Architectural Autonomy and melbourne
Spencer Mu, 25 Oct 2020
Architects and urban planners have a long history of describing themselves as the vanguard for progressive agendas. However, the pursuit of high ideals rarely survives the reality of political and economic stipulation, while architecture is often conscripted by the state or the rich as a tool for the accumulation of capital and power. In the time of political, economic, and humanitarian crises, architecture should now more than ever become autonomous. Autonomous architecture can instigate social justice by rejecting its current obsequious position to generate critiques and provoke critical thinking within and beyond the discipline. This essay will examine different aspects of the term autonomous in architectural practice, from the discipline itself to its inhabitants and the environment it occupies. Through the lens of deriving and crisis mapping, it will explore the application and impact surrounding architecture autonomy in the local Melbourne context.
To generate meaningful critique, architecture in terms of professional practice and built environment should seek autonomy from the imposition of political, cultural, and financial institutions. Unconsciously, Manhattan’s skyscraper culture in the late nineteenth to the early twentieth century has demonstrated that the separation of architecture’s material manifestation from the abstract institutional and religious ideals leads to formal and programmatic autonomy. In Koolhaas’s Delirious New York, he contributes to this lack of ‘moral relationship’ and the ‘perpetual crisis’ generated by the ‘cross-fertilisation’ between conflicting forms and inhabitants as the basis for Manhattan’s intimate and cohesive urban fabric (Koolhaas 1994, 81-108). Similarly, the Italian radical movement examines the emancipation of architecture from the consumeristic, capital-driven ‘welfare state’ (Aureli 2014, 217-238). From the ‘Non-stop city’ to ‘continuous monument’, the movement uses the death of architecture as the modus operandi to generate critiques on consumerism within their architectural typology. The disco, as an example, rescues architecture from subservience to thought-provoking space by denying its patrons pre-digested commodified architectural products (Alexis 2015). Although radical groups such as Archizoom, 9999 and Superstudio were successful at establishing architecture’s autonomy by incorporating industrial vernaculars and pop culture into the dialogue, their totalising and top-down pursuit for abstraction, timelessness and grandiosity failed to address the autonomy of its inhabitants (Brown 2012, 153-163).
Autonomous architecture is symbiotic with the autonomous agency that inhabits it. Rem Koolhaas attempted to generate social intercourse and socio-spatial freedom through his design’s diverse urbanistic ‘spatial genotype’ and programmes which free the architecture from established spatial hierarchy dictated by socio-political constructs (Kim and Dickson 2002). While Koolhaas’s spatial spontaneity and fluidity could stimulate social mobility, Berke promotes the inhabitant’s individuality through ‘architecture of every day’. Berke uses quotidian architecture to counter the ‘false heroism’s force-feeding of monumentalism and fashionable styles while proposing architecture should be experienced on an individual’s terms (Hay, Lovine and Wright 2001). However, both Koolhaas and Berke’s proposition has been criticised as spurious. Koolhaas has neglected freedom as human experience and only does so when convenient; on the contrary, Berke took refugee behind the term ‘every day’, and her uncontroversial design refuses autonomy by restricting critical thinking from inhabitants. Therefore, the autonomy of inhabitants is perpetuated by the conflict, interaction, and adaption within architecture, which originated by respecting the public’s right to self-determination. Denise Scott Brown and Robert Venturi use the success of Las Vegas’ popularism based Iconographic architecture as an example of institutions and architects surrendering their control of urban to the mass (Trufelman 2018). Brown’s ‘formal analysis’ method proves that when both the architecture and the inhabitants are self-governing and self-determining, they become a feedback loop of constant adaptation of negotiation (Koolhaas and Ulrich 2001, 592-617). By respecting the diversity between autonomous individuals and vernacular contexts, Brown and Venturi reinvigorate architecture’s relationship with socio-political issues from merely responsive to provocative (Brown 1979).
