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Back Issue Architecture As Conceptual Art? Number 19, Fall 2003/Winter 2004 print version (pdf) Book Reviews
Reviewed by Hilde Heynen The Minimum Dwelling by Karel Teige; translated and introduced by Eric Dluhosch Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press, 2002
Architects and architectural historians might know Karel Teige (1900–1951)—Czech poet, critic, and avant-garde artist—through his unexpected and rather severe criticism of Le Corbusier’s Mundaneum project.(1) Teige’s 1929 text attacked Le Corbusier for grounding this project in an archaic and formalist attitude that glorified vague and unscientific notions such as “harmony” and “sacred space.” Teige defended the radical position that Modern architecture by necessity was no longer an art: “Whenever the work of the architect is guided by the needs of practical life, it is the end of the arts. The criterion of usefulness, as the sole reliable one for evaluating the quality of architectural production, has led modern architecture to abandon ‘the mastodontic bodies of monumentality’ and to cultivate the brain: instead of monuments, architecture creates instruments.”(2) Since Le Corbusier’s Mundaneum project was not answering a concrete, practical need, since it emerged from an ideologically flawed idea—an international museum representing all times and all cultures—it could not be anything but a monument. It was not “constructed” according to scientifically based and clear criteria, but “composed” according to aestheticist principles such as the Golden Section. And being a monument, it could not be modern and failed, in Teige’s opinion, as a piece of Modern architecture. Teige’s criticism provoked Le Corbusier’s answer, “In Defense of Architecture,” which Tiege, as editor-in-chief, published in Stavba, his Czech architectural journal. The essay later appeared in a better-known version in L’Architecture d’Aujourd’hui.(3) The exchange is remarkable because it documents a rift in the architectural avant-garde too often not recognized as such today. Recent scholarly attention tends to focus on major proponents of Modern architecture like Mies and Le Corbusier, or it aims at a detailed documentation and interpretation of the work of lesser-known architects. However, what is too often left out of the picture is how Modern architecture fared in Eastern Europe. Since Giorgio Ciucci wrote about the ideological discussions between left- and right-wing architects in the early CIAM-congresses,(4) architectural historians are aware that not just one but several different and competing views of Modern architecture existed, and that these different standpoints were based upon political disagreements. However, given the fact that most English-language scholarship today does not deal with the leftist architects from Germany or Eastern Europe, this awareness is decreasing, and the ideological underpinnings of the theories of Modern architecture do not always get the attention they deserve. Therefore, this publication of Teige’s 1932 study of The Minimum Dwelling is timely and important. We should applaud Eric Dluhosch for pursuing an enterprise that, as he hints in his introduction, will not result in an abundance of academic credits. Translating books like these can only be done by scholars who are as well versed in the language as the subject topic, and it is indeed unfortunate that such an undertaking is not encouraged by the current tenure and promotion credit system. Moreover, we are indebted to Dluhosch for providing us with an excellent introduction that situates Teige and Czech Modernism in its historical, geographical, and political context. The fluidity of Dluhosch’s translation nevertheless does not result in a book that is a joy to read. Due to no fault of the translator, the book is repetitive and not very well written or organized. Some chapters are boring. These limitations are probably due to the fact that Teige hastily put it together using already existing articles and reports. It can be considered a not very successful mixture of, on the one hand, a Marxist analysis of the housing crisis and, on the other, extensive reports on the CIAM conferences of 1929 (Frankfurt) and 1931 (Brussels), peppered with some extra material on experiments in Modern housing in Czechoslovakia and the Soviet Union. It is clear that Teige meant to weave all this together into a convincing narrative that culminates in his offering a new model of the minimum dwelling—not a reduced version of the old bourgeois apartment but rather a completely new mode based upon the sharing of collective services combined with the utmost respect for the individual, who is entitled to his own live-in unit. Teige’s enterprise doesn’t hold together very well, however, because his weaving contains too many gaps and inconsistencies. Teige’s position was that of a convinced Marxist as well as an advocate of Modern architecture. As a Marxist, he thought that even the most revolutionary of Le Corbusier’s projects were too much rooted in capitalist production modes and could not therefore be considered valuable as the embryonic core for the proletarian dwelling of the future. As an advocate of Modern architecture, on the other hand, he was enthusiast about the same projects, presenting them as major examples of how to deal with housing issues. Apparent contradictions such as these would not have been insurmountable, had the author devoted more time and effort to editing his text, which, he recorded in his conclusion, had been written from October to December 1931 and was already published in July 1932. Given this compressed period of writing, it is not a surprise that it turned out as it did. Still it is, to my knowledge, the best book we have that extensively documents a radically left-wing position within CIAM. Teige attended the 1931 CIAM conference in Brussels and prepared a report for the CIRPAC (CIAM’s executive committee) on “The International Housing Shortage,” a report that he reused as a chapter in the book. He thus should be considered an active member of the organization, one who doubtless raised his voice in its meetings. Judging from the opinions formulated in The Minimum Dwelling, he certainly did have something to contribute to the occasionally too technical CIAM discussions. His voice stood for those who refused to deal with housing as just a matter of adequate architectural models or planning regulations. According to Teige, the housing problem was deeply rooted in the basic structures of the capitalist system, and