The unsettling feature is the presence of a modernist icon legitimizing a massive historical moment. The Casa Del Fascio – a building dripping in modernism- was never supposed to do this. Modernism was abstract, autonomous and for the new century, beyond any representation old world ideals- especially those in support of any political totalitarianism. Or is this true?
Pope reveals that prior to WWII, modernism was attached to political ideals- the new ideals that favored an empowered majority such as Socialism, Communism, and Fascism. Soon after however, the modernist project was rewritten and its representative functions and connections to collective movements cut (Fig .2) It was from then on to stand for autonomy, technicality, and art.
Original sketch, Fig. 2
Reyner Banham once remarked that the Second World War was fought to make the world safe for modernism. The sentiment has always rung true inasmuch as it also prompted its inverse: that modern architecture was ultimately made ‘safe’ for the post-war world.[2]
We are to believe that this shift toward the realm of autonomy and the apolitical has had its effects on modern city- filled with voids and empty of any meaning. Pope then tells us that this ‘shift’ away from representation was never a real decision at all, but the only move to make. Less of an evasive move away from representation, it was more of a commentary on the impossibility for architecture to participate in the post-war political world. This calculated withdrawal suggests not an absence of meaning but a potent silence.[3]
Traditional urban space is defined by spaces bounded by walls and forms. An example of this would be Central Park in New York City. Modern urban space however is unbounded. In a traditional gridiron metropolis like New York City, the streets are open and extensible and public spaces are delineated. This is contrasted with the cul-de-sac megalopolis of modern space- where the streets are closed and exist with in an open field of space.
Hilberseimer redevelopment plan for Marquette Park, Fig. 3 Pope argues that this modern spatial tabula rasa is necessary step toward reinvention- as it offered a release from the historical restraint of form.[1] At the same time however, it is still a site of utopian and dystopian promise and must be approached with an agnostic detachment. But when is this tabula rasa to be acted upon? Pope refers to this lack of action as a suspended revolution and quotes Henri Lefebvre from Production of Space:
A revolution that does not produce a new space has not realized its full potential; indeed it has failed in that it has not changed life itself, but has merely changed ideological superstructures, institutions or political apparatuses.[2]
The problem, for now is that modern space lacks a subjectivity- no mass subject has been realized to build for. Until the moment arrives, architecture can only anticipate their arrival and these words of Gilles Deleuze will remain true:
The people no longer exit, or not yet…the people are missing.[3]
[1] Hensel, Hight, and Menges, Space Reader 60.
