Fantasies of domesti(city)

GOLSOM BAYDAR NALBANTOGLU

Ira city, according to the opinion of philosophers, be no more than a great house and, on the other hand a house be a little city; why may it not be said, that the members of that house are so many little houses.

- Leone Batisti Alberti, 1755

A detail in a city means a house multiplied a hundred thousand times; therefore it is the city.

- Le Corbusier, 1924

[The] protocol of physical access gave all its meaning to the space of a dwelling and of a City; both were linked to the primacy of the sedentary over the nomadic ways of our origins. And all of this is being swept away by advanced technologies, especially those of domestic teledistribution.

- Paul Virilio, 1984

The conjunction of the terms 'city' and 'house' provides an extraordinary link between these three quotations from paradigmatic texts of radically different historical locations. The house and the city arguably occupy two extreme ends of the architectural scale and the modernist imagination has placed them at the opposite ends of the private/public divide. Home is constructed as the mythologised space of privacy that is connected with an originary identity. It is the unpolluted place of the nurturing mother. The city is the father's place. It is the public scene of the streets, social life and politics. Here the feminine figure bears the mark of seduction. Sexualised metaphors of the city and the home persistently emphasise the eroticised thrill of the metropolis and the familial haven of home. 1 Keeping these highly charged oppositions in mind, it is striking to see the repetitive appearance of the figure of the house in the texts of leading urban theorists w h o are rooted in the discipline of architecture. Questions proliferate: If repetition is a mark of difference rather than progress, what is the surplus that this repetitive conjunction produces? What role does

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the figure of the house play in urban discourse? What to make of the city/ house conjunction at a time when the discipline is alarmed by the loss of both? There are further commonalities between the discursive contexts of the three quotations that I will pursue in my paper. All bear the burden of re- defining the city on the basis of a perceived crisis rooted in technology - military, transportation and communication technologies respectively. All three cases describe the crisis in terms of fragmentation, disappearance and loss. What we have then, are three urban narratives that deploy similar terms in u n d e r s t a n d i n g a n d explaining historical breaks in the architectural identification of the city. By using the house as a metaphor, the first two explicitly rely on it as a stable and k n o w n identity to state what the city is. The third one announces the loss of the meaning of both the house and the city. What is at stake here is not_only the identification of the city but the house as well. But which city and which house?

It should be clear by now that my chronological alignment of the three quotations is not of historical interest. Rather than the history of the city, I am interested in its re-production in architectural discourse. Turning back to the three quotations, rather than taking the city and the house simply as pre-given objects of architecture, I want to investigate how these are produced and linked in specific ways by architecture's disciplinary strategies. What does the city mean for architecture and how does the house function in the production of this meaning?

S c e n e I . . . . a c i t y ... be no more t h a n a great h o u s e

A n u m b e r of contemporary theorists have argued that the concept of the city as a built object and as a unified entity did not exist before the fifteenth century (Lefebre 1991; Choay 1997; see also Burgin 1996). Indeed, the city is a significant preoccupation of the architectural treatises of the Renaissance. Earlier texts present it as an aggregation of public and private buildings but not as a spatial unity. Hence, the constitutive moment of Western architectural discourse exists prior to its incorporation of the city. Renaissance theorists embrace the Vitruvian precept that 'the w e l l - s h a p e d m a n ' provides the measure and proportion of all architectural elements in a building (1960:72). The city, w h e n it becomes an architectural subject, is conveniently absorbed in this framework. In that sense, the law of perfection precedes the perfect city. Alberti's statement that the city is no more than a great house and the house is a little city and that every edifice ' s h o u l d appear to be an entire and perfect body a n d not disjointed and unfinished members' is exemplary in this respect (1996:13). At this level, what conjoins the body, the house and the city is their intact boundaries that ensure wholeness.

As such the ideal city of the Renaissance emerges in a striking historical narrative. In 1430 Poggio Bracciolini w h o d r e w up the first systematic

i n v e n t o r y of the f r a g m e n t a r y remains of ancient Rome, declared that 'once the m o s t b e a u t i f u l a n d m a g n i f i c e n t of cities ... today, s t r i p p e d of all h e r a d o r n m e n t s , lies d e c a y i n g like a gigantic corpse, e v e r y p a r t h a v i n g been m u t i l a t e d ' (quoted in Choay 1997:53). Indeed, the R o m a n ruins as m u c h as Vitruvius' treatise w e r e instrumental in the formulation of the Renaissance city. W h a t m a k e s Bracciolini's statement r e m a r k a b l e is its reference to the disintegration of the city in relation to w o m a n ' s body. 2 The i m a g e r y is that of rape. The m u t i l a t e d b o d y of the fallen w o m a n is to be r e - m e m b e r e d and protected from further assault. H o w ?

