sand storm

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condition_01_ Border (in)Security: US/Mexico

Recent political efforts have sought to resolve the now centuries old situation of Mexico/US immigration, through a shift in policy and thereby cultural, social and economic position. An amnesty provision proposed in a bill to the United States Senate by Senators McCain and Kennedy in December of 2005 has recently undergone extended debate over its compromise. The prominent proposal would have it that the 12 million plus undocumented immigrants currently in the U. S. would be divided by the number of years that they are able to prove having been in the states. Those individuals that can prove that they have been in the U. S. for five to three years would be eligible for a green card upon their return to their port of entry. However, only 425,000 green cards would be offered during each of the next five years. This translates to the legalization of approximately three million people. Any person in the country less than two years would be required to leave the country.

Ecological

The Sonoran Desert covers the approximately 100,000 sq. miles including southwestern parts of Arizona, southeastern parts of California in the United States and the state of Sonora in Mexico. More rain falls on the Sonoran Desert than any other desert (roughly less than 10 inches/year). From December to March frontal storms from North Pacific Ocean occasionally bring widespread, gentle rain to the northwestern areas. From July to mid-September, the summer monsoon brings surges of wet tropical air and frequent but localized violent thunderstorms. Summer highs may exceed 120 F (48.5 C), with surface temperatures approaching 180 (82 C).



Political

An amnesty provision proposed in a bill to the United States Senate in December of 2005 has recently undergone extended debate over its compromise. The compromise would have it that the approximate 12 million undocumented immigrants currently in the U. S. would be divided by the number of years that they are able to prove having been in the states. Those individuals that can prove that they have been in the U. S. for five to three years would be eligible for a green card upon their return to their port of entry. However, only 425,000 green cards would be offered during each of the next five years. This translates to the legalization of approximately three million people. Any person in the country less than two years would be required to leave the country.


Economic

It may be generally said that the broader US economy benefits with large surges in immigrant population due to the reduced price of goods and services. However, the low income sectors of the US economy are often devastated by the presence of such a labor force. Ironically many of the population that are hurt are those of first generation immigrant families who compete for the same low paying jobs that the population of illegal immigrants comes in search of. This competition is also directly evident in the residential fabric of the same demographic groups. It is estimated that over the past twenty years illegal immigrant populations have reduced wages for these lower tier blue collar jobs by as much as eight percent.





Social

It is estimated that sixty percent of the illegal immigrant population currently in the U.S. is of Mexican origin. Mexican President Vincente Fox, now finishing his term has made agreements with president Bush about immigration policy that, if successful, are expected to soften anti-continuity back lashes.
Demonstrations against the recent Congressional debates have escalated. Though these demonstrations lack a clear leadership they have been fostered by media figures like Piolin while the 22 Latin congressional representatives have been largely quiet on the subject.




Technological

The operational integration of the US military with civilian law enforcement agencies has resulted in law enforcement's increasing reliance on military technology, equipment, and strategies, including Blackhawk helicopters, heat sensors, night vision telescopes and electronic intrusion detection devices.
“IDENT” technology has also been put to work enabling the identification of repeat border crossers and allowing the U.S. government to more rigorously prosecute them.
Urban walls built under programs such as “Project Gatekeeper” in San Diego are built in order to drive boarder crossing into the more manageable and more psychologically daunting territory of the desert.

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condition_02_ Subversive/ Cultural: Coca Legalization Bolivia

Ecological

Government Minister Carlos Sanchez Berzain ordered the formation of a new "ecological police" brigade to fight drugs in national parks. Throughout South America , 1.75 million acres of forest has been destroyed in the coca boom, and the labs which make cocaine base use enormous quantities of toxic chemicals such as kerosene, sulfuric acid, potassium permanganate. But little is known about the precise impact of the drug trade, much less about what eradicating the coca crop will do. United States Agency for International Development (USAID) financed a study done Southwest Research Associates “The Environmental and Ecological Effects of the Coca Conversion Industry" published in 1993 found coca's worst impact is deforestation.

Political

Over the past century, under particular pressure from United States drug enforcement, a war has been waged on the cultivation of coca as a preemptive measure to its conversion to cocaine. Despite the efforts of the United States and Bolivian governments as well as countless other agencies, the cultivation of coca has continued. Now, with the recent presidential election of Evo Morales the former Coca grower’s union chairman, coca cultivation may be able to grow unfettered.



