Piranesi, Koolhaas,

and the Subversion of the Concept of Place

Jun-Yang Wang

mong contemporary architec- century urban development: tabula cartoons, and newspaper ads, revealing
i rural theoreticians, Rem Kool- rasa large-scale planning, and the con- not only the miscellaneous forms of
m haas is certainly one of the sequent loss of characrer and identity Koolhaas' present practice as an archi-
most intriguing. He persistently chal- of place. He has the ability to discern tect but also the imprint of his earlier
lenges the modes of thinking architects the sublime in the vulgar, hope in the career as a journalist and screenwriter.
and planners employ in the name of terrifying, reason in the schizophrenic The structure of the book is indicated
human scale, historic values, and the condition of late twentieth century by its title: architectural materials are
like. He denies that place and identity cities. He searches for hidden laws in organized by size, both in terms of the
are necessarily dependent upon the past, an overwhelming urban wilderness in scope of building construction and the
whether this necessity is argued in terms an attempt to subvert the foundations scope of the thinking involved - or
of the Heideggerian sophistication or of post-war architectural and urban rather the magnitude of the subject
popular consensus. He embraces with- discourse, to reverse its trajectory by matter in question. However, as the
out reservation the forces that shape raising questions, and to explore the author suggests, the book has no con-
twentieth century urban civilization, potential in the perpetual transforma- nective tissue binding one part to an-
embracing thereby what many consider tion of the contemporary world. other. Many of the writings are embed-
the dark side of global modernization - Koolhaas' latest book, S, M, L , XL, ded between projects as autonomous
an aspect of development that grows unites his attempts to challenge assump- episodes rather than supportive mor-
darker as the world approaches the next tions and provoke discussion with tar. Taken as a whole, Koolhaas declares,
millennium. His strategy is to explore clearly outlined alternative strategies. the book is a free fall in the space of the
the remaining possibilities by accepting The book is a conglomeration of es- topographic imagination, and as such
and even applauding much of what says, fictions, diaries, travel logs, pro- its outcome can be read and interpreted
others tegatd as the failure of twentieth jects, drawings, models, photos, in an infinite variety of ways. 1

JUN-YANG WANG: PIRANESI, KOOLHAAS, 7

Fig. 1: Rem Koolhaas and Ella Zenghelis, Exodus, or the
Voluntary Prisoners of Architecture, entry for Casabella's
competition "The City as Meaningful Environment",
1972.

A t this p o i n t one is necessarily Association i n L o n d o n , driven by " i n - vided i n t o a series o f identical squares,
reminded o f the affirmative "nomad t u i t i o n , unhappiness w i t h the accu- each w i t h its o w n program, ranging
thought" exercised by modern thinkers mulated innocence o f the late sixties, from private allotments to communal
from Friedrich Nietzsche to Gilles and simple journalistic interest," 4
facilities. Together these squares are to
Deleuze and Félix Guattari. N o m a d Koolhaas chose " T h e Berlin W a l l as restore the debased ideals o f the metro-
thought operates i n smooth, open- Architecture" as the theme for his final polis "to a sparkling intensity that
ended, flowing spaces where one can thesis project. w o u l d tempt the inhabitants o f the
rise up from any p o i n t and move to One year later, i n 1972, i n an entry subconscious L o n d o n to escape into
any other. I t is a striving for freedom for the Casabella competition on the the strip i n an impulsive exodus - and
from codification, whether ideological, theme o f "A C i t y w i t h a Significant to become its Voluntary Prisoners." 6

institutional, or professional. 2
Nomad E n v i r o n m e n t " on w h i c h he collabo- D e p i c t i n g a "paradise" w h i c h is
thought derives from the vagabond rated w i t h Elia Zenghelis, the thread "good" enough to attract the inhabi-
imagination o f the savage heart on a o f the Berlin W a l l as Architecture tants o f L o n d o n and thus t u r n the
constant inner and ourer voyage, aspi- reappeared, but this time took the physical structure o f the o l d city into
r i n g to rranscend the limits o f experi- f o r m o f a fiction about the city o f a pile o f ruins, Exodus is certainly a
ence and thought. L o n d o n . Entitled "Exodus, or the Utopian vision. As Demetrios Porphy-
Koolhaas' inner voyage parallels his Voluntary Prisoners o f Architecture," rios observed early i n the 1970s, though
outer voyage: the book can be read as the tale begins w i t h a direct allusion it is hardly the first urban utopia i n
a documentary o f his tour o f rhe w o r l d to the Berlin Wall: "Once, a city was history, Koolhaas' and Zenghelis'
over the past decades, and o f his inquiry divided i n two parts. One part became Exodus does not aim to expose the ills
inro the condition o f twentieth century the G o o d Half, the other part the Bad o f contemporary cities, as its historical
architecture and cities under the impact Half. T h e inhabitants o f the Bad H a l f predecessors d i d , nor does i t propose
o f politics, economics, and globaliza- began to flock to the good part o f the solutions to cure or redeem those ills. 7

t i o n . Koolhaas firsr became k n o w n as divided city, [their flight] rapidly T h e architectural aim o f Exodus is t o
the author o f Delirious New York, how- swelling i n t o an urban exodus." T h e 5
awaken the sleepwalking metropolis
ever, the starting p o i n t o f his journey story describes an "artificial paradise," o f L o n d o n and to insert i n its inarti-
and thus OMA's place o f origin is, as a strip o f land that runs through the culate organism a social condenser o f
Fritz Neumeyer has suggested, "not center o f L o n d o n , "protected" f r o m "totally desirable alternatives;" and yet
N e w York, as one m i g h t assume, b u t the existing city by two walls along its the tale exposes the dark side o f such
B e r l i n . " A student at the Architectural
3
perimeter. Inside, the zone is subdi- social perfection - that architecture

8 NORDISK ARKITEKTURFORSKNING 1997:2

From the very beginning o f his hundred years, is, as Tafuri acknow-
architectural career, then, Koolhaas ledges, rather startling. What makes
abandoned the intellectual founda- this historical analysis of the avant-
tions of "polite" architecture. In its garde possible are the frequent refe-
place one finds, in the words of the rences to the works of Piranesi in the
late Italian criric and historian Man- writings of Sergei Eisenstein, one of
fredo Tafuri, a "negative Utopia" 8
the leading film makers of the moder-
which eliminates the distance nist avant-garde. Tafuri cites Eisen-
between imagination and annihila- steins exceptional study of Piranesi's
tion, between totality and nothing- work Le Carceri as justification for
ness, between Utopia and anti- establishing the birth of the avant-garde
utopia. Only a few people through- with Piranesi. Piranesi was interested
out history have approached archi- in theatrical scenery, and it is with
10

