Brutalism Exposed: Photography and the Zoom Wave

Author(s): Hadas A. Steiner

Source: Journal of Architectural Education (1984-), Vol. 59, No. 3 (Feb., 2006), pp. 15-27
Published by: Taylor & Francis, Ltd. on behalf of the Association of Collegiate Schools of
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Brutalism Exposed

HADAS A. STEINER

University at Buffalo, SUNY

Photography and the Zoom Wave

Photography was instrumental in conceiving representation as the effort to grasp the variable
rather than the objective appraisal of reality. This paper explores how avant-garde practitioners in
the mid-1960s harnessed reproductive technology for its momentary meanings. Using the
confluence of the Economist complex, the film Blow-Up, and Archigram 7, the phenomenon is
examined in the context of London-based architectural discourse. While the embrace of unstable

signification would present further challenges, possibility still dominated over loss at this critical
juncture. The allusiveness of representation intimated the potentials of a milieu where nothing
stagnated and images, in and of themselves, constituted architectural practice.

Blow-Up

Blow-Up begins with a jeep overflowing with

the one hand and mews conversions on the other, the

The opening scene of Blow-Up, Michelangelo

mimes and clowns circling the empty courtyard of the

Antonioni's film of 1966 set in London; takes place

complex.3 The costumed party spills out of the

progresses. When he discovers that he may have

in the courtyard of the recently completed

vehicle and then from the bare plaza into the ani-

inadvertently recorded a murder in the process of

sneaking photographs of what appeared to be a tryst,

dichotomy of mage versus reality unravels as the film

Economist complex (1959-1964) (Figure I).1 With

mated streets of the West End to engulf the con-

this commission, Peter and Alison Smithson put the

vertible of a jaded celebrity photographer as he

he scours the images for evidence. Ambiguity of the

vision they had expounded over the previous

returns from documenting a night in a Camberwell

mage leads to obsessive scrutiny of the photo-

decade to the test, not on the margins, but right

flophouse (Figure 2). From this initial disruption of

in the hub of London. The project entailed a cluster

the separation of site from city, social and spatial

graphic grain (Figure 3). Pictures, the photographer

discovers n the end, are as elusive as the transient

of three stone-clad buildings- an office tower,

collocations abound throughout the narrative, always

events they capture. The existential nature of truth

a bank, and a residential block- grouped around

encapsulated by differentiations, even polarities, in

unravels.

a plaza that was raised above street level. "The city

the urban environment. The time was ripe for the

is left outside the site boundary," the Smithsons

observation of such contrasts given the range of

mages. There is a minimum of dialog and, during

explained, with the plaza providing a transitional

zone from the encounters of the street.2 The

construction and reconstruction in many European

the blow-up sequences, none at all. For a story that

cities, from corporate headquarters in the municipal

includes the possibility of a murder, there is also

varying sizes of the buildings were further scaled

core to megastructures being built to accommodate

little in the way of action, even mystery. We watch

for the intimacy of program by the adaptation of

the urban poor on the outskirts. The theme is

along with the photographer as the instability of his

the bays on the elevations. The roach limestone

encapsulated by the work of the protagonist, who,

world s displayed to him. The narrative emphasis is

Blow-Up is a film about the language of

chosen for the cladding was a highly textured

addicted to the ephemeral sensations of his imme-

less on his exploits than on how the environment

durable material, distinctive for being scattered

diate environment, prods everything he encounters

affects him or, more accurately, fails to do so. The

throughout with hollows left by dislodged

fossils. Unlike the detachment of structure

with his lens. When bored of his lavish lifestyle and

film is, in the end, about the contemporary condi-

hedonistic fashion shoots, he turns his hand to cap-

tion and the ambiguity inherent in the process of

communication. Its two featured modes of photo-

and glass apparent in the paradigm of the

turing the gritty aspects of London life in black and

curtain wall, here the frame, shell, and services

white documentary-style photographs of the realist

graphy-the stark mages of photojournalism and

were integrated.

kind. Against the background of housing estates on

the commercial practices on which the fashion

15 STEINER Journal of Architectural Education,

pp. 15-27 2006 ACSA

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1. Economist Plaza, 1964. (Michael Carapetian)

2. Mimes in the Economist Plaza, still from "Blow-Up," 1966. (Warner Bros.)

Parallels of Life and Art

that migrated into architectural practice from scien-

industry thrived- were hallmarks of postwar image

Both of the photographic practices exemplified in

tific disciplines such as cartography and engineering.7

Axonometric projection represented not a way of

culture.4 Black and white representations of spon-

Blow-Up, replete with their ideological implications,

taneity, especially blue-collar artlessness, reflected

infiltrated the confines of architectural graphics.

seeing, as perspective and photography did, but

a serious endeavor aimed at capturing the essence

While pop art had taken hold in London in the fifties,

a way of drawing.8 Subjective representations would

of social reality. Color photography, on the other

the flooding of consumer imagery into architectural

disturb the balance.

hand, was circulated through the glossy mass media

imagery proper was a phenomenon of the next

decade. For a standard that had been drained for the

taken by Nigel Henderson of children playing in the

and belonged to the cosmopolitan, if transient,

When the Smithsons included photographs

domain of consumerism. The film, however, ques-

most part even of color, such an assimilation of

streets of Bethnal Green as part of their presentation

tions the authenticity of one mode of representation

external modes of representation was notable.

for the ninth Congrs Internationaux d'Architecture

over another. Is captured contingency more real

Modernism had continued the academic rejection of

Moderne (CIAM) held at Aix-en-Provence in 1953,

than the composed pliancy of the fashion shoot?

