Narrative
Architecture: A Manifesto
Manifesto
There is a form of architecture that aims at not getting
built. An architecture on paper that should not be confused with paper
architecture. An architecture based on pure statements in which real brick,
mortar, and poured concrete are substituted by cut-and-pasted paper and
narrative prose. An architecture about the failed and accomplished ambitions of
buildings and master plans. An architecture that although focused on the
critique of this ambition, is not concerned with just any form of critique. An
architecture not preoccupied with the expert’s view in newspapers, nor the
common man’s comments on populist design blogs, nor the propaganda centrefolds of glossy magazines. An architecture that
talks directly to architecture about architecture. An architecture of
disciplinary struggle. This form of architecture focuses on the critique
of ideology, after recognizing that ideology – in its multiple incarnations –
has infiltrated all spheres of architectural production, including the sphere
of criticism itself. An architecture that through narrative texts and a vast
repertoire of images (collages, photomontages, drawings, storyboards, comic
strips, animations) – creates allegorical stories that aim to expose the impasse and
misfires of architecture in theory and practice. This form of architecture is
simultaneously both theory and practice. It is theory as practice; critique as
architectural project. This form of architecture is called Narrative
Architecture and this is its manifesto.
Coup
In order to be an effective tool against the seriousness of
architectural discourse, Narrative Architecture relies on the subversive power
of humor. It paints cheeky portraits
that parody through irony and sarcasm the shortcomings of ideology. Narrative
Architecture turns disillusion into mockery, disappointment into subversive
critique, pessimism into kynical
reason.1 It drills the sharpness of critique into the ossified shell
of hegemonic architectural discourse. Narrative Architecture is made out of
blown-up impostures. Its components are exaggerated characteristics innate to architecture. Architectural ambition
freed from the pragmatic distortions
of selective inhibition.
Although ostensibly heroic, Narrative Architecture is not
utopian. Its colossal monuments, impossible landscapes, and allegoric texts are
real depictions mirroring the absurd scenarios imagined by architectural
discourse. Narrative Architecture implies the sublime autonomy of theory.
Narrative Architecture is pure theory under a magnifying glass. It is
architecture as 'endless
supermarket',' continuous monument' and 'voluntary imprisonment'. Narrative
Architecture is the product of failed struggles and lost wars. It recognizes
its inability to ‘win’ the fight. It feeds from past, present, and future
failures. Because it learned that Team 10, Yona Friedman, and even
artist-turned-urbanist Constant failed to break from the modernist discourse
and the tools of its ideology, Narrative Architecture turns the tools of
ideology against themselves.
If Modernism used every medium available – publications,
architecture, urban plans, even CIAM as a platform to project its ideology– to shoot down the opposition, Narrative
Architecture points the ideological guns back at Modernism. When an
architectural position tries to consolidate itself as a hegemonic discourse and
avoids “coming voluntarily to the table of negotiation” with its opponents,
Narrative Architecture provokes “the polemical continuation of the miscarried
dialogue through other means”.2 Narrative Architecture summons the
dialectic properties of narrative in order to reestablish the conversation and
expose the lies. If architecture promises a city made of glittering white
concrete, Narrative Architecture casts the whole world in cement. If
architecture renders buildings behind curtains of dense green foliages,
Narrative Architecture depicts a universe contained in a forest of
skyscraping trees. If architecture decides to surf the waves of economic and
social indifference, Narrative Architecture projects a world washed away by a
neoliberal tsunami.
Narrative Architecture tackles every form of ‘enlightened
false consciousness’ and reveals what lies behind the disguising masks of
social impromptu and urban reconstruction; of the intoxicating greenery of
certified sustainability and neoliberalist social philanthropy, of the
aesthetic fantasies-turned urban oversimplifications of parametricism and other
momentary aesthetic trends; of the perverse reductionism of cartoonish diagrams
and immaculate renders.3 Narrative Architecture doesn’t shoot down
the banners and slogans of architectural discourse, it reads them aloud against
the ideological wind so as to reveal their absurdity.
Post Mortem
Because ideology presents concepts as their opposite – lies
as truth, opportunism as responsibility, self-consciousness as social
consciousness – it has condemned Narrative Architecture to the sterile
indifference of the museum wall, to the anesthetizing beauty of the art book.
However, Narrative Architecture belongs on the drawing board, on the computer screen, in
the architectural discussion. Narrative Architecture belongs to the present, to
the schools, to the practices. Narrative Architecture reveals the condition of
the zeitgeist,
now. If Ideology is doublethink, Narrative Architecture screams “down with Big
Brother”. While ideology is watching you, Narrative Architecture watches it
back. In a world driven by nonsensical statements, the most absurd of positions then becomes the clearest path. When
everything seems to stagnate, Narrative Architecture keeps moving.
1 The concept of ideology critique applied here is borrowed from Peter
Sloterdijk Critique of Cynical Reason
(1983). According to Sloterdijk Kynicism, as opposed to modern cynicism
(enlightened false consciousness), could be used as a strategy to destabilize
the hegemomic powers of the establishment. Kynicism consists often of humor
(through satire or irony) that attempts to highlight the impasse of absurd
intellectual postures in order to carry out an ideology critique. For more see
Peter Sloterdijk, Critique of Cynical
Reason, trans. Michael Eldred (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press,
1987).
2 “Enlightenment is reminded how
easily speaking openly can lead to camps and prisoners. Hegemonic powers cannot
be addressed so easily; they do not come voluntarily to the negotiating table
with their opponents, whom they would prefer to have behind bars.” (…) “Ideology
critique means the polemical continuation of the miscarried dialogue through
other means. It declares a war on consciousness, even when it pretends to be so
serious and ‘nonpolemical’”. Ibid
3 Thus, we come to our first
definition: “Cynicism is enlightened false consciousness.” Ibid.
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