10. D1aGRAMMING THE New Wor Lp, or Hannes Meyer’s “SCIENTIZATION” OF ARCHITECTURE K. Michael Hays ‘The blame for our blindness lies in the fact that the human being has quite a weak ‘consciousness and poor instrument for understanding the structure of the picture: and a really poor sense ofthe Functions... . Our sense of function, our feeling, goes to sleep in the shadow of the strongest sense of touch and sight. ... We need an anal- ysis and new synthesis of our whole way of life, under the spell of plant life, the basis $f animal and human life —Konrad von Meyenburg, “Kultur von Pflanzen, Tieren, Menschen,” Bauhaus 1927, Building is a biological event. —Hannes Meyer, Bawhaus 1928 Hannes Meyer has nor been one of architecture history’s most favored subjects. Known, mostly as the “other” director of the Bauhaus, he has remained unpopular compared with both his predecessor there, Walter Gropius, and his successor, Mies van der Rohe. He has been denigrated for his architecture, which was dogmatically functionalist and technocratic, and for his politics, which were too far left even for liberal socialists. The la- bel most often used ro condemn Meyer is the same label that is most interesting in the present contest, a label he used o describe himself: Meyer was a “scientific Marxist."In one sense, we can take this asa fuirly routine modernist reference to both science and Marxism, especially among architects like Hans Schmid, Mart Stam, and El L ‘ky. Bur less routine are the examples that articulate his position: his article “Die neue Welt,” an analytic manifesto thar took up most of the issue of Das Werk in which it was published in 1926; a project for an interior published in that article; and a project for a girl’ school done the same yeat, which he referred to as his “first research into the ‘scienti= zation’ (Verwisenschafilichung) of architecrare."* Together these items yield a particular understanding of the science of architecture in a series of mutual reductions and en- foldings: frst, of architecture into technology and science; then, of science into a social and historical force field; and finally, of history into an unstoppable march toward a so- cialise Furure in which architecture as an art would have been negated but redeemed on a diferent plane as a “natural,” scientific organization of lifes needed and desired effects “Meyer invalidated buile form as architecture's highest achievement. Form, above al, ‘must be utilized. Form is bur che diagram forthe production of effects: che arrangement and distribution of experiential and expressive contents whose domain extends from care- filly abricared building details intended to coax out the latent, contradictory, and mar- ginal aesthetic effects of constructed materials co elementary geomettial systems that ‘construct differentiated spaces and structures for programmatic activites. In Meyer's conducive to certain outcomes, certain pos- jon; form is an instigator of responses and performances a frame is to suggest more than fx, ro outline possibilities thac will be realized only partly at any one time and only in occupation. Architecture in its fullest sense ‘emerges as an apré-coup: the enactment of a programmatic promise that, by form, had been deferred. Io that ofthe pri- vate aesthetic life of the bourgeoisie. By 1926 science and technology were already show- {ing thac socialism was not an illusory prospect but an immanent reality obeying che very laws of nature, which science itself attempts to theorize. And primary among the signs of collective modernization were graphic traces that lay just underneath the surface of the images of industrialized landscapes and modern advertising: clementary signs, he said in “Die neue Wel,” that permeate” the modern environment and call fora refanctionaliza- tion of the human perceptual apparatus. Meyer begins “Die neue Welt” with an intense description of the psychological preconditions of modem subjectivity: “The flight ofthe “Norge” to the North Pole, the Zeiss planetarium at Jena and Flerner’s rotor ship represent the latest stages to be reported in the mechanization of cour planet. Being the ouscome of extreme precision in thought, they all provide stik- ing evidence of the way in which science continues to permeate our environment. ‘Thus in the diagram of the present age we find everywhere amidst the sinuous lines of ts social and economic fields of force straight lines which are mechanical and sci- 234 | K Michael Haysentific in origin. They < of the victory of man the thinker over Hannes Mey "Ds morphous nature. This new knowledge undermines and transforms existing values. Te gives our new world its shape. Motor cats dash along our streets. On a tr from 6 to 8 p.s. there rages round 0 Ford” and “Roll? Royce -e and effacing the boundaries berween town and country... . Illuminated c island in the Champs Elysées dent ve burst open the core of the town, obli dist twinkle, loudspeakers screech, posters advertise, display windows shine forth. See figures 10.1 and 10.2. 