transmitted diseases and regulation of births. The fact that the elementary events of life
are resolutely seized upon is as it should be and corresponds totally to the ordinances of
primitive justice. But just as waiting in the labour exchange finds no fulfilment, except
through the blind caprice of the production process, so too the elementary existence here
is not built in and embraced. It stares into emptiness without being taken up by
consciousness and its place being maintained. Ostensibly out of the need to brighten up
the place a little, the walls have from time to time been adorned with coloured prints. Do
landscapes interrupt the misery or artistic portraits? Not at all. Rather, pictures that are
dedicated to the prevention of accidents. ‘Think of your mother’, stands under one of
them that, like the rest, warns of the dangers to which the worker is subjected when
working with machines. Astonishingly enough, the couple of illustrations of gloomy
happenings shimmer in a friendly manner above the heads. Yet nothing typifies the
character of this space more that the fact that in them even pictures of accidents become
picture postcard greetings from the happy upper world. If the unemployed could be
immediately transferred there from the employment agency, then the poster announcing
‘Unnecessary waiting on the steps is not permitted’, that adorns many staircase walls,
would not be required. It sounds like an afterword to the collection of texts that is
prefaced by the door plate at the entrance to the courtyard.
Rethinking Architecture 62