Forum 1976
By
the middle of the twentieth century, architectural thinking seemed to have
reached a stage of relative equilibrium and peace. The ideas of Functionalism
and of the International Style, as were manifested in the writings of Le
Corbusier and Gropius, in the articles of architectural magazines and in the
declarations expounded at conferences such as the Congrès International de
I'Architecture Moderne seemed to have fulfilled the promise of a new, modern
architecture which had been heralded as far back as the eighteenth century by
theoreticians of architecture and visionary architects. It was an architecture
liberated from the hold of the orders and proportions inheritred from a
constraining past, whose task it was now to identify and build according to
universal, 'natural' norms, irrespective of the particularities of the specific
user.
The idea of the universal,
'natural' norms and the corresponding institution of architecture applied to
both the visual and the functional aspects of design and constituted what we
shall call the Welfare State architecture.
Two
decades since then have sufficed to almost totally undermine in architectural
schools and offices any deep confidence in universal norms I or in an
institutionalised profession. One is left to ponder before such a thorough
transformation. Has there been a pattern to the attacks against official
architecture and it's hypotheses? Is there a new, coherent alternative approach
to design, or is it a phenomenon of structureless desintegration leading
nowhere? The aim of this essay is to demonstrate how this transformation
occurred and how -out of a multiplicity of critical attacks- there emerged a
new approach to architecture, and to try to establish a basis according to which
this new approach that we will call Populism can be evaluated. One of the first
criticisms to be weighed against the Functionalist and International Style
hypothesis of a universally desirable visual and functional order in
architecture, appeared in the May issue of the Architectural Review in 1949. In
an article on 'Outdoor Publicity', Gordon Cullen criticised architects for
having bypassed the phenomenon of street advertising as a source of
inspiration. Because, he said, this type of design had not been produced by
'professionals' and because it did not conform with the 'universal visual
order' architects had chosen to regard it as a part of the general squalor of
the sprawling metropolis, it's creator the public having lacked the basic
training necessary for good design, i.e. design produced by professionals in
keeping with the universal norms. Cullen refrained from calling in architects
to save the day and called their attention instead to events occurring about
them, events of importance that they had avoided or shunned in the past in an
'act of gentilism reminiscent of the days when the designer ignored everything
that did not fall into line with his own private taste'.
The
article is accompanied by several drawings and photographs of american cityscapes
that served to document the anomalies which were to confront the norms of
official architecture. Neon signs creating a 'nightscape in suspended
animation'. flashing lights: 'parking here' and 'open all night'; this was
'Broadway: vulgar and vital'. It was obvious that Cullen was bowing to the
authority with which the public seemed to be talking it's own design decisions
outside and independent from the accepted norms of architecture. These design
decisions, opposed to the architectural standards has been labelled
'incongruous', 'vulgar', 'degrading' and 'destructive'. Nonetheless, in the
opinion of Cullen they were exemplary. It was not the variety of anomalous
design products that had to be transformed he explained, but, the principles of
architecture that had to be adapted in order to meet the specifications of
popular design. 'Publicity has to be accepted as a vailable aid'. And the
reason for this? Some mysterious inspirational quality which seemed to exude
from the bare facts of popular design, some 'vitality' which had to be
preserved.
In
the past, the perception of the architectural object had been transformed
through a similar process. Objects which had been considered as external to the
domain of architecture had been assimilated, producing some modification in the
idiom of the discipline and to a certain degree an identity crisis to
practitioners.
The
rustic cottage, the acqueduct, the silo, the steamship for instance were design
products that had been introduced at a particular moment into architecture ~
This transformation had shaken the old prototypes of the design profession. It
had changed the norms of design, it had affected the form of the product and
the methodology of production as well. These were changes that the profession
had absorbed and survived.
In the opinion of Peter and
Alison Smithson, the well known British architects, popular design did not pose
any real threat to design practise. To justify this view they invoked past
cases of change and adaption in the practice
"Gropius, they said, wrote
a book on grain silos, Le Corbusier one on aeroplanes, and Charlotte Perri and
brought a new object to the office every morning; but today we collected ads'.
Others however were terrified. The scandal over the introduction of the idea of
a 'sovereign' public in architecture might have had further implications
because it challenged the very existence of the profession itself.
Cullen
and the Smithsons advocated nothing as extreme as this. Their conclusions were
rather open ended: "Let the public express it's vulgarity', 'the public
and it's vulgarity will improve together'. Nine years later, it would be the
turn of the 'public and it's publicity', with all of it's 'incongruity', to
improve the architect.
In
his article 'Architecture and Popular Taste', Douglas Haskel was in fact to
defend the 'common people' and the 'ordinary people' accused by 'prestigious
critics' of creating a 'dreary', 'corrupt', 'scornful I', 'infantile' and
'hopeless' environment. These people are attacked, he would say, for no other
reason apart from the 'strangeness' or the 'novelty' of the object they had
created. The situation as he saw it was no different than it had been at the
time when the machine had been introduced into the practice of architecture.
"Now the problem is , ..the adaptation to .., an era of popular mass
consumption", he resolved, Once again the advent of novelty was to bring
about 'new attitudes and new leaders'. (1)-
Times
Square appears for a second time with Haskel's article, as an illustration of
popular design but the selection this time is more varied. It includes
Disneyland, San Francisco Honky-Tonk and everything showing the 'schmaltz' and
'prettiness' of popular taste, the 'make believe' of 'fairy tale buildings',
the 'false fronts'. high gables painted with daisies' or 'Santa Claus Villages,
complete with Silent Night on the loudspeakers', Haskel, in this manner,
enlarged the category of 'public and publicity' embracing as he did in a
gesture of magnanimity all the design products for and by the 'common people'.
A splendid future was in store for architecture according to him, with 'new and
different kinds of architectural places. ..reduced to the barest suggestion of
scaffolding to support the real show that goes on ,.. popular yet wonderfully
abstract'. Haskel thought what he was beholding was the inevitable triumph of
the 'democratic wilderness'. It will not happen in any other way, was his
conclusion.
Indeed,
there seems to have been no other way, The impetus of the 'popular movement' was
irresistable. Tom Wolfe, the american journalist was soon to pour his
enthousiasm into it.
In
his article 'Learning from Las Vegas' he compared Las Vegas to Versailles as
'the only two architecturally uniform cities in history'.
In
1965, Reyner Banham, acknowledging the popular disrespect vis a vis the
architectural norms as legitimate, came to complain that 'motels, super
markets, bowling alleys, filling stations, hamburger stands, even private
houses 'which have been conceived through what he called 'emotional
engeneering' had been missing 'from the exhibition under way at the Museum of
Modern Art in New York City entitled. Modern Architecture, USA (2)
Banham's
demand for recognation of the 'people' did not rest on such abstractions as
'public taste'. According to him, it rested firmly on facts. This 'huge',
unexplored territory accounts for perhaps 95"10 of all buildings put up in
the United States. .. We can no longer refer to such a fact as an exception to
the rule'. The pro- ducts of 'frank and pleasurable emotional engineering. ..do
not answer a purely stylistic definitation of 'quality' but 'the quality
involved is too big to be ignored' .
