·e ~xt o the generation t placed between :aro, King and neither

>stered for very ·e precedents for the early 1960s,

d in the work of ~rs. Since he most

1e become with curvilinear ised Jst of the pieces r sombre colour. e culminates in 1 porticos and mt of subtle ptures which -like beings Camden Art of these shapes :l Bolus, and that teneration, is a •nscious or t a process which 1er naturally and

I sculptor in the lte that only by 1e role of ntext. It is artists uld be 1g for buildings, 3des and built-in s or 'so·called' 1st the ebullience :ors such as those 1 gift to the Tate, definite a way to 1 adjunct to a ieces, to be sions, whose too insistent for nctional and Such a division :orporated into a ystem, and that !em artificial to e used to f art is for

and the eum as an almost light emerge instance, could able works 1d displayed on <e the idea of rought out for ons would really ferent they

Jasia Reichardt

Piscator Hayward Gallery, London 21 July- 5 September, 1971

The work of Erwin Piscator has become familiar in the adaptations of his ideas by Brecht, but the intensity and stirring quality of his designs in the 20's are, clearly, far too little known. His theatrical productions are direct counterparts of the work of George Groz and John Heartfield- they might indeed, be described as three-dimensional photomontages. ('\nd Piscator was probably quite conscious of his debt to his friends. But if he took up ideas from some friends, he inspired others - he it was who commissioned and first thought of Walter Gropius' total-theatre design.

The exhibition, organized first by the Deutsche Akademie der Kiinste, Berlin, is small, but inspiring. The catalogue is also small, but most informative.

Utopia & Vision The exh;b;tion w" d .. ;gned to

10.,1 1901 co~memorat~ the Paris Co~mune (the only I 1 realized Utop1a of modern t1mes, the

organizers suggest), but rather than focus Moderna Museet. Stockholm June - September, 1971

I

attention on the barricades and the historical drama of the occasion, five themes have been chosen- work, money, newspapers, schools and homelife- that might suggest something of the life of the time.

I .

The legendary gunner of the Commune, Hortense David.

Entrance to the Ecole des Bcaux·Arts, Rue Bonaparte, Paris. 534 AD/9/71

Wednesday, 27th January 1971. In the vast, echoing glass-roofed Palais des

Etudes at the Beaux-Arts about 200 people are lost in the midst of broken plaster statues, relics of a time past. Three screens are erected and in the darkened, cavernous space Carousel projectors compete; the two left hand screens show projects done by visiting fifth year students of the Architectural Association, London; the screen on the right shows the activities of UP 6 of the former Beaux-Arts school. There is a strange and unnerving disparity between them, a disparity enhanced by the efforts of the AA leadership to draw close to the Beaux-Arts by comparing the seemingly imminent closure of the AA with the violent political engagement which is evident from the militant posters portrayed on the UP6 screen. 'We too are in a political situation .. .'begins Peter Cook but he is wrong, we are all wrong; compared to those UP 6 students who work on building sites, go to prison for spraying slogans on walls, build community centres for immigrant labourers, float newspapers demanding 'EVERYfHlNG', invade the offices of

536 AD/9/71

-The AA fifth year visit. Confrontat ion with UP6 in the Palais des Etudes

AA visit. The story of Archigram. Peter Cook explains

government ministers, hold lectures in the Louvre, department stores, or the street we are not political. We do not know what the word means.

On the AA screens appear collages of USAF Hercules transport ail craft delivering emergency housing instead of troops or

defoliants; there are girls in bikinis reclininF in nifty inflatables; a neighbourhood TV system called NKTV (too close to NKVD); projects for mobile living - it is all too much like a kind of sententious foolery suddenly taken to task. The uneasy English students explaining their projects sense it too; it only needs a sidelong glance at the Beaux-Arts screen, burning cars, massed police, clubbed, silently shrieking students, redevelopment protests, posters called The Struggle Goes On' with a forest of fists gripping spanners. Slowly the London school loses its initiative. A strange almost terror-stricken air descends. A Fun Palace appears on the AA screens. 'Pretty trite that stuff on the right,' observes an AA student; I wonder if he will be murdered. On the Beaux-Arts screen appear threats against patrons and flies, oaths of solidarity toward embattled workers. A translator explains a 'piste dragster' which has appeared on the left. 'Does this not make you angry?' I ask a French student. 'We are angry, but we are also polite,' is his reply.

For two hours the difference between being an architectural student in Britain and being a part of UP 6 at the ex-Ecole des Beaux Arts becomes clearer and clearer. During those two hours the desire to find out what these students and teachers have done, and why they began to do it, grips the authors of this issue. Emptily one of them

6 vows to reveal to the world the story of UP ·

This. 111311 v months later. i~ their attempt. Th . stor) be gills w1th the d1smtegratton of a

~em of architectural education that once r:d the world and then came with in _fi fty ears to represent al l that was archa1c,

rorrupt and obscure abou t architecture.

Without them one could 1emain at any pa1 tu.:ula1 stage Ill perpetuity: with them o ne wo uld steadily progress until assuming that one had been born under a lucky star­one m1gllt graduate with the promise of a JOb 111 the offi ce of the patron, and then (after further faithful servitude) find jobs coming ones way from the same source. This system has been accurately described as 'Malthusian' from its resemblance to the theory o f population control advanced by Thomas Mal thus in which population was

a n ·- __ D _- _I_ supposed to regulate itsetf automatically -cA., ~ according to the vicissitudes of food supply.

In the French university system - where 1 .. ~ ~ 1 • J ~ . entry was guaranteed by the possession of a

Gl£t ./[ """lqA,.(. Baccalaureat this meant that the wastage 1 rate was colossal but that each graduate was

in fact assured of a job and high social status 'If you have understood nothing that 1 have as a reward for his long years of study. At said the cause rests with you, my dear young the E. cole des Beaux-Arts the system worked sir. It is a matter of biology. In my opinion the rather differently because there was no teaching I have given up to now has been automatic entry on possession of exf,ITI~lary!' M. Zavaroni Baccalaureat, but as we have seen, an

admission course which was competitive.

'The class struggle '?That's rubbish. It's a matter of being born under a lucky star.'

M. Dengler

'The events of May? They happened because we banned their wild parties, the Rougevin festival, all that stuff. These buggers have to ejaculate

Even so the number of graduates was small (today France has only. 8.000 architects as opposed to over 20,000 in both Britain and llaly) and almost all graduates were assured of a future through the patronage that governed the whole education system. The first Diplomas were awarded in 1867, not until Petain's administration of 194044 was somehow!'

M. Chappey the practice of architecture regulated by

The above quotations are taken from a publication of the Assemblee Generale (AG) of the staff and students of the ex-Ecole Natwflale Superieure des Beaux-Arts, Paris: now the home of four Unites Pedagogiques (teaching units) out of the eight that presently exist in the Paris area. The old Beaux-Arts school was dissolved at the height of the May events of 1968, the end of a history extending back to its foundation by the Emperor Napoleon the First. Each of the statements above was made by a former patron of an atelier in the old school: as the sentiments themselves show, the teaching had a unique quality probably not to be seen again in the lifetime of anyone who reads this iSS Ue.

Under the old atelier system any twenty students who elected to form an atelier could do so, studying under a patron of their own choice - the snag was that the patron would not necessarily be paid. In this unique combination of extreme liberality with almost Byzantine cunning lurks the essence of the old system. There was no limit to the duration of the course - it was indeed perfectly possible to pass a lifetime striving merely to gain entrance to the school through the Concours d'Admission One of the authors of this issue recalls several students apparently fifty years old still carrying out the equivalent of third year studies after twelve or fifteen years - and that as late as 1958. Progress through the school was achieved by means of gaining a number of Unites de Valeur, or 'Mentions.'

government Decree. In 1942 the Ordre des Architectes was established by which a government licence to practise was made obligatory; in May 1968 one of the revolutionary acts that thrilled the French architectural profession was the tearing up of Ordre membership cards.

The old system at the Beaux-Arts probably achieved its greatest eminence during the last half of the 19th century after the dispute between reactionary students headed by Julien Guadet and Viollet-le-Duc, who had been made a professor to promote a programme of change, over reforms including a reduction in the age limit for the Prix de Rome.