subjective techniques, such as perspective and

they were thus making a statement in form as well as

The by-now familiar observation dramatized is that

atmospheric rendering.6 Modernist graphics assumed

content (Figure 4). This run down area of East

documentation of any kind, whether of homeless-

that representation was a transparent tool for com-

London was familiar to Congrs Internationaux

ness or of couture, comes about through dominance

municating a philosophy of design; drawings were

d'Architecture Moderne attendees from a study of

and transforms the subject to aesthetic object.5

treated as objective, measurable portrayals of

that slum presented to the congress by Jos Llus

Distinctions between life and art- city and site-

objects. Plan, section, and elevation were the desir-

Sert.9 The unaltered photographs provided snapshots

from the intrusion of the clowns on come undone

able modes of conveying architectural information, as

of engaged city life within the more technical

along with the protagonist.

well as their amalgam in the axonometric projection

language of urban reform. The notion of a genuine

Brutalism Exposed: Photography and the Zoom Wave 16

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3. Blow-up scene, still from "Blow-Up," 1966. (Warner Bros.)

d'Architecture Moderne display boards was not

unprecedented, the harsh photoreportage, captured
contingency of these slum images certainly was. The

images represented a contrast of the fluid nature of

the urban fabric with the diagrammatic purity of the

grid's divisions. These photographs of recreation in

working-class areas, the Smithsons believed, conveyed the same quality of captured contingency,

what they called the "as found," that needed to be

reintroduced to architecture to equate a method of
building with a way of life.11 The ethos of realist
photography migrated right into the heart of official
architectural business.

To the eye of the contemporary critic, the

interplay of scales in the Economist complex followed

the logic of realist photography- for better and

worse: "This change of scale between the two

buildings has resulted in a giant trompe-d'il with
which one is only to experience further perceptual
encounter was grounded further by the fact that the

of the presentation "grille/' these nonorchestrated

difficulty as one enters the centre of the plaza,"

mages were of children at play, itself the subject in

photographs functioned in the manner of orthogra-

wrote Kenneth Frampton in Architectural Design . "In

the 1950s of discourse about as-yet uncorrupted

phy, as measurable documents of reality.10 Though

the centre of the plaza the 'photographic' reduction

artistic expression. In the context of the conventions

the use of photographs in Congrs Internationaux

in scale of the residential block vis--vis the main

tower has the optical effect of 'zooming' this block

A. Detail of the Congrs Internationaux d'Architecture Moderne Grid by Alison and Peter

Smithson showing Nigel Henderson's photography, 1953. (Smithson Archive)

away from the observer, with a consequent dramatic

enlargement in the apparent space of the plaza. This

perceptual sleight of hand is brilliant but not in the

last instance felicitous, for the observer does not

remain rooted in the centre and moving on he quickly

discovers the deception."12

When the Smithsons turned to the blow-up,
they drew different conclusions from those implied

by the ordeal of loss endured by Antonioni's

photographer. In the film, the protagonist finds that

the closer he tries to get to the mage, the more it

dissolves, an experience akin to the study of the

Pollock-like paintings dribbled by the painter in an

adjacent studio. In the exhibition, "Parallel of Life

and Art," organized by the Smithsons with

Henderson and Eduardo Paolozzi in 1953, instead of

a diminution of reality, the photographic image was

used to draw structural equivalence between the

manmade and the natural: the anatomical

17 STEINER

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the fact that a number of their associates, Paolozzi

dissection of a typewriter or the analogy between the

angles from the ceiling and walls. The mages were

drips of abstract expressionism and the patterns on

culled from a range of fields, including photojour-

included, drew inspiration from the more ubiquitous

the egg of a sea bird, for example (Figure 5).13 The

nalism, medicine, and art and the subject matter too

and visceral realm of glossy photography, indeed the

primary form of mage making engaged in by the

influence of Lszl Mohofy-Nag/s heavily

was wide ranging, from the anthropological to the

illustrated, seminal postwar text, Vision in Motion

geological, archeological, and metallurgical. The

photographer of Blow-Up, the Smithsons rarely did.

(1947), and its promotion of photographic literacy

point, through a form of three-dimensional collage,

While claiming to collect ads, they were not com-

reigned throughout. The technologies of homing in

was to expose similarities through juxtaposition of

fortable using the language of consumer culture,

and zooming out- the photographic enlarger, the

things that otherwise would not be seen in proximity

even for subversive ends.16 The flooding of these

aerial photograph, the x-ray, the wide-angle lens, and

and that without the photographic record could not

mages nto architectural imagery proper as would

the microscope- demonstrated the expanded field

be compared. Due to the aggregate of imagery and

happen n the collages of the Archigram group was

of vision brought about by new tools. What unified

manipulation of scale, the experience of the exhibi-

a phenomenon of the next decade and the milieu in

the mages was their ability to demonstrate the

tion combined estrangement from the familiar with

which the Economist Building was destined to

significance of the camera to extend the visual range.

the equation of things of disparate natures. With no

emerge. The slowness of architectural production

This agenda was furthered by the reproduction of the

captions or commentary to distract the attention, the

often defeats the theoretical process of design. The

source material for the show. Henderson used a plate

visitor could focus on the variations in the perspec-

Smithsons' architecture of captured contingencies

camera to replicate the photographic reproductions

tivai relationships between the mages. The result was

and ready-made components would have contrasted

with the intention of cultivating the misleading sense

an amalgam of signs that presented n a condensed

with the revivalist styles of the West End under any

of scale inherent in the photographic medium.14

spatiotemporal field ideally would provoke multiple

circumstances; by the mid-sixties, the solemnity of

Formal leveling of scale highlighted the: role of the

significations in a viewer.15 Denial of scale increased

their approach was also being overtaken by the

camera as a tool for the investigation of reality. All

knowledge, rather than obfuscated it. The blow-up

ambient escalation of consumer culture in that

the reproductions, whether of paintings or cells,

was employed in the service of investigating reality,

not as an endeavor in frustration.

vicinity. The visual dominance of the mass media at

shared a grainy texture.