It is w e l l k n o w n t h a t the e a r l y m o d e r n a r c h i t e c t u r a l texts' p r i m a r y p r e o c c u p a t i o n is the city walls. The walls both define the city as a contained entity a n d ensure its survival against w a r technologies. The city's architectural materialisation is b a s e d on the threat of its dissolution. In other words, the city is stigmatised b y its dissolution at the very m o m e n t of its e m e r g e n c e as a finite unity. The b o u n d a r y gains priority as the guarantee of an intact a n d inviolable form.

The m e t a p h o r s of the female b o d y and the h o u s e become m o r e complicated at this juncture, a n d I w a n t to discuss this in the light of a p o w e r f u l illustration in Francesco di Giorgio Martini's late fifteenth-century treatise. Di Giorgio says that 'one s h o u l d shape the city, fortress, a n d castle in the form of a h u m a n b o d y , t h a t t h e h e a d a n d t h e a t t a c h e d m e m b e r s h a v e a p r o p o r t i o n e d c o r r e s p o n d e n c e a n d that the h e a d be the rocca, the arms its recessed walls, w h i c h , circling a r o u n d , link the rest of the w h o l e body, the vast city' (quoted in Agrest 1991:183). In the illustration that accompanies the text, the contours of the b o d y are literally the b o u n d a r i e s of the city. They stand in for the walls. The dissolution of the city is simultaneous w i t h the b o d y ' s dissolution - and the b o d y here is explicitly m a r k e d as male. 3 The use of the b o d y m e t a p h o r i n d i c a t e s the desire for controllable b o u n d a r i e s . Concepts are n o t s i m p l y i l l u s t r a t e d b u t p r o d u c e d b y m e t a p h o r s . 4 R e - m e m b e r i n g the m u t i l a t e d w o m a n ' s b o d y turns out to be an impossibility, perhaps because she w a s never m e m b e r e d at first place. The figures of the body, the mutilated w o m a n a n d the intact m a n are p r o d u c e d by, a n d in t u r n produce, specific w a y s of conceiving, p e r c e i v i n g a n d constructing u r b a n space.

H o w , t h e n , d o e s the h o u s e m e t a p h o r f u n c t i o n in this scenario? In an i n s p i r i n g s t u d y o n A l b e r t i ' s texts, a r c h i t e c t u r a l t h e o r i s t M a r k W i g l e y d e m o n s t r a t e s h o w sexuality functions in the Renaissance discourse on the h o u s e (1992:327-89). In d o i n g so, he complicates the c o m m o n p l a c e juxta- p o s i t i o n s of the city a n d the h o u s e w i t h m a l e a n d f e m a l e identifications respectively. In a remarkable instance Alberti says:

W o m e n ... are almost all timid by nature, soft, slow, a n d therefore more useful w h e n they sit still and w a t c h over things. It is as t h o u g h nature thus p r o v i d e d for our well-being, arranging for m e n to bring

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things h o m e a n d for w o m e n to g u a r d t h e m . . . . The m a n should g u a r d the w o m a n , the house, a n d his family a n d country, b u t not b y sitting still. (Alberti 1969:III, 207, q u o t e d In V~Flgley 1992:334)

As Wigley argues, the w o m a n ' s d u t y is to g u a r d the h o u s e according to the law that p r e c e d e s both her and the house. This is the law of the father, the law of m a r r i a g e as the t a m i n g of desire, and the law of order a n d surveillance. Hence the Albertian notion of domesticity is b a s e d on masculine control over sexuality a n d desire. As Wigley explains, 'if the w o m a n goes outside she is m o r e d a n g e r o u s l y f e m i n i n e r a t h e r t h a n m o r e m a s c u l i n e ' (1992:335). The house, on the other h a n d , is a site of order a n d purification. The primal scene of the m u t i l a t e d w o m a n as a m e t a p h o r of t h e d e s t r u c t e d city, a n d the construction of the city in t h e i m a g e of the m a l e b o d y m a k e m o r e sense now. The w o m a n outside is a fallen w o m a n . She n e e d s to be located in the h o u s e w h i c h is o r d e r e d in the image of man. The city as a large h o u s e contains and controls the f e m i n i n e e l e m e n t but is identified as male.

