02. - JvantSpijker.com

Transcription

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GLOSSY
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Snooze
Immersing architecture in mass culture
“The most delicious moment of the day: between dreaming and waking, dozily
drifting in and out of slumber, pushing the snooze button on the alarm again ...”
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Snooze
Immersing architecture in mass culture
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form
or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission
of the publisher.
For works of visual artists affiliated with a CISAC organization the copyrights have been settled with Beeldrecht
in Amsterdam. © 2003, c/o Beeldrecht Amsterdam
It was not possible to find all the copyright holders of the illustrations used.
Interested parties are requested to contact NAi Publishers, Mauritsweg 23, 3012 JR Rotterdam, The Netherlands.
Available in North, South and Central America through D.A.P./Distributed Art Publishers Inc., 155 Sixth Avenue 2nd Floor,
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Available in the United Kingdom and Ireland through Art Data, 12 Bell Industrial Estate, 50 Cunnington Street,
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NAi Publishers is an internationally orientated publisher specialized in developing, producing and distributing books on
architecture, the visual arts and related disciplines.
www.naipublishers.nl
Printed and bound in Belgium
ISBN 90-5662-313-3
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Acknowledgements
This publication has been made possible thanks to the Netherlands Architecture Fund, the Mondriaan Foundation and the
Netherlands Foundation for Visual Arts, Design and Architecture. Studio Sputnik would like to thank Frank van Manen,
Jeroen Mensink, Harm Timmermans, Paul de Graaf and Marc de Rooij for their supportive criticism and fruitful discussions
during the development of the text.
Concept and research
Jaakko van ’t Spijker, Henk Bultstra,
Ravi Kamisetti, Samir Bantal
Text
Jaakko van ‘t Spijker
Images
Jaakko van ’t Spijker, Henk Bultstra,
Ravi Kamisetti, Samir Bantal,
Connie Y. Chang, SELF
Edited by
Véronique Patteeuw
Dutch copy-editing
Els Brinkman
Translation
Andrew May
English proofreading
Pierre Bouvier
Graphic concept & design
SELF
Lithography and printing
Drukkerij Die Keure, Bruges
Publisher
Simon Franke
© 2003 NAi Publishers, Rotterdam
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GLOSSY
GAZEBO
MAIN ARGUMENT
PREFACE
I
INTRODUCTION
GAZEBO'S
IMPORT/EXPORT
OBSERVATION
(BE)CAUSE TRAVEL
II
ANALYSIS #1
SPECIFICITY
OPEN AND CLOSED
ANALYSIS #2
RADIKAL
CONCLUSION
HYPOTHESIS
III
BENCHMARK
SNOOZE CONDITION
STRATEGY
SNOOZE-CITY
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Contents
PREFACE
ON LOOPS, LARS LERUP
INTRODUCTION
6
12
THE STUFF THAT SURROUNDS YOU
Gazebo 1
I.1
OBSERVATION
28
MASS CULTURE
Gazebo 2
II.1
ANALYSIS #1
II.2
ANALYSIS #2
II.3
CONCLUSION/HYPOTHESIS
44
SPECIFICITY, OPEN AND CLOSED
58
EXPERIENCE AND TIME
82
THE CONDITION OF SNOOZE: RADICAL EVERYDAY
Gazebo 3
III.1
BENCHMARK
III.2
STRATEGY
Gazebo 4
118
PAST PERFECT?
IMMERSING ARCHITECTURE IN MASS CULTURE
136
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Preface
On loops
Lars Lerup
On the one hand … to loop the loop around a typical American beltway may lull
drivers into thinking that the suburban world is smooth1 and wide open. But
drivers venturing down the off-ramps, out beyond the giant megashape of the
freeway system, soon begin to question such first impressions. The suburban
metropolis is not smooth and open; in fact, its raison d’être from the outset has
been in part to use distance as a barrier between its subdivisions and the inner
city. This literal construction of distance through the interposition of rail, road
and vehicle initiated the complex suburban utility or infrastructure that we now
call security. The idea of securing the home is of course ancient, but in America
1 I will juxtapose smooth and
striated -open and divided- relying
loosely on the distinction made by
Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari in
Thousand Plateaus (London:
Athlone Press, 1989).
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2 Melvin M. Webber and Kenneth
Boulding made the observation that
the vernacular community seen in
Italian hill towns was no longer
applicable in the suburban city,
where ‘community without
propinquity’ ruled the day.
it has taken on a specific meaning. ‘Defensible space’, as the architect-planner
Oscar Newman conceived it, began in the unruly inner city of the middle 1960s
in connection with urban renewal. The term suggests that through arrangement
(distance), visibility (surveillance), and technology (locks, cameras, intercoms
and artificial illumination), individuals and families can protect themselves from
actual and perceived threats - a not so subtle suggestion that the ‘vernacular’
community2 is defunct and unable to protect its denizens. A state of perpetual
insecurity was thus transported to the suburbs as an addendum to distance.
Suburban crime statistics do not support the reasons often given for feeling
particularly insecure. The real reason is that the memory of the City (more
recently seen as a target of terrorists), repeatedly relived and reinforced through
the media, has developed into a collective formative experience. The creation
of suburban distance is therefore less a physical achievement than a state of
mind, an attitude that perpetuates the myth of the decadent and dangerous
City. Fear-associated technology and behaviour has resulted in a security
industry - a new suburban infrastructure as important as road systems,
sewage, water and electricity. Numerous technologies, from road humps to
armed security guards, have been coupled with legal instruments of zoning and
deed restrictions (the device of choice in Houston). All these elements, fuelled
by increasingly sophisticated electronic security and surveillance regimes, have
led to an elaborate enclavism, now self-perpetuating and inseparable from
Suburbia itself.
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After all, the original subdivision provided ready-made enclaves - due as much
to land economics, financing, government support, redlining against AfricanAmericans and Jews, and the size and capacity of the community builders as
to design. Suffering a peculiar blindness to anything beyond the connecting
road system, the subdivision possesses an internal logic: a vertebrate road
system ending in a series of cul-de-sacs open to the larger road network at one
access point only. Limiting access to the few is a driving logic fuelled by a good
dose of long-standing paranoia. Just as accessibility rules the freeway, security motivates the subdivision. Thus, a peculiar and disturbing contradiction
hides in suburban distance: the desire to overcome distance as fast as possible has led to the most sophisticated freeway system in the world, while the
inclination to create distance - to striate, to subdivide and to partition this
potentially smooth and open suburban field - has led to a meandering suburban labyrinth of dead-end roads open only to the initiated.
The conceptual distance between Suburbia, the primary locus of the American
Dream, and the open gridirons of New York, Boston and Philadelphia is paradoxical. Why has this peculiar turnaround taken place in Suburbia, the apex of
the immigrant trajectory? Is it not ironic that the conclusion of the most fundamental demographic vector of the American experience should be at the end
of an inaccessible cul-de-sac in a gated community?
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3 J.G. Ballard, ‘Project for a
Glossary of the Twentieth Century’,
in Incorporations, edited by J.
Crary and S. Kwinter (New York:
Zone, 1992), p. 273.
On the other hand … something is hiding behind the striations, deep inside that
peculiar suburban somnolence: a dormant potential. J.G. Ballard, the British
novelist and social commentator, wrote:
Suburbs. Do suburbs represent the city’s convalescent zone or a genuine step
forward into a new psychological realm, at once more passive but of a far
greater imaginative potential, like that of a sleeper before the onset of REM
sleep? Unlike its unruly city counterpart, the suburban body has been wholly
domesticated, and one can say that the suburbs constitute a huge petting zoo,
with the residents’ bodies providing the stock of furry mammals.3
Snoozing in a hammock, just ‘before the onset of REM sleep’ (possibly stimulated by a breeze brushing my skin), I daydream:
To my right, and below me in the grass, lies the Saturday issue of the New York
Times, its ‘Arts & Ideas’ section open to a page with an article by Emily Eakin
on the neuroscientist Antonio Damasio. His thoughts wander with the breeze:
the brain works for the body, my emotions are part of a body loop, my trembling
hands tell my brain to stir some emotion, not the other way around: Spinoza
was right and Descartes was wrong! I knew it in my bones! In 1976, the cyberneticist Heinz von Forester wrote (and I paraphrase): meaning comes about in
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use. This made me give up on behaviourism in Building the Unfinished:
Architecture and Human Action (1977)… On another page in the Times, the literary crowd wallows in its unimportance: theory is dead and so (they probably
think) is history. My hand plays with the frazzled weave of my hammock from
the Yucatan and I touch the hands of the Indian who wove it. In the
Mittellandschaft just beyond, life wobbles between stim and dross, making it
hard (and irrelevant) to know which, because here in the middle we snooze.
Everyday life, like mild soapy water in a vast bathtub, makes our distributed
bodies relax. It is hard to know what is up and down; the old mixes with the
new and striations fade. It is clear that history (the old) is not dead, but alive
right next to us (and for our literary friends, neither is theory dead - it will start
again, but now with the touch of water on skin!). In snooze mode, all comes
together in an endless loop: here is where emperors stay naked and children
are counted on to show the way. Snoozing, we don’t need the distinctions. As
I turn onto my back my open eyes are blinded by a figure of speech from the
lips of none other than John Milton (who still lives among us) which triggers the
following loop of thought:
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Blind Mouth is the emblem of a nexus of problematics surrounding architecture - the discipline and the practice. Edvard Munch’s 1893 Scream does not
reach us because it is painted - silenced by its medium. Architecture screams
at us, too, but again we cannot hear it. Architecture’s scream may not mean
what it looks like because what is left to us is only a gesture - an effect that enigmatically stops short of meaning. In all this glaring visibility we are still blinded.
Elliptic (loop-like), Milton’s catachresis blind mouth captures this insoluble
enigma like a snake biting its own tail (a suitable emblem as well for Damasio’s
body loop).
Architecture - blind, both silenced and silent - never meant anything beyond
the most obvious, yet it projects itself onto our senses. It is in this strange stim
that architecture finds its way to our mind.
Sensation, my friends, knocks at the gate of the Open City, so snooze, but
don’t fall asleep.
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Introduction
The stuff that
surrounds you
Learning from the existing landscape is a way of being revolutionary for an architect. Not the obvious way, which is to tear down Paris and begin again,
as Le Corbusier suggested in the 1920s, but another, more tolerant way; that is, to
question how we look at things.1
1 Robert Venturi, Denise Scott
Brown and Steven Izenour,
Learning from Las Vegas
(Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press,
1972), p. 3.
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Aura The lifestyle magazine Wallpaper* has a clever title. The asterisk refers to
the subtitle: ‘the stuff that surrounds you’. That is what this book is about: the
spatial environment as a sum of the stuff that surrounds you, in the broadest
sense of the word: the city and the landscape, but also the immaterial world
that surrounds us: adverts, radio and television broadcasts, fashion hypes. In
short, mass culture. FIG 1
The content of Wallpaper* is visual muzak: fashion, design, architecture, travel,
glossy adverts, all served up in a slick and easily digestible form. ‘The stuff that
surrounds you’ is like a dream for the magazine’s readers. Wallpaper* communicates directly with a carefully selected target group: it manufactures auras
around everyday cares, ordinary things are provided with an aura. You start to
associate your trousers with the party in an advert, your evening meal with a
terrace in Thailand, your partner with an attractive actor. Wallpaper* makes the
life of the individual reader ‘part of a package’ on every imaginable front.
Wallpaper* is a ‘packaging machine’. FIG 2
The urban environment changes continuously, influenced by tangible (construction of a house) and more abstract (Nike launches a new campaign)
forces. Assuming that experience is an important incentive in mass culture, a
logical and interesting question is what significance it holds for the spatial environment, and for the way it is designed. Not only architecture, but also urban
planning, landscape architecture and every other discipline that contributes to
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FIG 1
WALLPAPER* MAGAZINE
A PACKAGING MACHINE FOR THE READER’S DREAMS
WALLPAPER, THE WALLPAPER GROUP (LONDON, OKT. 2002)
02. /
03. //
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IDENTITY AND THE STUFF...
PERSONAL IDENTITY IS CONFIRMED BY A SELECTION FROM THE STUFF THAT SURROUNDS YOU
identity
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2 James H. Gilmore & B.J. Pine II,
The Experience Economy, Work Is
Theatre & Every Business a Stage
(Boston: Harvard Business School
Press, 1999), p. 16.
the design and layout of the physical environment have to deal with the issue
of what the experience economy means for them. Independent of the physical
and technological environment that make up the city, there is the aura, the
power of ‘packaging’.
In their book The Experience Economy the economists James H. Gilmore and
B.J. Pine II argue that experience is the engine of consumer society. There is
no form of economic activity that generates as much added value as the staging of experiences. From a cup of coffee served in a trendy espresso bar to the
immersive experiences in amusement parks and shopping malls, they all generate their revenues by offering experiences. Everyday things are furnished with
a ‘package’, something immaterial that is apparently worth an awful lot, as
Gilmore and Pine enthusiastically claim. That ‘something’ is essentially different to service or comfort. It is a new category of added value. ‘Ing the thing,’
say Gilmore and Pine, experientialize everything. From washing and cooking
experiences to something absurd like the mask-taping experience, everything
can be turned into an experience.2 The environment as experience, and experience as the guiding principle for designers? Ing the building. FIG 3 / 4
Packaging machines In this study, the opportunities that mass culture offers
architecture and urbanism are outlined by way of examples. We continue a tradition from the history of architecture by looking around us and interpreting
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3 The studies by Archizoom,
Archigramm and Superstudio
provided a commentary on the rise
of consumer society, Venturi cum
suis researched the Strip in Las
Vegas and Levittown in relation to
visual culture, and Rem Koolhaas
described the urban culture of
congestion in New York, to mention
just a few examples.
4 An example of experience in
relation to image: American design
firm The Jerde Partnership creates
projects intended to envelop
visitors in a ‘total experience’.
These projects cannot be categorized as duck or decorated shed,
but they can indeed be seen as
‘packaging machine’. The significance of the Fremont Street
Experience in Las Vegas (designed
by Jerde) is the dynamic ‘total
experience’, in contrast to the
Golden Nugget Casino described in
Learning from Las Vegas, the
significance of which is the image
communicated by the facade.
what we see from the point of view of spatial design.3 ‘Context-watchers’ often
study the physical world around them, or aspects of it. This particular exercise
is different in that respect, because in this case the object of study is a culture.
No one will doubt the existence of mass culture, yet it is less tangible than, for
example, the Strip in Las Vegas or a particular form of infrastructure. Mass culture, revolves around communication. In this context, the nature and the importance of communication are crucial for architecture’s role. What does a building want to signify; what is being communicated?
In Learning from Las Vegas, Venturi, Scott Brown and Izenour propose a subdivision of building types into ‘ducks’ and ‘decorated sheds’. FIG 5 This dichotomy distinguishes between buildings on the basis of how they present themselves to the outside world. A ‘duck’ is a building that shows what it is through
its architecture, while a ‘decorated shed’ is more efficient - a box with a big sign
on it that says what it is. The basic principle is that buildings, as auto-nomous
objects, want to make themselves known to their environment. The image is
the building. In the context of mass culture the whole environment is related to
experience. Put more emphatically, meaning is not based on image but on
experience.4 Here lies fertile ground with plenty of opportunities for exploration.