235. | Diackaumine rie New WontoBut Meyer reverses the tradicional negative valence ofthe subjective consequences of ts effects as rather expanding and sharpening our conscious- ness, The paragraph continues: such overstimulation, se “The simultancity oFevents enormously extends our concept of “space and time,” it cntiches ou lif. We live Faster and therefore longer. We have a keener sense of speed than ever before, and speed records are a direct gain forall. Gliding, parachute descents and music hall acrobatics refine our desir For balance. The precise division into hours of the time we spend working in office and factory and the split-mimute timing of railway timetables make us live more consciously. Meyer’ reportage of the objects of technological advance yields firs to an account of their experiential effect, then toa laying bare oftheir psychovisual deep structure, a gram ofthe present age": technological objects asa kind ofideogram or gestalt of cise temologico-social potential. "The picture the landscape presents ro the eye today is more diversified than ever before; hangars and power houses are the cathedral of the sprit ofthe age. This pic= ture has the power to influence through the specific shapes, colors, and lights ofits rmodern elements: the wireless aerials, the dams, th lattice girders: chrough the pa~ rabola of the airship, the triangle of the traffic signs, the crcl ofthe railway signal, the rectangle ofthe billboard; through the linear element of transmission lines... [See figures 10.3 and 10.4. [And later} The artists studio has become a scientific and technical labora tory... Burroughs’ calculating machine sets free out bran, the dictaphone our hand, Ford’ motor our placebound senses and Handley Page our earthbound spit- its. Radio, marconigram and photorelegraphy liberate us from our national seclusion and make us part of a world community. The gramophone, microphone, orches- ‘rion and pianola accustom our eats to the sound of impersonal-mechanized rhythms... Peychoanalysis has burst open the all roo narrow dwelling ofthe soul and graphology has laid bare the character ofthe individual. .. . National costume ving way to fashion and the external masculinization of woman shows that in- ‘wardly the ewo sexes have equal rights, Biology, psychoanalysis, relativity and ento= mology are common intellectual property: Francé, Einstein, Freud and Fabre are the saints of this aterday. Our homes are more mobile than ever, Large blocks of flats sleeping cars, house yachts and transatlantic liners undermine the local concept of the homeland,” The fatherland goes into a decline. We learn Esperanto. We be- come cosmopolitan. ‘Meyer’ effort in these passages seems tobe first, co turn subjective experience into ob- jectivized form and images that then flow back into the space of experience thus le ‘open; or in other words, to map the objective social field in terms of the conduct that it 236 1K: Michael Hays237 | Diackamaune tHe New Wontimposes on its inhaitans—all of which demands tha our cogisve and peters con ‘ventions he completely rfunctioned to participate in the Meyer intrest inthe graphic racing of modernity his research into “appied y= nd the resultant trajectory toward radicalization of perception had begun as For his first buile work, the Freidorf Cooperative Estate, He new world. chology carly as 1916, in preparation recounts that he had alladio’s plans ov thirty standard sheets of paper (size used my free time ro draw all P ed me to design my frst 420/594) in common scale. This work on Palladio promp housing scheme, the Freidor estate, on the modular sytem ofan architectural f= I the external spaces... and all public internal spaces de. By means ofthis system all were laid out in an artistic pattern which would be pereived by chose living there as the spatial harmony of proportion Proportional harmony and che repetitive cellular structure are for Meyer the architeut> aleion ofthe harmony of socialism, Likewise the Siedlung’s red color, what Adolf Be= tne called a "symphony in red." stands asa symbol of Freidor’sleftwardlcaning soil commitments, Already in chis early project the surface-level image, color, together with ‘an underlying geometry are od as an instrument of collective perceptual change. The wandardization and serialization ofthe Palladian system evacuate the traditional “Heanardenovations of the buildings and atempt ro reinstall a different sort of collective ity: Meyer acknowledges that although the co-operators no doubt appreciated the economic aspects ofthis tae “Gardization, it mostly ran counter to their sense of beauty In regard ro archivectural cation, the Freidorf standards goto the utmost limits of whar the individuale J raste and any further paring away of “architec ccwith an almost simpli istic Swiss will rolerate in matters o ture” will be branded as “prison and barrack” building and meet unbroken front of public resstan Bathe insists that “Man looks small once he enters the temple ofthe community” The individual must be sacrificed to the collective, and geometric serialization was the ideo- tram ofthe new cooperative word. So if we must cake pause atthe contradiction dat ‘Meyer’ plan for collective happiness must