt is clean dirt therefore; dirt that can pass through

every kind of filter, and resist every attempt to clean it up; dirt,

moreover, that is often actually a by-product of pollution control.

“Once nuclear power generates sufficient electricity,” we are told,

“we will be able to afford to treat all our sewage, and our rivers will

be clean again.”

Standards exist also for invisible dirt, and somebody sets them:

not the upper classes, in this case, but an anonymous band of of-

168

ficials, experts, professional associations and lobby groups.—Just

what level of lead ions is permissible in the air, in vegetables and

in milk? How close to the highways may our cattle be put out to

pasture? What level of radiation can a person withstand?—Some

authority or other always claims to have the right answer. And

the manufacturers never wait to be told it twice over; they just hit

whatever level of pollution is permitted. To produce less pollution

than permissible would not make economic sense. Yet to produce

more pollution than permissible is permissible too. It is written off

as an incident, a malfunction. Accidents happen. Invisible dirt is

somehow like social housing programs: the maximum is also the

minimum, and the norms set ensure that better than the norm is

never an option.

Let us return now to the issue of visible dirt, to waste and re-

mainders. Do you recall sitting in the tram on the way to school,

mulling over the previous evening’s homework, that long equa-

tion you deduced had a remainder? And then a schoolmate boards

the tram and you shout: “Hey, did you solve the equation? I had a

remainder of 7.” “Then you are wrong. I had no remainder.” But how

can we be so sure the outcome without a remainder is correct, and

the outcome with a remainder wrong? Surely the opposite might

be true. However, the equations in our math books in school were

always doctored. For schools are supposed to impart a picture of a

world in which everything works out precisely. Students are sup-

posed to grow up to become something sensible, and to achieve a

lot in their career: a career as a traffic engineer, for instance. A sen-

sible road width is one that can be divided by the number of traffic

lanes; any remainder, a half-lane, would not make sense. Admit-

tedly, a half-lane would make cyclists’ lives a lot easier. But cyclists

are dirt as far as traffic engineers are concerned: a remainder that

somehow refuses to disappear.

169

Problems can be solved without a remainder in college too. A

professor of architecture in Zurich sets an exercise: build a youth

center on the city’s Paradeplatz. The proposed plan could be real-

ized on that vacant lot. In reality however, an insurance company

has already begun to build its headquarters on the same site, and

besides, young people rarely hang out on Paradeplatz. Yet because

the professor’s assistants had carried out a preliminary study during

summer vacation, everything looks just fine on paper.

So we actually never learn how to solve problems in a way that

leaves a remainder, which is to say, we never learn how to deal with

reality. And that is why the world is full of remainders, of odd ends

of lots and the like. The road built to accommodate cars curves at

a weird angle to pass between two right-angled cubic buildings.

Fortunately for us, there are gardeners skilled in landscaping such

trigonometric clothoids. Yet curiously, accidents continue to hap-

pen even on roads purpose-built for traffic; and because such roads

are purpose-built correctly, at least one guilty party must exist for

each accident. Accidents are put down to human error, which is the

remainder in an utterly perfect system.

Even an individual project planned without a remainder will

give rise to a remainder when realized alongside another, likewise

perfectly planned project. To plan for reality therefore means to

plan projects that cater to the existence of such remainders, and

that anticipate human behavior. With a stroke of luck, this type

of planning might then also reap the beauty once inherent to the

older towns and villages in our traditional cultural landscape. Does

this imply a return to a perfect world, you ask? On the contrary: it

means we renounce any notion of an utterly perfect world being

possible.

170

What Is Livability? On Quantifiable and Invisible Needs (1981)

To plan, one needs exact figures. The planners’ query is directed

therefore at sociologists: How much space does a person need?

How much space for play? What height of ceiling? How much

green space? How much pavement? The sum of the responses, the

planner imagines, should give rise to the “livable city.”

Of course, the sociologists are taken in by the planners’ query,

and launch research based on so-called empirical methods. One

of the earliest empirical studies was an inquiry into the optimal

room temperature for factory work. A company provided for the

trial study a factory hall where women were engaged in piecework,

a simple, repetitive activity. The temperature was set at 20°C—and

the women attained an unusually high rate of production that day.

The next day the stable temperature was 22°C—and the women’s

production rate rose even higher. Further monitoring required that

the hall be heated to 25°C on the third day—and the women’s pro-

duction rate rose yet again. Finally, the temperature was lowered to

18°C—and the women produced more on that day than they ever

had before. The sociologists found this rather curious, ultimately,

and brought in a psychologist. He established that the group of

female workers in question had hitherto been neglected by the

factory management, and isolated from the rest of the workforce.

The fact that people who were apparently acting on behalf of the

management, and who sounded at any event like scientists of sorts,

were now paying attention to the group, prompted the women to

optimize their performance, regardless of which parameters were

set for the trial.

171

The story is amusing, but it also makes us think. It speaks of the

difficulty empiricists face when they seek to take non-quantifiable

factors into account. There is an important word in the title of our

conference, and of this lecture: “livability.” The word livability was

coined in the 1960s, when cities were optimized, supposedly on the

basis of a quantifiable factor, namely traffic norms. The word “liv-

ability” serves to describe the value of all that was sacrificed at the

time, supposedly to the benefit of urban development.

Our seminar is concerned—to put it in scientific terms—

with the critique of a quantitative concept of need. The first step

therefore, is to describe the indeterminate character of the needs

of human beings, as opposed to those of animals, say. It follows

that such human needs cannot be fulfilled technically, and that it

is therefore impossible to establish quantitative standards for their

fulfillment. We need to acknowledge that human needs are not bio-

logically determined, but develop in a social setting. When we say,

to fulfill one need generates other needs, we do not mean that it

generates covetousness and unwarranted luxury, but rather a quality

of life such as is expressed by livability, civilization and sophistica-

tion. Next, we should acknowledge that livability or culture or other

building blocks of life quality are not objects that occur individu-

ally, or in designated quantities—like housing or green space, for

example; rather, they are small subsystems comprised of organiza-

tional, modifiable and material components. “Nighttime safety” is

one such system, which cannot be defined only as the absence of

crime; and “peace and quiet” likewise comprises more than sim-

ply not exceeding a certain level on the decibel scale. Finally, we

must acknowledge also that livability, even if we were to succeed

in explaining it definitively, cannot be decreed: it is not a welfare

precept but requires active participation in society; and we’ll find

time perhaps also for a word or two, in conclusion, on the planners

172

themselves, and their way of planning, which always means to do

good, it is true, yet happens at times to do evil.

Let us begin with the indeterminacy of the human being as

compared with the animal, for example, whose keep and care in the

zoo is based on the observance of certain quantities and qualities,

surfaces, temperatures, dietary combinations and lighting condi-

tions. Not that man does not pose such biological demands, but his

by nature are so plastic and malleable that his later development,

his so-called education, puts them on track, and shapes them in a

way such that they are no longer quantitative, but have a formal or

symbolic character. Long before we die of cold, hunger or lack of

space, we perish because our world is no longer that which we have

learned it should be.

So our needs are not determined biologically, but historically, or

at the least, they are so forcefully molded by social development as

to leave their biological foundations far behind. This advance both

in the development and the satisfaction of need may not be con-

sidered a luxury however, so to speak as a mobile superstructure

built on biological foundations. None of us can return, alone, to the

living standards of the early industrial age; together, under certain

circumstances, in the wake of some catastrophe perhaps, we might

survive such a regressive step. That living standards—i.e. the extent

to which needs exist and can be satisfied—undergo historical de-

velopment is something we can probably agree on. A more difficult

matter is to admit that, even a historical reading of the concept

of need does not allow one to premise an existence minimum¹ on

1 The title of the second CIAM in Frankfurt/Main in 1929 was “Minimum Existence Housing.” Cf. also the paper “On the Value and Meaning of Urban Utopias.”

173

which modern man can survive. I have the following to say—and I

have deliberately framed my thesis paradoxically: no one can sur-

vive on the existence minimum.

No one can survive on the existence minimum? Well then, let

us raise the existence minimum! This very process, of raising the

existence minimum in every respect, has been mirrored for decades

in the norms, dimensions and comfort requirements of social hous-

ing programs.

No one can claim it is impossible to live in the apartments

built, say, in the framework of German social housing programs.

But hundreds of thousands of citizens live in older city centers, far

below this historically and politically defined minimum standard.

And one hears increasingly, how inhospitable the social housing

projects of the 1960s are—and older housing stock, sometimes of a

much inferior quality, is being maintained in order to spare people

having to move into such projects.

Evidently, the concept of livability cannot be realized by attain-

ing a standard based on the sum of a number of norms. To our

minds, livability is something whole, and we are little inclined to

break it down into its composite parts. We know where it is pos-

sible still to live in comfort: in old neighborhoods, in small towns,

and certainly in one or other of the modern projects too. Yet none

of that is of any use to the planner, so long as he is unable to break

the concept down into some building blocks or other, from which

to create the new livability. So we have to try for once, to break

the environment down, not into its usual quantifiable components,

which is to say into spaces, road widths, ceiling heights and green

spaces, but into manageable subsystems composed both of quantifi-

able and non-quantifiable elements.

174

In his book A Pattern Language,² Christopher Alexander names

one such building block of the livable city: the street corner with its

combination of intersection, bus stop, newsstand and cross-walk.

These are the visible elements of the street corner, and they are

complemented by invisible, organizational factors: the bus time-

table, traffic regulations, and the newsstand’s opening times. If the

newsstand is still closed when I am waiting for my bus to work,

the street corner subsystem fails to function: it lacks an element of

livability.

We named other subsystems earlier: building blocks of the liv-

able city, which are composed irrevocably quasi, of several quan-

titative and organizational components. We named safety on our

residential streets at night; and anyone will agree that this is a basic

prerequisite of livability. How lightly we dealt with the matter! And

we look at one another like wide-eyed innocents, and thereby as-

sure one another that the crime rate is very much on the rise. Yet

if one looks at the relevant statistics, it is doubtful whether this

elementary claim can be substantiated. It is doubtful moreover,

whether safety on our residential streets has anything at all to do

with crime statistics. We are speaking here, not of violent crime but

of the vague feeling of insecurity that prevents us from going out

around midnight, to drop a letter in the mailbox or to drink a beer.

The sense of safety one used to have in the city rested on the

presence of a large number of passers-by. Nowadays, most people

who go out at night take their car. Given that individual motoriza-

tion has reduced the demand for nighttime public transport, the

service has been withdrawn almost completely. This has forced the

2 Christopher Alexander, A Pattern Language. Towns, Buildings, Construction, Oxford University Press, New York 1977.

175

remaining nighttime passengers to use a car too. The outcome is not

only accidents due to drunk driving but also a sense of insecurity

on the street. If I happen to meet a single passer-by when isolated

amid the cars whizzing by, I feel afraid of him.

Another subsystem is noise. Planners plod through the city with

noise gauges, and measure the volume in decibels. Noise is more

than just physical impact on our auditory organs however. It is also

a source of information, and the sum of the noises we hear is our

acoustic environment. Disturbing noise therefore amounts to an

imbalance in our information environment, long before it becomes

physically damaging.

All noise is annoying, but our reactions differ greatly, depend-

ing on the relationship we have to the noise source. We sleep so to

speak, with one ear open, deciphering acoustic messages, and relay-

ing them to our consciousness, whether we like it or not. The selec-

tion of “relayed” messages has nothing to do with volume levels but

is governed rather by sympathy, anger, fear and curiosity. To date,

only aircraft noise monitoring has begun to take this factor into

account—and only to a limited extent, moreover—namely, by ref-

erencing the Noise and Number Index instead of the decibel scale.

But let us return to livability. Initially in the USA, and here too,

in the meantime, there have been signs among the general public of

an attitude people have attempted prematurely to dismiss as “nos-

talgia.” American sociologist Herbert J. Gans was the first to note,

how valuable certain aspects of a run-down Italian ghetto in Boston

had been to its residents. Resettlement of these residents at a higher

standard of living has failed to assure them the livability factors

they previously enjoyed. In St. Louis, there was an outcry when the

Pruitt-Igoe housing project—built as a replacement for demolished

slum housing by the prestigious architect Minoru Yamasaki—had

to be blown up because of the increasing level of crime there.

176

Herbert J. Gans drew on the example of Levittown to prove

that livability values may, but do not necessarily, manifest as a pic-

turesque appearance. The Levittown developments are specula-

tive, newly built residential developments that look horrific to we

modern aesthetes and aficionados of old notions of the city; yet

they evidently evince those invisible qualities that non-speculative

modern urban planning is unable to reproduce. The aesthetically

loaded word “nostalgia” is therefore simply a red herring, a means

to blind us to the real issues of livability. The growing popularity of

older housing stock is not due to its decrepit, picturesque, ruinous

or otherwise imperfect condition but rather, to its location in places

where those systems I refer to as the true building blocks of the liv-

able environment are still intact.

There is a second factor after all, perhaps an aesthetic or socio-

aesthetic factor: our personal environment does not consist only of

all that is physically present, which is to say, of built structures, stones,

bricks, grass, trees and parking lots. More importantly, our environ-

ment must provide food for thought, so that our imaginations can

build a world for us that we sense is right for us, and can accept. It is

no help to us at all to be granted portions of comfort, inch by inch:

the 60-liter refrigerators of the 1960s, or the 70-liter refrigerators

of the 1970s, and so on. Everyone has heard about the home seeker

who demands so much he could never possibly be satisfied. The one

apartment offered him has a beautiful view but no central heating

while the other offers the latest comforts but has no terrace. What

do we demand of an apartment? Surely also, that a visitor will say,

“What a lovely place you have here; I’d love to have such a view;” or

“What high ceilings you have, and they assure such a pleasant ambi-

ence and acoustics!” One thing at least remains of the ideal house we

were dreaming of when we began our search—the terrace, the gar-

den or the high ceilings—and we are willing therefore, to renounce

177

another. What we demand therefore is a first endeavor, or seeds: the

seeds of a dream, says the functionalist, contemptuously; whereupon

we add that functionalism, when it was still vibrant, namely in the

1920s, also offered the seeds of a dream. Architecture was never so

utopian as when it believed itself to be functionalist. It boasted a

level of social development not yet attained.

We come now to two last points that deal, not with the inhabit-

ant but with the planner. The notion of researching needs—their

translation into blueprints and urban development plans, and their

fulfillment—corresponds to a welfare mindset that actually fails to

attain its primary goal, namely the so-called satisfaction of needs.

Just as any need for rationing engenders the black market, stan-

dardization engenders the need to surpass the norm. We have con-

demned this human trait on moral grounds, and argued that people

should be broken of the habit—yet this too attests to a do-gooder

approach among people who think themselves better than others.

What then, might be the meaning of this mass exodus so hotly

decried by planners, the exodus to the single-family residence, the

countryside, the abandoned farmhouse and the closed-down fac-

tory? People are seeking refuge from the provision of standardized

architecture by the welfare state.

