City in Porn
51°01'54.9"N 11°31'02.4"EAn explorational account of the urban context and how to work it with examples from the German speaking part of the World. Based on a dare, to write something entitled „City in Porn" this text explores the idea of comparing urban practice with pornography. A widely speculative undertaking without scientific proof but plenty of references for the reader to look up on an online image search. If pornography can be understood as the ultimate objectification of a body, the author indicates, other then the modernist heritage, which contemporary urbanism practice is confronted with, not having a clear objective, not having a masterplan, not even a seducing rendering may be just the right way to deal with the worlds problems which architects and urbanist will face again, once they are allowed to step outside agin.
Throughout the summer, of 2019, I repeatedly crossed paths with members of Kollektiv Raumstation. To me, an eclectic bunch of people, who, in 2013 found together while studying at the Bauhaus-Universität Weimar. On their website, they describe themselves as an interdisciplinary platform for creatives and activists with the urge to shape the city. Raumstation is German for space station. From Weimar, their network expanded, exploring the urban space further, today they collaborate between space stations in Weimar, Vienna and Berlin and beyond. Since the student uprising of 1968 that originated in Paris, it is not a particularly new phenomenon that young people engage in experimental spatial practices; discovering the beach underneath the pavement. Anywhere across the planet, one finds a somehow organized group of people, who are dedicated to reclaiming the city as a co-created space. Due to the German translation of Henri Lefebvre's book "Right to the City", first published in French in 1968, almost half a century later in 2016, the German architectural discourse discovered the notion of architecture and urbanism as socio-spatial practice anew. Something overdue, especially in Germany, where the automobile industry seems to be steering the economic- and thus, political fortunes for the past 70 years.Kollektiv Raumstation however, is not driven by a political agenda. In what they do, they seem to take an extraterrestrial perspective onto their field, the urban context. Interaction with a member of Kollektiv Raumstation can be as strange as an encounter with an astronaut, fully space-suited-up, in real life.
If I remember correctly, I first met Silvan at a bonfire. He was singing sea shanties, in front of an iconic building by Egon Eiermann. A former factory building in a seemingly forgotten town named Apolda, between Weimar and Jena in the former GDR. The building is an early work by Eiermann, an extension to a former weaving plant, completed in the late 1930s. It then served as a production site for fire extinguishers until 1994. In Nazi Germany, Eiermann predominantly designed for the industrial sector, his buildings thus did not have to withstand the representation of a megalomaniac ideology, which paid special attention to the arts and architecture. Whilst the early represents of modern architecture, famously from the Bauhaus movement, fled the country and while a housing scheme, pedantically topped with gable roofs just next to the Weissenhof Siedlung propagated a traditionalist architecture for the Third Reich, Eiermann was able to develop and deepen his modernist style in relative integrity.
Post World War II, Eiermann became one of - if not the most - important German architects of that era and his buildings were symbols of the West German Wirtschaftswunder. Some of his most notable buildings are built manifestos for the belief in a Germany that has changed, like the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church on Breitscheidplatz in Berlin: in contrast to the remainder of the historicist church that was built during the Gründerzeit - meaning, the ruin of a steeple, relic of a bombing raid in 1943 which badly damaged the church - stand a modernist hexagonal bulk and belfry. Breitscheidplatz marks the starting point of Kurfürstendamm boulevard, the aorta of western culture in West Berlin, a shopping street representing the economical opportunities and dreams of that time and place. Post-war modernist skyscrapers stood out on both sides of the Berlin Wall, although alike in style, the demonstration of two opposite ideologies giving each other the middle finger.
Eiermann was also involved in the transformation of Bonn into the new capital of the Federal Republic of Germany. Der Lange Eugen has been for many years, a solitary skyscraper within the otherwise horizontally developed government headquarters at the banks of the Rhine. After the German reunification plans for the expansions of Bonn as the capital city came to a halt and political institutions, the parliament, chancellery and ministries moved back to Berlin and left behind buildings, erected only one generation ago as the promise of a new future.