needs be installed by a manifest impos. tion of pychic serials on all those individuals for whom liberation was intended, We must also register his understanding of form asa way of organizing ideological space- (Sce figure 10.5.) “The function of Meyers repetitive modu rcieraiv, serial building sytem ofa collective sociery, ro unfold architecture inro the reroity of mass technology and standardization. Meyers conception of the relation of building and science here ie based ona general les understanding of sialism as des tmanded by available machine technology, which is cogently summarized inthe manic leis wo inseribe across the architecture the 238 1K: Michael Haysfesto "ABC fordert die Diktatur der Maschine,” published by Hans Schmidt andl Mare ‘Stam in ABC, a radical journal with which Meyer was involved. Schmidt and Stam linked machine technology to an increased cooperative or collective labor already emerg- ing in the interstices of capitalism. Moreover, they made the same demand for a corr sponding transformation of culture that we saw in Meyer’ efforts at Freidorf a demand row put bluntly inthe form of “dictatorship” imposing on the masses an ironclad col- lective happiness* Meyer, at cis point in the trajectory of his own work, similarly sought to conjoin aesthetic and technical logics in order to force new conventions of mass perception adequate tothe available conditions of mass production. To that end he restricted and selected his tools and materials ro obliterate as nearly as possible the dis- ‘inctions among the aesthetic sign, its Functional operations, and advanced production procedures, But his concem, distinct from that of his comeades, is with what we might «all the reception of production a its most advanced level more chan with production itself and he thus deploys mechanization as 2 latent network of possible new relations ‘of perception more than a determining fact. ‘But when he reflected on the Freidorf project in 1925, he found its hierarchical las- sicism to be a “compromise, socially between the individual human being and the com- munity, formally berween town and country,” preferring a new architectural form in which “there would arse in an asymmetric broken way an estate buile only with justifi- able respect for hygiene and return on capital, as garden and engineered dwelling ma- chine, a sun-trap and at the same time conveying natural beaury and purity.”” By the time Meyer had finished the projec, he had questioned and inverted the tradition on. which his Siedlung was based as a viable mode of revolutionary and transformatory signi- fication, renouncing Freidorf as “inappropriate,” “laughably ridiculous,” the “product of an incomprehensible time." He recognized that mechanization is not wedded only ro the socal relations that produced it it could be brought into service for other modes of production. And indeed, architecture could precipitate them. In hs later work the Funda ‘mental harmonizing principles ofthe Siedlung Freidorf would be exploded by che raw things of modernity itself, the work's nonidentiry with its traditional physical and social surroundings asserted, with a certain dissonance as the result. ‘So one effect of this visual presence of science is to dissolve individual private life into collectivity. And itis here as well, among these traces of scence and technological production, that Meyer's Co-op Zimmes, contra a comfortable bourgeois domesticity ‘makes its conceptual presence felt, but now with a more adequate iconography than Freidorf. (See figure 10.6.) “Co-op Zimmer” is something ofa misnomer, For the project fact, a photograph: not a photograph of an existing interior but of an interior that hhas been always onlya photograph, published in “Die neue Wele” as example of the es- say's aesthetic of standardization, repecition, mechanized media, advertisement, no- sadism, impersonality, and collectivity. The “room” is represented by a mock up of white fabric, a folding wood-and-canvas chair, a cot raised on conical feet co allow air to 240 | K Michael Haysihe “Der tandad,” om 1 Wal” showing the ind lcape and the new dal 2 diagram of th 241 | Diagrams THe New Wontflow underneath, and a phonograph on a collapsible stool: the uncropped version also shows shelves of food products. The reiterate circles of the gramophone and stool rop, the double square ofthe chair hanging on the wall, che double triangles of the stool legs, and the rectangle and conical feet ofthe cot are combined in what could be taken a8 an clementarist gcometrical construction virtually collapsed onco its canvas background. (Sce figure 10.7.) Ivis as if, across a graph of advanced technology and media, a mem- bane has been stretched, a membrane of everyday, domestic use objects that (immediate and familiar as they are) make actual the otherwise purely virtual graph. By producing a kind of transverse communication berween verbal and visual images in the essay, Meyer weaves a network of extemalities into a cartography of the new world. In the chains of diverse references organized serially in declarative sentences, the reader cannot help feeling a kind