And here is the second point: well-intentioned welfare has never

reached those who truly need it. The entire social housing program

has benefited a social class comprised of lower-income but by no

means needy families living in thoroughly orderly circumstances.

This is not to dispute that public housing subsidies helped certain

families maintain a slightly higher standard of living than they

would have been able to afford otherwise. Yet, for those people truly

of limited means, this fact had disastrous moral consequences. Not

only were they excluded from those privileged circles given a boost

by public subsidies, but the raised norm also widened the gap be-

178

tween the living conditions of those eligible for support, and those

who were simply abandoned. Livability in this social sense implies

thus that I am left with at least a shred of hope of someday obtain-

ing a better apartment. However, the gap between my current situ-

ation and the next best on offer should not grow too wide; for if the

state-subsidized existence minimum amounts to much more than

the average income of the inhabitants of our old towns and indus-

trial cities, we abandon the latter to ghettoized non-livability—to

social non-livability. That is why all support should be based, not on

the idea of welfare assistance as charity, but on the political concept

of mutual aid and participation.

These comments amount in essence to a critique of the concept

of need upheld by planners, which assumes “quantifiability” and

“satisfiability.” Application of this concept has led to the ongoing

improvement of whatever is quantifiable, and the ongoing neglect

of whatever is not. Furthermore, quantifiable factors were raised to

a standard whose exigencies pushed non-quantifiable factors out of

the picture. The best example is the street. For traffic planners, lane

width for cars is a quantifiable factor whereas the convenience to a

person of using the sidewalk is not. What was more natural then,

than to narrow the width of our city sidewalks to just about that of

the human body, and to widen the roads to accommodate the traffic

planners’ recurrently raised norm? As we have endeavored to show,

such improvement of quantifiable factors, and neglect of non-quan-

tifiable factors is based on a false method of planning. The object of

planning is broken down into parts that are classified, not in terms

of their functional interrelationships but in terms of production pro-

cesses and construction processes. Livability however, will become

something we can preserve, or reproduce even, only when we have

grasped that it comprises, not the sum of construction-oriented im-

provements but rather, the organization of vital subsystems.

179

The Night Is Man-made (1989)

Initially it seems as clear as day that the night is not a man-made

but a natural phenomenon: the sun goes down, dusk casts its spell

for a while then darkness falls, finally, unless the moon musters a

meager light to help us on our way. Many animals—owls, bats and

moths—are experts at locating their food by night while man has

driven others such as foxes, deer, and rats into the nocturnal realm.

Man himself, who is doubtless a diurnal creature, has increasingly

laid claim to the world in spatial terms as well as to the hours

that are not rightly his: the nighttime hours. According to Mur-

ray Melbin,¹ to whom we shall return later, the night is “the last

frontier,” the last remaining area we have still to colonize. When

emigration is no longer an option, the fact that not all people are

awake at the same time can still reduce the rise in population den-

sity in urban areas.

Colonization of the night by the diurnal creature man has a

technical dimension: lighting. Yet this interesting strand in the his-

tory of technology and design is not the issue here. Our concern

rather, is to address that which I call “invisible design,”² namely

1 Murray Melbin, “Night As Frontier” in: American Sociological Review, Vol. 43 Nr. 1, February 1978; idem, “The Colonization of Time” in: Timing Space and Spacing Time, Vol. 2, Tommy Carlstein, Don Parkes, Nigel Thrift, (Eds.), Ed-ward Arnold, London 1978.

2 Lucius Burckhardt, “Design Is Invisible” in: Die Kinder fressen ihre Revolution, Bazon Brock (ed.), Cologne 1985. Cf. also: Kulturmagazin Nr. 37, Bern 1983, for discussion of the 11th International Darmstadt Werkbund Conversation on the theme of “The Night,” which took place November 13, 1982.

180

those social and legal resolutions, decisions, decrees, ordinances,

timetables, schedules and tariffs that together determine the man-

ner by which man colonizes the night. The term “invisible design”

hence denotes those human accomplishments that do not shape

actual materials yet have a decisive impact on our lives and our

environment nonetheless. When public transport operates at night,

that changes our habits; and even someone who chooses not to

leave the house after nightfall may still fall victim to nocturnal visi-

tors. When the post office introduced a cheaper rate for telephone

calls made after 10 p.m., lines tended for a time to be overly busy for

an hour, then a cheerful chitchat set in, and lasted until one in the

morning; and even those who chose not to make a call were unable

to evade it. The opening hours of shops, cinemas and theaters, the

extended opening hours of restaurants, pubs, and wine and cocktail

bars, along with their voluntary or officially imposed closing times

determine not only our personal habits but urban life in general.

Where can one go after an evening at the theater? When does the

last tram leave? And what does a taxi cost after the tram has left,

when the nighttime rate applies?

We echo Melbin in calling man’s encroachment and impact on

the night a form of colonization. No such thing was necessary in

feudal society, for peasants were tired by nightfall, and aristocrats

had leisure enough for daytime amusements. The latter welcomed

nightfall as an opportunity to pursue their pleasure by other, more

flirtatious means. Apart from certain rituals of repentance de-

manded of monastic communities, worship too is largely a daytime

activity. Our only record of the “agape” (love feast) passing for a

Eucharist or Holy Communion dates from the Early Christian era

in Rome, when religion was still a pleasure and a raison d’être. As

a new doctrine free of class distinctions, Christianity had appealed

to the working classes, who congregated when they had time, in

181

the evening. To this day we tell the friends we invite home: Do not

eat beforehand. This imperative evolved perversely as the dictate:

whoever celebrates the Eucharist in the early morning must not

break fast beforehand.

“Every day has its own vexations” while—so Goethe claims

twice in his work—“Night is the better half of life.”³ Philine says so

in Goethe’s Apprenticeship, after her mother has already said, “And

the night its joys will bring” to her son Hermann, who wishes to

marry Dorothea. The latter verse was omitted from several editions

published in the late nineteenth century. Connoisseurs of Goethe

at the time, including Friedrich Theodor Vischer, found the verse

so indecent, they seriously suspected some malevolent typesetter

had smuggled it into the text. Literary historians belonged namely

to that species whose nights are spent with bloodshot eyes, amid

books and manuscripts. This too is a form of colonizing the night:

in the daytime one plays the role of professor and privy councilor,

and at night one must pay the price.

But let us return to colonization of the night in the industrial

era. It was no accident that new discoveries in the field of lighting

affected the workplace primarily. Cambacérès invented that which

Goethe had yearned for, the candlewick that need not be snuffed

out; yet he invented it initially, one must add, in the framework of

optical research directed at stabilizing the light source.

Then followed those discoveries however, which strengthened

the light source: gaslight first of all, with which a factory was lit

for the first time in 1803; later, Auer von Welsbach invented the gas

3 J. W. von Goethe, Master Wilhelm’s Apprenticeship, Book V, Chapter X; as cited by Peter von Matt in: “Die Nacht, die Frauenzeit,” Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Bilder und Zeiten, 1.04.1989.

182

mantle, which considerably improved the efficacy of the illuminat-

ing gas used in the workplace. Finally, Davy invented the arc lamp,

and later Edison the light bulb. Like Cambacérès’ candlewick, the

light bulb had a major impact on private households too.

The means to light factories by night, combined with the high

cost of fixed capital, which is to say, of the machines installed in

factories for the purpose of gainful exploitation, paved the way for

nighttime work.

The latter is determined by tariffs, wage levels, the cost of trans-

port and by legislation; and by the absence of legislation too, of

course. In 1803, when the powers that be first allowed factories to be

artificially lit, this novel phenomenon had not yet been regulated,

and the night was open consequently to exploitation. Some time

passed before protective legislation came into force, to the benefit

of children initially, then of all workers. But shiftwork has never

been abolished. It has become less widespread yet, even today, it is

not restricted to vital nighttime provision such as public transport,

health care and emergency services but still facilitates full capac-

ity exploitation of the means of production; of chemical plants for

example, which would have to be a great deal bigger than they are

now, if they were permitted to operate only eight hours a day, and

had to shut down for sixteen.

Shiftwork and nighttime work is the fate of a large section of the

working population, and nighttime work has never become truly

equal to daytime work. There has been remarkably little research

done on shiftwork. Several empirical studies do exist, but none of

the major critiques of industrial labor makes much of the fact that

two-thirds of such work is done at a time of night when the bour-

geois class is at leisure. Marx had identified shiftwork, a relatively

new phenomenon in his day, as a novel form of exploitation, yet it

appears to have interested his successors only with regard to tariff

183

policy or medical issues. However, the cultural and social repercus-

sions of shiftwork are considerable. Can a life in which one’s wak-

ing hours never, or only rarely coincide with those of the majority

population even be called a social life? Most shiftwork schedules

experiment with a week-by-week reversal of the circadian rhythm.

One can accustom oneself to anything—yet none of these forms is

pleasant.

Besides industrial shiftwork there exists a whole range of other

types of “smaller” shifts, in relation to which the word “shift”⁴ takes

on a truly sociological ring: generally the working classes—who

have no choice but to “shift themselves”⁵—do so on behalf of classes

with which they rarely come into contact. One need only think of

trash collectors, for example, who thunder through our city streets

by night; or of the second wave of office workers who set to work

after the first has gone home—or before it arrives. My desk and

office carpet also are the realm of a working female trio—a Turk-

ish woman and her daughter, and a German—whom I usually see

rushing off whenever I turn up especially early to deal with a heavy

workload. What do they think of me? What on earth do they think

about in general? Nobody asks them.

Day and night appears to be a hierarchical arrangement. It is

therefore interesting to note that hierarchies are flattened at night.

Those with real authority go home; whoever works at night be-

longs generally to the lower ranks. Consequently, a shift in respon-

sibilities takes place at night too. By day, the doctor tells the nurse:

“Monitor the patient’s pulse, and call me if it becomes erratic.” In

4 The author plays here on two meanings of the German word “Schicht,” namely “shift” and “social class.”

5 A British term meaning “to spring into action.”

184

the evening, before he leaves, the same doctor says: “If his pulse be-

comes erratic, deal with it. Here is the key to the medicine cabinet.”

Things that demand expertise by day are entrusted at night to any

old girl Friday. Murray Melbin studied such shifts in interpersonal

behavior, and identified similar cases in public life, on the street, in

restaurants and in the private stairwell. Solitary night owls should

distrust one another, it is commonly assumed. Yet Melbin can prove

they tend to trust one another a great deal in fact. People help each

other more readily at nighttime than by day.

We also colonize the night increasingly in our pursuit of life’s

pleasures. Pleasure is virtually synonymous with evening enter-

tainment. Daytime is postponed, for whoever lives it up at night

spends all morning in bed. In colonizing the night we renounce the

daylight hours. Our endeavors to put a brake on this process are

remarkably paradoxical: we switch annually to daylight saving time

for example, then scrap it in winter in order that its effect can be

felt the following summer. Instinctively, we experience summertime

as an artifice, as an imposition on our lives: Italians call it “il tempo

legale” (legal time), and Italian newspapers announce in autumn “la

fine dei tempo legale,” hence the return to natural time!

Work and play together dictate that services in the city continue

to operate at night, or ought to: the goal is a city open 24/7, a city

where anything and everything is possible, anytime. No metropolis,

however large, has ever attained this goal. Closing down the Paris

subway between 3 a.m. and 5 a.m. is a much-debated topic; some

see it as a technical necessity, others merely as old hat. The lower the

density of public transport, the greater the importance of the pri-

vate car. A seriously detrimental side effect is the growing number

of accidents caused by drunk driving.

How far should nighttime services go? Transportation, polyclin-

ics, emergency rooms and firehouses—all these seem indispensable

185

yet they are not universally available of course, only in the cities. In

the countryside we must first wake up the doctor, or ferret out vol-

unteer firefighters from their beds or the bar; and after-work public

transport does not even exist. My students can only work at night,

at least they claim that is the case; yet their library is closed at night.

The library at Harvard is open around the clock—so no one there

can claim a good idea came to nought for lack of ideal working

conditions. And, on that point, here is a telling detail: a white man

sits at the circulation desk by day, and a black man by night. Subtle

hierarchies exist, even in the realm of knowledge.

But, with the exception of Harvard’s library, the modern city is

still a long way from 24/7 operations. In city districts, an unoffi-

cial timetable regulates the closing hours of places of entertain-

ment. The lights burn brightest in the inner city, although business

is restricted to limited areas there too, and by the early hours of

the morning, only a few dedicated streets can offer an open bar or

two. Anne Cauquelin⁶ studied this nocturnal time-space pattern

in Paris, and identified distinct changes in the cityscape: certain

streets acquire and then lose a specific meaning at different times

of day and night. Night-owls of a particular kind, people addicted

to particular drugs, or members of singular circles, transvestites

for example, meet at certain hours of the night in certain streets

that, one hour earlier or later, seem nothing special to the innocent

passer-by.

And how do things stand with the night of thieves, crime, dis-

putes and lawlessness? This is a question one is unlikely ever to

fathom entirely. By night, the police and criminals do battle; they

chase through the streets, tires screeching. Who started this? Who

6 Anne Cauquelin, La ville la nuit, Presses Universitaires de France, Paris 1977.

186

first came up with the idea of staging this war at night? Presum-

ably the custom dates from times when the eye of the law closed at

night. But nowadays, the eye of the law sees all, especially at night,

or so it seems. Or is Melbin’s observation correct, that policemen

normally sleep in their patrol cars? Nighttime police patrols have

only a minimal success rate. Motorized police very rarely catch a

criminal red-handed, and the police on foot almost never. The po-

lice force knows this: it deploys police officers actually, merely to in-

crease nocturnal pedestrians’ sense of safety. The motorized patrols

do not exactly heighten this sense of safety. Aid for a pedestrian can

come only from a pedestrian; and his forlornness amid the night-

time stream of traffic is precisely what heightens his personal sense

of fear while, at the collective level, it drives slum deterioration. Any

friendly advice, that he should use a car himself, or at least order a

cab, accelerates the inexorable advance of the nighttime criminal

city.

But streetlights now, they assure us safety! This is an old ques-

tion: Whom do public streetlights really benefit—the criminal,

or the person seeking safety? In former times people locked their

house and yard at night. They ventured onto the open road only in

exceptional cases, armed at best, and accompanied by torchbear-

ers. To whom did public space belong at night, back then? Some

researchers, Gleichmann⁷ and Schivelbusch⁸ for example, maintain

7 Peter Reinhart Gleichmann, “Nacht und Zivilisation,” in: Martin Baethge, Wolfgang Essbach (Eds.): Soziologie – Entdeckung des Alltäglichen, Festschrift für Hans Paul Bahrdt, Campus Verlag, Frankfurt/Main and New York 1984.

8 Wolfgang Schivelbusch, Die Entzauberung des Feuerscheins. Zur Entwicklungs-geschichte der künstlichen Beleuchtung, Hanser, Munich 1983. A second, paperback edition was published under the title Lichtblicke, Ullstein, Frankfurt/Main and Berlin 1986.