Personally, my favourite example of the empty promises of the Wirtschaftswunder, the German version of a fairy tale, globally known as endless economic growth, is the account of the Hortenkacheln. A single tile that worked as building blocks, creating distinguish façades patterns, wrapping up the corporate identity of the department store chain Horten. Today, after the takeover by a competitor, it thus stands for the new owner's corporate identity and, after a recent bankruptcy, the outdated tiled façades merely resemble dirty cheese graters in the repetitive shopping range of German inner-city streets. As a Swiss studying architecture in Stuttgart, Germany, I too, have naturally picked up on the inner-German prejudices about former East Germany, which brand the entire region - except of course Berlin - as a godforsaken place full of far-right populists. There might be some truth behind all this, however, to this day I have not met anyone who lived up to the stereotype. And yet, I was delighted to see that at least one thing East and West Germany have in common are empty buildings by Egon Eiermann.
There is the former IBM Campus, Eiermann Campus, beautifully located in the woody outskirts of Stuttgart with direct access to the Autobahn, which was only completed after Egon Eiermann's death in 1970. Moreover, there is the one and only Eiermannbau in Apolda, a product of the first decade of his 40-year-long career. Today, both buildings are of course protected as historic monuments, which - for many people - only makes things even more complicated. Nevertheless, they have to be dealt with. The question is how.
A popular tool in Germany to handle big-scale projects in the 21st century, are Internationale Bauaustellungen, an international architecture exhibition, in short IBA. Historically, the aforementioned Weissenhof Siedlung, a built manifesto of modernism, is probably the most prominent one. Under the umbrella of an IBA in 1956, West Berlin rebuilt its Hansaviertel with social housing dwellings, designed by master architects like LeCorbusier, Oscar Niemeyer or Egon Eiermann. 30 years later, another IBA supplemented the same city with buildings by a new generation of star architects, such as Peter Eisenmann, Alvaro Siza and Rem Koolhaas.
Considering the fiasco at the only recently inaugurated Berlin Airport, with a delay of nine years and the still ongoing construction of Stuttgart 21, which is now estimated to cost up to 10 billion Euros, compared to the original estimate of 2.5 billion Euros, an IBA seems to allow to bypass the inscrutable financial and political reality to contribute to building culture instead of simply succumbing to the market.
It comes as no surprise, the Eiermann Campus in Stuttgart, owned by real estate investors, was added to the list of projects for the centennial IBA Stuttgart 2027 by city officials after the buildings were abandoned for nearly a decade. In contrast to this, for the IBA Thüringen, which runs from 2012-23, the public sector, the IBA organizer, has fully acquired the Eiermannbau in Apolda. Other than the architect, Egon Eiermann, and the spanned IBA umbrella, the two contexts, Apolda and Stuttgart have little in common.
Naturally, it is not uncommon for an IBA to proclaim to be driven by only the most ideal goals; strengthened communities, affordable housing, sustainability and whatnot. There is, however, a discrepancy between theory and practice. Whilst looking at the actual built architecture, there is little evidence for the need for so many IBAs in the past 20 years. However, within the wide field of architecture, the more interesting focus is set on social, political and economical aspects of the realization of the same goals.
In Stuttgart, it seems likely, that the winning proposal, an inhabitable acoustic wall that surrounds the refurbished Eiermann Campus, remodelling it into a neighbourhood, will be realized under the label of the IBA Stuttgart 2027. One promising areal visual is posted on their website. Other than Stuttgart, Apolda is not a growing city. Thus, the question of what to do with their Eiermannbau seems not to have a quick answer, and there is no need to ban one stylized onto an intriguing image. Instead, the IBA Thüringen has embraced a more experimental approach and invited a hand full of young architects' practices and collectives which engage in strategies, which question the so-called traditional client-architect building projects. These are not the kind of urbanists and architects that produce crafty visuals for their projects but they are not less photogenic. I was standing on the deck of the MS Apolda, slightly tipsy on Old Cubans, the most cheerful drink for an upcoming champagne socialist like me. My gaze wandered along the meadows of Thuringia and I got a bit upset by the seeming lack of an agenda. What is the point of giving Kollektiv Raumstation, a dozen of friendly young people in red woollen hats like crew members of Jacques Cousteau, this platform? I guess, why not?