This led to the revolt of 1863, after which (his side having won) Guadet proceeded to win the prize the following year. He later became Professor of Theory. In 1882 one in every four students was a foreigner and the influence of the school in the United States alone has been well enough catalogued to justify its fame. In 1907 there were over I ,000 students in ten ateliers whereas in 1850 there had been barely 100 in four. I This global success was however won at a cost in social relevance which accelerated as the twentieth century advanced. In 1750 Blonde! set a programme for students at the Academy of Architecture

the Royalist predecessor to the Beaux Arts - of a lighthouse on the sea shore2: as late at 1967 the same problem was being set

I. SADG Bulletin. No 176 2. L'Arcllitecture d'aujourd'hui, No 143, April/May 1969

to students uf the Beaux·AI ts. Plagiarism reached unbeltevable depths dunng the late fifties when (fo r example) Oscar Niemeyer's Alvorado Palace at Brazilia would appear again and again as 'A Court of Justice,' a 'Civic Centre', an 'Opera House' and so on. Ultimate depths were reached during 1958 with the presentation of a thesis project for the design of a missile launching station in whjch the erect intercontinental missiles cast immaculate shadows. Requ irements for a Diploma consisted of so many square metres of chassis to be covered with rendered drawings. Just as Le Corbus1er's famous designs for the Palace of the League of Nations were rejected because they were not drawn in ink - so a project at the Beaux-Arts could be rejected because it was 'non-geometrical.' Yet, in the end, it was not so much the manifest and growing absurdity of this system that brought about its downfall: rather it was the breakdown of Malthusian selection itself. Between 1960 and I 967 the number of students in French

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538 AD/9/71

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t:. A Beaux-Arts project of 1965. Atelier Dengler. The design is for a world gold reserve bank situated on an island to the north of Iceland. The vaults are noteworthy in view of the reported remarks of M Dengler (see text).

<l 'En Loge' at the old Beaux-Arts. Students worked individually in these booths on twelve hour sketches on which future projects were based. Despite elaborate precautions plagiarism became the rule.

universities .ncreased from 220,000 to 520,000, the number of students of arcrutecture from 4,000 to 6,000. Both the ~stage ra~e and the level of disatisfaction mcreased m parallel ; worse still the Diplo became more of a passport to a ma proletarianized career of draughting for a salary3 than an admission ticket to an exclusive club. For this and other reasons reforms began with the creation of Groups A, B, C and C I in 1965 - largely as a result of the influence of Candilis, Josie and Woods who had been enviegled into teaching by the means described earlier (more than twenty students requested their appointment). Group C thus formed removed itself with Candilis and Josie to new quarters at the Grand Palais where it became the centre of progressive thought at the school. In 1967 Groups C and Cl abandoned atelier teaching altogether. By infinitesimal increments such subjects as housing found their way onto the list of projects formerly dominated by 'Un salon de musique,' 'Une maison de garde d'un pare national', 'La Banque Mondi.ale de /'Or', 'Une piscme c/Jlns un ctub pnve' and so on. The slow progress via modest demands and even more modest concessions persisted until the catacylsm of May 1968.

~ JJM.tJut ~·~! An architecture of technocracy.

Interested in concentration camps? Have a look at my ZAC (Zone d'habitations .C?'!centres).' In which blocks of hutments adJOtntJll a guardroom have been redrawn as blocks of hutments adjoining a supermarket.

A cartoon in 'eru:AGe7.-vous' 1969.

Paris is now ringed with suburbs of wruch the infamous Sarcelles is a typical example. It is now also pricked by massive motor~ys and has several new airports. Within the c1ty massive redevelopment is at work: dispossessed occupants are for the most part shipped out to the new suburbs, whence they must travel in and out daily, and for which they pay hJgher rents than formerly. The famous market at Les Hailes is corning down -it has already moved out to Rungis on the way to Orly airport. The same massive coarsening of the grain of ur~a.n tissue is at work in Paris as in other c1ttes of the West; the same simplification of social types; the same erosion of variety; .the same strangulation by traffic. But in Pans the

3. Henri Lefebvre, La Vie Quotidienne dans le Monde Moderne, I 967

. ts worse hcnuse France itself ts watton , .. f h f lh st. cenu:~ll \;d. o ~ 1 t u c

tughl1 !'on over 9,000,000 people live papu aP~ns basin and the figure is expected in th~rease to 14,00>,<?00 by the >:ear 2000. to 10 ·s no other ctty m France wtth a Ther~ \ion of more than one million. P0~~ ~ 965 the 'Schema Direc~eur', a master

for Paris regiOn, was published. It plan osed eight new satelJite towns and two pro_p movement axes; a north-south route m1aJorthe Seine and a west-east rail and

a ong a1 d toroutc. The fo rmer was rea y aubstantially in ex istence; the latter had to ~~carved out or bought up -immense land

culation was the result. Furthermore the spev 'Minister of Private Development' ne' d . d. Conic title), M. Chalan on - appOinte tn

1'969 - confirmed that the eight satellite towns we~e to be reduced to five, each with ,;

opulatJOn of l 00,000, and that all were c

~:be built by the private sector. Financial ~ interlocks between the contractors building ~ the motorways for the west-east route and

0 the contractors building housing for the new 0 towns enabled considerable profits to be f made on land bought for the most part at agricultural prices. A deve~opment levy imposed in 1965 at a particularly low level has proved ineffective in controlling this situation. .

At the same time the plan to decentralise the universities of France was also underway. This project, itself partly responsible for the triggering of the May events at Nan terre in April 1968, drew forth the folloWing recent criticism from the organisation which previously encouraged it: ~

Generally speaking, the exurbanization of the ~ universities has accentuated the unbalance of ~ the towns, bri'l!ing a degradation of the spirit ~ of the city centre, multiplying displacements, !-aggravating segregation of all sorts. The internal planning of the University Estate seldom gives a satisfactory way of life - campuses are too vast (over 300 ha. for Bordeaux and 20 ha. for Grenoble), the habitations scattered, the utilization of space too rigid, the circulation schemes inarticulate and lacking a welcome centre.

'Cahiers de l'lnstitut d'Amenagcment et d'Urbanismc de Ia Region Parisienne,' No 23.

In Paris itself public outcry over the Les Hailes plan has not prevented the demolition ofBaltard's elegant iron 'umbrellas'; more importantly it has not prevented the parallel demolition of surrounding cheap housing areas and their programmed replacement by office blocks, railway stations, a museum of modern art and expensive flats. As with Covent Garden in London the planners and apologists affect inability to understand the basis of public opposition to redevelopment: in Paris it proceeds apace. As Henri Lefebvre ..; has pointed out, the class struggle is to be found in the very fabric of urbanisation. As Friedrich Engels pointed out long before, a definitive characteristic of bourgeois

0

socialism is to seek to maintain the basis of all social evils whilst at the same time Wishing to eradicate them. At the time of

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The new airport at Orly Ouest,' completed during 1971, entering service Spring 1972. Maximum designed capacity for the ex~ti'l! Orly airport (henceforth to be caUed Orly.Sud) was reached in 1966. Since then it has been operati'l! under increasing pressure.

-~ ....... Belleville, scene of extensive redeveloJ?ment with the native population removed to outer suburbs whilst offices and expensive flats replace thetr tenements.

the publication of the 'Schema Directeur' in 1965:

France had a population of about 50,000,000. f ' o Section through part of the new Metro Express passing beneath the Rue Auber near the Opera.

539

3,000,000 of them were im~igrant workers. She had 15,000,000 dwellmgs. More than

half built before 1914. Of the 14,000,000 dwellings built before

1962 53% had no bathrOom, shower or mtenor w.c. Which is to say that more than half the dwellings in France had no more than a cold water tap. There were only one sixth as many bathrooms in France as there were in Britain.

One in three {fifteen million) persons Lived five or more persons to two rooms.

Three thousand single room dwellings were occupied by nine or more people. (Immigrant workers: 'La politique du lit chaud ').

For five and a half million old age pensioners there were 42,000 hostel beds.

For 4,000,000 childten below the age of four there were 55,000 nursery p,taces.

'CoUectLI Logement. Secours Rouge,' 1971.

'Our experience has shown us that it is possible to have growth wit~ou! social reform - ~hich is to say that quanhtahve growth can ex.•st without qualitative improvement. Under these conditions social change tends to be more apparent than real. Belief in change {the ideology of Modernism) enables us to ignore the stagnation of essential S<?cial values.' . ,

Henri Lefebvre, These sur La Vtllt: , SADG Bulletin, supplement to

No 167. 'Mai '68.'

