Architecture and Modernity : A Critique

154
scope. They even accused Constant of functioning as a public-relations officer for
capitalism because his project tried to integrate the masses in a totally technified
environment. 15
Constant, for his part, did not expect this social revolution to take place in the
near future. As a sort of strategy for survival in hard times, he considered that it made
sense to get involved in the concrete design of “une autre ville pour une autre vie”
(a different city for a different life). In the course of 1960 this difference of opinion became
increasingly apparent, and Constant resigned from the group in the summer of
that year.
The remaining situationists continued to work on unitary urbanism but in a different
way from Constant. They did not produce any maquettes, drawings, or paintings;
instead they wrote articles that criticized urban planning and development as it
actually was. 16 They denounced the existing practice of urban development as serving
the ideological purposes of capitalism: current urbanism, in their view, has as its
aim to organize life in such a way that people are discouraged from thinking that they
might have anything of their own to contribute. By emphasizing the question of
transport, contemporary urbanism isolates people from each other, preventing them
from using their energy for genuine participation. Instead they are offered the spectacle:
“That participation has become impossible is compensated by way of the
spectacle. The spectacle is manifest in one’s residence and mobility (personal vehicles).
For in fact one doesn’t live somewhere in the city; one lives somewhere in the
hierarchy.” 17
The fact that they are part of the spectacle turns people into passive individuals
who are alienated from their own existence. This is why the situationists saw it
as their first task to free people from their identification with their surroundings and
with codes of behavior imposed by a capitalist society. Unitary urbanism therefore involves
a permanent critique of the manipulation exercised by existing urban structures.
This criticism can be activated by the tensions and conflicts of everyday life.
The aim of unitary urbanism is to provide the basis for a life whose driving force is
continuous experimentation.
The situationists were concerned, however, that unitary urbanism would not
lead to the creation of “experimental zones” that would be isolated from the rest of
the world. Their strivings, they claimed, had nothing to do with the designing of yet
another holiday resort. On the contrary, “Unitary urbanism is the contrary of specialized
activity; to accept a separate urbanistic domain is already to accept the whole
urbanistic lie and the falsehood permeating the whole of life.” 18
A fertile method for criticizing urbanism is that of deliberate distortion, le détournement.
This technique aims to present a certain matter in a different light than
is officially intended, so exposing its fraudulent character. According to Kotanyi and
Vaneigem, it is possible to subject the lies in urbanist theory to a détournement in order
to counter its alienating effects. In this way one can trigger a process of disalienation.
What is necessary is a reversal of the rhythm of the discourse of
155