Absent from the visual field of "Parallel" were

One hundred twenty-two panels of diverse

dimensions were suspended at various heights and

the center swallowed up the grim realities at the

margin.

images drawn from the popular repertoire. Despite

Zoom Wave
5. Installation view of "Parallel of Life and Art," 1953. (Henderson Archive)

In 1966, Reyner Banham, who at the onset had been

a chief promoter of the Smithsons' built and written

work, reassessed that support. Banham had published a definitive article in 1955 that explained the

"as found" philosophy under the title of "The New

Brutalism" (Figure 6). For Banham, Parallel of Life
and Art was the "locus classicus" of the New
Brutalism as it firmly established the priority of mage

over beauty.17 The exhibition demonstrated all the

tenets of the doctrine in its structural incorporation

of scale, composition, and texture. More than the

built architecture of the landmark Hunstanton School

(1950-1954), "when Parallel of Life and Art had

enabled Brutalists to define their relationship to the
visual world in terms of something other than
geometry, then formality was discarded."18

Photographic documentation enabled the theory.

Brutalism Exposed: Photography and the Zoom Wave 18

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6. Illustrations for Reyner Banham's article on the "New Brutalism," Architectural Review, December 1955.

Polytechnic was the oldest of the bunch. The newest

was Clip-Kit, headed by Peter Murray at the Architectural Association. The third was Murray's previous

effort, Megascope, started at Bristol University

(Figure 7).23 The "reigning champion of protest

mags" was, of course, Archigram (Figure 8).24 Not
only was Banham's article illustrated with mages

from that magazine but also the other publications

looked to Archigram for inspiration, as well as

reproducing its projects and interests: Fuller and

geodesies, plug-ins and megastructures, and plastics

and inflatables.

These magazines emerging from the architec-

ture schools possessed a dispositional resemblance to

the manifestos of the avant-gardes of the teens and
twenties that Banham had struggled to rehabilitate

7. Cover of Megascope, November 1965.

Over the course of the decade that followed his

article, however, Banham came to suspect the

acceptance of the abstraction inherent in photo-

never quite broke out of the aesthetic frame of reference," Banham concluded.21

For Banham, avant-gardism had always implied

graphic reproduction, as well as the graininess and

engagement with technology and he turned, at this

chiaroscuro of the overenlargement.19 The critique

critical juncture, away from the raw materials and

was clearly articulated in the successive text, also

untreated surfaces of industrial production to the

called The New Brutalism, followed by the subtitle,

"Ethic or Aesthetic?"20 If the reduction down to basic

emerging domain of consumer-ready digital services

and the cooption of its visual sensibilities for archi-

elements, as the photographer discovered in Blow-

tecture. In March 1966, Banham published another

Up, merely revealed patterns, the New Brutalism was

key article, "Zoom Wave Hits Architecture," in New

left depleted of all its social aspirations. "For all its

Society.22 In it, he listed four little magazines at the

brave talk of 'an ethic, not an aesthetic/ Brutalism

core of this trend. Polygon out of the Regent's Street

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8. Cover sheet of Archigram 7, 1966. (Archigram Archives)

the heavyweight exercises of Brutalism. Fundamen-

environment within the gallery space (Figure 9).

tally, the shift was in the conception of architecture

Under the circumstances of the Living City, it was

as a dynamic distribution of energy within a structural

stated, there was no difference between the

system. As such, information would be the primary

substance of form.

and art.26 In addition to the use of light, sound, and

Thus, Banham's critical allegiance was transferred

exhibition and the city, no separation between life

the suggestion of scent, first and foremost the

to the environmental pursuit of a milieu in which every

experience of the walk-through installation was

part of the social experience that was in some way

dominated by the twisted nfrastructural system of

about exchange- of energy, of goods, of services-

the triangulated space frame of which it was made.27

was architecture. Banham's advocacy was not for

The complicated viewing angles of the triangular

a body of built work, as was the disciplinary norm, but

display panels resulted in a collage of mages with the

for a set of images that in and of themselves

then ensued (and, in fact, remains in force) was how to

suggestion of dimensionality.
Like Parallel a decade before, both these shows
were foundational exhibits that claimed to address

represent something with no visual qualities per se.

the desires and needs- the life- of an era.28 Both

constituted an architectural practice. The question that

The very production of an abundance of imagery was

used the strategy of hanging a dense array of imagery

what made the Archigram magazine so evocative. The

from an independent structure that did not differ-

ongoing quest for an architectural vocabulary

entiate in the traditional way between wall, floor, and

appropriate to the postwar era would be accompanied

ceiling.29 The fundamental differences, however,

by further integration of mages from a wide variety of

were apparent from the preparatory drawings for the

visual domains into the urban grid. For a discipline

shows and reinforced by the accompanying literature.

caught between the industrial and the digital eras of

In the case of Parallel, despite the rhetoric of the "as

technology, imagery would have a function different

found," the sense of randomness was more illusory

to that of built form. Ultimately, architectural

than an underlying principle. As orthography would

from the inception of his career as a critic. For Ban-

drawings, it would be argued, were not mere

have revealed little, the Smithsons inked a perspec-

ham, this coterie of publications revived the vital

blueprints for realization of structure. Architectural

tive to demonstrate the construction of what would

spirit of such early modern trends and the avant-

representation would be a medium for ideas about

appear as a tangle of imagery (Figure 10). Images

garde attitude toward technological production. In

structure itself through which one could, it was

were the dominant feature, anonymous in the

turn, the "Zoom Wave" thought this of itself,

hoped, confront radically new structural and social

installation; a foldout visitor's guide listed the mages

claiming that its generation could be "closer in basics

to the first modern architecture than most of the

possibilities and explore the contours of intangible

by number and acknowledged their sources. By

entities.