Economic

Bolivia is the world's second largest producer of coca leaf, growing 120,000 acres. The U.S. government spent $186 million between 1990 and 2000 trying to cut coca production (another $259 million went to military and police aid over five years). The chemicals used in the process of converting coca to cocaine are exported from the United States to Colombia where much of South America’s coca is converted to cocain. Companies, including Shell Oil and Exxon export a variety of chemicals that are important components of cocaine production. Between 1990-1995, Colombian imports of the chemicals grew nearlyn to more than 6,000 metric tons, 59% of those imports came from the United States. Sales totaled $15 million to Colombian customers.

Social

For thousands of years the production and use of the coca leaf has existed as an indigenous body to the cultures of central-South America. Use of the leaf can be traced as far back as 3000 B.C.E. Through colonial centuries indigenous Quechua and Aymara cultures consumed the ‘hoja sagrada’ to ward off altitude sickness, hunger and cold. Centuries later the leaf is chewed or stored in the cheek, much like chewing tobacco, in a practice called ‘acuillico’. In addition coca persists as an essential part of cultural, medicinal and ritual practices in the region.



Technological

Glyphosate the herbicide, known by its brand name, Roundup, is the key ingredient in the US-financed, billion-dollar aerial coca fumigation campaign that is a cornerstone of America's war on drugs. A new Roundup resistant strain of coca is being cultivated. What is unclear is weather it is the result of genetic engineering or an intelligence occuring in the growing community. One alternative to Round up in the fight against coca is Fusarium oxysporum, a plant-killing fungus classified as a mycoherbicide. Reports indicate that the US government has proposed its use.

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condition_03_ Battaling the Gobi: Desertification/China

Ecological

In the North West areas of China desertification grew from 1,560 square kilometers annually in the 1970s to 2,400 square kilometers in the 1990s. As far back as the 4th century B.C. desertification has been a problem. Chinese philosopher Mengzi described desertification and its human causes, including tree-cutting and overgrazing. Firewood collection is reportedly responsible for 32.4% of the deforestation, one key cause of desertification, another, chopsticks. Some believe that desertification can be traced to the great famine in early 1960s when the Chinese government institutionalized massive conversion of Mongolian natural grassland into farms.

Political

With the problem of desertification growing exponentially the Chinese government has had to take what in some cases are extraordinary measures to reclaim its country, or at least to stave its seemingly inevitable consumption. China aims to reclaim a quarter of a million square kilometers of land through investing in solar and wind energy. The government will also make money spent by private companies on fighting desertification tax-exempt. China is even planting a "Green Wall" in the northeast, which will eventually rival the famous Great Wall in length, to prevent the spread of deserts. In 1994 the United Nations' Convention to Combat Desertification, a Germany-based UN treaty body was formed.


Economic

The Ministry of Science and Technology has reported that desertification costs China about $2-3 billion annually.
The World Bank is currently collaborating with countries such as Italy to formulate a "green" accounting model to calculate economic growth after deducting the actual cost of environmental damages and natural resource depletion. Pan Yu, deputy minister of the State Environmental Administration, says his administration is testing a green accounting method in six provinces. He hopes the use of such a system will help to distinguish growth from invisible costs.



Social

China itself aims to reclaim a quarter of a million square kilometers of land through, among other measures, investing in solar and wind energy so people don't have to cut down trees for fuel and making the money private companies spend on fighting desertification tax-exempt. China is even planting a "Green Wall" in the northeast, which will eventually rival the famous Great Wall in length, to prevent the spread of deserts. The efficacy of the tree planting program has yet to be determined. However, the general belief is that human will may overcome nature, a fundimental belief emerges from the residue of Maoist concepts.



Technological

Tree planting, what will ultimately become the "GreatGreen Wall" has become China’s major offensive against the sand. According to the People's Daily, more than 30 billion trees were planted between 1970 and 1990. Mesh-like windbreaks stabilize shifting sand provide conditions for afforestation, thus offering effective protection to communication lines in the desert areas. In order to sustain the exorbitant tree planting campaign a similarly radical move in cloud seeding has begun in order to provide the new vegetation with sufficient water.