Banham, as an academic and a
historian of architecture, asked who the creators of the new architecture would
be. "Who knows what they look like, or if they exist? , , .Even those who
seem to think they under- stand it, still admit how little they know".
His
question however had distinct professional overtones, for if there was indeed
arising a new need for the so called emotional engineering products, then
surely someone would be needed to fill that need. Concern began to stir in the
hearts of many.
It
was finally Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown who put these into practice.
Having already made headway in their theorising on the problem, they proposed a
design project to their students in the School of Architecture at Yale
University. The project was a study of Las Vegas. Naturally, an education trip
to the city was organised. (3)
Las
Vegas was documented and analysed in the hopes of deriving possibilities for
future design pro- ducts. These effort both shocked and intriged. The Lectures
and articles of Venturi and Scott Brown in the sixties were unique for their
with and for the acuity with which they exposed the abuses and contradictions
of traditional Welfare State architecture, clearly showing the norms related to
a 'universal visual order' to be inconsistant, not only among themselves but
with every- day reality as well.
They were most adamant in
pointing out what they considered to be the one basic flaw of the Welfare State
architecture namely it's inhability to reconcile it's goal of providing an
architecture for the general welfare of the people on one hand, and on the
other, the refusal to 'look downward … to the commonplace' and to 'the
commercial vernacular' where it could have found the mass of people who were
after all the real users of architecture.
In a subsequent study of theirs
focusing on the town of Levittown America, a development that conflicted with
the established norms of good design and conforming instead to the commercial
standards sensitive to user needs. Venturi and Scott Brown observed the manner
in which the user perceives his environment. Their conclusion was that the user
fantasised his environment more than he actually saw it, the fantasies deriving
from a subjective projection of values and of the symbolic code that
represented them rather than from objective sensory data.
Unfortunatly, their search was
limited by their desire to fund a new 'scale' and an appropriate system
representation, a new norm able to contain the emerging anomalies. This lead
them back to where they had started from. The iconoclastic slogan 'Las Vegas is
to the strip what Rome was to the piazza' had the opposite effect to that which
Venturi and Scott Brown had wished it to have. Instead of challenging the
theoretical foundations of traditional modernist architecture, it merely
fortified it by expanding it's repertory of visual styles. It shifted the focus
from one architectural model object to another, leaving the basic modernist
presuppositions untouched.
Because
Venturi and Scott Brown insisted in approaching the architectural object as a
purely visual or stylistic phenomenon, they succeeded in providing neither a
deeper analysis of the meaning of norms in architecture, nor any insight into
what a new theory of design might be. By praising the -architectural
aberrations of Las Vegas, they simply enclosed them within the boundaries of
accepted architectural expression'.
Here
we turn to France for another instance in this trend of architectural thinking.
In a very beautiful written book Philippe Boudon has studied the Pessac housing
project designed I by Le Corbusier in the thirties. This! book is an account of
the changes: which the users put to the original buildings. Boudon sees the
outcome as being somewhat of a happy medium between the points of view of both
architect and user.
"La relation entre Ie
caractère individuel au départ de certaines maisons et les altérations et
transformations consécutives, met en evidence, transposée au niveau de
I'ensemble du quartier, Ie caractère fortement individualisé de ce dernier.
C'est un petit monde particulier -clos et ouvert -possédant une individualité,
qu'il nous a été donné d'étudier. Inversément, Ie fait que les maisons ou les
zones les plus impersonnelles du quartier aient donné lieu a des altérations
beaucoup moins marquées, nous fait prendre conscience de ce qu'un habitat
collectif, au lieu de susciter la réaction individuelle, risque de
I'étouffer." (4)
Similar
proposals for an 'open' or 'indeterminate' architecture were provided during
the time of the late fifties and early sixties by several architects, in
particular by the members of the Team X group. (5)
The attempts of this group were
not so much aimed at coming to terms with phenomenon of the commercial strip as
it was with the question of housing. As in the documented case of Pessac, these
architects saw the solution in the creation of a so called: 'double scale'
architecture. (6)
Decisions concerning the
structure and service framework were to be taken by the architect. These
decisions bound the user to a certain extent but he was in turn free to decide
on such matters as the proportioning of his own living space and the
determining of paths of general circulation and access to supplies. Thus within
these constraints, the user: was free to create an order all his own. The role
of the architect was symbolically reduced in this fashion to a 'minimum structure'
while that of the user was to increase proportionally.
This make-shift combination of
the two conflicting interests was highly artificial however. A compromise
between the idea of the universally applicable set of architectural norms and
of the idea of user sovereignity proved impossible for these two tendencies
were irreducible contradictions. The proposal for the coexistence of the two
orders and two scales was neither practical or rational for it made it
impossible to draw the line between the jurisdiction of the architects and that
of the user in any rigourous or legitimate manner. A common element in all the
above cases was that the hypothesis of universal norms and the legitimacy of
the institution of the architectural profession were undermined although no
alternatives were put forth to take their place.
It
was another group of young designers and planners who having broken away from
the orthodoxy of the profession and working towards the creation of a
fundamental social change, finally succeeded in providing a coherent framework
for a redifinition of the role of the architect and the social meaning of the
design decision making process. Whereas the affluent commercial buildings and
complexes had constituted the major area of study for Haskel, Banham, Venturi
and Scott Brown, this group of apostate professional and student architects and
planners turned their attention to the housing conditions of the poor.
While the strip captured the
imagination of many writers and theoreticians of architecture as a phenomenon
of growth and change, others took a keen interest in the problem of the slum,
within represented nothing but death and decay.
Although
the strip and the slum be- longed to totally different worlds, both had at
least one point in common: they constituted stumbling blocks for the Welfare
State theory of design. The strip, as the slum, cast a great deal of doubt on
the hypo- thesis of a set of norms which were universally desirable and
socially good. In spite of the attempts of the traditional architectural
profession to design buildings for the welfare of all, still there arose those
hybrid strips and those problematic slums.
As Venturi and Scott Brown had
made Las Vegas and Los Angeles their heaven, calling them their Venice and
their Rome, so those wanting to comprehend the slum left schools and offices to
experience life in Harlem New York, Mantua Philadelphia and the South End of
Boston. This they thought would rid them of their 'professional filter' which
had previously blurred their vision.
In
1963, a young american planner Chester Hartman pointed to the great disparity
between the needs of the poor and the norms that architects were implementing
in the design of their housing. "Physical factors alone have been stressed
in the evaluation of housing conditions and in the planning for improved residential areas. Physical factors are
important, but they have no inva- riant or 'objective' status and can only be
understood in the light of their meaning for other people's live, which, in
turn, is determined by social and cultural values". (7)
Hartman claimed that the
projected norms of the architect 'related to middle class value' instead of the
'working class orientations and life styles' of the user. As a result,
architects designed products that were neither 'meaningful!' not 'gratifying'
to their users.