187

that street lighting was the authorities’ hobbyhorse, and disadvanta-

geous to all common folk. But what constitutes “the common folk?”

Did not large sections of the population also benefit from the fact

that even men and women who could not afford an armed escort

were able henceforth to walk the streets alone? While Schivelbusch

claims that the cry “à la lanterne” meant a ruler was to be hanged

from the very symbol of public order he personally had instigated,

other sources dispute this. Aristocrats and the clergy are portrayed

in cartoons of the day as being intent on extinguishing street lamps,

and thus on refuting the Enlightenment. The question as to who

actually benefits from nocturnal lighting evidently requires further

study.

The question as to what we illuminate and why appears to have

been neglected also. Increasingly, it seems that those responsible

for lighting have no other goal than to make everything as bright

as possible. Our street lamps illuminate not only streets but also

house facades, which are ugly enough by day as it is. Moreover, such

brightly lit facades do nothing to improve visibility for road users.

Many cities now illuminate all or some of their historic buildings.

This can look lovely on condition that the building is lit also from

within. Without interior lighting, the facade looks like a ruin. All

this lighting would be far more striking, if other nearby buildings

were left in the dark. Street lamps ought therefore illuminate only

the traffic zone. All vehicles are equipped with their own lights;

there is therefore no need for streetlights on highways. Neverthe-

less Belgium, for example, lights its entire cross-country highway

network, and thereby demonstrates that lighting today, goes far

beyond that which is technically necessary, and penetrates meta-

physical or possibly, even theological space: man is endeavoring to

turn night into day. This whole lighting caboodle does not, let me

repeat, assure us safety: neither actual safety from traffic accidents,

188

nor a sense of security. It is similar to a long-forgotten comedy from

the 1930s, in which a married couple arriving home late at night

observes, “It is so disagreeably bright up front, and so disagreeably

dark to the rear.”

To light the streets of Paris at night—and in a very odd way,

moreover, namely by placing a streetlight at the beginning, the mid-

dle, and the end of a road, regardless of its length—was undoubtedly

a design decision taken by the king. The change, whether welcomed

with joy or rejected with suspicion, was in any case evident to all,

and nocturnal behavior was adjusted accordingly. Equally effective

are those resolutions and decisions we named earlier, which initially

appear to have no visible impact: schedules, opening times, closing

times, tariffs, regulations, laws, as well as—the absence and abroga-

tion of laws. These constitute the framework that shapes our living

conditions at least as radically as any visible and tangible elements

such as walls and gates do. We call this phenomenon “invisible de-

sign” in order to illustrate that such resolutions are akin to designs,

in that they put their stamp on our lives. One product of this invis-

ible design is the night, man-made night: a temporal environment

that is opened and closed in accordance with man-made rules. The

theater closes at 11 p.m., the last tram leaves at midnight, and so we

still have time for a beer. One instance determined the tram sched-

ule, another the theater program, and a third the restaurant closing

hours. The overall result is the form our night takes. The end of the

night is fixed also, and strangely staggered. The subway begins to

run at 5 a.m., the trams at 6, and the workers at 7; bureaucrats begin

work at 7.30, but open to the public only at 9. To call someone be-

fore 9 a.m. is considered rude, because everyone assumes everyone

else belongs to the elite, and thus can sleep late, be late for work and

lead a great nightlife.

189

Architecture—An Art or A Science? (1983)

When we come across the polarity of art and science in the field

of architectural design, the first question we must ask is, where, or

wherein is the difference between an artistic and a scientific ap-

proach supposed to lie? We are unable to trace this difference to

concrete aspects of the design process, which is to say, to its the-

matic content or to its results; hence, on the one hand to artis-

tic buildings, and on the other to technical ones. We know only

too well that buildings that appear technical may be intended by

their architects to appear artistic; and vice versa, that technical ap-

proaches may result in highly artistic forms—the architecture of

Mies van der Rohe exemplifies the former for instance, and that of

Félix Candela the latter. To differentiate between the artistic and

technical aspects of architecture therefore makes sense only when

the decision-making method is visible in the actual design process.

For instance, a “scientific” decision is one reached step by step, fol-

lowing careful analysis of individual factors, and an assessment both

of their effects, and their repercussions for other factors; and one

might call an architectural decision “artistic,” whenever the designer

strives intuitively to subordinate to personal caprice every last factor

that needs to be addressed. The role model for artistic decision-

making is the story of the Chinese artist from whom a client had

commissioned an ink drawing of a rooster. The artist had negotiated

a month’s time for the job. One hour before the month reached its

end, the client inquired whether he might pick up the drawing im-

mediately. But he has not yet even begun, the artist admitted, and

asked the client to return in an hour’s time. When the hour was up,

the rooster drawing was finished, and the client inquired as to why

190

the artist had requested a whole month. The artist replied, “I spent

the time reflecting on roosters.”

Now, an architect or planner’s product is not of the same ilk as an

ink drawing. Rather, it must satisfy a whole range of social and

practical criteria. Therefore, pure intuition such as pursued by the

Chinese artist is perhaps not an apt analogy when explaining the

design process. In fact, it confronts us with a difficulty that we could

call the design decision paradox. Architectural design is subject to

a complex cluster of imperatives, some of which can be reconciled

easily while others conflict intractably. To solve one little problem

perfectly gives rise always to several more: windows allow for op-

timal enjoyment of a beautiful panorama but cause too much heat

loss in winter; the optimal driveway to the house passes directly

beneath the neighbor’s bedroom; and so forth.

In a laboratory context, such problems probably, would be solved

scientifically step by step: we would set up a trial situation and

improve it constantly, on the basis of experience gained. The best

A working group makes a decision. Choices between complex alternatives must be simplified. The “essential” crite-ria that ensue from simplification prove to be incomparable.

191

decision-making method here might be called “management of an

initially incalculable batch of problems.”—Architecture aspires to

create a finished product however, and the client too, wishes for

nothing less. In terms of costs, it would be a blow to the client if

one were to say to him, perhaps we will tear down this wing again,

after all; and this window can be bricked up, if it lets in too much

noise. The architect also wants to catch the public eye with a fin-

ished product; at any rate, we have yet to see a photo-caption in an

architectural journal declare, that the pitched roof may perhaps still

be replaced by a flat one. The paradox hinted at above therefore, is:

architectural design must provide a solution, although the premises

on which the latter will be planned are not wholly transparent.

The decisions arising during the design process should be reached here, one at a time. But which comes first, and which later? This proves to be a crucial question. So how does one decide, what is to be decided first? Drawings by Lucius Burckhardt

Another decision method: one proposes a number of possible alternatives and evaluates them on the basis of criteria that serve as filters. Will any single proposal at all pass through all the filters? The Great Master is experienced: he knows what “works” in advance. “To be experienced” amounts to not wishing to gain more experience.

192

The means to reach a solution based on not wholly transpar-

ent premises is called intuition. This method of decision-making

is vital to human existence. Primitive man would doubtless never

have survived had he not been able to make relatively helpful de-

cisions in bewildering situations. We call the situation “paradoxi-

cal” only when intuition is used to repress or even, to replace other,

more rational methods of decision-making. The situation becomes

especially paradoxical when society uses the architect, as it so often

does, to reach decisions that the other social bodies with more re-

sponsibility for the matter have failed to reach; when, for instance

in the so-called urban planning department, the architect’s intu-

ition, which has been honed by his professional training, is used to

replace a feasible procedure comprised of small rational steps with

the seductive vision of a “grand solution.”

To illustrate the above I will outline a further four points in the

architectural decision-making process, a process that lasts from the

first inclination to construct a building (Should one do anything at

all?), through the first rough sketches (“I imagine something like

this”), to the plan, and, finally, to usage.

The process kicks off not with a construction project but with

a problem. The fact that several schoolchildren among the many

thousands in a city have impaired sight does not lead necessarily to

an institution such as a “school for the blind.” Many educational-

ists may think blind children should attend normal schools, also

in order to raise the other children’ awareness of the existence of

such people in their age group. Even if a decision is made in favor

of segregation, the solution to the problem is not necessarily a new

building. It would be entirely feasible to convert a few vacant stores

in the neighborhood into classrooms for blind pupils. To a certain

extent, architectural intuition’s first step is to give the problem a

name: the “School for the Blind;” a name that persistently conjures

193

the image of a building in the mind’s eye of everyone concerned.

The first design decision therefore consists in stripping the complex

problem of all that is supposedly “inessential,” and in giving it a

name that will lead to a solution, namely to a building.

A second step leads to the first rough design proposals or

sketches. Here, we observe the following phenomenon: the intuitive

design method leads the architect—and likewise his client, who is

watching, entranced—to imagine that the first solution that comes

along is the best solution. It is not easy to reconcile several factors,

even through so-called concentration on the essentials, or through

concentration on the so-called essentials. Yet if this is accomplished

on the drawing board, it releases a wave of such satisfaction in the

brain’s pleasure center, the author and everyone else he has man-

aged to convince instantly imagine, that the one and only possible

solution has been found. In consequence, architectural plans con-

ceived intuitively are not optimal but suboptimal.

A further step is to produce the so-called plans. As a matter

of course, we take “plans” to mean large sheets of paper on which

ink strokes indicate the future arrangement of walls. It is on these

sheets of paper that decisions are made, and whoever raises his

voice in protest will be given to understand that he understands

nothing about reading plans. Yet plans are a weak code; they may

serve masons and carpenters as guidelines but they cannot portray

the future functions of a building. The actual uselessness of so many

architectural components, such as can be observed in every recently

built public or private building, is related directly to the inarticulacy

of the allegedly, planning-oriented code of the ground plan.

One last point: to fetishize the product is part and parcel of the

intuitive method. Once a building is standing, the architect turns

his back on it, and flees. He considers it accomplished, perfect even;

and this means no experience is garnered; nothing is learned. Any

194

complaints on the part of the client are noted with annoyance; staff

is dispatched to deal with warranty work; and if it is noted later that

conversions are being made to the building, to sue for the destruc-

tion of intellectual property seems a reasonable option. A “scien-

tific” attitude this is not; an “artistic” one? … Perhaps.

195

A Critique of the Art of Gardening (1983)

One critique of the contemporary art of gardening is based gener-

ally on ecological concerns. To pave over or lay concrete on gar-

den paths, to spray weeds out of existence, and to treat ornamental

plants as disposable goods is indeed both wasteful and harmful.

Another critique of the art of gardening, and in particular of city

policy on parks and gardens, is based on the presumption of public

use. It therefore regards the growing tendency to landscape every

last patch of green in urban space as the seizure of public goods

quasi, and as a disciplinary measure. Critics here also and rightly

point out that merely to alter the style of a garden—to turn an

eclectic ornamental garden into a so-called biotope—does noth-

ing to improve things for users: for example, neither such type of

garden can accommodate children’s games. The present critique ad-

dresses a third angle by inquiring what the style of a garden signi-

fies—what message a distinctively designed or neglected area ac-

tually conveys—as well as how the viewer or user perceives and

interprets that message. This approach ties in with the second

aforementioned, user-oriented critique insofar as the potential to

use a place must of course be perceived as such, and taken advantage

of: opening a door does not automatically mean the public will step

through it. This critique is oriented to issues of information and

addresses three points in particular: the misinformation that ensues

from a style of gardening apt to destroy traces of former use; the

professionalization that seeks to divest laypersons of their compe-

tence in gardening; and finally, academicism, namely the depletion

of the codes of landscape and garden design through their excessive

and indiscriminate use.

196

Human behavior in open spaces is governed by two pieces of

information: the user must know whether a particular use of a loca-

tion is physically and legally possible, or whether natural obstacles

or proprietary rights stand in its way; and he must consider also,

whether the general public will tolerate his intended activity. After

asking “Can one do this here?” and “May one do this here?” comes

the question “Is this done here?” In a village that is striving to be-

come more beautiful, it is not enough just to put two benches on

the village square and plant begonias around them; for as long as

being idle in full view of village society is subject to sanctions, no

one but drunks would ever dream of taking a seat on the benches.

The user gleans messages about how possible or well tolerated an

activity may be inter alia from the vegetation. To detect the natural

qualities of soil, proprietorial rights or actual use by reading spon-

taneous (i.e. unplanned) vegetation is a skill we have acquired quite

unconsciously, since our earliest childhood. So-called plant sociol-

ogy is, strangely enough, the latest fruit of botany; only after many

centuries of the study of individual species did the botanists of this

century “discover” the fact that certain species form societies, that

such societies succeed one another, and that such forms of social-

ization tell us something about an area’s soil conditions, human use,

age and impairment. We all possess this knowledge unconsciously

however, even when we are unable to name the individual plant

species. The fact that vegetation one can walk on indicates a right of

way, that undergrowth indicates the current absence of agricultural

exploitation, and annuals indicate short-term changes is no more

foreign to us than our ready interpretation of prohibition and traf-

fic signs.

In essence, city gardening uses this same language: its motto, “Say

it with flowers,” signals the behaviors it believes are to be tolerated

or prohibited in public parks and facilities. A “mute” dialogue thus

197

ensues between the city parks department and the public: the first

response to people tramping through the newly created flowerbed

on Königsplatz is to plant roses. After a row of rose bushes also has

been trampled underfoot, the form of the flowerbed is changed, and

the public’s footpath is paved over. The language of gardeners dif-

fers from the language of spontaneous vegetation however, in that

care and maintenance always destroys the past. Landscape or garden

designs attempt to lay down new rules, whereas the eye of the user

scans the condition of existing vegetation—the grass that invites one

to walk on it, bedding meadows or waterside shrubs—to glean in-

formation about the social acceptance or sanction of the regulations

in force. The only spontaneous vegetation gardeners foster is weeds.

In botanical terms, weeds are species that thrive in soils prepared

and fertilized for ornamental plants, and are able either to produce

several generations a year (if their propagation cycle is brief ), or to

establish themselves rapidly, by sprouting deep, tenacious roots.

Our interest here is not the vegetal-sociological dimension of the

weed phenomenon but rather, its “linguistic” dimension. Weeds, as

Karl Heinrich Hülbusch has noted, stem from vegetable gardening;

it was only when Gründerzeit gardeners began to display flowers

like vegetables that the notion of weeds took hold also in the minds

of the urban dweller. In aesthetic terms, this led to the sanction of

certain wild plants, in particular of the dandelion, whose blooms

are no less splendid than those of treasured species such as white

and yellow narcissus, or the daisy. That the dandelion is absent from

meadow bouquets may be attributed also to its unpleasant sap. Yet

the fanaticism with which we tear it up by its roots derives surely

from its reputation as “the vegetable pest in the flower bed.”