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sublime interface

Boulee’s geometries are trash; the notion of a utopian vision, also trash. His use of elevations, plans and sections-ultimately, anything neo-classical about his work-is deeply problematic. However, something that Boulee managed to identify, even project (though not into physical form), was the position that architecture is ultimately constrained to the role of an interface. This is not something new, to Boulee, Durand, Ledoux or others of their generation, nor to the current condition. What is important however is that the distinction made early on by Boulee and reasserted in this project, is that the articulation of the interface is the sole purpose and the programmatic driver for any relevant work of architecture produced today. Here already, the cat may be out of the bag. Program, as Tschumi alerted us in the latter half of the previous century was, and some might argue, continues to be the one legged whore of the house. (Unless one has some afflicted fetishistic need, program will not be put to bed until all the sheets in the house have been ruffled.) It is largely due to an egoistic preoccupation with architectonic form that concern for the event space of architecture has been shoved away in disgust. This is not to say that there is a narrowing of architectures scope in the assertion of the interface. Nor is this meant to indicate that architectonic form is somehow irrelevant. Quite the contrary, there is an opening that may emerge from the recognition, even facilitation of architectural interface that may lead in just these directions. But, in order that this might occur, the distinction must first be made and the perception of an impending narrowing refuted.

The work that Boulee is most noted for, Cenotaph for Isaac Newton, as well as other unrealized utopian visions, like the Biblioteque National or the Lighthouse all posit architectures necessary role as interface. This assertion likely finds its origins in his classical antecedents, where monumental structures like the Acropolis similarly serve to mediate or facilitate the interfacing of the people and the gods. Understanding architecture first under these terms demands the question; what then differentiates Boulee from classical architecture or from any other architecture of history? Churches, modern business complexes, even a New England saltbox may thus be understood as an interface. Be it between the gods of ancient Greece, the God of Judeo-Christian theologies or the domestic god(ess), this is in fact part of the point. Architecture is first a mediator and a facilitator of human action. Weather that action is of pre-modern theological origins, modern functionalism or even of a post-modern cynicism is of no consequence. Further, that action is necessarily faith based, in the terms that one-the subject-requires a faith-a motivational speaker-of some sort to maintain that activity. So, here we arrive at the distinction or rather the importance of Boulee, the didactic capabilities of architecture. There is implicit in Boulee’s projections an aspiration toward the didactic role of architecture. The genre terrible is in fact a body of work, that through the incantation of the sublime seeks to bring the viewer-and if it were ever to be built, the user-closer to the cosmos. Boulee is trying to teach the world about Newton’s science in the Cenotaph, and about the pursuit of knowledge in the Biblioteque, through the voice of the sublime. Boulee as an enlightenment architect is trying to change the viewer-user. It is just this particular brand of transcendence that defines the distinction. To break from a ubiquitous model of thought and action, to move the viewer from a position of supplication in front of deities to a position of cognitive transcendence is the goal of the genre terrible.

So, now the fine distinction has been elucidated. But again arises an apparent narrowing of the field. Though now it has been exacerbated by the larger problem of enlightenment thought. Without expending a great degree of energy on the debate about enlightenment thought, the position will assume itself on reasonably safe ground to note that the transcendence being addressed is itself the failing of the enlightenment thinkers. Here the proposition undergoes its second shift, its second degree of distinction. From Boulee’s genre terrible might be drawn the recognition of the didactic capability and its positioning as a programmatic event. It may even be argued that-much as post-humanist or hyper modern positions would become physically ill at the thought-didactic tendencies cannot be divorced from architecture. As humans are afflicted by the need to impart meaning onto all objects of life so they will do to architecture. Meaning as information thus becomes a didactic vehicle. Back to the central proposition-if we understand that the didactic element is or even could be summoned forth from architecture, and if we understand that there is no longer a need for enlightenment transcendence, and if we are to understand that architecture’s role as an event space or interface, then what is left?

