Summary of “History of Architecture seen from the Construction Site”
This text was based on a series of three lectures Professor Sérgio Ferro gave at FAU USP.
First Lecture: from Strasbourg to Paris
Architecture is part of a larger entity, which is construction. In turn, construction is included in a larger one, which is political economy. It is from the analysis of these connected elements that we can understand the act of drawing/designing of the architect. The construction inside the political economy has an important role: it can provide economy with huge quantities of surplus value (surplus value is equal to the new value created by workers in excess of their own labour-cost, which is appropriated by the capitalist as profit when products are sold) because it is a profitable activity and it relies on an “outdated” construction technique (it is a manufacture, not an industry). Therefore, is the political economy through the specificity of construction, which fundamentally determines what we do: design - whose primary function is to assist the exploitation of labour. The history of architecture, seen from the construction site, is the story of its adaptation to different stages of the exploitation of labour by capital, mediated by the construction within the political economy.
During the 11th and 12th centuries in Western Europe, constructions were built in simple cooperation: the cathedrals would employ thirty or forty artisans that would conduct the construction from primary schemes. They would all know the rules of the métier, the “secrets” to raise a cathedral. There was not an architect. Designing was not an external activity, it was part of the process inside the construction site.
However, workforce relations would begin to change at the end of the 12th century. Strasbourg is a typical case. It became a sort of Republic and negotiations were more complex. A council would direct the projects and to obtain an agreement it became necessary to design in advance, making models, predict. In this scenario raises the figure of the intermediary, which elaborates the design-contract. This changes the organization and the responsibility of the construction site. Instead of following discontinuous decisions that are almost independent from each other, the site starts to be guided by a global order, by an overall view that the design and model enable. For the first time in the period under consideration, the divorce between the design and construction site arises.
Since the design is isolated from the construction site, the image of the proto-architect appears and nothing is said about the workforce anymore. The design’s heteronomy breaks the cohesion of the workforce that slowly disintegrates and disperses in various métiers. The worker that used to build a wall and carve a capital is gone. Now there are masons in one side, sculptors on the other. It is not yet a capitalist procedure. Large construction sites would not fed the accumulation of capital directly. However, they would help since they encouraged urban development.
At the beginning of the 15th century, in the hands of Brunelleschi, the design became a weapon in the class conflict. Even though design and site are already apart, there was one last obstacle: the workforce was still familiar with the gothic aesthetic and they could discuss, evaluate the design. To consolidate the power of the project, it was necessary to get out of this dilemma. Hence the last card of Brunelleschi: changing the aesthetic, adopting the classic.
The architect, to prove their need cannot stick to the constructive logic: this is still in the hands of workers. Its design had to go beyond. However, to go beyond meant falling short or pretend the impossible. As an example, Michelangelo liked to use technical absurdities, as in the Medici Chapel or in the Laurentian Library. In fact, in almost every classical piece of architecture we find the same strange duality. Behind, a real construction of poor quality; in front, the classic apparatus that does not disguise its artificiality. Generally, the shape of the elements of the architectural scenario does not correspond to the actual behaviour of materials. This incompatibility manifests itself as poor training, as rough execution, especially in the Baroque, where the hand that draws always wants more.
On the other hand, housing production opened the path for a more rationalized construction, reducing costs and using materials in an effective way. By the 19th century, there was enough empirical knowledge that allowed the creation of a science of construction. It is the rise of the engineer.
Second Lecture: from Paris to Dubai
The end of the 19th century, early 20th century, is one of the most complex periods in the history of art and architecture: it is not without reason that is when modernism is born. During the 19th century, little by little, emerged the trend of transforming formal submission into real submission inside the construction work environment, although there was no industrialization.
In Paris, the political situation a few years after the Commune (1870) and the establishment of the Republic, less authoritarian and repressive, allowed the creation of more consistent workers’ organizations. Consequently, workers’ agitation grows and several strikes occur between 1890 and 1910. Construction workers actively participated in this awakening, and had a considerable advantage in the fight that favoured direct action: confrontation in the workplace.
Just like before, the capital invested in construction found the answer for its problems changing the rules of the game. In order to force an advantage in the power relation, they changed the material used in construction, adopting iron as a main element. Besides serving to break strikes, what impressed was the economy in production costs. Therefore, the use of iron was limited to buildings linked to constant capital or the circulation of goods - the territory of the engineers.
