           FORMULARY FOR A NEW URBANISM



SIRE, I AM FROM THE OTHER COUNTRY	

We are bored in the city, there is no longer any Temple of the Sun. 
Between the legs of the women walking by, the dadaists imagined a monkey 
wrench and the surrealists a crystal cup. That's lost. We know how to 
read every promise in faces--the latest stage of morphology. The poetry 
of the billboards lasted twenty years. We are bored in the city, we 
really have to strain to still discover mysteries on the sidewalk 
billboards, the latest state of humor and poetry: 

                 Shower-Bath of the Patriarchs
                 Meat Cutting Machines
                 Notre-Dame Zoo
                 Sports Pharmacy
                 Martyrs Provisions
                 Translucent Concrete
                 Golden Touch Sawmill
                 Center for Functional Recuperation
                 Sainte-Anne Ambulance
                 Cafe Fifth Avenue
                 Prolonged Volunteers Street
                 Family Boarding House in the Garden
                 Hotel of Strangers
                 Wild Street


And the swimming pool on the Street of Little Girls. And the police 
station on Rendezvous Street. The medical-surgical clinic and the free 
placement center on the Quai des Orfevres. The artificial flowers on Sun 
Street. The Castle Cellars Hotel, the Ocean Bar and the Coming and Going 
Cafe. The Hotel of the Epoch. 

And the strange statue of Dr. Philippe Pinel, benefactor of the 
insane, in the last evenings of summer. To explore Paris. 

And you, forgotten, your memories ravaged by all the consternations of 
two hemispheres, stranded in the Red Cellars of Pali-Kao, without music 
and without geography, no longer setting out for the hacienda where the 
roots think of the child and where the wine is finished off with fables 
from an old almanac. Now that's finished. You'll never see the hacienda. 
It doesn't exist. 

The hacienda must be built. 

All cities are geological; you cannot take three steps without 
encountering ghosts bearing all the prestige of their legends. We move 
within a closed landscape whose landmarks constantly draw us toward the 
past. Certain shifting angles, certain receding perspectives, allow us 
to glimpse original conceptions of space, but this vision remains 
fragmentary. It must be sought in the magical locales of fairy tales and 
surrealist writings: castles, endless walls, little forgotten bars, 
mammoth caverns, casino mirrors.

These dated images retain a small catalyzing power, but it is almost 
impossible to use them in a symbolic urbanism without rejuvenating them 
by giving them a new meaning. Our imaginations, haunted by the old 
archetypes, have remained far behind the sophistication of the machines. 
The various attempts to integrate modern science into new myths remain 
inadequate. Meanwhile abstraction has invaded all the arts, contemporary 
architecture in particular. Pure plasticity, inanimate, storyless, 
soothes the eye. Elsewhere other fragmentary beauties can be found -- 
while the promised land of syntheses continually recedes into the 
distance. Everyone wavers between the emotionally still-alive past and 
the already dead future. 

We will not work to prolong the mechanical civilizations and frigid 
architecture that ultimately lead to boring leisure.

We propose to invent new, changeable decors....

Darkness and obscurity are banished by artificial lighting, and the 
seasons by air conditioning; night and summer are losing their charm and 
dawn is disappearing. The man of the cities thinks he has escaped from 
cosmic reality, but there is no corresponding expansion of his dream 
life. The reason is clear: dreams spring from reality and are realized 
in it.

The latest technological developments would make possible the 
individual's unbroken contact with cosmic reality while eliminating its 
disagreeable aspects. Stars and rain can be seen through glass ceilings. 
The mobile house turns with the sun. Its sliding walls enable vegetation 
to invade life. Mounted on tracks, it can go down to the sea in the 
morning and return to the forest in the evening.

Architecture is the simplest means of articulating time and space, of 
modulating reality, of engendering dreams. It is a matter not only of 
plastic articulation and modulation expressing an ephemeral beauty, but 
of a modulation producing influences in accordance with the eternal 
spectrum of human desires and the progress in realizing them.

The architecture of tomorrow will be a means of modifying present 
conceptions of time and space. It will be a means of knowledge and a 
means of action.

The architectural complex will be modifiable. Its aspect will change 
totally or partially in accordance with the will of its inhabitants.... 

Past collectivities offered the masses an absolute truth and 
incontrovertable mythical exemplars. The appearance of the notion of 
relativity in the modern mind allows one to surmise the EXPERIMENTAL 
aspect of the next civilization (although I'm not satisfied with that 
word; say, more supple, more "fun"). On the bases of this mobile 
civilization, architecture will, at least initially, be a means of 
experimenting with a thousand ways of modifying life, with a view to a 
mythic synthesis.

A mental disease has swept the planet: banalization. Everyone is 
hypnotized by production and conveniences sewage system, elevator, 
bathroom, washing machine.

This state of affairs, arising out of a struggle against poverty, has 
overshot its ultimate goal--the liberation of man from material 
cares--and become an obsessive image hanging over the present. Presented 
with the alternative of love or a garbage disposal unit, young people of 
all countries have chosen the garbage disposal unit. It has become 
essential to bring about a complete spiritual transformation by bringing 
to light forgotten desires and by creating entirely new ones. And by 
carrying out an intensive propaganda in favor of these desires.   

