(from The Interior Architecture Reader, edited by Gregory Marinic, 2018 Routledge)

Chapter 40

Death of the architect

Appropriation and interior architecture

Markus Berger

This disjunction occurs, the voice loses its origin, the author enters his own death, writing begins …¹

When Roland Barthes declared the death of the author in 1967, he freed the text from the dominant “god-like” theological presence of the writer, best captured for architecture in Ayn Rand’s towering depiction of Howard Roark who “held his truth above all things and against all men.”² The heroic figure of the architect has dominated much of the history of modern architecture, with manifestos, changes in style, and advancements in material and technology subsumed under his singular creative authority. By decentering the architect as a god-like author, following Barthes’s cue, could we not engage architecture and its interiority differently? It allows for the lived experience of architecture (like Barthes’s reader) to become more central to our understanding of the production of space, and by relinquishing origins and authorial intent, the built environment can be

opened up to multiple meanings/readings and creative appropriation for making and remaking the world we live in.

This approach to appropriation has profound implications for professional practice and education in architecture and relocates the much younger disciplines of interior architecture and interior design as not marginal but integral to it. After all, most of the construction industry in the United States is focused on the reuse of existing buildings, and the market for green buildings is exploding; the lion’s share of the opportunity exists in retrofits, not new buildings. $^3$ Across a globe of human habitation, this massive stock of existing buildings – and remaking this built environment – requires a complete reconceptualization of architectural history and theory. The past of buildings cannot be merely narrated from a singular architectural origin, but rather has to be thought through its diverse social and cultural lives. The architect can no longer simply represent the body and soul of a building, rather the forms and spaces accumulate meanings through years of appropriation and acts of living. How do we account for this nonlinear history of architecture, and in what ways does it alter the role of the architect and the nature of architectural interventions? By thinking along lines of appropriation, this chapter explores an alternative roadmap for architectural practice at large.

The art of appropriation

According to the Oxford English Dictionary (OED), the noun appropriation comes from the Latin verb “to appropriate,” and its primary meaning is to make “of a thing private property, whether another’s or one’s own; taking as one’s own or to one’s own use.” To make a thing “one’s own” is laden with both negative and positive meanings. It can mean privatization, theft, borrowing, copying, or adaptation. In cultural theory, appropriation has been described as “the adoption of elements of one culture by members of a different cultural group.” However, it especially refers to “adoption … without the consent of the originating culture, and when the appropriating group has historically oppressed members of the originating culture.” $^4$ Thus,

an act of appropriation can become a sign of submission to a dominant culture or of rebellion against it. In The Production of Space, Henri Lefebvre defines appropriation as a deliberate act to dissipate or replace feelings of domination. In this sense, it can be understood as both an act of rebellion against authority and a way of negotiating the structures of inequality we find ourselves within. Architects, architectural historians, and photographers for architectural work tend to view and represent buildings as pristine, untouched by any real human interaction. Any disturbance in the form of use, practices of habitation, and alterations by people’s belongings and lifestyles is considered as a violation of the “real” architecture – to be erased out of the visual record. From the point of view of heroic architecture, these acts of living are unwelcome appropriations that distort their pure design. From the point of view of those who “take over” the built environment, these are the very appropriations that give these places their identity, their soul.

Art has conceptualized appropriation even further, as not just a rebellious act, but also as a deeply creative one. The OED defines the distinct category of “appropriation in art” as a “practice or technique of reworking the images or styles contained in earlier works of art, esp. (in later use) in order to provoke critical reevaluation … or to challenge notions of individual creativity or authenticity in art.” “Taking over” something existing (an ordinary object or another work of art) into a “new” work of art sets into motion a whole new set of potentials. Appropriation unsettles ideas of single authorship, originality, and authenticity established by conventional art history, but the relating of the old to the new is a creative intervention that sets into motion the many possibilities of recontextualization. Words and techniques like collage, bricolage, montage, pastiche, and assemblage come to mind. From cubist compositions of newspaper cuttings, wine labels, etc. to Marcel Duchamp’s “ready-made” urinal to Barbara Kruger’s reinterpretation of found photos, appropriation in art has unsettled our preconceived notion of things/objects and their place in time, and in so doing it has shown us the creative possibilities of rendering multiple points of view and nonlinear time. Appropriations as acts of intervention have thus

destabilized meaning as well as created new meanings. Artist Shepard Fairey’s work, for instance, appropriated images and slogans and rearranged them to set in motion a set of different connections of visuals and meaning for the viewer. Appropriation, as Robert Nelson has explained, is “a distortion, not a negation of the prior semiotic assemblage.” In fact, its potential to make us think and interpret anew lies in our very recognition of these historical and cultural references. These references are not sacrosanct, to be enshrined in one dominant narrative, but rather elements of a constructed past which we must draw upon as creative raw material to give meaning to our present.