Only later, at the turn of the century, the concrete began to call attention. Its advantages went far beyond the simple issue of production costs. The change to concrete did not develop a savoir faire that could accumulate, or a métier tradition that could consolidate a working alliance. Neither concrete nor iron could serve as a basis for the workforce in the workers’ conflict, like wood and stone. Both materials require calculations, structural studies and precise technical details and its knowledge concentrated in the hands of engineers and technicians.
The construction, because of its role in economy, should continue as a manufacturing process. Due to the amount of workforce it retains, and the small number of machines it uses, it is an essential source of capital accumulation. Therefore, the industrialization of construction is out of hand. In this way, the emergence of modernism is part of the instinctive, but tenacious, response of the capital against the threat of a possible revolution. The modernists stood as the proclaimers of a non-existent – and unlikely – industrialization, from which they only mimic the imaginary appearance. To the self-managed, egalitarian claims of revolutionary syndicalism, modernism responded by raising the division between design and production – by using iron and concrete – but keeping a promise to take care of social issues as soon as possible with the expected industrialization of construction, in an unchanging social horizon.
After the Second World War – that ended the positive view of science and technology –, back in the 1960’s, the social hope revived. The basic theme that fuelled period preceding modernism was recovered: the critique of the relations of production. In the field of architecture, there were some external experiences (like ours). Also, alternative proposals and practices multiplied, especially among students. But even in this cases, production in the construction site has not changed. The design continued to reign and the workers continued to obey, even when the goal was to meet their needs.
Nowadays, the stars that are heard are Venturi, Jencks, Gehry, Eisenman, Koolhas, Portzamparc, Nouvel, Zaha Hadid, etc., the post-modernists and similar. They rise after 1990, with the guaranteed hegemony of financial capital, the disappearance of USSR, and the discouragement of the working class. They dispense of the insincere modernism program: a promise is no longer needed. Rarely architecture corresponded so loudly to the dark side of its function: to introduce irrationality in the possible technical rationality of construction.
Dubai may be the symbol of this architecture, showcase of stars: built almost exclusively with the accumulation of capital derived from exploitation of slavery in construction sites. Today is stage for the loose power of finance capital. The fantasy nouveau riche style of the projects and their kitch boldness perfectly suits the “fictitious capital” – as Marx called the financial capital. When I wrote “The construction site and Design”, 40 years ago, I could never have imagined such a perfect concrete example of his thesis.
Third Lecture: the case of Art
*Ferro resumes this section in topics at the end of the text.
1. The artist moves away from the artisan. They are still close, however, the artist uses different strategies that apply to production means which they both share.
a) Virtuosity in the use of these means;
b) Deletion of the means used;
c) Sprezzatura, courtier use of means;
2. The separation stabilizes (XVI-XVIII century). These three strategies are determined, encoded by the academies: they specify the metier and create the material of the Art. The slow Craftsman descent, now a manufacturing worker, diminishes the confusion between them and the artist. The opposition becomes deeper: in addition to the means, the way they work also differentiates them (heteronomous orders against free creation on the spot).
3. The separation is so distinguished that it seems to be diluted. The industrial worker, atomized, with no means of struggle, is not even considered an oppositional reference to the artist anymore. Art, kind of loose, twists around itself and creates internal oppositions (neoclassical versus romantic).
4. At the end of the 19th century, early 20th century, there are upheavals caused by the definitive bourgeois hegemony (academy crisis, impressionism), but then increased by the outbreak of the Second Industrial Revolution, which opens up the possibility of a new society. The workers and left-wing movements are amplified. Art seems to finally be able to get out of its determinate negation and correspond to its concept, free labour. There is no more an Art versus social work opposition.
5. Another crisis during the First World War. Sharp retreat. The progress made falls apart and Art lets itself be swallowed by the capital market: end of the postulated autonomy, of its “freedom”. The difference between artist/worker is changed: now it is the opposition between random work/submissive labour. In reaction, it begins the autophagy of Art that, instead of looking for an autonomous producer, seeks the autonomy of the product by following, without suspecting, the fetishization of the merchandise that it has sunk into.
6. After several preparations (impossible to detail here, but that includes the pop irony, the elitism asceticism of minimalism, the effrontery of “bad painting”, the idiot hyperrealism, the boring spree of “happenings”, etc.), Art gave itself totally to the financial capital. We could already feel that Art would abandon the noun “labour”, together with the adjective “free”.