tecture in such a way. One was the his imaginary theater of the Carceri,
eighteenth century Italian architect Tafuri suggests, that the theme of
and etcher Giovan Battista Piranesi, imagination, with all its ideological
whose plan of Campo Marzio is, significance, enters into the history of
significantly, one of only two pre- modem architecture. With Le Carceri
rwentieth century architectural the historical avant-garde enters the
Fig. 2: Giovan Battista Piranesi, Careen, images in the more than one thou- real world, and Tafuri logically cont-
plate VII (first state), etching. sand pages of S, M, L, XL. inues his study with the theme "the
stage as 'virtual city'" in which the field
of the avant-garde expands from the
can function as an instrument for Piranesi a n d t h e " A r c h a e o -
cabaret to the metropolis.
imprisoning. At the same time as its logical R e c o n s t r u c t i o n " of
"architectural warfare" stems from the t h e Campo Marzio This kind of visual or theatrical
"hedonistic science of designing collec- affiliation between Piranesi and mo-
To my knowledge, Tafuri was the first
tive facilities that fully accommodate dern architecture leads finally to a
to explore Piranesi's work in relation
individual desires," the tale presents "historicity of the avant-garde." How-
to the modern architecture of the twen-
scenarios as from a horror srory, from ever, Tafuri's introduction to the Car-
tieth century rather than the Roman-
the purgatory-like reception area to ceri is particularly interesting for his
ticism of the eighteenth and nineteenth
the totalitarian supervision of the allot- assertion that "what must be made clear
centuries. He did so because of Pira-
ments. Thus, unlike most urban from the start is that all this breaking
nesi's "predilection for melodrama and
Utopian thinking, the idealized metro- up, distorting, multiplying, and
elemental fear, coupled wirh a taste
politan prorotype, the "Good Half" disarranging, apart from the emotional
for 'picturesque' ruins and rustic,
of London, promises nothing but reactions it can elicit, is nothing more
bucolic landscape." In The Sphere
9

relentless pictures from a doomed than a systematic criticism of the concept

and the Labyrinth, a study of the avant-
civilization, an apocalipsis cum figuris. of place, carried out by using the instru-
garde and archirecture, Tafuri starts
Instead of a utopia conceived on the ments of visual communication." 1 1

with a chapter entitled "'The Wicked

traditional basis of "goodness," Exodus At first there seem to be no further
Architect:' G. B. Piranesi, Heterotopia,
is wrought with "dirty realism," revea- explorations of this "systematic
and the Voyage." To begin a detailed
ling in irs psychological confrontation criticism" of the concept of place in
analysis of the relationship between
with the Berlin Wall the delirium, Tafuri's study - in fact, nowhere in
the avant-garde and architecture with
miseries and duplicity of the twentieth the book did he mention this issue
Piranesi, who preceded the twentieth
century metropolis. again. Nevertheless, given the discourse
century avant-garde by nearly two

JUN-YANG WANG: PIRANESI, KOOLHAAS, 9

on the concept o f place i n recent o f Roman architectural and enginee- his predecessors had. O n this open
decades, it is not difficult to see the ring achievement Piranesi had begun marshland the historically developed
significance o f his point: i f the concept w i t h the Prima Parte di Architetture e language o f specifically Roman b u i l -
o f place is inherenrly associated w i t h Prospettive and continued w i t h Opere ding types is affirmed; the combination
the center, rhen the Carceri, w i t h its Varie di Architettura, Prospettiva, Gro- o f individual building types, however,
constant metamorphosis o f space, is a teschi, Antichita and the four volumes appears by and large disorderly. M o n u -
"systematic criticism o f the concept o f o f Le Antichita RomaneP U n l i k e the ments are massively presented but
'center.'" A n d i f the concern for the frenzy, or to use Eisenstein's w o r d , the arbitrarily disposed. B u i l d i n g types
concept o f place has resulted i n the "madness" o f the Carceri, the archaeo-
14
vary intensively, but artificially, and
need for a concise language o f archi- logical approach to the Campo Marzio for their o w n sake. Streets have vanis-
tecture, then the ecstatic intertwining seems a rather rational, "scientific" hed, as has the entire domestic fabric
o f superstructures, the u n d e r m i n i n g investigation o f the history o f Rome, o f the city: there is no spatial continuity,
o f the laws o f perspective and thus the "supported by a sound scholarly no structural integration. Instead, a
potential liberation o f form - or rather method, appropriate to the Enlighten- hodgepodge o f individual wills is at
liberation from form - o f the Carceri ment and its concern w i t h the pheno- work, resulting i n a heterogeneous void,
present an "unequivocal attack on the mena o f historical change." 15
a chaotic, senseless heap o f b u i l d i n g
'language insofar as i t is a mode o f However, as Stanley Allen has noted, objects that have little to do w i t h one
acting upon the w o r l d . ' " A n d i f the i n a project ostensibly devoted to the another. Even i n the areas composed
legitimacy o f the concept o f place is archaeological reconstruction o f ancient w i t h geometric and hierarchic struc-
justified i n terms o f the subject's Rome, Piranesi clearly ignored the tures, such as the double bend o f the
dependence on history and nature, historic, monumental center o f Rome, river w h i c h seems i n terms o f plans
then, i n the "negative Utopia" o f the where rhe existing ruins were concent- and bird's eye views to represent the
Carceri, " H i s t o r y and Nature become rated and stood more or less free o f center o f the area, rhe extravagant diver-
detacbedfmm the subject, not to open contemporary b u i l d i n g . Instead he
16 sity o f b u i l d i n g types undermines the
up a new universe o f values, but rather turned to the Campus M a r t i u s , a principles o f urban organization. A
to present this radical divergence as marginal zone which remained outside language o f urban f o r m is thus first
the only possible value." 12
the boundary o f Rome — the Severan exaggerated and then transgressed.
Wall - until the Aurelian Wall was builr Taken as a whole, the Campus Martius
M u c h o f Tafuri's analysis o f the
i n the second half o f the t h i r d century. also violates the very n o r i o n o f city
Carceri holds true for another o f
T h e choice o f the site is not w i t h o u t walls as urban boundaries. Abandoning
Piranesi's works, 77 Campo Marzio
significance: for Piranesi, the Campo the walled city o f ancient Rome, Pira-
dell'Antica Roma, w h i c h he published
Marzio had always been associated w i t h nesi's Campo Marzio appears to have no
i n 1761-62, shortly after reworking
the training o f the young and w i t h boundaries, as though able to expand
and elaborating o f the Invenzioni
military exercises, bur d u r i n g the em- endlessly i n all directions.
Capricciose di Carceri. There are, how-
ever, some unmistakable fundamental pire i t was open to other uses - to Inasmuch as Piranesi grounded his
differences between the two works. pleasure and spectacle, to funerals and reconstruction on topographical inves-
Whereas the "systematic criticism" o f burials. I n other words, the Campo tigations o f the site as well as evidence
the concept o f place i n the Carceri Marzio is characterized not only by its provided by the fragments o f the Seve-
appears as a message from nowhere, marginality, but also by its otherness, ran Marble P l a n , the Campo Marzio
18

the Campo Marzio brings us directly by its incongruity w i t h the city proper cannot be regarded as purely the pro-
to Rome, sovereign among cities. o f ancient R o m e . 17

duct o f his imagination. Piranesi h i m -

Unlike the Carceri, the Campo Marzio I n his "archaeological reconstruc- self stressed this p o i n t i n a letter to the
is a more or less historic gesture, carry- t i o n , " Piranesi presented more o f the Scottish designer Robert A d a m , when
ing on the archaeological invesrigation otherness o f the Campo Marzio than he wrote that, i n combining his on-site