'The latest Lou Harris Poll shows that 62% of the British public do not want to join the Six. 20% do and 18% are undecided.lnterestingly 82% o/those questioned thought that Britain would join the Common Market any way.'

TIME, May 3ht 1971.

Social paradoxes of this kind no doubt exercised the minds of Beaux-Arts students during the autumn of 1967 when they sat down for the last time to ponder the intricacies of 'A swimming pool for the members of a private club.'

540 AD/9/71

Technio.1ues et Architecture,

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Map of the Paris region, showing projected new towns reduced to five - Jan. 1961. Cergy-Pontoise, Marne Valley, Melun Senart , Evry, Trappes. Map showifll planning permissions granted~

for new office development in the • Paris Region, 1962-1969. The massive centralisation is evident. ·~

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' .. ....... Three times the he@ht of all surrouridifll buildings, the new Maine-Montparnasse tower is ironically the site of many student interventions amofllst construction workers.

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The nportance of the events of May 1 96b m the process of dissolution to which the ENSBA was already subject can scarcely be exaggerated. As we have seen, reforms had begun in response to mounting criticism during the early 1960's, notably in the formation of the Atelier Candilis/Josic in J964. and in the splitting off of 'Group C' which removed to the Grand Palais (in the prestigious VIII arrondissement) in the autumn of 1965. But without the short lived but very real political power which resulted from the solidarity of students and workers during the most bodeful phase of the May revolt, it is doubtful if on the one hand the ENSBA students would have become sufficiently radicalised to demand as much freedom as they did in January 1969, or on the other that the administration would have been so terrorised as to abandon the lockout policy with which they greeted the return to civil order in June 1968. An important element, then as now, was the division of responsibility between the Ministry of Education - which was responsible for the administration of the French universities -and the Ministry of Culture, which retained responsibility for architectural education. Many observers, Anatole Kopp among them, believed that once the revolt had failed the authorities would deal with further ENSBA disturbances by closing down the school altogether. This they tried, as we shall see, but abandoned after a comparatively short time.

The following chronology of the events of May is brief and drawn from several sources, each of which on its own is more complete. A selected list of more detailed accounts is given at the end of the section.

The political origins of the events of May extend back as far as the tripartiste union of socialists, communists and Gaullist technocrats which briefly ruled France in the aftermath of the German occupation. Charles de Gaulle resigned from leadership of this unlikely coalition (which had indeed only come into existence under wartime pressure) in 1946 and in 194 7 tripartisme itself collapsed. Nonetheless with the return of General de Gaulle to power in 1958 an accommodation with the communists and the old Resistance belief in his willingness to undertake socialist reforms enabled him to carry the Social Democrat and Socialist parties with him for much of his period of office. By 1967 this quiescence on the part of the Left was wearing thin and ~erious trouble began to flow from the ..; unportant gains the centre parties made in E

the general elections of that year. In the ~ spring of 1967 France was gripped by a wave ~ of large scale strikes in .public as well as ·; private sectors, and for the first time :l engineers, technicians and highly skilled ~ workers in advanced industries began to take ff a serious part. In the universities and ~ lycees, growing protest at the Vietnam war g (which, it will be remembered, particularly 1l concerned the French as Vietnam "" was a colony until 1956) had exacerbated

the process of radicalisation begun a decade earher w1th Algena. In the summer of 1967 a number of governmental decrees began to dismantle the reigning social security system and increase direct charges, General de Gaulle's puppet premier Georges Pompidou angered Socialist Deputies by delaying parliamentary debate of these measures indefinitely. By the autumn two separate levels of exasperation with Gaullist government were becoming clearly defined. On one the French Communist party, together with the more moderate parties of the Left, were growing increasingly militant over the President's handling of social and labour issues. By Christmas 1967 half a million French workers were unemployed, a large proportion of them skilled and many of them representatives of the new technology·based industries. A further three million workers earned less than £12 for a forty eight hour week, and the difference between top and bottom salaries in industry had increased by 40% since General de Gaulle's return to power. On another level, and one far more dangerous to the regime, students and /yceens struggling under an antiquated education system (which had seen an increase in the number of university students of over 100% between 1960 and 1967), were growing increasingly angry over both the universities' failure to keep pace with contemporary needs, and the shabbiness and mediocrity of the technical and managerial roles it offered to those who survived years of Malthusian attrition in order to graduate at aU. On this level, dissaffection was already too severe to be • removed by piecemeal reforms; only a major transformation of the whole education process and its relation to the hated 'societe spectaculaire marchande, might soothe- it. Thus with the orthodox Left now fully emerged from its somnambulant acceptance of Gaullism, and a 'New Left' emerging in the schools and universities. the 24 hour

Graffiti at Nanterre - 1968.

strike called by the CGT (the Communist controlled Conjederatwn Gbu!rale du Travail) and the CFDT (the formerly Catholic Confederation rranratse Democratique du Travail, which enjoyed a heavy white collar representation) during the winter of 1967 achieved the status of a portent when it was noted that students of eight Paris lycees joined in. The two levels of dissent were coming together.

In the spring of 1968, the French Communist party intensified its opposition to the Vietnam war in an attempt to prevent itself being outflanked by extremist student and workers' organisations; in consequence demonstrations against unemployment and rule by Presidential Decree, and in favour of university reform, tended to merge in the eyes of the government into one threat of disorders. Throughout April strikes and university disturbances gained force; at Nanterre (where a New Arts Faculty of th{l University of Paris had been built in 1964 a. part of a programme of decentralisation) uproar broke out on the 25th April following several student occupations and the steady splintering of UNEF (the Union Nationale des Etudiants de France, an organisation with over 80,000 members which had been losing central control ever since the end of the Algerian War). On Thursday May 2nd, the Faculty at Nanterre was finally closed down following persistent

.• . criticism by Daniel Cohn-Bendit and the '22 Mars' group. On the same day the right wing 'Occident' group attempted to burn down student union offices at the Sorbonne.

Eyents escalated quickly following the Nanterre closure and the following day CRS (Compagnie Republicaine de Securite) riot troops surrounded the Nan terre campus; in Paris the Sorbonne and Science faculties both closed - the former with much violence by police with tear gas. Over the weekend all demonstrations were banned and the Ministef of Education branded the student strikes as illegal.

Je mens Jt toctncot

Sites of 20 buricades in the Latin Quarter.

Monday 6th May 60,000 demonstrators making their way

towards the Sorbonne were attacked by the CRS. 739 demonstrators were hospitalised and the first barricades to be erected in Paris since 1944 sprung up around the Latin Quarter. The University strikes spread around the country, fifteen Paris lycees struck in sympathy. The UNEF appealed to the people of France for support: the CFDT sympathised, the CGT did not.

Tuesday 7th May UNEF and SNE Sup (the university

teachers union) drew up a joint list of demands. Student strikes spread further and appeals to workers were made. Further demonstrations took place in Paris. The French Con1munist Party denounced the students as ' pampered adventurists': the CFDT renewed its support. At this point it became evident that without CGT support, the insurrection - for that is what it had become - was unlikely to succeed. From then on everything depended on the support of Unions and workers.

Wednesday 8th May The Ecole des Beaux Arts struck. 20,000

students demonstrated in Paris and the three emerging student leaders debated: Sauvageot (UNEF), Geismar (SNE Sup) and Cohn Bendit (22 Mars). A student demonstration in Marseilles was supported by workers in large numbers. The CGT asked the government to reopen the faculties closed down the week before.

Thursday 9th May Lower echelons of the CGT supported a

student demonstration in Dijon.

Friday lOt h May The Nanterre and Sorbonne faculties

reopened administrative staff only were admitted to the latter. Demonstrations occupied the day and by evening 50,000 students and sympathisers were in the Latin Quarter. They erected sixty barricades and that night a pitched battle with the CRS took place. 180 cars were destroyed. CGT and CFDT fi nally called a general strike for Monday to protest against government oppression.

Monday I 3th May The General stnke was Widely ~uppo1tcd.

Over 600,000 marched in Paris, and student and CGT contingents fraternised. CRS troops withdrew from the Sorbonne and it was re-occupied by the students, their comites d'action located in the Censier Annexe. Many Local Action Committees were established in the provinces.

Tuesday 14th May The Nanterre faculty declared itself

independent. Almost all universities in the country were either occupied or on strike. At 3 pm a provisional strike committee informed the administrative council of the ENSBA that the students were taking possession of all premises. Joint student/worker demonstrations took place in Rouen. ORTF (Office de Radio et Television Franfaises} finally acknowledged the existence of student rebels. General de Gaulle left on a state visit to Roumania.

