PURE PROGRAMME AND ALMOST NO FORM:

NOTES ON THE TYPICAL PLAN

F r a n c e s c o M a r u l l o

1

The typical plan is usually the nth plan of a series of desig ns for a spe­

cific project, like the layout of a high-rise building or the standard floor

plan of a suburban housing development: it is a plan stripped of all its

qualities and reduced to a calculated relation of discreet elements - an

envelope, a technical core and a load-bearing frame.

In 1993 Rem Koolhaas wrote a short article titled "Typical Plan"

that passed almost unnoticed among the other more renowned texts

in S, M, L, XL (1995).' The essay focused on the homogeneity of 20th-

century Manhattan office-building plans and their progressive rar­

efaction due to the evolution of business. From the beginning of the

1900s, in fact, financial capitalism began replacing the disciplinary

regime and rigid compartmentalization of industrial mass-production

with more aleatory regimes of speculation and flexible accumulation,

producing programmes that did not require any particular space but

only a quantity of rentable square metres in order to better respond

to the variations ofthe market.

The typical plan should thus be understood as a technology more

than a typology, or as an apparatus for sheltering human activities

in a simple way. It is neutral; i t doesn't acknowledge any difference

between good and evil because it just doesn't care. It welcomes any

content whatsoever and works in any context. It neither obstructs nor

represses contradictions but simply lets them occur, reconfiguring its

internal arrangements accordingto the influence of its users. In short,

it is a zero-degree architecture made up mostly of content. Yet it is pre­

cisely this omnivorous indifference that makes it an efficacious tool

for real-estate speculation: the more it denies architecture, the better

it performs its task of sheltering and the more it increases the value of

its surface by blatantly exposinglife in all its complexity and leaving

its inhabitants free to produce, exchange, circulate and proliferate.

Years before discovering Manhattan, Koolhaas had found the

same specific indeterminacy along the Berlin Wall. Once again, this

was an architecture whose power resided more in the emptiness and

absence it implied rather than in its explicit presence, for it func­

tioned as an act of erasure.^ The wall ensured the highest fiexibility

of programme and the least leeway in its architecture by indiffer­

ently sequencing different situations of a spatial, social, historical or

geopolitical character: it was "a script, effortlessly blurring divisions

between tragedy, comedy, melodrama". In a similar way, the typical

plan offered another strategy by which to "imagine nothingness",

using the subtle rhythm of its supports and the potential of its flat

1

Rem Koo lhaas , "Typ ica l P lan"

[1993], in S , M , i - j X i - ( N e w

York; The Monace l l i P ress ,

1995), 336 -50 .

Rem Koo lhaas , "F ie ld Tr ip

A; (A) MEMOIR (F i rs t and

L a s t . . . ) T h e Ber l in Wal l

as A r c h i t e c t u r e " [1993],

in Sj M, L,XL, (New York:

The Monace l l i Press,

1995) 2 2 8 - 3 1 : "/n my

eyes, the wall also forever

severed the connection

between i m p o r t a n c e o n d

mass. As an o b j e c t t h e

wa l l was u n i m p r e s s i v e ,

e v o l v i n g t o w a r d a near

d e m a t e r i a l i z a t i o n ; b u t t h a t

l e f t i t s p o w e r u n d i m i n i s h e d .

In f a c t , in n a r r o w l y

a r c h i t e c t u r a l t e r m s , t h e wal l

was n o t an o b j e c t b u t an

e rasu re , a f r esh l y c r e a t e d

absence . For me, i t was a

f i r s t d e m o n s t r a t i o n o f t h e

capac i t y o f t h e vo id - o f

n o t h i n g n e s s - t o ' f u n c t i o n '

w i t h m o r e e f f i c i ency ,

s u b t l e t y and f l ex i b i l i t y t h a n

any o b j e c t you c o u l d imag ine

in i t s p lace . I t was a w a r n i n g

t h a t - in a r c h i t e c t u r e -

absence w o u l d a lways w i n

in a c o n t e s t w i t h p r e s e n c e "

(emphas is in t h e o r ig ina l ) .

Q u o t e d in Pa t r i ce Gou le t ,

"La d e u x i è m e chance de

I ' a r c h i t e c t u r e m o d e r n e

. . . e n t r e t i e n s avec Rem

Koolhaas" , L'Architecture

d'aujourdhui, no. 238 (1985),

2 -9 ; t r a n s l a t e d by t h e

a u t h o r .

Bes ide c u r a t i n g a page

e n t i t l e d "Peop le , An ima ls

and Th ings " - a n o t h e r

examp le o f t h e a w k w a r d

f o r m o f c a t a l o g u i n g t h a t t h e

E e n t w e e d r i e e n z f a v o u r e d

- Koolhaas was ac tua l l y

w o r k i n g on t h e very layout

o f t h e j o u r n a l , w h i c h was

also a n o t h e r f o r m o f " t y p i c a l

p lan" . In an i n t e r v i e w f o r t h e

Financial Times Koo lhaas

sa id , "I was asked t o do t h e

l ayou t a n d , a t 23, t h a t ' s w h a t

I was d o i n g - t y p e s e t t i n g ,

l ea rn ing t h a t e v e r y t h i n g

you do has an i m p a c t

s o m e w h e r e e lse on t h e

page, r e a d i n g e v e r y t h i n g

ups ide d o w n in lead" . The

E e n t w e e d r i e e n z w e r e main ly

c o m p o s e d o f Rene Daalder

and Kees M e y e r i n g w i t h t h e

occas iona l p a r t i c i p a t i o n o f

Frans B r o m e t , Jan de Bon t ,

P im de la Parra and Robb ie

Mul ler , and t h e i r mov ies

w e r e r e c e n t l y s c r e e n e d a t

t h e OMA/Progress e x h i b i t i o n

in L o n d o n in 2011.

