PAST TALKS 2022
18 October 2022
Session Title:
Overlapping Ideological Structures through Space and Time
SERENA DAMBROSIO
UC Chile
Respondent: Laurence Heindryckx, Ghent University
Left, Model of the Grande Axe project, 1991, ©OMA Archive.
Right, Model of the Plan Voisin Le Corbusier, 1922.
This dissertation reconstructs the role of the expression tabula rasa in Western architectural discourse about the city during the twentieth century. Specifically, the research focuses on this idea's material and conceptual translations into a set of ideological neutralisation tools in the context of urban transformations. The expression tabula rasa, better known in Western philosophical discourse as a metaphor for the malleability of the human mind, emerges in the architectural debates at the end of the twenty century to describe different operations that put into practice the overlap of modern rationality on existing reality such as: the material demolition and destruction of entire partsof cities; a non-linear understanding of historical time and references; the use of disruptive representation techniques. The thesis argues that the tabula rasa is the most powerful and, at the same time, problematic legacy of modern architectural discourse in the urban realm since it unveils the interconnection between the modern ideas of progress and novelty and the implicit installation of a culture of erasure. In this way, the city becomes a laboratory, an available space for testing new economic, political and social experiments. At the same time, the installation of these ideas implies a series of negative externalities, which are still little discussed in the architectural debate, such as the overproduction of building waste, overexploitation of resources, and social injustices resulting from dispossession and forced evictions. This dissertation explores the idea of tabula rasa through the investigation of some of the design and intellectual works of three canonical figures of 20th century architectural and urban theory and directly involved in its dissemination: Le Corbusier, Kenneth Frampton and Rem Koolhaas, specifically their early writings and interconnected ideas about the city andSession Title:
Overlapping Ideological Structures through Space and Time
Tabula Rasa: The City as Laboratory
The Ideological Neutralisation of the ‘City’ in Western 20th Century Architectural Discourse
SERENA DAMBROSIO
UC Chile
Respondent: Laurence Heindryckx, Ghent University
Left, Model of the Grande Axe project, 1991, ©OMA Archive.
Right, Model of the Plan Voisin Le Corbusier, 1922.
urbanism.
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The Spanish Colonisation of Andean Time:
Urban Life in Andean Cities
during Early Colonial Times
DANIELA BUSTAMANTE
UC Chile
Respondent: Manuel Saga Sanchez Garcia, Dumbarton Oaks
Santiago 1615. The oldest known image of Santiago shows how architecture is constituted as a system of signs. Derived from the mestizo urban imaginary of the indigenous chronicler Felipe Guamán Poma de Ayala, he represented an idealised version of the city as a mediaeval tale of chivalry and conquest, framed by an assorted array of both european and andean architectures. Source: Royal Library of Denmark.