Wednesday 15th May Strikes and occupations of factories

spread throughout the country. The Odeon national theatre was occupied by demonstrators for public discussion. The General Assembly of the ENSBA strikers published a declaration of aims and demands.

' ••• • We oppose the emptiness of educational content and the pedagogical manner in which it is put over because everything is organised so as to ensure the production of human beings without critical awareness or knowledge of social and economic rea lities. 'We oppose the role which society expects inteUectuals to play, along with technocrats, as the watch-dogs in a system of bourgeois economic production, seeing to it that each man feels happy with his lot, even when he is exploited. ' ••• We want to fight against the domination of education by the profession, by means of the Ordre ·des A rahitectes or other corporate bodies. The teaching of architecture should not merely consist of the repe_tition of 'good practice' until the pupil becomes a carbon copy of the master. We want to fight against the conditions in which architecture is subordinated to the interests of public or private promoters. How many architects have agreed to cany out projects such as SarceUes .•• ?

Thursday 16th May StiU without official Union support the

wave of strikes and occupations spread around France. Occupied faculties began to organise staff/student management committees. General de GauUe in Roumania and Premier Pompidou in Paris conversed telephone and the forme r decided to advance the date of his return to the Saturday. At ENSBA the Atelier Populo ire for the production of posters and propaganda material established itself in occupied studios with a proclamation. ' ••• We are ~ainst the established ord!!r o f today. What IS bourgeois culture. It is the means by which the forces o f oppression of the ruling class isolate and set apart the arti~ts from the workers by giving. them a privileged status. Privilege locks the artist in an invisible prison. The fundamental concepts which underlie t11is act of isolation which bourgeois culture brings

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about are the idea that art is 'autonomous' and the idea that 'creative freedom' is real freedom. In giving the artist a privileged status, culture places the art ist in a position where he is absolutely harmless and yet can act as a safety valve for the discontents bourgeois society generates. This is the situation of every one of us. We are aU bourgeois artists, how could it be otherwise?'

Friday 17th May The CGT became disturbed at the

increasing fraternisation between Its own workers and the students. In the PCF (Parti Communiste Fram;ais} !here were acrimonious disputes between factions for and against the students. The CFDT openly called for further spreading of the strike movement. Meanwhile the students organised a demonstration march from one side of Paris to the other, ending at the Renault works at Boulogne-Billancourt where the CGT endeavoured to prevent fra ternisation and occupation of the factory.

Saturday 18th May General de Gaulle returned from

Roumania and an emergency cabinet meeting was held. Public opinion polls showed that 55% of the population supported the students, 60% wished for 'a new form of society', but 5~ opposed the strike movement. All air and rail transport was paralysed. The Gaullists began to organise the CDR (Comitees de Defense de Ia Republique) and the extreme right wing organisations offered their support in return for the release of General Salan. impnsoned for treason at the close of the Algerian War. In Cannes, the film festival was broken up and many directors removed their enlries. At ENSBA. the strike committee announced that the course begun by the first year that month was being abandoned as invalid. .. Sunday 19th May

General de Gaulle held a ministerial conference, he saw the choice facing him as between reform and depraved disorder. 'Les reformes, oui, Ia chien/it, non!' Formation of CDR's proceeded apace. The strike then covered aU transport, the na lionalised industries, the steel industry, the banks, the public services including ORTr.

Monday 20th May Georges Scguy, General Secretary of the

CGT declared himself unimpressed by ideas of workers' control, reform of society and suchlike. On Europe Radio No I he announced the CGT's own aims.

• ... A general rise in wages, guaranteed full employment, an earlier ret irement age, reduc tion in working hours withou t loss of pay, the defence and e>.tensio n of trades union rights in factories.'

(These were almost exactly the concessions General de Gaulle allowed afler the elections held one month later). Meanwhile, encouraged by marauding bands of CDR's, many thousands of immigrant labourers and their fami lies had begun to fl ee France.

Tuesday 21st May At tlus point approximately ten mill ion

546 AD/9/7 1

workers and students were on stnke. Essential public services were kept 111 operation by volunteer groups of key workers occupying their factories. In Pekin , effigies of General de Gaulle were burned by demonstrators chanting 'Long live the Paris Commune.' The strike committee at ENSBA issued a pamphlet.

• ..• We are determined to transform what we are in society. Let us make it clear that it is not the forging of better links between art and technology that we want - that would merely intensify our alienation. We wa nt to open our eyes to the problems of other workers, to understand the historical rea lity of the world tn which we live. No teacher can help us familiarise ourselves with that r eality, we must all teach ourselves. This does not mean that objective- and therefore admissable -knowledge does not exist . Older artists and older teachers can help us to understand it. But o nly on condition that they themselves have decided to transform what they are in society, and to take part in the work of self educatio n.'

Wednesday 22nd May A motion of censure on the government

was heavily defeated, receiving only 223 votes. Daniel Cohn·Bendit, who had been speaking in Brussels, was refused re-entry into France. The CGT and CFDT issued a joint communique stating their willingness to negotiate with the government more or Jess on the lines laid down by Seguy's broadcast. The isolation of the students had begun.

offer began negotiations with General Mass commander of the French Army of the u, Rhine for military support in the event of open insurrection.

Saturday 25th and Sunday 26th May The government finally attempted to spl't

off the students by negotiating with 1

management and unions in the Rue de Grenelle. Mean~hile the directors of thuty theatres andMa1sons de Ia culture issued a joint communique on the necessary politicisation of culture.

Monday 27th May The Grenelle negotiations finally ted to

an offer of a minimum wage, a small reduction in working hours and a 10% nsc to all workers. All over the country the strikers refused to accept the agreement, some CGT contingents began to abandon their leadership. The CFDT finally refused to sign the 'Grenelle' agreement. The government thereupon began to arm the CDR's, cut off supplied of petrol to garages, and denounce the students and strikers as tools of organised crime. A referendum was promised for June 4th. At the Charlety stadium in Paris a mass meeting attended by 50,000 (including former Premier Pierre Mendes France) debated the possibility of a new society. By Wednesday 29th of May, the day General de Gaulle made his secret flight to Baden Baden to confer with General Massu, the events of May had already passed their peak. The revolutionary zeal of the unions including the CFDT had terminated in the proposal of the old socialist Pierre Mendes-France as the leader of a new government. This choice, unacceptable to

J the PCF or the CGT, and somewhat less than ! galvanising to the student activists of 22 ! Mars UNEF and SNE Sup, marked the

Thursday 23rd May Once again the CFDT raised its earl ier

demand for workers' control but the CGT refused to fo llow suit. Independent radio stations were told that henceforth they would not be allowed to use roving microphones in covering demonstrations and meetings. Radio Luxembourg was threatened with closu re of its Paris office. ln Pekin over a miUion Chinese marched to express solidarity with 'The just struggle of the French students and workers.' In London the l.SE was occupied as an expression of solidarity.

Friday 24th May General de Gaulle made a broadcast via a

radio transmitter barricaded at the top of the Eiffel Tower, manned by blackleg technicians. He offered a referendum on public participation in government in June. A riot followed the close of a CGT demonstration attended by 200,000. The Bourse was set on fire and police stations were sacked. General de Gaulle, disappointed by the reception accorded his

failure of 'new forms of social organisation' to progress beyond the level of images reflected in the waU slogans, debates and posters of preceding weeks. As Jean-Pierre Vigier observed afterwards, l the established institutions of opposition to the status quo had revealed themselves utterly incapable of tlunking beyond it. ' Political and economic organizations, founded to oppose capitalism, have slowly acquired the same hierarchical structures and methods of acting as the system they claim to be attacking. In other words, except for their rhetoric they have actively attempted to integrate their supporters into the system. They have systematically minimised conflict and sought to make temporary compromise after temporary compromise. But these have never really been compromised because the essential has always been conceded . • . They have become incapable of proposing any meaningful alternative to the present hierarchical system. '

The hiatus did not last long. Before the end of the week the CGT renewed its efforts to redirect the strike movement into reformist channels with more limited aims. Thus General de Gaulle's belated arrangement with the French anny which involved the declaration of martial law in~ l. Jean· Pierre Vigier Tfle Action Committees 1?68.

event of the PCF jo1mng the revolutionanes _became an insurance policy almost as soon as it was reached. On Thursday 30th May a massive Gaullist demonstration in the Place de Ia Concorde, facilitated by the use of armY transport to convey suburban and provmcial supporters to the centre, attracted over one million participants. His confidence restored, the General thereupon dissolved the National Assembly and proposed a general election in place of the referendum previously offered. The PCF revealed that it expected (instead of a revolutionary conquest of the country) to increase its vote by between four and six per cent.