A man is driving a car. What does this arbitrary car communicate? Prestige, status, even the temperament of the owner? Taking this a step further: what does
an advert promoting this car communicate? Is the advert about the car or about
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FIG 3
ING THE THING
YOU ARE WILLING TO PAY MORE BECAUSE OF THE AURA
BASED ON GILMORE & PINE'S ANALYSIS
02. /
03. //
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THING VS THINGING
HOW MUCH OF A BRAND IS PHYSICAL (THING) AND HOW MUCH IS PACKAGE (ING)?
BRAND
INDICATION
MAXIMUM
NOTHING
01 CNN
02 IKEA
03 NIKE
04 EASYJET
05 PLAYSTATION
06 DASH
07 VISA
08 WALLPAPER
09 HOTMAIL
10 DIESEL
THING
THING-ING
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5 Lars Lerup, After the City
(Cambridge, Mass./London: MIT
Press, 2000).
the lifestyle of the potential buyer? The showroom in which the car is sold takes
it another step further. What does this building symbolize? The car, or the sensation that the car is associated with in the adverts? At some point a kind of
vicious circle is activated, and car and lifestyle become symbols for each other:
they become a package. If the meaning of objects, by analogy with Wallpaper*,
is their role as packaging machine, then this also applies to built objects. Our
hypothesis in this study is that architecture can be approached as packaging
machine, rather than ‘duck’ or ‘decorated shed’. FIG 6
Position Industrial and graphic design, television and art play just as important
a role as architecture in the ‘experience city’. In order to bring together these
elements of mass culture and the city we need a new framework, a new understanding. Where to start? Enter Lars Lerup. This classically trained European
architect emigrated to America and, straddling the Atlantic, he proposed experience as a frame of reference for urban critique. For us writing this book, his
role was that of a facilitator, the man who established the right conditions for
action. Lerup, while suggesting urban analysis based on experience,5 declares
the city dead. That makes space. The traditional European città has been transformed into a ‘leaner and meaner creature’, he writes, namely the metropolis, a
fundamentally different species. We take this message seriously. Looking
around, we do so as designers with a wide vision. It is not the city that we
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should try to see; instead we should be looking at ‘the stuff that surrounds us’.
Not searching for the ‘urban hardware’, but the guises that the experience
economy adopts in the city. In this new city of experiences there are things that
appeal to us and things that prompt a certain aversion. Our attitude towards
mass culture and the accompanying experience city could be described as
‘avant-pop’, a term that has been borrowed from literary criticism. Avant-pop,
a compound of the terms ‘avant-garde’ and ‘Pop Art’, describes the synergy
that can be generated when avant-garde attitudes and mass culture meet.
Framework The background to this research is in part the result of a question
about our stance as designers with regards to mass culture. Is it utopian and/or
idealistic, or practical and pragmatic? In the first case the designer is a true
ideologist: someone who claims to know what is good, they are some kind of
prophet. This was a respectable and logical position for a long time. Rationale
was based on ideologies until the 1960s, and a position outside this ideological system was practically unthinkable. Over the course of the last 30 years
these ideologies have been eroded, because, among other things, a general
idea about what is ‘good’ for ‘the people’ has proven untenable. People’s views
and their attendant dreams are difficult to reduce to a couple of categories. In
a world that has abandoned Utopia the ideologist of today is a fossil, a
dinosaur.
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FIG 5
02. /
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THE DUCK AND THE DECORATED SHED
VENTURI'S SUBDIVISION OF BUILDING TYPES BASED ON IMAGE AS THE MEANING OF THE BUILDING
VENTURI, LEARNING FROM LAS VEGAS, THE MIT PRESS (CAMBRIDGE MASS., 1972)
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THE PACKAGING MACHINE
BUILDING TYPES AS PACKAGING MACHINES SPARK EXPERIENCE AS THE
MEANING OF THE BUILDING
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6 Rick Poynor, Obey the Giant, Life
in the Image World (London/Berlin:
August/Birkhäuser, 2001), p. 13.
In the second case the designer is a true pragmatist, who in the wake of the
extinction of the ideologies has no other choice but to cynically take things as
they are. The designer is a surfer on the swell of the age and his or her sole
objective is surfing as well as possible. Taking part in the game and performing
spectacular tricks is the only possible ambition, because there is nowhere to
surf to. The pragmatic surfer is not concerned with the waves, ‘the stuff that
surrounds you’.
Every modern-day designer deals with the tension between these two polarities.
Because both extremes are unattractive this study is about neither of them.
The vitality and power of mass culture are irresistible. The middle class has
exploded in number in the space of a few decades, in combination with staggering media developments. As spatial designers we want to grasp the opportunities of this age, but at the same time we are weary of many things that mass
culture generates. The British design critic Rick Poynor has tellingly summarized this dilemma: ‘Ambivalence and not always being certain are part of the
fun…. All day long you are exposed to visual messages which may affront every
value you cherish, yet you must find your own way of coping.’6 We have chosen to adopt an outspoken position, unfettered by either ideology or cynicism.
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Snooze The study starts with the definition of the term ‘mass culture’ and a
description of our avant-pop attitude towards it. This is followed by a definition
of ‘open specificity’, formulated as a feature of what we believe are successful
products in mass culture, with ‘closed specificity’ as its counterpart.
In the second section the point of departure is Lars Lerup’s analysis of the city
based on experience over time. By extrapolating Lerup’s analysis, we formulate
a new term to describe a certain urban condition: ‘snooze’. This concept represents a condition of slumbering experience which describes our ambitions as
designers in the context of mass culture.
In the third and last section of the book, the concept of snooze is applied in two
ways: for the reinterpretation of present reality and as a strategy with which to
create a new reality. Using snooze as an analytical tool leads to surprising
insights. It offers the possibility of comparing the qualities of classic cities with
the products of the current ‘retro’ fashion (New Urbanism). Snooze as a strategy implies an urban condition that charges the everyday in an unpredictable
manner. At the end of the book this strategy is made concrete in clear-cut criteria for design.
Snooze represents the dreamstate of the siesta, the quiet before the storm, the
ballroom before the party. The power of snooze is its instability. In the experiential world of Snooze City, the environment - ‘the stuff that surrounds you’ becomes a packaging machine that can take you by surprise at any moment.
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Gazebo 1
GAZEBO’s import-export
Archizoom Associati of Florence created the GAZEBO interior series in 1968. A range of orientally inspired interiors, with seductive names like the ‘rosa dell íslam’ and the ‘splendori sul nilo’,
could be ordered from the mail-order catalogue of GAZEBO Inc. (import-export).7 To complete the
standard interior it was possible to order various attributes such as water jugs, sunglasses and
fezzes. The formula launched by Archizoom has proved itself over the course of time: mail-order
catalogues for interiors are now a solidly established feature of the world of home interior shopping. It can be assumed that Mr. Gazebo himself has made a fortune. A Richard Branson-like
entrepreneur with a progressive vision like his could not possibly desist from investing this fortune
in new market opportunities that present themselves time and again. In this book we report on a
selection of Gazebo’s projects. The fortune he earned with his mail-order company exceeded all
our expectations, as did the new activities that he has unfolded since.
7 Passigli Progetti (ed.), Andrea Branzi, The Complete Works, (New York: Rizzoli, 1992), p. 38.
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Observation
I.1
Mass Culture
mass, n (modifier) consisting of a mass or a large number, esp. of people.
culture, n the artistic and social pursuits, expression, and taste valued by a society
or class.8
‘The modern state and mass society and culture level status and value hierarchies,
reducing ideals and tastes to the lowest common denominator and producing
mediocre individuals.’9
8 Collins Concise Dictionary, 21st
Century Edition (Glasgow: Harper
Collins, 2001).
9 Friedrich Nietzsche, Twilight of
the Idol / The Anti-Christ, (London:
Penguin Books, 1990).
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Receiving end Mass culture is a fact. Over the course of the 20th century it
crept into our lives in a determined and irreversible fashion, and it has settled
in our consciousness almost unnoticed. Whether a network for mobile telephony, a hip lifestyle magazine, a trendy fashion label or an amusement park,
nobody questions their right to exist. They satisfy a demand and seem to
require no further justification. Products, and especially the way in which they
are presented to the public, have changed radically over the last decade, and
their number has also increased. Mass culture has become experience culture.
Mass culture is an unbelievably wide-ranging term which has been around for
a long time, and a great deal has been written about this phenomenon. This
essay focuses on what interaction is possible between spatial design aspects
and mass culture. In order to answer this question we must clearly demarcate
the general term ‘mass culture’. Here we focus on the effect of mass communications and mass production on daily life. We review how mass culture is
experienced on a personal level. When talking about mass culture as a collective noun, its meaning for mass media and mass dispersion of information (the
big television channels, the Internet, etc.) is of course always implicitly present.
However, we propose explicitly shifting from the perspective of an outsider who
can oversee a whole production chain (a car manufacturer with a new model
and accompanying advertising campaign) to the subjective individual on the
receiving end of the chain (the family somewhere in suburbia who see the
advert and consider buying the car).
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FIG 7
MASS CULTURE FIELD
MASS CULTURE DEFINED AS A FIELD: X = PASSIVE TO ACTIVE, Y = PHYSICAL TO VIRTUAL. FOCUS: ACTIVE PHYSICAL QUADRANT
VIRTUAL
CNN
INTERNET
DVD
MTV
WALLPAPER
VISA
PASSIVE
ACTIVE
EASYJET
MICROSOFT
DKNY
IKEA
BARBIE
LAVA LAMP
VOLKSWAGEN
HOUSE PLANTS
PHYSICAL
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EXPLOSION OF THE MIDDLE CLASS
TOTAL: 1.8
TOTAL: 3.25
TOTAL: 5.7
INDEXED GROWTH OF THE MIDDLE CLASS: RELATIVE GROWTH OF THE MIDDLE CLASS IN A NUMBER OF REGIONS
index = 1
GLOBAL POPULATION
6 BILLION
(2000)
8.3 BILLION
(2010)
OLD TRIAD
DATA: ROBERT PESTEL, TELEWORK SESSION ON WORK AND SUSTAINABILITY, LECTURE, HELSINKI, 2001
INDUSTRIAL
PERIPHERY
9 BILLION
(2025)
CHINA
INDIA
OTHERS
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Imagine the whole of mass culture as a graph, a mathematically defined field,
with the x-axis representing the shift from passive to active and the y-axis
going from physical to virtual. All kinds of coordinates can be plotted on this
graph. If this model represents mass culture in the broad sense of the term,
then the section of mass culture we are concerned with is the quadrant in the
bottom right corner of this complete field: the most active and physical quarter. FIG 7 The active and physical quadrant has a big impact on the spatial environment through a combination of two factors. Firstly, the quantitative explosion
of the middle class in the Western world within a few decades. The outcome of
this is that a vast majority of the Western population has excess money and time
for extras that were previously limited to a small elite. FIG 8 Secondly, the development of mass culture into the experience economy. Over the last three
decades the Western world has seen a shift from an orientation around life’s
material necessities to a greater emphasis on post-materialist va-lues such as
quality of life, self-fulfilment and freedom. FIG 9
The experiential possibilities are infinite. Drive a new type of convertible: the
ultimate driving experience. Take a ride in a new rollercoaster: experience the
thrill. Travelling to an exotic land: an enriching experience. The masses are
falling for the seductive siren call of experiences, resulting in massive streams
of visitors, cash flow and travelled kilometres. The masses are hungry for experience, experience, experience! The upshot is that the perception of city and
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10 Hajer and Reijndorp state that ‘…
the cultural geography of the urban
field is not dictated by material or
typological qualities.’ See Maarten
Hajer and Arnold Reijndorp, In
Search of New Public Domain, trans.
Andrew May (Rotterdam: NAi
Publishers, 2001), p. 61.
11 Quoted by Rick Poynor in Larry
McCaffery (ed.), After Yesterday’s
Crash: The Avant-Pop Anthology
(New York: Penguin, 1995),
pp. xvii-xix.
environment is not so much defined by their physical characteristics, but by the
activities offered there.10 The perception of the city is pre-eminently based on
what can be gained at the receiving end of mass culture. If we want to know
something about the crossover between the (urban) environment and mass culture, then this is the corner where we should be looking. FIG 10
Avant-pop The multifacetedness of the modern consumer is spectacular.
Today’s mass culture offers sufficient backing for the most obscure of subcultures. There is no conceivable niche culture, no trend, which has not sparked a
development, for example in clothing, magazines, music or sport. Mass culture
is a pluriform extravaganza. In the fragmented new world it is a challenge for
designers to find a constructive and critical approach to this culture. FIG 11 / 12
The American literary critic Larry McCafferty coined the term ‘avant-pop’ in the
early 1990s to cover the paradoxical phenomenon of progressive hipness and
popular success often going hand-in-hand in mass culture. ‘Avant-pop combines Pop Art’s focus on consumer goods and mass media with the avantgarde’s spirit of subversion and emphasis on radical formal innovation. (...) It is
the product of the “co-evolution” of the artistic avant-garde and mass-culture
(rock music, TV films and advertising) so that with the arrival of MTV they were
mutually supportive ….’11
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FIG 9
THE RISE OF POSTMATERIALISM
SHIFT FROM AN ORIENTATION AROUND LIFE’S MATERIAL NECESSITIES TO A GREATER EMPHASIS ON
POST-MATERIAL VALUES SUCH AS QUALITY OF LIFE, SELF-FULFILMENT AND FREEDOM
1981-1983
1990-1991
+28
26
9
6
2
-2
-10
-16
+18
+30
+19
-24
NETHERLANDS
BELGIUM
SWEDEN
+25
U.S.A
14
+20
14
0
-13
-6
-11
+13
-19
-32
BRITAIN
GERMANY
DATA: INGLEHART + ABRAMSON, VALUE CHANGE IN GLOBAL PERSPECTIVE, UNIVESITY OF MICHIGAN PRESS
(MICHIGAN, 1997)
CANADA
JAPAN
+13
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ENVIRONMENT
YOU CHOOSE YOUR CITY FROM ACTIVE PHYSICAL EXPERIENCES
ENVIRONMENT
STUFF 02
STUFF 02
STUFF 04
STUFF 02
IDENTITY
STUFF 02
STUFF 04
STUFF 01
STUFF 03
STUFF 04
STUFF 04
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12 Poynor, p. 54.
The term ‘avant-pop’ covers a plethora of phenomena in mass culture which
have stirred our imagination. From a classical perspective, originality and art
(‘high art’) are often diametrically opposed to products that appeal to and serve
a mass public (‘low art’). However, it cannot be denied that mass culture has
produced many things that are progressive in an attractive and characterful
way. The television channel MTV and the advertising campaigns by Diesel and
Nokia are obvious examples. They target the masses with an avant-garde posture. Mass culture and the avant-garde are not necessarily mutually exclusive.