Working
class housing is designed 'for the worker, not by the worker' complained B.
Brolin and J. Zeisel, a young architect working with a sociologist in an
article published in 1968 by the Architectural Forum entiteld 'Mass Housing:
Social Research and Design'. The authors argued that the official approach of
architects to housing 'has been a dehumanising and degrading effect'.
While
'unplanned housing built by the inhabitants themselves' expresses the social
values of it's users, planned housing designed by professionals imposes 'new
ways of life' on the inhabitants and these are dictated by the designers. Mass
housing designed by professionals might be 'technically adequate'. Broling and
Zeisel wrote arguing much along the same lines as Hartman, but it is
nevertheless often 'socially inadequate' and 'culturally alien to it's users'.
It 'puts up barriers to their way of life'. Examples from the world over were
cited in the article, of slum tenants who prefered their old and poorer
habitats to technologically superior housing conditions.
After having pointed out these
and other disservices of architecture Brolin and Zeisel proposed an alternative
to the design decision process. They proposed to limit the power of the
architects and to integrate the user in the conception of every plan. This was
feasible as long as the operation involved the help of an applied sociologist
they insisted however. It would be his duty to intervene as arbitrator between
user and designer, supplying information on the living pattern and 'latent
social structure' of the future inhabitant. The sociologist would obtain his
information 'by repeated observation and the use of other techniques surveing
attitudes, informal interviewing, counting how often people do things'.
Brolin and Zeisel were
proponents of the view that the user was one whose needs could neither be
understood through intuition nor satisfied through the blind application of
arbitrary and standardised formulae. From this they deduced that the
intervention of a specialist acting the role of detached and impartial observer
was indispensable in the design decision making process if the need of the user
were to be properly met.
The
fact still remained however that with this approach the sociologist, every bit
as much as the architect was responsable to the sponsor of the plan, even in
the case where the sponsor happened not to be the user of the product, as in
the case of mass housing. But Brolin and Zeisel chose to overlook it.
To this some other young
architects and students proposed a solution. They were inspired by a movement
in planning which required of the planner to be an 'advocate' of the community
for which he was planning instead of a paid agent coming from the exterior. In
the words of one of the founders of the movement 'the advocate planner would be
responsable to his client and would seek to express his client's views'. (8)-
The
advocate architect was to produce his plans with the community. The people were
to become incorporated in this fashion into the design process to prevent
infiltration of alien values. Accordingly, part of the job of the advocate
designer was to present and explain his plans regularly to the users in order
to assure himself that the desire of the users, had been correctly met and
properly implemented. Furthermore, he was to present those plans to the
sponsors or potential sponsors of the project and defend them as legal cases.
Whether the sponsor was to be an entrepreneur or a gouvernement official, the
main concern of the advocate designer was to assure the freedom of the user to
decide on the final product of the design process. At approximatly the same
time a more extreme position was taken by a British architect who had been studying
the barriadas in Lima Peru by the name of John Turner. The barriadas were an
form of urban squatter settlements. (9)
This
type of 'environment that (the user) creates, forms itself. ..' he wrote
'although results in slums that are really a health menace' nevertheless offer
a 'good fit' or' response' to their user's needs. Up to this point, Turner's
arguments seems to coincide with the previous observation on advocacy design.
Turner proposed more however, According to him, the freedom to shape one's own
environment resulted not only in providing economic and social benefits, but
also provided an 'existential value'. Whereas housing until then had been
accepted as an 'object or a product', housing might be seen he suggested, as a
'process which the users themselves must be free to manipulate through the
support of institutionalised services', Thus self help design is now seen not
only as a means by which to achieve more satisfactory products, but also as a
goal in itself. (10)
According to another writer,
Herbert Gans, the fundamental faults of the design process lay in it's total
disregard for the opinion of the user and the method by which it imposed 'class
norms and aspirations' of the architect onto the user. He offered a counter
proposal whereby all users sharing the same 'norms and aspirations', in other
words, all 'subcultures' or 'classes' would be free to express their needs and
demand satisfaction. (11)
He
firmly believed that in an egalitarian democratic society design product must
reflect the values of the user in a manner consistant with pluralistic
principles, and not only with those of the elite. (12)
There
must not only be a sufficient quantity of products for everyone but also a
variety of qualities which correspond to the standards of each group and each
user. There are many standards of utility and different 'tastes of beauty',
There show therefore be 'architecture and architects for each taste culture'.
(13) It was undemocratic for an architect, according to Gans, to impose his
point of view on the user because 'the architect is not a political
representative and he is not accountable to any electorate or other
constituency'. He had 'no right to decide (what) people ought to be' and the
fact that the architect does just that makes his action illegitimate.
We
now feel free to call movement of populist architecture the apparently
fragmented and disparate currents of thought which have be- come predominant in
architecture since the beginning of the 1950's. Although Turner, like Gans and
all those we have seen so far in our rapid survey of writings, present a
certain degree of individuality in relation to one another, the fact still
remains that they are united by a common source: that of discontent with the
traditional role of the architect and with the structure of the design process
in architecture. The self-proclaimed goal of the populists was to bring about a
transformation in the architectural profession, in response to steadily growing
social issues. They wished to cast aside the architectural practice based on
visual and functional regimentation in favor of an activity ideally centered
around the needs of the individual user.
The user was to become, for the
populist, the official mentor, if not master, of the design decision- In spite
of whether a particular proponent of populist architecture favoured the low
brow and popular visual expression on the strip, or the implementation of user
participation and self-help design in the slums, he urged, in all cases, that
the design process should be carried out 'in the name of the people'.
What
appears to be a progressive upheavel of the traditional thinking in
architecture in favour of populist trends is merely the outcome of a shadow
battle between two systems of belief which were not as adverse as one might
have been lead to believe at first. Indeed, as we shall demonstrate the Welfare
State and the Populist architecture both arose in response to specific
socio-economic phases of the same fundamental structure.
The
rationale of the populist movement can be put succinctly. Given that all
evidence denied the existence of a single universally good and desirable
formula in architecture, and, given the fact that the Welfare State
architecture, both as a theory and in practice forced individuals to live in an
environment alien to them, then it must be replaced by an alternative way of
thinking and doing architecture. In it's ultimate conclusions populism saw
design as a direct outcome of the needs of the user, or as directly accountable
to them only.
As
such, populism too has been widely criticised. The literature on this subject
is extensive. Most criticism, however, has been aimed at matters of pure
operationality. This criticism has located problematic point in the overall
theory that had been overlooked in the first wave of populist writings.
The major reservations with
regard to populism alluded mostly to questions, which may arise between the
various usergroups, of conflict and conflict resolution within the narrowly
constrained area that an architect worked in:
1-
What if the information available for
each usergroup were not the same?