The f ive p r i n c i p l e s o f t h e

Een tweed r i eenz w e r e :

" 1 . The f i lm d i r e c t o r is

a c o o r d i n a t o r and n o t a

p e r s o n a l i t y w h o s e w i l l

is i m p o s e d on t h e o t h e r

m e m b e r s o f t h e t e a m ; 2. Al l

t h e c r e a t i v e f o r c e s o f t h e

c r e w have t o be mob i l i zed

and i n t e g r a t e d ; 3. A c t o r s

and c a m e r a m e n dese rve a

la rger i m p o r t a n c e ; 4. The

extension to generate congestion and unforeseeable forms of organiza­

tion rather than management and control. Indeed, many of OMA's hrst

projects owed a lot to this architectural device, a sort of algorithm of

Manhattanism in all its variations - "bigness", "schism", "lobotomy",

"auto-monument", etc. Nevertheless, here it w i l l be argued that

Koolhaas's obsession for the typical plan derived not principally from

either Manhattan or his meditations on the Berlin Wall, but mainly

from the laconic work of Ivan Ilyich Leonidov, whose emblematic 1929

plan for a House of Industry figures, not by chance, in the last passages

of Koolhaas's essay on the typical plan. Leonidov's typical plan, in

fact, embodied the purest demonstration of what Koolhaas wanted to

achieve with architecture: "a project that could [be] pure programme

and almost no form, [and] that could indifferently coexist with whatever

other type of architecture"; he would later claim, "It was a question of

opposing the intelligence of Leonidov to the intimidation of Tafuri". '

Koolhaas effectively turned to architecture only in the mid 1960s after

he came across the drawings of Leonidov, whose work he approached

from a rather unusual perspective, untainted by any theoretical preju­

dice or building experience yet profoundly affected by his previous

experience as a journalist and filmmaker. In Leonidov's projects, col­

lages and concise texts, Koolhaas unexpectedly encountered the same

instruments, tactics and issues he had been exploring in his movies

and scripts, the same effort to index the unpredictability of reality via

the simplicity of a frame, whether through a text, a screenplay or a plan.

At that time, in fact, Koolhaas was still typesetting and writing for

the liberal journal De Haagse Post while being an active member of a

group of cineastes known as the Eentweedrieenz, which translates

to "1, 2, 3, etc.'"' This name not only referred to the openness of the

group - whose number of members varied according to the project -

but also declared a statement of intent about how to make a f i lm: as

in a generic catalogue of n elements, without any hierarchy or fixed

positions, the group's members were swapping the roles of actors,

directors and cameramen among themselves while shooting, claim­

ing that "the politics of the author are over" and "a movie is a great,

mobile entity that is constantly changing positions and functions".^

What truly mattered at that point was the sequence itself, namely,

the screenplay - the scaffold ofthe movie - which was indispensable

to structuring the plot, deciding how intervals of time and space were

60

broken down and establishing the directionof events and how to create

a montage ofthe episodes, just like in a generic architectural layout. Of

course, screenplays have their own logic and work in a particular way,

being composed by both the conventional forms of a written language

and, indirectly, the potential forms of a visual language - something

which is not literally "there" and can be completed only beyond the

script itself by way of a reader's agency or through the making of the

movie. As typical plans, scripts are both precise and approximative,

including an intentional emptiness that induces a desire for form, a

tendency to become something else.

In this sense, the screenplay always speaks the language of a struc-

ture-in-m ove ment, or, as Pasolini described in those years, "a struc­

ture endowed with the wi l l to become another structure",** one that

engenders new ways of envisioning, organizing and even contesting

reality via the imagination of a director and the actor's performance.

For Koolhaas, the openness of a screenplay and the emptiness of a

typical plan were one and the same, for the potential of both lay in

the living content that filled their frames as well as in tlie way they

both provided the possibility of opposing, refusing or critiquing the

scheme itself through their autonomous repetition.

Even as a journalist for De Haagse Post, Koolhaas followed the

same logic, trying to minimize his personal involvement in order to

arrive at a description of a more poignant reality by literally report­

ing bare facts, sampling and filtering raw information with abstract

detachment, as i f he were composing the layout of a page. Indeed, he

was largely influenced by the painter Armando and the poet-writer

Hans Sleutelaar, who were both editors of the Haagse Post at the time

as well as exponents ofthe Nul-beweging- the Dutch Zero Movement-

and who were both connected to the magazine Z)eW/ewwe Stijl, which

sought a total poetry of reality through an absolute directness and

brevity in the use of language, purified of any stylistic preference and

aspiringto the austerity and mechanical objectivity of atape recorder.

