Real Abstraction: Architecture as Capital

*Published in Think Space MONEY. Zagreb: DAZ, Think Space Programme, 2014.

By Patricio De Stefani                                                                                         

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Architecture of Density #39, Michael Wolf.

Abstract

Does money really ‘rule’ the world? If money is just the form of appearance of exchange-value, does not a more substantial reality lie behind it? What if money is just a means to realise something far more complex, namely, capital? If this is the case, what sort of architecture has the capitalist mode of production engendered and how? If the production of value is what characterises simple commodity production in pre-capitalist societies, the production of surplus-value defines the capitalist mode of production. How is this surplus produced? Where does profit come from? Only by understanding till what extent capital is embedded in the production of architecture a way to challenge that relationship can be thought about. This process could not have taken place without the integration of architecture, and space in its entirety, into the circuits of capital. Therefore, if capital is a process in which the value contained in commodities continuously changes its form in order to expand itself, then, as soon as architecture steps into this circuit as means of production (a factory or office building, for instance) it turns itself into capital – as constant capital, or more specifically, fixed capital.

Abstract space was born out of the violence and ‘creative destruction’ of primitive accumulation and the establishment of the modern state. Essential to this was also the increasing role of urbanisation in the expansion of markets, eventually reaching the whole globe. Built upon the historical process of abstraction of labour and space, psychologists, art historians and architectural theorists developed the modern concept of space towards the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. This concept presented ‘space’ as a neutral and autonomous void/volume divorced from the social and political practices which produce it. Indeed, the reduction of space to this apolitical, visual-aesthetic, or purely empirical state is no mere ideology, but fulfils a precise practical function: to ensure the reproduction of social relations of production. This is not achieved without major problems though. Contradictions internal to the development of capitalism (notably between capital and labour) are increased at the spatial level as a simultaneous tendency towards an absolute homogenisation and fragmentation of space. Space and architecture become real abstractions (like money or capital), apparently autonomous and rational objects which aspire to homogenise whatever stands on the way of the forces of accumulation (the state and the world market), paradoxically, by means of fragmenting and subdividing space according to their requirements. If space/architecture can serve political and economic purposes by reinforcing the reproduction of production/property relations, could it serve as a device to confront these relations?

Keywords: Value, Capital, Abstract Space, Abstract Architecture

 

We often hear ‘radical’ common wisdom complain about money as the ‘root of all evil’, or the conservative one as the ‘necessary evil’, but evil anyway. What those well-intentioned moral critiques usually forget is that money is just another commodity, but a very special commodity indeed. Just to name a few of its ‘special properties’: it measures the value of all other commodities at the same time it allows their trade or circulation. Does money really ‘rule’ the world? If we spend half of our live making it and the other half spending it, who could think it does not determine a huge part of it? But what is behind the mystery of money? Is money always capital? What is their relation to social space and architecture?

In what follows I intend a historical approach to the process of abstraction of space by which architecture was transformed to fit the requirements of capital accumulation in the emergence of bourgeois society. It will be argued that only by understanding till what extent capital is embedded in the production of architecture a way to challenge that relationship can be thought about.

Emancipatory Horizons: The Possibility of a Revolutionary Architectural Practice (Introduction + Conclusions + Full PDF Thesis)

Note: Finally I’ve decided to officially publish online my work. It has been 6 months since I completed the writing and submitted the final draft, and 3 months since I submitted the final version. After almost 2 years living in Liverpool I’m back in Chile preparing the bibliography for the next stage of research (this time without an academic sponsorship). Although the result is fairly satisfactory, I think some shortcomings should be pointed out: A further and explicit integration between Part I and II or between the key concepts of architectural object and abstract space is needed in order to successfully relate the spheres of architectural theory and social-economic theory. A deepening of the analysis of monopoly rent and its relation to architecture (which was only mentioned, some of its historical preconditions outlined though). The question of the political needs to be put in its historical context, that is, situate it within historical cases (Foucault’s studies on prisons would be an example). The empirical aspects of architectural practice must be concretely analysed (real estate, construction industries, architectural firms, state urban planning, and so on). And together with this, the new problems posed by postmodernism and global capitalism need to be tackled from the perspective of historical materialism. 