We have already pointed out the need of constructing situations as being 
one of the fundamental desires on which the next civilization will be 
founded. This need for absolute creation has always been intimately 
associated with the need to play with architecture, time and space.... 

Chirico remains one of the most remarkable architectural precursors. He 
was grappling with the problems of absences and presences in time and 
space. We know that an object that is not consciously noticed at the 
time of a first visit can, by its absence during subsequent visits, 
provoke an indefinable impression: as a result of this sighting backward 
in time, the absence of the object becomes a presence one can feel. More 
precisely: although the quality of the impression generally remains 
indefinite, it nevertheless varies with the nature of the removed 
object and the importance accorded it by the visitor, ranging from 
serene joy to terror. (It is of no particular significance that in this 
specific case memory is the vehicle of these feelings; I only selected 
this example for its convenience.)

In Chirico's paintings (during his Arcade period) an empty space creates 
a full-filled time. It is easy to imagine the fantastic future 
possibilities of such architecture and its influence on the masses. 
Today we can have nothing but contempt for a century that relegates such 
blueprints to its so-called museums. 

This new vision of time and space, which will be the theoretical basis 
of future constructions, is still imprecise and will remain so until 
experimentation with patterns of behavior has taken place in cities 
specifically established for this purpose, cities assembling--in 
addition to the facilities necessary for a minimum of comfort and 
security-- buildings charged with evocative power, symbolic edifices 
representing desires, forces, events past, present and to come. A 
rational extension of the old religious systems, of old tales, and above 
all of psychoanalysis, into architectural expression becomes more and 
more urgent as all the reasons for becoming impassioned disappear. 

Everyone will live in his own personal "cathedral," so to speak. There 
will be rooms more conducive to dreams than any drug, and houses where 
one cannot help but love. Others will be irresistibly alluring to 
travelers.... This project could be compared with the Chinese and 
Japanese gardens of illusory perspectives [en trompe l'oeiI]--with the 
difference that those gardens are not designed to be lived in all the 
time--or with the ridiculous labyrinth in the Jardin des Plantes, at the 
entry to which is written (height of absurdity, Ariadne unemployed): 
Games ure forbidden in the labyrinth. This city could be envisaged in 
the form of an arbitrary assemblage of castles, grottos, lakes, etc. It 
would be the baroque stage of urbanism considered as a means of 
knowledge. But this theoretical phase is already outdated. We know that 
a modern building could be constructed which would have no resemblance 
to a medieval castle but which could preserve and enhance the Castle 
poetic power (by the conservation of a strict minimum of lines, the 
transposition of certain others, the positioning of openings, the 
topographical location, etc.). 

The districts of this city could correspond to the whole spectrum of 
diverse feelings that one encounters by chance in everyday life. 

Bizarre Quarter--Happy Quarter (specially reserved for  habitation) -- 
Noble and Tragic Quarter (for good children)--Historical Quarter 
(museums, schools)--Useful Quarter (hospital, tool shops) --Sinister 
Quarter, etc. And an Astrolaire which would group plant species in 
accordance with the relations they manifest with the stellar rhythm, a 
planetary garden comparable to that which the astronomer Thomas wants to 
establish at Laaer Berg in Vienna. Indispensable for giving the 
inhabitants a consciousness of the cosmic. Perhaps also a Death Quarter, 
not for dying in but so as to have somewhere to live in peace, and I 
think here of Mexico and of a principle of cruelty in innocence that 
appeals more to me every day. 

The Sinister Quarter, for example, would be a good replacement for those 
hellholes that many peoples once possessed in their capitals: they 
symbolized all the evil forces of life. The Sinister Quarter would have 
no need to harbor real dangers, such as traps, dungeons or mines. It 
would be difficult to get into, with a hideous decor (piercing whistles, 
alarm bells, sirens wailing intermittently, grotesque sculptures, 
power-driven mobiles, called Auto-Mobiles), and as poorly lit at night as 
it is blindinglylit during the day by an intensive use of reflection. At 
the center, the "Square of the Appalling Mobile." Saturation of the 
market with a product causes the product's market value to fall: thus, 
as they explored the Sinister Quarter, the child and the adult would 
learn not to fear the anguishing occasions of life, but to be amused by 
them. 

The principal activity of the inhabitants will be the CONTINUOUS DERIVE. 
The changing of landscapes from one hour to the next will result in 
complete disorientation.... 

Later, as the gestures inevitably grow stale, this derive will partially 
leave the realm of direct experience for that of representation.... 

The economic obstacles are only apparent. We know that the more a place 
is set apart for free play, the more it influences people's behavior 
and the greater is its force of attraction. This is demonstrated by the 
immense prestige of Monaco and Las Vegas--and Reno, that caricature of 
free love--although they are mere gambling places. Our first 
experimental city would live largely off tolerated and controlled 
tourism. Future avant-garde activities and productions would naturally 
tend to gravitate there. In a few years it would become the 
intellectual capital of the world and would be universally recognized as 
such. 

                               IVAN CHTCHEGLOV*

                                  October 1953