Given, on the one hand, its ornamental plant monocultures and,

on the other, its production of short-lived weed societies, the art of

gardening makes it impossible to read plots of land in terms of their

198

use and capacities. The most we can discern from an area planted

with ornamental plants and weeds is, firstly, that the soil has been

freshly tilled and fertilized, which may possibly hamper its use;

and, secondly, that the potential interest of an owner or gardener,

or perhaps only his temporary lack of interest, affords weed seeds a

chance to put down roots. Constant weeding constantly reproduces

the same weed society, and hence uniformity, in addition to signal-

ing rejection.

In contrast, all older plant societies—on roadsides, quarries,

wasteland, countryside meadows, on the unresolved borders be-

tween the private and public spheres, on parking lots, or on lots

awaiting speculative development, abandoned construction sites

and urban industrial sites—signalize longer-term developments.

They render past and present use visible, and they assure more-

over, that such use is tolerated, for they render legible the fact that

many people, perhaps many children, have access to an area. The

diversity of plant societies and plant species fosters a discriminating

gaze, provides entertaining information also for mere passers-by or

non-users, and is insofar a greater source of vitality than the total

care lavished on all urban green areas, which leads to an endless,

mono tonous succession of ornamental plants, ornamental lawns

and weeds.

The second point in our critique of the modern art of gardening

is its professionalization. For anyone who has the means as well as a

misapprehension of professional expertise, everything is possible—

technically. This fact has served to seriously devalue the longstand-

ing experience of gardeners however amateur, regarding what grows

well where and without major interventions. Local conditions need

no longer be taken into account. If need be, one simply imports new

topsoil. And if rhododendrons fail to flourish alongside dry grasses,

one builds drainage and irrigation. This attitude among gardeners

199

who consider themselves landscape designers has a dual impact on

our perceptions: for one, it gives rise to misinformation by disturb-

ing the character of the landscape and, secondly, it discourages the

amateur gardener.

To create a garden in defiance of the landscape and its natural

conditions is an approach learned during a form of professional

training premised on technical viability. The set pieces or notions

grasped summarily in the design class—the ponds, canals, foun-

tains, mounds and sculptured terrains—are deployed everywhere,

ruthlessly. That water flows downhill, that geological tectonics un-

derpin the landscape, that hillcrests sprout different vegetation than

valleys, all this seems to amount to little more than the sum of the

obstacles that must be eliminated by technological means.

The cover of Destroyed By Care (1981), in which the Kassel Werkbund group expressed its criticism of the National Horticultural Show.

200

In the park that was built in 1981 on the lower terrace of the

water meadows by the River Fulda in Kassel, there are artificial

mounds just high enough to obstruct the view of the ring of hills

at the boundary of the Kassel Basin, those of the Kaufunger, Rein-

hard and Habicht forests—and these mounds were created at the

very points designated panoramic sites of interest by the provision

of bench seats! The art of gardening thus annihilates the magnifi-

cent geographical integrity of the Kassel Basin, of which one had a

perfect view from the River Fulda’s water meadows, prior to these

interventions.

Gardeners faced with a large body of water seem to have noth-

ing better to do than set a smaller body of water alongside it. One

design we saw recently proposed to use a small ornamental pond to

embellish a site from which one has a panoramic vista of a hairpin

bend in the River Fulda. Ponds on hillsides seem to be nothing

less than the norm in the art of gardening; yet this fact is nowhere

brought home so forcefully as when hilltops are redesigned as natu-

ral springs, as was the case at the National Horticultural Show in

Stuttgart.

Intentionally or not, the professionals’ unswerving belief in their

unlimited powers serves to intimidate the layman, and to foster

his dependency. I buy a catalogue of the latest flowering plants. It

promises me gigantic blooms. In my little garden however, they may

wither or flourish, but they never attain the proportions depicted on

the catalogue’s cover. Yet only next door, in the city’s public garden,

the same flowers look exactly as prescribed. Evidently the gardener

knew exactly how to enrich the soil, and what poisons to use to

keep away pests; the plastic sheet, and the skull and crossbones

warning above each flower bed last fall were not installed in vain.

Such incidents foster self-doubt in the layman. Rather than reflect

on his inherited knowledge—on how his parents and grandparents

201

did whatever was possible in their gardens, and let well alone what-

ever was not—he comes to believe he lacks the talent for gardening,

and should therefore relinquish his garden to professional care. And

we all know where that leads: laying out the garden once and for

all is not the end of it, for the professional is much more likely to

claim that plants nowadays must be renewed annually, by the pro-

fessional in person, and that they will all die a sorry death, if ever

the client dares presume he may manage the matter himself. The

garden is thrown thus so completely off balance, that it must either

be manicured permanently to perfection or—much to the chagrin

of onlookers—be abandoned to lie fallow for several years.

We consider the third point pertaining to the destruction of

information to be academicism, which is to say, the depletion of

horticultural codes through their eclectic application. The language

of the art of gardening is based a priori on distinguishing and indi-

vidually interpreting the two viable loci of expression such as have

been manifest in our climes for centuries, namely in the distinction

between the “French” and the “English” styles, which is to say, be-

tween gardens that attest to human intervention, public policy and

the extension of urban aesthetics into rural areas, and those that

symbolize nature, original conditions of use, pastoral landscapes and

the like. Undoubtedly, the motifs found within these two contrary

loci of expression have long since intermingled, and great gardeners

have drawn on both style repertoires simultaneously. But nowadays,

the expressive potential of each is used so interchangeably, is so

merged as to render their respective contextual significance illeg-

ible. Moreover, a growing trend to deploy elements regardless of

their origin and semantic context can be observed, even when it

comes to smaller details. Japanese bonsai trees, for example, are a

means of expression (albeit in miniature) that belongs semantically

in the “English garden” context, which is to say, in natural or primi-

202

tively used landscapes. Such trees should be deployed carefully and

sparingly therefore, wherever naturalness is to be demonstrated in a

small area, by recourse to a change in scale.

But what on earth are these bonsai thuja hedges, bonsai conifers

and bonsai junipers supposed to signify when they are planted in

rank and file formation? What if tulips are sprouting up between

them; tulips that, were the bonsai tree a real tree, would have to

be regarded as towering structures? At the National Horticultural

Show in Kassel, Japanese bonsai trees had been set around a small

pond, the banks of which were decorated with river pebbles. If one

were to enlarge this landscape on a scale with real trees and real

ponds, the significance of the river pebbles would be absurd. A re-

duction in scale therefore ought to have been considered, also in

their case. (We will not go into detail here, about the fact that the

river pebbles bordered the forest on the one hand, and granite slabs

on the other; or that the bonsai trees were interspersed with rhodo-

dendron bushes of equal size, whose flowers and leaves accordingly

looked inappropriately large, etc.).

Knowledge of the significance of trees seems to have dissipated

entirely. In any case, the one question discussed, is whether trees are

“native” or alien—a minor factor, it seems to me, in the context of an

artificially designed park or garden. More pertinently, a species of

tree itself conveys, or at least used to convey information that evoked

associations in the viewer: either with certain locations associated,

rightly or wrongly, with tree species; or with traditions in relation to

which certain tree species are planted. The horse chestnut, walnut and

birch are species worlds apart, and the very fact that they originated

in quite different climatic and cultural contexts assures the gardener

a rich palette that must be used with great care. But if he plants all

these trees indiscriminately, in one and the same arboretum, the in-

herited code dies away, and the site becomes uninteresting.

203

“Minimal intervention”—this is our adamant response to devel-

opments in the art of gardening over the past few decades. Minimal

intervention is not only a concept underpinned by thrift and the

ecological imperative; it is also a tool to be used at the linguistic

level, as a means to impart significance. Significance can never be

premised on the destruction of information. Wherever that which

exists, that by which one might orientate oneself, is altered, a richer

source of orientation must be proffered. The latter cannot be cre-

ated through the indiscriminate use of signifiers however, just as

volume or noise alone, do not suffice to produce language. Rather,

the means of creating significance must be introduced subtly into

the existing context, and must clarify it. To opt thereby for minimal

intervention is a means to guarantee that the significance of what-

ever already exists will be apprehended in full and accepted.

204

Fake: The Real Thing (1987)

Real jewelry is not the issue here; it does not interest us at all. It

is ephemeral, trivial and fake—yes, fake; but first things first. Its

high value, whatever that may be, makes real jewelry extremely

short-lived. Only a few choice gems ever survive a generation. The

Knights of the Holy Spirit presented Louis XV with a golden cross,

studded with diamonds. Diamonds were just what the king was

after. He had them removed from the cross and set into the hilt

of his sword. When Napoleon came to power, he found this sword

among the crown jewels. He liked the diamonds but not the style

of the sword. A goldsmith worked a new sword, and set the old

diamonds into its hilt. After the Battle of Trafalgar, this sword was

given to the Duke of Wellington. To the delight of his wife, Wel-

lington also had the diamonds reworked, this time as a necklace.

Maurice Rheims, who recounts this tale, notes that the necklace is

unlikely ever to be found. Presumably, Wellington’s daughters and

granddaughters are wearing the diamonds in their rings, earrings,

brooches and clips.

“But that is surely an exception!” cry those whose eyes pop

out on stalks, ogling the Queen of England’s crown jewels in the

Tower of London. Let us assume, firstly, that everything on display

there is genuine. The stones are not very old. Most of them date from

the nineteenth century, and have changed hands often. Crowns seem

at any event more durable than merely ornamental pieces of jewelry,

and for an obvious reason: crowns stand for something, namely for

Empire, whereas merely ornamental pieces have no meaning beyond

themselves. They are tautological. We have stated enough of a case

now to be able to say something about fake jewelry. Fake jewelry

205

is of interest precisely because it stands for something, because it

means something, because it stands for “the real thing.” The real

thing exists in its own right and has no further meaning. That is why

fake jewelry is the real thing, whereas the real thing…

But that is impossible, a senseless, vicious circle. If fake jewelry

imitates the real thing, but the real thing has no real meaning, then

the fake stuff too will become boring in time. And that is why we

must come to the very point that prompted our interest in fake

jewelry in the first place: fake jewelry is genuine when it does not

strive at all to be the real thing but simply transcends it. Real fake

jewelry does not imitate real, actually existent jewelry but rather,

real jewelry that does not exist—and could not exist, in fact, because

no such precious gems exist, at least, not unless they are fake. So,

if the genuine jewelry represented by fakes does not exist then the

fake stuff really is the real thing. Fake jewelry is a utopia. It consid-

ers what the jewelry really worth copying might be like, if ever it

were to come into existence. This utopia has a banal name: glamor.

Glamor is basically wishful thinking, about how things could and

should be. The history of teen fashion, as it is called, is closely in-

terwoven with this preoccupation with role models and ideals, and

likewise with the deconstruction of traditional meanings: hence the

importance of glamor. Young Londoners who raided their grand-

fathers’ wardrobes in the 1950s, donned stockbrokers’ suits, and took

to the streets, did not want to resurrect nineteenth-century capital-

ism. They were not interested in counterfeit as such but in invest-

ing the look with new symbolism. In the same way, squatters in

Frankfurt-Westend were interested, not in living in bankers’ villas

as bankers do but in appropriating the pillars, cherubs and atlantes

on the villas’ facades for their own idea of utopia; for, to debunk

Establishment splendor as glamor gives rise to a new freedom, to

the phony fake and to the real thing.

206

And now we have used the word “real” again, which we were

actually trying to avoid. The last century wore itself out on the prob-

lem of authenticity, with its senseless paradoxes. In all walks of life,

the spirit of bourgeois manufacturers united in praise of the real

thing—which was perhaps, just punishment for a class that lived

from the production of fake goods or ersatz.

For, what characterizes the middle class as of 1848 is the fact

that it no longer lives surrounded by the things it produces. It pro-

duces cotton but wears silk; manufactures rubber but wears leather.

Nationalism in particular was attached to the notion of the real

thing: monuments of stone, granite, sandstone and marble trace the

path of the Second Empire, and even in the Third Reich, eagles and

swastikas had to be carved in real stone. Finally, plaster and paint

was chipped off house facades in the name of heritage preservation,

and the real thing was discovered beneath them: real stones, real

buildings. Then paint was stripped from real timber doors too—

what else did we expect to find beneath it? This cult of the real thing

was countered solely by its denunciator, the cult of glamor; and the

claim that appearances are deceptive was countered by this discov-

ery: appearances are the only thing that is not deceptive.

Papa Goethe thought all these thoughts long ago, with a mis-

chievous smile on his face. Not that he was on the side of teen fash-

ion, for he sided rather with the Establishment, with the nobility

that still wore its jewelry with grace, and bore the real thing with

humor, and dignity with charm. In Goethe’s cryptic revolutionary

drama The Natural Daughter, the duke plans to give his illegitimate

daughter a jewelry case on the day he adopts her. The princess’ joy is

dampened when his housekeeper sourly demurs:

207

“Yet not the appearance but the genuine worth

Can satisfy the cravings of thy heart!”¹

In its ascetic pedantry, the emerging middle class distinguishes be-

tween the “appearance” even of the genuine article, and “true sub-

stance.” Yet the fledgling princess has a ready quip, a truly charming

Goethean couplet:

“What is appearance having naught of substance?

And what would substance be without appearance?”²

For the nineteenth century it was then clear: appearance lacking

in substance is fake, fake material or fake jewelry. But what then is

the substance that does appear? To demand such substance of real

material would amount indeed to barbaric materialism. That is why

we put our trust in the youngest generation’s answer: the substance

that appears is glamor.

While real jewelry was a sign of waste for the nobility, it was

a sign of asceticism for the commoner. The nobility bought and

made gifts of jewelry without a moment’s hesitation whereas the

commoner made investments. When he withdrew surplus value

from the market and invested it at no interest, he did so for the

sake of caution: by renouncing the interest, today’s profit, he assured

the stability of his assets. The middle-class daughters’ jewelry case

was the family piggy bank quasi. Was such investment profitable?

Moderately. Jewelry is valuable at times when everyone has money;

when everyone is in need, no one gets rid of his jewelry. Thus in

1 “The Natural Daughter,” Act II, Scene V in: Goethe’s Works, Vol. 2, Philadelphia, G. Barrie, 1885.

2 Ibid.

208

1946, gold chains and diamond rings turned into nothing more than

a few sacks of rapidly wolfed down potatoes. And long-term value

is in any case nothing to write home about. The advertising cam-

paign the diamond syndicate launched two years ago was symp-

tomatic of the fact that there are too many diamonds, and too few

people to wear them. The price of these gems has fallen therefore,

just like the gold price.

This brings us back to the question of value. Nothing illus-

trates commodity fetishism (to use Marx’s term), so well as indus-

try’s search for diamonds and gold, nature’s providential products.

Something that should be discovered serendipitously, with a stroke

of luck—the gold nugget, the rough diamond—is organized and

rationalized here, and mined in huge concentration camps; an in-

dustry just like any other, although more macabre. The value of the

product mirrors social relations however. And nowadays more than

ever, a fall in prices perhaps somehow reflects the fact that such

methods of exploitation no longer rank among the finest, even in

the exploiters’ own books. The end of white South Africa is a part

of the end of the era of good taste.