10 NORDISK ARKITEKTURFORSKNING 1997:2

Fig. 3: Giovan Battista Piranesi, ground plan of the northern area of the Campus Martius, 1762.

investigations with a careful study of those beyond the Porta Capena, and regarded as a contravention of the city
the old plan of the city in the Capitol he will find that the ancients trans- and its rules. Tafuri reveals the book's
and the knowledge of the best histori- gressed the strict rules of architecture true nature: "the archaeological mask
ans of the time, he hoped that "no one just as much as the moderns. Perhaps of Piranesi's Campo Marzio fools no
would claim that I had followed my it is inevitable and a great rule that one: this is an experimental design and
own whim rather than...any evidence." the arts on reaching a peak should the city, therefore, remains an un-
At the same time, Piranesi makes clear then decline, or perhaps it is part of known." It is the Campo Marzids
20

in the same lettet his aspiration to man's nature to demand some license singularly unfamiliar character that
transcend the established language of in creative expression as in other things, makes it a colossal non-place, the anti-
architecture: but we should not be surprised to see thesis of the place known as Rome. It
But before anyone accuses me of that ancient architects have done the is this unknown aspect of the city too
falsehood, he should, I beg, examine very things which we sometimes criti- that makes Piranesi's project another
the ancient plan of the city which I cize in buildings of our own times. 19
"systematic criticism" of the concept
have just mentioned, he should of place, this time on the urban plane,
examine the villas of Latium and that Perhaps, more than an investigation of calling into question the vety concept
of Hadrian atTivoli, the baths, the ancient Rome, Piranesi's reconstruction of the city. To be sure, given the condi-
tombs and other ruins, especially of the Campo Marzio ought to be tion of late twentieth century cities,

JUN-YANG WANG: PIRANESI, KOOLHAAS, 11

Piranesi's Campo Marzio no longer today i f current t h i n k i n g is unable to Surrealism by Salvador D a l i . 2 4
Accor-
appears merely an ominously fore- operate w i t h o u t the past as its frame ding to D a l i himself, the method is a
shadowing "negative Utopia," b u t a o f reference? W i t h o u t a contemporary f o r m o f "irrational knowledge" based
realistic description o f urban conditions frame o f reference, any assessment o f upon the "interpretative-critical asso-
around the globe today, where key the present becomes no more than a ciation o f delirious phenomena." T h e
aspects o f traditional cities such as or- prosecution list o f what has gone lost. method thus enables the subject to pass
der, integration, centrality, and urban Even though the past is the source o f from the " w o r l d o f d e l i r i u m " to the
boundaries are disappearing. Alex identity and place, can we n o t take "plane o f reality" through the discovery
Krieger made the connection between the loss o f that past, the erosion o f o f new and objective "significance i n
Piranesi and present-day N o r t h Ame- historic identity and the eclipse o f the i r r a t i o n a l . " 25
I n other words, what
rican cities, suggesting that "character," as the p o i n t o f departure is given is irrational, delirious, and
for our comprehension o f rhe present insane, and paranoiac-critical activity
I f we look, say, at greater Toronto or transforms the "delirium o f interpreta-
and the future? Koolhaas' urban dis-
Atlanta or the outskirts of historic t i o n " from the "pathological pheno-
course addresses these and other sim-
Boston, or at the most infamous of menon" o f paranoia into an adventure
ilar questions.
edge cities, Tysons Corner in northern o f poetic discovery w h i c h leads finally
Virginia, do we not see environments
Koolhaas and the to a conquest o f the irrational.
as boundless and multi-centered, as
"Paranoiac-Critical Tourism" A sort o f paranoiac-critical approach
conspicuously wasteful, redundant,
of t h e G e n e r i c City appears i n the w o r k o f Koolhaas as
and eccentric, as "un-master-planned,"
I n an essay on Surrealism, H a l Foster early as the Exodus. Here, as Fritz
and just potentially chaotic, as
describes the experiences o f André Neumeyer noted, one is presented
Piranesi's Rome? 21

Breton as an assistant i n a psychiatric w i t h a psychological terrain, a "Freud-

It seems, however, that the whole dis- clinic at Saint-Dizier i n 1916. H e ian tableau" o f the bizarre forms o f life
cussion o f the concept o f place, and treated a soldier w h o believed that the and the split reality o f the metropolis.
many other architectural and urban war was a fake, w i t h the wounded made Here, by virtue o f a surreal mode o f
issues o f the past decades, are more up cosmetically and the dead on loan perception and representation, "the
often than not motivated by an u n w i l l - from medical schools. T h e soldier hunger for reality could find abundant,
ingness to accept this new reality. T h e intrigued the young Breton: here was exotic nourishment and the desire for
point o f departure for these discussions a figure shocked i n t o a paranoid alter- contradiction could discover sudden
is generally the historic community, native reality that was also somehow a surfaces o f friction to lay bare the secret
and the lamentation over the loss and critique o f this reality. To what extent
23
poetic content o f this reality." I t is, 26

devaluation o f tradirional cities has this experience at Saint-Dizier impacted howevet, i n Delirious New York that
resulted i n a state o f m i n d that, i n Breton's later life as a surrealist is impos- Koolhaas clearly refers to Dali's para-
Koolhaas' words, is "fixed on what we sible to know precisely, but the signifi- noiac-crirical method. For Koolhaas,
have lost, wrecked w i t h p h a n t o m cance o f the phenomenon o f paranoia paranoiac-critical method is a sequence
pain." 22
But do we believe that i n a on Surrealism can hardly be overstated. o f t w o consecutive but discrete opera-
world o f change the goal o f our inrellec- For not only Breton but many other tions:
tual discourse is either to determine surrealists as well, from Giorgio de
1. the synthetic reproduction of the
h o w things were i n rhe past or h o w Chirico to M a x Ernst, tried to capture
paranoiac's way of seeing the world in
they should be on rhe basis o f h o w and explore the anatomization o f
a new light - with its rich harvest of
they used to be? Should not our aim paranoia i n their art. I n particular, as
unsuspected correspondences, ana-
be to understand the way things Breton stated, "an instrument o f
logies and patterns; and 2. the com-
actually are? W h a t role can critical primary importance," called the para-
pression of these gaseous speculations
architectural and urban theory play noiac-critical method, was injected into
to a critical point where they achieve

12 NORDISK ARKITEKTURFORSKNING 1997:2

Fig. 4: Rem Koolhaas with Zoe Zenghelis, City of the Captive Globe, 1972.

the density of fact: the critical part of Atlanta to Singapore to cut with preci- illustrated by the "exaggerated extra-
the method consists of the fabrication sion at the "delirium" of the metropolis polation of an essentially unconscious
of objectifying "souvenirs" of the pa- and its new condition in late twentieth Metropolitan landscape," known as
29

ranoid tourism, of concrete evidence century - often on a deep subconscious the "City of Captive Globe," which
that brings the "discoveries" of those level. Not surprisingly, while Manhat- he conceived before writing Delirious
excursions back to the rest of mankind, tan is used in Delirious New York as New York. "Devoted to the artificial
ideally in forms as obvious and "a model to outline fundamental conception and accelerated birth of
undeniable as snapshots. 27
attributes of high-density, high-rise theories, interpretations, mental con-
urbanity," embodied in the Down- structions, proposals and their inflic-
This interpretation of the paranoiac- town Athletic Club, what is called
28
tion on the world," Koolhaas wrote,
critical method reveals one of the the Culture of Congestion is hardly to the City of the Captive Globe is the
surgical scalpels Koolhaas uses as his be understood as physical congestion capital of Ego, "where science, art,
journey around the world continues alone. It is above all a programmatic poetry and forms of madness compete
from Berlin to New York and from density which can be most precisely under ideal conditions to invent,