of dispersion, as of tracers sent out in scattered direc- tions registering functions oF instruments, disciplines, modes of thought, habitas, and habits, all of which ate constituent parts ofthe transformed life-world configured by the Co-op Zimmer. The Co-op Zimmer isan assemblage, a “conspicuous arrangement,” Meyer called it, that sil functions within some larger cultural machinery that includes a conceptualization of the nomadic mobility enabled by the portable firniure, the alimen- tary products, and the invasion ofthe bedroom by the jazz band whose sound is now severed from its instruments and flattened onto a reproducible disk.'" Not an actual ar- chitectual space but a concept of space, not a fact so much asthe possibilty of a smoothly traversable world, this “diagram of the present age” is objectively determined by the imposition of new rechnical products and external “Fields of force” thar operate to dissolve established boundaries within various forms of experience and cognition. “The Co-op Zimmer attests tothe possibilty char forms of simultaneous collective reception, linked directly to the inexorable movement of science and technology, can afford a kind of protopoliical and practical apprenticeship for the collective sociery to come. The concrete experience of the visual products of science and technology, when understood as affording a symbolic and psychological mapping of the now vivid and trac- table consequences of modernity, may be conceived as a functional diagram for the kind of mental retooling the human subject must undergo to divest itself of ts historically con- ditioned defects and failures of development and begin its journey toward the classless f- ture. ‘A diagram of the present age": The phrase desribes not a utopian condition chat ‘one can only wish for, never to find in some actual place, bur rather a machinery for pro- ducing utopian effects: possible new rclations, pleasures, and freedoms. The machinery includes the certain but, as important, it includes a percepeual apparatus capable of scanning the sur- face of the modern industrial landscape for what I have called a graph of technology— gestalts that Meyer scems to understand as so many Wienschbider (“the parabola of the airship, the triangle of the traffic sign, the circle of the railway signal, the rectangle of the billboard, ... the linear element of transmission lines). Ie does noc simplify Meyer's iberative infrastructure of modern transportation and communication for 243 | Dracransaise Tie New Wont108 Hannes Meyer, Peterschale projet 1927 from Bahan 2, with HH. ighic' lighting diagram and “mathe rmatical prof” ofthe lighting tems fects. Arhitcrure as an abaact. machine enterprise wo insist on his concern for images, for what we understand asthe significance dof Meyer’ pictorial reportage of the mass industrial and mass culeural landscape has less to do with the latter as a source of sheer aesthetic experimentation than it does with this pictures claim ro cognitive and practical as well as wsual and aesthetic satus The appro- priation and presentation of che multiplicity of diverse images testify ro Meyer’ preoceu- pation aot only with the indusalizaion process as kind of “second navure” bu also wrth dhe forms of experience that ae the subjective consequences of such a proces, This play of images—whose emblematic value is confirmed bythe presence in Meyers a ticle of exemplary phorographs including scenes of industry, its use objects, and its repeti- tive morphology—seeks to satisfy not only the apperite For form, but also the appetite for matter The pictures stand a facts ofa certain kind of seeing, asthe actual forms of cour collective knowledge of things, a kind of visual Esperanto. And their importance may therefore be recognized in rerms of thei ability to assimilate material and produc: tive values to visual and psychological (even biological) effets, ro convert the qualities of fone into the forms of the other. “The Co-op interior organizes one set of images that, by embodying in a concen- trated package the rationalized formal and procedural necesities of mass rechnology, releases an entire range of potentials for inhabitation, use, and social practice not previously imaginable: Architecture asa dizerifordsrbusion apparatus for ditferen- tal spaces, functions contents, and expressions from the registers of industrial produc: tion and rationalized geometry now pressed together into a single tssuc all of which compels the viewer af this work co flex certain previously underused conceprual muscles te hold together possiblities for use and occupation that normally remain unthought. ‘We find another diagram of possibilities in what Meyer calls his “Co-op building,” the Pexerschule project for Basel of 1926-1927, his more complete attempt a che “scent: tion” of architecture. (See figure 10.8.) “The scientization of architecture in the case ofthe Petersschule is a matcer of three basi tactics: First is the construction of potentials for a new function of learning-play: & composite activity based on Heinrich Pestalzais pedagogy, which rejected catechesis and memorization