2-
What if the bargaining between groups
were not facilitated by the political process?
3-
What if the willingness to cooperate were not equal for all parties concerned?
To
these objections populists retaliated by introducing more rigourous definitions
into the design process and by adding the following functions to the designer's
activities:
1-
To generate and diffuse information
concerning the satisfaction of user needs to all groups. (14)
2-
To change or restore inequalities deriving from the existing political process
and affect legislation act by
techniques of persuasion and demonstration of size. (15)
3-
To create a situation of arbitration over small issues between the various
conflicting groups where the dissent is not extreme and then to gradually bring in the important issues
where the major conflicts exist. (16)
The
theoretical implications inherent in the concepts used by populists however
have remained until now unchallenged. This issue has been bypassed in the
writings of the populists and their critics to give full vent to matter of
operationality.
Some
populists have gone so far as to reject such a debate stating, with a certain
degree of defensiveness, that everything which was not 'down to earth' was
'abstract', 'ideological' and part of a ruling class endeavour to mask reality.
'Given
the complex problem facing the poor, plans promised on ideologies are at best,
and, at worst, harm- full to the specific interests of the poor, for they
represent unreal, often misplaced, abstractions. ..' (17) In spite of fevered
disavowals, populists did adopt a precise theoretical stand, as consistent and
as determined as any previous movement in design. Although overlooked by the
populists and their critics, it is at this fundamental level that populism
draws it's coherence as a movement under the seeming multiplicity of design
approaches. These essential points of departure give to populism not only the
coherence of a movement but also confine it within certain limits. It is in
fact within these theoritical boundaries that the arbitrariness and poverty of
populism lie.
What
is needed in this case then is to trace back and criticise of these fundamental
concepts in order that populism be properly reassed, both as an alternative to
the theories of the past and as a desirable approach for the present.
The
traditional theories of the past to which the populists were so vehemently
opposed had started taking shape during the period of the Enlightenment through
the writings of Lodoli, Laugier and through the visionary projects of Boulée
and Ledoux.
It
was they who first introduced into architectural thinking the concepts of the
humanly 'essential' and the universally 'necesarry'. These two concepts were
not unique to architecture.
They
became the tenets of what was gradually to take shape as the Welfare State
approach not only in architecture reached but in the other institutionalised
professions, medecine and education.
The
Welfare State approach to architecture the height of it's expression with it's
twentieth century heirs such as Le Corbusier, those designers associated with
the ClAM-group during the 1920 and 1930s, and the proponents of Functionalism
and the International Style.
The
approach was based on a small number of general statements which characterised
not only architecture, but, as has been already said, all of the professions
affected by Welfare policy: first there was a value system composed of 'common,
identically calibrated measures' or of 'interpersonally comparable cardinal
utilities' according to which design objects were determined, and, secondly,
that this value system reflected inherent human needs as dictated by
"human nature'. As health came to be identified with a norm of hygiene and
education with a norm of literacy, so too good architecture was thought of as
built on essential, necessary and solid norms.
In accordance we might refer to
the demand of Lodoli that 'in arcitettura tutto ha da nascere dal necessario'
(18), or Laugier's statement 'Les parties essentielles ...(sont) ...introduites
par besoin'. (19)
The goal of the Welfare State
was to uplift the standard of health, education and general welfare covering
architectural matters, when and where found to be lacking. In order for this to
be possible it was necessary to establish a series of norms, defining minimum
standards or levels, that the gap between norm and actual state could be
objectively measured and therefore appropriatly compensated.
From
this followed the need for the scientification of architecture, as well as all
the professions in order that the norms be accuratly and authoritativly defined
and as effectivly met as possible.
As Welfare architects became
obsessively preoccupied with the rationality and verificability of their
arguments, the appropriate model of design seemed to be science. The list of
'necessary essentials' was short. Although a real consensus was never reached
by architects their proposals dit not vary to a great extent. The documents of
the 'Congres International d' Architecture Moderne', the writings of Le
Corbusier, of Gropius, the manifestoes of the modernists in the Soviet Union,
the magazines or the curriculum of the Bauhaus and the other Avant Garde schools
of the time, all attest to the raging concern on the part of architects for
scientific rigour and their spectacular failure at reaching it. Indeed whether
these architects dealt with the organisation of activities in the environment,
the dimensions of built form or with spatial arrangements, they read very much
like various catalogues of 'necessary supplies' in time of war.
The fact was that they were very
much inspired by war studies. Moreover the remarquable List of Primary Forms of
the International Style was very reminiscent of an elementary geometry primer
for the simple reason that it was in it's turn very much inspired by such
primers.
This
simplemindedness in combination with a few metaphysical abstractions were
elevated to the status of universal theory by several notable welfare
architects. What had been half true before the welfare era became thus a
general characteristic of all humanity, and to quote Carlyle's reference to
Jeremy Benthams view of utiliratian man, half-truth now defined 'the
completedness of limited man'. (20)
The
needs and perceptions that had been moulded by history are henceforth
considered as human nature and subject to a rigorous scientific definition and
satisfaction through enforced norms.
Twentieth century architecture
schools tended to divert their attention from historical considerations,
preferring to indulge instead in the vagaries of such courses as
'anthropometrics' and 'visual perception', much to their intellectual
detriment.
The
welfare approach failed, for it succeeded neither in organising design into a
rational process nor architecture into a science. It did succeed however in
establishing a belief system which legimitised the actions of the architect for
a certain period and which helped the economic system to which it was rooted to
accomplish it's end. It made the Welfare State look temporarily sound, rational
and collectively desirable. (21)
With
the decline of the Welfare State new concepts were needed to revitalise
transform and legitimise the role of the architects in the emerging economic
reorganisation, and to support the development of the economic trends. Welfare
architectural theory came under attack and out of these gradually emerged
counter proposals, all finally tending in the direction of a coherent populist
movement, as we have seen. While populists aimed their criticism at welfare
architectural theory, as a pure theory of design of the man made environment,
independant of social consideration, their criticism was intimatly related to
the fact that as a belief system the Welfare architectural theory was beginning
to lose it's credibility (just as the welfare economy was becoming obsolete)
and therefore it's capacity to manipulate the perception of reality in a manner
consistant with the new direction of the economy.
The
following sections of this paper will deal with the analysis of the fundamental
concepts on which the populist movement is based and try to connect them to the
historic conditions out of which they arose. We will firstanalysthe concept of
the designer. Wether the populists embraced the strip as a visual ideal or the
slum as a social cause, the major issue at stake was the desirability of the
architect's role as one who imposes an apparently arbitrary set of norms on the
man made environment. In other words, the populists denounced and renounced the
role of the Welfare State designer as one who demanded conformity to a given
standard, like the Welfare State educator and doctor.