The city as a large h o u s e then m a r k s an architectural fantasy of total control. In that sense the house, w h e r e domestication a n d m a s t e r y are always already established, p r o v i d e s the fantasmic s u p p o r t for the city as an i d e a l site. I use the notion of fantasy here in the psychoanalytical sense and not in its e v e r y d a y use as the opposite of reality. Placing fantasy on the side of - rather than in opposition to - reality, Lacanian p s y c h o a n a l y s i s argues that fantasy is the support that gives consistency to w h a t is called 'reality'. Architecture needs a p h a n t a s m i c f r a m e to identify the city as a site of order a n d control. The figure of the h o u s e materialises that frame. Fantasy 'functions to h i d e the palpable void of n o t h i n g n e s s a n d meaninglessness - d e a t h - at the centre of a p p a r e n t m e a n i n g or a p p e a r a n c e ' (Ragland-Sullivan 1992:59). The fantasy of the ideal city s u p p r e s s e s the w i l d forces of u n p r e d i c t a b i l i t y a n d d i f f e r e n c e , a n d structures the desire to reconstruct a n d r e g u l a t e existing cities. The d e a d w o m a n ' s b o d y then m a r k s the symbolisation of the loss that an idealised u r b a n identification is b a s e d on. After her death, the city can be symbolised as an architectural reality w i t h the s u p p o r t of the h o u s e a n d the body.

Scene II . . . . a house m u l t i p l i e d a h u n d r e d times ...

A primal scene sets the stage for Le Corbusier's !924 publication, The City of Tomorrow. T h e b o o k w a s written d u r i n g the emptiness of a Paris s u m m e r w h e n the city w a s quiet a n d u n d e r p o p u l a t e d . 'Then c a m e the a u t u m n season,' the architect says and,

D a y b y d a y the fury of traffic grew. To leave y o u r h o u s e m e a n t that once y o u h a d crossed y o u r threshold y o u w e r e a possible sacrifice to d e a t h in the shape of i n n u m e r a b l e motors. I think back t w e n t y

years, w h e n I was a student; the road belonged to us then; w e sang in it a n d argued in it, w h i l e the horse-bus s w e p t calmly along. With a striking change of tone he continues:

O n that 1st d a y of October, on the C h a m p s Elysees, I w a s assisting at the titanic r e a w a k e n i n g of a comparatively n e w p h e n o m e n o n , w h i c h three months of s u m m e r h a d calmed d o w n a little - traffic. Motors in all directions, going at all speeds. I w a s o v e r w h e l m e d , an e n t h u s i a s t i c r a p t u r e filled me. N o t the r a p t u r e of the s h i n i n g c o a c h w o r k u n d e r the gleaming lights, but the rapture of power. The simple and ingenuous pleasure of being in the centre of so m u c h power, so m u c h speed. We are p a r t of it. We are part of that race w h o s e d a w n is just a w a k e n i n g .... Its p o w e r is like a torrent swollen b y storms; a destructive fury. The city is crumbling, it cannot last m u c h longer. (1987:xxiii)

The city is o n the verge of d i s a p p e a r a n c e . The safe h o u s e n o w stands ir~ opposition to the d e a d l y streets of h u m a n sacrifice. It is interesting to note that in Le Corbusier's discourse an abstract notion of the city stands separate from s p e e d a n d traffic that poses threat. 'The city is crumbling' b u t s p e e d a n d traffic stand as i n d e p e n d e n t sources of power. This is sheer p o w e r w i t h o u t an object a n d w i t h o u t location. While the city is crumbling, as Le Corbusier states later in the book, 'the idea of the 'old h o m e ' disappears' as well (ibid.:231). Since the ' h o u s e ' itself is threatened, there remains no r o o m for the Albertian notion of the city as a large house.