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survey

An early permutation of this project was called Survey. Survey, was a proposal for a desert research institute and museum on Mormon Mesa in Southern Nevada. The project was located across a 5 square mile territory at the eastern edge of the mesa and continued to the river valley below. Within that territory were three key locations the first, the main research and gallery facility was cut into the face of the mesa’s edge along side a dirt road, as if a car had missed a turn and continued its vector through the mesa and emerged on the other side. At one end of the main facility, beyond a gallery and theatre, was an over look that strategically aligned itself with the second sight. The second sight, at the bottom of the river valley was the cinderblock structure and the detritus of an abandoned gun club. The shell of the building had eight placards located around the perimeter and one inside. The placards described the history of the sight and what the viewer was looking directly at. In the case of the placard inside, the viewer was positioned to view the third sight, a small cut into the top of the mesa virtually invisible from the gun club, but for the description of it on the placard. The sights were mapped out to draw the visitors into the territory between the architectural elements, to explore the landscape and also to initiate an awareness of the viewer/viewed condition as well as the compulsion to infiltrate and territorialize space. This strategy took its cues from the pilgrimage maps of the twelfth century as well as from primitive surveying techniques like the use of cairns to mark territory.

Christian pilgrimage maps, even the phenomena of the pilgrimages themselves represent an early model of a networked cultural intelligence. The church of the twelfth century - an infrastructure in its own right - gave rise to a new movement of people en masse, carving territorial lines into the land and culture, much as the Survey proposal set out to do with visitors. Similarly, Emergent Infrastructures, will propose the development of a networked condition that is derived from a one such multiplicity condition.

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Rothko is kindof like white bread

Information is embedded in every element, every material, and every gesture that subtends, crosses through and passes over the human scale position. Often that information operates most recognizably in an intuitive strain of consciousness. However, even these elements of information graft, morph or otherwise ‘shift’ to other operative conditions. Take for example a slice of bread, perhaps even a slice of white bread, still further a slice of bread on a sandwich with the crusts cut off. This bread of its own condition of operation elicits meaning from the consumer and the observer. Humans attribute meaning - another scale of information transference - to the world they engage. So, the slice of bread carries correct or otherwise, information to that user-subject about the nutritional value of the bread, the social status of its typical consumers, even information about falling objects and the potential head trauma that ensues when a child climbs on the shelves of a grocery. In addition to this operational scope of information, that bread carries with it another scope of information transference. The grains that were grown, the production process, the place of that production, the genetic make-up of the allowable insect content in that production category of the economy, are all elements of information born into that slice of bread. Further, the life of those insects, or the life of the processes of production, delivery, consumption initiates the discussion point that situates the information in the temporal operational mode, and again the ‘thing’, the information is complicit in another body of operation.

This is all, of course an over simplification of a meshwork condition of informational bodies that we happen to be - in that same way - complicit in. The meshwork condition is not a woven, ordered condition. It is a frenetic system of dynamic interdependency. Regardless, it should be easily taken in this brief assembly of information, that indeed we are comprised of and operate through information and information assemblies. What is also essential, but perhaps less clear thus far, is the fact that the human affliction is the subjective interpretation and re-projection of pieces of these informational bodies.

That said, another example might be taken, one that places the discussion-in a more sophisticated light-within the scope of human re-projection and interpretation. As informational aggregates we necessarily, and without end, (re)present information through our subjective affliction. So, the example - not Rothko, but through Rothko - we understand that a field of pigment is information. Additionally, we understand that that information may, even must, be read, and inquired into, through a multiplicity model of information that understands that there is not any economy in human action or information transmission. So, through Rothko, we may view a canvas, a field of pigment, a field of information that upon first viewing appears as a naïve stylistic gesture that situates itself opportunistically in a particular history. However, it is in fact the afflicted position of that perception that fails to interrogate the information being presented. One possible and more appropriate re-projection of information would have it that based upon the human condition and view in the world, a black canvas and the textures and information implicit within represent a void space. The canvas is a fat man under a tree for eternity, or the interior of a cenotaph that was never built, the canvas is a window into the re-projection of information that was initiated by an other. The filed of pigment is a ‘void’ space through which information is transferred. The canvas, like the slice of bread carries a subjectively applied information, but also the depth of information of its production.

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Hays, Hilbersheimer and the Anti-Oedipus

For several decades, if not centuries, modern human culture has been projecting itself toward and through a tectonic of the image. Attempting to create a utopian world culture we necessarily must mask the inherent dystopic tendencies of such an enterprise with images of our aspirations for that enterprise. In so doing we have developed a multilayered, multifarious matrix of imagery that we have come to know as and ultimately in place of our selves. This abstraction of individuality serves to numb the senses sufficiently enough to allow the individual, or what remains there of, to continue their role in the redoubling of the images of humanity.