On Saturday June 1st, the beginning of the Bank holiday, normalisation was speeded up by the release of petrol supplies delivered to filling stations by troops driving civilian tankers. Queues a mile long formed with owners pushing their cars so as not to exhaust the few drops of petrol left in their tanks for the homeward drive should supplies t'ttn out. They did not, and the holidays got off to a good start. The rest of the story can be briefly told as the alliance between students and workers was by then effectively extinct. On Wednesday 12th June Left wing student organisations were banned and all demonstrations forbidden. On the 13th the workers councils were dissolved. On the 14th General Salan was released from pnson and an OAS amnesty granted. On Sunday 16th the Sorbonne was cleared of students by the police, and on Monday the Odeon theatre also. During the night of the 26th/27th June, starting at four o'clock in the morning, police attacked and cleared the ENSBA. On Sunday 30th General de Gaulle won h1s last electoral victory on a platform of reform and participation- but no fundamental social change. The events of May were over.

'The historical ro le of the student commune wiU be all the more enhanced by its never having been anything but itself. Those who believe that its mission was to trigger a workers' revolution and those who feel that it should have concentrated on university reform have misunderstood its role. Precisely because it was utopian rather than construc tive it was able to envisage a future which embraced society as a whole. Because it refused to compromise it is already exemplary. Ed M . 1968 gar onn .

Accounts of the events of May 1968. Refl«tions on the revolurion in France I 968 J::d. Charles Posner, Pelican 1970. ' ' 'Architecture, Jl,fouvement, Continuite, Bulletin de Ia Societe des Architec tes boplomes par le Gouvernement, Supplement to No 167, 'Special Mai 68'. Partisans, No 42, MaifJuin 1968, 'Un seul combat' Notes et etudes documentaires. Nos 3722/3723. 'Chronologie des evenements de MaifJ uin 1968' • La Documentation Francaise, Paris 1970. Partisans. No 53, MaifJuin 1970, 'La selection aux Beaux Arts' Ld~ Carre 8/eu, No 3, Feuille internationale

archotec ture, Paris 1968. Posters from the revolution, Dobson London 1969 • 'Arcl;itecture, Mouvement Continuite' 1,\~ll ~tin de Ia SADG, No 1'70, 'Mai '68 che1 les ~l~ves architectes,' Monique et Raymond ~ochelct, J ean·Michel Fourcade, Andre

?,lucksmann. 'Strategie et R evolu tion en r ranee: J 968 '.

548 AD/9/71

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"France" is pacified by riot police in the home -aftermath of May 1968.

The Grand Palais in t he VIII arrondissement on the banks of the Seine. Home of UPS and UP7.

With the end of the ENSBA occupation and the dispersal of the strike committee in June 1968, the future of the school of architecture resumed the dubious aspect it had enjoyed since the formation of Group C in 1965. Since that date integration into the university system had been one of the principal reforms demanded by both students and junior staff. The experience of fraternisation afforded by the grouping of several ateliers under the same roof at the Grand Palais had stimulated even greater interest in what came to be called the 'credit card' system; a method whereby students could accumulate credits (unites'de valeur) in different courses within the university, all of them contributing to the total necessary for the award of a Diploma. The dissolution of the schpol carried out at the height of the events of May had however greatly increased the confidence of the more radical students, so much so that a communication from the Ministry of Culture (20th August 1968) proposing interim measures for the corning academic year, which included abandonment of the Prix de Rome and promised 'participation' in negotiations with the university, was rejected as inadequate. A further communication outlining an interim structure of independent Unites PMagogiques - five to be located in Paris, and others in the provinces - was refused by a large majority of students and staff. On the 16th September 1968 the AG (Assemblee Genera/e) of students and teachers wrote an Open letter to the Ministry of Culture demanding unconditional reopening of the school. An attempt at re-occupation by force on the same day was prevented by the police, although about thirty students remained in the building for a time.

By the beginning of October the ex-ENSBA section of the SNE Sup (the union of teachers in Higher Education) had prepared a list of their demands for the future organisation of architectural education. On 8th October the AG set forth for the last time its arguments in favour of integration with the university.

1. We are faghting against a feudal institution. Against a privileged corps of Patrons (Mandarinat). Against the absence of any objective body of knowledge to underlie our studies. Against preferment awarded according to subjective criteria - that is beautiful, he is gifted etc. Against the surxender of teaching to a non-academic profession. Against the encouragement of fantastic projects whilst real crises - such as the housing problem - are ignored.

2. We do not want Unites Pooagogiques Because they will merely become competitive schools. Because they will foster the creation of new hierarchies - Diplomas granted by one will be more highly valued than those granted by another etc. Because they will adapt themselves to existing economic forces and continue to be at the service of the technocracy.

3. We want rational, object ive teaching. A scientific evaluation of information. Close ties with other disciplines engaged in the development of new social concepts. Projects related to the social realities of our time. Consequently we demand from the administration of the ENSBA clear responses to the following demands.

The same regulations as are operative in the university. No examination for admission. The same number of scholarships as are available to. university students. The same requirements for the selection of staff. The same administrative framework. The possibility of exchanging credits with other disciplines. The same opportunities for research.

The document ended by demanding that the admission class of 1967/8, whose efforts had been interrupted by the May events and the subsequent closure of the school, should be promoted immediately to the second year of the course. Furthermore, that years spent trying to gain admission to ENSBA should henceforth count as years passed in a course of six years maximum duration.

Response to these demands arrived within a few weeks. Although the matter of the 1968 admissionnistes was settled by some manipulation of the old rules governing oral

exarninations, the Ministry of Culture proved inflexible over the question of integration with the university. On December 6th 1968 a Ministerial Decree created five Unites Ndagogiques of between 400 and 700 students in Paris; and thirteen provincial Unites. The decentralisation of ENSBA was described as follows.

'Thus the architectural section of the former ENSBA wid give birth to pedajogical units with complete economic and administrative autonomy, and educational autonomy subject to reservations arising from the necessity of a common framework for the purposes oC professional competence. The thirteen provincial schools wid also operate as autonomous pedagogical units.'

Faced with this act of force majeure approximately half the ex-ENSBA students and some staff elected to join one or other of the five Paris Unites which were quickly established as follows (in each case the description of the aims of the Unite is taken from the French official schoolleavers publication issued by the Office National d1nformation sur les Enseignements et les Professions).

Unite Pedagogique No 1. Location The former ENSBA building on

Aims

:·

the Quai Malaquais. To develop a critical attitude (at the same time pragmatic) in the face of environmental problems. To seek to supply the needs of the vast majority of the population who are living in an industrial society undergoing continuous change, by means of the development of an overview which is both comprehensive and technological.

When asked to describe this Unite an architect and teacher who had played an

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important part 111 the foundation ol Group C in 1965 replied as follows.

This group shares a political attitude rather than an attitude to design. They have achieved a linguistic homogeneity. Within the limits of their political stance they are tJying to develop a way of teaching an architecture which conforms to the official PCP line. Their results are, I think. more efficient - but not better­than any ot the other Unites. A project 'Espaces de Transition'

exhibited in the studio of UP I in January 1971 was headed by the following slogan.

I( aU human activities were programmed 24 hours per day, and if all took place in functionally isolated locations, man would become a machine and li fe would become impossible.

Unite Pedagogique No 2. Location The former ENSBA building on

the Quai Malaquais. Aims We are not prepared to let the

architectural profession die, nor to let it be reduced to a specialism. We are not prepared to defend the unique, isolated traditional practice of architecture. We proclaim the indissoluble union of practice and research. Our UP is organised around three functions: information, research and teaching. We train practical men.

Unite Pedagogique No 3. Location The fonner stables of the Royal

Palace at Versailles. Aims To provide a broad education in

architecture so that the graduate will be competent to operate at all levels of society. To provide specialised technical training orientatt'd towards the construction of buildings. To this end the staff will operate initially as encouragers of imagination; secondarily as sources of reference, and finally as consultants.

