architecture there is an imitation of the ‘Riβ’, of the engraving, the action of ripping.
This has to be associated with writing. From here originates the attempt of modern and
postmodern architecture to create a different kind of living which no longer fits the old
circumstances, where the plan is not oriented towards domination, controlling
communication, the economy and transport, etc. A completely new rapport between
surface—the drawing—and space—architecture—is emerging. This relationship has
long been important. In order to talk about the impossibility of absolute
objectification, let us move from the labyrinth to the building of the tower of Babel.
There too the sky is to be conquered in an act of name-giving, which yet remains
inseparably linked with the natural language. A tribe, the Semites, whose name means
‘name’, a tribe therefore called ‘name’ want to erect a tower supposed to reach the
sky, according to the Scriptures, with the aim of making a name for itself. This
conquest of the sky, this taking up of a position in the sky means giving oneself a
name and from this power, from the power of the name, from the height of the meta-
language, to dominate the other tribes, the other languages, to colonize them. But God
descends and spoils the enterprise by uttering one word: ‘Babel’, and this word is a
name which resembles a noun meaning confusion. With this word he condemns
mankind to the diversity of languages. Therefore they have to renounce their plan of
domination by means of a language which would be universal.
The fact that this intervention in architecture, with a construction—and that also means:
de-construction—represents the failure or the limitation imposed on a universal
language in order to foil the plan for political and linguistic domination of the world
says something about the impossibility of mastering the diversity of languages, about
the impossibility of there being a universal translation. This also means that the
construction of architecture will always remain labyrinthine. The issue is not to give
up one point of view for the sake of another, which would be the only one and
absolute, but to see a diversity of possible points of view.
If the tower had been completed there would be no architecture. Only the incompletion of
the tower makes it possible for architecture as well as the multitude of languages to
have a history. This history always has to be understood in relation to a divine being
who is finite. Perhaps it is characteristic of postmodernism to take this failure into
account. If modernism distinguishes itself by the striving for absolute domination,
then postmodernism might be the realization of the experience of its end, the end of
the plan of domination. Postmodernism could develop a new relationship with the
divine which would no longer be manifest in the traditional shapes of the Greek,
Christian or other deities, but would still set the conditions for architectural thinking.
Perhaps there is no architectural thinking. But should there be such thinking, then it
could only be conveyed by the dimension of the High, the Supreme, the Sublime.
Viewed as such, architecture is not a matter of space but an experience of the
Supreme which is not higher but in a sense more ancient than space and therefore is
a spatialization of time.
EM Could this ‘spatialization’ be thought of as a postmodern conception of a process
involving the subject in its machination to such an extent that it cannot recognize itself
in it? How can we understand this as a technique if it does not imply any reacquisition,
any dominion?
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