The articles, poems and paintings of the group were mostly composed

as neutral arrangements of elements, like the homogenous series of

bolts in Armando's paintings or Hans Schoonhoven's obsessive ink

line-drawings and white-paper structures. "Zero is first of all a new

idea of reality, to which the individualism ofthe artist is reduced to

its minimum", Schoonhoven wrote in 1964. "[T]he Zero artist only

chooses and isolates parts of reality (material as well as the ideas

derived from reality) and presents them in the most indifferent way

p o l i t i c s o f t h e a u t h o r are

over [ l i t e ra l l y dood in de pot];

5. A f i lm is a g r e a t m o b i l e

e n t i t y w i t h a c o n t i n u o u s

s h i f t o f p o s i t i o n s and

f u n c t i o n s " . T rans la ted by

t h e a u t h o r . For a d e t a i l e d

d i s c u s s i o n o f t h e i r f i l m

m a n i f e s t o , e n t i t l e d "1,2,3,

Rhapsod ic " , see Rein

B loem, " E e n t w e e d r i e in de

n e d e r i a n d s e f i lm" , Sl<oop 3,

no . 3 (1965) , 18-20 .

In t h e same year, in f ac t ,

Pier Paolo Paso l in i w r o t e

his i m p o r t a n t essay "The

Sc reenp iay as a ' S t r u c t u r e

Tha t Wan ts t o Become

A n o t h e r S t r u c t u r e ' " , in

w h i c h he r e m a r k e d u p o n

t h e p a r t i c u l a r a u t o n o m y

o f t h e f i lm s c r i p t as a

c o n s e q u e n c e o f i t s t w o f o l d

n a t u r e : on one leve l , i t

r e f e r r e d t o t h e w r i t t e n

s igns , and on t h e o the r , t o

t h e v isual s ign , o r k i neme ,

a f o r m - i n - m o v e m e n t , a

f o r m - i n - p r o c e s s , t h a t was

n o t d i s s i m i l a r f r o m a rea l

re i /o/ut /or tory w i l l ; "Tha t an

i n d i v i d u a l , as a u t h o r , r e a c t s

t o a s y s t e m by c o n s t r u c t i n g

a n o t h e r one , seems t o me

s i m p l e and na tu ra l in t h e

same way in w h i c h m e n , as

a u t h o r s o f h i s t o r y , r e a c t

t o a soc ia l s t r u c t u r e by

b u i l d i n g a n o t h e r t h r o u g h

r e v o l u t i o n , t h a t is, [ r eac t ]

t o t h e w i l l t o t r a n s f o r m t h e

s t r u c t u r e . . . I am speak ing

o f a ' r e v o l u t i o n a r y w i l l , ' b o t h

i n t h e a u t h o r a s c r e a t o r

o f an i nd i v i dua l s t y l i s t i c

s y s t e m t h a t c o n t r a d i c t s t h e

g r a m m a t i c a l and l i t e r a r y -

j a r g o n s y s t e m in f o r c e ,

and in men as s u b v e r t e r s

o f p o l i t i c a l sys tems . " See

Pier Paolo Paso l in i , "The

Sc reenp lay as a ' S t r u c t u r e

T h a t Wan ts t o Become

61

Len in Inst i tu te , 1926.

From Sovremmenaja

Arkhitektura, no. 4 /5 (1927)

possible. Avoiding tlie disturbance of personal feelings is funda­

mental to Zero".^

The threads of journalism, script-writing and architecture finally

intertwined in 1965, when Koolhaas was invited to give a lecture on

the Eentweedrieenz's movies at the Technische Universiteit Delft by

Gerrit Oorthuys, who, together wi th Max Risselada, was one of the

first architectural historians to study Russian Constructivism in the

Netherlands.^ Itwas, in fact, Oorthuys who introduced Koolhaas to Soviet

architecture and the work of Ivan Leonidov, which soon became a shared

obsession. From 1970 to 1972, Koolhaas repeatedly travelled to Moscow

with Oorthuys to collect material for a book while taking courses at the

Architectural Association in London and writing screenplays as aliobby.^

II Leonidov never built anything except a flight of stairs in Kislovodsk.

Nevertheless, his white-on-black drawings and the resolute dynamism

of his plans were never impossible exercises but always consciously

planned steps towards socialism that were consistent with the political

stance of the Revolution and minutely calculated for actual construc­

tion. Between the New Economic Policy (NEP) and the first five-year

plan it was no longer the moment for symbolic objects in space or

propagandistic monuments to the masses: architecture had the social

task of creating frames, rhythms and institutions for the "new man",

treating his whole life and the entire national territory as unlimited

fields of action. There were to be no more isolated settlements, but

rather a territory unified by an infrastructure of productive epicentres;

no estrangement or pathos, but rather a totally committed architecture

that replaced compromises and reformism with a strict rationality and

an adherence to class struggle and power relations.

Just as the spontaneity of the rioting movements had to be coher­

ently integrated into the logic of the party, so the enthusiasm ofthe

Revolution had to be translated into effective principles and structures

to become a proper form-ofdife, with its daily efforts and duties (the

so-called byt). Reflecting Lenin's political project, Leonidov's idea of

architecture revolved primarily around the issue of labour and the

organization of the workers,^" or, in other words, around how to merge

the spontaneity of the working class's opposition with the strategy of

the party. Organization was thus a truly tactical effort that allowed

the working class to overcome the capitalist cycle of crisis and devel­

opment and elaborate ways of undermining its hideous mechanisms

A n o t h e r s t r u c t u r e ' " ,

in Heretical Empiricism

( W a s h i n g t o n , D .C: New

Academia Pub l i sh i ng , 2005:

Engl ish t r a n s l a t i o n o f t h e

I ta l ian Empirismo eretico,

1972). Koolhaas 's i n t e r e s t in

t h e sc reenp lay is t r a c e a b l e

al l t h e way back t o one o f his

f i r s t p u b l i s h e d m a n i f e s t o e s ,

"Een D e l f t s b l a u w e

Toekoms t " , Skoop 3, no . 1

(May 1965), 1 4 - 2 1 .