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Thesis Cover “Emancipatory Horizons: The Possibility of a Revolutionary Architectural Practice” (Design by Camila Ayala).

Abstract

Architecture has always been tied to social change, but also to social reproduction. Architects have sought to challenge social structures before, but this tendency seems to be in utter decline, is an emancipatory practice of architecture still possible? What prevents architecture from engaging in radical social and spatial transformation? To find out if it can still have a progressive function within society, its material relation to capital must be unravelled. The active human body, abstract labour, abstract space, fixed capital, landed property, and rent are crucial concepts to understand the spatial logic of capitalism. This research examines these theoretical issues through the historical case of UNCTAD III building in Chile, one of the last attempts to challenge the capitalist production of space. Through this case the difficult questions concerning the role of architecture within capitalist society and what are the possibilities for an alternative practice in our current conditions can be addressed. A radical alternative through architecture must acknowledge both its autonomy and dependence from the cities produced by capitalism if it wishes to address concrete change.

Keywords: Capitalism, Production of Architecture, Abstract Space, Practice, Utopia, Revolution, Emancipation

Contents

Introduction

Part I: The Material Basis of Architecture                                                                 

1 The Relations to Nature

2 The Artificial Order

3 The Architecture of Acts and the Abstraction of Labour

Part II: The Production of Architecture under Capitalism

4 The Social Production of Architecture

5 Real Abstraction: Architecture as Capital

6 The Formal: Architecture as Political Mediation

Part III: UNCTAD III and the Dialectics of Defeat

7 1971, Utopia: Industry, Modernism, and Class Struggle in the Chilean Road to Socialism

8 1973, Tragedy: The Neoliberal Utopia and the Road to Postmodernism

9 2010, Farce: GAM and the Flattening of History as Spectacle

Conclusions: A Revolutionary Architecture?

—◊—

Introduction

Sooner or later in his formation or practice, every architect is compelled to confront a peculiar dilemma: to project the possible he has to think the impossible. In other words – and perhaps without knowing it –, he has to imagine something that appears impossible in order to make way for new possibilities. If he avoids this, his visions and designs will be thwarted by the present: they will either endlessly repeat the already existing, or they will trivially modify it, making it appear as truly new, or else, they will nostalgically regress to a longed past. They will not be projections in the strict sense; they will fail to envision an alternative. In challenging what appears to be possible, the architect realises the fact that his ideas are not really his, that he lives within a social reality in which he plays a role just like anybody else. His perceptions and thoughts about that reality are conditioned by his place in it, and that is the actual source of his views on architecture, on the issues it should address more urgently, the objectives it should aim to, and the most suitable methods to pursue those objectives.

UNCTAD III: Contradictory Architecture (Draft)

Note: Draft for the second section of Chapter 5.

By Patricio De Stefani

This building reflects the spirit of

work, creativity and

effort of the people of Chile,

represented by:

 

their workers

their technicians

their artists

their professionals

 

It was built in 275 days and finished

on April 3, 1972 during the popular

government of comrade

President, Salvador Allende G.

 

S.R.R[1]

 

1971, Utopia:

Industry, Modernism, and Class Struggle in the Chilean Road to Socialism

The building for the third international session of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD III)[2] was built in Santiago de Chile, between June 1971 and April 1972, during the government of socialist president Salvador Allende.[3] Its history is marked by a series of ‘traumatic’ social and political events, to say the least. In this section I will focus on a ‘political economy’ of the building in relation to particular aspects of the Chilean economic system during the late 1960s and early 1970s. To do so I will use the main hypotheses and concepts developed in the first part of this research, the wider economic, social, and political background of the epoch, and the case and role of CORMU[4] in the design of a new way of conceiving urban space and architecture influenced mainly by the Bauhaus and CIAM ideologies, but also by the social and political visions embedded in Chile’s emerging modern culture.