‘Hyper-consumer capitalism’s unquenchable demand for the new is exactly the
same need that has always driven the avant-garde.’12 FIG 13 / 14
There is a flipside to the coin. One could say that popular success of any avantgarde development is a dead-alive business. The thing against which you are
adopting a critical stance embraces you precisely because of that critique. The
worldwide success of a book like Naomi Klein’s No Logo is a good example of
this. In a certain sense it has become what it was rebelling against, a danger
that almost every explicit and original standpoint within mass culture is
exposed to. However, only as long as this is something that befalls you. As
soon as an avant-pop attitude is deliberately sought and adopted it is no longer
a risky undertaking. Popular success is then no longer a form of vulnerability or
failure.
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Avant-pop is a critical but certainly not a dismissive view of mass culture, and
this is an accurate description of how we position ourselves with respect to
mass culture in this book. Considering the number of success stories to be
told, when armed with an avant-pop attitude there is space for innovation and
space for outspoken and daring experiments in the context of mass culture.
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FIG 11
EXPLOSION OF MAINSTREAM
MASS CULTURE IS A PLURIFORM EXTRAVAGANZA
02. /
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MASS - NICHE - AVANT-POP
AN AVANT-POP PRODUCT IS OPEN TO INTERPRETATION
BG, ENTERTAINMENT EXPERTS NETWORK, AMSTERDAM
06 / 07
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FIG 13
BG BASIC GROOVE MAGAZINE
AN AVANT-POP MAGAZINE
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DIESEL: 'PROTEST, SUPPORT AND ACT'
DIESEL ADVERTISING CAMPAIGN, OCTOBER 2002
ADVERT FOR DIESEL IN THE FACE, OCTOBER 2002
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Gazebo 2
(be)cause travel
Gazebo was swept off his feet by the staged demonstrations as backdrops for the marketing of
jeans that he came across in trendy magazines, in the wake of the anti-globalization demonstrations
in Seattle and Genoa. Demonstrating was hip, an expression of independence and willpower.
Demonstration as a trendy lifestyle, engagement as a selling point. Gazebo instinctively understood
that the bizarre contradiction in the phenomenon could work out to be really sexy and really
lucrative.
The TV commercial is just as cunning as the rest of the formula. Balaclavas and woolly hats, resolute expressions and sunglasses, stubble beards and goatees - this is a crew with a mission.
They’re cool and they’ve got ideas. It could be a film, but, the voice-over reminds us, this is real.
And you could join them. Unconditionally. By tomorrow. Support the cause, join these new militants
and co-write history. Gazebo’s (be)cause travel will sort you out, wherever you want to go, whatever you’re up against. Because your cause is our cause!
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Analysis #1
II.1
Specificity,
open and closed
‘They were made in the factory, but they almost restored the rarity value and idiosyncrasy of traditional handiwork. You bought them off the shelf, then shrank them
to fit, until they had moulded themselves to the irregular contours of your body.
Piled up in the shop they all had the same colour, but after a few washes they all
looked different. Warhol wished that he had discovered jeans: more than absolutely
any artwork, jeans were “something that you would always be remembered by.
Something massive.”’13
13 Peter Conrad, Modern Times,
Modern Places, Life & Art in the
20th Century (London: Thames &
Hudson, 1998), p. 710.
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Specificity, 2x It sometimes seems like an abstract haze that completely surrounds you. Mass culture in all its guises is an all-embracing idea that cannot
be pinpointed exactly. In order to understand and be capable of taking a critical approach to that haze we developed a frame of reference with which we
can search for patterns in the mist’s behaviour.
In mass culture there is a common posture that everybody uses to distinguish
themselves: specificity. Specificity is the refusal to choose a safe, neutral position. Specificity is the degree to which a particular subjective position is adopted, for example in the development, marketing and branding of a product, setting the tone of a television programme or film and so on. Specificity triggers
experience, and in the experience economy this is appreciated. In the advertising world it is often, for example, argued that every form of publicity, positive
or negative, is good for a brand or product name. Being specific has its
rewards. In their own way, brands like Diesel, Nokia, Starbucks, McDonald’s
and Disney profile themselves specifically and distinctively. Although specificity is clearly apparent, it has a disadvantage as a distinguishing concept. The
term is too broad, and in order to be useful it must be differentiated. That is why
we have subdivided it into open and closed specificity.
What open-specific concepts have in common is that they display no ambition
whatsoever to embody good intentions in an ideological sense. Open specificity does not appease. You might say that besides being outspoken and
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FIG 15
OPEN AND CLOSED SPECIFICITY
OPEN SPECIFICITY: OPEN TO INTERPRETATION; CLOSED SPECIFICITY: A UNIQUELY INTERPRETABLE MESSAGE
OPEN SPECIFICITY
CLOSED SPECIFICITY
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FIG 16
OPEN VS. CLOSED SPECIFICITY
THE LIST OF CONTRASTING TERMS AND BRANDS PRESENTS AN IDEA OF THE DISTINCTION BETWEEN OPEN AND CLOSED SPECIFICITY
CLOSED
MODERNISM
BAROQUE
FIGURATIVE
ABSTRACT
CONSERVATIVE
COMPARTIMENTALIZATION/ CLARITY
STRAIGHTFORWARD LOGIC
CLEAR ADVERTISING MESSAGE
UNAMBIGUOUS
COQUETTISH
KLM
SIEMENS
LOCAL SHOP
VIVA
LACOSTE
LUNDIA
SUBJECTIVE LIST: STUDIO SPUTNIK
PROGRESSIVE
HYBRID/ BLURRY
FUZZY LOGIC
VAGUE ADVERTISING MESSAGE
AMBIGUOUS
INDIFFERENT
EASYJET
NOKIA
MARKET/MEGASTORE
WALLPAPER *
DIESEL
IKEA
OPEN
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14 The concept ‘open specificity’ is
related to the openness of artworks
as discussed by Umberto Eco in The
Open Work. In this book, Eco
describes how certain artworks
expect an interpretation from the
‘consumer’ in order to be seen to
full advantage. Umberto Eco, The
Open Work, trans. Anna Cancogni,
rev. ed., (Boston: Harvard University
Press, 1989).
extravagant this approach is also pragmatic and indifferent. Open specificity is
interested exclusively in its own agenda, and thus emancipates itself from the
personal, subjective interpretations of others. That paradox defines the attractiveness of open specificity.14 Closed-specific concepts are employed to
please people. Closed specificity is specific with the best intentions. Now that
there is no longer a clear-cut profile of ‘humankind’ these concepts can end up
strangled by their own specificity. Closed-specific concepts are often served
up with lashings of good intentions, and multiple or fantastical interpretations
are made impossible. That is why instead of talking in terms of closed specificity it is also possible to talk about ‘dead-end specificity’. FIG 15
The distinction between open and closed forms of specificity is the degree to
which the perception of that specificity is prescribed or predetermined. In other
words: in a case of open specificity the experience is not hinted at, even though
it is indeed present. The reaction to something that is open-specific is only
defined on its reaching the receiving end. These different approaches are often
tellingly expressed in commercials. There are adverts which establish an
atmosphere and say very little about the product (mobile telephony, cigarettes),
and there are adverts which rub in the message (washing powders, baby articles). The division into open- and closed-specific also applies for places.
Compare, for example, a beach and an amusement park. Anything can happen
on the beach, depending on the weather, the atmosphere, the day of the week,
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and so on. In an amusement park a preconceived experience is presented for
consumption.
The difference between the two forms of specificity can be made clear by using
a list of contrasting terms and brands. We are aware that the dichotomy of
open and closed specificity looks fairly subjective at first glance. Marginal
notes could be set alongside many of the examples, or it simply depends on
how you look at them. Nevertheless, it is clear to us that within the mass culture around us this subdivision is a relevant fact which can, moreover, produce
some interesting patterns. FIG 16
No info A non-descript man wanders around in non-descript surroundings. A
monotonous female voice sums up all his desires. It goes on and on. At last it
gets to the point: ‘Ik ben BEN’ (as well as meaning ‘I am BEN’ this Dutch wordplay means ‘I am AM’). End of film. The clip was part of the launch of a new
Dutch mobile telephony provider, but even after seeing the whole advert its
motivation was still fairly unclear. The low informational content of this advert
was unparalleled. It all revolves around atmosphere. The advertising agency
behind the BEN campaigns was the Amsterdam-based KesselsKramer. This
agency orchestrates campaigns with an ironic undertone and remarkably scant
information. The preferred tactic is evidently to stay in the background: open
specificity. KesselsKramer strives to be unpredictable and challenging. The
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FIG 17
ATMOSPHERE AND CONTENT
ASSESSMENT OF THE QUANTITY OF ATMOSPHERE IN RELATION TO THE QUANTITY OF INFORMATION IN COMMERCIALS
START
00:00 MIN
01 KLM
02 BEN
03 AMSTEL
04 LEVI'S
05 OMO
06 McDONALDS
07 COCA COLA
08 PLAYSTATION
INFORMATION
IMAGING CLOUD
FINISH
00:30 MIN
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FIG 18
AVANT-POP
WITHIN THE CONTEXT OF MASS CULTURE AN APPROACH HAS EVOLVED WHICH CAN ALLOW ITSELF TO BE WAYWARD, AMBIGUOUS,
EVEN IN A CERTAIN SENSE AUTHENTIC: OPEN SPECIFICITY RUNS PARALLEL TO AVANT-POP
BASED ON LARRY MC CAFFERTY'S TERM
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agency’s portfolio makes it plain that this is an approach more or less devoid
of content. A whole diversity of clients, from hip fashion labels to charity organizations, sees the advantage of KesselsKramer’s unconventional communication technique. Open specificity pays.
There are other approaches available to the advertising sector. Washing powder adverts, for example, are mostly glaringly dull. A washing powder ad is 80
percent solid information, data that is embellished with a meagre 20 percent
atmosphere. The same applies for other household articles, which are almost
always presented to the public in a closed-specific form. Closed specificity is
also worth its while. It is for designer and client to decide the tone of an advert.
Mass culture offers a fundamental choice between these two forms of specificity. Within this field, open specificity is an extension of our preferred avantpop attitude. FIG 17
Authenticity Because an open-specific approach offers limited information,
open specificity has an unexpected side effect: In a curious and sometimes
even unsettling way it is more authentic than closed specificity. This offers freedom of movement if, as an individual, you are given the space to formulate your
own interpretation of a design, film or advertising message. Open specificity
plays the authenticity game from two sides: on the production side, because
without a clear message there is the latitude for personal interpretation by the
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producer of the advert or the design; on the receiving end, because the concept is open to the viewer’s interpretation once received.
In the closed-specific branding of shop and restaurant chains we often
encounter references to a kind of good-old-days security blanket: homegrown,
old country, original, arts and crafts. The selection of these kinds of brand
names acknowledges the need for a gold trim, but the infill is dull and transparent. What is remarkable is that this presents absolutely no problem for the
conceptualizers. The allusions are hypocritical (mass-produced bread is still
mass-produced bread, even if it does have a ‘homegrown’ label) but they are
effective, and that is what counts.
Open specificity is less literal. This means that open specificity is less prone to
hypocritical forms of fake. There is as little need for the message to be true as
with closed specificity, but at least the message does not pretend to be true.
The curious authenticity of open specificity relies on the space afforded for
interpretation. FIG 18 / 19
DO A wonderful example of authentic, open-specific thinking is DO, a brand
developed by the Dutch cooperative Droog Design. The most important notion
behind DO is that it is a brand name which runs ahead of the product. First
there was the brand, and then whoever wanted to furnish a product that fitted
the brand was welcome to do so. The DO mission statement states: ‘DO is an
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FIG 19
AUTHENTICITY
THE CURIOUS AUTHENTICITY OF OPEN SPECIFICITY RELIES ON THE SPACE FOR INTERPRETATION: MEANING IS NOT PRE-DETERMINED
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FIG 20
DO DEPENDS ON WHAT YOU DO
COMBINING MASS PRODUCTION AND INDIVIDUAL IDENTITY: DO IS A BRAND NAME WHICH RUNS AHEAD OF THE PRODUCT
c
WWW.DOSURF.COM
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important
important
PT
03
02. /
03. //
56
15 http://www.dosurf.com.
ever-changing brand that depends on what you do. Somewhere in the future is
a brand that you are creating. It is a brand that responds to your ideas, feelings,
and thinking. It is a brand that is flexible enough to allow lots of people to be
involved. This wacky, future brand is a way to make new and different products
and services for people who like to think and do.’15
This might all sound terribly abstract, but various products which put the philosophy simply and clearly into practice have now been developed under the
DO flag. The common denominator for this series of remarkable projects is their
ability to combine mass production and individual identity. The ‘DO break’, for
example, is a glass vase covered with a layer of transparent rubber. After you
have bought it you smash it. The rubber holds the shards in place, and the
owner then has a unique vase. The ‘DO sit’ is an aluminium cube that the purchaser can bash with a mallet, transforming it into a personal seat. And the list
goes on. The DO brand specializes in all kinds of disciplines, surprising combinations and products, all of which share the common feature of reserving an
active role for the consumer. FIG 20
Differentiation The concepts of open versus closed specificity differentiate
between rebellious and conservative successes, between experience-oriented
and information-driven approaches in the world of mass culture. We associate
avant-pop with open specificity, success aimed at innovation. What makes this
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57
aspect of mass culture so interesting and, in particular, what can we expect if
we examine the relationship between mass culture and urban space?
It is fascinating that an approach which can permit itself to be wayward,
ambiguous and even in a certain sense authentic has evolved within the context of mass culture. It is an intelligent response to clamorous adverts, it is an
alternative for pretentious and empty company images and in the world of
design the consumer becomes involved with the product. By adopting a similar stance, architecture and urbanism can perhaps also be intelligently and
assertively immersed in mass culture.
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Analysis #2
II.2
Experience and Time
‘The metropolis is no longer a “place” but is becoming a “condition”, in fact the
same condition which thanks to consumer goods has resulted in an homogeneous
distribution of social phenomenon. The future of the metropolis runs parallel with
that of the market itself.’16
16 Archizoom (Andrea Branzi),
‘No-Stop City’, Domus no. 496,
1971.
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17 Lerup, p. 21.
18 Lerup, p. 181.
Dynamic In order to be able to interrelate mass culture and the city it is necessary to correlate experience and the city. We begin our probe into that relationship on the basis of a groundbreaking analysis of the metropolis, the work of
the Swedish-American architect and professor Lars Lerup.
Lars Lerup lives in a high-rise apartment in Houston. This is where he wrote the
book After the City. For Lerup, his move to Houston was a confrontation with
the American suburban metropolis. In order to explain how he originally viewed
this kind of urbanity he quotes Manfredo Tafuri, who wrote that the endless
American sprawl was the result of ‘the merciless commercialization of the
human environment’.17 From the 28th floor, Lerup observed and contemplated
the sprawl around him – first appalled, later fascinated. And in that tower-block
apartment something remarkable happened: over the course of time he ‘delearned’ the ‘old city’. In his descriptions of the city, Lerup avoids being nostalgic about the old European city (Rome, Paris). His credo is that anyone who
fails to forego the classic city as a frame of reference will never be able to
understand anything about the contemporary metropolis.