in favor of cultivating the child’ natural capacities for observation, disco try and experimentation. Meyer writes in the statement accompanying the 1926 compe- tition project, “The goal: No commanded study but rather experienced knowledge!” He lsserted that “the classroom, the decked and undecked play areas, and the wiles are the inseparable constructive units (or cells) ofthe school building,” and designated thar the School should make the “greatest possible separation ofthe teaching work from the ground level into the sunny, well ventilated and lic eel." And indeed, the block of Tlasrooms, a vertical block of tiles attached ro the classrooms, a lower block of aneil- fary functions, and the suspended decks constitute the building’ basic configuration. Meyer goes to some effort ro document his lighting calculations relating to the depth ofthe room, the window area, and table height, which ae based on Henry Harold 244 1K Michael HaysSevan nome, 245 | Diacranoarna tHe New Wortpics experiments at the University of Michigan frst published, as best [can cll, the same year as the Petersschule project. Meyer even reproduces exactly the same diagram thar Higbieilustrates as optimal for lighting a working surface.° The desire to maximize the separation from the ground also led him to propose the roof deck and the huge Freflichen or open decks suspended from cables, directly accessible from the classrooms via outside gangways all so be used as play space by the students, The suspended decks are held away from the clasroom block by a dimension determined by the angle of light penetrating into the gymnasium and ono the playground. The entire arrangement of the basic unies in his projet can be explained in terms of the maximization ofthe area for outdoor recreation and the amount of light penetrating into the building, these cou- pled with the methods ofits technical construction. ‘The architecture is but an insrip- tion of these functional conditions and relations The building is buileon a stel framework resting on only eight columns and with, ‘outside walls of this section: facing of chequered aluminum sheet —pumice concrete slabs—air space—kieselguhr slabs—air space—polished Exernit sheets. Fitting out [Bautechnische Austattungl: steel framed hopper-type windows, aluminum sheet doors steel furniture, halls and stairs covered with rubber flooring.” Meyer’ second tactic in the Petersschule i to intensify the raw materiality of the constructed thing—the gla brightness, the hardness, one might even imagine the smell, the rste—and thrust the caperience ofthat thing, previously indifferent and unimaginably external, oward the viewer with unpadded harshness. His materialism emphasizes the heterogeneous ties of things and their effects in real space and realtime and induces 2 play of sensuo energies in the viewer, a compulsive pleasure taken inthe quidaly of the building but also in the contradictions, the disruptions. the gaps and silences, all of which ex- plodes the received social meanings of those things. Ina later essay, Meyer would write, In line with the Marxist maxim that “being determines consciousness” the building is a factor in mass psychology. Hence cities and their must be organized psychologically in keeping withthe findings ofa science in psychology is kepr constantly in the foreground. The individual pretensions t0 ceptions [Empfindunguansprtee| of the artstarchitect must not be allowed t0 rine the psychological effer of the building, The clements in a building that telling psychological effece (poster area, loudspeaker, light dispenser, tarease, etc.) must be organically integrated so as ro accord with our most profound it into the laws of perception.” “Through such instrumentalization of built form to produce the desited p results, the Petersschule disenfranchises composition and vision as the dominant ries of architecture. Volumetric components are conceived in functional rerms: sin jacencies grouped according to use. And “elements ... thar havea telling, 246 | K Michael Hayeeffect,” such as, in this case the stars, walkways, and suspended platforms, are standard- ized or confiscated like so many found elements and affixed or grafted onto the basic tunic of the building. All of chi operates ro negate the relational compositional strategies identified with traditional art of human facture and ¢o substitute things untouched by Meyer’ third tactic for the scientization of architecture in the Petersschule isa te- lated urbanistic desire. The site of the Petersschule lies on the eastern periphery of the in- ne city wall of Basel, a former Roman fortification, adjacent to the Peterskirche. Meyer's project isolates itself on the sie. holding the street line to the west and leaving more than half of che eastern part of the site free on the ground plane, The entry, which isan ex- tended spatial and cemporal sequence through the system of open and glazed stairs, begins ar the western street. visible from the square in front ofthe church, and wraps around the building's northside. The passageway formed by the suspended platforms on the north of che building operats