contrast, the plan and section of Living City were

about the structure. The former articulated the flow

fascination concentrated on technologies that had

The New Vernacular

"mechanicals," including a flicker machine and

evolved outside the disciplines ostensibly concerned

The first group activity to be undertaken by the core

periscope, but not the display. The catalog with its

with aesthetic considerations. Some of the celebrated

members of the Archigram group was an exhibition.

Held in the summer of 1963 at the Institute of

warning, "We have begun to cherish disorder,"30 did

Contemporary Arts, by now the natural London

added another level of clutter.31 "In this show," wrote

postwar building."25 As for the Futurists fifty years

of the space and the latter showed the contours and

earlier- and to whom they overtly referred- the

developments were simple, itinerant forms of shelter

such as cars and mobile homes. Others had evolved

nothing to disentangle the muddle, perhaps even

to accommodate the extreme conditions of space

home for exhibitions with a touch of the avant-garde,

Robert Maxwell in his review, "there was no coherent

travel or underwater exploration. The primary

the "Living City" used the agenda of the lightweight

programme, no offer of a policy, no statistics, no

structural agenda, however, concentrated on tension

structure to address the problem of visual

rationalisation. Captions were fragmentary, and all

distribution and non-point load compression.

representation. Like the alternative it intended to

the reproductions, whether photographs of real

Lightweight structures stood in clear opposition to

demonstrate, the exhibition was set up as a distinct

places and things or photographs of photographs of

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9. Plan and section for Living City, 1963. (Archigram Archives)

becoming increasingly more detached from the

aggregate of municipal building types. The objects

that made up the content of the urban "Survival Kit,"

for example, provided a possible sample of material

urban life, ranging from necessities for generic bodily

maintenance to personal preferences for leisure

activities. Some forms of shelter already had elements of the expendable built into their production.
Urban vitality, however, was generated not by the

demarcations of the built environment, or even

objects at all, but rather by the discourse that took

place when people gathered.37 Those things and

conditions that enabled inhabitants to lead a vital
form of life relied on the opportunities that arose for
communication. The exhibition addressed this hier-

archy in spatial terms. Man, Crowd, and Survival, the

categories that addressed the inhabitants, formed

a cluster to the left of the entrance point. These

categories were contingencies dependent on the

variables of Movement, Place, and Situation that
unfolded in a crescent to the right. Communication,
the stimulant that enabled all the social conditions
for activity, had pride of place on entrance right.

From Big Ben to transportation systems, the images

advertising, science, science-fiction or pop-art

equation of scale is in the treatment of these two

in the exhibition were presented as the signs and

material, were presented in a deliberately disjointed

or random fashion/'32

events, both dependent on time, location, and

symbols of transmission.

Living City deployed the jumble of photographic

circumstance, as "equal- as facts of the shared

experience of the city."35 The mages employed for

"We are in pursuit," wrote Warren Chalk, the

senior member of the group in the catalog, "of an

mages as signs from across the visual field, "from

this end were described as being of the moment, with

idea, a new vernacular, something to stand alongside

trivia to valued drawings, and monster versions to

the unavoidable admixture of past forms.36 Each

the space capsules, computers and throw-away

minuscule versions of everyday things," albeit of

section of the exhibition- Man, Survival, Crowd,

packages of an atomic/electronic age."38 The "new

different objects and for a different message

Movement, Communication, Place and

(Figure II).33 Significantly, the allegiance to the

Situation- utilized imagery for its own purposes.

vernacular" on display in the exhibition was not one

of authentic naivete but rather the urbane accretions

camera lens, the prioritization of the visual, and the

An implicit premise was that architects rely on

holism of the mage were absent. The camera was, in

prevailing vocabularies and that these expressions,

of plenty. Take, for example, the photomontage of

the modishly dressed woman glancing over her

fact, represented as part of a broader collage

like those of fashion, have geographic specificity and

shoulder, mouth obscured by a furry stole as she

dedicated to the subject of communications that

vary over time. While a designer might be keenly in

touches her seamed calf, that accompanied Chalk's

encompassed the written word, the film reel, the eye,

touch with the cultural moment, conventional

statement declaring the quest for an updated

the phonograph record, the highway interchange, the

architecture inevitably outlasts methodology due to

vocabulary in the exhibition catalog (Figure 13). It is

clock, and the corporate logos (Figure 12). The

its duration. There were already things in the urban

an overtly voyeuristic mage of a contemporary

organizers hoped to express as urban content "the

environment that had evolved to the point that they

woman caught from behind in a vulnerable posi-

triviality of lighting a cigarette, or the hard fact of

were discarded upon outliving their use. Like the

tion.39 In a convergence of the glamor shot with stark

moving 2 million commuters a day."34 Here the

proliferation of disposables, the life of the city was

realism, the damp street on which she stoops is lined

21 STEINER

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10. Installation perspective for "Parallel of Life and Art," 1953. (Smithson Archive)

with dull, high-rise office blocks of the very

kind on view as the protagonist of Blow-Up drives

from a potential murder scene to meet his
publisher about a collection of photographs featuring

urban poverty. Another such image of generic

office blocks was annotated: "This sort of
environment can never be the answer and it isn't

even good technology."