W h a t interests m e here is the contradictory tones that m a r k Le C o r b u s i e r ' s discourse. The first part of his account resonates w i t h nostalgia; a y e a r n i n g for his familiar c h i l d h o o d city. This is in h a r m o n y with the Albertian desire for the city as a large house. The second part, on the other h a n d , bears the m a r k of seduction. The architect is a p p a r e n t l y s e d u c e d by the uncontrollable p o w e r that overtook the familiar city. In psychoanalytical terms, his experience of the city is ' b e y o n d the pleasure principle'. This is a paradoxical pleasure rooted in d i s p l e a s u r e . The a r c h i t e c t a n d t h e city, the s u b j e c t a n d the object are m o m e n t a r i l y conjoined by the flow of s p e e d and power. The second part of Le C o r b u s i e r ' s account m a r k s the brief m o m e n t of jouissance in the text w h i c h erupts from an i n a d v e r t e n t crack in the u r b a n identification b a s e d on the m e t a p h o r of the house. Ironically, the cost of Le Corbusier's bliss is the v e r y city itself. The s u d d e n t u r n of the text is a striking revelation that d e a t h and jouissance are e m b e d d e d in the same mise-en-sc~ne. Le Corbusier's encounter w i t h the city is u n c a n n i l y similar to the ancient m y t h of O d y s s e u s ' e n c o u n t e r w i t h the sirens, creatures, h a l f - w o m a n a n d half-bird, w h o live on an island a n d h a v e the p o w e r of enticing m e n w i t h their singing. Those w h o succumb

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die immediately. Odysseus, w h o s e ship passes their island, deals w i t h the situation b y filling the ears of his m e n w i t h w a x a n d h a v i n g himself fastened to the mast. The sirens then d r o w n themselves from vexation at his escape. The question of w h a t the sirens sang or w h e t h e r they sang at all are left open. In a brilliant analysis of the myth, Renata Salecl argues that the sirens' s o n g stands as an empty, unutterable point in the O d y s s e y w h i c h conjoins seduction and d e a t h

(1998:175-98).

It stands for the failure of symbolisation just as the force of sheer power, e m p t i e d of any material content, stands for the failure of the city in Le C o r b u s i e r ' s account. How, then, does the architect design his

Contemporary City for Three Million Inhabitants

w h i c h is the focus of his book? H o w does he reconcile his nostalgia for familiarity a n d his bliss in the city's death?

At this point, Salecl's inspiring c o m p a r i s o n b e t w e e n the sirens a n d the m u s e s e n a b l e s f u r t h e r theorisation. The m u s e s , w h o are the singers t h a t preside over t h o u g h t a n d creativity, sing songs of past glories to m a k e m e n forget their troubles. 'Inspired b y the m e m o r y that the m u s e s provide, their listeners are able to create w o r k s of art, w h i l e those w h o h e a r the k n o w l e d g e offered b y the sirens' song i m m e d i a t e l y die' (ibid.:179). Despite its inspiration by the sirens' song then, is the

City for Three Million

a response to the call of the muses? Is it inspired b y a y e a r n i n g for 'the city as a large h o u s e ' rather t h a n the unsymbolisable p o w e r that marks the f o r m e r ' s death? For Le Corbusier, the city is n o t a large house, however. H e says that it is 'a h o u s e m u l t i p l i e d a h u n d r e d t h o u s a n d times' (1987:71). W h a t to m a k e of this repetition?

The City for Three Million

is a complicated project that n e e d s to be interpreted at a n u m b e r of levels. At one level, as the architectural discipline has it, it is a m a g n i f i c e n t m a n i f e s t a t i o n of an ideal m o d e r n i s t city at the age of trans- portation a n d speed. Its orderly layout, clear z o n i n g a n d traffic m a n a g e m e n t marks the a t t e m p t to recover the loss of familiarity a n d belonging. As such, it is an u r b a n fantasy that avoids the t r a u m a of the city's disappearance. At another level, h o w e v e r , I w a n t to argue that the project reveals its o w n limits in interesting ways. The h o u s e enters as a crucial figure in this reading. Let m e turn to the notion of the city as a h o u s e m u l t i p l i e d a h u n d r e d t h o u s a n d times.