7

The Nu l -beweg ing main ly

i n c l u d e d t h e p a i n t e r s Jan

S c h o o n h o v e n , A r m a n d o ,

Jan Hende r i k se , He rman

d e V r i e s a n d Henk Pee te r s ,

who c o n s t i t u t e d t h e Du t ch

" e x t e n s i o n " o f t h e Ge rman

Zero M o v e m e n t f o u n d e d a t

t h e end o f t h e 1950s by Heinz

Mack and O t t o Piene and

based in Düsse ldo r f . They

c o o p e r a t e d i n t e r n a t i o n a l l y

w i t h t h e Nouveau Réal isme

m o v e m e n t in France and t h e

A z i m u t h g r o u p in I taly. See

J.J . S c h o o n h o v e n , "Zero" ,

and A r m a n d o and Hans

S leu te laar , "aanwi jz ingen

voor de pe rs (Nos. 1-5)"

( I n s t r u c t i o n s f o r t h e Press,

Nos. 1-5), in De Nieuwe

Stijl, Deel 1: Werk van de

Internationale Avant-Carde

( A m s t e r d a m : De Bezige B i j ,

[1965]), 118-23, 137; see also

t h e l onge r v e r s i o n pub l i shed

in S j o e r d van Faassen and

Hans S leu te laa r , eds. , De

Nieuwe Stijl, 1959-1966

[ A m s t e r d a m ; Busy Bee,

1989), 21 -22 : "Facts are

m o r e i n t e r e s t i n g t h a n

c o m m e n t s and c o n j e c t u r e s

. . . T r a d i t i o n a l c r i t i c i s m

makes no sense . I n f o r m a t i o n

i ns tead is necessary :

n o t t h r o u g h o p i n i o n s ,

b u t t h r o u g h f ac t s . " For a

c o m p l e t e a c c o u n t o f t h e

w o r k o f Koo lhaas as a

63

j o u r n a l i s t and f i lm d i r e c t o r ,

see B a r t Loo tsma "Le Film

a I 'envers: Les années 60 de

Rem Koolhaas" , Le Visiteur!

(200-0, 90-111 .

Rem Koolhaas, "A B r i e f

H i s t o r y o f OMA: Pro logue" ,

Content (Co logne: Taschen,

2003), 44: "In 1966 I f i r s t

hea rd o f a b r i e f m o m e n t o f

t i m e - t h e C o n s t r u c t i v i s t s

in t h e Sov ie t Un ion , 1923 -

w h e r e t h e m o s t i n t i m a t e

d e t a i l s o f dai ly l i fe b e c a m e

t h e l e g i t i m a t e s u b j e c t o f

t h e a r c h i t e c t ' s i m a g i n a t i o n .

[ c o u l d n o t r e s i s t my late

p a r t i c i p a t i o n - t o t h i n k o f

a r c h i t e c t u r e n o t as a f o r m ,

b u t as o r g a n i z a t i o n , t o

i n f l uence t h e way l ives are

l i ved , an u l t i m a t e f o r m o f

s c r i p t w r i t i n g " . In a m o m e n t

o f t h e s t u d e n t s ' s t r ugg le and

t h e i n te rna ) r e o r g a n i z a t i o n

o f t h e e d u c a t i o n a l

a p p a r a t u s , O o r t h u y s

and Risselada c u r a t e d

an i m p o r t a n t e x h i b i t i o n

on Sov ie t a r c h i t e c t u r e

in 1969 (USSR 1917-1933:

Architectuur en Stedebouw)

a t t h e Techn i sche

U n i v e r s i t e i t De l f t wh i ch was

rece i ved pos i t i ve l y and was

la te r b r o u g h t t o t h e iAUS

in New York by Kenne th

F r a m p t o n in t h e s u m m e r

o f 1971. In t h o s e years

t h e y e s t a b l i s h e d s t r o n g

c o n n e c t i o n s w i t h M o s c o w

and , via s o m e co l leagues

a t Prague Un ivers i t y , t hey

managed t o g e t c lose n o t

on ly t o Rodchenko 's fami l y

b u t a lso t o Ivan Leon idov 's

w i d o w and s o n .

G e r r i t O o r t h u y s in a

pe rsona l c o n v e r s a t i o n w i t h

t h e au tho r , A m s t e r d a m , 24

Apr i l 2013. T h e i r

of exploitation. After liaving socialized tiie means of production, and

thereby destroyed the anarchy of private ownership wi th its class

differences, the Soviets tried to dismiss the role of the state, which

represented the legalized oppression of one class by another. But

such a drastic shift could only have been accomplished by gradually

dismantling the true apparatuses of state control and mass coercion -

its ubiquitous organs of standing army, police, bureaucracy, clergy,

and judicature - in order to undermine the power of the bourgeois

class by way of its same means of oppression.