Closer to home, autonomous architecture faces the challenges of decolonisation and land exploitation. Melbourne’s grid plan, and by extension, the suburb, has always controlled the public and tamed nature (Aaron 2017). With no place for public assembly and interaction, Melbourne as a city of destinations lacks the eclecticism found within the more contentious urban context. In Image task B, both Deakin University and the Brickwork as points of attraction provide chances of encounter and places to perform social intercourse. They possess the potential of radiating mobility and creativity onto the suburban space. However, Melbournian’s grid planning and its by-product- the sprawling of homogenous housing architecture - stagnated this development. The grid as a control method disregards humans’ autonomous nature and incorporates natural landscape and infrastructures to isolate and divide Burwood into fragmented islands with inadequate linkages. Instead of promoting social mobility, their proximity gives rise to property values, their progressive and even heroic architectural gesture becomes an accomplice to gentrification. In order to achieve architectural autonomy and urbanism, the built environment should not cast domination on the natural landscape nor infringe on the inhabitant’s freedom of self-determination. Architects and urban planners need to look beyond the linear relationship of the tram, university, and the Brickwork; but rather introduce complexity and heterogeneity into suburbia.
In the crisis map, this cystic relationship between the grid, the suburb and destination city is even more apparent. Nature becomes subservient to economic development as authorities exploit it through the physical occupation using the grid. It imposes order on the public and restricts the public from critically engaging in public matters. The exploitation of natural landscape is hidden behind a well-decorated narrative of economic growth, while further dispossession of aboriginal land and appropriation of aboriginal culture is hidden inside the new aboriginal kitsch mentioned by Burrow and Harwood (Burrow and Harwood 2018). The prima facie response to the striking visage of the Barak building is its progressive agenda of decolonisation. Parallel to the Italian radical’s critiques on the reformist left’s effort of using progressivism art to achieve political agenda, Burrow and Harwood criticises the building employing art as a form of further colonisation and dispossession (Aureli 2014, 217-238). The Barak building’s material effect of gentrification and capital accumulation is well-camouflaged in its good deeds. Underneath the superficial autonomy of the building’s climate control and the monumental façade, it silently recruits unwitting inhabitants and pedestrians to participate in the action of creating a false progressive narrative as a front to its consumeristic intention. Geographically, Melbourne’s uncontrollable expansion of its built environment into the mountain ranges is beyond any individual or public’s comprehension. The intangible effect of homogenous urban sprawl is to numb the public from realising their loss of autonomy over their actions. In order to rescue architecture and the population from the control of the institution and the state, the architectural discipline needs first to recognise its hypocrisy of self-proclaiming progressivism and return the control of the urban environment to its inhabitants. Architectural autonomy is responsible for recognising the autonomy of nature and the landscape, while architects and urban planners should engage with nature as its custodian rather than its master.
In the current crisis, the suburban space has become responsible for many social, professional, and even political activities, often conducted in the confines of the city. However, it lacks the stimulation from the diverse and complex urban contexts, nor the autonomy and freedom that comes with the heterogeneous built environment. Demonstrated by Koolhaas’s study of Manhattan and Brown and Venturi’s formal analysis on Las Vegas, autonomous architecture is the catalyst for creating social justice by facilitating critical dialogues between autonomous inhabitants, between different and even conflicting forms or programmes. For Burwood, its social stagnation results from Deakin university and Brickwork’s programmatic and demographic exclusivity and their blatant conformism to the consumeristic value. Meanwhile, the suburban grid plan and homogeneous architecture solidified their destination status and obstructed the closer integration with the suburb. Melbourne’s expansion is ironically like Italian radicals totalising, modular and anti-architectural typology on the urban scale. However, Melbourne’s suburban architecture is intricately linked with the mandate for capital accumulation and land exploitation. The oversimplified revival of Italian radical architecture has lost its thought-provoking allure as it becomes a pre-digested commodity (Alexis 2015). The future urbanisation effort should detest the universalism and commodification and position architecture as the conduit for critical dialogue.
In conclusion, autonomous architecture is ultimately a constant negotiation between the autonomy of the architecture, its autonomous inhabitants, and the autonomy of nature. As human society is complex and contradictory, so is the relationship between and within the built environment. While architecture’s ability to generate and facilitate critique is an integral part of architectural autonomy, architects and the public should also recognise the need to change the mindset to accept controversies. The architecture discipline should not only look at the current urban expansion and grid planning as a failure; but rather a unique opportunity for reflection and interrogation.
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