After the City is an extraordinary book. It is a description based on personal
experiences, a quest for an unprejudiced and optimistic understanding of the
city. The form of the text is a reflection of Houston as Lerup perceives it. ‘This
text is ostensibly a drift along Houston’s many physical trajectories. Like gossip or commentary ....’18 To avoid unconsciously referring back to the classic
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CITY VS. EXPERIENCE
THE ESSENCE OF THE CITY LIES IN EXPERIENCE RATHER THAN IN “URBAN HARDWARE”
FOTO: HENK BULTSTRA
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FIG 22
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4 CITIES: AERIAL VIEW
FOUR DIFFERENT CITIES ASSESSED
ROME: HTTP://INTRANET.ARC.MIAMI.EDU/JOHN/IMAGES/HADSIAMICARCHITECTURE/ROME. - CENTRE ROTTERDAM: WEBSITE KROONDUIF AIR - STRIP: THE NEW CITY, ED. JEAN FRANCOIS LEJEUNE,
UNIVERSITY OF MIAMI SCHOOL OF ART (MIAMAI,1994) - SUBURB: ROBERT CAMERON'S ABOVE LAS VEGAS, CAMERON& COMPANY (SAN FRANCISCO)
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19 Lerup, pp. 46, 180.
20 Stim is used as an abbreviation
for ‘stimulation’ in William Gibson’s
science-fiction book Neuromancer.
city, Lerup abandons the city as physical entity. First of all he stops talking
about the city, replacing it with ‘the metropolitan field’. But above all he throws
the city as a logically coherent collection of buildings, streets and squares overboard: ‘The metropolitan galaxy has replaced the city as a singularity. The density of this galaxy varies radically, and somewhere in the middle of the spectrum from bright to faint lies the suburban metropolis.’ Later he continues: ‘The
City is forever surpassed by the Metropolis and all its givens.’19 Lerup argues
that you will not discover the essence of the city if you concentrate on the built
and realized city. He states that the essence of the city can be found in the
experience of the city, and proposes an analysis of the city based on experience that is dynamic and time-related. FIG 21
Lerup therefore introduces the binary terms ‘stim’ and ‘dross’. Stim as in stimulation, Stimme (voice) and Stimmung (ambience).20 The term represents life,
exuberance. Lerup defines a stim as a situation in the city where something
special happens, such as a party or a sports tournament. ‘Dross’ is the word
for waste or impurities formed on the surface of molten steel during smelting,
but also means worthless stuff, dregs. Here dross represents the great nothing,
the lifeless, inactivity. If nothing happens in the city then it is ‘dross’ there.
Lerup uses these terms to recast the city in a refreshing way. In his model,
every point in the city can be stim or dross at different instants, dependent simply on what is happening there. Consider a normal, sleepy suburb. Nothing
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special happens, so this place is dross. The instant that there is a party somewhere in the neighbourhood that particular spot lights up in the dark dross
penumbra, as it were, and becomes a ‘stim in the dark’. At the end of the
evening everyone leaves, the DJ packs up his PA, the lights go out, the stim
reverts to dross. The city is like an endless starry night replete with flickering
and shooting stars. This representation of the city is independent of the urban
‘hardware’. The city has become a process, a collection of constantly changing conditions, and for all that the analysis remains crystal clear, whether it concerns a downtown area full of high-rises, a carpark or a dull suburb. FIG 22 / 23 / 24
Urban experience The stim-dross model judges the city on the basis of timerelated experience. This establishes a link between the experience economy
and the city. Lerup’s analysis makes it possible to study the impact of mass culture in the city. To be able to do this in a meaningful way we have to give more
profound consideration to the type of experience that leads to a stim: what do
we judge an ‘urban’ experience in the model, in other words which experiences
count as stim? Lerup is not explicit about this. It is obvious that the meeting of
people is a criterion, but where is the limit? Can someone also experience a
stim alone, for example when making a phone call? The viewpoint from which
a situation is experienced is crucial as well: a private party is certainly a stim for
the partygoers, but it means nothing for a passerby in the street. The notion of
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4 CITIES: URBAN HARDWARE
AFTER NOLLI'S MAP OF ROME, PUBLIC SPACE MAPPED FOR FOUR CITY FRAGMENTS
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FIG 24
4 CITIES: STIMS
AFTER LARS LERUP'S MODEL: STIM INTENSITY MAPPED FOR FOUR CITY FRAGMENTS
BASED ON THE MODEL BY LARS LERUP
06 / 07
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an objective, all-seeing perspective from which the city is observed can be
abandoned. This is closely aligned with Lerup’s thinking and, moreover, is an
extension of our interpretation of mass culture. FIG 25
Rethinking the city thus becomes more radical: the perception of the city is
dependent on the hardware and is different at every moment and for every individual: each to his own city, each to his own stims. ‘Urban experience’ is often
associated with encounter, preferably in public space. In this study we want to
leave that narrow definition behind us, we do not want to view urban experience
in the context of mass culture as something independent of other forms of experience, as we have already demonstrated. Experiences overflow and intermingle. Stim represents the intensity of any experience whatsoever in relation to
space. We do not want to limit ourselves to urban stims when using the stimdross model, because we believe that the experience economy is propelled by
a much greater gamut of stims. Proceeding from this, a party can be a stim, but
a film and an advert are equally likely candidates, as are seeing a billboard or
renting a car, reading a magazine in the train or at the reading table in a café.
The stim intensity (the sum of all the subjective stims), in contrast with ubiquitous snooze, is an indication of the vitality of a city. The analysis on the basis
of time-related experience is already independent of the ‘urban hardware’, and
the experience does not necessarily have to be a traditionally ‘urban’ experience. This underscores the ‘filter effect’ even more forcefully: an outsider sees
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an average suburb as nothing but dross, but its inhabitants experience numerous stims per day there: from attending a coffee morning to reading a flyer, or
going to a twee birthday party.
So what? How can we turn Lerup’s stim-dross model to our advantage in correlating mass culture and the city? This analysis forges a link between the
experience economy and the city. How might this influence the work of a
designer? This point reveals the limitations of Lerup’s theory: he limits himself
to a model, an analysis, but he does not clearly draw any guiding conclusion
from it. He has credibly described the city as a dynamic system, based on
experience intensity. The model differentiates between a high experience intensity and an experience intensity of null. This prompts the question of how one
might evaluate the outcomes of the stim-dross model.
Suppose a city is described according to the Lerup method. A major part of the
city would be judged dross for most of the time. The likely conclusion is that
this part of the city is boring. The city where the dross is predominant prompts
associations with a lifeless plane. It is an experience-less zone and does not
constitute a desirable image. Think of desolate business zones, unending bedroom communities, cheerless residential blocks.
In certain parts of the city, however, the stim condition prevails. Stims flare up
briefly and disappear again. They are swift and unpredictable. Their elusiveness
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SUBJECTIVE URBAN EXPERIENCE
THE VIEWPOINT FROM WHICH A SITUATION IS EXPERIENCED IS CRUCIAL FOR ITS QUALIFICATION IN TERMS OF STIM AND DROSS
STIM
DROSS
SITUATION
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BLUNT PICTURE
THE IMAGE OF THE CITY ON THE BASIS OF THE BINARY TERMS ‘STIM’ AND ‘DROSS’ LACKS SUBTLETY AND GRADATION
STIM
DROSS
FOTO: HENK BULTSTRA
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is part of their charm: it’s impossible to get a hold on the stims. However, a couple of stims are especially intensive: hospitals, busy traffic intersections and
round-the-clock entertainment centres.
The image of the city that we construct in this manner lacks subtlety and gradation. The city can be described in terms of experience, but only in a rather
blunt fashion. Perhaps a description as dross, filled with the unpredictable and
temporary flicker of stims does justice to the reality of many cities. But what is
the conclusion? How should we assess and evaluate this model? Must we, by
definition, strive for a maximum achievable number of stims? Can dross only
be described in negative terms? In order to understand this more clearly, we
must proceed beyond a strictly analytical position. FIG 26
The quality of quality Fashion plays to the senses, not to morality. The fashion
designer has a single objective: showing clothes on the catwalk. Taste, commentary and authentic ‘signature’ are intertwined in every new collection, but
remain devoid of a harmonized moral judgement about what clothing – or the
fashion industry – stands for. The avant-pop couturier dresses up the mannequins as living packaging machines: they sensuously move into the spotlights,
and from that point the mass-media machine takes over. Flashlights, gossip
magazines and television go wild over the creations. If the stars are favourable,
the collection - and thus the designer - becomes a hype; if not; a flop.
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If we shake off self-importance, if we can fantasize and experiment lightheartedly and without an oppressing gravitas, then an urban vision as lacking in
moral engagement as an haute-couture creation can step out onto the catwalk.
Unpredictable, challenging, ambiguous. Incisive without being pedantic. Not
dismissive (No Logo), not suspending criticism (Disney), but fascinated by what
is possible, optimistic. And above all, not afraid of the spotlights. Avant-pop
stands for an open-specific attitude towards mass culture. Is it possible to outline a quality framework for urban experiences that is similar to the approach of
the fashion designer? FIG 27
If we are concerned with the quality of urban experience then we can pinpoint
various categories of criteria that are relevant. A first category is a cluster of
safety-related issues. Terms like safety, cleanliness, tidiness, recognizability
and reassurance (the keyword in Disney communities) are used a great deal in
the media and by developers to provide urban areas with a quality-assurance
label. Besides this there is a PR category. Optimum accessibility, newness, representative, user-friendly and dynamic are words typically used to describe a
furniture mall, office park or entertainment centre. There is an informality category (interaction, spontaneity, human scale, geniality) that is often used to
describe the qualities of historic cities, there is a functionality category (efficiency, rationality, ergonomics), and there are other categories that come to
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FIG 27
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MOVING BACK
MARIA BLAISSE: 'MOVING BACK' IS A DESIGN THAT IS BEYOND THE DESIGNER’S CONTROL
BRADDOCK + O'MAHONY, TECHNO TEXTILES, THAMES & HUDSON (LONDON, 1998)
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FIG 28
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QUALITY BEHIND QUALITY
CLOSED SPECIFIC
OPEN SPECIFIC
STRONG REPRESSION./
MICKEY MOUSE WALK./
ZERO TOLERANCE./
ONE-WAY COMMUNICATION./
CAMERA SURVEILLANCE./
ROUTING./
MUZAK./
SOCIAL CONTROL./
MARKET SQUARE./
TOLERANCE./
DISCUSSION./
MARKET SQUARE./
FIELD./
MUSIC./
OR
DE
R
DE
CE
NC
Y
RE
AS
SU
RA
NC
E
EF
FI
CI
EN
CY
SA
FE
TY
RE
AS
SU
RA
NC
E
EF
FI
CI
EN
CY
SA
FE
TY
URBAN QUALITY IS NOT SO MUCH DETERMINED BY QUALITY TYPE BUT BY HOW QUALITY IS ACHIEVED
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mind. Discussions about urban quality are often about the choice and/or
potential combinations of these kinds of categorized qualities.
There are two sides to a coin. The categories imply that the potential outcome
of pursuing these qualities is a ‘good’ city. The pitfall is that it is not so much the
quality type that determines the quality of urban experience, but how it is
achieved. Safety can be pursued through strict repression or through informal
social control. Dynamism might be the dynamism of the Mickey Mouse walk or
that of the market square. There are important variations in the quality of quality. And this difference can be discussed in a productive manner with the aid of
the terms open and closed specificity. FIG 28 It is interesting and refreshing to
judge urban experience in this way. Safety in the form of control, dynamism in
an amusement park? Closed-specific. Safety through social policy, the
dynamism of the market square? Open-specific. For us, the criterion for the
quality of experience in the city is open specificity, no matter what the experience. This is where there is space for the avant-pop attitude to be applied to the
city, and thus it is possible to make useful pronouncements without moral judgement. Open specificity is a qualitative notion. In order to exemplify this abstraction we have reviewed a series of everyday fragments. A quality series like this
is intuitive and subjective. The series is meant to make our frame of reference
for quality understandable, in order to present a clear picture of a possible interpretation of the banal and quotidian based on an avant-pop criterion. FIG 29
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21 Tracy Metz, Fun! Leisure and
Landscape, trans. Peter Mason,
(Rotterdam: NAi Publishers, 2002),
p. 274.
The terms open and closed specificity function on the level of urban experiences and qualities. It seems logical to assume that, just as in fashion and
advertising, there is a place for the development of avant-pop designs in urban
planning and architecture.
Stim city In her book Fun! Leisure and Landscape, the Dutch-American journalist Tracy Metz surveys the leisure industry in the Netherlands in the broadest
possible sense. It is a cheerful and pragmatic book in which she describes policy-makers, leisure entrepreneurs and amusement consumers, and it of course
primarily presents an incredibly exaggerated gamut of leisure attractions. It is
the sheer quantity of all these leisure attractions that strikes you at a certain
point. The unending enumeration of amusement and bungalow parks, themed
city centres, festivals, meditation centres, home furnishing malls, safari parks
and mega-cinemas eventually prompts repugnance. At a certain point even the
book’s author heaves a sigh: ‘All that accumulation of fun can be very depressing. It makes you think: We’re amusing ourselves to death. Are we really so
breathlessly looking for fun and diversion?’21 Tracy Metz’s book is a description
of the Netherlands as stim city. She has catalogued the predetermined stims.
What these stims have in common is that they were thought up and designed
with the intention of exploiting them commercially – they are pre-programmed.
This touches the very heart of stim city: stim city as designed city is closed-
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FIG 29
QUALITYQUALIZER
AN INDICATION OF THE SUBJECTIVE PERCEPTION OF QUALITY BY THE AUTHORS
semi-public
lawn
unpredictable
status quo
just do it!
park
market square
authentic
imagination
high density of impressions
access
radical
hackers
horizon
field
spontaneity
streetsoccer
niches
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monotone
rigid
fence
neighbourhood watch
social control
nostalgia
appeasing
paranoia
organised
routing
zero tolerance
informal
social-clustering
efficiency
social control
infosign
discussion
24-7
imagebuilding
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specific. The stim sparkles and guarantees an intense experience, or the
amusement park is closed and the stim is extinguished. Stim city cannot be a
design objective from an avant-pop angle. In stim city the hype never sets,
there is no end to the action and the exhilaration of wow. You know what you
will get; there are no surprises. Stim city is gung-ho or it is dead. FIG 30
Dross city Dross city could be described as the flipside of stim city, as the
backdrop against which stims stand out is dross. The street that life has
retreated from, behind hedges and garden fences. Business zones, the space
in-between the warehouses. There is almost no conceivable place that does
not have its dross moments. But does dross city exist, the place where much
of the city subsists but where there is hardly anything to be experienced?