Unite Pedagogique No 4. (Unite Pedagogique de Synthese) Location Quai Malaquais. Aims The aim of this, the Unite of

synthesis, is to train architects in the broadest sense of the word. Men capable of creating, developing and finally directing teams of specialists to bring into being the products of the art of building and the manipulation of space.

The archi tect who previously described UP I gave the following description of UPs 2,3 and 4.

Unite Pedagogique No 5 Location Grand-Palais. Avenue Franklin

D. Roosevelt. Aims The organisation of teaching at

UP 5 provides both the formation of an approach to environmental design by means of exercises in volume, colour and form; and a sound grounding in the human sciences of psyche- sociology, urbanism, geography and economics.

In the two years following the Ministerial Decree of December 1968, three more Unites were created. The first - UP 6 grew from a call put out by the AG on the 1Oth 1 anuary 1969 for a boycott on the Unite structure initially proposed. This call was answered by the signatures of 1,200 students and 78 staff- all of whom refused to enrol in any of the five established Unites. After a forcible occupation of their old premises in the ENSBA buildings, and several vicissitudes which will be described in the next section, this group was given an official (but tentative) designation UP 6. More than two years after this concession the official Information sur les Enseignements. et les Professions publication mentioned earlier still claimed that information on the aims and organisation of UP 6 had not yet arrived ('Renseignements sur !'organisation des etudes non encore parvenus'). In view of the importance of the activities of UP 6 since 1969 this is surprising.

UP 7 came into existence as an extension of UP 5 with which it now shares the cavernous volume of the Grand-Palais. UP 8 -as we shall see - was formed as a splinter group from the mass of UP 6 late in I 969.

Unite Ndagogique No 7. Is listed in the J:'nseignements elles Professions handbook as is UP 8. •

Unite Pedagogique No 7. Location Grand-Palais. Avenue Franklin

D. Roosevelt. Aims The aim of UP 7 is to train

architects capable of operating on many levels, capable of adapting to the shifts of a society in gestation, and capable of participating in its evolution.

Unite Pedagogique No 8. Location Les Halles. Aims The teachers of UP 8 endeavour

to instruct the fundamentals of contemporary technology: the rational basis of the conception and realisation of projects; and to interpret the spatial consequences of the built environment in terms of social meaning.

The architect quoted earlier on the subject of the original Unites, described 'UP's 5, 7 and 8 as follows.

These students and teachers are opportunists. They have taken advantage of the disorder which followed the collapse of ENSBA to take upon themselves the teaching o f a ' new' form or archjtecture. The Ministry - eager to solve its problem - has placed in their hands problems which they are incapable of resolving, whether they claim to be doing so or not. Of the unacknowledged UP 6 the same

architect said. These are the only people who believe that the real structure of the new teaching must be developed continuously, in the ligltt of experiences and experiments which wiU themselves define the architects role and his task.

Students in these Unites are grouped around the old academic Patrons who still romantically believe in the obsolete teachings of the Beaux Arts. These are small groups circling around old men who are dying. They are also students who are interested in obtaining diplomas as quickly as possible and with the least disturbance. Beaux-Arts students locked in after the attempted re-occupation of 16th September, 1968.

550

-Redevelopment project for Saint Denis, Paris. UP I. Diploma project 3111 Cycle.

Urban studies. Projects for town houses in Tuamotua, French Polynesia. UPJ. Versailles 2nd Cycle. 'The placing of a parallelepiped on an imaginary site.' A project from the l st Cycle of UPS.

551

552 AD/9/71

(,es Cahiers d'UP 6. 1969-7 1

January lOth 1969. 'L'Appel du 10 Janvier' Official reopening of the ex-ENSBA

buildings after their closure by the strike committee during the May events. The wave of criticism which had greeted the inauguration of the new Unites Ndagogiques culminated in the circulation of a petition, eventually signed by 1,200 students and 78 staff. protesting at the way in which the new order ignored their pleas of the previous October (see 'Pacification') for integration into the university.

We the undersigned deplore the recent dec•sions of the Ministry which have presented bOth students and staff with a fait accompli in the form of Unites Pedagogiques created with no consideration for their wish to have their studies integrated with those of the university. In the absence of any attempt to rationalise architectural education the UP's will themselves become merely competitive schools on the old pattern.

We further protest at the entirely inadequate thought given to the organisation, location and financing of these UP's, particularly at a time whed' ~number of students has greatly increased and the cost of technical education is mounting.

We also deplore the failure of the proposals to clarify the status of teachers in schools of architecture. Among the 78 staff who signed the

'Appel du 10 Janvier' were Faugeron (a particular target for student dislike owing to his close connections with the public works prOJects of the Gaullists), Candilis and Schein, but also the entire academic staff of the former Group C. The UP arrangement in fact pleased few apart from the government who were eager to break up the mass of students concentrated in the centre of Paris.

January 17th 1969 Assemblee Generale. A meeting of the AG voted

overwhelmingly in favour of occupation of the school premises by the signatories of the Appel du 10 Janvier and the establishment of courses of study related to the demands of October 8th.

January l Oth 1969 'Rentree Sauvage'. The occupation takes

place but the authorities react with surprising flexibility. Confused at first as to whether student opposition to the Decree of Decem tier 6th establishing the five Unites was political or academic in origin, they resolved to test the matter by legitimising the occupation. The 1,200 students and 78 staff are christened Unite Nc!agogique No 6 and given the same autonomy as the other five. Ten new staff are appointed including Le Dantec of Sartre's 'La Cause du Peuple:

February 25th 1969 A further meeting of the AG resolves not

to accept the status of UP but to allow 'the present state of ambiguity to continue for as long as po~sible in order that the maximum amount of useful work may be done wrthout official hindrance.' Work on the development of an improved course structure begins at once.

April 19th 1969. Political Aims. Group EM 68 (t'nvironnement Mai '68)

prcscuts a fe.\IC! cl'Orientativn Pvlitique to the Assemblee Genera/e. Taken in conjunction with the demand for integration with the university of October 8th 1968 this document makes clea r the position of UP 6 in relation to the ex-ENSBA administration and the government.

WHERE WE STAND. Environnement M.68 is dedicated to returning to the people the power of decision ·and the right to manage their own affairs. Environnement M.68 is a militant organisation which welcomes all who fight against: The built environment created by the bourgeoisie with its technocratic and functional justifications. and for: A democratically organised built environment achieved by the transformation of the means of construction.

WHAT DO WE DENOUNCE? 1. We denounce present methods of

environmental design and construction which are merely instruments of alienation in the hands of the ruling class - in France the bourgeoisie.

2. We denounce the injustice of the present processes of environmental design and wnstruction whose results are endured by oppressed classes who have no means of influencing them.

3. We denounce the cartels which control this process of development; the lobbies and pressure groups, the banks, professions, the administrative and

Unidentified photograph of wall list

technical bureaucracy who are all in the service of the ruling cJas.,. We denounce the mystification and alienation which hides reality in this domain, and which consequently operates as another form of oppression.

4. We denounce the bourgeoi:. conception of man, it is a mere alibi for an alienated society.

S. We denounce bourgeois art and culture as instruments of ideological domination in their own right.

6. We denounce the class segregation perpetuated and augmented by present bourgeois urbanism.

7. We denounce the poverty which today exists S<Jiely to protect land values.

WHAT WILL WE FIGHT FOR? I. We will fight for the collective ownership

of land and the means of production which will then be removed from the realm of private profit.

2. We will fight to ensure that the users of the environment are given the power to design, construct , control and manage it: they retain the power of real intervention over matters that concern them.

3. We will fight to disseminate the truth about the built environment outside the corrupt channels of the bourgeois press.

4. We will fight to reform professional education so that it can never again cease to respond to the real needs of the

:· people. EM.61S. Pour un environnement Oemocratique.

EM 68 is henceforth to comprise seven working groups: an information group, who will take charge of the production and editing of a monthly magazine; a liaison

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553

group consisting of one member of each of the other groups charged with liaison with the AG ; a group Ill charge of recruiting; a group responsible for relations with other organisations of parallel aims ; two groups charged with the prosecution of community action, one in Verri~res and the other diffused among several Bidonvilles in the Paris area; and finally a group charged with the production of 'White Papers' on the theory of social archHecture.l

June 1969 Turning the referendum on

regionalisation into a vote of confidence, General de Gaulle loses and resigns as President. Malraux resigns as Minister of Culture, he is succeeded by Michelet.