The City of Tomorrow

overflows with statements of d e t e r m i n e d insistence on mass p r o d u c e d h o u s e s and the notion of the h o u s e - m a c h i n e . H o w can w e explain this d r i v e to repeat? I a m t e m p t e d to i n t e r p r e t it in terms of the proposition that 'the drive is in the final instance always the death drive'. To further this analysis let m e turn to the m e a n i n g of the h o u s e for Le Corbusier. B a s e d o n Le C o r b u s i e r ' s d r a w i n g s a n d p h o t o g r a p h s of his h o u s e s , architectural theorist Beatriz Colomina argues that for h i m the h o u s e is n o t d e f i n e d o n the basis of domestic interiority (1992:73-130). O n the contrary, it is a device to frame the exterior. To inhabit m e a n s to see. The look is not g e n d e r - n e u t r a l however. The architect consistently depicts w o m e n facing the interiors a n d m e n looking out. Interestingly h o w e v e r , all traces of traffic, speed a n d

u r b a n life are eliminated from the views that Le Corbusier's houses are m e a n t to frame. W h a t w e get are picturesque landscapes of a domesticated nature. The city is a h o u s e multiplied a h u n d r e d t h o u s a n d times but, in m a k i n g the city, a h u n d r e d t h o u s a n d houses annihilate it. The narrative of loss doubles in Le Corbusier's account. The loss of the city of his c h i l d h o o d is a c c o m p a n i e d by another a n d m o r e traumatic loss - the loss of the city itself. That is precisely w h e r e t h e n o t i o n of the d e a t h d r i v e b e c o m e s i m p o r t a n t : it m a r k s the eradication of the symbolic texture w h i c h constitutes reality (Zizek 1989:132). 5 For the source of jouissance lies at the unsymbolisable kernel at the core of the symbolic order. In m y reading, w h a t m a k e s The City of Tomorrow an i m p o r t a n t project lies less in its being a m o d e r n i s t manifestation of w h a t an ideal city i n c l u d e s t h a n in its i n a d v e r t e n t disclosure of the lack that e m e r g e s at its f o u n d i n g m o m e n t .

The figure of the h o u s e then plays a double role in the City for Three Million. First, it plays the role of fantasmic s u p p o r t that makes the city possible. By structuring the very architecture of the city, it covers over the i m a g e of the d i s a p p e a r i n g city that Le Corbusier experienced in his m o m e n t of jouissance. At the same time, however, its incessant repetition marks the obliteration of the symbolic w e a v e that constitutes the city as an identity category.

Scene III . . . . all of this is being swept away ...

Both the Albertian and the Corbusean responses to the loss of the city take the form of u r b a n ideals. As such they posit 'ideal' cities as objects of desire to enable 'real' u r b a n intervention. The figure of the h o u s e plays a crucial role here in symbolising the loss a n d hence p r o v i d i n g the fantasmic s u p p o r t for the recovery of u r b a n identification. If the Albertian and C o r b u s e a n idealisations m a r k the e n d s of two narratives based on loss, the c o n t e m p o r a r y discourse on cities of the information age m a r k the beginning of yet another one. Paul Viritio is one of the m o s t vocal critics in that respect. In an e x e m p l a r y p a r a g r a p h in 'The O v e r e x p o s e d City', h e states:

Today, the abolition of distances in time b y v a r i o u s m e a n s of c o m m u n i c a t i o n s a n d telecommunications results in a confusion in w h i c h the image of the City suffers the direct a n d indirect effects of iconological torsion and distortion, in w h i c h the m o s t e l e m e n t a r y reference points disappear one b y one. With the d e c a y of u r b a n centrality and axiality, the symbolic a n d historic reference points go first. Then, w h e n the industrial apparatus a n d the m o n u m e n t s lose their m e a n i n g s , the architectonic references vanish. M o s t decisively, the demise of the ancient categorisation a n d partition of the physical dimension leads to the loss of the geometric reference points. (1991:30)

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Abolition, confusion, torsion, distortion, decay, loss, disappearance, demise are all negative terms that point to dissolution and death. Interestingly, at this junction the figures of the body, the house and the city are linked one more time. Stating himself to be 'a materialist of the body', Virilio is extremely critical of its 'de-realisation' by the invasion of transplants, biogenetic devices and developments in nanotechnology. Similar to the disappearance of the 'real body', the dissolution of the city and the dwelling too are linked to technological developments. The issue here is the breakdown of physical boundaries. As Virilio explains, the city gate is replaced by the security gateway at the airport and the house-window with the screen interface. The protocol of physical access, as o p p o s e d to a d v a n c e d technologies and teledistribution systems, he contends, 'gave all its meaning to the space of a dwelling and of a City; b o t h w e r e linked to the primacy of the sedentary over the nomadic ways of our origins' (ibid.:99).