like an upper-level logga: in concert with the deep en- try door to the first level and the large window of the ground level, it describes a zone of circulation a the sites northern edge extending the space of che marrow passage that en- ters the ste from the east and continues parallel to the south facade of Peterskirche. All of this furthers the preeminence ofthe diagonality so apparent in the perspective and axo- nnometric drawings and blocks any frontal reading of a humanist building “face.” The suspended decks also determine the building’ sectional organizations The ‘ground level i left open for public circulation and parking; only the gymnasium, swim- ‘ming pool, and kitchen are located at ground level or below. The building engages the specificities ofits sive bur implies an entice sectional reorganization of the traditional city. “The competition project was submitted under the “motto: compromise,” the signal of ‘Meyers belie that the constrained building site in old Basel assigned by the competicion was “absolutely unr for a contemporary schoo!” planned for more than 500 children." Ina sarcastic, boldfaced conclusion to his explanation of the project "HOCH DIE DENKMALPFLEGE!” (“Cheers to the preservationist") —Meyer implied thar it would not bean unhappy consequence of the adventitious insertion of the new Pecersschule ifthe surrounding old environment were allowed to wither away. Like a prosthetic apparatus for crippled and crippling city unable to function ade- quately on its own, the Perersschulle organizes its elements in such a way as to reveal the present order as unsatisfactory, physically and socially, and to propose an antisocial re- sponse as a possible way out: The Petersschule would like to leave the old city behind. Short of tha, it diagrams the concrete effects of what the city lacks. Like a prosthetic de- vice thar is both the mark of and compromised solution to a debilitation, the Peters- schule produces a significant absence, that is to say an absence that it compensates for and ar the same time represents, Bur we need to move to another level of interpretation, other than representation, to fully explain the project. A provocative way of describing the Perersschule—one that, it 247 | Diacranaunse rie New Wontwill now be recognized, has remained in che background of my analysis ofall Meyers Co-op work —is suggested by Gilles Delewe's concept ofthe “abstract machine” and the particular abstract machine he calls che diagram, Deleuze finds diagrams, for examples in Michel Foucault's analysis of disciplinary and punitive system like Panoptiism that “m= pose prtcular conduct ona particular human mudrplic. We need only insist hat the ‘rulkipiciy i reduced and confined to a tight space and thatthe imposition ofa form of Conduct is done by distributing in space, laying our and serializing in time, composing in space-time, and so on... [A diagram] is machine chat i alos blind and mute, vem though it makes others see and speak."” For Delewe, the Panopricon, viewed as an ab= seract machine, hs no form of its own but rather presides over relations berween forces vrurside itself. Deleuze also finds diagrams in the painting of Francis Bacon. Here the dia- iram isthe operative st of ines and areas, of asgniying and nonrepresentative brs srrokes and daubs of color. And the operation ofthe diagram, its function, as Bacon says, isto ‘suggest’ Or, more rigorously itis the introduetion of ‘possibilities of fact." Nake ther abstract in the sense of Mondrian nor expressionist in the sense of action painting, Bacon's painting breaks from traditional figuration in order, exactly, to produce a new figure: “Iris like the emergence of another work.” In general the abstract machine has no form of ts own (much less substance) and makes no distinesion within itself beeween content and expression, even though outside itself ic presides over tha dis: tinction and distributes it in strata, domains, and territories. An abstract machine in itself s noe physical oF corporeal, any more than i is sermoticy iis diagram ‘matic... Ieoperates by matzer, not by substance: by fimctin, not by Form. Sub stances and forms are of expression “ot” of concent. But functions are nor yet semiotcally” formed, and matters are not yet “physically” formed. ‘The abstract ma- chine is pure Matter-Function—a diagram independent of the forms and sub stances, expressions and contents it will distribute: In one sense, peshaps any architecture isan abstract machine, insofar a any achites= ture enables certain functions and constrains others, produces certain effects and fore- ‘loses others. But che intensity of Meyer's understanding and pursuit of this dimension of archirecrure must be underscored. The format of Meyers presentation of che Pe- tersschule project as published in Bauhaus should be taken for what it i: Almost chree= “quarters ofthe sngle-page layout is devoted to diagrams and calculations he “building itself” is only one component ofthe total architectural appararus that includes these pre= dictions of effect. In a letter to Walter Gropius of 1927, Meyer wrote abous the illustra: tion, “Ihave