Why not pretend the Eiermannbau is a massive ship on an exploration mission to find the Apolda formula? Under the premise of having a plan, a master plan even, powerful men mostly, have issued tall towers and shiny rockets as phallic symbols of the world order whose narrative they control. It was around this moment, back on dry land at the bonfire; I started wondering whether not having a plan is an overtrumping political statement when one of these reborn Jacobines, Silvan Hagenbrock, dared me to write a text for his blog entitled "City in Porn". I also figured, the Old Cubans are particularly strong tonight. Later the same year, I saw Silvan again at a conference in Brussels straightforwardly called Urban Movement! Connecting Resistance and Alternatives, organized by a foundation affiliated with a left-wing party. I promised him to write something for him one day. I had no plan but at least a catchy title.
Pornography is not shocking, or even provocative anymore. PornHub, the world's most (in)famous online pornography platform, with bold and ironic advertisement campaigns as much as a distinct drum beat, has entered the sphere of global pop culture. A lot comes to my mind when thinking of city and porn. Sure, tall buildings look like penises. Zaha Hadid's stadium in Qatar does kinda look like a vulva. Most pornography that I am familiar with though, does not specify locations. The city is a rather unimportant detail in the background, except maybe when shot in Paris. I remember the first time I watched the mind-boggling music video for the song "Baby Baby Baby" by French duo Make the Girl Dance, which features a sunny Parisian afternoon and three naked young women. Needless to say, this video, depicting public nudity has become significantly more popular than their music. Even though, the public showing of certain body parts, such as the genital area, buttocks or breasts in many places around the world is no longer considered indecent exposure, the most common social media channels do prohibit such images. Guy Debord describes in "The Society of the Spectacle" a social relation among people, mediated by images. A notion I learned to accept and relate to, in the past pandemic year during which my screen time exploded, attending lectures via Zoom or Youtube as well as scrolling carelessly up and down through my Instagram feed. Despite the claim to understand architecture as a language both, architecture and porn are primarily communicated via images. Captivated by a picture, the subject becomes an object of lust. Beautiful pictures on popular pornographic websites like ArchDaily, Dezeen or A f a s i a, as Walter Benjamin predicted, lose their aura in the age of copy-paste. Personally, it was my interest in photography that conducted me towards architecture. Working for renowned architecture photographer Roland Halbe, editing pictures of astonishing houses on the Pacific Coast of Chile, I even gained an insight into the production of #archiporn.
In architecture and pornography alike, what strikes me as obscenity is not what the image depicts but what my mind assumes it represents. Namely, a world in which men are mostly, surrounded by real estate on private property and women, reduced to a fuckable objects, keep on stiffening a global narrative. Considering the urgency of the current estate of planet earth and its ruling species it goes without saying; today, for architecture and urbanism, concerns about how to make nice objects are no longer a top priority. A change of perspective is necessary. Barcelona-based Swedish filmmaker Erika Lust is probably the most influential contemporary pornographer. Her 2004 debut short The Good Girl turns the longstanding, misogynist porno plot of the pizza guy around and takes the female point of view. Her production company produces the kind of pornographic films I could watch with my partner; a shared experience. Feminist and queer approaches gain significance in the field. Sharing different perspectives on one object is generally helpful to understand the said object. This goes not only for porn.