We will need to compare the general premises which the project intended regarding the relationship between modern architecture and the existing city, with the actual relationship the building established with the city of Santiago. How did UNCTAD III related to the existing city? What was the general and specific mode of this relationship? Answering these questions requires that we distinguish between the building as sensory thing and the building as social object.

As a concrete urban intervention, it was originally meant to complete a larger modernist housing complex: San Borja Urban Renewal. This development was part of the urban policies carried out by CORMU (since 1966) and the housing policies of CORVI[5] –both dependent of the Ministry of Housing and Urbanism (MINVU).[6] The role and vision of these State institutions was largely progressive and focused on solving housing and urban problems of the working class. The building is located at the centre of Santiago on a triangular block. Its main entrance faces south to the city’s main street, ‘Alameda’ (Libertador Bernardo O’Higgins), and to San Borja; to the west is Santa Lucia Hill (the city’s foundational place); to the north Lastarria neighbourhood, Forestal Park, and San Cristobal Hill; and to the east, one of the main squares of the city, Plaza Baquedano. It is an isolated building composed of two main volumes, a slab-shaped horizontal volume containing all main conference halls and other facilities; and a tower comprising secretariat functions (Fig. 1). The horizontal block’s general magnitude could be summed up as follows: 180 m length, 50 m width, and 20 m height; whereas the tower’s is 24 m length, 20 m width, and 80 m height. The main building comprises three smaller buildings (of steel structure and corrugated sheet cladding), and upon them a flat steel spaceframe roof rests on sixteen concrete pillars. The building connects, through its main entrance, Alameda Avenue and Lastarria neighbourhood (Fig. 2).

The Social Production of Architecture (Draft)

Note: This is the draft for Chapter 4. I had to put the conclusion on hold since I need to get into Chapter 5 right away.

By Patricio De Stefani

Conceptual Scheme for Chapter 4

Architecture as Mean of Production 

To establish the role of architecture within capitalism as a system is the difficult task we have ahead in this section. If the hypotheses outlined in the first one are valid, then this problem could not have been addressed directly from the beginning. For our concern is not just determining various kinds of relationships between architecture and capital, but to prove their internal and structural interdependency in such a manner, that a possibility for breaking with it could be effective –and not mere rhetoric. Hence, only by starting our analysis from the most elementary categories concerning the substance of architecture (objects) and capital (value) we can now begin to build into the complexity of the historical analysis of concrete case studies. In this chapter we will clarify and extend the basic concepts that will be put forward into such analysis, considering them first in their general form –i.e. independent from the capitalist mode of production. These stem out of the chain of categories developed in the previous part, in which the centrality of human activity was established as a fundamental mediation between our objective human world (second nature) and the social life which takes place in it and produces it. Thus, contradictions between nature and man, natural and artificial, things and objects, use and exchange, objects and values, concrete and abstract, subject and object, can scarcely be understood without the mediation of human’s social actions.

Concerning the distinction between human act and human action, for example, both Lefebvre and de Certeau acknowledge –at least implicitly– such difference. The former from his ‘rhythm-analysis’, and the latter from his concept of ‘everyday practice’. Lefebvre uses, for example, the term gestural system to refer to rhythmed actions as ‘the basis of ritualized (and hence coded) rules’ (1991, 214). For his part, de Certeau talks about everyday practices as ‘ensembles of procedures’ and ‘schemas of operations and of technical manipulations’ (1984, 43); also his distinction between strategies (abstract codified practices) and tactics (ways of creative appropriation of those codes) roughly matches that between acts and actions (de Certeau 1984, 35-39).