condensed into one drawing the design sent co L, Moholy. I should be pleased ifthe relevant lighting calculations were published with it... Ubeieve chat we Fhustif posible base our new designs which arise from Functional building, on building cience, in order to counter the otherwise justified complaine about the lack of objectiv= iy” Taking the format seriously means not only secng ic as a description of equip- 248 | K Michael Hayswos Hannes Meyer, Co-op Construction 1, 1926, Biologia reproduction and vial ee. ‘ment, of as propaganda, Here is Deleuze again: “The diagrammatic or abstract machine ‘constructs 3 real that is ye to come, a new type of reality. Thus when it constitutes points of creation of potentiality it does not stand outside history but is instead always prior to history." By organizing new spaces and new events, the Petersschule partci- pates in the construction of the new world by reprogramming its inhabitants, training them in new perceptual habits, producing new categories of experience, delineating, by way of the architecture itself, new subject positions and hierarchies, ‘The scientization of architectu aesthetic object—the organization of an organic whole that we normally mean by “good design’ —but as a scientific commuration system—a program, a se of functions and pro- cedures, a “biological process.” Perhaps this claim can be Further substantiated by way of ‘one lat analogy. Consider Meyer's assertion, “building isa biological event,” together with his Co-op Construction of 1926, itself a kind of biological building. (See figure 10.9.) With is strated space, rectangular planes, diagonal placement within it frame, ge- ‘omecrical purity and emphasis on visual layering and transparency as diagrammatic po- tentials of photographic technique, it resembles in its formal organization nothing so ‘much as the Petersschule and its various attachments of suspended platforms, walkways, : the reconceptualization of architecture not as an 249 | Discaawmine rie New Wortand stairs as techno-psychological cxpedients—appropriated industrial components onga~ nized in terms of intensified visual effec. Like the schools suspended decks, the glass fragments are unworked; they are palpably glass, propped up against the eggs they do nor consent toa merely visual apprehension but in their unmediated juxtaposition of mate- rial fragment to fragment, emphs constructio the fall psychological effect of faccural,rechnical ‘More important, the white ovoid is, afterall, an egg:a biologically re po pro- duced volume analogous to the mechanically reproduced body of the school classroom block. Beyond its geometrical purity, the egg tends toward an identification with the ali- mentary products of cooperative societies like Freidorf and he utopian modes of produc tion, distribution, and consump mn they anticipate. As Jacques Gubler has written, “the co-op egg of 1926 is consumable, not by way of the oneiric, notin the sense of surreal but rather by way of the oral." But chen, the eggs alimentary aspect is just as surely canceled by the fact that the construction is made out ofan egg and then photo- ‘graphed; itis assembled from selected pieces, not painted or carved, which links the activ- ity of sign production to the activity of work, and i is distributed in a journal, which ks it co available techniques of simultancous collective reception. What we as viewers ddo with this piece must then inevitably oscillate between our aesthetic habits and the blockage of those by che sheer perceptual facts. The construction and distribution of the object begins to enter the process of colletive-cooperative organization directed toward the socialization of all objects of consumption. And the Petersschule extends this fune- tional proliferation to the multiple relations among bodies, equipment, movements, pro- cedures, and technologies programmed by its spatiotemporal regime. Nores 250 Maldonado, “Preface.” p. 7. Meyer, "Biografsche Angaben,” p. 357. Meyer, “Die neue Welt, p. 205.” All subsequent excerps are from this essay unless noted. Leer from Meyer to Graf Dirckheim, 24 August 1930: in Hannes Meyer: Bawen und Gell haps p.75- ‘Meyer, “Wie ich arbeit,”p. 21; emphasis added. Behne, paraphrasing Meyer in a review of Meyers ADGB school, adagogiiche Beige, p. 41. Meyer, “Freidorf Housing Estate,” p 7 “The machine’ nothing more than the inexorable dictator ofthe possiblities and tasks ‘common to all our lives. ‘Bur we ate still in a state of becoming, of transition. The machine has become the servant of bourgeois individualist culture born ofthe Renaissance. Just as the servant is paid and despised by the same master s0 the machine i simultaneously used by the citi= zen and damned by his intellectual cour, his artists, scholars and philosophers. The max chine is nota servant, however, buta dictator—ie dictates how we are to think and what swe have to understand. As leader of the masses, who are inescapably bound up with it it demands more insistently every year the transformation of our economy, our culture 1K Michael HaysWe have taken the fie tp: the transition from an individualisically producing soci- ty held cogetheridealy by che concepes of the national Sate and a racially delimited re- ligious outlook, 10 a capiealistically producing sociery materially organized in response ro the need for industralizaion and the intemational exchange of goods We have to take the second step: the transition from a society tha is compelled to pro- duce collectively but is stil individuaistcally oriented toa society that conseously thinks and works collectively...” Schmidt and Stam, "ABC fordert die Diktatur der Masehin.” pp. 115-116, 9, Meyer, "Die Siedlung Freidort” p. 51 10, Ibid, 1, In "Die neue Wel,” p. 223, Meyer lists phonographic recordings “appropriate forthe times.” 