JUN-YANG WANG PIRANESI, KOOLHAAS, 13

Fig. 5: OMA, Boompjes Tower Slab, project, 1979-82.

destroy and restore the world o f pheno- is everything. USA: everything big. shopping center by Bakema. Rotterdam
menal Reality." 30
Here the metropolis, Europe: everything small." T h e n i n later became a "gigantic p r o b l e m , " its
or the Culture o f Congestion, is a rigid 1979 an event intervened w h i c h p u t open center was filled i n w i t h closed
chaos i n the form o f the Manhattan aside the dilemmas altogether: K o o l - blocks i n the name o f urban renewal -
grid i n w h i c h each block represents an haas was invited to do a project i n as the I B A wrote on its banners, t o
independent island w i t h unique laws, Rotterdam. Similar ro OMA's Berlin,
31
make the city more "urban." I n this
a m a x i m u m agglomeration o f differenr Rotterdam was once a historic center regard Rotterdam manifests the situa-
values - architecturally as well as ideo- and was k n o w n for its o w n specific tion i n Europe i n the age o f the "Recon-
logically. modernity between the wars. T h e n struction o f the European City."
Koolhaas returned to Europe i n the everything had been suddenly Koolhaas' view o f Rotterdam at the
late 1970s to teach at the AA i n London. destroyed by the war. T h e city was time was quite different. For Koolhaas,
His return was not w i t h o u t dilemmas: rebuilt, but never regained its pre-war not only d i d the city's unique quality
"USA: post-modernism t r i u m p h a n t . urbanism. I n fact i t was considered a depend precisely on the openness o f
Europe: historicism o n the rise - the model city i n the late '50s and early its center, bur, as i n the case o f Berlin,
'new' superseded, maybe forever? USA: '60s because o f its open center and its richness stemmed from the proro-
freedom from context. Europe: context perhaps above all the Lijnbaan, a linear typical sequence o f its m u t a t i o n and

14 NORDISK ARKITEKTURFORSKNING 1997:2

destruction. His view is hardly surpri- dilemma, that of context and non-con- Koolhaas' position is surely never
sing considering the difference between text, seems unresolved. For even in that of a reformist. In the heart of urban
Koolhaas' strategy of operating in the the "terrifying beauty of the twentieth chaos he aspires to imagine nothing-
present and the protagonists for the century," where "each architectural ness, claiming that "where there is
reconsrruction of European cities based doctrine contradicts and undoes the nothing, everything is possible. Where
on pte-twentieth century history. essence of the previous one as surely as there is architecture, nothing (else) is
Whereas the "Reconstruction of the day follows night," there is a context to possible." In a sense, it is this longing
36

European City" in the name of history explore by which "each bastard gets for nothingness that leads him to tran-
sets out to erase the most significant his own genealogical tree; the faintest scend the dilemma of context or non-
fact of history (the destruction of the hint of an idea is tracked with the context simultaneous to, or rather as a
world wars), rwentieth century Europe obstinacy of a detective on a juicy case result of, surpassing the dilemma of
is, in Koolhaas' eyes, ridiculously of adultery." Certainly this context
34
the big and the small. Beyond a certain
beauriful "for those who can forget — is no longer that of figure-ground scale, Koolhaas declares, architecture
for a fleeting moment - the arbitrary contextualism. Nor does the clinical acquires the properties of Bigness
delusions of order, taste and integrity." inventory of the actual conditions of which jettisons the "art" as well as the
O f course this is no easy task: when each site have the same objective as "morality" of architecture. Bigness
order, taste and integrity are gone, "the contextualism. transforms the organizational, struc-
resulting landscape needs the combined Yet "context" remains an architec- tural and interior/exterior relationships
interpretative ability of Champoleon, tural issue, perhaps because of the of architecture. Bigness renders what
Schliemann, Darwin and Freud to simple fact that any building is located traditionally can be controlled by
disentangle it." And when returning on a specific site. Site conditions can architects or planners uncontrollable.
to the past is dismissed for practical be understood in terms of a formal or Bigness discards urban contexts.
reasons, the unfortunate alternative is spatial matrix, but also in terms of the Bigness breaks "with scale, with archi-
often "the most clinical inventory of configuration of service and supply on tectural composition, with tradition,
the actual conditions of each site, no the site or the flow of human and capital with transparency, and with ethics —
matter how mediocre, the most calcu- forces through it. Regardless of those the final, most radical break: Bigness
lating exploitation of its objective po- conditions, and whether a building's is no longer part of any urban tissue.
tential." But Koolhaas found inspira- surroundings are traditional of modern, It exists; at most, it coexists. Its subtext
tion in such a dry, factual analysis of the site will one way or another have is fuck context." 37

the site. In the case of Rottetdam, " i t an impact on the building. The asser- In his manifesto of Bigness, Koolhaas
was the banal conditions of water and tion of context in this sense suggests focuses on the issue of large-scale
traffic, together with the reductive both an unreserved acceptance and an buildings and the architectural and
inventory of modern typologies, that imaginative approach to reality in all urban consequences of such buildings.
triggered the imagination." 32
it messiness and unpredictability — an This issue has haunted architectural
This position was expressed in attitude which seems to be part of and urban discourse in recent decades,
architectural form in OMA's project Koolhaas' strategy in many cases. On resulting in a contextual mode of
for the Boompjes Tower Slab and the the other hand, as Jacques Lucan has thinking, the notion of human scale,
projects for Kochstrasse and Friedrich- noted, any obligation to context is, in and the like. These strategies aim to
strasse in Berlin, which were designed the end, a feformist position which criticize, break down, or simply avoid
at about the same time. With these assumes that in the wotld we inhabit the Big. Koolhaas goes in the opposite
projects, postmodern "histoticism," conditions are fixed and there is there- direction. He fully accepts the architec-
the first of the three dilemmas that fore no longer a need for territories tural and urban consequences of the
Koolhaas faced in the late '70s, is that are still undetetmined, free, con- Big, treats it as a theoretical domain
transcended. Meanwhile, the second
33 querable only by new orders ex nihilo?'' (as indicated by the capital B), and

JUN-YANG WANG: PIRANESI, KOOLHAAS, 15

Fig. 6: Atlanta.