Virilio's arguments are multilayered and complex but the above quotation bears an unmistakable mark of emasculation. Indeed, sexuality is explicitly w o v e n into his statements on the progressive loss of habitable space. As Verena Anderrnatt Conley argues, 'repeatedly, Virilio claims'that w o m a n is man's first vehicle in a series of relays that leads from the prehistoric

pugilat

[fight] to present-day teletopia and that goes along with the progressive loss of "Mother Earth"' (1999:202). 6 With reference to the story of Genesis, he ascertains that man's seduction by woman led him astray on his search for the perfect technological object. This parallels the eroticised feminisation of loss in Alberti's and Le Corbusier's discourses. In the former instance, the city is literally lost as the result of warfare and associated with the mutilated woman's body. In the latter, physical disturbances such as noise and traffic bear the burden of loss and the sign of seduction. In both cases the house provides the fantasmic frame that holds the image of the city. It is that frame that provides meaning to the material reality of the city. It seems to me that today that very frame is experienced as loss. Virilio explicitly says that it is the 'image' of the city and its 'meaning' that vanish. Since the source of meaning for both the city and the house has vanished, the house can no longer function as the metaphor for the-city-to-be. Indeed, today the house turns out to be the source of urban dematerialisation. William J. Mitchell's

City of Bits,

has a lengthy section entitled, 'Electronic Agoras' which begins with explaining h o w his home computer collapses the spaces of the office, the marketplace, the neighbourhood caf6, the Main Street and all aspects of formerly 'urban' life (1996: 7-24). Has the Albertian ideal come full circle then? Is the home literally a small city now? What is the role of architecture in this scenario?

I n o w want to turn to the architecture of the house and enter Bill Gates's 'home of the future' in Seattle. Gates describes his house in his renowned book,

The Road Ahead, in the

section appropriately entitled, 'Plugged in at

H o m e ' . As he explains, the house is m a d e of w o o d , glass, concrete a n d stone. The w o o d is r e c y c l e d D o u g l a s fir f r o m an e i g h t y - y e a r - o l d l u m b e r mill (1995:214). It stamps the h o u s e w i t h the m a r k of stability, authenticity and history - the unmistakable signs of domesticity. However, the h o u s e is also m a d e of other materials, 'of silicon and software' as Gates states. Indeed, there is a b u n d a n t use of digital a n d electronic technology in this house. The o w n e r explains:

First thing as you come in you'll be p r e s e n t e d with an electronic pin to d i p to your clothes. This pin will connect you to the electronic services of the house ... will tell the house w h o and w h e r e y o u are, and the house will use this information to try to m e e t a n d e v e n anticipate y o u r n e e d s - all as u n o b t r u s i v e l y as possible. (Ibid.:217-18)

Thanks to the pin, the occupants will be a c c o m p a n i e d b y a m o v i n g light zone, p e r s o n a l i s e d music, movies and n e w s as t h e y m o v e a r o u n d the house. In the case of a p h o n e call, only the h a n d s e t nearest the addressee will ring. All e v i d e n c e of silicon microprocessors, m e m o r y chips and software equipment, h o w e v e r , is concealed b e h i n d traditional b u i l d i n g materials. ' M y h o p e is that the v i e w a n d the Douglas fir, rather t h a n the electronic pin, will be w h a t interest y o u most,' says Gates in a m o s t revealing statement. I think that this is a striking response to the prevalent conviction about the d i m i n i s h i n g role of architecture in the age of electronic technologies. 7