But let us return to that of interest to us: false jewelry and glamor.

Appearances alone are not deceptive, we said, and this idea must be

considered more closely. Appearances are not deceptive—and how

could they be, given that they serve the very matter of discernment?

Anatomists tell us it is difficult to distinguish a lion’s skeleton from

that of a tiger. Yet any child can tell the difference between a lion

and a tiger. Obviously, the difference lies in their appearance or, to

be more precise, it is their appearance that makes the difference.

Two species of duck are closely related yet differ greatly from one

another in appearance, more markedly so in the case of males in

the mating season. This distinctive plumage occurs however, only in

those regions inhabited by both species of duck. On remote islands

209

where only one of the two species is found, the drakes look quite

unimpressive, also in the mating season.

The emergence of—fake?—jewelry in teen fashion in recent de-

cades seems significant to me. Broadly speaking, this trend devel-

oped thus: in 1968 the new era of modesty began, one symbolized

by the hippie who did his best to resemble a poor Indian strug-

gling to find enough to eat and to provide for his family. Cloth-

ing, hairstyle and jewelry expressed the following position: a poor,

but also unassuming, self-sufficient and therefore happy people has

values other than material gain and career advancement. This posi-

tion implied the use of worthless materials to create modest but

aesthetically pleasing jewelry. Sunflower seeds and similar worth-

less elements, it was discovered, can be strung together to make

decorative necklaces.

The divergence of various tribes in the realm of teen fashion

revealed a need for more nuanced differentiation. Even those who

had remained loyal to the Indian gusto no longer portrayed “real”

starving Indians, but Indians of the silver screen, Indians with

glamor. Sunflower seeds disappeared in favor of gigantic jewels

supposedly reminiscent of the treasures of the Indian rajahs. Road-

side shops and stalls sprang up, where one could buy colorful glass

beads and threads, the building blocks of this gem agenda. Natu-

rally, such building blocks could be used to make more than only

“Indian” things. The same kind of glamor might refer to European

and American fin de siècle bohemians, to movie stars of the 1930s,

or to social classes transformed by glamor. If one considers overall

trends in the youth culture of that period, it becomes evident that

the conspicuous display of personal symbols and signs turned into a

style war: the mutual seizure, appropriation and reinterpretation of

signs, pieces of jewelry, medals, uniforms and hairstyles.

Phase three: the style war is over now; the “tribes” co-exist and

210

no longer step on each other’s toes. The signs people use are no lon-

ger intended for their opponents but for their friends, for only those

in the know are able to read the deeper meaning of a stylistic ges-

ture. That is why current fashion remains difficult for outsiders to

understand. Seemingly contradictory features are combined for no

apparent reason: a sailor’s cap and a blond perm, an old-fashioned,

Teddy Boy look and a well-waxed rocker’s quiff, or Punk and Indian

emblems. The message is intended only for close friends. To see an

outsider shake his head in wonder is considered a successful coup:

“Hooray, I’ve got him stumped.” Yet contradictions are very rich in

meaning, and the more incomprehensible they are to outsiders, the

more insiders find them highly informative: fur on silk, long hair

combined with a mustache, jewels on a sweater—for initiates, these

signs are like a horoscope of the person in question: “Although you

are generally thrifty to the point of avarice, you can be generous

when it really matters.”—Well, what is he now, stingy or generous?

Outsiders find this contradictory, but the person in question finds

himself aptly described: It’s true, I am sometimes petty; but money

doesn’t mean a thing to me when it comes to the crunch! The lace

collar peeks out from beneath the Norwegian sweater, and there is a

flash of Rivière beneath the anorak. I am that kind of guy.

Real jewelry has nothing at all to do with any of this. Its message

is linear and tautological: one piece of jewelry differs from another

in one respect only, which is measured in carats. The intangible and

seemingly supernatural dimension of jewelry, which has so fasci-

nated mankind for centuries, is now banal. While, historically, gold

and precious stones stood for a supernatural material—for that

perhaps, of which Paradise is built, for platonic, immaterial solids,

so to speak, to which were attributed an ideal value derived from

celestial spheres—such real jewelry has long since been outshined

by fakes. And this is the case because it is possible today, not merely

211

to produce fake jewelry that is both indistinguishable from, and of

equal value to real jewelry but also, above and beyond that, to pro-

duce “fake” jewelry that has no genuine counterpart, and therefore

symbolizes much more than real jewelry ever can. Such fake jewelry

does not stand for a Platonic world of ideas but for an imaginary

world—yet one that, were it to exist, would belong to our worldly

realm of the here and now.

Fake: The Real Thing. Photo: Annemarie Burckhardt

212

Aesthetics and Ecology (1990)

I do not know about you but certainly, I meet plenty of people who

tell me they just spent their holidays some place where there are no

vacationers. Of course, they got along well with those locals who sell

their authentic handicrafts as cheap-at-the-price souvenirs yet who

remain unspoiled. For these fortunate people actually get by without

money. They live on and can make a good livelihood from this—and

here comes the decisive term—from this intact landscape.

Now, before we return to our humanitarian vacationers, let me

explain the premise of my remarks. Nowadays, under the catch-

phrase “ecology,” we discuss the various strategies deployed to save

resources, preserve species and protect natural cycles from destruc-

tion yet, ultimately, the objectives we pursue do not derive from

ecology but are of an aesthetic nature. To sum them up we use the

magic phrase “intact landscape.” And the definition of what land-

scape is, is aesthetic. And it is about the aesthetics of the landscape

that we will talk today.

To return now to our tourist: he is not unlike theologians in

the Age of Discovery who discussed whether the soul of the native

born resembled our own, or whether a border like the one separat-

ing mankind—the master of nature—from nature itself might exist

between us and the native born. In any case, our tourist imagines

that landscape is natural and intact, so long as the locals till it for

their livelihood, but that it is doomed to destruction the moment

colonialists or tourists set foot on it—with the exception of our

tourist, of course, who got along so well with the locals.

My geography teacher—he is long since deceased—went one

step further. Of course, he too was of the opinion that the land-

213

scape and the farmers who cultivate it belong together, and that

urbanization, industry and the hotel trade mar this landscape. Yet

suddenly areas opened up where his argument changed to include

both industry and the industrial population as part of the landscape

too. I still remember the day he gave me a bad grade because, for the

life of me, I could not grasp how smoke-belching chimney stacks,

winding towers, slag heaps glowing in the dark, the Bessemer con-

verter’s yellow dust clouds, and miners in blue peaked caps, heading

home on push-bikes from a shift, might ever add up to a landscape.

Neither spruce nor fir trees grew in the Ruhr District at the time;

only pine and deciduous trees could survive the constant swirl of

dust; and large parts of the region were—and are still today—char-

acterized by plant societies that indicate pollution by heavy metal

salts. Yet, in my geography teacher’s eyes, this is precisely what

made it a “typical Ruhr District landscape.”

Let us return now to my opening premise, namely that ecol-

ogy, insofar as it is oriented to the landscape, pursues an objective

rooted not in ecology itself but in an aesthetic dimension. The word

“landscape” is without doubt one of our more ingenious linguistic

inventions: were we philosophers in scholastic medieval times we

might use it to open a debate on the problem of universals. What

comes first, the individual item—or the generic term; the myriad of

plants, animals, stones, mountains and clouds—or the landscape?

Without the concept of “landscape” we, or at least we urban

dwellers, would be unable to see and categorize our environment.

To see does not suffice alone for perception—a babe in arms sees but

he does not perceive. Gradually he learns to distinguish significant

objects from among the thousands of impressions he is exposed to:

he recognizes foodstuffs, potential playthings and possible obstacles.

Yet most of it leaves him indifferent. A person whose livelihood

derives from agriculture creates a similar cognitive model: the fruit

214

here is ripe, there it is not; this is good soil, that is poor; the neigh-

bor’s corn is higher than mine, but his vines have not taken as well as

ours have. It is a form of perception based on vested interests.

The urban dweller’s perception is accordingly “disinterested,”

which is to say, he does not expect any profit; he moves around the

countryside like a tourist in search of confirmation that the landscape

looks either as he imagines it to look, or as his schooling and tourism

propaganda have prefabricated it in his mind’s eye. His enjoyment of

landscape lies in the sense that those images and turns of phrase ac-

quired in the course of our cultural history—from poetry and paint-

ing as well as from more lowbrow forms of culture such as cinema,

TV and tourism brochures, and the covers of cheap novels—are made

manifest. A culturally coded pattern—the landscape—is vital to the

urban dweller or to anyone else alienated from agricultural labor, for

it facilitates his ability to read an unfamiliar rural environment.

So we see now, that the term landscape includes everything within

any given environment. On the one hand, it takes a certain agrarian

economic system that can put its stamp on a place and, beyond that,

it requires that this singular phenomenon born of economic and

natural circumstance be rendered visible by literature and art.

Worpswede¹ provides us with an historical example of that

which I caricatured in my opening words: the intact landscape and

the native born that work it, plus those pioneering tourists who

tend to blend their own presence out of the landscape, and who

even kick up a fuss at the mere sight of other tourists who (they

claim) are bound to drive away the locals, or at the least turn them

1 A small town in Lower Saxony, Germany, popular in the late nineteenth cen-tury among artists such as Paula Modersohn Becker and Rainer Maria Rilke. It is still a popular artists’ retreat.

215

into waitresses and kiosk-keepers. Worpswede still thrives today on

this image created in 1890, an image that now barely corresponds to

reality, for not only has tourism come to dominate the local econ-

omy but the entire local economy has changed: peat is no longer in

demand, the swamps have been drained, and intensive agriculture

geared to EEC² demands has won the upper hand. For instance,

substantial areas of heath are used now to soak up hen dung from

local poultry factories.

The question as to what landscape is, and which guidelines one

might best follow in order to keep a landscape “intact” is historically

determined. We know that the origins of landscape lie in classi-

cal poetry: in the charming place, the imaginary Arcadia, where a

shepherd cups a handful of water from a fresh spring, in the shade

of a bush. Greek and Roman poets peddled this image to the people

of Athens and Rome at a time when the latter’s only remaining

connection to the countryside was the fact that the state had slaves

cultivate cereals there, then transport them to the city.

A revival of precisely these forms of landscape set in, the mo-

ment English capitalists began to create mock-Arcadian landscapes

in their actual parks and gardens. Nevertheless, these eighteenth-

century Englishmen and likewise their continental prophet Rous-

seau differed from our modern-day tourist in that they were well

aware of the artificiality of their interventions. We cite in this re-

gard the scene in Rousseau’s novel Julie; or the New Héloise, in which

Julie tells her Saint-Preux of the efforts to be countenanced when

undertaking to create nature—which is to say, our imagined intact

landscape—artificially. Today, when people talk of their desire to

2 The Treaty of Rome established the European Economic Community (EEC, now EU) in 1957.

216

maintain landscapes by artificial means—and landscape here al-

ways denotes agrarian modes of production—then one must bear

in mind this point in Rousseau’s work, at which he gives the lie to

his much quoted, superficial “Back to nature.”

Let us take another look at an epoch marked by a quite differ-

ent perception of the landscape, namely the late nineteenth and

early twentieth centuries, when preservation of “truly natural land-

scapes” became something of a rallying cry. National parks came

into existence at this time, possibly the most extreme example of

which was the Swiss National Park of Grisons Canton. Such parks

encompassed areas no longer cultivated by mankind but abandoned

instead to the elements and to natural processes. Yet even an area

left in its “natural” state is by nature a highly artificial construct. The

point of departure here is a concept unlikely to have dawned on

eighteenth-century landscape gardeners, namely Darwin’s concept

of free selection and the survival of the fittest. While a landscaped

park offers a picture of seemingly natural harmony, the national

park offers a picture of seemingly natural struggle. There on the

tree line stand lonely warriors, battling with the wind; there the

avalanche roars into the valley, tearing a herd of chamois along with

it; and there is where the valiant, hardy alpine flora is meant to

prove its strength, unharmed by haymaking and grazing.—Yet that

is precisely what it fails to do. The much-proclaimed diversity of

alpine flora is part of a system of husbandry based on seasonal graz-

ing and wild haymaking. When this type of agricultural activity

ceases—be it by order of conservationists, on account of the use of

more modern production techniques such as fertilizers and com-

bine harvesters, or simply because the cultivation of alpine slopes

eventually proves unviable—alpine flora vanishes with it. The val-

iant alpine flowers prove not to be the fittest after all, and are van-

quished first by grasses, then by shrubs. Total protection served in

217

this case neither to preserve biodiversity nor to preserve the typical

alpine landscape, but led instead to plant successions with which

natural scientists of the day had never reckoned.

So where are these reflections leading? I come now to three

points by which I hope to demonstrate that aesthetics and ecology

are more closely connected than one thinks; and that two things

suffer whenever this connection is not considered, namely the

natural regeneration of resources, and fulfillment of the observer’s

expectations of the landscape. Each example revolves around the

production of alleged naturalness.

I begin with a critique of conventional gardening, in particular of

that undertaken by the city parks department. A basic premise here,

in this era of total agriculture under EEC constraints, is that little

of the countryside remains available for spontaneous vegetation. It

is therefore not really far-fetched to assert that “natural nature” mo-

mentarily needs the city in order to survive. So-called weeds number

among the biological reserves with which we might later manage to

recultivate abandoned agricultural land. Yet our city parks depart-

ment treats weeds as the enemy. It goes about its business of flowers

and lawns as if compelled to imitate modern agricultural practice:

true, anything it harvests is cast aside as waste yet, prior to that, it

is optimized. Now, that used to be a fairly harmless matter given

that city gardening was limited to only a few parks. Planning and

speculation, in particular on the city margins, assured that tracts of

land—derelict buildings, designated building lots awaiting a buyer,

and land lying around unsold because it had been overvalued so as to

boost the market—were always available for spontaneous vegetation.

Bad planning and real estate speculation insofar make great conser-

vationists: they guarantee the dysfunctionalism that is indispensable

to the preservation of healthy weeds. Today however, city gardeners

find all that disorderly, and are extending the scope of their influ-

218

ence far beyond the parks to the entire urban area; they mow, lay

asphalt, and sow seed in zones where toddlers and teenagers previ-

ously would have played on empty lots. Naturalness here seems to be

understood as a continuum of unused and unusable areas, as endless

lawns and roses that garnish traffic with a touch of green.

The bad thing about this development, and this brings me to my

second point, is how gardening wreaks destruction on the infor-

mation conveyed by a landscape. Children—and hence tomorrow’s

adults—speak the language of natural vegetation. Hoary plaintain,

wall barley, chicory and nettles alert them to whether they can play

undisturbed in a place, climb over the fence and make a fire, or

expect an angry owner to arrive and instantly lay claim to the land

himself. Vegetation is information; gardening, hence the act of put-

ting vegetation in order, is consequently the destruction of informa-

tion. It clouds issues of authority and responsibility.