Architecture must do the same, for if we conceive of the architectural intervention as appropriation, then it must be self-conscious, rebellious, and creative in disposition. The reuse of building materials, as of spoils after a war, is as old as the built environment. These ancient appropriations did not simply recreate something “authentic,” but rather

mobilized a set of references to shape public memories and display power. $^7$ Instead of attempting to return to and “fix” a building to a singular mythological origin, as much of conservation does, or of entirely erasing its undesirable past to repurpose an interior, as developers do, appropriation as architectural practice allows us to form a far more dynamic relationship with the living and breathing spaces that we take over and remake in new fields of meaning. Instead of viewing a building with a single identity, appropriation acknowledges the potential of multiple authors, multiple pasts, and the formation of a multiplicity of futures (Figure 40.2).

An apprentice of appropriation The German word for appropriation, aneignung, has two very different meanings: to take something away, and to learn something. This second meaning in German, to train until one has mastery and is able to make one's own, is what sets aneignung apart from the English “appropriation.” In

German-speaking countries, a craft is still learned through the old medieval institution of apprenticeships, and an apprentice learns the craft through appropriation – thus referring to the learning aspect of appropriation. The apprentice learns through copying the matter; duplication and repetition without any original thought or experimentation is integral to the first process of appropriation of the master’s skills. Richard Sennett reminds us in his book, The Craftsman:

Craftsmen take pride most in skills that mature. This is why simple imitation is not a sustaining satisfaction; the skill has to evolve… Slow craft time also enables the work of reflection and imagination – which the push for quick results cannot. Mature means long; one takes lasting ownership of the skill. $^8$

Appropriation is thus more than just imitation of the master, it is the slow and long accumulation of skills that become “one’s own.” This is central to the making of “tradition,” but it is not a static tradition, for as a set of skills become “one’s own,” the very achievement of mastery requires the apprentice to add something to what has been copied. Thus appropriation in this sense also recognizes slow change that is integral to “taking” and remaking.

In art history, what is passed down from teacher to student is rarely accounted for as vital, for the discipline is so focused on stand-apart “originality” that the only way to understand transmissions that shape us is through the idea of “influence” that can be traced between masters and ideas. Indian classical music, for instance, is passed down through the guru-shishya tradition, based on lineage and a relationship between guru (teacher) and shishya (student). For the student to become a master he must add something to the technical mastery he receives in his training with the teacher. That which he adds is not with the grand gesture of “originality,” but rather it is the subtle soul force of creativity.

Another way to think about the slow, accumulated transformations and creativity of aneignung is through the image of the

palimpsest. In 1967, around the same time as Barthes’s landmark essay, Rodolfo Machado’s text “Old Buildings as Palimpsest” came out, in which he argued:

remodeling can be seen as writing over, as underlining, as partially erasing, as interstitial writing, as a way of qualifying, accentuating, quoting, commenting upon, as digression, interlude, or interval, as a way of writing parenthetically, of setting off by punctuation, as a new form of an old story. $^9$

Machado invites us to think of a building as a text that has many layers of writing on it over time but also marks and marginalia. Thus, when the building has to be repurposed, it becomes an encounter between layers of signs and different kinds of signs. As some are appropriated to make alterations in the building’s function, “a new plot is composed out of the old words, a new interpretation has taken place.” $^{10}$ Unfortunately, interior architecture largely ignores the rich semiotics and the multilayered histories of buildings, and follows instead a few simple approaches. Existing spaces and buildings are either completely rewritten or overwritten without leaving any traces of the earlier “words,” or the new design is merely juxtaposed against the old in order to create a contrast. Both of these forms of interventions in interior architecture follow the mindset of either preservation, restoration, or heroic architecture. They desire a tabula rasa, a clear canvas on which the architect’s authorship can be clearly differentiated and is visible to all; but if the ethos of architectural intervention took the form of aneignung then it would have a far more vivid canvas of habitation to “take away” from and add to, as an apprentice or a shishya must do to become a craftsman or guru, with the slow and subtle life force of creativity.

The copy toolbox To copy is to make a reproduction of something, an imitation, a replication, or a transcript of something “original.” So much fear has been created

around copying as the antithesis of originality, that repetitive copying has largely been removed from our education systems, and a huge body of laws on intellectual property have made appropriation a dangerous, instead of creative, task. Copyshop, a former retail site in Copenhagen (2005–2007), challenged these ideas of intellectual property by giving copying new meanings. This site became a platform for discussion of copyrights, patents, and intellectual property and the ways in which these legal interventions asserted control over the value and distribution of products in the market place. The site also critiqued this control by participating in the marketplace itself by creating merchandise such as “modified originals,” “improved copies,” “political anti-brands,” or the “Supercopy” as a new original. In order to enable these ideas in the creation and intervention into the built environment, we need to “free” form, methods, and theory from current conventional belief and to bring appropriating back into our creative toolkit.