Hence, according to Lenin, after the Revolution a strategically

planned transition phase was required to guide the working class to

the seizure of political power and to establish the dictatorship ofthe

proletariat, or "a state as the organized proletariat against the ruling

class". The administrative framework of the state machine had to be

disassembled into simple tasks of registering, filing and checking,

in order to eliminate the ranks of functionaries and redistribute the

managerial responsibilities to militant workers who, on the other hand,

had to be prepared and provided with the appropriate instruction. For

these reasons, in parallel to a national industrialization plan,^^ Lenin

strongly endorsed social reforms a nd cultural facilities such as work­

ers' clubs, studios, theatres, assembly halls, cinemas, libraries and

learning centres. He was convinced that only by means of these new

Soviet educational institutions could the working class be prepared

to construct and govern the new "Commune" being envisioned.^^

This vision deeply influenced Leonidov's first works, beginning

with his thesis project at the VKhUTEMAS in 1926 - the Lenin Institute,

or the collective scientific centre of the USSR - for which he designed

an acentric, cruciform arrangement of a spherical auditorium, a slen­

der library tower and a horizontal slab of laboratories conceived as a

strategic communication outpost connected to the centre of Moscow

via an aerial tramway and to the whole country by way of a radio sta­

tion. The sphere and the tower - the future Koolhaasian archetypes

of Manhattan's typical plan - converged here as the two opposed

polarities of Lenin's strategy: technology and programme, pohtics

and praxis, "Soviet power plus electrification".

Nevertheless, rather than disappearing into a classless society, as

Lenin prophesied, the socialist state ended up being inflated beyond

measure precisely through the reinforcement of its bureaucratic and

managerial class, a policy imposed at the end of the 1920s by Stalin

to control the nationalization of production and the supervision of

64

economic planning, and to take advantage of the relative ignorance and

backwardness of working-class administrators. Thus while capitalism

was collapsing, it was not doing so within the expected order of social­

ism. The betrayal of the Revolution gave birth to another monstrous

version of the state whose economy was still based on the nationalized

ownership of the means of production yet totally controlled by a rul­

ing class of managers, technicians and functionaries: it represented

a new planned, centralized system of "bureaucratic collectivism".^^

Wi th in and against such a managerial revolution, the young

Leonidov elaborated his most important proposals as successive acts

of a unicjue counter-project aimed at envisioning new institutions for

the workers - above all, the idea ofthe club as a territorial epicentre

focused on enhancing cultural education, political awareness and

Soviet organization - while countering traditional petit-bourgeois

life-values and destroying the Stalinist systems of coercion.

In this sense, the club for Leonidov was not just another element

ofthe city, but the indispensable collective infrastructure that linked

the assembly line of the factory to the household domain:^" when

asked whether the club was a place of leisure or relaxation, Leonidov

promptly replied that there was no such a thing as "absolute rest", for

life was a constant stream of activities and labour which acknowledged

no difference between production and its reproduction.''' In his 1928

proposal for a "Club of New Social Type", Leonidov clustered all sorts

of cultural facilities - libraries, lecture rooms, laboratories, botanical

gardens, study areas, auditoria and cinemas - in a raised, two-level

platform connected to sports facilities, parks and pavilions that cul­

minated in a gigantic parabolic volume hosting a mass assembly hall.

The plan of the club was further developed two years later in his

Palace of Culture for the Ploretarsky District, where the earlier project's

platform lost its architectural definition and became a flat portion of

territory organized in strips of land with different purposes ranging

f rom education to mass-demonstrations: as In a script, the rigour

of the frame ignored the limits of building-objects, defining spatial

intervals that simply let life happen. The idea of the typical plan was

therefore already implicit in the serial partitioning of the platform

and in the squared repetition of plots, which both acted as condensers

for activities orbiting around very few fixed technical points. In this

sense, OMA's later proposal for La Villette was nothing but another

application ofthe same principle: taking "the section ofthe typical

skyscraper and put[ting] it on its side" corresponded to horizontally

c o l l a b o r a t i o n r e s u l t e d in

Koolhaas's f i r s t e x t e n d e d

a r t i c l e on a r c h i t e c t u r e

p u b l i s h e d in Oppositions in

1974, and in a r e t r o s p e c t i v e

a t t h e IAUS in 1977 e n t i t l e d

Ivan Leonidov: A Russian

Visionary Architect 1902¬

1959. See Rem Koolhaas and

G e r r i t O o r t h u y s , "Leon idov 's

Dom N a r k o m t j a z j p r o m

Pro jec t " , Oppositions, no. 2

(January 1974), 95-103.