explores its potential. I n so doing, how- a collective theater where " i t " happens; the primary concern; nor is what the
ever, he is concerned not merely w i t h there's no collective " i t " left. The street city should be. Dismissing these two
the size or scale o f b u i l d i n g projects, has become residue, organizational questions, he tries instead to discover
w h i c h range from the small V i l l a device, mere segment of the continuous what rhe ciry actually is. Again he went
dall'Ava to the extra large at Euralille. metropolitan plane where the remnants to America to find possible answers.
N o r is his interest primarily the dilem- of the past face rhe equipment of the "Sometimes i t is i m p o r t a n t to find
ma o f context or non-context as such. new in an uneasy stand-off... Bigness what the city is - instead o f what i t
Beyond breaking w i t h urban contexts, no longer needs the city: it competes was, or what is should be. This is what
Bigness has urban implications which with the city; it represents the city; it drove me to Atlanta - an i n t u i t i o n
can only be comprehended i n terms o f pre-empts the city; or better still, it is that the real city at the end o f the 20th
the concept o f the city itself. the ciry. 38

century could be found there...." So

begins Koolhaas' w r i t i n g on Atlanta,
I f Bigness transforms architecture, irs Unmistakably, Koolhaas has left the
an outstanding example o f the A m e r i -
accumulation generates a new kind of traditional concept o f the city far
can city w h i c h , i n Koolhaas' view,
city. The exterior of the city is no longer behind. W h a t the city was is no longer

16 NORDISK ARKITEKTURFORSKNING 1997:2

"reveals some of the most critical the downtown having been atomized, — distance: it has been constituted
shifts in architecture/urbanism of the its autonomous particles could go any- and skillfully maintained as the neces-
past 15 years."39
where: "now allis city, a new persua- sarily ragged, myrhical gateway to the
Like many other American cities, siveness that includes landscape, park, destabilizing, novelty-introducing
Atlanta is actually mote a vast region industry, rust belt, parking lot, housing outside. 43

than a city; and like almost all Ameri- tract, single-family house, desert, air-
Kwinter's observation is perfectly
can cities it once had, and in a sense port, beach, river, ski slope, even down-
accurate insofar as Koolhaas' world
still has, a downtown. But in the 1960s town." Or, conversely, "Atlanta is not
journey is restricted to Eutope and
and '70s, while the downtown area of a city; it is a landscape."
41

America. But beyond the New World,

many other great American cities lay Atlanta's new urban - or rather, as
the development of modern Asia
in a deep state of despair, downtown Koolhaas puts it, "post-urban" - land-
provides another new territoty (thus
Atlanta was being revived and in fact scape is a case of Bigness par excellence.
his use of the plural "New Worlds")
thoroughly rebuilt. For Koolhaas, this Koolhaas himself makes no secret of
through which Koolhaas comes to
rebuilding of the downtown area was the significance of this case in OMA's
explore the condition of Bigness, this
not urban renewal in the usual sense; history, stating that it was the shock
time along with the volatile process of
it was "a virgin rebirth: a city of clone' of the Bigness of the New World(s)
global modernization. The outcome
characterized by an accelerating redeve- rhat made what was already implicit
is his writing on Singapore, an Asian
lopment catalyzed by architect/developer in Delirious New York explicit, especially
city which in just thirty years has deve-
John Portman. He started by rebuilding against the background of Europe. 42

loped from a rraditional village into a

one block at a time to form a compre- It need hardly be mentioned that its
modern, late twentieth century city.
hensive urban system in which build- most explicit expression comes with
ings are connected to one another by the "Manifesto of Bigness." And as far In what sense is Singapore a test-
bridges and skywalks. One essential as the concept of place is concerned, it bed of Bigness for Koolhaas? Certainly
element of this new urban system was is clear that Koolhaas' endorsement of not in the sense of its physical size or
the architectural device, reinvented by the new urban reality in Atlanta discards population; rather in the sense of the
Portman, which he called the "atrium." concepts derived from traditional cities, Bigness implicit in the global process
Portman's atrium is a huge glass-roofed and traditional European cities in of modernization: "Bigness, through
interior space surrounded by hotel particular. As Sanford Kwinter notes, its very independence of context, is
rooms, office cubicles, restaurants, and nothing in Koolhaas' intellectual pro- the one architecture that can survive,
all sorts of facilities. Each atrium duction better verifies this elabotation even exploit, the now-global condition
becomes "a replica as inclusive as down- from New York to Atlanta: of the tabula rasa." * Historically speak-
4

town itself, an ersatz downtown." The ing, tabula rasa, or beginning anew
cumulative result of all the atrium In Koolhaas, the concept of "America" from a clean slate, is not a new pheno-
buildings is that "downtown disinteg- has always loomed large. It has served menon of modernization. It first hap-
rates into multiple downtowns, a clus- not only enormous aesthetic ends, pened, in fact, in Europe. Haussmann's
ter of autonomies." Consequently,
40
but has played a major role in genera- boulevards, Le Corbusier's Plan Voisin,
what seemed to help rehabilirate and ting both the novelry and the radicality and Ludwig Hiberseimer's housing
stabilize Atlanta's downtown actually in OMA's work (especially in the project for downtown Berlin all
acceletated its demise in two ways. primarily European context with exemplified the tabula rasa approach
First, the traditional concept of the which they have dealt).... For Koolhaas, in various ways. This attitude soon
street as an outdoor space no longer America, although deeply studied came to be regarded as the worst sin
makes sense: even when the street space and assimilated into his work, has of modernism, a sin to be eradicated
remains, the actual life of the city now always strategically been kept at a at all costs. Thus, as Koolhaas describes
occurs within the buildings. Second, "dangerous" - and therefore creative it, "the city of Zurich has found the
most radical, expensive solution in

JUN-YANG WANG: PIRANESI, KOOLHAAS, 17

modernization mature i n its o w n right
to transcend the dilemmas between
tradition and modernization that seem
to have been so painful for Europeans?
The contributions o f non-western
sources to the post-war architectural
and urban discourse have been nume-
rous. M o r e often than not, however,
these contributions have tended to
f o r m an anthropology o f the past.
Koolhaas' w r i t i n g on Singapore is
fundamentally different: i t is, perhaps
for rhe firsr time i n the history o f archi-
recrural and urban planning theory,
an arrempr to introduce a non-wes-
tern source, i n Koolhaas' words, i n an
"ecology o f the contemporary." H e 48

writes that "Singapore is incredibly

'Western' for an Asian city, the apparent
v i c t i m o f an out-of-control process o f
modernization. The temptation is to
leave i t one o f those conundrums
doomed, i n a last polite little spasm o f
colonialism, to remain so, simply
because they are Asian, or Chinese."
However, he argues,
Fig. 7: OMA, "Tabula Rasa Revisited", Misson Grand Axe, Paris, site expanssion over
time, 1991. this perception is a Eurocentric mis-
reading. The "Western" is no longer
reverting to a k i n d o f reverse archaeo- — especially i n Europe — we declared
our exclusive domain. Except perhaps
logy: layer and layer o f new modernists every b u i l d i n g i n the entire zone that
in the regions of its origins, ir now
- shopping centers, parking, banks, is older than 25 years worthless - n u l l
represents a condition of universal
vaults, laboratories - are constructed and void - or ar least potentially
aspiration. It is no longer something
underneath the center." 45
removable?" 47
But i n southeast Asia,
"we" have unleashed, no longer some-
Even for Koolhaas, respect for urban where cities leap from the nineteenth
thing whose consequences we there-
context is legirimate i n many cases. 46
century straight into the twenty-first,
fore have the right to deplore; it is a
Nonetheless, the desire to envision the shorrage o f b u i l d i n g space exacer-
self-administered process that we do
nothingness led h i m to employ an i n - bated by the exponential growth o f
not have the right to deny - in the
terpretation o f the tabula rasa approach urban population and living standards,
name of various sentimentalities - to
in OMA's project for the redevelop- has the tabula rasa approach to urban
those "others" who have long since
ment o f La Defense i n Paris. I n the planning been practiced i n reality to
made it their o w n . 49