This destruction of information swept through villages for many

years in its most virulent form under the watchword, “Unser Dorf

soll schöner werden.”³ The titivation of our villages was achieved

by ticking boxes. Accordingly, whatever was unique disappeared;

generalities ran rife. A prize jury knew exactly how a beautiful vil-

lage should look: the village fountain is shut down, and its basin is

planted with begonias and geraniums, and surrounded by a lawn

on which stand two park benches. The lawn is perfectly manicured,

so no path is ever trodden to the benches. No villager or occasional

visitor ever dares take a seat on the benches because they emit an

3 The national competition “Our village is to grow even lovelier” was launched in 1961. It was open to villages with a population of up to 3,000 inhabitants, which competed for the title “Loveliest Village.” In 1997, the competition was renamed “Unser Dorf hat Zukunft” (Our Village Has A Future).

219

aura of having never been used. Trampled paths are frowned on

anyhow. The children now cannot tell whether or not they may step

on the grass, and therefore don’t—or at least not when an adult is

watching—simply to be on the safe side. Naturalness is understood

here as the obliteration of all traces of human existence by means

of perfect gardening.

The destruction of information also plagues entire branches

of the tourism industry. The creation of so-called nature reserves,

which nowadays have little in common with the National Park’s

Darwinist approach, consists primarily in establishing a network

of hiking trails. These trails are marked out in such a way as to ren-

der redundant any natural sense of orientation vis-à-vis prominent

features of the landscape: the objective is quite clearly to make the

urban dweller forget how to find his way around a place on his own.

Today, there are regions of the Federal Republic of Germany in

which the Forestry Commission itself creates a dysfunctional land-

scape: it propagates landscape images that actually reduce the vi-

ability of forestry yet somehow correspond to the images of forests

allegedly entertained by hikers. Naturalness is to be read therefore

in this context both as the illusory absence of an agriculture econ-

omy, and as the introduction into this “wilderness” of human beings

who must be constantly informed and instructed.

So one asks oneself: what is the true objective when endeavoring

to manufacture so-called naturalness? The National Park concept

has been downsized to the biotope: the tiniest lots are fenced off

and left to their own allegedly natural devices. The result is pos-

sibly a reduction in species diversity, and the emergence of plant

successions that arouse little interest. Yet, as our example from the

city margins has shown, biodiversity thrives best on disruption and

change. And thus the question arises as to the true objective of so-

called ecology. If the objective is to preserve biodiversity then one

220

would have to create an artificial disruption whenever peat-cutting

and real estate speculation disappear—which is ridiculous.

If the objective is to preserve certain species then interventions

are called for, yet the “naturalness” of such interventions is rather

doubtful. Today, many kinds of animal are marooned; the only trout

to be found in mountain streams have been stocked there; and zoo

parks pride themselves on preserving animals that have become ex-

tinct in the wild.

A third objective could be to create stable and typical final states

such as steppes, deserts, moors, marshes and forests. Such final states

may well be natural yet they generally evince limited biodiversity,

and are boring. Only outright catastrophes can guarantee the sur-

vival of a myriad of species in these final states: forest fires, flash

floods, avalanches and the like. The longer we reflect on the ecology

and aesthetics issue, the greater the paradoxes we find ourselves fac-

ing, whichever approach we take. Ecology is caught up currently in

a debate about its objectives while the aesthetic dimension, namely

how nature is perceived and represented, is in deep crisis, the crisis

of the modern-day art of gardening. What triggered this develop-

ment? What has changed in our world, our society, and caused such

seemingly normal concepts as naturalness and horticultural beauty

to be shaken to their roots?

Society has been based historically on the principle that nature is

there to be exploited. Society understands itself as a productive force,

and production proceeds namely by exploiting natural raw materials,

or processes for the manufacture of commodities. The natural sci-

ences are also geared to production, and harness all types of knowl-

edge in order to improve methods of mining, methods of breed-

ing—methods of exploitation, in brief. A clear border used to run

between the exploiter and the exploited natural world: here is society

with its production and distribution processes, and there is nature,

221

the arena of exploitation. Nobody ever suspected that nature in turn

would have an impact on society. Yet the catchwords environment

and environmental hazard herald this precisely.

We are the first generation to witness the natural world, hitherto

our arena of exploitation, now rise up in turn, and seriously menace

the exploiters. And this means not only that we must exploit resources

more sparingly, as we have done at times in the past, but also that the

absolute limits of exploitation are now etched so clearly on the horizon

as to effect social change. Society and exploited nature today comprise

an intricately networked system of effects and counter- effects: human

impact on nature, formerly a one-way street, today runs smack up

against nature’s impact on mankind. As Ulrich Beck explains graphi-

cally in his book Risk Society,⁴ nature is no longer something external

but rather, an integral part of the networked society. So our society is

the first to have to come to grips with the idea that nature is part of

the social process, and not an object to be exploited.

Nature as such is invisible; it is perceived only when served up in

some way—in the form of an arbitrary representation as landscape,

in the form of artificial representations as a garden. In this respect

too, our generation is the first to find itself in a novel situation.

Our perception of landscape rests traditionally on the opposition

of town and countryside. The landscape, as we have noted, denotes

the picture that the urban dweller—he who will never soil his fin-

gers with soil—has concocted of the agricultural realm beyond the

city walls. Today, this distinction no longer holds true. We live in

the metropolis. The metropolis is, on the one hand, the geographical

dispersion in space of an endless succession of fragments of both the

4 Ulrich Beck, Risk Society: Towards a New Modernity, Sage, London 1992. First published in German in 1986.

222

city and the countryside; and on the other, an inextricable tangle of

urban and rural functions. Where does the urban dweller live? In the

countryside preferably, if he can afford to—from whence he drives

daily to work in the city. Where does the farmer live? Here in Swit-

zerland, most farmers still live in the countryside yet in Holland, for

instance, that need no longer be the case. Someone who cultivates

vegetables or tulips can just as easily commute every morning from

his urban home to his agrarian workplace. Our forest dwellings are

also a thing of the past. The forester does not live in the forest; he

just visits it occasionally when not at work in his office. Hence our

society is on the threshold of a new way of perceiving its physical

environment, one that no longer rests on the opposition of town and

country. Town is everywhere, and countryside is everywhere; and for

the planner it is increasingly a matter of rendering this more or less

urban, or that more or less rural component of a settlement some-

how typical and identifiable.

Just how do we render visible the fact that something like nature

still exists in the middle of our metropolis? Today, city parks depart-

ments attempt to save the image of nature by transposing traffic-

garnish greenery from the slip roads to the city center: through pe-

destrian zones, right up to City Hall and the courthouse, and along

hospital corridors, they present indifferent foliage in an endless suc-

cession of uniform concrete tubs. This careful distribution of green-

ery provokes a creeping sense that the city is becoming ever more

unnatural, and ever more stony. It is precisely in this respect that the

art of gardening has lessons to learn—or perhaps it must relearn the

lessons of the historical art of gardening with which the designers of

the French or the English garden were still familiar.

The French garden was a well-staged exposition of the contrast

between the town (or the palace) and the surrounding forest. Thanks

to a sophisticated system by which materials and meanings were re-

223

versed—trimmed hedges represented walls, avenues full of statues

represented vegetation—the observer became attuned to the fact that

he was progressing from the palace to the forest, a forest where the

duke rode to hounds and slew the deer; and hence in which the prin-

ciple of man’s struggle against nature, and man’s exploitation of nature

were given ritualized expression. At a time when the infinite reaches

of the forest had been curtailed by agrarian workers’ land clearance

and introduction of crops such as cereals and wool, there emerged

among this rationalized and “geometricized” agricultural terrain a

patch of natural wilderness: the English garden. It too, is rooted in

a paradoxical transition, namely from the exploited landscape to a

purely symbolic representation of its archaic function as the realm of

shepherds.—We see that both styles of garden, the formal French and

the natural English, are rooted in a paradox. They are in dialogue with

the environment: here, with the forest, and there, with enclosed agri-

cultural land. Here therefore, is our lesson for the gardener: greenery

becomes visible only when it is discussed; when it raises and renders

tangible the issue of the hazards that greenery faces.

That we pursue ecological gardening today seems to me to be a

matter of course. However, ecological gardening is not yet a means to

represent nature, or to render it perceptible. The ways and means of

this new art of gardening must first be developed. I presume artists

will drive this development rather more forcefully than professional

gardeners or landscape architects will. And I can draw on the example

of an actual landscape intervention undertaken by Joseph Beuys in the

years 1982–87, in the city of Kassel: his renowned work “7000 Oaks.”⁵

5 The full work title is “7000 Eichen—Stadtverwaldung statt Stadtverwaltung” (7000 Oaks—City Forestation instead of City Administration). The project was developed in the framework of documenta 7.

224

“One cannot see the forest for the trees” is a proverb that holds

more than a grain of truth. It really is not at all easy to see a forest;

for, if we are standing within it, we see the trees that surround us,

some tree trunks, a few crowns swaying above our heads—but we

do not see the forest as such. So let us therefore leave the forest

and take to the open fields. Doubtless we now see something of

the forest, its edges; but we cannot tell whether it consists only of

a line of trees or continues within, whether we are in fact on the

edge of a really large forest. It takes several thousand trees to make

a forest, but can one see them? Can one see 7000 trees? The forest

is evidently an idea, a concept we must construct in our mind’s eye.

Only with the aid of a map can we establish whether we are on the

edge of a forest, or faced simply with a strip of woodland only a

few meters deep. How therefore, Beuys presumably asked himself,

does one ever see 7000 trees? And in a city moreover, where a for-

est between the streets and houses and gardens is inconceivable.

And yet Beuys called his work “The Forestation of Kassel.” It is well

known that Beuys had a basalt block half-buried alongside each of

his 7000 trees. Before the action began, all 7000 basalt blocks were

piled up on Friedrichsplatz in Kassel. Every resident of Kassel saw

them. Then the blocks were gradually taken away, to join the 7000

oaks being planted. So now, whenever we see a tree accompanied by

a basalt block, near our apartment or workplace in Kassel, we know

there are 7000 such trees. And 7000 trees make a whole forest. So

there is a whole forest in Kassel—but the forest was made visible,

not by planting 7000 trees alongside one another, which in any case

would never be perceived as a forest, but rather, by encouraging us

to put two and two together in our mind’s eye, and hence to deduce

the number of trees. It is an intellectual, artificial and artistic forest

yet it is a forest rendered visible in the environment in which mod-

ern man is destined to live: the metropolis.

225

A landscape intervention undertaken by Joseph Beuys in the years 1982–87, in the city of Kassel: 7000 Oaks—City Forestation instead of City Administration). Before the action began, all 7000 basalt blocks were piled up on Friedrichsplatz in Kassel. Every resident of Kassel saw them. Then the blocks were gradually taken away, to join the 7000 oaks being planted. Photo: Annemarie Burckhardt

226

A Walk in Second Nature (1992)

To learn how nature as seen in our mind’s eye translates into the

image we call landscape is a perennial object of our research. A

walker’s mind and his constantly roaming eye together conjure a

seemingly stable image. In a broader sense, the walk accomplishes

an even greater miracle: a chain of insights interrupted by distances

merges ultimately in a single impression. We go along a road, across

a forest, a glade, see a stream, the valley narrows, and eventually,

from a hilltop, a broad panorama opens up; and by the time we

arrive home we have seen a landscape. We can now describe how

the area around Kassel looks, or that west of Schlettstadt or in

Montecatini. How, namely? It looks typical, typical of each respec-

tive area.

Here one ought perhaps digress, and speak of the geographers’

landscape. This is not the same as that of the landscape lovers, walk-

ers, tourists and landscape painters, although some links exist be-

tween them. One such link is all that is “typical.” Do you remember

geography lessons in school? The white cliffs of Dover are typical

of England’s eastern coast; homecoming coal miners in flat caps

are typical of the Ruhr District… Don’t laugh. This concept of the

typical may have consequences, for example whenever geographers

become planners.

But let us return to the walk and its history. Born in the English

landscape garden, it found its feet in the Scottish highlands then

later in the foothills of the Alps, until a new invention—the rail-

road—triggered its crisis. The railroad reduced the typical region to

the destination. It brought the tourists to those hotels where the

photo in the brochure, and on the picture postcards on sale there,

227

corresponded exactly to the section of landscape on display beyond

the windows at least of the more expensive rooms. If one threw

open the curtains in the morning, one saw the Giessbach Falls, the

Matterhorn or the Sainte Victoire.

These destinations represent large regions in the “typical” way, or

the early days of nations even. A connection exists between Ger-

man unification and the image of the island of Helgoland, between

the modern Swiss Confederation and the hotel windows in Schwyz

and Brunnen. Do we need a brief digression on the topic of why

we did not use to be bored of seeing always one and the same land-

scape? Of course we also played cards and plotted schemes, but the

answer to the riddle occurred to me during a stay on the Furka: the

Landscape-theoretical watercolor drawing by Lucius Burckhardt, untitled.The atomic power station becomes part of an idyllic landscape…

228

weather used to take care of changing the scenery, for we had not

yet established that one-sided relationship with the weather such as

is shaped by the eternally blue sky of our travel brochures.

In Switzerland and elsewhere, a large number of the old hotels

at tourist destinations have now vanished: I can name Rigigipfel—

demolished; Furka—demolished; Giessbach—closed down. The

hotels at these destinations are in decline while tourist numbers

continue to grow. Today’s tourists stay at hotels between destina-

tions—for the walk of old has gained a new lease of life, namely in

the form of the round trip by car.

The round trip by car has a larger perimeter. While the walk

explores one hill to the west of Schlettstadt, the trip by car covers

In 1988, Lucius Burckhardt accepted an invitation to the 17th Triennale in Milan. A mock travel agency offering “The Voyage to Tahiti” was set up in the “Landscape” section of the show. Photo: Martin Schmitz

229

At the 17th Triennale in Milan: When Armstrong landed on the moon, he radioed his first impressions to the earth. What did he see on the moon?—A landscape, of course; one, for which he need never have flown to the moon. A rock glacier, the Furka Pass, or the Colorado Canyon would have done the trick just as well. Photo: Martin Schmitz

230

the Vosges, the Provence and Tuscany. Consequently, the landscape

experience is abstracted to a far greater degree. By the end of his

long weekend, the motorist knows “what Burgundy looks like.” No-

where in Burgundy looks how he imagines Burgundy to look. He is

convinced that the people of Burgundy have completely destroyed

their beautiful Burgundy. He alone managed to construct an image

from the typical remains.

In the 1960s, when suddenly everyone owned a car, and used

to set off on a tour during the vacation season, the bells tolled for

the extended walk. Civil engineers declared that it was necessary

to channel traffic in order to avoid traffic jams, and they built the

highway, and thereby created the very traffic jams from which they

hoped to protect us. Once the highway was built, the problem of

destinations raised its head, just as it had with the railroad.