July. l969 Ignoring the conditions laid down by the

AG in October J 968 the Ministry of Culture proposes a new conference to discuss the precise role and status of teachers in the UPs. Still intent on university integration UP6.and several of provincial UPs refuse to attend. Instead UP 6 publishes its own statement of educational objectives. In outline this plan involves the creation of working groups or 'modules' to undertake specific studies within the framework outlined in October, so that: 1. More serious long term studies can be

undertaken. 2. By retaining the provisional character of

the teaching arrangements already devised, the working groups should retain the flexibility necessary for them to adapt to the university system when occasion serves.

3 . A constant liaison should be maintained with the university, relevant courses there should be followed, and the level of teaching in UP 6 should not be allowed to revert to the old closed pattern.

4. The organisation of credits (Unites de valeur) should be sufficiently flexible to permit various graduations of study, from major to minor, obligatory, specialist and optional.

5. Each student should be able to determine the object of his own studies and to proceed towards that object by means of attendance at the university and work at UP 6 with his working group. Both to be interchangeable. These aims, spelt out in detail in

'ObJectifs des Etudiants et E'nsetgnants Architectes et Plasticiens Groupes autour de l'Appel du JOJanvier 1969', were based on the existence of the Centre Experimentale de Vincennes, a university department established the previous year for the study of environmental and urban problems in which most of the ex-ENSBA students who later formed UP 6 had enrolled during the autumn of 1968-when it seemed that ENSBA was not to reopen. Arrangements with Vincennes were of course not legitimised by the ex-ENSBA administration,

l . These are abstracts of lectures and books that ,ave been produced regularly since.

554

so course credits gained there were only usable in the then ambiguous context of UP 6. This arrangement did however serve as a bridgehead into the university system and was jealously guarded as such. The three two year cycles, out of which the six year course at all the UP's was constructed, was only adopted by UP 6 with the proviso that the fust cycle of two years should retain parity with courses at Vincennes so that students could in theory decide at the end of that time whether to continue their studies in architecture or at the university. The university issue, it will be remembered, originated in the control of architectural studies by the Ministry of Culture rather than the Ministry of Education (in English terms this roughly equates with the control of all schools of architecture by the historic buildings section of the Ministry of Works). The entire dispute over university integration was based on the ,ij1ndamentally different attitudes to architecture taken by the younger staff and students on the one hand, and the Minister of Culture on the other - particularly during the tir)1e when Andre Malraux held that office. A cartoon of the period showed an underling explaining to Malraux that the students of architecture were restive and wished to change their course structure. Malraux replies 'Architecture? But surely these things are eternal ... '

In response to the Ministerial initiative over the question of the precise role and status of teachers in the UP's, UP 6 f!llally proposed an unofficial Federation of Unites Pedagogiques for the purpose of homologating at least the first of the two year cycles so as to prevent the rebirth of competitive schools. Several Paris and provincial UPs joined this Federation which was to have some influence during the strike of November 1969.

"~y problem is to remain optimistic in a situation w1th no possible outcome." Caption to a cartoon of Bernard Huet.

September 1969 Formation of UP 8.

to the splitting off of a number of stude at~d teac~1ers who form a separate Unite nts Pedagog1que no 8. (No 7 having alread formed at the Grand Palais). The reas/ this split a.re not entirely clear, and rna~~ for contacts VJa working groups were maint · long after. Bernard Huet, who left with ~~ed b.reakaway group and now teaches at uP 8 giVeS the follow!llg explanation. '

·~ 6 was a latge unstructured grou , Its actions were spontaneous. Many orfts stud have chosen a revolutionary mode of Politi e~ts acti~n as a means ?f criticising convention~ arch.ttectural practice and l respect their mott~es, many ot!ters however continue their reacti?nary practice under the cloak of these

gauch1stes, as do many technocrats. The is filled with inconsistencies, that is whygroweup left.'

He later described the philosophy of uPS as follows.2

'We do not wish to be concerned with plannin social systems because that is a political 8 proble~ to be solved by politicians. What we ask forts a framework, defined by politics within which we can work.' ' Debate over the question of the political

value of architecture versus the architectural value of political action became prominent with the creation of UP 8. During the events of May the pol itical.impera tives within the school had been overwhelming. Now faced with a non-revolutionary situation the question of the social value. of architectural studies came to the fore.

October 2 1st 1969. First riot since May. Beginning of academic year 69/70. On

the 21st a fight between 100 ex-ENSBA students and the police develops over a demonstration held to coincide with the visit of a high government official to a nearby school. Carrying banners reading 'New Society: Old Repression' and 'Three deaths every day on building sites: this is bourgeois architecture,' the students are forced back into the courtyard of the ENSBA buildings. Entrenched behind their railings they throw missiles at the police, four of whom are injured. (Le Monde 23 Oct).

Students occupy the office of the Director of the Beaux-Arts for an emergency creche, October 1969.

October 23rd 1969. 'Creche Sauvage.' The first attempt to open the school to

the outside world and intervene in social crises. Noting that only nine children out of every thousand has a place in a creche in France, and claiming also that babysitting is a principal cause of poor attendance at

Second issue of EM '68 appears, containing reports from some working groups - others have not reported. The group has abandoned its permanent headquarters at 118 Rue de Ia Tombe lssoire as too expensive. Henceforth it wiU operate from the homes of members. In VP 6 itself disputes over the methods to be employed in resolving the conflict between social needs and the academic study of architecture lead 2. In conversation with the authors.

1 1 1re,, thirty students from UP 6 together e~tl th~: area Comlte d'Action occupy 1,000

w•ua1e feet of administration offices at the scqhool including the Director's office, s , . f ,,.,_. h s , declaring the opemng o a \.-,ec e auvage for students and children fr?m the. area. posters 1nvite mothers to brlllg thelf children, and part of the school garden is turned into a playground. The students demand that the school pays for t.he child rrunden;. The administration considers the matter and the Director moves to an adjoining offi~e. Fi~ally a permanent creche is established 10 a different part of the school. The attempt to integrate with the surrounding community is less successful.

November 1st, 1969. Exhibition destroyed M. Michelet, Minister of Culture since the

resignation of General de Gaulle and M. Malraux, opens an exhibition of plans and models of the new towns to be constructed around Paris as well as redevelopment projeots-in the centre. R~ga~din~ this exhibition as a provocatiOn Ill VIew of the undesirable consequences of redevelopment and the scandal of private sector responsibility for all new to~s, th~ students of UP 6 disrupt the proceed!llgs,which are taking place in the main courtyard of the school,and hurl the exhibits into the road. A few days later the commencement of the construction course at UP 6 reveals that only three staff are available for 400 students. Outrage at this leads to a strike being called which is joined by other UPs including some from the provinces.

November 17th 1969. 'Cours sauvage'. The Assemblee Generale delivers a

violent attack on the whole basis of architectual teaching under the new system. For a start the Ministry of Culture, disposing of less than 0.4% of the national budget, has responsibility for 6,000 students of architecture, which it clearly cannot afford. Furthermore the Malthusian selection system has created a situation where France has only about 8,000 architects (as opposed to 20,000 in Italy or Britain for an approximately similar population) and .entry is heavily biased against lower class aspuants. It can be clearly shown, they claim, that professional protectionism has a clos~ . connection with the inadequate prov1ston of housing in France.

'The liberal profession is a myth rather than a reality. Forty pet cent of the 200 practic~ in the country handle over half the work available. Only 22% of Architectes Dipl6mes par le Gouvernement are in practice for themselves; the remaining 78% are salaried worke~. The social origins of Beaux Arts students d1splay the bias built into the education system: only 6% are working class. 20% middle class, and 74% upper class. In order to find one architect of working class origin we must go through 147,500 workers. In order to find one architect of white collar origin we must go through 23,500 white collar workers. In order to find one architect who is the son of a manager we must go through 5,000 managers. In order to find one architect who is the son of a professional we need only go through 800 professionals. And in order to find one

The Ministry of Culture's exhibition of urbanism in the Paris region, destroyed in the courtyard of the school. November 1969.

architect who is the son of an architect, we by redevelopment. A pamphlet called 'Why? need only~ through 43. This is our liberal was published to clarify the real task that lay profession. . before UP 6.