10

I n t e r v i e w w i t h Ivan

Leon idov , "K lub novogo

so ts iaTnogo t i p a " (P ro jec t

f o r a C lub o f a New Soc ia l

Type), Sovremmenaja

Arlfbitektura, no. 3 (1929),

105-11 : "(SA): 'How is one

t o a c c o u n t f o r y o u r use

o f i d e n t i c a l f o r m s f o r

d i f f e r e n t f u n c t i o n s , e x c e p t

by f o r m a l i s t a e s t h e t i c

c o n s i d e r a t i o n s ? ' (L): 'The

q u e s t i o n i n d i c a t e s t h a t

t h e q u e s t i o n e r is p r i m a r i l y

i n t e r e s t e d in e x t e r n a l f o r m ,

in t a s t i n g r a t h e r t h a n in

o rgan i z i ng . Such a q u e s t i o n

is a p p r o p r i a t e w h e r e one is

c o n c e r n e d w i t h i dea l i s t i c

a r c h i t e c t u r e 'as ar t ' ,

w h e r e a s we are c o n c e r n e d

w i t h f o r m as a p r o d u c t o f t h e

o r g a n i z a t i o n and f u n c t i o n a l

i n t e r d e p e n d e n c e o f w o r k e r s '

a c t i v i t i e s and s t r u c t u r a l

f a c t o r s . It is n o t t h e f o r m

one s h o u l d c o n s i d e r and

c r i t i c i z e , b u t t h e m e t h o d s o f

c u l t u r a l o rgan i za t i on . ' "

11

A l ready in 1920, s t r o n g l y

s u p p o r t e d by Len in , t h e

S t a t e C o m m i s s i o n f o r t h e

E l e c t r i f i c a t i o n o f Russia

(COELRO) e l a b o r a t e d t h e

f i r s t la rge-sca le m a s t e r p lan

t o dev ise t h e l oca l i za t i on

o f t h e main p o w e r p l a n t s ,

i n d u s t r i a l po les and

65

Ivan I lyich Leonidov, House

of Indust ry , Moscow, 1929:

Typica l plan redrawn by the

au thor

Ivan I lyich Leonidov,

T s e n t r o s o y u z , Moscow,

1929: Typ ica l plan r e d r a w n

by the au thor

66

aligning typical plans side by side in order to accumulate "congestion

without matter"."

Along the same lines, Leonidov's proposal for the Tsentrosoyuz

Building was the first attempt to transpose the principles ofthe club

to the urban envelope of an office building. Refusing Le Corbusier's

articulation of parts, Leonidov stacked all the administrative, com­

mercial and cultural programmes into a single slab balanced by a

low horizontal volume for hosting exhibitions. The project essentially

consisted of a repetition of typical plans: floors were totally unclut­

tered and corridors were abolished in order to allow maximum flex­

ibility and the greatest possible number of potential rearrangements,

wi th the main circulation distributed through six paternosters in

the hallway.^^

Nevertheless, the logical culmination of Leonidov's early work

was the 1929 typical plan for the House of Industry. Despite hosting

one of the most important centres of the Stalinist bureaucracy - the

headquarters of the Supreme Soviet of the National Economy of the

Russian Republic (VSNkh RSFSR) in Moscow - Leonidov's design

sought to blow apart the official hierarchies and the customary labour

divisions, and it eventually drew harsh critique and led to h im being

accused of exerting a harmful influence upon his students at the new

VKhUTEIN. The plan ofthe Dom Promyslennosti was, in fact, not just

a plan, for it embodied the whole political and economic project of a

Soviet society based on work and collective institutions. In the text

accompanying the project, Leonidov claimed that labour should not

be conceived as a regrettable necessity, but as the very essence of the

human species-being, which demanded a coherent physical and psy­

chological integration of all spheres of life, f rom domestic rhythms

and leisure time to self-valorizing cultural exercises; "in our conditions,

every new building is a step in the direction of socialism, and it must

respond to the new conditions of work and everyday life. An architect

who disregards these conditions is conservative".

The project yielded a gigantic rectangular scaffold served by a

lateral stone wedge that hosted all of the technical paraphernalia,

leaving the floor completely empty and permeable as in the facto­

ries being built at the same time during the first five-year plan. And

it was not a coincidence that the plan, albeit on a different scale,

conceptually resembled Leonidov's proposal for the chemical and

metallurgical settlement of Magnitogorsk, which he draughted a few

months later. As in the House of Industry, where the employees were

i n f r a s t r u c t u r a l d i s t r i b u t i o n

o f e l ec t r i c energy across

the w h o l e na t iona l t e r r i t o r y .

All o f t h e u n d e r g r o u n d

resou rces and t h e geo log ica l

c h a r a c t e r i s t i c s o f t h e soi l

w e r e c o n s i d e r e d as the

s t ra teg i c p l a t f o r m fo r

any f u r t h e r e c o n o m i c and

po l i t i ca l a d v a n c e m e n t

and , a year later , t h e S t a t e

Planning C o m m i s s i o n

(COSPLAN) d e e p e n e d t h e

t e r r i t o r i a l o rgan iza t i on

by de f i n i ng e c o n o m i c

reg ions and a d m i n i s t r a t i v e

p rov inces in r e l a t i on t o t h e

p r o d u c t i v e spec ia l i za t ion

and c o n t r i b u t i o n o f each

local c o m p a r t m e n t t h r o u g h

t h e i d e n t i f i c a t i o n o f t h e

main r o u t e s , t h e i ndus t r i a l

and log is t i ca l nodes and t h e

p o i n t s f r o m w h i c h t o e x t r a c t

ma te r i a l r esou rces .

12

V l a d i m i r Len in , S to te and

Revolution t1917), chap .

I l l , s e c t i o n 2; b u t see also

A n t o n i o Negr i , Trentatré

lezionisu Lenin (Rome:

W a n i f e s t o l i b r i , 2004).