Beyond the obvious flneurisme of the scene,
then, the advertising technique of juxtaposing the

sensuality of the "The Passing Presence/' as the

image was titled, with the engineered object was
drawn upon to sell the idea that not only was
there such a thing as retrograde technology but

also that some technology was simply bad. In

contrast "good technology" was that of the
chance encounter and the transient condition.

Much of the excitement of the new generation of

visionary architects was focused on replicating the

ambience of the satisfaction of desire through

technology. There was an urgency to broaden the

architectural domain and the compulsion to raid
11. Installation view of Living City, 1963. (Archigram Archives)

from other disciplines. In the Archigram, the

predominant way in which these ideas were

circulated was through the deliberate use of the
imagery of the information age or the media of

mass communications. Indeed, Archigram

drawings featured bright swaths of color that

reproduced the feel of magazines.40 Moreover,

the composite mages were populated by figures

that had strolled by from across the media
border.

Unlike the narrative of technological

development, technological fashion, also known as

style, was disruptive to the simple "telos" of
progress. As demonstrated by the trendy and pliable

women who populate the landscape of Blow-Up,

both fashion and technology were celebrated and
feared as instruments of oppression in the sixties.
Thus, the infiltration of popular culture into

architectural practice was perceived by the older

generation to be particularly threatening to the

discipline's sphere of control for ideological reasons

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12. "Communications" collage, for the Living City exhibition, 1963. (Archigram Archives)

13. Warren Chalk, "The Passing Presence," for the

Living City exhibition, 1963. (Archigram Archives)

that went much deeper than the introduction of

unorthodox forms.

previous numbers: growth, change,

metamorphosis, indeterminacy, anti-zoning,

expendability, freezones, etc .... What started

out as separate threads seem now to be

Beyond Architecture, 1966

meshing together, and like any catalysts they

By the time Banham defined the Zoom Wave, the

are undergoing their own metamorphosis:

Archigram project was already into its fifth year

suddenly a much bigger conversation looms

and on its seventh newsletter, Beyond Architecture .41

(one which could not be imagined when we

From the expendables that still were, after all,

started Archigram, which is more than the sum

predominantly the product of an industrial culture,

of its parts): does architecture have anything to

they had graduated to the heightened transience of

do with life anymore? Are there any abstract

networks. The cover sheet of Archigram 7 featured an

values worth waiting around for whilst we fall

intricate weave of circuitry. The issue, assembled at

further and further behind reality?

the end of 1 966, consisted of fifteen loose pages of

varying sizes printed in inks of red, green, blue,

brown, or black that came sheathed together in

a plastic bag. It was, certainly in terms of format, the

In conclusion came the warning, "there may be

no buildings at all in Archigram 8."
That architecture might not involve building was

among the convictions that the Archigram project

least coherent of the Archigrams. Still, Peter Cook's

editorial reflections commented on the manner in

shared with Cedric Price, a figure who was a role

which the ideas of previous issues, such as networks,

model for the group and a frequent contributor to the

had begun to converge:

publication. In a three-page essay included in the

"Mathematical modernism," Price assessed, only

seventh Archigram, Price explained that an interro-

continued the tradition of "puerile pattern making"

In Archigram 7 we are looking at several

gation from outside the discipline also required

from within. Interpolations of the grille, for example,

interpretations of basic ideas thrown up in

a mode of representation that came from without.

would fall into this category. He further criticized

23 STEINER

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and from the cultural realm without.43 Chalk wrote

14. Warren Chalk, "Ghosts," Archigram 7, 1966. (Archigram Archives)

Greene:

Architecture is probably a hoax, a fantasy world

brought about through a desire to locate,

absorb and integrate into an overall obsession

a self-interpretation of the every-day world

around us. An impossible attempt to rationalise

the irrational. It is difficult to be exact about
influences, but those influences that enter our
unconscious consciousness are what I call

ghosts.
Our lives exist within a complex web of these
influences which we either accept or reject;

those we find acceptable are turned to

advantage; they become our preoccupations,
prejudices or preconceptions.
To demonstrate how architecture served as

a method to assimilate the everyday world, Chalk

prepared an array of mages as a supplement to the

letter (Figure 14). On both sides of a sheet of inked

paper (15.5 x 12.5 inch), white mages emerged

from a black background. The "A" side was dedicated

to the "unconscious consciousness" of preconcepdiagrammatic propositions, singling out by way of

language could develop the capacity to represent

tion. Surrounding a picture of Ayler with his saxo-

example the techniques proposed by Christopher

objects and, more complicatedly, conditions that

phone hovering over the word "GHOSTS" with an

Alexander. He asserted that the manner in which an

were always in transition.

adjustable compass strategically placed off to the

analytical techniques were often mistaken for work-

Ghosts

on a framework.44 Included in the array were side

idea was expressed set the tone for built work, as

right were the apparitions of modernism's variations

ing drawings. Even the computer, Price observed at

Archigram 7 is redolent of loss. From the lack of

elevations of tubular steel chairs by Marcel Breuer,

this early juncture, was being used by most to reiterate what had been done before it was available

binding to the elimination of buildings, it mostly tells

the design for a Spherical Theater (1924) by Andreas

a story about what architecture can no longer be.