It does not require a great leap of the imagination to realize that the experience
intensity of a suburb is lower than that of a shopping centre. The quality of
those experiences is another issue: are they spontaneous and unpredictable or
passive and controlled? In many suburbs we can discern specifically organized
liveliness. The club life and neighbourhood organizations of every community
are an indication of this invisible activity. These are pre-programmed stims. In
essence, most suburbs are nothing more than dross cities, made more pleasant by closed-specific experiences. This setup is found in an even more
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22 From the official Celebration
homepage: http://www.celebrationfl.com/
06 / 07
extreme form in gated communities, the communities stage-managed by New
Urbanism. In the name of safety and propriety, even the dross is controlled
here. As Celebration’s website proclaims: ‘A place where memories of a lifetime
are made, it’s more than a home; it’s a community rich with old-fashioned
appeal and an eye on the future. Homes are a blend of traditional southeastern
exteriors with welcoming front porches and interiors that enhance today’s
lifestyles.’22 In these gated cities everything is pre-programmed, from the architecture and interiors to the way in which residents tend their house and garden.
The question of whether in these circumstances we can talk of closed-specific dross or of closed-specific stim is academic. What is most obvious is that
this form of urbanity, just like stim city, is far removed from our desired avantpop position. FIG 31
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FIG 30
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STIM-CITY
IN STIM CITY THE HYPE NEVER SETS: IT IS GUNG-HO OR IT IS DEAD
%
DROSS
FOTO: STUDIO SPUTNIK
STIM
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DROSS-CITY
IN DROSS CITY THE GREAT NOTHINGNESS PREVAILS: DROSS IS LIKE BACKGROUND NOISE, ELEVATOR MUSIC
%
DROSS
FOTO: JAAKKO VAN 'T SPIJKER
STIM
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Conclusion/
hypothesis
II.3
The condition of SNOOZE:
Radical everyday
‘In its broadest sense, Thirdspace is a purposefully tentative and flexible term that
attempts to capture what is actually a constantly shifting and changing milieu of
ideas, events, appearances, and meanings. If you would like to invent a different
term to capture what I am trying to convey, go ahead and do so. I only ask that the
radical challenge to think differently, to expand your geographical imagination
beyond its current limits, is retained ....’23
23 Edward W. Soja, Thirdspace,
Journeys to Los Angeles and Other
Real-and-Imagined Spaces (Malden,
Mass.: Blackwell Publishers, 1996),
p. 2. Soja employed the term ‘thirdspace’ for a mode of thinking that
situates geographical space in a
wide-ranging, immaterial context.
Soja interprets physical space as
firstspace, space in relation to time
(history) as secondspace and space
in relation to social factors as
thirdspace. In his book, Soja advocates the exploration of thirdspace
by everyone involved with the formulation of theory about potential
‘spatialities’.
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83
Transformer Lars Lerup lives in a tower in Houston. We live in the centre of
Rotterdam, an intersection of raw, grey concrete somewhere midway between
the old city and American sprawl. For us there are no vast expanses of family
houses stretching as far as the Texas horizon, but an automobile city with a market square. At the end of a market day the stalls are loaded onto carts. A brigade
of street-cleaning wagons with flashing lights moves through the twilight, driving
swarms of seagulls picking at fish guts in front of it. It is transformed from a square
with busy shuffling and hollering stallholders into an indeterminate space; it is free
again. The transformation is a fleeting moment, in-between the busy market and
the empty plain: disorderly, indeterminate, neither active nor passive. This instant,
on a different scale and in a different world, is reminiscent of the urban happening
that Lerup surveys from his window. The city reorganizes itself. There are no stalls
along walkways, but indeterminacy. There are no rules, but a genial chaos of delivery vans and pick-up trucks. The square is somewhere in-between stim and dross
– impalpable, dreamy and beautiful in the raw. FIG 32
The typology of experience The avant-pop perspective which can be successfully deployed beyond the ambit of architecture seems to founder within
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FIG 32
TRANSFORMER
ROTTERDAM MARKET: GREY CONCRETE, HALFWAY BETWEEN CLASSICAL CITY AND AMERICAN SPRAWL
FOTO: JAAKKO VAN 'T SPIJKER
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FIG 33
STIM-DROSS SPECTRUM
AN EXPERIENCE SPECTRUM WITH DROSS AND STIM AT ITS TWO EXTREMES
DROSS
ORIGINAL LERUP MODEL
STIM
DROSS
STIM-DROSS SPECTRUM
STIM
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Lerup’s model. The model functions like an analytical instrument. As a tool for
the formulation of objectives for the city, however, it falls short of the mark. Stim
and dross are too crude as binary terms. Dross is the experience-less city, stim
is replete with closed-specific experience. It is obvious that Lerup sensed this
too, because he introduced the term ‘stimdross’ in his book, formulating a phenomenon of spontaneous, informal stims. Stimdross tends towards a form of
experience that corresponds with a product of open specificity, even though
Lerup does not refer to the quality of experiences. However, he does not define
exactly what stimdross is, how the term relates to stim and dross. This book
sets forth the pursuit in the direction of stimdross.
We propose a revised version of Lerup’s model in order to link open specificity, our design objective, to the city. This revised version of the model introduces
a spectrum of experience with the dross and stim at its two extremes. The
model is thus refined from a bipolar model into a graduated scale between two
extremes. Shifting from dross to stim, the intensity of and/or the number of
experiences increases. The city can thus be described in a much more subtle
way based on how it is experienced, a gradation that also clears the way for
the formulation of objectives and desirabilities in the city of experience. FIG 33
In order to gain some insight into how the renewed model functions, we performed a number of analyses ourselves. We subjected four different locations
to an analysis over time. We shot stills of these research locations at half-hour
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intervals, using webcams which we could access via the Internet. The stills
were graded on the dross-stim scale. If the stills are charted based on their
attributed value then a ‘pattern of experience’ emerges which describes the
‘behaviour’ of the location over time: a typology of experience. The way in
which the intensity of experience evolves during the day says a lot about the
identity of locations. This qualification depends both on the buildings and what
happens in and around them. The spectrum model makes it possible to analyze the experience intensity of locations more precisely. FIG 34
Snooze The ritual of dismantling of the Rotterdam market is inspiring. There are
more of these indeterminate moments in the city, when a place temporarily
becomes programme-less, is in a process of transformation, and could thus
become anything and everything. Windows of time in which greyness and concrete suddenly become full of potential, open-specific. Is there a way to exploit
such a fleeting, immaterial quality as a design objective? Only if we revalue the
stim-dross model, elevating it from a purely analytical instrument to a directive
and strategic tool. In order to achieve this, the quality criterion of open specificity must be coupled with the experience analysis of Lerup’s model. This
means that a link must be established between open and closed specificity on
the one hand and the stim-dross spectrum on the other. The market square in
transition may well be situated at the intersection of these two trains of thought.
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FIG 34
16
EXPERIENCE TYPOLOGIES
ANALYSIS OF BEHAVIOURAL PATTERNS OF FOUR LOCATIONS DURING A 24-HOUR CYCLE USING WEBCAM SHOTS
4 WEBCAMS
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The connection between experiential intensity in the city (stim – dross) and our
notion of quality (open – closed specificity) has been outlined as a hypothesis
in the ‘mother-graph’ of this book. Analogous to the stim-dross model, a spectrum with closed-specific and open-specific at its extremes has been devised.
Because closed specificity scores poorly for quality when gauged using the
avant-pop criterion, while open specificity scores well, this spectrum can also
be understood as a quality line. In the mother-graph we have plotted the stimdross line on the x-axis and the quality line on the y-axis. The key hypothesis
underlying our argument has then been plotted out in the graph, illustrating the
connection between these two factors. Their interrelationship is a typical
Gaussian distribution or bell curve: at the two extremes of the stim–dross spectrum quality scores poorly, in line with our descriptions of dross city and stim
city. In the middle, somewhere in-between stim and dross, there is an optimum.
It is this line, and especially this quality peak, which we have been seeking thus
far in this argument. It is an intersection of mass consumerism in the form of
experience and the urban environment. The peak area encapsulates the fleeting transitional atmosphere of the market square at the end of the day. It is a
condition that is easy to describe and leaves everything open. It is a theoretical free-zone that draws together inconceivable and everyday possibilities. We
have called this area ‘snooze’. FIG 35 / 36
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Snooze is the term for temporarily switching off a beeping alarm clock. It is a
bitter-sweet mechanism that blurs the boundary between dream and reality.
Using the snooze function maintains an unstable equilibrium between sleeping,
dreaming and waking consciousness. It is an apposite metaphor for the experience level that we want to describe: an unstable condition that can change
over time, but which basically maintains the midpoint between hyperactive and
deathly quiet, between dreaming and doing, between stim and dross. Snooze
represents the poetic potencies of everyday things. The unconstrained chaos
of clearing away the market, the summer-time peace and quiet in a park, indeterminate moments that can still become anything. With the term ‘snooze’ in
hand we are on the trail of a spatial-design objective that is formulated on the
basis of experience. Not the hype-experience of the amusement parks and
shopping malls, not the non-experience of a deserted suburb or industrial
zone, but a slumbering area somewhere in-between, a charged and exciting
form of the everyday.
Freedom One of the motives behind the ‘snooze’ exercise is a feeling that
architecture and urban planning are conceived and developed in relative isolation from the rest of society. We are continuing a line that was begun by Lerup.
His philosophical argumentation is also first and foremost highly personal and
subjective. He advocates breaking through the elitist isolation that he sees in
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FIG 35
MOTHERGRAPH
HYPOTHESIS: MAPPING QUALITY IN RELATION TO THE STIM-DROSS SPECTRUM. THE OPTIMUM AREA IN THE MIDDLE IS ‘SNOOZE’
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FIG 36
SITUATIONS
QUALITY OF SPECIFIC URBAN SITUATIONS PLOTTED ON OUR HYPOTHETICAL ‘SNOOZE’ CURVE
FOTO'S STUDIO SPUTNIK
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architecture. Architecture needs to pay much more attention to disciplines like
marketing and economics, to strategy and product development. Reneging the
distinction between high art and low art, coupling mass culture with architecture and cross-fertilizing philosophy and economics results in an amalgam of
thoughts which strives to bridge the differences between all these worlds. We
think it is essential that architecture incorporate the experiences of experiential
culture. Applying the art term ‘avant-pop’ to mass culture is an ideal test for the
avant-pop concept. Economics and philosophy are two independent modes of
thinking, which means that the combination of the two can be all the more
interesting for a practical profession like architecture. As when defining urban
quality, in this study we have taken the liberty of the fashion designer: the lightness of the catwalk. FIG 37
Snooze City We have demonstrated that stim city and dross city are credible
concepts, and in certain cases already exist. Can snooze city, the open-specific city, be added to this? Snooze city is unconstrained and unpredictable.
Snooze city emanates the atmosphere that you encounter on a (market)
square, at a petrol station, on the Witte de Withstraat in Rotterdam, in the centre of Nairobi, in the collective memory of the medieval Mediterranean city, at
the periphery of big events (the campsite at a pop festival). Snooze city already
arises spontaneously here and there, but the deliberate introduction of open
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specificity in the urban context is new, and it could indeed be a special and
invigorating force. Snooze city as a design objective means generating openspecific experiences with spatial design. Snooze city as a mental exercise does
not imply that the world must change into snooze city. Snooze city is rather a
welcome supplement to the urban landscape. Because of the open character
and position of snooze city at the intersection between mass culture and city
we suspect that the capacities of snooze city could strike solid roots. FIG 38
Four perspectives In order to make snooze an understandable and effective
term it is approached from four different angles. The combination of the four
angles of approach clearly reveals which phenomena have snooze as a common factor. The four angles are snooze as condition, snooze and architecture,
snooze as urban condition, and snooze and mass culture.
1. Snooze: the condition At the abstract level of the metaphor, snooze is a state
of slumber. The word ‘snooze’ is used to refer to situations that are charged
with experience, not coercive or forced but certainly specific: a park in the city,
the beach, the foyer of the Hilton. The term describes spaces or spatial situations in which people are challenged and perhaps sometimes provoked.
Snooze is a condition that is not stable over time, a transformer captured in
continuous transformation. In spite of or thanks to a permanent state of vacil-
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FIG 37
FREEDOM
THE SNOOZE HYPOTHESIS IS A MULTIDISCIPLINARY EXERCISE IN WHICH ASPECTS OF DIFFERENT DISCIPLINES COME TOGETHER
SOURCE
SOURCE
INFO
INFO
ARCHITECTURE
ECONOMICS
URBANISM
SNOOZE
ART
MARKETING
PHILOSOPHY
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FIG 38
SNOOZE-CITY
SNOOZE CITY: PERMANENT IMPERMANENCE
%
DROSS
FOTO: STUDIO SPUTNIK
STIM
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FIG 39
SNOOZE: THE CONDITION
STIM/DROSS AND SNOOZE CONDITIONS COMPARED
STIM
SNOOZE
DROSS
SNOOZE
FIXED PLACES/ SITE CARAVAN.
FREE SITES.
PARKING LOT.
BEACH.
AMUSEMENT PARK.
FESTIVAL.
SPORTING CLUB.
STREET SOCCER/ STREET BASKETBALL.
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FIG 40
SNOOZE: ARCHITECTURE
STIM/DROSS AND SNOOZE QUALITIES COMPARED
STIM
SNOOZE
DROSS
SNOOZE
TAILOR MADE.
OVER-UNDERSIZED.
CONTEXTUAL.
RECONTEXUALISATION.
NEUTRAL.
OUTSPOKEN.
READY.
RAW/DIAGNOSTIC.
SPECIALISED.
CROSS-FERTILISATION.
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lating equilibrium, the snooze-place has a clearly defined identity (the park can
be busy or empty, but it is still a park). Because snooze expresses a state of
experience, and does not describe any actual things, the word has no physical
reference points. Snooze describes specific situations (on every scale) that are
shown to full advantage through the unpredictable interaction with passers-by.
Snooze is not a new concept. The name may be new but the experience it
expresses is certainly not. In the past, Church and State have initiated ‘avantgarde’ and multidisciplinary developments in a snooze-like manner in architecture, partly as a form of marketing. The churches erected during the
Renaissance in Italy (by architects such as Brunelleschi and Bramante) were
avant-garde in their ambition to be innovative, multidisciplinary in their combination of architecture, painting and sculpture, and pop in the fact that they
communicated with the masses at the experiential level in the name of the
church. FIG 39 / 40
2. Snooze and architecture On a concrete platform in a forest in Japan a collection of objects forms a house: a couple of glazed facades, a bath, some
chairs and a table, and a couple of other things. The strangest thing in this collection is the ‘seating area’ on the ‘balcony’. Two pairs of stools, protected by
a curved element of corrugated sheets and covered by rounded canopies. The
organization of this seating area is somehow disturbing: it does not look out
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over the landscape but back towards the house. The placement of the stools
in relation] to each other is strange: if you sit on the stools it is difficult to see
or speak with one another. The stool’s ill-easiness forces those who sit on them
to adopt a position: Why am I sitting here and what do I want? The design renders the sitting experience open-specific. FIG 41
Open specificity is not an unfamiliar phenomenon in architecture and design.
