CALL FOR PAPERS San Rocco 5: Scary Architects

• Scary Modernism •
Modernism dealt with quantity. It terrifyingly organized
masses of people within a Cartesian space: the
houses of Pagano, Diotallevi and Marescotti’s Città
Orizzontale were distributed among city blocks according
to the number of members a family had. Pigeonholed
as if placed in the methodical cabinet of an
obsessive entomologist, dwellers’ interrelations were
strictly classified and predetermined on the basis of
physical quantities: singles, couples, three-person
families, four-person families, and so on . . . In a sort
of desolated metonymy, apartments stood for inhabitants,
city-blocks for groups of people, cities for masses.
In such a non-human landscape, people acquired a
surreal quality. Surprisingly, human figures appear in
Ludwig Hilberseimer’s Hochhausstadt perspectives.
As shapes cut out in black shown in groups of two and
equally distributed in space, they stand on the bridges
that the architect kindly provided. You won’t notice
them at first glance, but they are there nonetheless.
You have to wonder if their inclusion was a joke . . .
• Phalaris Takes Power •
In his Politics, Aristotle recounts that Phalaris (who
lived from around 570 to 554 BC) was a Greek architect
entrusted with the building of the temple of Zeus
Atabyrius on the acropolis of Agrigentum. Phalaris
is, by far, the greatest “success story” if we consider
the historically one-sided relationship between architects
and politics, in which the latter almost always
strong-arm the former. Indeed, after receiving
the commission for the temple, Phalaris lamented the
lack of resources for the project and asked for more
money and more workers. After his request was accepted,
he used the money to arm the workers and
installed himself as the tyrant of the city. Under his
rule, Agrigentum seems to have attained considerable
prosperity.
Phalaris was renowned for his excessive cruelty. His
alleged atrocities included cannibalism: he was said
to have eaten suckling babes. Phalaris is also famous
for his brazen bull, which was invented, it is said, by
Perillos of Athens. The tyrant’s victims were shut up
inside the bull and a fire was then kindled beneath it,
roasting them alive; their cries were supposed to represent
the bellowing of the bull.
Phalaris’s exploits (except the bull, maybe) somehow
remind us of everything Manfredo Tafuri always wanted
(but never dared) to do: quit architecture, jump
into politics, seize power.
• Julius Caesar’s Bridges •
Julius Caesar allowed the construction of two bridges
across the Rhine during the Gallic Wars in 55 and 53
BC. The construction of the first bridge most likely occurred
somewhere between Andernach and Neuwied,
downstream from Koblenz. Book 4 of the Commentarii
de bello Gallico provides technical details about this
wooden-beam bridge. With over 40,000 soldiers at his
disposal, Caesar built the first bridge in only ten days.
He crossed with his troops over to the eastern bank and
managed to burn some villages, but he found out that
the ur-Germans had been smart enough to escape further
east. After eighteen days without any major battle,
he returned to Gaul and burned the bridge. Two years
later, close to the site of the first bridge, possibly where
the modern town of Urmitz is found, Caesar erected a
second bridge, again built in just “a few days”, according
to Book 6. His expeditionary forces raided the countryside
but did not encounter significant opposition, as
the Germans had retreated once again. Upon returning
to Gaul, the second bridge was taken down as the first
had been.
Caesar used his technological superiority to scare more
than to conquer. The bridges were, in reality, utterly
useless, for the army could have crossed the river in all
kinds of different manners; Caesar just wanted to put
on a terrifying show for his enemies.
• A Career as a Scary Architect •
Even though there are scary architects who have enormous
firms, it is the smaller practices that are arguably
the most interesting. These small firms are almost
invisible and operate in stealth. They seldom have real
offices, and this makes their practices extremely agile
and opportunistic; sometimes they even use another
practice to make what they want to make. They
rarely take full responsibility for what they actually do,
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