I w o u l d argue that in the Gates house, architecture-as-we-know-it plays a f u n d a m e n t a l historical role in d e m o n s t r a t i n g the limit of the Albertian fantasy that the city is no more than a great h o u s e a n d the h o u s e is a little city a n d that every edifice is a body. The Gates h o u s e is i n d e e d a little city at a n u m b e r of levels. This is d u e less to its public m e e t i n g spaces such as a theatre and a reception hall than to the electronic c o m m u n i c a t i o n devices that enable the entire h o u s e to absorb such u r b a n functions as m u s e u m s , concert halls and offices. All these facilities are m a d e available by m e a n s of the electronic pin that is attached to the body. The city i n v a d e s the house. The h o u s e implodes and i n v a d e s the body. The Albertian ideal comes full circle. The city and the b o d y m e r g e via the house. The architecture of the h o u s e plays a crucial role here in covering u p the dramatic limit of the Albertian fantasy. This is the limit w h e r e b y the city, the h o u s e a n d the b o d y are totally synchronised. In this scenario, the h o u s e can no longer function as the fantasmic s u p p o r t for the identification of the city. This is not only because the two identifications merge, b u t also because w h a t remains of the h o u s e and the city is only architecture (the p e r c e p t u a l shell that conceals the reality of electronic devices w h i c h regulate any notion of interiority) w h i c h n o w functions as a m a s k to cover over the v o i d left b y the death of domestic interiority - domesti-city.

220 U R B A N F O R U M 11:2, 2000

RE-MEMBERING THE CITY

I have argued that the metaphor of the house functions as a fantasmic support for the architectural identification of the ideal city. It guards against the city's disintegration, and its ultimate death. Indeed, notions of loss and death appear at a number of levels in my argument. First and most fundamental of course, is that the very question of the city emerges simultaneously with its experience as loss. The ideal city marks the symbolisation of 'the thing' that is lost. Second, death is woven into my argument in relation to feminine identification. In the Albertian instance, the metaphor of the dead w o m a n not only symbolises the disintegrated city but also the impossibility of its recovery. Also, in both the Albertian and Corbusian instances, the definition of the house, the fantasmic support of the city is based on the eviction a n d the d e a t h of feminine identification. Third, in the latter instance, the notion of the death drive helped me to explain the impossibility of fulfilling the premises of the ideal city.

In all these instances, the urban imaginary which operates on the principle of recovery, fulfils the social symbolic requirements of mastery and control. Recovery in that sense turns out to be re-covery - covering over the perceived loss. I would like to argue that once the notion of loss is critically examined, there may be other imaginary identifications for the h o m e and the city. 8 Perhaps then, V~trilio's statement on the loss of meaning will hold the very promise and possibility of locating meaning away from the interiority that the h o m e m e t a p h o r builds. Since m e a n i n g , by definition, d e p e n d s on the symbolisation of the founding loss, the question cannot be to discard this powerful notion. If we accept the psychoanalytical proposition that the lost object was not there at first place, but emerges as being lost, we will accept the inherent impossibility of its reconstruction. There must be other ways of producing meaning than the (failed) reconstruction of its founding loss.

How to relocate the desire for meaning? How to productively undo the messy entanglement of the notions of loss, recovery and meaning? I find Kaja Silverman's insistence on the importance of embracing the futural mani- festation of the past extremely inspiring here (1999:90-91; see also Silverman 1996:180-83). Following psychoanalytical theory, her argument is that since the backward path to satisfaction is blocked, we have no choice but to move forward. On this new path, the desired object can only be recovered in the form of a substitute. What is too often forgotten is that every re-membrance involves a displacement and hence alterity. A productive involvement with the past is possible by capitalising neither u p o n the return, nor upon the p a r t i c u l a r i t y of the n e w term, but on the possibilities o p e n e d up by displacement. Silverman emphasises that our capacity to care is rooted in the past, as the very perception of loss provides us with the capacity to cherish and care. What is important here is that this capacity is always subject to retroactive rearticulations.

In terms of m y o w n a r g u m e n t then, our u r b a n projections will inevitably be rooted in experiences of loss. The point is that there are other w a y s of h a n d l i n g t h e s e e x p e r i e n c e s t h a n e i t h e r m o u r n i n g o v e r the loss or e u p h o r i c a l l y celebrating the n e w terms. Productive symbolisation of the latter is enabled by the invocation of care that is e m b e d d e d in a retroactive orientation. Indeed, recent critical w o r k on specific u r b a n sites suggests that the i m m e d i a c y of the p r e s e n t offers a b u n d a n t u r b a n instances that are yet to be symbolised (see, for e x a m p l e , L o z a n o v s k a 1997; Sherif 1999; N a l b a n t o ~ l u 1999). Each time w e allow these instances to appear in architectural a n d u r b a n terms, w e have the o p p o r t u n i t y to t u r n a w a y from the u r b a n enclosure b a s e d on the violence i n h e r e n t in the m e t a p h o r of h o m e . Since o u r p e r c e p t u a l a n d e n u n c i a t i v e positions are always historically, geographically and socially located, these instances can proliferate ad infinitum. Today, as w a r a n d disasters, as m u c h as