The destination must once again be typical because it represents

a region; but, as we said earlier, it must be typical to a greater degree

of abstraction. The Matterhorn may represent the Alps, and the

island of Helgoland Germany—but only very few tourist locations

are constituted thus. Since the image of the region, of Tuscany, of

Burgundy, exists only in tourists’ imaginations and not in reality,

the tourist location must endeavor to live up to this great degree of

abstraction. Often this is achieved by adding a further round trip to

the trip to the original destination: one goes to Meiringen only to

depart from there on the “Three Passes Trip,” or the “Five Glaciers

Tour;” and to Samaden to take the “Three Countries Tour,” which

takes one over the Ofen Pass, the Stelvio and the Splügen. Five

glaciers amount to the abstract essence of the single glacier.

Nonetheless, the place one stays should also evince something

of this universally typical flair. Of course there are the vernacular,

regional types of architecture, alpine for instance, but they devel-

oped their characteristic style at a time when neither hotels, nor

231

large parking lots, nor swimming pools existed. So how might these

huge buildings be made to look typical of their region? No role

models exist, so it is a case of faking things without an original. In

modern tourist architecture, the fake is the real thing because a real

counterpart to the fake does not exist. It is possible therefore, that

everything today is typical of everywhere; the style generated is that

of ubiquitous regionalism.

Once the tourist location has successfully resolved the problem

of typical, regional architecture it then tends to free itself from any

compulsion to provide the round trip or the “Three Passes Tour”—

which deprive it of tourism revenue in fact. Is it not at all possible

to merge all that is typically regional in a single location?—That

requires a staged setting. The solution is an institution that com-

bines the joys of an indoor swimming pool with a theme park that

gives expression to all that is typical of the region. And since we can

now pursue design completely free of local constraints, the region

is the world. In an alpine hut on the tropical beach, we can enjoy

Finnish health with Japanese philosophy. Without moving an inch,

we experience the entire world in the form of a second nature.

232

The Sermon (1994)

I have chosen a motto for my sermon. It is from the Prophet Eze-

kiel, Chapter 36, Verse 26, and it says: “[…] I will take away the

stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you an heart of flesh.”¹

It must be said that prophets, contrary to popular belief, do not

predict the future. They don’t predict that I’ll hit the jackpot next

year or have an accident. What prophets do have to say to society

is both timeless and timely. We’ll return later to the verse’s timeless

significance. Interpreted by the light of traditional church doctrine

it means, mercy replaces the law, and the New Testament replaces

the Old. We want to consider what a heart of flesh means for we

who are alive today, and working at universities of applied science.

To answer that, I’ll need to digress slightly. One skill that man pos-

sesses yet animals probably lack is the ability to plan. An animal

reacts; it responds in a certain way to a given stimulus. Man also

registers a stimulus, a nuisance or an impulse—yet he is able not

only to react but also to plan a permanent countermeasure. This

characteristic attains a professional dimension in the person of the

engineer, and it is about him that we shall speak next. We’ll also

reflect on how his skills can be taught and learned.

Engineers come up with two types of blueprint: one type I call

“the masterpiece,” the other “the neat solution.” The masterpiece

ensues from an academic tradition, the neat solution from the

polytechnics. The masterpiece is the work of a great master. He has

1 “The Major Prophet Ezekiel 36 (KJV—King James Version).” Blue Letter Bible, 1996–2010.

233

intuition, likewise an important human quality, namely that of sum-

moning imaginative powers enough to be able to act and to plan,

even in circumstances about which one is not adequately informed.

The great master needs intuition when he is young, in order to forge

great plans while carrying out the minor tasks entrusted to him.

Gradually, in the course of his career, he gains that which he calls

experience, and which we believe to be the first sign of his heart

growing stony. Later in life, the master is given major tasks for which

he delivers paltry solutions. Namely he draws on his experience, and

concludes that whatever was right for small tasks will do equally well

for large ones. To extrapolate thus gives rise to the gigantic failures

of planning we know only too well, to Chandigarh, Brasilia, the Salk

Institute and so forth. Therefore, when we ask here for a heart of

flesh, we do so in order to avoid being paralyzed by past experience,

to avoid feeling that we have nothing more to learn simply because

we think, “I’ve done that, been there. This is how it’s done;” and,

above all, in order to avoid telling our students, “What you’ve begun

there will never do. I tried that once, and it didn’t work out.”

Now we come to the polytechnic engineer and his neat solu-

tion. He, we have noted, is rooted in another tradition, that of the

polytechnic school founded by Napoleon, who asked his engineers:

How do we get our troops across the Rhine?—And the engineers

answered, We build a bridge. The assignment is depoliticized in this

way, and responsibility is clearly assigned. Napoleon gives the order

and, if the bridge leads to war then because that is what Napo-

leon wishes. The engineers come up with the solution so they are to

blame if the bridge collapses under the weight of the cannons. If the

cannons fire on people the engineers remain innocent.

In the 1960s, the technical approach ceded to a methodical one.

The engineer applies the following formula: define the objective,

analyze the problem, reach a conclusion, draw up the plan, imple-

234

ment it, and monitor how it functions. This, so they say, renders

the chosen solution compatible with other economic or ecological

processes. The fact is, however, that it is difficult to define the ob-

jective the minute one begins work on a task. In consequence, far

too much data is collated for analysis, and cannot ultimately be put

to use. That which goes by the name of conclusion is therefore an

arbitrary dismissal of inconvenient information. To draw up a plan

based on this conclusion is accordingly just as intuitive a matter as

the traditional masterpiece. The plan is carried out to the letter, and

monitored only far too late, when everything has been done.

Neat solutions pollute our environment. I would mention the

Aswan Dam which has destroyed the ecosystem underpinning

irrigation in Egypt; or the World Bank’s construction of the Sar-

dar Sarovar (Narmada) Dam in western India, which is currently

displacing 260,000 small farmers; or the 2,400 pump stations like-

wise financed by the World Bank, which are meant to alleviate the

impact of the irrigation system installed recently by engineers in

the Indus estuary. The irrigation system has caused sea-salt that lay

hitherto deep in the ground to permeate the topsoil and make it

unfertile, so the salt water must now be pumped off. The available

pumps were designed for freshwater however, and will rust within a

few years. But no matter: nobody yet has any idea where the power

to run 2,400 pumps is supposed to come from.

Evidently the technicians behind neat solutions are always look-

ing ahead to their next task. They follow the law Meadow described,

which claims that to redress a problem always leads to a bigger

problem. It is clear, moreover, that a neat solution doesn’t deliver a

real solution, for this is not at all possible—it merely redistributes

the problems. The engineer thus never manages to turn misfortune

into good fortune but only to allocate benefits and disadvantages to

different people than before.

235

If we ask here for a heart of flesh, then also for the sake of rules

or planning methods which put the neat solution in context. In my

opinion one shouldn’t go about pretending to adore decision-mak-

ing. It isn’t necessary to decide everything today. Our successors are

not dumber than we are. Rather, they can see further into the future.

We may therefore postpone a few decisions. We may also reach

soft decisions, which can be revised if planning proves to have been

mistaken. Even completed buildings need not imply a precise solu-

tion, but should remain convertible, able to serve freshly defined

purposes. We should always work on an appropriate scale such as

1:1 at best or, at worst, 1 : 1,000 or 1 : 10,000. We should experiment,

but in a way such that we can break off the experiment. We should

always remain aware that it is not happiness we bring but rather, a

change for the better, for some, and a change for the worse, for oth-

ers. This is why we should learn to resolve conflicts with empathy.

Let us consider teaching, too. Students should be allowed to

make mistakes. Making mistakes is the only way to learn. That is

why they should be allowed to take on tasks they can fail at: not

only textbook exercises that end well, or planning proposals that

the professor’s assistant has already trialed, or drawings that lack

content but are accomplished to perfection. This is the reason why

we haven’t instigated the Bauhaus foundation course in our new

Design Faculty. We don’t want an “apprenticeship” that proceeds

step by step, whereby one is told at every step, “You may take the

next step only when you have accomplished this or that to perfec-

tion,” and “Only when you know this will you be allowed to know

that.” At our school one is allowed also not to know—and to act

nevertheless.

And only now begins the actual sermon, with this point pre-

cisely: the stony heart presumes to know what it knows, whereas we

are dealing with not knowing.

236

Now, this “not knowing” is an ancient term, and classical philos-

ophers said long ago that, “I know that I know nothing” or “It is not

given to man to attain complete knowledge.” In the Judeo-Chris-

tian tradition, this approach to not knowing implied acknowledge-

ment of Our Lord, who is omniscient on our behalf.

The new factor in our day is: the term is devoid of meaning.

Our “not knowing” is not a temporary state; it neither refers to a

potentially broader science, nor is it a sign of modesty in the face

of a comprehensive system of knowledge, or of religion. Nietzsche’s

new message “God is dead” is a metaphor for the loss of any pos-

sibility of seeing our ignorance, our “not knowing” in relation to

greater, intact knowledge. Our knowledge is not like the shards of

a broken vase that might still be mended or, at the least, imagined

still to be whole. There is no vase, and our shards cannot be made

whole because they do not fit together.

And there we have the stony heart’s solutions we know only too

well: either to act as if nothing is going on, and to herald security

even if it actually no longer exists; or to take doubt and skepticism

so far as to suggest there might be a basis worth purging, one on

which we might erect a new edifice of knowledge.

The heart of flesh goes forth from the devastated remains of its

own fragmented knowledge in the midst of greater rubble. Lyotard

calls these “narratives.” I would now like to mention three such

fragments or “narratives.”

All of us running around at technical schools take a scientific

view of the world, one that suggests natural processes are embedded

in systems, and that all these systems are networked in turn to cre-

ate a great, cosmic system. And this last certainty is precisely what

we have lost; yet we are nonetheless incapable of abandoning our

idea of it. Perhaps we obscure the image of this crystalline system,

as Deleuze and Guattari do, and make of it a disordered rhizome,

237

or a system no longer transparent. But nothing takes us beyond the

concept we have of a system. And here, the hard heart springs back

into action. The catastrophes I described earlier occurred because

either we or the engineers went so far as to apply our concept of the

systematic course of things to the act of planning, and thus to be-

come system builders ourselves. That the world constitutes a system

is a metaphor; one moreover, for which there is no guarantee. We

cannot mistake this image for reality and tinker away at it.

Another narrative that we cling to nonetheless is Marxism. This

too is a narrative insofar as it explains the way of the world par-

tially and incompletely. The progression from Marxism to dialecti-

cal materialism and other universal models of the sort is nothing

but folklore. Yet this by no means invalidates the explanatory power

of Marxism—a term I take to include the revisionists Luxemburg,

Hilferding, and those on the barricades in 1968. We should not

believe however, that Marxism might change the world. To believe

that, and to use Marxism to that end, is to show one’s stony heart.

Yet our heart of flesh cannot do without Marxism as an additional

narrative.

And finally, one of the greatest narratives we have is our Christian

religion. For our fathers, it too was a means of explaining the world

and they, hard-hearted as they were, consequently became men of

great faith and men of great doubt. They wrote books, inquiring as

to whether one may keep the Christian faith without believing in

the resurrection of Christ. Such intellectual acts of prowess are alien

to us. Neither our belief nor our doubt is that strong. Gianni Vat-

timo recommends “feeble thinking” (il pensiero debole), and I second

that in recommending feeble faith. Christ has risen for my sake—

but I have a hard time believing it. And this ability of mine, to live in

such discrepancy, is implicit in my plea to leave me my heart of flesh.

I will never be either a true believer or a true skeptic.

238

And, in conclusion, I’d like to make one more personal com-

ment: on behalf of the government of Thuringia and in cooperation

with others, I, in my capacity as founding dean, have founded the

Design Faculty at the University of Architecture and Engineering,

here in Weimar. The act of founding the Faculty amounts to an

incomplete blueprint, a blueprint that I now abandon with a soft

heart, a heart of flesh. I ask others to assume the creative task of

filling it with life, and I undertake to understand whatever my suc-

cessors do. One cannot hold onto a thing until it turns out how one

would like it to be. This too is an aspect of the heart of flesh.

239

Strollological Observations on Perception of the Environment and the Tasks Facing Our Generation (1996)

Aesthetic aspects of the environment have never before concerned

people to the extent they do today. Never before were so many com-

mittees preoccupied by permit procedures; never were such power-

ful organizations at work to protect the environment, the landscape,

monuments, and a sense of local identity; never was it so difficult

to erect a new building in a historical location, or on a landscape

still bearing traces of earlier gardens or agriculture. Yet despite all

these safeguards, procedures, and turned down construction pro-

posals, complaints about the “uglyfication” of the environment and

the destruction of the landscape are growing louder by the day.

My science, which attempts to analyze this phenomenon, is

called strollology. Strollology examines the sequences in which a

person perceives his surroundings. For it is not as if we find our-

selves “beamed” all of a sudden to Piccadilly Circus or to the Can-

celleria; instead we find our way there, one way or the other. We

leave our hotel on the Via Nomentana or the Pincio, catch a bus

or flag a cab—younger people go on foot. We check out the streets,

cross squares, stroll along the Corso, perhaps take in the Palazzo

Vidone, Linottte and St. Andrea della Valle, and are thus suffi-

ciently prepared for the Cancelleria to also fall into place. A para-

chutist who happened to land among the endless cars parked in the

narrow alley in front of the Cancelleria would gain a quite different

impression of the architecture than we do.

In the old world, the intact world, any context explored strollo-

logically served as an explanatory complement to the actual object

240

of a visit. For example, the Cancelleria is not situated just anywhere

such as in a park, on a hillside or on a large square flanked by two

fountains. And if the nineteenth century had ever erected an imita-

tion Cancelleria in this way, then the context selected, its driveways,

flowerbeds and fountains, would have explained the building as a

Gründerzeit¹ replica.

A building supported thus by its context had a relatively easy

time of expressing itself. And much has been clarified already: we

are in Rome, in the Cardinals’ Palace district; or we are on a nine-

teenth-century boulevard in a commercial and administrative dis-

trict; or we are in a park whose genesis we are able to date, and are

1 The “Founder Epoch” refers to the early phase of industrialization and eco-nomic growth in Germany and Austria, before the stock market crash of 1873.

Voilà ce qu’on peut dire: nos bâtiments vont bien partout! This much one can say: our buildings work wherever one puts them! Drawing: Lucius Burckhardt

241

arriving now at the palace. The architectural statement, the archi-

tects’ message can be limited under such circumstances to the nar-

row field of stylistic contrivance; the architect can fulfill the stylistic

ideal or, to the Classicists’ horror and to Robert Venturi’s delight,

deviate from it. Either message is certain to be clear to the visitor,

for his stroll has equipped him to read facades.