13

This is w h a t B runo Rizzi

c l a i m e d in 1939 in a sel f -

p u b l i s h e d p a m p h l e t e n t i t l e d

"The B u r e a u c r a t i s a t i o n

o f t h e W o r l d " , w h i c h Guy

D e b o r d i d e n t i f i e d as one

o f t h e m o s t i n f l uen t i a l

ye t u n k n o w n books o f t h e

c e n t u r y , and w h i c h James

B u r n h a m la rge ly r e p r i s e d

in his r e n o w n e d w o r k The

Managerial Revolution (1941).

14

Leon idov i n t e r v i e w , "K lub

novogo so t s i a l ' nogo t i p a " ,

105-111; a lso q u o t e d in

A n d r e i Cozak and A n d r e i

Leon idov , Ivan Leonidov: The

Complete Works ( L o n d o n ;

67

25 100m - I 1

Top:

F la t tened a x o n o m e t r i c

v iew of the Magnitogorsit

kombinat c h e m i c a l and

meta l lurg ica l indust r ia l

s e t t l e m e n t , Magnitogorsk.

1930.

Bot tom:

Typica l p lan of a dwel l ing

68

assigned flve-by-five-metre areas wi t i i in a bipartite plan of working

and resting spaces/^ in tbe linear city of Magnitogorsk a series of

leisure, recreational and cultural programmes run alongside collec­

tive housing units, residential towers and gardens. Getting rid of the

obsolete office layout, with its "enclosed courtyards, no views, small

cubicles, inadequate fresh air, barracks-like corridors", Leonidov

subtly delimited the workspaces in the House of Industry with rows

of potted plants, as in an ante litter SLmBürolandschaft. Deploying the

same strategy in the plan of Magnitogorsk, he denied the capitalist

speculative conglomerations of housing blocks by proposing a linear,

twenty-five-kilometre-long settlement in three strips that stretched

between the metallurgical complex and the collective farms and that

were composed of a series of dwelling units comprising individual

cells orbiting around shared spaces.

Il l Architecture cannot produce life; i t can merely create the opportuni­

ties for it to take place. As Bernard Cache has claimed, forms of life

only arise from the mutual interaction of living subjects wi th their

surrounding milieux, and architecture can provisionally mediate

this relation by providing frames, intervals of space enabling us to

dwell and to construct territories across the indeterminate extension

of reality. To frame means, in fact, to delimit a portion of land by

means of walls, floors and openings in order to protect an inner life

but also to allow its coexistence wi th what lies beyond them. Since

"one never knows how the interval that is marked off by the frame wil l

be filled",^^ the frame is indifferent to its content yet always reflects

and propagates the qualities and the forces that proliferate within

its interval in each case.

In this sense, Leonidov's typical plans never aimed at controlling

users or imposing specific functions, operating instead by punctuat­

ing and framing portions of territories and thereby creating the con­

ditions forthe construction of a collective sphere within and beyond

the ruins of the state. His projects were clearly pedagogical, composed

through the use of legible grids and modular repetitive structures

that were designed not only to instruct and facilitate work, but also to

ensure the inhabitants a constant consciousness of their own effort

and behaviour within the context of broader common goals: the plans

and their formal arrangements literally suggested the way in which

the inhabitants could potentially make use of them.^"

Academy E d i t i o n s , 1988), 6 1 :

" [ l ]n o r d e r t o involve t h o s e

s t r a t a o f w o r k e r s w h o are

n o t s o f a r b e i n g p r o p e r l y

se rved " , he c l a i m e d , " i t is

essen t i a l t h a t c u l t u r a l w o r k

s h o u l d n o t be c o n f i n e d

w i t h i n t h e f r a m e w o r k o f t h e

c l ubs , b u t be d e v e l o p e d

w i t h i n t h e e n t e r p r i s e s

t h e m s e l v e s , t h e w o r k s h o p s ,

w o r k e r s ' b a r r a c k s and

hos te l s , and w o r k e r s '

s e t t l e m e n t s " .

15

Ib id . , 65: " W h a t e v e r a pe rson

does he ge t s t i r e d . Bu t one

gets re l a t i ve r e s t f r o m one

k ind o f w o r k by engag ing in

a n o t h e r (one can r e s t f r o m

'phys i ca l ' w o r k by engag ing

in ' m e n t a l ' w o r k ) . A pe rson 's

w o r k i n g day, c u l t u r a l

d e v e l o p m e n t and le i su re can

on ly be o r g a n i s e d by t a k i n g

t h e p r o c e s s e s o f wo rk as

s t a r t i n g p o i n t . "

16

Rem Koo lhaas and B rendan

M c C e t r i c k , " P a t e n t O f f i ce " ,

Content (Co logne: Taschen,

2003), 73; see a lso Rem

Koolhaas and B ruce Mau,

"Conges t i on W i t h o u t

Ma t t e r " , in S, M, L,XL (New

York: The Monace l l i Press,

1998), 921 .

17

' A n d f r o m an ideo log ica l

p o i n t o f v iew, w h i l s t

p l a n n i n g s o l u t i o n s can

lead t o a c u l t u r e o f p u r e

a r c h i t e c t u r a l i s m , t h e s e

spa t ia l s o l u t i o n s , when

f u n c t i o n a l l y fu l l y v a l i d a t e d ,

keep t h e w o r k f i r m l y

d i r e c t e d on t h e task , f o r c i n g

a t t e n t i o n away f r o m t h e

p r o p e r t i e s and spec i f i cs o f

space a s s u c h , a n d o n t o t h e

p r o p e r t i e s and spec i f i cs o f

t h o s e soc ia l .