Besides Kazuyo Sejima, designer of the ‘Platform I’ house described above, the
architect Toyo Ito has also created a polemical open-specific project with his Pao
project, ‘A Dwelling for a Tokyo Nomad Woman’. In design and architecture this
is not unusual: projects which are disturbing, which demand an interpretation by
the subjective user in order to fulfil their potential. This is nothing new either. This
same analysis can be applied to a classical building like Michelangelo’s San
Lorenzo library, with its dramatically oversized staircase. FIG 42
Open specificity is a way of thinking and designing that at first seems diametrically opposed to functionality. The key is pushing the envelope of functionality;
open-specific designers understand the function that the design might fulfil in a
broad sense. In a certain way, an open-specific design methodology is related to
the Baroque (Bernini, Borromini). Not strict and not frugal, but free, frank,
ambiguous and idiosyncratic. Open specificity seeks a reaction.
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FIG 41
SEJIMA'S SEATING
TWO PAIRS OF STOOLS PROTECTED BY A CURVED ELEMENT AND COVERED BY ROUND CANOPIES: DISTURBING AND UNCOMFORTABLE
DIAGRAM: STUDIO SPUTNIK
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FIG 42
SAN LORENZO STAIRCASE
ENTRANCE TO THE SAN LORENZO LIBRARY WITH ITS DRAMATICALLY OVERSIZED STAIRCASE (MICHELANGELO, 1524-1534, COMPLETED
IN 1559)
FOTO: NOTTINGHAM UNIVERSITY, HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE DEPT., SIMON SADLER
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THE STUFF THAT SURROUNDS YOU…
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WWW.ISSEYMIYAKE.COM
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FOTO: HENK BULTSTRA
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3. Snooze as urban condition The streets of many suburbs are nothing more
than the infrastructure which provides access to the houses. There is no more
identity than this. From an experiential point of view, this kind of street can be
qualified as dross. At the same time, medieval and/or Mediterranean references
are valued for their street experiences, for instance the informal bustling and
winding little alleyways of Siena. The desire for a familiar and harmonious experience of the street, an experience that is reminiscent of the early American
main street, was also pivotal in the development of New Urbanism in the U.S.
during the 1990s. In the evolution of suburbs a certain scale of experience has
disappeared. Can the value of places and neighbourhoods be increased by
snooze, or is that in itself a contradiction in terms, and is it by definition impossible to stage-manage [spontaneous] experiences?
Extending the analysis of the public domain by Hajer and Reijndorp,24 the
analysis here is of a series of public places which have a careless charm and
straddle the public and the controlled. At an airport, in hotel lobbies, in IKEA
and its cafeteria, in the library – there are countless places that have something
unforced which we associate with snooze. Under what programmatic conditions does snooze thrive? Certain functions seem to entail a kind of slipstream
that affords space for something else. The provision of terraces is not the primary function of an airport; as little as a hotel is built around its lobby.
Passengers primarily take a ferry for the crossing, and are entertained en pas-
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sant. All these kinds of sidelines flourish terribly well, and are far from reaching
their full potential. Oddly enough, here is a form of snooze that is found in the
wake of the stims: the ‘chief experiences’ that are usually pre-programmed.
The chief attraction ensures safety, shelter and infrastructure, while snooze
flourishes in its wake. FIG 43 / 44 / 45 / 46 The significance of this observation lies in
the following: firstly, it seems that specific programmes (stims) have auxiliary
effects that are explicitly expressed in the experiential field. Secondly, the introduction of a snooze-experience in the city at an experiential level depends on
how the programme is handled. The conditioning effect of the main attraction
(the security policy, shelter, etc.) is crucial. Many existing ‘snooze-places’ are
more or less coincidental, arising in the wake of large-scale programmes like
airports and stations.
Once again, the history of architecture can provide reference-points. In the
past, important stims were accompanied by what can be interpreted as built
slipstream guidance systems. City palaces and government buildings are often
laid out with a stairway feature or a large square to the front. This not only takes
better advantage of their function as packaging machine, but these places can
develop into informal meeting places, markets, collective urban living rooms.
The shadow of the stim has evidently had a certain attractive power in the collective consciousness since olden times, for designers as well as the public. It
is a logical assumption that many programmes (whether they exist or not) now
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THE SLIPSTREAM OF THE STIM: LIBRARY
MANY EXISTING 'SNOOZE-PLACES' ARE MORE OR LESS COINCIDENTAL ...
MODEL: STUDIO SPUTNIK
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THE SLIPSTREAM OF THE STIM: HOTEL
... ARISING IN THE WAKE OF LARGE-SCALE STIMS
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THE SLIPSTREAM OF THE STIM: SHIP
SNOOZE AS A SPIN-OFF OF STIM ...
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THE SLIPSTREAM OF THE STIM: AIRPORT
... IS AN UNEXPLOITED POTENTIAL IN THE EXPERIENCE CITY
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also generate a slipstream that nobody has yet thought to exploit. Snooze as a
spin-off of stim is an unexploited potential in the experience city.
4. Snooze and mass culture Snooze and mass culture intersect at two points:
mass customization and image building.
Mass customization is mass production to order. It is a form of mass production that is burgeoning thanks to the possibilities presented by IT. You can put
together and order your personalized Nike trainers and Nokia telephone over
the Internet. In the field of mass-customization of buildings (residential or commercial), there has been a marked development over recent years. The industry for so-called catalogue builders is enormous. The latest trend in this area is
that a great deal of research is being carried out into how it is possible to offer
the resident a choice of complete and ‘individualized’ houses and components
within the constraints of mass housing construction. Systems that offer a
choice in cladding materials and house sizes are starting (albeit on a limited
scale) to appear on the market.
All these developments are a reaction to uniformity. In order to understand the
relationship between snooze and image we return to some observations that we
made earlier in this essay. The introduction opens with the example of
Wallpaper* as packaging machine. In that capacity the magazine succeeds in
imbuing the stuff that surrounds you with an aura of sorts, an immaterial surplus
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value at the experiential level. Mass customization is a means to achieving the
goal of image building. The image-building component is underdeveloped in the
customization trend in the construction industry. The only way for the construction sector to hook in with these developments in mass culture is if buildings,
commercial and residential, are interpreted as packaging machines.
Image building in the literal sense is the challenge that snooze champions:
building packaging machines. In other words, deliberately connecting the
meaning of the built environment with associations from beyond the world of
the building as well. There is an opportunity for customization here that has not
yet been picked up. The choice that flexible construction systems offer the
consumer is not concentrated solely on a lifestyle, image or other phenomena
that are squarely set outside the world of construction. Nike and Philips recently announced they would be launching portable music equipment. Nike cannot
manufacture electronic equipment and Philips recognizes that it cannot imbue
products with immaterial surplus value. This kind of collaboration does not, as
yet, exist in the world of construction. In the spatial environment, customization
offers the opportunity to facilitate synergy between the product and the urban
context, for example with neighbouring stims. In contrast to snooze in the context of architecture and urban planning, snooze does not exist, or barely, in
relation to mass culture. This is a large fertile terrain that is ready for irrigation
with snooze. FIG 47
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BUILDING IMAGE
NIKE AND PHILIPS COOPERATE TO PRODUCE TRENDY PORTABLE MUSIC EQUIPMENT
NIKE.COM + PHILIPS WEBSITE.COM
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PARADIGM SHIFT
SNOOZE - ALIENATING (CLOSED-SPECIFIC) AND SNOOZE - ENFORCING (OPEN-SPECIFIC) CONDITIONS COMPARED
OPEN
INDIFFERENT
INDEPENDENT OF USER, NOT APPEASING
E-SCAPE
FREE OF FUNCTION, FREE TO USE
ENDLESSLY WIDE, ENORMOUS CHOICE
SELF-SPECIFIC
SHORT LIFECYCLE, RISC ALLOWING
CHOICE, NICHES, IDENTITY-ENFORCING
EVERYWHERE
INDEPENDENCE,
ACCES TO EVERYWHERE
ILLUSION OF TRUTH
CLOSED
REPEAT, PREVENTATIVE, BIG-BROTHER
SIMPLICITY
MICKEY MOUSE WALK, FACADE ONLY
INITIATIVE KILLING, CONTROL
NUMB
THOUGHTLESS, WORLD OF RULES,
NO ALTERNATIVE
NOSTALGIA
PRIVATE FACADE, DREAM OF KITSCH
SYMBOLISM, STATUS, PARAFERNALIA
PHYSICAL CONTROL
ACCESIBILITY
FLIMSY LAYER OF POCHE,
RESTRICTION
SPACE
CONCENTRATION
RIGID STRUCTURE FOR INDIVIDUAL,
PHYSICAL
SNOOZE FACILITATING CONDITIONS
PARANOIA
HUGE CONCENTRATION OF STIM
SNOOZE ALIENATING CONDITIONS
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The term snooze works like a filter through which spatial open-specific experiences are distinguished from closed-specific experiences. From this perspective, snooze signifies a place (physical) that is charged up to become an openspecific experience (virtual). Buildings and bridges sometimes evolve into an
icon for a city (e.g. Rotterdam’s Erasmus Bridge and the Guggenheim Museum
Bilbao). Cities are starting to understand that they can put themselves on the
map with a ‘product-placement strategy’. Barcelona, for example, commissioned a marketing bureau to work on the city’s image, a move that has clearly become an interaction with the city’s most prestigious urban development
project: Forum 2004. The snooze concept makes it possible to discuss the
considerable ambition of marketing campaigns of this kind. How does the city
want to profile itself? Are people aware of the pitfall of clichés (closed-specific)
and the possibilities of a snooze approach?
Conclusion Snooze is a term that captures an architectural ambition at the
experiential level: open-specific experience. Approaching it from four angles
brings out a multicoloured image of snooze. Snooze is hardly an unambiguous
term, but it serves as a collective noun for phenomena that have open specificity in common, and thus spark an interesting spatial experience. Snooze
already exists here and there. Snooze is not about the invention of a new form
of experience, but a way of looking and a means of interpreting. Open-specif-
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ic characteristics can also be seen and recognized in everyday things (television, brands, houses, streets). Specifying them leads to an insight into what
might be called the ‘radical everyday’: the potency of the built environment for
avant-pop. This insight requires a different view of the reality around us. One
might say that spatial design has to undergo some kind of paradigm shift, take
a mental leap from closed specificity (‘snooze-alienating’) to open specificity
(‘snooze-enforcing’). FIG 48
With the term ‘snooze’ as a benchmark it is now possible to scout two flanks.
We can use it to look at what happens around us through a pair of differently
tinted spectacles, and it can be applied as a new criterion with which to design.
In the next chapter we use snooze to outline a number of ongoing developments in buildings and cities from the experiential perspective. We then apply
snooze to set out a design strategy.
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Gazebo 3
Radikal
Radikal stands for the intrinsic, the infallible, the 100-percent honest. The brand does what it
promises. It is radical in its incorruptibility. It is incredibly famous. There is relatively little else to
be said about it so far, but that is no problem for Gazebo. In interviews he has repeatedly had to
explain to mocking presenters that he is building a pie in the sky which will one day turn into solid
gold. The crazier they think he is, the more exposure he gets.
The idea is almost as simple as the catalogue it all started with. Launch a brand, invest in its profile and exploit the brand name. If you maintain it well then the brand will be a guarantee for the
product introduced under its flag. Analysts have dubbed it ‘experience branding’. Gazebo himself regards it as a form of inverted sponsoring. The FIFA, for instance, wants to link up the next
World Cup with the name Radikal (fair play), Nike wants to introduce a Radikal shoe (produced
without child labour), and Greenpeace has submitted a request to name its next ship the
‘Radikal’. All these proposals are being considered, but the requests themselves made world
news: exposure for brand and client alike.
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a.
126
Benchmark
III.1
Past Perfect?
‘Some critics suggest that we are playing to the lowest common denominator. For
them, we are absolutely forthright in affirming that, when necessary, we are prepared to sacrifice architecture on the altar of urbanism, because all architecture is
meaningless in the absence of good urban design. Behind six acres of parking, a
true cantilever is no more ethical than a fake arch.’ 25
25 Andres Duany, Elizabeth PlaterZyberk and Jeff Speck, Suburban
Nation: The Rise of Sprawl and the
Decline of the American Dream
(New York: Farrar, Straus and
Giroux, 2000), pp. 210-211.
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127
Round trip Lars Lerup’s motive for developing his stim-dross analysis was the
search for a new vocabulary with which to describe the city. The existing frame
of reference, focused on the classic city, worked like a hazy filter in front of the
eyes of those striving to understand the new metropolis. The transition from
Rome to Houston required a new pair of spectacles. In the previous chapter,
Lerup’s alternative filter, dynamism and experience, was extrapolated to arrive
at a model that makes a qualitative assessment based on experience: snooze.
Now that this model has been established, we arrive at the next intriguing
question: What do we see if, wearing these new spectacles, we look back to
Rome? In the city of the past there was perhaps a form of perception that corresponds with what we are now calling snooze. How did or does the European
city function in terms of experience and dynamism? It is a pertinent question,
because in many contemporary urban developments, New Urbanism in the
United States of America and the retro-hype in Europe for instance, the historic
European city is seen as the benchmark. Which qualities of historic cities are
so appealing? Can these simply be transposed into a modern-day era of experience? FIG 49
Experience has a role in the economy and in mass culture, which are powerful
forces when it comes to urban developments. FIG 50 New homes are marketed
with experience-oriented jargon and marketing techniques. Many of these new
homes make reference to ‘the good old days’. This reference is obviously
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c.
FIG 49
ROUND TRIP
WHAT DO WE SEE IF WE LOOK BACK AT THE CLASSIC CITY THROUGH THE 'FILTER' DEVELOPED TO UNDERSTAND THE CONTEMPORARY
METROPOLIS?
LOOKING BACK
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FIG 50
09
RISE OF THE GATES
DEVELOPMENT OF HOMEOWNER ASSOCIATIONS IN THE U.S. THAT PURSUE PRIVATE GOVERNMENT, PRIVATE SECURITY AND GATES
FOUNDED HOMEOWNERS ASSOCIATIONS
private government; gated and private security (United States)
250.000
205.000 associations
200.000
42.000.000
OF THESE:
150.000
100.000
NEW
80%
TOTAL
30.000
60 - 80% middle class
SHIFT
DATA: C.J. WEBSTER, GATED CITIES OF TOMORROW, IN: TOWN PLANNING REVIEW 72(2), LIVERPOOL UNIVERSITY PRESS, (LIVERPOOL, 2001)
BLAKELY, SNYDER, FORTRESS AMERICA, BROOKINGS INSTITUTION PRESS (WASHINGTON DC, 1987)
2010
2000
1990
1980
1970
1960
1950
1940
50.000
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e.
130
informed by a collective sense that ideal experiences are to be found in times
past. What is that feeling, that dreamt experience, which so many people are
searching for? We are convinced that people are collectively seeking openspecific experiences.