European context, however, this project an historically unprecedented extent.

w i l l remain entirely theoretical, based Is what we see happening i n Asia an Paul Ricoeur has pointed to the con-
as i t is on a not very realisric premise: unexpected product o f a Pandora's box flict between the emerging universal
"whar w o u l d happen if, even i n Europe first opened i n Europe, or w i l l Asian civilization and our established natio-

18 NORDISK ARKITEKTURFORSKNING 1997:2

nal cultures, suggesting that in our modern world,
"mankind as a whole is on the btink of a single world
civilization representing at once a gigantic progress for
everyone and an overwhelming task of survival and
adapting our cultural heritage to this new setting." 30

Thirty years' tabula rasa has almost entirely erased

Singapore's cultutal past, the original village now but a
wreck floating in an ocean of hygienic newness. The
toad to continued modernization seems to make the
Ricoeurian paradox either even more overwhelming, in
that the task of survival and adapting a well-established
cultural heritage to new conditions was entitely ignored
in the rush to modernization in Singapore and many
other places in Asia, or completely irrelevant, in that
since the "cleaning of the slate" almost nothing has
survived to be adapted to the new setting. However, it is
worthwhile to note that the wholesale tabula rasa
planning that was the basic strategy in Singapore's
modernization would have been impossible to
implement if it had not been supported by aspects of
the local cultural heritage, such as "a hard-core
Confucian shamelessness, a kind of ultimate power of
efficiency" for "taking care" of its people and bringing
"help to the multitude," the willingness to pay the
51

price tequired to catch up to the leading industrial

countries and become a player in global markets. In this
sense, one might consider Singapore a case of moder-
nization based on cultural heritage despite physical
appearances to the contrary. Or is it?
Even during the past thirty years of pursuing tabula
rasa development in its pure form, the hunt for identity
and character in Singapore has never ceased. As
Koolhaas observed, "the manipulation of identities,
through which the respect given to each specific culture -
its ethnic, religious heritage - is an alibi for avoiding
the serious demands - for more and more freedoms - of
modern culture." What is more, in the age of con-
52

sumerism, when global consumer culture strives for not

only the consumption of goods but also the consump-
tion of identity and history, the manipulation of iden-
tity indeed has far-reaching physical consequences. It
engenders cultural subversions like the stylized "Asian"
villages, Chinese gardens, the reconstruction of various
kinds of temples, tower buildings with "Chinese" roofs,

JUN-YANG WANG: PIRANESI, KOOLHAAS, 19

and the shopping centers i n post-mo- to shopping centers; airports are its Here again the issue of identity arises
dern Confucian style that have popped city gates, where both hyper-local and i n regard to the Generic City, w h i c h
up throughout Singapore. I t is by no hyper-global commodities are avail- by definition is supposed to be devoid
means inconceivable that one day the able; ir is N e w Towns i n an endless re- o f identity. Perhaps i t is true that what
original village w i l l be entirely recon- petition o f the same simple structural is called identity, character, and sense
structed somewhere, i f not on its origi- module; the Generic C i t y is formless, o f place is, i n Ian Nairn's words, "not a
nal sire. I n Singapore, the physical ap- a "free-style" assemblage o f three ele- fine art extra, i t is something that we
pearance of cultural heritage and ethnic ments - roads, buildings, and nature. cannot afford to do w i t h o u t . " 5 4
This
identity is sooner overwhelming than It is the final death o f planning. W h a t placelessness, this loss of character and
absent, though what remains o f the is more, i n this the city o f tabula rasa, identity, is perceived as an ever-increas-
past is no more than histotical kitsch. the cycle o f interdependence between ing worldwide phenomenon today,
From Singapore - and i n fact from history and identity is completely and thus identity is more sorely needed
Atlanta as well - there is only one step severed: than ever. I n the Generic City, i t is no
left to the Generic Ciry, the synthetic surprise that as soon as a h i n t o f iden-
reproduction and compression of urban it is nothing but a reflecrion of present t i t y is discovered, i t is utilized to the
facts or "souvenirs" into an urban form need and present ability. It is the city maximum:
that is ideal from the p o i n t o f view o f without history. It is big enough for
I f it is water-facing, then water-based
the paranoiac-critical method, and as everybody. It is easy. It does not need
symbols are distributed over irs entire
obvious and undeniable as snapshots maintenance. I f it gets too small it
territory. I f it is a porr, rhen ships and
to the rest o f m a n k i n d . T h e Generic just expands. I f it gets old it just self-
cranes will appear far inland. I f it is
C i t y is by definition multi-racial as destructs and renews. It is equally
Asian, then "delicate" (sensual,
well as multi-cultural; i t is located i n a exciting - or unexciting - everywhere.
insctutable) women appear in elastic
tropical climate; its business is clearly It is "superficial" - like a Hollywood
poses, suggesting (religious, sexual)
manifested i n the form o f d o w n t o w n studio lot, it can produce a new
submission everywhere. I f it has a
towers; its urban life is concentrated identity every Monday m o r n i n g . "
mounrain, each brochure, menu,
ticket, billboard will insist on the hill,
as i f nothing less then a seamless
tautology will convince. ' 5

W h a t Koolhaas conceives as the para-

noiac-critical tourism o f the Generic
C i t y is obviously a parody o f modern
man's desperare need for identity,
character, and sense o f place i n the so-
ciety o f consumption. This parody
suggests that what Ricoeur called the
"lowest degree o f creative culture" is
an inevitable consequence o f con-
sumer culture i n a universal civilization.
But i t should also be noted that i n the
same essay Ricoeur stresses the "tragic
law o f the creation o f a culture" w h i c h
diametrically opposes the "false con-
Fig. 11 : OMA, 2 Bibliothèques Jussieu, Paris, competition entry, 1993 sciousness" o f identity and the steady

20 NORDISK ARKITEKTURFORSKNING 1997:2

accumulation o f the tools that make the demand for order and the w i l l to psychic and social accommodation to
up a civilization. Creativity, Ricoeur formlessness."' For Koolhaas, the new
8
the relentless processes o f destruction
asserts, eludes all definitions.' I n light
6
conditions o f architecture and urba- and creation through w h i c h the city
o f Ricoeur's tragic law o f creativity, is nism i n the late twentieth century mutates according to the shifting
not disregard for the identity o f a place have not only changed the very concept requirements o f capitalism." Perhaps
60