“In all cases through out history the same individualist motive is at work attempting to save independence from the machine.”1

Through this process each individual increasingly develops faith in their own individuation via the products and images acquired in the processes of consumptive redoubling. Herein lies the central problem of modern, or now, hyper-modern culture. Modern culture is encrypted with the algorithm of de-individualization. However, humanity, as yet unprepared for such a dystopic vision, has waged war in the name of individualism on the social meta-structure which it has created. It is this construct of self, this aspiration for individuality that fights in passive opposition to the success of modernity. In order to substantively overcome this impasse, a re-conceptualization of the individual within the specter of modernization must occur. The individual must no longer be recognized as such, but rather as what may be termed the cellular individual; a being of specialized service to the larger community (organism) from which it developed. This re-conceptualization may be better understood as a progression in the practice of tectonics. That is to say, if we are all, consciously or otherwise, at practice in the realm of tectonic production, the product of which is currently and primarily spectacular sensation and imagery, then the next phase in the development of tectonic production will be still further inward. The next phase of tectonic production must be the production of the human subject as a cellular entity.

K. Michael Hayes, in his readings of both Ludwig Hilbersheimer and Hannes Meyer, saw an early postulation of such a modern organism. In psychological terms Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari articulated the problem of the schizoid subject as a result of this conflict within modern culture. By looking, in particular, through these texts we can see the individual at opposition with the aspirations of modernity and how that has fundamentally altered the course of his role within the organism of hyper-modern culture. Additionally, in the work of Ludwig Hilbersheimer, we can see the early precedent for the proposed reconciliation of the individual with the permeation of modernity into the individual himself. When developed to a programmatic level of engagement his proposal will provide the framework for an engaged and accelerated integration of humanity and modernity.

Hayes sets out by establishing a precedent of humanist thought in modern culture, describing the position of the subject as the “originating agent” of meaning for the object.2 At this point the first glimpse of individuated human intervention is visible as a disruption of the meta-structure of modernity’s aspirations. Within a humanist construction of the modern condition the subject is elevated to a place of authority with regard to the material world. The subject or, perhaps detracting from Hayes’ intentions, the individual is granted a deified status based upon his own projection of himself as creator. The individual claims his product and thus its process of production as his own. Thereby the subject claims that deified position above a hierarchic construct designed with the intent of supporting the assumed position of the subject. This elucidates Hayes’ position that within the Humanist construct the subject is ultimately “constituted in social practice”. Only in relation to a production oriented social order, to an objectified par view of humanity may the subject conceptualize the notion of self. However, that self will and must be inextricably linked to the construct of objectified humanity. This relationship between the subject or self and an objectified humanity is the root of humanity’s resistance to giving itself over to the production systems of its own making. “Objects and processes are seen as being independent of and threatening to the unity of the individual.” Therefore, humanist and outwardly common perceptions would have it that the subject holds a purportedly elevated and therefore safe position above the objects and processes of modernity.

“Post humanism is the conscious response to the dissolution of the psychological autonomy and individualism brought about by technological modernization.” It is through an intellectual recognition of our own servitude to the objects and processes of our own making via our desperate grasps for hierarchic salvation that we again try to reposition ourselves. From the ‘I did this” to the “I am this”, humanity may become integrated with the organizational structures of its making and thus become the true subject of modernity. As Hayes articulates, the essential linkage between the work of Hannes Meyer and Ludwig Hilbersheimer is the implementation of Aufhebung or sublation. The avant-garde objective of fully integrating life and art here becomes the, albeit incomplete, premise for the reconceptualization of the individual. Avant-guardist notions of art and architecture maintain and proffer an elevation of the subject by way of their process. According to Hayes, Hilbersheimer and Meyer advance this premise through the process of sublation, causing the subject to become dissolved by and reconstituted as a part of their processes. The central difference between Meyer and Hilbersheimer arises in their proposals for architecture in the process of this sublation. Meyer projects architecture as the agent for the translation of the modern objective into a “prototypical force directed toward the formation of a collective agency”. In deference, Hilbersheimer sees architecture as a representation of the forces constructed by the subject, which foresee its own end.3

Later while looking at Theodore Adorno and Ludwig Mies Van der Rohe, Hayes argues that even the object of modern society is dissolved in the post-human development of the relationship between the individual subject/object to the meta-subject. “For Adorno, as for Mies, the renunciation of humanist subjectivity is consequent to an act of ‘immersion in particularity,’ of the subject giving itself over to the object, (in Mies' case the city) which leads not to the subjects self discovery but to the discovery of a social structure in a particular historical configuration.”4 Giving over to the object no longer means giving over to the fetish object of capitalism on the micro scale neither of the commodity nor within commodity culture. The commodity and the subject become dissolute elements within the larger organism, the meta-subject of social order as production.