The designer of the Welfare
State, whether a planner or an architect, was an 'elitist' prejudiced by his
own private theories against the taste of the 'user'. He was a
bureaucratoffuscated when people wished to have fun and oblivion to their
specific needs. In general, he was classed as a 'poor-oriented' 'professional
imperalist'. (22)
Thus
the populists defined the designer as a class: class of experts who because of
a total occupational envolvement with matters of pure design or because of
their own middle class origins had developped a private way at looking at the
man made environment. In general, they saw the designer as assuming the power
to impose his views on the other classes unjustly. He was a professional
oppressing the layman. Moreover, the populist regarded the design making
structure as a menas by which to ensure that the design decision be enforced,
all orders stemming from the top down in a pyramid like order, descending
gradually through the lower echelons of the organisation before being finally
imposed upon the user.
This
chain of command, according to the populists, had been implemented in order to
distribute in the most efficient manner the greatest amount of utilities to. the largest number of people. The
distribution of utilities in reality however did anything but conform to this
Welfare State ideal.
The
'bureaucratic' system was in all evidence socially inequitable and, from the
populist point of view, the Welfare State was merely a structure which had
allowed a 'professional elite' to 'do it's thing', imposing opinions on other
classes of people and frustrating the real needs of the user. The designer thus
'oppressed' the user by dictating the shape of his environment and by denying
him the right to free self expression.
The
populist accordingly proposed several alternatives to the traditional
'pyramidal' design decision making process. A 'matrix organisation' was
developped to take it's place. It was to be an organisation within which the
opposition between architect and user, bureaucrat and activist, elitist and
layman might be resolved through an equalisation of classes and with the
creation of a network whereby all classes of people might be free to express
their point of view in the design process. (23)
"It
is not for the planners", said P. Davidoff in an article in the Journal of
AlP, "to make the final decision in transforming the values into policy
commitments. His role is to identify distribution of values among people, and
how values are weighed against each other." (24)
With the populists then, the
empha- sis passed from an ideal of 'order' and 'expertise' to one of 'freedom'
and 'pluralism'. In order to implement this freedom, the populists proposed to
include as we have al- ready mentioned, within the design process conflict and
arbitration: 'The fruit of this conflict. ..is that in extracating the city
from preplanned control, man will become more fully in controle of themselves
and more aware of each other'. (25)
In
general it can be said that while for the Welfare State the aim was to identify
a common identically calibrated measure for all individuals in an ideally
homogeneous society, for the populists the task passed to the formalisation of
new models which might represent individual differences, express subjective
values and reflect the diversity of a truly democratic society. (26)
With the acceptance of values as
subjective and irreducable to a common norm, the project of identifying ideal
plans for the man made environment and of applying them to design products was
abandonned. With it also, the scientific model of the design decision making
process was cast into doubt.
Whether
this criticism was correct or superficial will not be discussed at this time.
The fact is that populists felt that this model of design had to be refuted and
a new one developped in it's place'.
The populist proposals for a new
approach rest on the definition of the design decision making as a political
process. As every design decision had in the past been a reflection of class
values, in a truly democratic society the weight of every group's opinion must
be equal and represented in a pluralistic decision making process forming a
'vector sum' of all the collective points of view. To take only one point of
view into account was for the populists a clear case of totalitarianism in
architecture. (27)
Both
the concept of designer and of design process rest on the issue of class,
Populists opposed the policy of the Welfare State on the grounds that class
values of the user had been disregarded in the traditional design process, in
favour of the class values of the designer.
Populists defined class on the
basis of observable facts, according to the apparent 'norms and aspirations' to
quote Herbert Gans, of each group of people, thus reducing class distinction
almost to a matter of differing taste.
This vision of the social
organisation, as one might suspect, lead to superficial conclusions. What was
wrong they felt, with the designer of the Welfare State was, that he imperilled
on the sacred rights of the user by imposing his opinions in such matters as
color combination, furniture arrangement, room layout, window spacing and so
fort. He reduced the user to a position of dependence. The selective amnesia
with which populist writers overlooked the historical conditions which fostered
these 'norms and aspirations' gave to these latter an autonomous status which
otherwise might have been equivocal, It was only by repressing the genealogy of
these class values that populists were able to assert beyond any doubt that
they were the spontaneous expression of 'human nature'. (28)
For
an instant Herbert Gans permits history to creep into the definition of the
formation of norms and aspirations, But this does not influence his
conclusions.
He
accepts class 'norms and aspirations' as being the result of economic and other
conditions, ..responses to situations to which people (have had) to adapt (and
which have been) internalised and have become behaviour norms'. His view of the
past was extremely vague and lead him to the dubious conclusion that the satisfaction
of these 'norms and aspirations' must be sought after since they have 'not been
proved to be socially or emotionally harmful'.
The historical analysis of the populists went no deeper than this, and
thus they proned as the right of every group, every 'class', 'social' or
'cultural' the freedom to express it's value through the design of the built
environment.
This
stand on the part of the populists is, at best, naive. The bias resulting form
the implicit acceptance of this positivist view of society is multifold. It
follows that if class is defined solely on the basis of observable norms or
values, that social 'oppression' must simply be a dependence in matters of
consumption. But the study of the values of a social group in history shows
them to be the outcome of the relationships of dependence of this group to the
other groups in relation to the process of production.
Thus, if the history of the
'norms and aspirations' is ignored the class definition of a class is removed
from it's causes and rests exclusivly with the effects. Consequently, the
acquisition of products by a group designed according to its 'norms and
aspirations' does not change in the least it's particular dependence to other
groups or classes or it's 'oppression',
If
the freedom of choice in matters of consumption does not guarantee the
independence of a group, then the movement of the user oriented design otters
nothing but an illusory freedom to the dependant classes. This total disregard
for the importance of the means of production in the determination of
dependence in society and the exclusive reliance on the aspect of consumption
caracterise not only the view of the populists, but of the designers of the
Welfare State as well.
The
designers of the Welfare State tried to apply to the arbitrarily isolated
domain of consumption, the scientific approach. They attempted to define an
abstract, universal ideal of consumption in relation to the habitat, and
ignored the fact that such norm could not be found outside the structure of
dependencies in society which is determined by the organisation of control over
the means of production. The definition of design as a political process was no
less misleading than the definition of design as a scientific process. Thus,
while architects saw the designed envjronment as a well ordered regiment,
populists evisaged it as well serviced supermarket.
The model of the supermarket
has, indeed, often been used as a planning prototype. (29)
People seem to acquire from
shelves what they need, without control, supervision or bureaucracy. If only
the cashier's desk were taken away from the entrance as once remarked sadly
Herbert Read.
This
vision of reality was not only very partial, observing as it did the sector of
consumption activities and trying to eliminate the bitter reality of
production, the real structure of dependence -ah, that little cashier! - but it
also created a falsely optimistic vision of the function of design and of
design products in the organisation of power in society.
Let us, as the populists did,
consider for a moment the satisfaction of utilitarian needs as paramount in the
overall scheme of 'social change'.