Let us speak as strollologists also of the landscape for a mo-

ment. In the nineteenth century, the age of railroads and terminals,

the landscape shrank to a postcard cliché: this is Ostend, and this

“I am a chapel on the landscape.” Yesterday and today. Drawing: Lucius Burckhardt

242

Scheveningen, Interlaken or the isle of Mont Saint-Michel. The

stroll was reduced thus to the choice of a holiday destination, the

purchase of a ticket, and the rental of a hotel room with a view

to match the postcard. The railroad journey was in a sense also a

strollological context. Yet experience of the landscape prior to the

Golden Age of railroads was a very different matter: the way was

as important as the goal. Perhaps a person would have left town,

A mobile bus stop would make life easier for people dependent on public transport, but has only been realized so far in form of a seminar held at Kassel University. Photo: Helmut Aebischer

243

on foot or on horseback, via a brick city gateway, seen strangers

at their work, forded a river, entered a forest or climbed a hill. He

may have chosen another route back to his home town where, in

the evening, tired and weary, he described the landscape to his dear

ones: that is how things are in Saint Germain, or in the Jura near

Besancon, and the forest of Fontainebleau is like this. Much of that

which the stroller related at home he had never really seen, and

much of that which he had seen was omitted from his account.

The image he conjured was a collage of previous knowledge mixed

with fragments garnered along his way. The outcome was never-

theless certain knowledge—he now knew the forest of Fontaine-

bleau.

In the course of the seminar “Perception & Traffic,” led by Lucius Burckhardt and Helmut Holzapfel in 1991, people walked along a busy road, holding windshields in front of their faces. The lack of the protective shell of a car prompted a peculiar perception of “place.” Photo: Bertram Weisshaar

244

Did he find it beautiful? Of course: for everything he saw of

agriculture and natural growth on his travels was beautiful. Poetry

since the days of Theocritus and Horace, and the paintings of

Neapolitan and Dutch Masters had prepared him for this beauty,

had schooled his eye. And, moreover, he regarded this landscape

with disinterest, in Immanuel Kant’s sense of the term, meaning

he did not seek to derive from it any personal benefit. He was in

search neither of mushrooms nor of a suitable place to till the soil.

The urban dweller’s lack of familiarity with the rural landscape was

precisely what enabled him to appreciate its aesthetic qualities.

In 1987, “The Voyage to Tahiti” led to an abandoned military training area in Kassel. During the walk, an actor read aloud texts by George Forster, who was on Tahiti with Captain Cook in 1772. This served as a soundtrack while people gazed upon the Dönche Nature Reserve, a place for which the descriptions of a paradise isle were equally apt. Photo: Klaus Hoppe

245

And now I wish to describe why and to what extent our gen-

eration is the first to find itself in a novel situation vis-à-vis the

object observed, be it a building or a landscape. And the explana-

tion is once again strollological. It is not objects themselves that

have changed, but the context. I’ll name here some of the changes.

One actually does arrive in front of many an interesting build-

ing in much the same way as our parachutist, but from below, from

the subway. I have traveled from the Gare de l’Est to the Louvre

station, and find myself now in the Rue de Rivoli. Where am I?

What is that? And how rapidly the picture changes: now I am in

the courtyard of the Louvre, or in the Tuileries Gardens. I am at a

loss without my prior knowledge, my city map or my travel guide.

“The ZEBRAcrossing”—during a stroll through Kassel in 1993, the available zebra and intersection light crossings were ignored. Use was made instead of a portable striped zebra carpet (Gerhard Lang), rolled out so as to allow a six-lane highway to be crossed at any selected spot. The action drew attention to the disappropriation of city dwellers’ right to walk. Photo: Angela Siever

246

I park my car and head for the city forest. Gas stations, factories

(abandoned ones mostly), a second-hand rubber dealer with a stock

of old tires, a farmer on a tractor who is spraying his field with a

white powder or vapor and, finally, trees. Are they valiant warriors,

bowed by the tide of time, or is the forest here dying? And whose

fault may that be? Possibly mine, it is said, insofar as I drive a car

and have a centrally heated home. And who drinks the water from

beneath the sprayed field? Again, I do. So I am implicated in what

is happening around me after all; and by no means alien or disin-

terested, as Kant would have it.

Another example: let’s say I go to the park, back to the Tuileries

Gardens. In historic times one used to cross the built-up city, the

city in which every last square meter was exploited, and in which

the king used his great wealth to plant a green oasis, the Tuile-

ries Gardens. So I walk through the “stone city,”² cut through the

Palace, and find myself gazing in delight upon this precious pub-

lic park. Yet, the Tuileries Gardens have come to present a quite

other aspect since the nineteenth century: we come now from the

Champs Elysées, cut through the grounds that were laid out for the

World Exhibitions, search between the Seine and Place de la Con-

corde for a way to reach the entrance, and ultimately find ourselves

in a place not so very unlike the previous grounds. The experience

of “I am now setting foot in the park” has been lost.

And now let us leave these anyhow still classical situations and

take a look around those infinite zones we might best describe as

“metropolises.” These are the zones in which the city strives to be

the countryside and where everyone, whether building a home or

2 A reference to Werner Hegemann’s book Das steinerne Berlin (Berlin of Stone), Kiepenheuer, Berlin 1930.

247

a factory, surrounds himself with as much greenery as possible. The

same is true of the zones in which the countryside aspires to be

urban, and in which every small town mayor is in search of an in-

vestor prepared to make him a gift of a tower block or, at the least,

of a railroad station with an underground section, a pedestrian level,

and a multistory parking lot.—And now, my discovery: in these

zones of our environment which the majority of people inhabit or

visit, the strollological context that fosters understanding of what

we see there has disintegrated completely.

Therefore we are the first generation of people for whom the

aesthetic experience does not occur automatically. Instead, the place

itself must explain its aesthetic intent. When we create a park, the

park can no longer rely on the fact that we proceed from the town,

through a gate, to a green space, and hence know we are visiting

the park. Rather, the park must now substantiate by means of its

interior design the extent to which it contrasts with its surround-

ings. So, without us even taking a single step, it must give us the

strollological explanation: You have come from the city to the park.

The same holds true also for architecture. Architecture can no

longer rely on us grasping its greater significance thanks to its loca-

tion alone, and so must assert its singularity by deviating slightly

from the stylistic ideal. For instance, a new bank must now intro-

duce a slightly variant nuance to the banking district. Now, an ac-

climatized suburban cube that has been incorporated in a partly

green, partly concrete-braced artificial plane must fall back on a

conveniently ambivalent statement: I am in the suburbs but I am

resolutely urban; I am a bank, but a bank like no other…

To reiterate: we are the first generation to have to construct

a new aesthetic, a strollological aesthetic. Strollological, for the

simple reason that the way or route to a place can no longer be

taken for granted, but must be reproduced in, or represented by,

248

the object itself. The multilayered message that a building or, in

another case, gardens or a cultivated landscape must deliver can

no longer be supplied by a flash of genius on the part of its creator.

The enterprising architect’s statement, “Where there is no place,

I will create a place myself ” is not enough: there are enough such

aesthetic cactuses dotted about already and indeed, it is they which

have contributed so decisively to the much lamented deterioration

of the natural environment. What is required here rather, is design

intelligence, intelligence that conveys a dual message: information

about the context as well as about the object in question.

249

Wasteland As Context.Is There Any Such Thing As The Postmodern Landscape? (1998)

Everything is growing more ugly by the day—on that we all agree.

We discovered a beach three years ago, on a remote, rocky bay,

and went there time and again, with the children. We swam, they

searched for seashells, and we never saw a soul all day long. But

we returned there last year, and what did we find but a half-built

hotel. And in the Alps, two summers ago, we discovered a sunny

slope with a whole range of alpine flora: gentians, alpine asters, and

lobelia. But this year the struts for a cable lift have been installed,

so all the flora will soon be crushed beneath skis and snow ploughs.

Don’t we all have similar stories to tell when we return home from

a vacation? Is the “uglyfication” of our landscape a one-way street?

Our grandparents had a much better time of it. When they left the

city they found themselves in a beautiful rural landscape and, if they

traveled even further a-field, could enjoy magnificent beaches or

mountain vistas. Yet we too still have it good, for we manage now

and then to discover a lovely spot, and we keep quiet about it; and

even when that spot has gone to the dogs, there is a good chance

we will find a new one. But how will things look for our offspring?

Will a thing of beauty be lost to them forever?

Strong and influential movements protest the “uglyfication” of

our environment: lobby groups for the protection of local identity,

the protection of the landscape, the protection of the natural envi-

ronment, and the protection of cultural heritage. Remarkably, all

these lobby groups were founded, not recently, but by our grand-

parents: “protection of ” lobby groups were invented sometime be-

250

tween 1900 and 1910. Evidently, the impression that everything is

increasingly ugly was even stronger then than it is today. Yet we

like to think everything in those days was still lovely, and that there

was probably little need for the “protection of ” lobby groups. Will

our grandchildren think the same about us? Will they say: “Our

grandparents still had it so good. There were still so many beauti-

ful places, back then; and is it not strange, how upset they all were

about environmental degradation?”

Today, we will consider these changes, this apparently one-way

development. Without doubt, that thing we describe generally as

landscape is changing. Whether or how one might pinpoint the

nature of this change is hard to say, for landscape is a quite tricky

word, an interpretation of our surroundings. That which is changing

might better be described as “tangible space.” Evidently, tangible

space used to be in a state such that we called it a beautiful land-

scape, but we no longer rate it so highly owing to its present altera-

tion. Or do we? Perhaps there are changes now underway that make

tangible space look lovelier than ever. It must have been beautiful

at some time or other, on its way from primeval Germanic forest

to the present-day pig and chicken factories. The decision to de-

scribe a certain stage of agricultural development as “beautiful” and

as “landscape” is historically determined therefore, which is to say,

it is a construct created by past generations, and hence one presum-

ably subject to change and development. That the more remote and

extreme instances of agricultural economy such as one finds in the

Alps, say, are more beautiful than charming, sheltered places in the

countryside around Rome attests to specific historical shifts in our

interpretation of landscape. Evidently—and this rather complicates

the matter—we are dealing with two developments: firstly, with

changes in tangible space, however quantifiable or representable

this may be; and, secondly, with the ongoing shifts in our percep-

251

tion of landscape—and this brings us now to ask: Could it be that

our concept of landscape is outdated insofar as it has failed to keep

pace with changes in the modern landscape?

Let us begin by reviewing the classic, traditional view of a beauti-

ful landscape. This rests, for one, on the distinction between town

and country. The construct “landscape” is the urban dweller’s inven-

tion; it is he—and not the farmer working the land—who finds the

landscape beyond the city limits so appealing. He also fulfills the

second premise posited by Immanuel Kant: he has no “vested inter-

est” in the countryside; he visits it, not to buy cheap potatoes or to

collect rent from leaseholders, but as a “disinterested” onlooker. He

admires the golden ears of corn and the industrious laborers bring-

ing in the harvest but he has no gain from them, and nor does he

want any. That his existence as an urban dweller actually depends on

the agricultural economy is another story altogether. In addition to

the opposition of town and country, and the passing urban dweller’s

lack of involvement, there is a third premise: short distances covered

on foot or, in the past, on horseback or, today, by bicycle, make it

possible to construct an image of the local landscape, and to label it

“typical.” Every city has, or at least used to have, a landscape it con-

siders somehow typical: Berliners have their lakes in Brandenburg,

Frankfurters the Taunus or the Wetterau, the people of Strasbourg

their Vosges, those in Zurich their Lägern, and the Viennese their

Vienna Woods. And beyond, way beyond the typical charming fea-

tures of a hike through the local landscape lies the heroic, sublime

vacation landscape: the Curonian Spit, Helgoland, the White Cliffs

of Dover, Lake Lucerne, and the Matterhorn. These heroic, sublime

landscapes are also integrated in the local-typical schema however,

for the simple reason that, having arrived at our vacation destina-

tion, we need walk only a short way to see them—perhaps not even

that, if the Matterhorn, say, is visible from our hotel window. In this

252

respect we evidently still share the aesthetics of the Golden Age of

railroads, with its vacation destinations and hotels.

I would like now to demonstrate the extent to which our situa-

tion has changed in objective terms, i.e. with regard to that which

I call tangible space, as well as in terms of our subjective attitudes

and hence, our perceptions.

Certainly, the contrast between town and country still exists yet

it has become much less pronounced. The urban dweller no longer

lives in the city necessarily, and even someone who works the land

may choose now not to live on it. All Forestry Commission proper-

ties in Germany have been closed down, for if ever a forester is re-

quired to see the forest, and happens not to be at work in his office,

he travels by car to the point at which his patrol route begins. Nor

do farmers need live alongside their fields and stalls these days, and

may just as well direct their business from the city. Whoever toils

in Holland in the famous tulip farms can arrive there each morning

on his motorbike, and likewise winegrowers and cattle raisers in the

south of France. The majority population in the countryside, in the

villages, is no longer tied to the land for its livelihood. Many com-

mute to work in the city, others have urban jobs in rural areas, or

they simply work at home. This has repercussions also on architec-

ture. The old marketplaces and villages no longer have a distinctly

rural appearance, and their smart mayors have no greater ambition

than to find an investor for a high-rise. The cities meanwhile, are

falling apart. Fast means of transport have made high densities and

walking distances redundant. The pride of urban mayors is more

likely to be urban parks, urban expansion, and to fill every street

and square with so-called urban-garnish greenery. Patches of green

therefore envelop the motorist at every turn, before releasing him

into the underground parking lot, from where he makes his way to

the pedestrian zone, once again surrounded by shrubs.

253

Settlement of the countryside by urban dwellers was made pos-

sible by the car. The result was development of a settlement struc-

ture that can be reached and explored solely by car. Reasonably

enough, anyone who lives in the city or the countryside therefore

now gets about by car. This has an impact on the distance he walks.

Even the very first step into the classical experience of landscape is

denied him, for he no longer experiences a transition from urban to

rural architecture. He will therefore travel great distances in search

of the greatest contrast, the most “unspoiled” place imaginable. The

effect of such overly long trips is that he can no longer manage to

integrate all he sees in a local-typical landscape schema. A walk in

the immediate vicinity therefore no longer guarantees he will find a

familiar and hence, preferable landscape.

Every motorist has read somewhere, at some time, that exhaust

fumes are partly responsible for so-called forest dieback. Individu-

als deal with this information in different ways: one can continue

to use the car and suffer a guilty conscience, or join an association

that relieves the feeling of guilt, and fosters a “So what?” attitude.

Everyone is aware also, that the work farmers do in their fields is

no longer totally harmless: farmers sit on grotesque machines that

spread indefinable substances on the fields, substances likely to seep

into the groundwater and come gushing out of our faucets the very

next day. Our complicity in crime and our awareness of such risks

sweep away all traditional notions of the disinterested onlooker on

the sidelines. Whatever we do has an impact on the landscape—on

forest dieback—and whatever the “Fortunate folk of the country”¹

1 The reference is to Friedrich Schiller’s poem The Walk (1795), in which he dis-cusses the development of human civilization, and the fundamental question of man’s relationship to Nature.