Doppelgänger Open specificity encapsulates the qualities of Siena and Venice,
of the pre-industrial and pre-automobile era, of informality and geniality, with a
single denominator. There is a collective, semi-conscious longing, and it as if it
is obvious to many people that this can be appeased in the historic city. That
longing is a longing for snooze. The market has intervened to satisfy this
demand. Because of the association of the historic city with pleasant experiences, houses that are associated with the historic city are attractive.
Developers, catalogue builders and marketeers can produce market homes
that are symbol for the historic city at the drop of a hat: this is an experience
scam. The client who was seeking an open-specific experience gets a closedspecific home and living environment. Buildings developed in this way are
symbols meant to be read in one specific way. Closed specificity operates as
the doppelgänger of open specificity. Retro-houses are closed packaging
machines. The retro-phenomenon is a perfected fantasy, a myth that has
become reality, and has sucked in all parties, from builder to economist to theorist. FIG 51
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131
26 Venturi, Scott Brown and
Izenour, p. 154.
Theorists Several architectural theorists and architects have picked up on historicizing architecture and urbanism as a theme. In the same way as art historians occasionally incorrectly attribute a fake painting to an Old Master, many
theorists legitimize the historic doppelgänger. One by one they argue why old
architecture should be recycled, and one by one they fail to notice experience.
Venturi cum suis substantiates the retro-practice by extending the idea of the
‘duck’ and the ‘decorated shed’ as far as suburbia. He points out that the symbolic function of the house (a reference to the classical country villa) in
Levittown is realized in an economically efficient way by seeing the house as a
shed, decorated with all kinds of paraphernalia. ‘For the middle class suburbanite … identity must come through symbolic treatment of the form of the
house, either by the developer (for instance split-level colonial) or through a
variety of ornaments applied thereafter by the owner.’26 FIG 52
Léon Krier, who along with his brother Rob must be reckoned among the founding fathers of European retro-architecture, put forward the argument that classical architecture reassures the citizen, and is therefore an act of civilization.
Nobody asks what exactly it is that determines the perceived attractiveness of
those old references. Standard houses have to symbolize an old country villa and
the city must reflect the old harmonious city, because they will be then associated with a certain feel-good experience. These symbols are stamped royally
across massive tracts of land. The contrast between the world being symbolized
and the actual reality is often grotesque.
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g.
FIG 51
DOPPELGÄNGER
EXPERIENCE SCAM: HOMES THAT ARE A SYMBOL FOR THE HISTORIC CITY CANNOT LIVE UP TO THE ORIGINAL EXPERIENCE
SIENA
"SIENA"
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FIG 52
09
SUBURBAN SYMBOLISM
‘FOR THE MIDDLE-CLASS SUBURBANITE ... IDENTITY MUST COME THROUGH SYMBOLIC TREATMENT OF THE FORM OF THE HOUSE.’
TREES
RAIL FENCE
CURVING STREET
COACH LAMPS
COLUMNS
FOUNDATION PLANTINGS
GATEWAY
SWEEPING LAWN
NO CURB
PERFECT COUPLE
BASED ON SKETCH IN VENTURI, 1972, P. 158
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i.
134
27 The car and the house are the
two most widely distributed commodities owned by the average consumer. Both have a profound influence
on the spatial environment and
government policy.
Snooze as concept is independent of urban hardware, and is thus by definition
also temporally independent, timeless. It is an indication of quality that pierces
through style like X-rays. With the experience model, the spectacles for the
modern city, we can look at old cities from a different perspective. In our view
it is the snooze quality of those old cities that is so appealing. So it is logical to
strive after the experience itself, rather than after a reference to that experience.
Historicizing architecture is no laughing matter, as the qualities of old cities are
justifiably valued. If buildings are employed as one-dimensional, closed packaging machines then this does little justice to the qualities of the old cities being
emulated. In our experience culture, the starting-point must be the experience
that these old cities conjure up.
Life-cycle test With the aid of snooze and open and closed specificity it is not
only possible to compare contemporary housing with historic predecessors,
but also with other contemporary products. To illustrate various approaches in
terms of experience we compared the life cycle of the car with that of a
house.27 In suburbia, the car and the house have become intertwined. They
determine each other’s existential conditions. Both cater to the feelings of the
consumer, and they thus contribute to the identity of their owner. The production process and the end result, however, could not be more different. This
analysis is about gaining insight into how the experiential component is
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135
expressed in the life cycle of car and house respectively. We have mapped out
the useful life cycle of a car and a house from design to demolition in two diagrams. We drew up an inventory of the decisive elements for each step in this
cycle. And most importantly, we made a distinction between functional and
experience-oriented components. FIG 53 / 54
At a glance, the graphics show that the experience component of the car is
much more extensive and complex than that of the house. This is of course no
surprise, yet it still gives pause for thought. Why is the house, which plays at
least as important a role in the life of the owner as the car, heavily underdeveloped in the area of experience when compared to the car?
Open and closed specificity are useful terms when we are looking for the root
cause of the different life cycles of car and house. The explanation put forward
here ties in with the doppelgänger theory. Both the car and the house are packaging machines. It is generally accepted that you can ‘buy’ experience with a
car. With a house, from the angle of experience, you are primarily buying a symbol. That is an important shift in emphasis.
The car is a packaging machine that presents myriad possibilities. The car
industry offers the whole spectrum of experiences, from open to closed, from
Smart to Chrysler PT Cruiser. The car is more than a symbol. The evolution of
the car and the evolution of the experiential spectrum that the car has to offer
are an indivisible whole. The diagram proves this: experience plays an important role throughout the entire life cycle of the car.
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k.
FIG 53
LIFE OF THE CAR
DEVELOPMENT OF THE CAR AND THE EXPERIENCES IT OFFERS ARE INSEPARABLE
DATA: FORD CORPORATION, VW CORPORATION, 'AUTOWEEK' MAGAZINE, 'DE HEILIGE KOE' MAGAZINE
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FIG 54
LIFE OF THE HOUSE
EXPERIENCE DOES NOT COME INTO PLAY UNTIL THE HOUSE IS SOLD AND INHABITED
DATA: HEIJMANS DEVELOPERS, CELEBRATION FLORIDA, DIVERSE REAL ESTATE CORPORATIONS IN US AND
HOLLAND
09
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m.
138
28 Duany Plater-Zyberk & Co. was
responsible for planning more than
200 urban communities, the most
famous being Seaside, Florida
(where the film The Truman Show
was shot) and Kentlands, Maryland.
The house is a packaging machine which is a symbol for experiences that have
been associated with dwelling since olden times. It is focused on experiences
such as safety, peace and security in an informal, genial living environment.
Since the house fulfils a primary function it is logical that the experiences
expected of it are relatively constant. The question is whether and how a house
satisfies these expectations. We ascertain that over the course of time the symbolic function has become important beyond all proportion. The experiences
themselves have therefore ended up in the background. The symbolic function
is closed-specific: the house must be read in a certain way. This is not to the
advantage of the quality of the experiences. The diagram shows this clearly, in
relation to the car. Experience plays a much smaller role in the whole process.
It is only when the house has to be put on the market that experience gains
equal importance: the symbolic function must then guarantee the attractiveness. The housing market can be compared to the car market in the former
Communist bloc. Targeted at the highest common denominator, quasi-innovative with new models that are essentially no different to their forerunners, conservative and accompanied by reams of empty rhetoric. FIG 55
TND The urban planners and architects Duany, Plater-Zyberk and Speck occupy a remarkable position in the home business.28 They are extremely critical of
sprawl and have carried out probing studies into the differences between
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139
sprawl and ‘pleasant neighbourhoods’. In their case the pleasant neighbourhood is the ‘traditional neigbourhood’. The book Suburban Nation: the rise of
sprawl and the decline of the American dream that was written by these architects, sustains a far-reaching analysis. Coupled with their experiences, it has
resulted in a design strategy crystallized in a Traditional Neighbourhood
Development (TND) checklist. Duany, Plater-Zyberk and Speck were the cofounders of the Congress for the New Urbanism (CNU) in 1994, intended as a
modern-day counterpart to the CIAM. The remarkable thing about this collective of designers is the glaring discrepancy between their theory and their practice. Here we are dealing with a group of dedicated architects who are capable
of a razor-sharp and convincing dissection of sprawl. Time and again they
seem to be searching for the experiential qualities of the old American city,
qualities that we would describe as snooze. The last thing one would expect to
result from this are the neighbourhoods for which Duany Plater-Zyberk & Co. is
responsible. They are well-protected, isolated enclaves where the neighbourhood regime prevails. All at once, the designers seem to have forgotten that the
car is incredibly important, that there is no economic production in residential
enclaves, that the demography of the population is not homogeneous. Their
designs are a denial of the reality that they analyze so astutely. They are closedspecific designs, environments which can only be interpreted in one single way.
There is no quest to find some way to introduce the qualities of yesteryear that
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o.
FIG 55
SYMBOL VS. PACKAGING MACHINE
SYMBOLISM IS ABOUT THE BUILDING; PACKAGING IS ABOUT THE PERCIPIENT
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FIG 56
FREEDOM UNDER LAW
LÉON KRIER LIKES TO SIGN OFF HIS TEXTS IN STYLE
FROM: LÉON KRIER, ARCHITECTURE, CHOICE OR FATE, ANDREAS PAPADAKIS PUB. (LONDON, 1998)
09
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the aura of
physical things
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142
they hold in such high esteem into the present-day social context. The designers are so convinced of their mission that they impose the qualities encountered in old cities in their designs in a well-nigh autistic fashion. Their inspirer
and colleague, Léon Krier, goes so far as to unashamedly sign his work with a
shield depicting an eagle and the text ‘freedom under law’. FIG 56
In an age when the contemporary city is no longer read with the filter for the old
city in front of one’s eyes, it is absurd to stick to this historically outdated frame
of reference when planning and designing housing. In looking back to the past
it is important to do this through a contemporary filter. We are convinced that
one can find a large portion of a form of experience that we have called
‘snooze’ in the historic city. It is a condition that is completely absent or only
minimally present in suburbia, a sphere that is irreconcilable with the experience in ‘hardcore sprawl’. It is naive to think that this vanished experience can
be magicked back by simply applying a particular style. Snooze cannot be captured by the simplistic duplication of facades, the imitation of street patterns,
or the orchestration of behaviour. Snooze is more fundamental: it is about the
way in which everyday life is enacted, about the possibilities to which the city
is receptive.
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144
Strategy
Immersing architecture
in mass culture
Somewhere there is a house. Other houses stand around the house. A filigree network interweaves the house with the mirror image of the world – stim city. There
the mega-stim flickers in its own turbulence, slipstreams randomly billowing in all
directions. Where are the birds? Meanwhile, far away in the twilight, the market is
being dismantled. Inside, the Wallpaper* lies on the table, open at an image of a catwalk and the street where the house stands. These days, the stuff that surrounds you
comes very close. There is something not quite right. Where does the house end,
where does the street become a catwalk? The distinction gradually fades. There is no
more architecture to be seen, no sign of urban structure. Everything is mass culture.
Now what?
III.2
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145
Strategy Snooze requires a critical strategy. There is not one particular strategy
for snooze, because snooze is an open concept. In this strategy the starting point
is that the context is mass culture. It is no longer possible to retain a distance
from mass culture, to somehow or other withdraw or hide from it. That is why
architecture must become a component of mass culture, be immersed in it. Mass
culture is propelled by packaging machines. More emphatically, mass culture
turns everything, everywhere into a packaging machine. When designing, it is a
good idea to assume that the result will eventually function as a packaging
machine. The packaging machine is a troubling factor in the snooze strategy:
Snooze can exist perfectly well without mass culture (in historic cities, for example), but in mass culture the packaging machines are an important vessel for
spreading the snooze condition. The packaging machine aspect of spatial design
is interpreted here as those aspects which contribute to the image building of
place and user. In practice it boils down to interpreting the context of buildings
as broadly as possible: context is not only the physical environment, but also,
among other things, cultural references that are part of the building, the role that
a location plays in the region, and the role that the client plays in the media.
Packaging machines exist in open and closed form. It goes without saying that a
strategy for snooze means that the prime objective is creating open packaging
machines. It is through these that snooze can be spread within mass culture.
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01
Pagina 146
05
09
the aura of
physical things
u.
• 168 P
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02
06
10
03
07
11
04
08
12
02
FIG 57
PROFILER
A LIST OF EXPERIENCE-BASED DESIGN CRITERIA TO IDENTIFY THE EXTENT TO WHICH A DESIGN IS SNOOZE
PROFILER
SNOOZE CRITERIA
ITEM A
ITEM B
PRODUCT:
-
ITEMS
open-specific design
+
space for interpretation
distinctive
indifferent
over-/undersized
-
programmatic slipstream stims
+
treshold
link with a stim
control
-
image that transcends the object
+
image-ratio
information content
cross-fertilisation
possible costumization
variation
built-in options
mass customization
+
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s
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Pagina 147
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02
06
10
03
07
11
04
08
12
FIG 58
/
09
CALIBRATING THE PROFILER: 2 VASES
DO-VASE; CHINESE VASE
PROFILER
SNOOZE CRITERIA
VASES
CHINESE VASE
DO-VASE
PRODUCT:
-
VASES
+
distinctive
indifferent
over-/undersized
-
treshold
link with a stim
control
-
image-ratio
+
+
information content
cross-fertilisation
variation
built-in options
FOTO'S: DO, STUDIO SPUTNIK
mass customization
+
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Pagina 148
02.
01
05
09
the aura of
physical things
w.
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07
11
04
08
12
FIG 59
CALIBRATING THE PROFILER: 2 WEBSITES
WWW.DISNEY.COM; WWW.ISSEYMIYAKE.COM
PROFILER
SNOOZE CRITERIA
WEBSITES
WWW.DISNEY.COM
WWW.ISSEYMIYAKE.COM
PRODUCT:
WEBSITES
-
+
distinctive
indifferent
over-/undersized
-
+
treshold
link with a stim
control
-
+
image-ratio
information content
cross-fertilisation
variation
built-in options
WWW.DISNEY.COM
WWW.ISSEYMIYAKE.COM
mass customization
+
snooze 124-168
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Pagina 149
/
01
s
14:20
05
09
• 168 P
EDIXION 90GRMS
02
06
10
07
11
08
12
03
04
FIG 60
CALIBRATING THE PROFILER: 2 PLACES
SQUARE IN POUNDBURY, UK, 2000; PIAZZA DEI SIGNORI, VICENZA (1850), PAINTED BY CARLO FERRARI
PROFILER
SNOOZE CRITERIA
PLACES
POUNDBURY
VICENZA
PRODUCT:
PLACES
-
+
distinctive
indifferent
over-/undersized
-
+
Poundbury, UK, 2000
treshold
link with a stim
control
-
+
image-ratio
information content
cross-fertilisation
-
mass customization
+
variation
built-in options
WWW.PRINCES-FOUNDATION.ORG: POUNDBURY
WWW.SALAMONGALLERY.COM
piazza die Signori, Vicenza, Italy, 1850
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12
Y.