Let
us suppose that the present society with organisation intact is finally able to
deliver enough design products to all humanity. Why in such a case would the
cashier have to be reserved? Would not the major problem in the society of
affluence be the determination of the characteristics of each design product
according to the needs of each individual? Having disregarded the possibility
that the present organisation of society might operate on the basis of certain
contradictions, such that although it appears to be aimed towards the
satisfaction of consumer needs, this aim can never be reached, and that this
contradiction is inherent to it.
The
affluent society is an illusion which, in order to be perceived needs special
observations filters -and, even assuming that such mass consumption is
possible, it will only change the distribution of design products among the
various groups in society. It will however leave intact the organisation of
domination and dependence. This leads to the discussion of another concept
basic to the populist approach: that of the design product. Populists assumed
that the acquisition and the use of design products must be an source of
satisfaction for their user because of the presence of 'utilities' in the
products themselves. The task of the designer was therefore to determine
products that maximise these utilities.
The
common notion was that pro- ducts gratify because certain properties inherent
to them and corresponding to certain needs, in turn inherent to human nature.
This concept of the design product was used both by the Welfare State designers
and the populists, who took it for granted.
That different qualities seemed
to be satisfactory at different times in history was somehow interpreted in
both schools of thought as a phenomenon relating to the 'plasticity of human
need'.
History
shows however that behind the reality of the 'plasticity of human needs', the
design product assumes a value which is dictated by the role it plays as a
signifier of power. As a signifier of power, the goodness of the object is
relative to that for which it stands, rather than what it is made of. Thus the
gratification it offers is not the result of a material property which they
contain, but of a social function that it fills. What is pleasing in the object
is not in the project itself, but the social relation it signifies which stands
outside of it. This explanation of design products was put for three hundred
years ago by Claude Perrault, scholar, doctor and theoretician of architecture.
Perrault saw that the value that
we assign to design products comes out of a 'Connection which the Mind makes of
two things of a different nature, for by the Connection, it comes to pass, that
the Esteem where with the Mind is predisposed for some Things whose value it
knows, insinuates an Esteem also for others. ..and insensibly engages it to
respect them alike. This Principle is the natural Foundation of Belief'.
Perrault went further to argue that architecture, functioning as a belief
system is not different from the 'Things in the Mode' or the 'Ways of Speaking
used at Court' whose forms were respected because of the 'Regard we have for
their Merit and good Graces of the Court'. (30)
But
with the exception of this shrewed analysis of Perrault design theory has
bypassed this kind of investigation altogether and has implied that the design
product is desirable because of a gratifying faculty contained by it. In other
words, theorists have considered only the fetichistic quality of the design
object which masks the human
relationship of domination and dependence behind it. In this manner, the structure
of dependen- cies is hidden behind the phenomenon of posession. As the presence
or absence of the design objects become more observable, the social relations
become camouflaged.
It
was not therefore the equality in the distribution of the design products or in
the determination of their caracteristics which created the inequality of
power. It was the organisation of power and dependence, acheived through the
pocession of the means of production, mapped into a 'code' of controle,
utilishing design products as it's 'medium', which generated a perception of
the inequalities in terms of posession. (31)
Thus
any alteration at the level of the signifier does not automatically lead to a
corresponding change at the level of it's signification.
It
should come as no surprise that the concept of the design object as a treasure
of utilities is absent in pre-market economies. The so-called 'primitive'
designer is not in search of the maximisation of utilities, much to the
bewilderment of many of our contemporaries, who choose to call him 'irrational',
underdeveloped' and as acting 'subconsciously', this if he does not
misinterpret him totally as 'doing his thing'. (32)
The
model of design as an autonomous political process assuring the 'liberation' of
the user through a direct participation in the design process, rest on the
exploitation of the design product as a source of social power, as on the
hypothesis that class values are autonomous from the overall development of the
social organisation.
Thus we arrive at the conclusion
that the assumptions which lie behind and are fundamental to populism are
implicitly established on hypotheses which are unverified. They are arbitrarily
held as true. Populism as a theory departs from a biased ground, with no
qualifications for universal applications. Because of this we conclude that,
although populism claims to be an theory of design, it does not present the
epistemological credentials which are required from a conceptual system if it
aspires to the status of Theory. (33)
Arising
as a negation against the approaches which were either practiced or preached by
the Welfare State planners and architects and which implied the dominance of
the professional designer over the user, populism lead to a counter approach of
'liberation' for the user, making him his own designer. But the liberation was
limited by the very negation out of which it had stemmed. Because this negation
did not go beyond the limits set by the definitions of the concepts 'class' and
'product'.
Indeed,
even in the most 'user oriented' or the most 'self help' made object, the user
is always bound to a relationship of dependence. This relationship becomes
apparent when the user realises that it is not he who posesses the materials
and the re- sources necessary to build his design object and that he lacks the
economic power to obtain them. The user will have to face the realities of the
status of consumer, be it only of raw materials, and moreover, he will be
forced to accept a status of high dependence in the production sector where he
will have to give up his freedom in order to acquire the required compensation
by which, and only by which, he can obtain the licence to consume and acquire
the needed material and then 'create'. Even more, his dependence on the
production sector could increase by the fact that being a 'free' consumer, his
desire to consume will be intensified. Thus, the liberation for the user
demanded by the populists is restricted and can not be accepted in a sense of a
universal condition of liberation, since it could lead to an heavier underlying
state of dependence for the user.
Given
these limitations of populism, it can be viewed a movement which has evolved
within the constraints of a new economic framework in correspondence with it's
economic demands. Within the limits of this new framework, the Affluent
Society, to use the term of John Kenneth Galbraith, populism has ifs relevance
and even ifs merits! It criticised succesfully the Welfare State approach,
attacking the totalitarian and fetishistic nature of the 'norm' in the design
object, the treatment of the user by the architect as impershal and the
wastfulness of the bureaucratic structure in the program of the Welfare State.
Populists succeeded in demystifying the 'scientific' discourse of the
architects of the Welfare State by proving this to be arbitrary approaches,
having 'little impact on the behavioural patterns ...of people', a response of
the elite group of society to the 'threat which ...immigrants, and urban
industrial society generally represented to the social, cultural and political
dominance' which they had joyed before. (34)
However,
as the Welfare State approaches to design corresponded to a certain level of
economic development in 1 adapting to the industrial society a population which
was principally of agricultural origin (changing the mentality of pre-rational
man of the pre market economy into a man integrated into the rationality of
production in a market economy) 2 transforming a population of existing
pauperised urban proletariat into consumer so the populist approach coincided
with a higher level of economic organisation.
In
both cases, the Welfare State, responded to the changing conditions of the
socio-economic system, the advancement of technology which was to revolutionise
production, the intensified level of capital accumulation and the dangers of
social opheavals in a concentrated mass of dependent urban populations.
To
meet these new conditions as well as the constant demand for accumulation of
power into tighter concentration, the Welfare State took, upon the following
tasks: integration of all groups into the economic system with high
caracteristics of stability and the expansion of consumption sector of the
economy, the two tasks being related.