( " D o w n w i t h character!" as Koolhaas o f the city, they have rendered urbanism nowhere is this "anguish o f urban
puts it) not merely a hypothetical issue as a profession i n its traditional sense dynamism" more overwhelming than
for the Generic City, but i n fact a impracticable, and thus made the i n the leading figures o f the M o d e r n
necessity i f we are to approach what struggle between order and chaos mean- Movement. Some o f them, from W i l -
remains to be explored after the Generic ingless. I n other words, inasmuch as liam M o r r i s and Ebeneezer H o w a r d
has taken over? the city is the creation o f designers to Frank L l o y d W r i g h t , tried to con-
and planners, practical demands and quer this "anguish o f urban dynamism"
Conclusion creative w i l l are both o f vital i m p o r - by suggesting a direct opposition or
There are two grounds for the concept tance, whether the result is order or alternatives to i t ; others, such as O t t o
o f place: what a place was i n the past formlessness. But to Koolhaas, today's Wagner, L u d w i g Hilberseimer, and Le
and what i t should become i n the cities are anything but products o f the Corbusier, were fascinated by the
future. Piranesi's archaeological recon- design profession. I f our cities are dynamics o f modern cities, and yet
struction o f the Campo Marzio seemed formless rather than formally ordered, that fascination was accompanied by
to be a reference to the past, yet behind chaotic rather geometrically structured, a persistent fear o f chaos and a continual
the mask o f archaeology his desire for it is n o t because they are designed to effort to bring the metropolis under
creative expression resulted i n an ex- be so but because they are the outcome control, either from an architectural
perimental design that challenged the o f real forces i n operation - flows o f or a socio-ideological p o i n t o f view.
rules o f architecture and cities, and capital, flows o f h u m a n beings, flows Hence the urban Utopias o f the twen-
subverted the concept o f place i n terms o f w o r k . I f the essence o f the super- tieth century: for Howard i t is "a peace-
o f past and future simultaneously. T h e modern city is its loss o f a sense o f ful path to real reform;" for Le Cor-
paranoiac-critical tourism o f Koolhaas' place, this loss is n o t pre-designed but busier, "revolution can be avoided"
Generic C i t y constitutes the "archaeo- a consequence o f late-capitalist when the chaos and injustice o f nine-
logue o f the 20th century," utilizing modernization. teenth-century cities are conquered
u n l i m i t e d plane tickets rather than by the harmony and beauty o f the
I f Piranesi's Campo Marzio as a
the shovel o f the traditional archaeo- Contemporary C i t y . T h e urban
61

subversion o f the concept o f place is

logist, and disregarding questions o f
57
Utopias o f M o d e r n i s m are never fully
to be understood against the backgro-
what places have been or should be. realized, and the anguish o f urban
u n d o f an architectural ideology based
Koolhaas, simply by focusing on the dynamism is never fully overcome.
o n the Enlightenment concept o f
present, by l o o k i n g into what places T h e gap between the modern spirit
Reason and its c r i t i c i s m , then the
59

or cities actually are i n a rapidly chang- and the modernized environment was
subversion o f the concept o f place i n
ing w o r l d , launches a discourse i n becoming clearer i n the late 1950s, the
Koolhaas must be seen i n relation to
w h i c h the foundations for the concept result, according to Jane Jacobs, o f
the epistemological and economic
o f place are criticized, transgressed, "the principles and aims that had
changes since the nineteenth century
and finally subverted. shaped modern, orthodox city planning
w i t h w h i c h the experience o f moder-
and rebuilding," referring i n particular
But there ends the parallel between nization can be summed up. Jonathan
to H o w a r d and Le Corbusier. 62
Early
Piranesi and Koolhaas. Piranesi Crary has suggested that one is brought
Modernism's urban ideas and the m o -
subjected the city to an experimental to "what Manfredo Tafuri called the
dern environments created i n accor-
design i n which the epic tone is, accord- coming to terms w i t h 'the anguish o f
dance w i t h t h e m have been a new
ing to Tafuri, the struggle "between urban dynamism' - the precarious

JUN-YANG WANG: PIRANESI, KOOLHAAS, 21

source o f anguish ever since. This holds condition, we must firsr do away w i t h what exists, and yet i n a sense implies
true for Europe as well as America. I n all preconceptions - architectural as the abandonment o f all ideologies. His
his essay on the experience o f moder- well as urban, ideological as well as position is, as Alejando Zaera has sug-
nity, Marshall Betman wrote that "So moral. W h a t is left to explore is not a gested, "a strategic rerreat, the cessation
often the price o f ongoing and expand- matter o f what things were ox should o f ideological resistance to the develop-
ing modernity is the destruction not bebm what things actually are. To ment o f contemporary c i v i l i z a t i o n . " ss

merely of'traditional' and 'pre-modern' Koolhaas' exhilaration, urban develop- Inasmuch as the development o f con-
institutions and environments but - ment now tends to run its own course, temporary civilization is not unequi-
and here is the real tragedy - o f every- putting planners i n a position o f power- vocal, and inasmuch as our understan-
rhing most vital and beautiful i n the lessness. A n d yet "since it is out o f ding and treatment o f reality remains
modern w o r l d itself." 63
Here, Berman's control, the urban is about to become a necessarily value-laden, Koolhaas'
themes o f the 1960s "shout i n the major vector o f the imagination. strategy o f non-resistance w i l l itself
street" and the attempt at " b r i n g i n g i t Redefined, urbanism w i l l nor only, or undoubtedly meet w i t h opposition. I t
all back home" i n the '70s are but two mosrly, be a profession, b u t a way o f is p r o o f o f Koolhaas' inrellecrual
examples o f how the post-war archi- t h i n k i n g , an ideology: to accept what strength that i n rendering urbanism a
tectural and urban discourse has been exists. "Gay Science" aiming ar "perfectly
haunted by anguish over the loss o f The crisis o f the ideological and rational answers to perfectly insane
urban vitality. Utopian aspirations o f modern archi- questions," 67
he remains so intriguing

W h a t then is the relationship tecture has been rigorously analyzed that, as N i c k Land said o f Georges

between Koolhaas' architectural and since Tafuri. According ro Tafuri, this Bataille, one feels rhat "to accept his

urban thinking and the Modern Move- crisis, resulting i n the demise o f the writings is an impossibility, to resist

ment? O n the one hand he is k n o w n architect as social ideologue, is only them an irrelevance. One is excited

for paying persistent homage to the the final testimony o f some "impotent abnormally, appalled, but w i t h o u t

modernist tabula rasa strategy and to and ineffectual myths, w h i c h so often refuge." 6 8

the paradigmatic dimension o f rhe serve as illusions that permir the survival
Siedlungen and Broadacre City. Yet o f anachronistic 'hopes o f design.'" 6 5

this homage is never overshadowed by Whether or not he sympathizes w i t h

rhe fear o f chaos or the uncontrollable the political position o f Tafuri's analy-
forces o f development. Koolhaas' is a sis, Koolhaas' call for a new ideology
die-hard Modernism that embraces seems to have consolidated a post-
the consequences o f late-capitalist Tafurian position - though absent
modernizarion, spectacular as well as Tafuri's pessimism, for the fire o f m o -
relenrless, and entirely free f r o m dernity rhat Koolhaas' w o r k embraces
anguish. Faced w i r h new conditions, is fueled by far-reaching o p t i m i s m .
he is exalted rather rhan traumatized, N o r should this post-Tafurian position
maintaining that unprecedented, be confused w i t h the k i n d o f "autono-
unanticipated, and thus potentially mous architecture" w h i c h i n post-war
liberating possibilities could revitalize architectural and urban discourse took
an exhausted profession. Koolhaas the entirely linguistic course o f typology
accepts the new conditions de facto. or deconsttuction, because this k i n d
Change continues w i t h or w i t h o u t o f autonomy has long since been Jun-Yang Wang, arkitekt
our consent; change is a pure "given," dismissed by Koolhaas. Instead, K o o l - och tekn.dr, är verksam vid
and thus i n itself is value-free. I f we haas declares a new ideology w h i c h is School of Architecture and
are to understand the new urban transposable, capable o f accepting Urban Planning, Tongji
University, Shanghai.