12, Look again atthe epigraph from the article by Konrad von Meyenburg in an isue of Bau /ncus edited by Meyer: “The blame for our blindness les inthe fact chat che human being has quite... poor instrument for understanding the sructure ofthe picture (Serukeur der Ge- bile) lemphasis added)” 13, ‘There are actully «wo versions of the projec, the orginal competition entry of 1926 (entry number 72, “motto: ‘compromise™) and the revised presentation ofthe project in Bauhaus 1927, no. 2 (Dessau): 5.1 blur the diferences here. 14, Meyer and Witewer, “Erlaurerung 2um Schulhaus,”p. 81 15. Higbie and Randall, “A Method for Predicting Daylight,” p. 41. Emily Thompson helped ime locate Higbie's work. 16, Meyer, “Projekt fr die Peersschule,” p. 17. 17. Meyer, “Uber marxistische Architektur” p. 31, 18. Meyer and Wirrwer,“Eelaurerung zum Schulhaus,” p. 81 19, Deleuze, Foucault, p. 34: emphasis in orginal. 20, Deleuze, "The Diagram,” p. 194 21. Deleuze, “The Diagram,” p. 194 22, Deleuze and Guatari, A Thousand Plate, p. 14 23. Leer of 28 March 1927 from Hannes Meyer, Base, to Walter Gropius, Dessau, in Getty Archives, Los Angeles. 24, Deleuze and Guatari, A Thousand Plateaus, pp. 37, 142. 25. Gubler, ed., ABC: Arcitetura¢ avunguardia,p. 128. Brnuiograrny Behne, Adolph. Pidagegiche Beilage zur Sachschen Schutzeitwng 20 (June 1928): 4142. Deleuze, Gilles. "The Diagram.” In Constantin V. Boundas, ed, The Deleuze Reader, 193-200. [New York: Columbia University Press, 1993. Deleuze, Gilles. Fouceult. Translated by Sein Hand. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press 1988. Deleuze, Gilles, and Félix Guatarti, A Thousand Plateaus. Translated by Brian Massumi. Minneap- ols: University of Minnesota Press, 1987. Gubler Jacques, ed. ABC: Architerur ¢avanguardia, 1924-1928, Milan: Electa, 983. 251 | Diackamanive rite Nuw WontHigbie, HH. and W. C, Randall. “A Method for Predicting Daylight from Windows.” Engi- neering Research Bulletin (Department of Engineering Research, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor) 6 January 1927): 36-41. Maldonado, Toms. “Prefice.” In Schoaidt, Hannes Meyer. 7. Meyer, Hannes, “Biograische Angaben." In Hanne Meyer 1889-1954, Arcizekr Urbanist Lebrer, 1355-362. Berlin: Ernst & Sohn, 1989. Meyer, Hannes, “Fredorf Housing Estate, near Basle, 1919-21." Translated in Schnaidt, Hannes Moyer, 2-15. Meyer, Hannes. Bewen wnd Gesellichafi: Schriften, Brief, Pyjelie. Dresden: VEB Verlag der Kunst, 1980. Mayer, Hannes, “Die neue Welt.” Das Werk7 (1926): 205-224. Translated in Schnaid, Hannes Meyer 1-95. ‘Meyer, Hannes, “Projekt fir die Petersschule, Basle, 1926." In Schnaldt, Hannes Meyer. 17. ‘Meyer, Hannes. “Die Siedlung Freidort.” Das Werk 12 (1925): 40-51. ‘Meyer, Hannes. “Uber marxistische Architekaut” In Meyer, Biuen und Geelchaf, 92-97. Patil English translation in Schnaid, Hannes Meyer. 31. Meyer, Hannes “Wie ich arbeite.” Architekrura CCCP 6 (1933): 103. Partial translation in Schnaide, Hannes Meyer, 19-21, ‘Meyer, Hannes, and Hans Witwer. “Eriurerung zum Schulhaus von heue.” Published as fcsim= ile in Hannes Meyer 1889-1954 Architeks Urbanist Lebre, 81. Berlin: Ernst 8 Soh, 1989. Schmidt, Hans, and Mare Stam. “ABC forder de Diktasur der Maschine.” ABCA, vol. 2(1927— 1928), Translated in Ulkich Conrads, Prgrams and Manifsioeson 20th-Century Architecture, 115-116. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1970. Schnaids, Claude, Hannes Meyer: Banten, Projekte und Schrfien. Buildings, Projects and Writings. vetsion by D, Q, Stephenson.) New York: Architectural Book Publishing Co, 252 | K. Michael HaysTHE ARCHITECTURE OF SCIENCE Perer GALison AND Emity THompson Tae MIT Pras Canmnines, Massacnuserrs Loxpox, Exctann(© 1999 Massachuses Instewte of Tecnology All sights seerved. No part ofthis book may be reproduced in any frm by any electronic or mechanical ‘means (including photocopying, recording, or nformationxorage and rerieval without persion in swing fom the publisher “This book wast in Adobe Garamond by Graphic Composition, In, Athens, Georgia. inte and bound inthe United States of Ameria. Library of Congres Caaloging-n Publication Daca “The atchitecrueofscnce / edited by Peter Galson and Emily Thompson pom Includes bibliographical refrences and index ISBN 0-262-07190-8 (he: all paper) I Architecture and scence, 2. Arcitecure and rechnology: 3. Laboratories. 1. Galion, Peer Louis. 11 Thompson, Emily Ann. 1NAQS43.$35A73 1999 70a 9843966 cp