Thus,
the Welfare State acted by abandonning the early policies of enforced
domination through the limitations of income for the dependent group as
described by Bernard de Mandeville in the 18th century 'the only thing that can
render the labouring man industrious is a mode- rate quantity of money'. It accepted
a new mode of socio-economic organisation, one which permitted by higher
compensations the development of sufficient property to 'labourers'. (35)
It was thought that this new
organisation would place the working class, not in the old 'abjector service
condition', but in a state of 'easy and liberal dependence'. Goods, among which
were design products, services and compensating income which were distributed
by the Welfare State outside the wage system of private entrepreneurship were
made possible not only because of the new developments, but also because of the
anticipation of a new reorganised socio-economic system, caracterised by more
stability and a restructuring of power into smaller and tighter concentrations.
Thus
the distribution of 'bonuses' by the Welfare State filled more of a normative
function than a purely philanthropic one.
It
was this normative goal of the Welfare State, the preparation of an economic,
social cultural base neccessary for a new economic organisation to take root,
which gave to the Welfare State architects and designers their common identity
and their techniques Dorrowed from the study of 'nature' for design of the man
made environment, convenientIy called at that time 'habitat'.
The
degree to which the old design policies of the Welfare State were positive of
negative, and the criterion according to which they are to be judged is the
subject of another investigation. 1he fact is that populism attacked this and
succeeded in dismantling at least parts of the facade of Welfare State
policies, if only in order to proceed with what the Welfare State would have
considered as it's ultimate goal: the integration into the economic system of
all groups of society and the expansion of consumption.
This
wether the populists dealt with the slum or with the strip, they supplied proof
which demolishes the Welfare State claims to an objective and scientifically
rational outlook in design. When, however, they offered their counterplans, the
populists reacted not against the exploitative aspect of the Welfare State, but
to it's growing operational obsolescense. In other words, if we assume that the
basic tasks of the Welfare State had been achieved by the beginning of the
Populistera, what the Populists were demanding was the expansion of the
'liberal dependence' program within an Affluent Society advocating the need for
consumer sovereignity. It was in the beginning of the 50s that John Dyckman and
Martin Meyerson urged for the recognition of the 'authority' of the consumer
and the need of planning to be 'responsive' to the consumer market. Rapkin,
Winnich and Blank, in a Mimeograph same period on housing, urged in a similar
fashion to turn to the 'ultimate consumer as the source of legitimacy for
planning' and proposed to exploit 'the market as a mechanism for assessing
consumer choises'. (36)
We
draw the following final conclusions: if we accept the existence of the program
of liberal dependence, we are compelled to look upon the populist movement as
the natural successor of the Welfare State approach to design. Design 'in name
of the people' do not form a theory, but rather a belief system through which
the policies of an emerging Affluent Society were perceived as collectively
beneficial. (37)
That
populism has had a liberating effect, there can be no doubt. Design forms have
finally been disengaged from a normative mold of false authority. From this
point of view, there is a rift in contemporary theory of design comparable in
impact with that which developped in the 17th century, when the design object
was broken loose from the Sacred Model and established in the world of the
Profane Populism however has left intact the fetishistic quality of the design
object with which it hat been invested by the theory of architecture of the
Welfare State. The populist movement tries to replace the belief in the
goodness of a universal fetish with the glorified cult of the individualised
fetish and by dismantling the authority of universal norms, to reject the last
remaining vestige in the built environment representing the collective nature
of society
The
authoritarian regimentation of objects is in the process of disappearing, but
what is emerging in it's place is the loneliness of a design supermarket,
pluralistic, varied, plethoric and artificial.
1
Douglas Haskel, Architecture and Popular taste
Architectural Forum, August 1958
2
Reyner Banham, The Missing Motel,
TheListener,August5th,1965
3
Robert Venturi, Complexity and
Contradiction in Architecture, 1966;
Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown, Learning from Las Vegas, Architectural Forum, March 1968
4
Philippe Boudon, Pessac de Ie Corbusier, 1969
5
Team X, Report published in Architectural Design, December 1962. Also several articles published in the Forum during the period extending from 1958 to 1962
6
See N.J. Habraken, Supports: an alternative to Mass Housing, 1972. Dutch edition 1961.
'A support structure', he wrote 'is quite different matter from the skeleton
construction of a large building,
although to the superficial spectator
there may appear to be similarities.
..The more variety housing can assume, the
better.. .'
7 Chester Hartman, Social values
and Housing Orientations, Journal of Social Issues, April
1963, vol.
XIX, no. 2
8
P. Davidoff, Advocacy and pluralism in
Planning, Journal of the American
Institute of Planners, vol. XXXI, no. 4, November 1965, p. 331-338
9
John Turner, The squatter Settlement: an
architecture that works, Architectural Design,
vol. 38, August 1968
10 John
Turner, 1971, unpublished paper given
at the Centre Intercultural de Documentation
Cuernevaca, Mexico and J. Turner and R. Fichter, Freedom to
Build, New York, London 1972. See also the experience of Hassan Fathy, Gourna a Tale of two Villages, Cairo 1969
11 Herbert
Gans, Poverty and Culture. In H.
Gans, People and Plans, 1972
12 H. Gans, The Balanced Community, Journal of the American Institute of Planners.
XXVII, no. 3, 1969 and H. Gans, op. cit. Preface, p. XII
13 H. Gans, Some Observations, 1972
14 'The
power to conceptualise is a power to manipulate', Lisa Peattie, Reflections on Advocacy Planning, Journal of the American Institute of Planners, March
1968. For the developed techniques of
decision making which take into account
differences in the maount of information available to the participants and their attitude with regard to cooperation see: Isard W, Smith TE et ai, General Theory, Social Political,
Economic and Regional, 1969
15 See George Burke, Citizen Participation
Strategies, The Journal of the Americal Institute of Planners, September 1968
16
See Francis Priven, Proceedings of
National Conference on Advocacy Planning and Pluralist Planning, Urban Research
Center, Hunter College. and Lisa Peattie, op. cit. for further details. For a
comparative evaluation of models related
to the case of advocacy planning see Earl M. Bleecher, Advocacy Planning for Urban Development, 1971. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, Maximum Feasible
Understanding, gives a very
interesting description of the 'professionalisation' of the rights of a class. The professional formulates values to
finally propagate his own interests and not those of the class he is
representing
On
the contradiction between the designer
and the user, of the design's class is not the same as that of the user: see Advocacy Planning, Pro- gressive Architecture,
September 1968. On the size of groups
as a factor in the process of bargaining and arbitration,
see J.M. Buchanan, The Demand and Supply of Public Goods, 1968, and also M. Olson, The Logic of Collective Action, 1965
Problems also arise where it is
impossible to develop 'pure and homogenious groups
17
Marshall Kaplan, Advocacy Urban Planning,
Social Welfare Forum, 1968
18
Published in F. Milizia, Arte di vedere
nelle belle arti del disegno, 1781
19
M.A. Laugier, Essai sur l'Architecture, 1753
20
Quoted by John Stuart Mill, Bentham, London and Westminster Review, August 1838
21
An accurate description of the gradual
genesis of the welfare approach in architecture
and it's concepts will not be found
in the writings of the Modernist architects such as Gropius and Le Corbusier who claimed it as being 'all there own', but
instead in the Journal of Cesar Daly entitled Reveu Générale de l'Architecture et
des Travaux Publics during the years
between 1847 and 1870. See especially
the Vlth volume, 1845-46 and the articles on Worker's Housing on the
Struggle between workers and entrepreneurs by Perreymond, the debated about the Ecole de Beaux Arts de Paris, on the profession of the architect
22
Herbert Gans, Some Observations and
Proposals on the Role of the Architect in Today's America, 1972. Unpublished paper delivered in New York, at
a conference in the MOMA on architectural
education in the USA.