Weininger, the plan of the 5O-by-5O House (1950-

instead of opening up new possibilities. "This is yet

Tucked in among the loose pages of expected

1 951 ) by Mies van der Rohe, and a plan of Ronchamp

another plea," he wrote by way of explanation, "for

Archigram visuals, including several variations on the

(1955). These choices were not necessarily paradig-

the architect to increase others' range of choice, but

plug-in concept and a dymaxion-style cut out puzzle,

matic items, but personal, more fanciful- an

in the context of the future planning it requires

was a letter written by Warren Chalk to David Greene

impossible theater for spectacle, an unbuilt prototype

conscious design application in calculated uncer-

that addressed the losses of visual language directly.

for mass housing by Mies, Le Corbusie^s more

tainty." To design for calculated uncertainty required

Under the heading, "'Ghosts' (by Albert Ayler)," this

whimsical later work. Strewn among those were

a language that did not fall back on past conceptions

contribution dealt directly with the pressures of

mages from without, including a silhouette of

or mistake the diagram for the finished product.42

influence that were brought to bear on the creation

a crane, outlines of tailor's mannequins, and a film-

The question that remained was how architectural

of the new language, both from within the discipline

strip by Richard Smith and Robert Freeman featuring

Brutalism Exposed: Photography and the Zoom Wave 24

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the capacity for its language to incorporate the

15. Warren Chalk, "Phantoms," Archigram 7, 1966. (Archigram Archives)

range of ever-changing influences from outside.

The "B" side, "Phantoms," to which the "Ghosts"

will succumb, included no works of architecture as

such (Figure 15). These included diagrams of geodesic triangulations, op art abstractions, a model
against a leopard print, diagrams of fleeting
impulses of various kinds, and a schema of a rocket
with hovering spiky, comic-style speech bubbles.
Whether an aerial, a telephone cord, a satellite dish,
or a strip of punched code, all forms of electronicsage cultural production were architecturally

suggestive.
Other projects in the Archigram further

addressed the "onslaught of the invisible media":

the Free Time Node by Herron and Barry Snowden,
for example, was a serviced spine of programmatic

"cages" for leisure, education, shopping, and other

urban activities that allowed for freedom of

mobility within the urban framework. Mike Webb's

Rent-a-Wall provided some insight to accompany

a joke.46

Phantoms (of the Future)

If the language of captured contingency had once
appeared bold in the context of institutional

a man in profile.45 Drawings of one of modernism's

it is right that influences should last only as

most enduring ghosts, the four-door sedan, were

long as they are useful to us, and our

modernism, the juxtaposition of the design philos-

also incorporated.

architecture should reflect this. At a general

ophy of one decade with the built practice of

Chalk continued:

level it is becoming increasingly apparent that

another exposed the contingencies of duration for

due to historical circumstances the more

the process of mage making. The Economist

Ghosts help reinforce and establish attitudes,

tangible ghosts of the past- those grim,

Building stood in the heart of the city like one of

build a very personal language, a complex

humourless, static, literary or visual

modernism's ghosts among the phantoms of the

labyrinth of deals, constraints, theories, half-

mages- will succumb to the onslaught of the

future. Architecture as a vehicle of communications

remembered rules, symbols, words that

invisible media; the psychedelic vision; the

had by then dramatically increased the reliance of

ultimately digested affect our concepts. It is

insight accompanying a joke; the phantoms of

the discipline on the visual domain outside of

unpopular, but essential, that existing attitudes

the future.

reappraisal. We are confronted with a dynamic

modern graphic strategies. Images of consumer

culture were drawn upon to generate the

come in for constant and rigorous renewal or

Thus, the static things that linger and preoc-

atmosphere of transience and circulation, or even

shifting pattern of events at both popular and

cupy must be allowed to interact with the newer

equate lifestyle and architecture. Architecture as

a web of imagery implied that building was not

intellectual levels, both stimulating and

dynamic conditions all around, even be supplanted

confusing. In this ever-changing climate, old

by them. The capacity for architecture to adapt to

of the essence after all. Representation was

ghosts may be cast out and replaced by new;

the ever-changing climate directly correlated with

architecture in itself.

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As the decade progressed, the visual context

"directly concerned with the physical properties of

noted "like to advertise themselves by being different." Le Corbusier' s

"Description of the CIAM Grid, Bergamo 1949" appeared as an appendix

would continue to evolve and Archigram's own

things."49 If architecture dissolves, and the mage is

imagery of contemporary life, as Chalk had known,

architecture, then the image- as the Archigrom -

would have to move on or stagnate. The elimination

has no right to existence either. If, Greene wondered,

1952), pp. 171-175.

of hierarchy and signification raised its own chal-

architecture was, as Archigrom insisted, "no more

11. For discussion of the "as found" see Alison and Peter Smithson, "The

lenges for the process of design. As the tale unfolded

important than the rain," why render the buildings?50

in Blow-Up, in the midst of the allure of the transient

The burdens of visual language, those considered

realities, representation, reduced to its constituent

intrinsic to the discipline and those still external to

elements, disintegrated. The inconsistencies and

it, would continue to vex and have only become

incompleteness of communication placed the

more acute.

structure of representation itself under scrutiny. The

to J. Tyrwhitt, J.L. Sert, and E.N. Rogers, eds., The Heart of the City:

Towards the Humanisation of Urban Life (London: Lund Humpheries,

'As Found' and the 'Found,'" in David Robbins, ed., The Independent
Croup: Postwar Britain and the Aesthetics of Plenty (Cambridge, MA: MIT

Press, 1990), pp. 201-202.