At the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, PornHub offered free access to their exclusive premium content in countries such as Italy, which imposed a hard lockdown. Spending only hours, never to mention days quarantining, bored in a house and in a house bored, masturbating is usually a thought that comes to mind. According to several news outlets, porn consumption has increased over the past year. Presumably for the same cause then the increase of podcasts of random people just talking randomly; mimesis. Listening to podcasts, group Zoom calls or watching porn is a virtual re-confirmation of being a real human being, whose individual identification is concerning their peers. During long lonely walks through Copenhagen in lockdown, I have caught myself a few times glimpsing in these oversized windows, which were meant to absorb the light of the low-laying Scandinavian sun. Fantasizing about an erotic encounter between the ubiquitous PH designer lamps and monstera plants of Danish city life. The Standard Hotel in New York, situated right underneath The High Line gained fame for being a voyeuristic hotspot. The enormous glass facade invites both sides to watch and perform. I find this intriguing and would count it as the beautiful, messy synchronicity with potential and chance of meeting that I call urbanity. And I miss it deeply.
The object with which Kollektiv Raumstation works is the city. Their ambiguous name, space station, does not refer to their perspective. Their approach is inherently critical towards the cartesian understanding of a matter by placing it onto a grit that allows one to zoom either in or out like Charles and Ray Eames in "Powers of Ten". In fact, there is almost no distance between the subject and the object. Like many other young urban practitioners, Kollektiv Raumstation takes a multilateral approach and other than looking either up or down, they look around. In between houses of the city and their residents, between windows, trees and cars, they explore the possibilities of public space; collecting stories on-site, initiating dialogues and change; resting on the beaches of rushing traffic. Despite the commonly used practices of abstraction, such as mapping, the city cannot be objectified; turned into an object to be studied or fetishized as part of a spectacle or a set of requirements. Like a naked body might reveal plenty of information about a human's anatomy but conceals any other relevant information about this person.
The city, any city really, is what Timothy Morton describes as Hyperobject, to explain objects so massively distributed in time and space as to transcend localization, such as climate change and styrofoam. The city is the built and unbuilt space but also its inhabitants, their walks to the grocery store and memories of missing your train at the central station; an object so complex, a good way not to despair is embracing this complexity. To objectify the city is an impossible undertaking, inevitably the city, as a complex organism in which we are taking part, would come off badly. What a beautiful realization it is, however, instead of pinning the city down onto an image; to become part of this organism and be part of its immanent movement opposite to force movement upon it via restraints. Therefore, the conference I attended in Brussels held such inconspicuous importance, which at the time I did not recognise. To link people and ideas and initiatives together and meet each other on eye level without a plan but the desire for exchange and experimentation.
Throughout my engagement in a project which advocates for parklets in place of parking spots, fewer cars and friendlier streets in Stuttgart I got to know many compassionate and amazing people, which is the reason I am writing this text. I know there are countless other people all around the planet who work in similar ways. I just happened to have the luck to get to know some of them personally.
My friend Laura Bruns who I randomly met at a party at the Manifesta the European Nomadic Biennial in Zurich in 2016, simply because her yellow raincoat caught my attention, was then about to publish a little booklet. Freiraumfibel is a manual with advice and hints for people, who want to take urban design into their own hands and transform their neighbourhood. Who to talk to? What to consider? Together with others, she originated URBANE LIGA, the urban league, a platform that not only brings young urban practitioners and their projects together but also offers them an opportunity to be heard by the actual decision-makers from the Federal Ministry of the Interior, Building and Community in Berlin. Babysteps.
I was particularly impressed by how Kollektiv Raumstation manages to collaborate across not only geographical separation. In the past year, they co-published a book entitled "ORGANISIERT EUCH!" with urban equipe, an association of urbanists, spatial planners and other enthusiasts based in Zurich. The imperative organize yourselves! refers to the essence of the urbanist approach of co-creating the city but also the book itself, which has contributions from several people who are all active in their cities.
Not knowing what the outcome will be can be frightening, sure. Without having a plan, but an idea that can be tested out, the fear of failure is obsolete. It's complicated but awesome and extremely liberating. I had no idea what to write about when I agreed to write this text. Heck, I have no idea what the purpose of this text is. It might be simply some pseudo-intellectual self-gratification by showing off about the people I have met, mistaking it for ecological thinking. If it makes someone think though, maybe even look up one of the many references and inspire you, I guess the experiment has been a success.