New Massings For New Masses | Collectivity After Orthography

MIT Keller Gallery, May 15 - August 15 2014.

There once was an architectural dream called Housing, which demanded from any architect who dared wander into its dream-shadow a complete rejection of existing culture. Housing was, during its early and most radical period, the first legitimate architectural counterculture. It was also a possible path towards career suicide.

Housing is no longer possible—in part because all of the historical and socio-political conditions that made it a sensible concept have been swept away: Socialism and Liberalism have given way to Neoliberalism; the State has been swallowed by the Market; sociality has dissolved into interactivity; the city has been erased by urbanism; etc. This much we know.

More importantly, however, for our purposes: the architectural spirit of experimentation that motivated Housing has ceased to exist because the technical-representational surface from which it emerged—the orthographic architectural drawing—has disappeared. Architecture has not yet discovered ways of experimenting with collective forms of life within its new technical regimes.