only a political revolution could offer a real solution. All the efforts of Modern architects to develop new ideas and plans could only come to fruition in a social system based upon the collective ownership of apparatuses of production. One wishes that Teige had had the support of a skilled editor, for the book potentially contains a very well articulated and well-argued line of thought. Starting from an intriguing introductory chapter on a dialectic of architecture and a sociology of dwelling, he offers analyses of the housing crisis (Chapter 2), the international housing shortage (Chapter 3), and housing in Czechoslovakia (Chapter 4), before shifting to “The Face of the Contemporary City” in the fifth chapter. Chapters 6 to 10 focus on the relation between dwelling and household and how the reform of dwelling types might parallel a new social organization no longer based on the bourgeois ideal of the nuclear family but rather on the recognition of each adult, female as well as male, as active agents in both production and public life. Chapters 11 and 12 deal with questions of site planning (the topic of the Brussels CIAM congress), and Chapters 13 and 14 advocate “new forms of dwelling” and the abolition of the “antithesis between city and country.” The conclusion summarizes all these arguments, pleading for a gradual process leading to the adoption of collective houses, communal apartments, and uniformly dispersed settlements. For contemporary readers, I would especially recommend Chapters 1, 6, and 13. Chapter 1 is exemplary in its unraveling of a four-staged dialectical development of dwelling. In the primitive dwelling everything is contained within a single space of undifferentiated functions. The second stage, the most developed bourgeois model, is a negation of this primitive dwelling in which all the functions—economic, social and biological—have been differentiated and delegated to specific rooms. The third stage, the “proletarian abode” or the dwelling of the classes of minimum subsistence, is the negation of this first negation, containing only the bare minimum of a sleeping place. The fourth and final stage foresees a “collectivist reconstruction of dwelling” in which all the functions are centralized and collectivized, except for the individual live-in cells. From a feminist point of view, Chapter 6, “Dwelling and Household in the Nineteenth Century,” contains the most interesting arguments. Teige quotes at length the analyses by Marx and Engels of the bourgeois family that show that its structure is based upon the overt and covert slavery of women, who in assuming the burden of domestic work, are prevented from taking part in public production. Teige extends this analysis to the bourgeois dwelling: “Not unlike the bourgeois family, the layout of the bourgeois dwelling is equally based on the enslavement of women (as an expression of that type of family). Today’s woman does not realize how oppressed she has become by this form of dwelling. Today’s family homes, whether villas or rental apartments, enslave the woman-housewife in equal measure with their uneconomical housekeeping routines. Private life in today’s dwellings is obliged to closely conform to the dictates of bourgeois marriage” (170). Teige argues that the new minimum dwelling for the working classes should be conceived in a radically different way. Given the fact that proletarian families did not really have a family life because the reality of working conditions forced them to devote too much time to commuting and labor, Teige espouses a new way of collective living. For each adult the minimum dwelling should contain a live-in cell with a bedroom annex sitting room but without a kitchen or further facilities. All these additional facilities should be made available collectively. Family life would thus be broken up, and all individuals could free themselves to fully exploit their potential for participation in public life. Chapter 13, “Toward New Forms of Dwelling,” explores several experimental schemes that work with such a new conception of dwelling, ranging from American “hotel skyscrapers” to German and Swiss homes for single adults to dom-kommunas in Soviet Russia. While these chapters best acquaint readers with Teige’s essential argument, the other chapters are interesting for other reasons. Scholars have repeatedly argued that the international avant-garde in the 1920s took advantage of a remarkably well-developed communication network built on personal contacts, exhibitions, publications, and other means of exchange. The speed and distance that information was disseminated indeed becomes evident again in this book. Whereas the American public had to wait until Catherine Bauer’s 1934 Modern Housing to become seriously informed about the most recent tendencies, thanks to Teige, the Czechs were at least two years ahead. Some parts of the book read as an inventory of the most important projects that have in the meantime been canonized as establishing a definition of Modern architecture. The most interesting information, though, will be found elsewhere, where Teige discusses several less well-known projects. These projects provide a good reason to study the book in detail, for they point to ideas and schemes that have been left out of the canon. In providing access to an important part of Modern architecture marginalized for political reasons, The Minimum Dwelling might help us critique our established ideas. But in my mind, an impetus to study this specific intellectual heritage in greater depth is more than enough reason to be grateful for this publication.
1. Karel Teige, “Mundaneum”Stavba VII, 10, 1929, 145 ff; translated in Oppositions 4, October 1974; my source for this text is the Dutch translation in Oase 41, 1994, 43–56. 2. The English formulation of this quote comes from Simone Hain, “Under the Banners of Positivism,” Rassegna, March 1993, 22–29. This entire Rassegna is devoted to “Karel Teige, Architecture and Poetry. 3. Le Corbusier and Pierre Jeanneret, “A la défense de l’architecture,” L’Architecture d’Aujourd’hui 10, 1933, 34–61. For an excellent discussion of the issues involved, see the chapter on “Instruments and Monuments” in George Baird, The Space of Appearance, Cambridge: MIT Press, 1995, 129–166. 4. Giorgio Ciucci, “The Invention of the Modern Movement,” Oppositions 24, 1981, 69–91.
Hilde Heynen is associate professor of architectural theory at Katholieke Universiteit Leuven (Belgium) and author of Architecture and Modernity: A Critique.
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