22 NORDISK ARKITEKTURFORSKNING 1997:2

Notes
1. OMA, Rem Koolhaas and Bruce Mau, 18. Wilton-Ely, Piranesi as Architect and 44. Koolhaas, S, M, L, XL 515.
S, M, L, XL (The Monacelli Press, 1995) Designer 40. 45. Koolhaas, S, M, L, XL 1249.
xix. 19. Jonathan Scott, Piranesi (London: 46. Koolhaas, S, M, L, XL 1099.
2. See Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, Academy Editions and St. Mattins 47. Koolhaas, S, M, L, XL 1105.
A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Press, 1975) 166-167. 48. Koolhaas, S, M, L, XL i o n .
Schizophrenia (Minneapolis: The Uni- 20. Manfredo Tafuri, Architecture and 49. Koolhaas, S, M, L, XL 1013.
versity of Minnesota Press, 1987). See Utopia, (London: MIT Press, 1973) 15. 50. Paul Ricoeur, "Universal Civilization
also Gilles Deleuze, "Nomad Thought," 21. Alex Krieger, "Conflicting Ideals for and National Cultures," History and
The New Nietzsche, ed. David B. Alli- the City," CSD News Winter/Spring Truth (Chicago: Northwestern Uni-
son (New York: Dell, 1977). 1995: 16. versity Press, 1965) 271.
3. Fritz Neumeyer, "OMA's Berlin: The 22. Koolhaas, "Understanding the New 51. Koolhaas, S, M, L.XLioiy, 1037.
Polemic Island in the Ciry," Assemblage Urban Condition," GSD Atev Winter/ 52. Koolhaas, S, M, L.XLm^.
11: 38. Spring 1996: 13. 53. Koolhaas, S, M, L, XL 1250.
4. Koolhaas, S, M, L, XL 216. 23. Hal Foster, Compulsive Beauty (Lon- 54. Edward Relph, Place and Placelessness
5. Koolhaas, S, M, L, XL 5. don: MIT Press, 1993) xii. (London: Pion Limited, 1976) 32.
6. "Exodus/1972," Architectural Design 24. Franklin Rosemont, ed., What is Sur- 55. Koolhaas, S, M, L.XL 1263.
47-5 (i977) 3*8. realism? Selected Writings, by André 56. Ricoeut, "Universal Civilization and
7. Demetrios Porphyrios, "Pandora's Box," Breton (New York: Monad, 1978) 136. National Cultures" 281.
Architectural Design 47.5 (1977) 357. 25. Dawn Ades, Dali (London: Thames 57. Koolhaas, S, M, L, XL 1263.
8. Manfredo Tafuri, The Sphere and the and Hudson, 1982) 119-126. 58. Tafuri, Architecture and Utopia 16.
Labyrinth (London: MIT Press, 1987) 26. Neumeyer, "OMA's Berlin" 46, 38. 59. Tafuri, Architecture and Utopia 14-16.
29. 27. Rem Koolhaas, Delirious New York 60. Jonathan Crary, "Notes on Koolhaas +
9. See Miranda Harvey, Piranesi: The (NewYork: Monacelli Press, 1994) 238. Modernization," Any9 (1994).
Imaginary Views (London: Academy 28. " Architectural Design 47.5 (1977) 319. 61. For the architectural as well as ideo-
Editions, 1979) 7. 29. " Architectural Design 47.5 (1977)" 331. logical dimensions o f these urban
11. Tafuri, The Sphere and the Labyrinth 17. 30. Koolhaas, Delirious New York 294. Utopias, see Robert Fishman, Urban
12. Tafuri, The Sphere and the Labyrinth 31. Koolhaas, S, M, L, XL 518. Utopias in the Twentieth Century —
27, 34, 38. For the concept of place in 32. Koolhaas, S, M, L, XL 206-8. Ebeneezer Howard, Frank Lloyd Wright,
terms of center, history and nature, 33. For an discussion of the struggle with andLe Corbusier (London: MIT Press,
and the language of architecture, see "historicism" in this sense, see Man- 1982).
Christian Norberg-Schulz, Genius Loci; fredo Tafuri, "Modern Architecture 62. Jane Jacobs, The Death and Life of
Norberg-Schulz, Existence, Space & and the Eclipse o f History," Theories Great American Cities, New York: Pere-
Architecture (London: Studio Vista, and History of Architecture (London: grine Books, 1984) 13-35.
1971); and Norberg-Schulz, The Concept 1980). See also Neumeyer, "OMA's Ber- 63. Marshall Berman, All That Is Solid
of Dwelling (New York: Rizzoli, 1985). lin". Melts Into Air (New York: Verso, 1989)
13. In fact the Campo Marzio was done as 34. Koolhaas, S, M, L, XL 206, 208. 295.
the fourth and final volume of Le 35. Jacques Lucan, "Contextualism and 64. Koolhaas, 5, M, L, XL 969, 971.
Antichità Romane. Universality," Lotus International I ) ]4.
1 -
65. Tafuri, Architecture and Utopia 181-182.
14. Sergei Eisenstein, "Piranesi, or the Flui- 36. Koolhaas, S, M, L, XL 199. 66. Alejandro Zaera, "OMA 1986-1991.
dity of Forms," appendix, The Sphere 37. Koolhaas, S, M, L, XL 495-502. Notes for a Topographic Survey,"
and the Labyrinth, by Tafuri (London: 38. Koolhaas, S, M, L, XL 514-15. OMAJKoolhaas ip8y-ippj (Madrid: El
MIT Press, 1987). 39. Koolhaas, S, M,L, XL 835. Croquis, 1994).
15. Wilton-Ely, Piranesi as Architect and 40. Koolhaas, S, M, L, XL 839-43. 67. Koolhaas, S, M, L, XL 971 and Kool-
Designer 40. 41. (Koolhaas, S, M, L, XL 850. haas, "Understanding the New Urban
16. Stanley Allen, "Piranesi's Campo Marzicr. 42. Koolhaas, 5, M, L, XL 503. Condition" 13.
An Experimental Design," Assemblage 43. Sanfotd Kwinter, "Flying the Bullet, ot 68. Nick Land, The Thirstfor Annihilation
10: 72. When D i d the Future Begin?" ARCH + — Georges Bataille and Virulent Nihi-
17. Allen, "Piranesi's Campo Marzio' 75. 132 June 1996. lism (London: Routledge, 1992) xii.

JUN-YANG WANG: PIRANESI, KOOLHAAS, 23