Attempting to optimize and thus advance the new meta-subject of modernity Hilbersheimer, in his competition entry for the Chicago Tribune tower, demands that each building bay and the subsequent functional space become a module identical to all others in every dimension creating a potentially infinite matrix of cells, “the gap between the urban order and the individual construction cell is thereby abolished”.5 Here the building is reduced to the elemental articulation of modern technologies. Simultaneously, the architecture becomes the projection of those building systems which negate the individual and constitute the meta-subject.6 This precept of Hilbersheimer’s work, what Hayes describes as sublation, must be developed further. The use of repetitive spatial organization and structural strategies must be transposed upon the programmatic organizations and processes of the meta-subject. Hayes statement, “form and construction have become the same thing,” should rather be posited as, form, construction and program have become the same thing. It is only in this final fold that the sign, of Hilbersheimer’s work, in Hayes’ argument will successfully propagate itself, with the object of completely absorbing its context and subsuming all contingencies for its existence.

The “molecular” structure employed by Hilbersheimer, as Hayes articulates, was intended to provide a replacement for the metaphysical absences of modernity sought after by the Expressionists.7 This might have been proven possible with the implementation of such practices in the programmatic realm of the architecture. The cellular individual finding the permeation of that molecular structure in his waking patterns of organization will serve as an omnipresent reminder of his subjectivity. The molecular functioning of the cellular individual would thus be reflected back on that activity creating an internalized reminder of a service to the meta-structure. Hayes argues this point indirectly by noting that Hilbersheimer’s own writing utilizes a semantic that transitions freely between discussions of theory or building practice of both simultaneously.8

It is here that the issue of the paranoid subject arises. As Hayes describes it, paranoia occurs when the subject can no longer resist the threat of outside forces. The subject then withdraws simultaneously developing internal fictions and conflicts. Thus, the subject’s totality is maintained as a fiction. The subject is elevated in relation to the threat but is also an indication of its own peril to that threat.9 This construction of the paranoid subject must be understood with regard to the individual subject and the later, post-humanist meta-subject. The paranoid individual, the humanist subject, looses control, or rather, never gains control over the systems which he has created. Because a method of signification, through which the individual might hope to gain control has not been achieved there occurs the loss of ordered stability and thus the need for the internalized fictions of paranoia.10 With the inscription of a programmatically developed project of the formal and structural articulation that Hilbersheimer proffered, the paranoia of the humanist subject can be circumvented. The inscription of such a system provides the paternal signifier needed for the potentially paranoid subject both humanist and meta-subject to rest within the necessary internalized control. The subject can only recognize or validate themselves through a set of objects that cyclically divorce the notion of the individual from the subject. It is within the modification of utopian vision in conjunction with an adapted articulation of the individual where the resolution of hyper-modern society and the meta-subject lies.

The paranoid subject as Deleuze and Guattari find it is the result of what they call an Oedipal lapse. This occurs as a result of a misinterpretation or inability to differentiate between the hierarchies of familial relations. Without a clear paternal or maternal signifier to operate in deference to the subject the subject will not be able to divorce themselves from their context.11 Within a culture where parental roles are being ceded to the, once secondary, social structures such as schools, peer groups, and other brands of indirect social engagement, the necessary articulation of familial hierarchies that Deleuze and Guattari propose are evaporating. This palpitation of the modern social order may be resolved through the implementation of a programmatically complete proposal in line with that of Hilbersheimer’s in the Chicago Tribune project and elsewhere. The program provides the organizational structure for the notion of the individual to be re-conceptualized as a cell within a larger organism. On a smaller scale the individual, the cell, is once again provided with the necessary paternal signifier to properly divorce the notion of self from the performance of a cellular subject. This organization is then redeposited into the structural and spatial configurations of the organism that were sought after by Hilbersheimer, creating the requisite permeation of such a proposal, for its success.

This permeation of this organizational structure is defined by Deleuze and Guattari as they refer to Henri Bergson’s, Creative Evolution.