23
See C. Argyris, Today's Problems with Tomorrows Organisations, Journal of
Management Studies, vol. 4 no. 1
24
P. Davidoff and T.A. Reiner, A. Choice
Theory of Planning, Journal of the American Institute of Planners, vol. 28,
p. 108, 1962. M. Reim, Social Planning: The Search for Legitimacy, Journal of the
American Institute of Planners, vol. 35,1969
25
Richard Sennett, The Uses of DIsorder,
1970
26
K. Arrow, Social Choice and Individual
Values, 1963. J.S. Minas and R.L.
Ackoff, Individual and Collective Value Judgement, in M. W. Shelly and G.L. Bruyan (eds) Human Judgement
and Optimallty, 1964; C.H. Coombs, A.
Theory of Data, 19M
27
A concept at least as old as Condorcet.
See Essai sur la Construction et les Functions des Assemblees Provinciales, 1758.
See also R.P. Wolff, The Poverty of Liberalism, 1968
28 For
an elegant
demonstration of how values related to the
built envi- ronment took shape in the mind of the french industrial working
class of the 19th century. See M.G. Raymond,
La Politique Pavillionaire, 1966-
29 George Woodcock, Hebert Read: The
Stream and the Source, 1971
30 Claude Perrault, Ordannance des
Cinq Especes de Colonnes, 1683. See also Wolgang Herrmann, Claude Perrault
and Alexander Tzonis, To- wards a non
Oppressive Environment, 1972, chapter
on 'Arbitrary Beauties of Perrault'
31 B. Bernstein and
D. Henderson,
Social Class Differences in the Rele- vence of Language to Socialisation, : Sociology, vol. 3, 1969: and
B. Bern- : stein, Elaborated and
Restricted Codes, American Antropologist; vol. 1 66, no. 6, 1964: and Mary
Douglas,
Natural Symbols, 1970
32
See Christopher Alexander, Notes
on the Synthesis of Forum, 1964.
For an example of this view. And for a critique
of this view see Karl Polanyi, Our obsolete Market Economy, in George Dalton,
Primitive, Archaic and Modern Economies, Essays of Karl Polanyi, 1968; M. Sahlins, Stone Age Economics, 1971. A. Tzonis, op. cit. 1972. J. Baudrillard, Pour une critique de I'economie
politique du signe, 1972: Maurice
Godelier, Hori- zons, trajects marxistes en anthropo- logie, 1973: 'Le
caractere fetiche des marchandises ...est ...I'effet dans et pour les consciences de la dissimu- lation
de la realite des rapports soci- aux dans et so us leurs appraences',
p.321
33 This weakness of populism is
illustrated in the writings of Robert Dahl
on participation. Here the
dis- cussion takes on the dimensions
of a proposed theory. Robert Dahl, A
Pre- face to Democratic Theory, 1956. This
aspect is also apparant in the work of John Turner and Herbert Gans. In
General, as Pyriotis correctly observed, Advocacy planning and participatory
design are extensions of the 19th century movement of Pluralism, a movement lacking rigour from the point of
view of it's episte- mological foundations. See J.S. Mill, On liberty, 1859: and J.S. Mill, Princi- ples of Political Economy, 1848. Populists conserved the fetichistic,
'utilitarian approach to design ob-
jects and responded to the needs of
Pluralism by replacing the 19th cen- tury concept of 'freedom of the indi-
vidual' with that of 'freedom of class'. Whereas the 19thcenturylaisserfaire
approach encouraged the rise of the individualistic profit oriented firm, the
20th century populist approach fa- voured the expansion of the marked by
promotion of consumption in all individual groups. Populism praised self help
design on the grounds that he
produced 'inspired and individu- alistic' objects. Thus, they transposed values
which had been applied to the 19th
century individual promotor, to the
20th century consumer group. Experimentation for the populists is also tied
into the expression of 'class norms and aspirations'. Populists postulated that
by 'altering the con- ditions' and 'observing how people' reacts the needs of
the user could be indentified
'Such experiments can be initiat~d
only by the government or by well endowed foundation, but they can be undertaken
only if social scientist are willing
to
design them in the first place'. Herbert
Gans, op. cit. 1969. This is in
accordance with the pluralist view of the State, in the 19th century, as
providing the means by which the individual might be free 'to develop this
powers. J.S. Mil/, op. cot. 1858. This
idea was actual/y derived from the writings of Baron Wilhelm von Humbolt. The
sphere of Duties of Government, 1851
34
Herbert Gans, The Goal Oriented Approach to
Planning, 1958; People and Plans, 1972
35
Sir Frederic Eden, The State of the Poor,
179Z
36
C. Rapkin, L. Winnick and D. Blank, Housing Market Analysis: A Study of
Theory Method, 1952
37
Indeed for several writers, especial/y
theorists of organisation, 'participation' has very different reason for being
apllied. 'Closely related to the
issues of cooperation and protest absorption is that of participation in
decision making. A long line of social psychological experiments in laboratory
and field settings has emphasised the importance of participation as a positive 'factor in the acceptance of
decision outcomes'. W. Gamson, The
Management of Discontent, in J. Thomas, W. Bennis: Management of Change and Conflict, 1972; see also L. CoCh, J. French, Overcoming
Resistance to Change, in H.
Proshansky, B. Seidenberg, Basic Studies in Social Psychology, 1965, and S. Verba, Smal/ Groups and Political Behaviour, 1961. For these authors, problems occur not so
much out of the reality of the structure of power as much as of the perception
of it that different groups have. 'In trying to explain or controle the behaviour of people, we are not cencerned with
determining whether their interests are real/y in harmony or conflict ...but
how they perceive these interests. It is now a well established uniformity of organisational behaviour that whenever
groups of people occupy widely differing positions in a hierarchy and carry out different
activities, they are bound to see
their interests as being different'
W.F. White, Models for Building and
Changing Organisation, Human Organisation, vol.
26 no. 1-2,
1967.