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Aureli Platforms
Aureli Platforms
Aureli Platforms
Jørn Utzon, Sydney Opera House, Sydney, 1959–1973. Image: DOGMA, 2019.
In 1962, Jørn Utzon, the architect of the Sydney Opera House, published a short yet
seminal essay titled “Platforms and Plateaus.”1 The text is an account of his
fascination with the architecture of the platform, of which Utzon mentions a few
examples, including the giant platforms in the Yucatán, the plinth upon which Old
Delhi’s Jama Masjid sits, the floor of a traditional Chinese or Japanese house, and
the mysterious architecture of Monte Albán in Mexico. By highlighting the platform,
Utzon put forward an idea of an architecture that defines space without enclosing it.
Yet it is precisely the subtleness of the platform as a space that manipulates the most
essential datum of existence—the ground—that makes this type of architecture an
ambivalent form that both enables and restricts what happens upon it.
Utzon’s interest in the platform can be developed further, toward a more critical
genealogy of this architectural form. Platforms are not just pedestals that function to
single something out of their immediate context.2 They are alterations of the ground
that can be read as tangible indexes of power relationships. It is not by chance that
since the nineteenth century, the term has been used outside of architecture: first
within parliamentary politics—to refer to party policies and institutions—and, more
recently, in the digital world, in order to address giant internet corporations that
mediate interaction between groups of users. Like their physical counterparts, both
the political and the digital platform refers to space that at once facilitates and
conditions use. Since it is an apparatus of social order whose function is based on the
stability of recurring patterns of behavior, the platform therefore embodies the
quintessential meaning of institutional power.
Donato Bramante, Belvedere Courtyard, Vatican, Rome, 1503. Image: DOGMA, 2019.
The garden as a sequence of platforms and plateaus formalized this code through
carefully choreographed sequences of movements and stoppages. Soon such
theatrical landscapes made of platforms and ramps were expanded from the villa to
the city. During the Renaissance, and even more in the Baroque European city,
slopes often provided the opportunity for ground alterations that would turn
circulation into a processional spectacle. The most notable example of this approach
is Alessandro Specchi’s design of Rome’s so-called “Spanish Steps” (1725), a
monumental staircase that connects Piazza di Spagna with the church of Trinità dei
Monti. Here, the steps are both a means to ascend to the church and a system of
benches cascading toward the piazza in the manner of a theater.
Yet precisely at the time that the city was being designed as a theatrical space, theater
itself was becoming increasingly confined to a specialized architecture whose
function was to establish a clear-cut distinction between stage and audience. It is
important to note that simultaneous to these processes was the increasing control
and suppression of theatrical performances on the streets, which had been an
important tradition of medieval Europe. What was at stake in the shift of theater
from outdoor to indoor spectacle was the possibility for elites to establish rules for
performing in public, thus limiting the political influence of theater to the social life
of a city.22
Adolphe Appia, stage for Orpheus and Eurydice by Christoph Willibald Gluck, 1912–1913. Image:
DOGMA, 2019.
A fundamental break with the strict separation between stage and audience was
promoted by the Swiss scenographer Adolphe Appia, whose work is considered
among the most influential contributions to twentieth-century theater.23 In 1909,
Appia conceived an innovative type of stage that he defined as “Espaces rythmiques.”
These were meant for the performance of eurhythmics, a discipline invented by
Émile Jaques-Dalcroze to teach rhythm and musical expression using bodily
movements.24 Appia conceived these rhythmic spaces not so much as scenography,
but as a platform composed of steps, ramps, and a low wall—an architecture reduced
to its simplest volumetric expression. He intended this abstract design to extend
from the stage, far beyond the traditional scope of scenography, and to make bodily
movement the absolute protagonist of the stage.
Appia and Émile Jaques-Dalcroze collaborated in 1913 on the staging of Orpheus and
Eurydice by Christoph Willibald Gluck for the Hellerau theater, where the set was
reduced to a gigantic staircase that could be arranged in different ways. Indeed,
Appia conceived theater as a space of interaction, in which architecture would
provide only a horizontal articulation. Appia imagined a whole world no longer
enclosed by walls or scenes but rather made up of platforms, where no prescribed
way to interact or perform was put forward. In Appia’s idea of the stage, the platform
became an abstract form, an ostensible artificial ground devoid of any symbolism
and institutional control, and ready to enable unforeseen ways to live and move
together.
Even more significant are Aldo van Eyck’s hundreds of playgrounds built in many of
Amsterdam’s in-between spaces between 1947–1978. These playgrounds can be
interpreted as an “urban” realization of Appia’s radical reinvention of the stage as a
platform open to unforeseen uses. These humble examples of architecture, made
mostly of repetitive elements such as concrete blocks, different surface materials,
and metal circles, squares, and triangles, were conceived as platforms where the
“everyday” dimensions of life—understood as the repetitive aspect of life—could take
place. One of the striking characteristics of Van Eyck’s playgrounds is that they were
not fenced; this element differs from most other playgrounds at the time. Instead,
they were occasionally marked either by raised surfaces, by deploying different
surface materials, or simply through the careful positioning of small walls and
benches. This suggests an active participation of both children that had “to develop
the skill of anticipating danger and manage it” and parents who had to watch their
children cooperatively.28
Participation and active imagination were also stimulated by the abstract character
of the playground structures. These did not have a prescribed function, and instead
provided simple support to constant invention and reinvention. Amsterdam’s
playgrounds, similar to the platforms proposed by Appia, Le Corbusier, and Mies,
implicitly question the relationships between inside and outside, figure and ground,
top and bottom, which have settled over the millennia to reinforce the (private)
possession of land. It is only the utopian reinterpretation of the platform put forward
by Appia and Van Eyck—as defined and yet-unbound space—that opens up radically
alternative ways of using the ground beyond possession and control. Opening up the
design of the ground to new forms of imagination is particularly urgent today, when
access and use of urban space are often strictly determined by codes of behavior and
rights of property. Moreover, the right to access of differently-abled users demands a
radical rethinking of the architecture of the ground towards inclusive solutions. It is
precisely the right to freely access and use the ground as exemplified by Van Eyck’s
playgrounds that should inspire alternative ways of conceiving the open spaces of our
cities. Of course spatial justice is something that goes far beyond what architectural
form can do on its own, but architecture can and should be mobilized to offer at least
glimpses of unforeseen possibilities.
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Conditions is a collaboration between the Sharjah Architecture Triennial and Africa Is a Country, Ajam
Media Collective, ArtReview, e-flux architecture, Jadaliyya, and Mada Masr.
Pier Vittorio Aureli co-founded DOGMA in 2002. He teaches at the Architectural Association School
of Architecture in London, and is a visiting professor at Yale University.
Martino Tattara co-founded DOGMA in 2002 and is an assistant professor at KU Leuven, Faculty of
Architecture.