“But if the living organism was thought to be similar to the world, this was attributed to the fact that it was or tended to be an isolated system, naturally closed: the comparison between microcosm and macrocosm was thus a comparison between two closed figures, one of which expressed the other and was inscribed within the other.”

While the subject matter of the cellular subject and the meta-subject is necessarily about an active inter-scaling, it is not an issue of microcosm-macrocosm. There is a historic tendency to superimpose one upon the other, articulating them as coexistent but distinct from one another. In addressing the cellular and meta-subjects it must remain clear that the inter-scaling of the system is necessarily fluid and that they are ultimately one in the same. Any apparent division or discontinuity within the system is simply that of semantic articulation.

The socio-psychological articulation of the schizoid subject, by Deleuze and Guattari, demonstrate the subtexts of the modern conflict between the individual and the ‘machine’. Only when there is a clear articulation of the goals of both modernity and those of the individual can they be appropriately reconciled. The goal of modernity does not permit the existence of the individual as we know it. The individual fights at all costs to reassume their identity within the specter of the modern meta-structure that humanity has created. If this conflict is to be overcome a reappraisal of the notion of individuality must occur. K. Michael Hayes has articulated this conflict and its potential resolution through the work of both Hannes Meyer and Ludwig Hilbersheimer. Hilbersheimer's work, in particular has provided a substantial framework upon which a probable resolution might be built. The ‘molecular’ definition of both structure and space exemplified in his entry in the Chicago Tribune Tower project provide that source material. The addition of a thorough programmatic permutation of those ideas provides the flesh of the organism in which the current concept of the individual will be reframed as a cellular factor within a larger organism. Thus the individual becomes a being of specialized service to the larger community (organism) from which it developed. This may be seen as the next phase of tectonic evolution. That is to say, if we are all, consciously or otherwise, at practice in the realm of tectonic production, the product of which is currently and primarily spectacular sensation and imagery, then the next phase in the development of tectonic production will be still further inward. The next phase of tectonic production must be the production of the human subject as a cellular entity.

---

1 Georg Simmel, The Metropolis and Mental Life, The University of Chicago Press, Chicago, Illinois. 1971, p324
2 K. Michael Hays, Modernism and the Posthumanist subject: The Architecture of Hannes Meyer and Ludwig Hilbersheimer, The MIT Press, Cambridge Massachusetts. 1995, p.5
3 Ibid, p 12.
4 Ibid., p 191
5 Ibid., p 195.
6 Ibid., p 196.
7 Ibid., p 200.
8 Ibid., p 201.
9 Ibid., p 204
10 Ibid., p 210
11 Deleuze, Gilles and Felix Guattari, Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia, University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, Minnesota. 1983, p75

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pedagogue

This project has been developing for several years. One early permutation of the project was called Pedagogue. Pedagogue, a proposal for a Los Angeles City high school sought to reframe the formal and programmatic structure of public education. By redefining the programmatic structure of the education system to account for the multitude of learning types an aggregate formal/organizational model was developed. The aggregate body was comprised of a potentially infinite assembly of cells. Within each of the cells a student was to be individually engaged in the making of their own curricular structure. The development of each student’s curriculum resulted from their aptitude for and completion of skill sets relative to particular subjects of study. A secondary pedagogical element was also at work as the students inhabited and ultimately matriculated through the school. Because the school was an aggregate of translucent cells organized according to the process of matriculation, the students would be fully exposed to and aware of all other students in the building. Further, they would be aware of one another’s movement through the system both in terms of literal physical movement and in terms of matriculation.











Several aspects of Pedagogue have survived and will re-present themselves in this later permutation of the project. Emergent Infrastructures will build upon the theoretical aspirations of Pedagogue by adopting that sublime element of the student’s awareness of the system. In addition to focusing the sublime experience on the building and its inhabitants, as was the case for Pedagogue, Emergent Infrastructures will also direct the confrontation of the individual toward the sighting of the project proposal and the infrastructure itself. Also, the use of the architecture of Pedagogue as an interface for the inhabitants will carry over. Within each of the cells of Pedagogue the programmatic demands of the institution were directly met with the interface structure of the building. Emergent Infrastructures will open the programming to accommodate a more fluid movement of individuals through the system, but that movement will again be facilitated by the architectural interface.

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