150
Bridge In this strategic phase it is important to build a bridge between the
abstract goal of snooze and clearly defined design criteria. How is it possible
to translate the theoretical condition that snooze has represented so far in this
essay into manageable and preferably even measurable principles for design?
In the ‘Snooze: radical everyday’ chapter, snooze is described from four angles.
We have translated these four angles into testable criteria, a tool which we have
dubbed the ‘profiler’. We then assume that the result of a design process based
on these criteria will consist of open packaging machines. FIG 57
The list consists of experience-based design criteria. None of these terms
makes a judgement about form or programme. The list is therefore consistent
with the precept that we are working on a strategy for experience-driven
design. The criteria are truly testable. It is possible to determine whether these
aspects are present in a design for each individual criterion. We propose that if
each of these aspects is present to the maximum possible extent in a design
then it is an open packaging machine that is terribly ‘snooze’.
Calibration The snooze strategy is based on the following theorem: the more
criteria from the profiler are present to as great an extent as possible in a
design, the more snooze. In order to elucidate the impact of this selection of
terms, the list has been used to formulate ‘profiles’ for a number of examples.
These profiles entail making a simple inventory of the degree to which each of
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151
the criteria is present. Consider the DO vase. To what extent does a DO-vase
offer space for interpretation? To what extent is the vase distinctive? And so
forth. Circling an answer for each of the criteria outlines a profile of the degree
to which the vase is ‘snooze’. By making a profile for various examples we
demonstrate what exactly comprises snooze and vice versa, the aspects that
are snooze to a greater or less extent. FIG 58 / 59 / 60
What does this mean for the strategy? If there are reliable criteria then it is possible to make an assessment, and then there is something to work towards. In
other words, with the aid of the profiler the abstract design objective of snooze
is translated into a concrete experience profile as design criterion. In this strategy the profile has a polemical character: all criteria to the max! To design a
theoretically perfect snooze-street, for example, then each of the experience
criteria from the profiler would be present to the maximum extent. The same
applies for a house, a neighbourhood, and so on.
Imagination If we describe a snooze-street in this manner then we switch all
the indicators to the maximum in one go, as if the profiler were an electrical
switchboard. This manner of pursuing a strategy has an attractive side effect.
The question that arises is how such a theoretically maximized snooze-street
would look. Can such a street exist in reality? The experience list starts to act
like a crossing of description and specifications that sparks the imagination.
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important
note
note
09
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NOTE:
PT
CLOSED/
W
152
We have mapped out our imagination. This led to a series of emblematic
sketches. These must be understood as a theoretical maximization in 3-D diagrams. They are not designs, nor schematic plans, but a graphic representation of the strategy. This non-specific status of the sketches gave us a sense of
freedom. One might call it a visual idiom that goes further than diagrams but
retains the same open character. It is a visual idiom that captures snooze as
condition without constraining its spontaneity, a graphic representation that is
founded on mass culture as a total context. It does not deal with the functions,
the streets, the billboards, the houses, the parks, the pavements or the
carparks. It is the combination of these factors and especially the interstitial
sphere that is palpable in the image. If you peer between your eyelashes at the
space in-between individual objects, then you will see the open and always
unpredictable condition of SNOOZE. FIG 61 / 62 / 63 / 64 / 65 / 66
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09
153
Picture Somewhere there is a house. Other houses stand around the house. A stim
flickers close by. The pleasant half-presence of its slipstream wavers around the
houses. All around there are hundreds of other stims. A united blanket of slipstreams forms the backdrop for thousands of houses. The birds are everywhere and
nowhere. In the distance the market is being dismantled. In the twilight the city
takes place, the filigree network of large and small, violent and mild stims. There is
genial chaos everywhere, typical of the situation somewhere in-between stim and
dross.
Inside, the Wallpaper* lies on the table, open at an article on Snooze City, the last
project of the legendary Gazebo. The title is: ‘Live the stuff that surrounds you.’
Everything is mass culture.
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02
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EDIXION 90GRMS
important
note
note
WRITEABLE MEDIA
00
00/
OPEN
SET
W
NOTE:
PT
FIG 61
SUBURBIA: FIELD OF DROSS
PROPOSAL: STUDIO SPUTNIK
03
00. /
00. //
CLOSED/
SNOOZE
THIS IS AN UNSTABLE URBAN CONDITION THAT CAN CHANGE OVER TIME, BUT WHOSE BASIC
CONDITION FORMS THE MIDPOINT BETWEEN HYPERACTIVITY AND DEATHLY QUIET,
BETWEEN STIM AND DROSS. THIS CONCEPT DENOTES A CONDITION OF
SLUMBERING EXPERIENCE, WHICH DESCRIBES A DESIGN AMBITION IN THE
CONTEXT OF MASS CULTURE.
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EDIXION 90GRMS
FIG 62
SUBURBIA: A BLANKET OF SLIPSTREAMS
06 / 07
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Pagina 156
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02
• 168 P
03
EDIXION 90GRMS
important
note
note
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W
NOTE:
PT
FIG 63
MAXIMISING 1: CITY
THEORETICALLY MAXIMIZED SNOOZE-CITY
PROFILER
SNOOZE CRITERIA
SNOOZE-CITY
PRODUCT:
-
SNOOZE-CITY
+
distinctive
indifferent
over-/undersized
-
+
treshold
link with a stim
control
-
+
image-ratio
information content
cross-fertilisation
variation
built-in options
mass customization
00. /
00. //
CLOSED/
SNOOZE
+
snooze 124-168
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Pagina 157
04
05
• 168 P
EDIXION 90GRMS
06 / 07
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01
Pagina 158
02
• 168 P
EDIXION 90GRMS
important
note
note
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FIG 64
MAXIMISING 2: NEIGHBOURHOOD
THEORETICALLY MAXIMIZED SNOOZE-HOOD
00. /
00. //
CLOSED/
SNOOZE
W
NOTE:
PT
03
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05
• 168 P
EDIXION 90GRMS
06 / 07
snooze 124-168
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01
Pagina 160
02
• 168 P
03
EDIXION 90GRMS
important
note
note
00. /
00. //
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00
00/
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SET
W
NOTE:
PT
FIG 65
CLOSED/
SNOOZE
MAXIMISING 3: STREET
THEORETICALLY MAXIMIZED SNOOZE-STREET
PROFILER
PACKAGING
SNOOZE-STREET
SNOOZE CRITERIA
PRODUCT:
-
SNOOZE-STREET
+
distinctive
indifferent
over-/undersized
-
+
treshold
link with a stim
control
-
+
image-ratio
information content
cross-fertilisation
variation
built-in options
mass customization
+
snooze 124-168
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Pagina 161
04
05
• 168 P
EDIXION 90GRMS
06 / 07
snooze 124-168
12-05-2003
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01
Pagina 162
02
• 168 P
03
EDIXION 90GRMS
important
note
note
00. /
00. //
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00
00/
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SET
W
NOTE:
PT
FIG 66
CLOSED/
SNOOZE
MAXIMISING 4: HOUSE
THEORETICALLY MAXIMIZED SNOOZE-LIVING
PACKAGING
PROFILER
SNOOZE CRITERIA
SNOOZE-HOUSE
PRODUCT:
-
SNOOZE-HOUSE
+
distinctive
indifferent
over-/undersized
-
+
treshold
link with a stim
control
-
+
image-ratio
information content
cross-fertilisation
variation
built-in options
mass customization
+
snooze 124-168
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04
05
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EDIXION 90GRMS
06 / 07
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Pagina 164
Gazebo 4
Snooze City
The house stands on a plot in Hotel. Hotel provides a pleasant environment, the gardens are well
maintained, the bar is always open, and you can go there to read a newspaper, have breakfast or
sip a cocktail. It is a complete contrast to the plots in Supermarket, where it is busier and more
anonymous. The people who live here, all sorts of professionals, park and shop around the clock.
However, it has to be said that Supermarket is a great environment, for youngsters too. Even the
Tankers have respect for the skaters from Supermarket. As you drive from Hotel towards Terminal
it is hard to miss the diversity of Snooze City. After Park you pass by Library Towers, home to a
colourful company of students, old ladies and chess-players. A little further on, to the right, you
pass School (mainly teachers with their families), Sport and the adjoining Sportswear (trendy
sportspeople), and the inexpensive apartments of Cheap. Cheap cooperates with Terminal, which
you are driving towards now. Their cooperation has resulted in the surprisingly lively character of
this neighbourhood: plenty of street vendors, markets and little shops. Of all the success stories
in Snooze City this is still Gazebo’s favourite. This is where he brings every camera crew making
a report about the miraculous metamorphosis that Sprawl has undergone in the space of a
decade. Snooze City is the biggest and most controversial project of Gazebo’s career. Now even
the biggest criticasters cannot ignore the balanced equilibrium that has been struck between
commerce, automobility and lifestyle differentiation on the one hand and the city on the other.
Gazebo no longer uses the word ‘city’, as he thinks only in terms of experiences. The timelessness of the experience concept still amazes him. That it took nothing more than a different way
of looking to come to such a radically different form of living ...
Gazebo orders another espresso, rearranges his fez, and leans back comfortably. He is surrounded by a genial chaos. Elusive, dreamy and beautiful in the raw.
snooze 124-168
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Pagina 165
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166
Glossary
SELECTION OF THE MOST IMPORTANT TERMS AND THEIR
AVANT-POP
SIGNIFICANCE WITHIN THE CONTEXT OF THIS BOOK
THE AMERICAN LITERARY CRITIC LARRY MCCAFFERTY CAME UP WITH
THE TERM AVANT-POP IN THE EARLY 1990S TO DENOTE THE PARADOX
MASS CULTURE
THAT REVOLUTIONARY HIPNESS AND MASS SUCCESS OFTEN GO HAND
MASS CULTURE IS THE COLLECTIVE TERM FOR ALL PHENOMENA
IN HAND IN MASS CULTURE. AVANT-POP IS A CRITICAL BUT NOT DIS-
RELATED TO MASS MEDIA AND MASS CONSUMPTION. IN THIS STUDY,
MISSIVE ATTITUDE TOWARD MASS CULTURE; THE WORD DESCRIBES
WHEN MASS CULTURE IS DISCUSSED, THE FOCUS IS ON THE PERSPEC-
THE STANDPOINT OF THIS BOOK IN RELATION TO MASS CULTURE.
TIVE OF THE SUBJECTIVE INDIVIDUAL UPON WHOM ALL OF THIS CUL-
PACKAGING MACHINE
TURE OPERATES.
PACKAGING MACHINES ARE PRODUCTS THAT ARE DESIGNED, BY
EXPERIENCE
MEANS OF DELIBERATE ALLUSIONS, TO ELICIT EXPERIENCES BEYOND
EXPERIENCE IS THE INTANGIBLE YET UNDENIABLY PRESENT GOLD
THE PRODUCTS THEMSELVES. THE HYPOTHESIS PROPOSED BY THIS
TRIM, THE AURA OF PHYSICAL THINGS. EXPERIENCE IS AN
STUDY IS THAT ARCHITECTURE, TOO, CAN BE APPROACHED AS A
AUTONOMOUS CATEGORY OF ADDED VALUE; IT IS THE ENGINE OF THE
PACKAGING MACHINE.
CONSUMER ECONOMY.
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06 / 07
167
OPEN SPECIFICITY
DROSS
OPEN SPECIFICITY IS THE COLLECTIVE TERM FOR CONCEPTS
LERUP ALSO COINED THIS TERM, WHICH IS THE OPPOSITE OF STIM.
EXPRESSED WITHOUT IMPEDING SUBJECTIVE INTERPRETIVE
DROSS REPRESENTS THE GREAT NOTHING, THE LIFELESS, INACTIVITY.
FREEDOM. OPEN-SPECIFIC CONCEPTS ARE OPEN AND PROVIDE
WHEN NOTHING IS HAPPENING IN THE CITY, THERE IS DROSS.
SPACE; THEIR SPECIFICITY IS LIBERATING.
SNOOZE
CLOSED SPECIFICITY
THIS IS AN UNSTABLE URBAN CONDITION THAT CAN CHANGE OVER
CLOSED SPECIFICITY IS SPECIFIC WITH A PREDETERMINED INTENT. IN
TIME, BUT WHOSE BASIC CONDITION FORMS THE MIDPOINT BETWEEN
CLOSED SPECIFICITY, EVERYTHING HINGES ON THIS INTENT. THE
HYPERACTIVITY AND DEATHLY QUIET, BETWEEN STIM AND DROSS. THIS
SPECIFICITY OF CLOSED-SPECIFIC CONCEPTS THEREFORE HAS A
CONCEPT DENOTES A CONDITION OF SLUMBERING EXPERIENCE,
SUFFOCATING EFFECT; THERE IS NO ROOM FOR ANY INTERPRETATIONS
WHICH DESCRIBES A DESIGN AMBITION IN THE CONTEXT OF MASS
OF THIS FORM OF SPECIFICITY THAT HAVE NOT BEEN PRE-DEFINED.
CULTURE.
STIM
LARS LERUP INTRODUCED THIS TERM, WHICH DENOTES LIFE, EXUBERANCE IN THE CITY. URBAN SITUATIONS IN WHICH SOMETHING UNUSUAL HAPPENS, SUCH AS A CELEBRATION OR A SPORTS TOURNAMENT, ARE WHAT LERUP CALLS STIMS.
snooze 124-168
168
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14:21
Pagina 168
00
00
//
//
00
snooze FC katern B
12-05-2003
14:47
Pagina 1
snooze FC katern B
12-05-2003
14:47
00
00
START
GLOSSY
Pagina 169
SUBURBAN FIELDS OF GREEN VALLEY, LAS VEGAS
FOTO: ROBERT CAMERON
Glossy
00
169
snooze FC katern A
112
12-05-2003
14:34
00
00
END
•
GLOSSY
Pagina 112
00
snooze FC katern B
12-05-2003
14:47
Pagina 170
snooze FC katern B
12-05-2003
14:47
Pagina 171
snooze FC katern B
170
12-05-2003
14:47
Pagina 170
snooze FC katern B
12-05-2003
SNOOZE CITY FRAGMENT
STUDIO SPUTNIK
14:47
Pagina 171
171
snooze FC katern B
12-05-2003
14:48
Pagina 172
snooze FC katern B
12-05-2003
14:48
Pagina 173
snooze FC katern B
172
12-05-2003
14:48
Pagina 172
snooze FC katern B
12-05-2003
14:48
SNOOZE CITY PANORAMA #1
SELF
Pagina 173
173
snooze FC katern B
12-05-2003
14:48
Pagina 174
snooze FC katern B
12-05-2003
14:48
Pagina 175
snooze FC katern B
174
12-05-2003
14:48
Pagina 174
snooze FC katern B
12-05-2003
14:48
SNOOZE CITY PANORAMA #2
SELF
Pagina 175
175
snooze FC katern B
12-05-2003
14:49
Pagina 176
snooze FC katern B
12-05-2003
14:49
Pagina 177
snooze FC katern B
176
12-05-2003
14:49
00
00
END
GLOSSY
Pagina 176
00

02. - JvantSpijker.com

Transcription

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