12. Kenneth Frampton, "The Economist and the Haupstadt," Architectural Design (February 1965): 62. He continues, "Once the illusion of
the residential building has been exposed, the whole assembly is open
to "theatrical" interpretation and this interpretation does not help in
sustaining belief in the true monumentality of the major office tower."

declaration in Archigrom 7 that buildings would go

Notes

13. The exhibition was held at the Institute of Contemporary Art from

was accompanied by the announcement that so

1 . Based on the short story, Las Babas del Diablo (1 959), by Julio Cortzar,

September 1 1 to October 18, 1953. In Banham's review of the show in

would the paper: 'THE PRINTED PACE IS NO

Blow-Up was Antonioni's first film in the English language and starred

the Architectural Review 114/ 682 (October 1953): 260, the images of

David Hemmings, Vanessa Redgrave, and Jane Birkin. Antonioni's filmic

Jackson Pollock in his studio and the egg of a guillemot were placed
side by side.

LONGER ENOUGH: Ideas and situations now involve

practice departed from neorealism, the genre that had dominated postwar

movement and sequences that need film, colour,

Italian cinema, and focused on the quotidian hardships of working-class life,

14. Victoria Walsh, Nigel Henderson: Parallel of Life and Art (London:

magnification and explanation in length; Magazines

dramatized further through the strategy of using nonprofessional actors,

Thames & Hudson, 2001), p. 95.

will dissolve into hybrid networks of all media at

once."47 The absence of structure in Antonioni's films

as well as the Archigram publication rendered the

systematic organization of the environment an indi-

vidual, as opposed to a collective, process. Under the

children in key roles, and shooting on location in poor neighborhoods or the

1 5. The interest in signs was one shared by the more radical art

countryside. The Smithsons' design philosophy, as this essay demonstrates,

students and teachers at the time, such as David Sylvester, Richard

was sympathetic to the social beliefs inherent to neorealism.

Smith, Robyn Denny, and Edward Wright, in addition to the more

2. Alison and Peter Smithson, The Charged Void: Architecture (New York:

familiar figures of Henderson, Paolozzi, Richard Hamilton, and

Monacelli Press, 2001), p. 248.

Lawrence Alloway. See Christopher Finch, Image as Language:

3. Herbert Muschamp recently reflected on the excitement that this

Aspects of British Art 1950-1968 (London: Harmondsworth, 1969).

building generated among architecture students at the time. "25

16. Alison and Peter Smithson, "Personal Statement: But Today We

conditions of constant change, as Archigrom 7 and

St. James's Street," New York Times Magazine (May 15, 2005): 30-32.

Collect Ads," ARK 18 (Autumn 1956): 59. See also David Robbins,

Blow-Up demonstrate, the course of mage making

4. See, for example, David Alan Mellor, "Realism, Satire, Blow-Ups:

"American Ads," The Independent Croup, p. 59.

Photography and the Culture of Social Modernisation," in Chris Stephens

17. "The New Brutalism," Architectural Review 118/708 (December

was inevitably marked by loss. Nonetheless, at this

and Katherine Stout, eds., This was Tomorrow: Art & the 60s (London:

1955): 356.

critical juncture, circa 1966, the possibilities offered

Tate Publishing, 2004), pp. 68-87.

18. Ibid., p. 361.

by contemporary culture dominated over the crisis of

5. The cooption of the techniques of photojournalism by the fashion

19. Reyner Banham, The New Brutalism: Ethic or Aesthetic? (New York:

industry has emphasized this further.

Reinhold, 1 966), p. 61 . Banham had already cautioned against complacency

what would be lost by the problem of unstable

6. See Robin Evans, "Architectural Projections," in Eve Blau and Edward

over photographic truths in his review of The Parallel of Life and Art: "We

Kaufman, eds., Architecture & Its Image (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press,

tend to forget that every photograph is an artefact, a document recording

nications. Searching for one ghost, another assumed

1989), p. 33.

for ever a momentary construction based upon reality . . .. But the

its place. Mediated through the vocabulary of mass

7. See Yve-Alain Bois, "Metamorphosis of Axonometry," Daidalos

photograph, being an artefact, applies its own laws of artefaction to the

1 (1981): 40-58.

material it documents, and discovers similarities and parallels between

8. See Bernard Schneider, "Perspective Refers to the Viewer, Axonometry

the documentations, even where none exist between the objects and

meaning that accompanied the increase of commu-

culture, the allusiveness of representation intimated

the potentials of a milieu where nothing becomes

stagnant and images, in and of themselves, constituted architectural practice.

Within a few years, however, representation's

Refers to the Object," ibid., pp. 81-95.

9. Jos Hus Sert, Can Our Cities Survive? (Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press, 1941), pp. 31-33. CIAM, as Sert's analysis made clear to

events recorded." Architectural Review 114/682 (October 1953):

259-620.

20. Banham's subtitle responded to the cryptic definition of the New

the Smithsons, would have no effect unless it took into account how

Brutalism given by Alison and Peter Smithson: "Any discussion of

people interact with each other and the spaces in which they live.

Brutalism will miss the point if it does not take into account Brutalism's

inevitable contradictions and baggage made at least

10. Le Corbusier had instituted the grille, or grid, format at the Bergamo

attempt to be objective about 'realit/- the cultural objectives of a

one of the Archigram members, David Greene,

conference in 1949 as a tool for the members to decipher and commu-

society, its urges, its techniques, and so on. Brutalism tries to face

influenced further by Joseph Kosuth's "Art After

nicate their ideas about urbanism, which, he explained, had become the

up to a mass-production society, and drag a rough poetry out of

most crucial job of the architect. The grid, which Le Corbusier introduced

the confused and powerful forces which are at work. Up to now

Philosophy/' conclude that drawing should be

to the meeting as "the poetry of classification," was intended to simplify

Brutalism has been discussed stylistically, whereas its essence

abandoned.48 The dematerialization of the object

the presentation of complex urban problems through the categories of the

is ethical." Alison and Peter Smithson, "Thoughts in Progress: The New

inherent in the tenets of conceptual art, he concluded

work-leisure-transportation-home model. Even in its first year of use,

Brutalism," Architectural Design 4 (April 1957): 111-113.

there were some rebellious submissions from those who Le Corbusier

21. Reyner Banham, The New Brutalism: Ethic or Aesthetic? p. 134.

with Kosuth, implied that architects need not be

Brutalism Exposed: Photography and the Zoom Wave 26

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22. Reprinted in Design by Choice (London: Academy Editions 1981),

also claimed to speak for its generation (Editorial, Living Arts

converted what in the drawings was a metaphor of circulation and

pp. 64-65.

