(Below) Moritz Kahn's
The Design and
Construction of
Industrial Buildings
of 1917 outlined the
concrete-framed
'Daylight' factory
system espoused by
his brother Albert
a desire to subvert this transactional logic by establishing that value,
seemingly independent of money cost, might coexist "\vith an implicit
denial of its importance in the production of buildings. Rather than
deny such logic, though, historians might find better ways to expose
it in the production of meaningful, even operative, histories.
As a relativising device, cost provides a way to measure other
kinds of value, if only because hard currency regulates how people
live. But money cost also introduces politics into architectural
assessment, more or less by stealth - a politics that emerges ·with
greater drama during times of crisis, shortage or contraction. vVhen
resources are scarce for many, lower cost matters to those who have
less - as well as to those who profess to represent them. The luxury
of ignoring cost, by contrast, is equally indicative of prosperous
socioeconomic status, and thereby acquires its own political
association 'vith elites. Those vvith abundant resources can ignore
cost if they so choose. Facto ring the money cost of building into
ar chitectural discourse thus lays bare the class basis of architecture
itself, cancelling many of its claims for social betterment,
or embedding them deeply in an elitist, paternalistic concept
of social engineering. Avant-garde or progressive credentials do not
mask this class basis; they only make it more apparent by restating
its claims in a slightly different language. The avant-garde is not
so much t he canary in the coal mine of capitalism as its mechanical
avatar, never to be killed by the no:A.ious vapours of the host. We have
gone beyond the time of the avant-garde; now, as we contemplate
the challenges to architects posed by degrowth, alternative historical
paradigms might include the arriere-garde - better yet, they include
a rejection of art historical models altogether.
Looking for alternative models for history writing, in which cost
features as a base condition of architectural analysis (such as site,
materials, programme, style), the end stages of the Second
Industrial Revolution bring forward one work of theory and one of
history. Both refer back, buffering the violence of their own present- characterised by seemingly untrammelled consumption and rapid
technological change; both writers focused on building types that
emerged from such change to serve large occupant populations.
~Ioritz Kahn, trained in t he College of Engineering at the University
of Michigan, published an obscure theory of architecture, The Design
and Const1·uction of Indust1·ial Buildings, in 1917, while 12 years
later, Francisco l!Iujica published the remarkable History of the
Slcysc1·aper with his own Paris-based imprint.
Both books belong to a period of American architectural history
(North and South) that has received insufficient attention, perhaps
eclipsed by the twin juggernauts of world war and the dramatic
landing of Modernist art on these shores. """That do these books
offer to a consideration of cost in architectural history? Both reflect
architecture deeply embedded in capitalist systems; both take for
granted t hat market forces define and constrain what architects do.
For Mujica, these constraints guided the development of a building
type generated by land and real-estate speculation: the high-rise
office building. For Kahn, serving a demandingly profit-conscious
clientele, buildings were quite literally production machines.
High-rise buildings generated profit by maximising urban land,
stacking floor upon floor as 'machines to make the land pay' in the
words of Cass Gilbert. Factories, by contrast, were profligate of land,
spreading out over acres, making the land pay through saleable
output. Bot h books, usefully informative about their historical
context, also merit re-reading today. Should one wish to combat
'capitalist sorcery', in the words of Philippe Pignarre and I sabel
Stengers, one might first understand its operations, and seek escape
valves before they are cut off. The authors warn, the 'sounder of the
depths' of capitalist building activities needs to keep a sharp eye
on the waters ahead.
Kahn's treatise came out of the phenomenal demands that factory
construction exercised on Detroit architects and builders in the first
15 years of the new century, when his brother .Albert was active.
As Moritz noted in D esign and Construction, design exercises