The design studio "copy-nessed housing blocks with copy-nessed flats" proposes copy-ness as a positive formal attribute of architecture. This design studio works explicitly formally, but in diametrical opposition to that contemporary formal work in the architecture of housing, which continuously problematizes its inherent seriality by creating the greatest possible formal differentiation. The architectural-formal work to establish copy-ness requires a new relational method of form-making, in the development of which historical examples must be reinterpreted from the perspective of copy-ness. A recourse to the examples of simple seriality of the mass housing construction of the post-war period is of no help, since its seriality is on the one hand limited to the single-family model and on the other was never formally argued and worked out, but always techno-teleologically, sometimes functionalistically, sometimes industrialist-utilitarianistically, sometimes metabolistically or puristically.
The French and Russian revolutionary architecture as well as the architecture of Red Vienna on the other hand, each of which formulate a fundamental claim of an architecturally structured equality in their respective periods, offer many instructive points for the development of a positive copy-ness. Thus, a reconsideration and a re-reading of these architectures becomes necessary, since their consideration in the post-war period was for varied reasons carried out either eclectically and one-sidedly, or was almost completely lacking. The understanding of the history of the reception of Red Vienna through Manfredo Tafuri in the 1970s in Italy as well as the lack of any reception in the former Eastern Bloc brings us to the central question of whether and how socialist building differs from merely pragmatic, high-quality housing.
With copy-ness in seriality an architectural form is for the first time articulated in the contemporary discourse on housing, which in rejecting to the contemporary dogma of formal difference in seriality does not revert to the historical model of the simple seriality of the post-war period. Instead it opens up the possibility of non-neoliberal living as well as an architectural way of working that can embrace the basic copy-ness as the origin of modern architecture. This affirms that, which is undesired by neoliberalism, as the very core of architecture: the proactive development of copy-ness in seriality.
Literature:
Jean Baudrillard, Das System der Dinge. Über unser Verhältnis zu den alltäglichen Gegenständen, Frankfurt a. M.: Campus Verlag /New York 2007. - Eve Blau, Rotes Wien. Architektur 1919-1934. Stadt – Raum – Politik, Basel: Birkhäuser Verlag 2014. - Mario Carpo, The Digital Turn in Architecture 1992-2010, London: John Wiley & Sons 2013. - Emil Kaufmann, Von Ledoux bis Le Corbusier. Ursprung und Entwicklung der Autonomen Architektur, Berlin/Stuttgart: Hatje Cantz Verlag 1989. - Mark Fisher, Kapitalistischer Realismus ohne Alternative?, Hamburg: VSA Verlag 2013. - Maurizio Lazzarato, Die Fabrik des verschuldeten Menschen. Ein Essay über das neoliberale Leben, Berlin: b_books Verlag 2012. - Selim O. Chan-Magomedow, Pioniere der sowjetischen Architektur. Der Weg zur neuen sowjetischen Architektur in den zwanziger und zu Beginn der dreissiger Jahre, Dresden: VEB Verlag der Kunst 1983. - Alexander Nagel/Christopher Wood, Anachronic Renaissance, New York: Zone Books 2010. - Manfredo Tafuri: Vienna Rossa. La politica residenziale nella Vienna socialista, Firenze: Electa Editori 1995. - Jan Turnovský, Die Poetik eines Mauervorsprungs, Basel: Birkhäuser Verlag 2014. - Adolf M. Vogt, Russische und französische Revolutions-Architektur 1917 – 1789, Basel: Birkhäuser Verlag 2000.
Filmography:
- Luis Buñuel, Der diskrete Charme der Bourgeoisie, 1972. - Luis Buñuel, Dieses obskure Objekt der Begierde, 1977. - Keith Fulton/Louis Pepe, Lost in La Mancha, 2002. - Peter Greenaway, Vertical Features Remake, 1978. - Milo Rau, Die Moskauer Prozesse, 2013. - Milo Rau, Das Kongo Tribunal, 2017. - Steven Spielberg, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, 1977.
The search for an architecture of copy-ness has nothing to do with the simple copying of originals, but with a new relational method of generating form, in which several housing blocks as well as their urban disposition, their flats and rooms are at all times designed with a simultaneous view on to each other. Through this fundamentally concurrent design process of, for example, multiple housing blocks it is possible to determine an architectural form that maximizes the mutual formal sameness – which is conceptually defined as copy-ness. This exploration of the formal properties of copy-ness opens up research questions of determining qualities of dwelling beyond 'smart' optimization, individualization and flexibility. The strengthening of the characteristics of copy-ness leads to an intricate engagement with the architectural core of the flat, whereby its angles, balconies, window placement, installations, floor plans, volumes and more have to be relieved from the role of marking difference and put into the constellation of the copy-ness. Just as the rich copy-ness of twins is not one that arises from standardization, modularization, or abstraction, the formal search for copy-ness moves in the opposite direction to the logistical hierarchizing of metabolistic architecture, or the equality by means of accumulation of cube-like cell units in monasteries, in the functionalist residential construction of the post-war period or the Plattenbau. Instead of the ensemble being separated hierarchically from the individual flats, which always results in a moment of non-motivated array, be it on the large, medium or small scale, our design calls for a new thematization of copy-nessed tensions between the rooms, the flats, the housing blocks and the urban planning.
