Hubert Damisch - Noah’s Ark: Essays on Architecture

Noahs Ark

Writing Architecture series

A project of the Anyone Corporation; Cynthia Davidson, editor

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Noahs Ark: Essays on Architecture Hubert Damisch, 2016

Noahs Ark

Essays on Architecture

Hubert Damisch

Edited and with an introduction by Anthony Vidler

Translated by Julie Rose

The MIT Press

Cambridge, Massachusetts

London, England

2016 Massachusetts Institute of Technology

This translation was made possible in part by a grant from the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form by any electronic or mechanical means (including photocopying, recording, or information storage and retrieval) without permission in writing from the publisher.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Damisch, Hubert, author. | Vidler, Anthony, editor. | Rose, Julie,

1952 translator.

Title: Noahs ark : essays on architecture / Hubert Damisch ; Edited and

introduction by Anthony Vidler ; Translated by Julie Rose.

Description: Cambridge, MA : The MIT Press, 2016. | Series: Writing

architecture | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2015038269 | ISBN 9780262528580 (pbk. : alk. paper)

Subjects: LCSH: ArchitecturePhilosophy.

Classification: LCC NA2500 .D33513 2016 | DDC 720.1dc23 LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2015038269

EPUB Version 1.0

In memory of

JOSEPH ZALEWSKI

(19071979)

Professor in the School of Architecture

at Harvard University

CONTENTS

Sources

The essays collected here are sometimes partly rewritten, oftentimes translated (sometimes anew) by the award-winning translator Julie Rose, and edited by Anthony Vidler. The prologue first appeared as LArche de No inRevue Critique 43 (JanuaryFebruary 1987). Chapter 1, Aujourdhui, larchitecture, first appeared as inLe temps de la rflexion, no. 2 (1981). Chapter 2, The Column, the Wall, was published in French and English inArchitectural Design 49 (1979), in a special issue on Leon Battista Alberti edited by Joseph Rykwert. Chapter 4 first appeared as La Colonnade de Perrault et les fonctions de lordre classique inLurbanisme de Paris et lEurope, 16001680, edited by Pierre Francastel (1969). Chapter 5 was first published as Larchitecture raisonne, the preface toLarchitecture raisonn: Extraits du Dictionnaire de larchitecture franaise (1964). A previous translation appeared inArchitectural Design 50, nos. 34 (1980), a special issue on Viollet-le-Duc. Chapter 6 first appeared as Du structuralisme au fonctionnalisme inA la rescherch de Viollet-le-Duc, edited by Geert Bekaert (1980). Chapter 7, Ledoux with Kant, was originally published as the preface to the French translation of Emil KaufmannsDe Ledoux Le Corbusier: Origine et dveloppement de larchitecture autonome (1981). It was translated by Erin Williams and previously appeared in Perspecta 33, a special issue titled Mining Autonomy (2002). Chapter 8 first appeared as Lautre Ich ou le dsir du vide: Pour un tombeau dAdolf Loos inCritique 31, nos. 339340 (AugustSeptember 1975). The translation here, by John Savage, was published first inGrey Room 1 (Autumn 2000). Chapter 9 first appeared as Ornamento inLEnciclopedia Einaudi, vol. 10 (1980). Chapter 10, Against the Slope: Le Corbusiers La Tourette, first appeared in English, translated by Julie Rose, inLog 4 (Winter 2005). Chapter 11 first appeared as La plus petite difference inMies van der Rohe: Sa carrire, son hritage et ses disciples, an exhibition catalogue published by Centre Georges Pompidou (1987). Chapter 12 appeared as Le parti du dtail inJean Prouv: Constructeur 19011984, published by Centre Georges Pompidou (1990). Chapter 13 is a compilation of four essays that first appeared in theAny book series, published by the Anyone Corporation with the MIT Press: How We Deal with History, inAnyhow (1998); Three Minus Two, Two Plus One: Architecture and the Fabric of Time, inAnytime (1999); The Offense of Wandering, translated by Mortimer Schiff, inAnymore (2000), and Anything But, inAnything (2001). Chapter 14, Blotting Out Architecture? A Fable in Seven Parts, translated by Julie Rose for publication inLog 1 (Fall 2003), was first given as the lecture Effacer larchitecture at the Canadian Centre for Architecture in Montreal in May 2003.

Introduction

I keep thinking of myself as some sort of displaced philosopher. The issue of displacement is, in any sense, crucial to my work. According to Gilles Deleuze, philosophy has mostly to do with inventing concepts. In that sense, I am not a philosopher: I do not invent concepts, but I try to displace them. For instance, the concept of structure is of great interest, when dealt with in artistic terms. I first became interested in architecture because architecture provides us with an open series of structural models.

Hubert Damisch

The following essays, written between 1963 and 2005, represent Hubert Damischs forays into architectural theory. Organized roughly according to the chronology of their subject matter, they span the period between the Renaissance and the present, a period of architectures emergence as a discipline with all the attendant problems of origin (Noahs Ark or Adams House?), structure (abstract model of relations between the elements, or supporting framework?), meaning (communicative sign or silent system?), and, with increasing industrialization, material (building fabric or essential nature?).

These questions and more permeate Damischs reflections, which are not so much couched in terms of theoretical pronouncements or historical exegeses but rather read as what he calls in another preface a set of exercises. In the case of the previous collection, under the titleSkyline, Damischs exercises were primarily (as his subtitleThe Narcissistic City indicates) concerned with the imaginary, symbolic realms explored by psychoanalysis. In the present collection, the preoccupation is less with Freud or Lacan (although the presence of a modern subject is always lurking close to the surface) as it is with the general idea of structure, construed both physically and mentally and analyzed in terms introduced by structuralists both anthropological and linguistic, from Claude Lvi-Strauss to Roland Barthes.