electronic c o m m u n i c a t i o n devices literally obliterate u r b a n boundaries, and reconstruction projects proliferate, our experiences a n d perceptions of loss can lead to different bodily, domestic a n d u r b a n imaginaries that are not rooted in domesti-city.

N O T E S

1. Sue Best cites a considerable n u m b e r of examples, from architect Rein Koolhaas's description of N e w York to philosopher Francois Lyotard's a c c o u n t of Los Angeles to Support this proposition. One of the most p r o m i n e n t thinkers w h o uses maternal references in relation to the concept of h o m e is, of course, Gaston Bachelard (see Best 1995:181-83).

2. Mario Gandelsonas states that 'the city has b e e n the object of architectural desire from the m o m e n t architectural discourse w a s established w i t h A l b e r t ' s theory: A n a r t i c u l a t i o n of t w o illegible texts, one w r i t t e n (Vitruvius's Ten Books on Architecture) a n d one built (the Rom a n ruins)'

(1998:130). Bracciolini's statement is not the only historical instance w h e r e an association is m a d e b e t w e e n w o m a n ' s b o d y and the city. In an inspiring c o m m e n t a r y on the architectural/archaeological discourse that surrounds the impression of a w o m a n ' s breast on a piece of earth in Pompeii, Mirjana L o z a n o v s k a observes that 'there are s p o n t a n e o u s , a l m o s t a u t o m a t i c gestural, spasmatic links b e t w e e n w o m a n , death and buried city: eroticism as subtext can only be symbolized within an e c o n o m y of death' (1999:236). 3. For an inspiring a c c o u n t of h o w sexuality functions in Renaissance

treatises see Agrest 1991:173-95. In fact, the invocation of space in relation to the b o d y as a b o u n d e d entity is an historically recurring theme. Citing M a r y Douglas, Sue Best argues that the b o d y provides the m o d e l for any b o u n d e d system (1995:183).

4. F r o m a poststructuralist perspective a n u m b e r of c o n t e m p o r a r y theorists h a v e emphasised the problematic separation of image a n d m e a n i n g in

222 U R B A N F O R U M 11:2, 2000

the use of m e t a p h o r (see Best 1995:185-88; Wigley 1993, esp. "The Domestication of the House', pp.97-122).

5. Zizek explains that in the late work of Lacan the symbolic order is identified with the pleasure principle beyond which lies a traumatic, unsymbolisable core. At that level, the death drive is the opposite of the symbolic order, 'the radical annihilation of the symbolic texture through which the so-called reality is constituted. The very existence of the symbolic order implies a possibility of its radical effacement, of "symbolic death" - not the death of the so-called "real object" in its symbol, but the obliteration of the signifying network itself' (1989:132).

6. Conley's ultimate project is to point to rare turns in Virilio's texts where the space opened to movement in connection with eros might enable transformations outside the totalitarian closure that Virilio anticipates. Other articles in the same issue of Theory, Culture and Society in which Conley's article appears to go further to illuminate the multiplicity of interpretations evoked by Virilio's position.

7. In a recent and informative article on the Gates house, for example, Adi Shamir Zion contends that while historically architecture had an implicit connection to building techniques, information technology seems not to require architectural response and participation. Her project is to reform architecture in the light of a ' n e w m o d e r n ' , h a r k i n g back to the transformations in spatial perception in the early twentieth century. In a sense, this is yet another narrative of a golden past, unwanted present and future recovery (1998:78).

8. I use the term imaginary identification in the psychoanalytic sense here, indicating identification with the image i n which we appear likeable to ourselves, i.e., the ideal ego (see Zizek 1989:105).

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Best, Sue. 1995. Sexualizing Space. In Elizabeth Grosz and Elspeth Probyn (eds), Sexy Bodies. N e w York: Routledge.

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