To appropriate, to rewrite, or to recontextualize is to transform something from one state into another state, and as a process it can generate the possibilities of simultaneously engaging multiple points of view and creating new forms of multi-authorship and multidimensionality. Interior architecture could apply and appropriate the techniques used in art, such as the mentioned collage, bricolage, montage, pastiche, and assemblage, as well as other more human- and environment-centered approaches. For example, in “Appropriating the Everyday” for everyone, each day, and every situation, we apply and use things and ideas for the simplest daily functions: a coat over the handrail, a cafe mug on the windowsill, or other applications that are considered as a resourceful “misuse” of an item or situation. This would allow the users to be part of the (design) process, shaping the environment as an active part of habitation (Figure 40.3). Or, in “Appropriating the Appropriation,” we question and expand on the terms of originality, authorship, and authenticity in transformations. Here we deal with multiple forms of authors and originals to find the values of various sources and understand design as a continuation of possible further interventions in the future.

A travelogue: from something to somewhere

T.S. Eliot wrote, in The Sacred Wood: “Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal; bad poets deface what they take, and good poets make it into something better, or at least something different.” Interior architecture must break away from the frameworks of conventional architectural history and theory and develop its own conceptual tools that can reshape architecture as well. Appropriation as a striving for good poetry is a good place to start and can contribute to building a thoughtful design process that gives expression to existing spaces, remaking its usability, resilience, and sustainability. The striving, or the journey, is important and de-centers what the medievalist scholar Claire Sponsler has called “the recuperative project preoccupied with beginnings, sources, and the recovery of lost originals.” In her essay “Critical Terms for Art History,” she argues that instead of “origin” or “influence,” appropriation emphasizes the act of taking as “active, subjective, and motivated.” Appropriation in a lexicon for interior architecture has the same potential, to be an active, subjective, and motivated strategy that emphasizes movement rather than stasis. American writer Harry Mathews once wrote that “all books come from other books” and that “[w]hat matters in writing, as in music, is what’s going on between the words; the movement is what matters, rather than whatever is being said.” Such ideas can generate a new framework for the use of the term in interior architecture and refocus the field beyond the formal and visual, further valuing the existing as essence for a new discourse of context, as understanding of space and place, and as new interpretations of narration that include memory. Only then can we advance towards Jean-Luc Godard’s guidance, “it’s not where you take things from, it’s where you take them to,” and therefore make the spaces our own.

“A work is never completed except by some accident such as weariness, satisfaction, the need to deliver, or death: for, in relation to who or what is making it, it can only be one stage in a series of inner transformations.”16

Notes

Roland Barthes, “The Death of the Author”, Participation (2006): 41–45.
Ayn Rand, The Fountainhead (New York: Plume, 2005), p. 711.
“Annual Energy Outlook”, U. S. Department of Energy, Energy Information Administration, 2010, www.eia.doe.gov/oiaf/aeo/excel/aeotab_5.xls. Construction reports indicate that most of all design and construction work will be in existing buildings. The U.S. built environment comprises more than 77.9 billion square feet of commercial building space, and only a small percentage of that is new construction each year; Note: Read more: Jessica Dingwell, “Huge Growth in Retrofit Buildings Predicted: $10-$ 15 Billion Dollar Market by 2014” (2009), on Green Economy Post online, http://greeneconomypost.com/huge-growth-in-retrofit-buildings-predicted-10-15-billion-market-by-2014-5476.htm.
Eden Caceda, “Our Cultures Are Not Your Costumes”, Sydney Morning Herald online, www.smh.com.au/comment/our-cultures-are-not-your-costumes-20141114-11myp4.html (last modified 14 November 2014).
Henri Lefebvre, The Production of Space (Oxford: Blackwell, 1991).
Robert S. Nelson and Richard Shiff, eds., Critical Terms for Art History (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996), p. 163.
Markus Berger, Heinrich Hermann, and Liliane Wong, eds., Interventions/Adaptive Reuse: Int/AR (Providence: Rhode Island School of Design, 2009).
Richard Sennett, The Craftsman (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2008), p. 295.
Rodolfo Machado, “Old Buildings as Palimpsest: Toward a Theory of Remodeling”, Progressive Architecture 57 (1976): 47–49.
Ibid.
T.S. Eliot, The Sacred Wood (New York: Alfred K. Knopf, 1921), on Bartleby.com website, www.bartleby.com/br/200.html (accessed 28 April 2015).
Kathleen M. Ashley and Véronique Plesch, “The Cultural Processes of ‘Appropriation’”, Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 32, no. 1 (2002): 1–15, available on the website of Project Muse, https://muse.jhu.edu/ (accessed 23 May 2015).
Nelson and Shiff, Critical Terms, p. 118.
“Composing: Harry Mathews’ Words & Worlds”, library exhibit, University of Pennsylvania online, 2004, www.library.upenn.edu/exhibits/rbm/mathews/mathews.html (last modified 26 October 2010).

15 Jean-Luc Godard, Movie Maker Magazine, 22 January 2004, on website of Goodreads, www.goodreads.com/quotes/search?utf8=&q=godard&commit=Search (accessed 12 April 2015).

16 Paul Valery, “Recollection”, in The Collected Works of Paul Valery, vol. 1, trans. David Paul (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1972).