Lefebvre’s concept of rhythm is especially relevant here, since it not only relates to the ‘pace’ of the human body and its biological or cyclical rhythms, but more importantly to the ‘colonisation’ of them by the artificial and linear repetitions of labour, namely: social rhythms (Lefebvre 2004, 8). According to him, the idea of a rhythmanalysis and the ‘production of social time’ was meant to put the key ‘finishing touches’ to his theory of the ‘production of space’ (1991, 405). Rhythms are ‘sequential relationships in space (…) a relationship between space and time’ (Lefebvre 1991, 206), or more precisely an ‘interaction between a place, a time and an expenditure of energy’ (Lefebvre 2004, 15). Lefebvre is very emphatic in pointing out that there is no rhythm without repetition and difference, and more importantly without measure; and not only this: since they depict a spatio-temporal relationship, they are a ‘measuring-measure’ –like ‘tree-ring dating’ or a factory assembly line (2004, viii, 8; 1991, 175). He also sought to demonstrate how this notion of rhythm could bring Marx’s quest for social relations concealed within commodities to its limit expression.

The Architecture of Acts [1] and the Abstraction of Labour

Note: This is the third and last chapter of Part 1 (The Architecture of Capital), after this I will move into the political economy of architecture and the analysis of the case studies.

By Patricio De Stefani

Labour and Object

We have already introduced the general character of human labour in Chapter 1, now we need to develop more in detail its relation to the concept of object as it has been specifically defined in the previous chapter. However, first we need to examine objects –and the labour which uses and produces them– from the standpoint of biological processes in both the world of perceptions and the world of actions as defined by Uexküll.

The sensations we perceive from stimuli coming from things existing in the outside world are not really properties of them, hence, sensations belong to the subject and lack spatial extension. This is what Uexküll concludes from his biological understanding of what makes an experience of the world, which is heavily grounded on Kant’s conception of the subject-object relationship (Uexküll 1957, 13). For example, says Uexküll, if we hear the sound of a bell far away, this is nothing more than a sequence of processes: a physical process in which the air waves penetrate our ears, a physiological process in which these are transformed by the eardrum into nervous excitation and transmitted to the brain, and finally a psychic process when the receptor cells project a perceptual cue into the Umwelt –in this case a sound sensation– making it appear as a property of the bell itself (1957, 63). As already stated, this process is called sensory circle since it describes a path from the external to the internal world of the animal and back to the external, forming the subject’s perceptual world (Merkwelt). Each sensory circle corresponds to one sense organ, but in combination they are responsible for the concrete image of our world. Uexküll brought this study to its limit asking which part of the experience belongs to the subject and which to the object (n. d., 13), concluding that an animal cannot perceive anything outside the reach of its own Umwelt –which brings him closer to Kant’s notion of the thing-in-itself (Uexküll n. d., 70; 1957, 13). Some authors have seen the Umwelt concept as hardly distinguishable from solipsism (Weber 2004, 300), whereas others have emphasised the distinction between them, arguing that Uexküll never denies the existence of the external world, but he criticises mechanistic scientific objectivism as having forgot the crucial role the subject plays in any experience of the world (Rüting 2004, 49).

Sensory circle and exteriorisation of the sound sensation

The sensory circle provides the content of our experiences: these are content sensations and are distinguished by their quality and intensity (Uexküll n. d., 29-30). This circle, however, only consists in ‘half’ of the biological process described by Uexküll. For if the result of this is a passive sensory perception –a ‘natural’ thing– there must be another process by which the subject engages actively with his world. A simple example would be if we suddenly look directly at the sun or if an object is fast approaching our eyes, in both cases we might blink repeatedly or even cover our eyes with our hand or forearm. This is called a reflex act, and the process by which the sense organs relate to the organs of action so as to provoke a bodily response is called reflex arc (Uexküll n. d., 12-13). But only a small part of our actions can be considered involuntary reflexes, whereas the rest result from more complex processes.