2 [1963]: 1).

exchange into a monumentalization of services. On-camera musings

23. Murray later became the art editor for Architectural Design.

29. Many critics disliked this feature.

reveal bewilderment at the fundamental lack of dynamism on display.

24. Despite its authors' claim of institutional neutrality (e.g., Archigram 5

30. Cook, p. 66.

While the frame enabled internal flexibility of program, the core issue
of transience, from the structural incorporation of time to the exchanges

declared: "This magazine is completely independent of any organization,

31 . A section of "Living Arts," a new journal founded by Theo Crosby for

school of architecture, etc. It is registered as a business name"), the Ar-

the ICA, provided the textual accompaniment for the exhibition.

of technology and consumption, was untouched. The consensus was

chigrom was part of this phenomenon of the architectural schools and was

32. Robert Maxwell, "The Living City Exhibition at the ICA," Living Arts 3

that the Pompidou Center was, though filtered through the

initially distributed by students at the AA and the Regent's Street

(1964): 98.

representational lens of Archigram, a static building. Thus, the Archigram

Polytechnic.

33. Cook, p. 71 .

project was converted into a traditional one. Dennis Postle recorded the

25. Editorial, Archigram 2, unpaginated.

34. Ibid., p. 70.

bus trip from London to France and the observations of Price and the
others as part of Four Films, Tatooist International Productions, Arts

26. Peter Cook, "Introduction," Living Arts 2 (1963): 69.

35. Ibid., p. 70.

27. Maxwell's review noted that the group originally considered using

36. Ibid., p. 71.

Council, 1980.

smells as well. When asked what sort of smells they might have contem-

37. Peter Cook, "Come-Co: The Key to the Vitality of the City," Living

43. Ayler first recorded "Ghosts" on Spiritual Unity (1964).

44. Chalk was an avid enthusiast of jazz and sought to extend the analogy

plated and about the composition of the soundtrack, Dennis Crompton

Arts 2 (1963): 80.

responded, "I don't recall anything very positive, but city smells come to

38. Warren Chalk, "Cloop 7: Situation," Living Arts 2 (1963): 112.

of "jamming" to design.

mind. You must have noticed the different characteristic smells of Paris,

39. Simon Sadler remarks on the issue of masculine identity with

45. The image came from the first issue of Living Art magazine,

Milan, London and New York just for a start. Bob also refers to 'discon-

relation to this image in "Living City Survival Kit: A Portrait of the

captioned "A film made by Richard Smith and Robert Freeman in 8mm

tinuous sound track'- cannot be much help with this either except to

Architect as a Young Man," Art History, 26/4 (September 2003):

colour (running time 10 minutes)."

suggest that you should first check on the availability of tape recorders in

556-575.

46. "You'll appreciate Rent-a-Wall's good looks and versatility. . . . says

1 963 as I'm not sure that we had them at that time. The earliest 1 /4" tape

40. The colors, however, were not reproduced in the Archigram publi-

president Fred X. Shooman."

that I have on my shelves is the Beatles 'Revolver dated 1966. We did

47. "International Ideas," Archigram 7, unpaginated.

have records and Coltrane/Coleman would have been high on the hit list.

cation where the feel of a zine was self-consciously maintained until its
demise.

But it could just have easily been the ICA barman's radio!" (e-mail,

41 . An exhibition, "Beyond Architecture: A Projection of 640 Images,"

49. Joseph Kosuth, "Art After Philosophy," in C. Harrison and P. Wood,

eds., Art In Theory 1900-1990, An Anthology of Changing Ideas (Oxford:

48. Conversation with Greene (June 1, 1998).

December^ 1998).

opened on February 22, 1967 at the Oxford Museum of Modern Art.

28. In the working documents for an early version of the exhibition

42. This came to be the judgment directed at the Pompidou Center,

Blackwell, 1992), p. 864. Or as number ten of Sol LeWitt's "Sentences on

proposal, Peter Smithson stated, "The first great creative period of

despite the commonplace that one of the few British architectural exports

Conceptual Art" claimed, "Ideas alone can be works of art; they are in

modern architecture finished in 1929 and work subsequent to this can be

of the twentieth century, the style known as "High Tech," followed in the

a chain of development that may eventually find some form. All ideas

regarded as exploratory work for the second great creative period

footsteps of Archigram. Indeed, a group bus trip was undertaken to see

need not be made physical" (ibid., pp. 837-839).

beginning now .... The second great period should be proclaimed by an

the completed Pompidou Center (1977), some highlights of which were

50. "When it is raining in Oxford Street the architecture is no more im-

exhibition in which the juxtaposition of phenomenon from our various

caught on film. The arrival in Paris, inevitably, was accompanied by

portant than the rain; in fact the weather has probably more to do with the

fields would make obvious the existence of a new attitude" (Walsh,

disappointment. Though they recognized their cartoons in the work, the

pulsation of the living city at that given moment" ("Introduction," pp.

Nigel Henderson: Parallel of Life and Art, p. 90). "Living City"

literal application of diagrammatic color to the overblown external ducts

70-71).

27 STEINER

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