without any loss of practical efficacy. It’s not that one level
replaces the other; the levels can coexist, and a Zulu might even try hunting a
tasty zebra with a technique tried and tested on the imperial prince. The
architecture of the camp, whatever its degree of realization (interpretations
and intentions must be taken into account as well as actual huts), constitutes a
return to the real, because life is real, and the Zulu have to live, as well as
hunting and making war. But they return involuntarily, as it were, without any
plan, the way dreams unfold. The centre of the village is a void elegantly
furnished with a bloody suction.
The architectural key to the built / unbuilt opposition, which
analogies fail to capture, is the flight of time toward space. And dreaming is
that flight. (So it wasn’t a pure coincidence that Patri’s dream was about
architecture). Except in fables, people sleep in houses. Even if the houses
haven’t yet been built. And therein, perhaps, lies the origin, the original
cell, of the sedentary life. While habits, whether sedentary or nomadic, are
made of time, dreams are time-free. Dreams are pure space, the species
arrayed in eternity. That exclusivity is what makes architecture an art. Beyond
this point, the timeless mental material of the unbuilt is detached from the
field of possibility, ceases to be the personal failure of an architect whose
more daring projects stalled for want of financial backing, and becomes
absolute. Even the mixture of the built and the unbuilt becomes absolute. The
construction at whose summit Patri was sleeping was a real model of that
mixture, by virtue of its incomplete state and everything the decorators were
still planning to do. It was a step away from the absolute, waiting only for
bricks, mortar and metal to expel time from its atomic matrix in a fluid
maneuver. That was the purpose of the girl’s dream.
Now if the unbuilt, or the mixture in which it participates, can be
considered as a “mental” phenomenon, like dreaming or the general play of
intentions, the mind, in turn, can be seen to depend on the phenomenon of the
unbuilt, of which architecture is the exemplary manifestation.
There are societies in which the unbuilt dominates almost entirely:
for example, among the Australian Aborigines, those “provincial spinsters” in
the words of Lévi-Strauss. Instead of building, the Australians
concentrate on thinking and dreaming the landscape in which they live, until by
multiplying their stories they transform it into a complete and significant
“construction.” The process is not as exotic as it seems. It happens every day
in the western world: it’s the same as the “mental city,” Joyce’s Dublin, for
instance. Which leads one to wonder whether unbuilt architecture might not, in
fact, be literature. In urbanized societies, city planning doubles architecture,
robbing its symbolic function. If, in nomadic societies, the arrangement of the
camp performed a function that was not performed by the construction of houses,
that is, symbolizing society, in the planning of large contemporary cities,
where the buildings require the convergence of skills and know-how
from a great range of social sectors, urban planning repeats a function already
satisfactorily performed, and ends up having no function of it own (or rather it
symbolizes the policing of society). But perhaps it would be better to say that
it leaves a “symbolic vacancy,” an energy unemployed by any current necessity.
The Nias come to mind with their twin deities, Lowalani, who represents positive
forces, and his enemy, Latura Dano, god of the negative. According to the Nias,
the world is layered, made up of nine superposed planes, on the highest of which
resides Lowanlani, sleeping with his consort, a nameless goddess (let’s call her
Patri), who is a kind of mediator. The planning of the Nia villages “represents”
this construction, horizontally of course, the high, for
replaces the other; the levels can coexist, and a Zulu might even try hunting a
tasty zebra with a technique tried and tested on the imperial prince. The
architecture of the camp, whatever its degree of realization (interpretations
and intentions must be taken into account as well as actual huts), constitutes a
return to the real, because life is real, and the Zulu have to live, as well as
hunting and making war. But they return involuntarily, as it were, without any
plan, the way dreams unfold. The centre of the village is a void elegantly
furnished with a bloody suction.
The architectural key to the built / unbuilt opposition, which
analogies fail to capture, is the flight of time toward space. And dreaming is
that flight. (So it wasn’t a pure coincidence that Patri’s dream was about
architecture). Except in fables, people sleep in houses. Even if the houses
haven’t yet been built. And therein, perhaps, lies the origin, the original
cell, of the sedentary life. While habits, whether sedentary or nomadic, are
made of time, dreams are time-free. Dreams are pure space, the species
arrayed in eternity. That exclusivity is what makes architecture an art. Beyond
this point, the timeless mental material of the unbuilt is detached from the
field of possibility, ceases to be the personal failure of an architect whose
more daring projects stalled for want of financial backing, and becomes
absolute. Even the mixture of the built and the unbuilt becomes absolute. The
construction at whose summit Patri was sleeping was a real model of that
mixture, by virtue of its incomplete state and everything the decorators were
still planning to do. It was a step away from the absolute, waiting only for
bricks, mortar and metal to expel time from its atomic matrix in a fluid
maneuver. That was the purpose of the girl’s dream.
Now if the unbuilt, or the mixture in which it participates, can be
considered as a “mental” phenomenon, like dreaming or the general play of
intentions, the mind, in turn, can be seen to depend on the phenomenon of the
unbuilt, of which architecture is the exemplary manifestation.
There are societies in which the unbuilt dominates almost entirely:
for example, among the Australian Aborigines, those “provincial spinsters” in
the words of Lévi-Strauss. Instead of building, the Australians
concentrate on thinking and dreaming the landscape in which they live, until by
multiplying their stories they transform it into a complete and significant
“construction.” The process is not as exotic as it seems. It happens every day
in the western world: it’s the same as the “mental city,” Joyce’s Dublin, for
instance. Which leads one to wonder whether unbuilt architecture might not, in
fact, be literature. In urbanized societies, city planning doubles architecture,
robbing its symbolic function. If, in nomadic societies, the arrangement of the
camp performed a function that was not performed by the construction of houses,
that is, symbolizing society, in the planning of large contemporary cities,
where the buildings require the convergence of skills and know-how
from a great range of social sectors, urban planning repeats a function already
satisfactorily performed, and ends up having no function of it own (or rather it
symbolizes the policing of society). But perhaps it would be better to say that
it leaves a “symbolic vacancy,” an energy unemployed by any current necessity.
The Nias come to mind with their twin deities, Lowalani, who represents positive
forces, and his enemy, Latura Dano, god of the negative. According to the Nias,
the world is layered, made up of nine superposed planes, on the highest of which
resides Lowanlani, sleeping with his consort, a nameless goddess (let’s call her
Patri), who is a kind of mediator. The planning of the Nia villages “represents”
this construction, horizontally of course, the high, for
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