69

d o m e s t i c and w o r k i n g

p r o c e s s e s f o r w h i c h t h e

space is be ing o rgan ized . "

E x c e r p t f r o m F. la lovk in 's

a r t i c l e in Ivan Leon idov 's

"Dom C e n t r o s o j u z a "

(Tsen t rosoyuz ) ,

Sovremmenaja arkhitectura,

no. 2(1929), 4 3 - 4 5 , 47.

18

Ivan Leon idov , "Dom

P r o m y s l e n n o s t i " (House o f

I ndus t r y ) , Sovremmenaja

Arkhitektura, no . 4 (1930),

1-2; q u o t e d in P.A.

A l e k s a n d r o v and S. Khan-

Magomedov , Ivan Leonidov

(Mi lan : Franco Ange l i , 1975),

8 6 - 9 0 : "On one s ide o f

t h e s e w o r k i n g areas t h e r e

is a zone f o r r e l axa t i on and

r e c r e a t i o n , s t r u c t u r e d by

sofas f o r ly ing d o w n ; t h e r e

is a lso a l i b ra ry , spaces f o r

mea ls se rved f r o m be low,

s h o w e r s , a s w i m m i n g p o o l ,

wa l k i ng and r u n n i n g t racks

and spaces f o r r ece i v i ng

gues ts . T h e r e is every

o p p o r t u n i t y f o r regu la r half-

h o u r and t e n - m i n u t e b reaks ,

f o r exe rc i se , a shower , t o

ea t , e t c . " T rans la t i on f r o m

t h e I ta l ian by t h e a u t h o r

19

B e r n a r d Cache , Earth Moves:

The Furnishing of Territories

( C a m b r i d g e , MA: The MIT

Press, 1995), 22-30 .

20

This is a m o t i f t h a t Leon idov

w o u l d inves t iga te in his last

p r o j e c t s , f r o m t h e Grea te r

A r tek P ioneer Camp (1937) -

w h e r e landscape i t se l f was

conce i ved as a geograph ica l

at las f o r t e a c h i n g t h e

s t u d e n t s t h e mo rpho logy o f

t h e w o r l d - t o his v is ionary

d raw ings f o r t h e Ci ty o f

Sun ( 1 9 4 7 - 5 9 ) - w h i c h were

i nsp i red b y t h e h o m o n y m o u s

In the plan for Magnitogorsk, Leonidov designed houses, office

buildings, collective facilities and outdoor compounds according to

the same module, because different parts of a unique collective strive

for growth and thus follow the same foundational principle of labour.

Similarly, in the House of Industry he juxtaposed cognitive work,

physical exercise, leisure activities and household chores on the same

horizontal floor, emphasizing both the subjective entrepreneurship

of the inhabitants and the fundamental lack of distinction between

labour and life.

Like Lenin, Leonidov was convinced that the construction of a

new socialist city necessarily had to undergo the socialization of the

domestic economy and the disposition of shared facilities in order to

subvert the bastions of individualism and bureaucratism, to dismantle

the family as an economic unit and to emancipate women from their

centuries-old slavery. But the strategy ofthe party was only attainable

by beginning with individual "tactics" of subversion in the construc­

tion of everyday life, insti l l ing and promoting forms of publicness

within the domestic realm itself and eradicating obsolete cultural

values wi th new collective daily rituals.

Therefore, l eonidov's "rectangles" - as Koolhaas renamed these

plans - were in fact scripts designed to engender new forms-of-1 ife, a

series of frames capable of being used, varied, intensified or eventu­

ally ignored by the unpredictable wi l l of its inhabitants because of the

deliberate indifference of their architecture: an architecture stripped

of any cjuality designed to allow qualities as such to emerge from its

plethora of immeasurable expressions.

Nevertheless, despite its naive geniality, Koolhaas's interpreta­

tion of the Soviet typical plan still remains questionable: while in his

article he never addresses any of the socialist political intentions of

Leonidov's plans, in his deployment of the typical plan he often ends

up neutralizing the implicit subversive potential that characterized

them. Like Lenin's political project, in fact, Leonidov's architecture

could not be simply reproduced or exported, for it acted as a strategy,

one that was indissolubly related to specific socio-economic condi­

tions and thus valid only in the context of certain power relations

and political actors.

On the other hand, i f the typical plan rapidly became the most dif­

fused apparatus for architecture of production, then Koolhaas simply

lamented its degeneration into an instrument of capitalist parasitism

that "devour[ed] larger and larger sections of historical substance.

invading whole centers or [being] exiled to the periphery", failing to novel b y T o m m a s o

understand it as the most crucial device by which to intervene criti- campane l l a m w h i c h ^ knowledge was d i s s e m m a t e d

cally within the Generic City. t h r o u g h t h e parks , passages

Therefore, it is precisely by recovering its working-class nature, and a r c h i t e c t u r e s o f a -, , , , • ., ... . • . 1 . • 1 ^ • c o m m o n l y bu i l t e n v i r o n m e n t .

and by acknowledgmg its constituting incompleteness m relation to

the precariousness and flexibility of present labour conditions, that

we might be able to reconsider the typical plan today as one of the

most crucial battlefields for the organization, defence and emanci­

pation of the general intellect, the highest, and thus most profitable,

source of value.

71