We cannot seriously attempt to tram . Wh d f ·1· 'th hildren architects of any social value unless we cOf!SJder 1. Y O am1 Jes Wl young c the failures of current building policies, c.hietly and small incomes find it imposstble to those $0verning redevelopment and housmg. obtain homes? What ts at stake is not the survival of a . 2. Why does one have to wait for up to 10 profession but th~ state of the pe?ple of this years for HIM (roughly equivalent to country. To imaglne that we can unprove ~r ? own training as architects without denouncmg Council) accommodation . the scandal of present building policies is an 3. Why must the majority of workers illusion.' spend two or three hours per day From this point on, the AG endeavoured travelling to and from work?

to set the demands of studdents and t1eache

1rs 4. Why do poor families have to pay two

for an improved course an more re evan or three times more (in proportion to teaching into a political perspective going far their budget) for their housing, than do beyond student interests.J The probl~ms of rich families? inadequate budget, antiquated selectiOn, s. Why have two thirds of French houses competitive Diplomas, insufficient staff and neither a shower nor a bath? so on were to be viewed in the contexdt obf 6. Why do 15,000,000 French people live actual social crises, such as those pose Y in conditions of overcrowding? housing and the destruction of communities 7. Why are community services neither

constructed nor foreseen when suburban 3. Lcs Cahiers de Mai. No l 7.

555

Cours Sa~vage. The occupation of offices at the Ministry of !lousing: a poster following the arrest of 128 students who took part.

housing developments are planned? 8. Why does nursery school space exist for

only nine children in every thousand? 9. Why are the inhabitants of

redevelopment areas always rehoused in the suburbs, miles from their old community?

10. Why do 'efficient construction methods' cost the lives of three workers every day on the building sites of France?

11. Why are 70% of French construction workers immigrants who live in Bidonvilles or conditions of gross overcrowding?

12. Why has the government given responsibility for the construction of HLM dwellings, services and roads, entirely to the private sector?

13. Why have housing targets been reduced by I 00,000 units for 1970?

These are your problems as well as ours. We see them reflected in the absurdity of our education system and our process of selection. That is why we are on strike.

The effect of this new analysis was electric. It was decided almost immediately that the period of the strike should not be wasted and that 'A school on strike should not be an empty school.' The strike was reinterpreted as a detournement of the normal teaching programme: if there were not sufficient teachers to give lectures in the school, then the lectures would be held outside it, out in the real world where the evils the students wished to combat were to be found. At the same time 'lectures in the streets' would give them a chance to explain their case to the people, to demonstrate to them that they too shared their oppression,

to make contact with the people of Paris and to see with their own eyes the maladministration and speculation at the heart of bourgeois rule.

For the next few weeks, until the budget for UP 6 was increased and 50 more staff employed, thus ending the strike, the existing staff and students took their lecture courses in the streets and in public places. Lectures and demonstrations were held at the Louvre - at the foot of the Victory of Samothrace, at the headquarters of the Ordre des Architectes, at the Institute of Decorative Arts, at the Institute of Environmental Science, at the offices of Le Monde, at the UNESCO building, at the market in Belleville - a working class area in the process of redevelopment - and at the Offices of the Ministry of Services and Housing (Ministere d'Equipment et Logement). Hubert Tonka, professor of the history of urbanism at Vincennes held lectures on consumer society in one of the largest department stores in Paris. The following account is of the temporary occupation of the office of M. Chalandon, Minister of Housing, it is given by the lecturer who spoke at the time.

December 2nd 1969 An occupation. 'For the purposes of a lecture on the housing

problem we had decided to occupy one of the offices in the Ministry of Services and Housing for 45 minutes. We arrived at the office without incident; it was extremely luxurious, hung with tapestries and crystal chandeliers, its luxury is astounding. A voice says ''This is my office. What do you want?" "You'll see," we reply, and as the occupant hastily leaves we si t down , all 150 of us with all the usual banners plus a new one which reads "REGIONAL PLANNING = PARISIAN CANCER+ SLUMS+ THE DEPORTATION OF FARMERS." We had intended to stay for three quarters of an hour and hold three lectures, one on the recently approved standards for HLM housing which

required lifts only above six storeys instead of four, on the new smaller space standards and .. the permittin$ of north facing rooms; another on the conditions of immigrant workers in Bidonvilles; and a third on uncontrolled rents and property speculation. During the fust lecture we discover that we have been

··surrounded by police but they do not dare in terrupt until the lecture has ended. Then the officer in charge asks me if I am the tutor. I answer that I am, and am immediately pounced on by several policemen. Comrades attempt to defend me and the doors to the office are broken durin$ the ensuing fight. One hundred and twenty e1ght of us are arrested and taken in police vans to Beau jon where we are installed forty in each cell intended for twelve. Mter a time we are both cold and hungry; some more experienced comrades have prepared themselves by wearing warm clothes. Our morale is high. 4. Beaujon. Central Police station for interrogation. Much used during May 1968.

layout of Beaujon police station, showing time and motion study carried out by a student. Solid dots= Police. White dots = Students.

557

558 AD/9/71

we ask the police if it is bribery to ~-pi t on them. o response. We question them about Mmc

J'omp•dou and the Markovitch affair. Nothing doing. 'At one a.m. the traditional identification procedure takes place, we are checked against our papers and photographed. A comrade who was next to the smashed doors is recognised by a policeman. Hardly aware of his rights he signs a document and is charged with oreak.ing and entering. He is later released on bail.

'At 8.30 in the morning we are brought in groups of ten to the police station for questioning. We are asked to make a statement but since we have not contacted lawyers we refuse. At two o'clock in the afternoon we are asked more precise questions: who broke the doors? Who distributed leaflets; above all who wrote "Chalandon creve salope" on the wall of the office? We are also asked if we can identify photographs of people we have never seen before.

'At five o'clock I am asked if I am responsible for the occupation. I reply that it was decided upon by our Assembtee Gbzerale. At this very moment other comrades are negotiating at the Ministry of Culture to bring an end to the strike. As soon as they hear of our plight they refuse to negotiate further until we are freed. At six o'clock we are released, except for the ccSmfade who was charged - he is released later.' Les Cahiers de Mai no 19.

December 5th 1969. Belleville. Concurrent with the occupation of

Ministry offices, the cours sauvage at Belleville also ended in arrest. On three successive Fridays, UP 6 students and staff had met in the open market at Belleville, fratemising with the inhabitants and offering their aid in combating eviction orders, compulsory purchase and removal to distant suburbs. They carried banners and distributed leaflets which explained the rights of the inhabitants under law - they also attempted to explain their own predicament, their strike, and what they wanted to achieve. The attitude of people in the market was at first one of resignation and sympathy tinged with a patronising concern for the 'Daddies boys'. On the last morning eight police buses were waiting by the entrance to Metro Menilmontant. Fifteen students are arrested as soon as they reach pavement level, the rest after they have spent fifteen minutes in the market. Some local sympathy is aroused by this process. In all 80 students are searched, put in police buses and released some hours later - each having been fmed for disturbing the peace. The demands for fmes are collected and delivered to the Director of the Beaux-Arts - the students having resolved not to pay them. Operations in Belleville continue afterward on a different basis, small groups working from door to door.

Two factors helped to end these cours sauvages; first the Ministry agreement to the enlisting of another fifty staff for UP 6 -the strike consequently did not outlast the Christmas vacation. Second the attrition involved in continual encounters with the P?lice had begun to take its toll, both duectly of the most courageous, and subtly of the more timid - to whom the diploma was still a matter of great importance, although they affected to despise it. For the

THE GAUCHISTE GROUPS

THE TROTSKYITES

I. The 'Ligue Communiste. French section of IV International. Leaders in the communist committees at the University. Alms to establish Links with students. Does not believe in university strategy, but only university tactics within the university. Publishes the newspaper 'Rouge'. Their leader was candidate at the Presidential Elections in 1969. Joint actions with the United Socialist Party.

2 . Socialist Youth Alliance (A.J.S.) Breakaway group of the IV International. Operates mainly within the unions. Newspaper 'Jeune R evolution.aire :

3. Revolutionary Marxist Alliance A ' Pablist' group, (based on interests of immigrant worker population). Oriented towards Third World as source of rcvolu tionary impulse.

4. Lutte Ouvriere (L.O.) Beliefs on the same lines as Ligue Communiste but differing over their respective analyses of the nature of the Socialist state.

THE MAOISTS

I . La Gauche Proletarienne (G.P.) Paper 'La Cause du Peuple' Main activity towards the workers sector. Fight against the French Communist Party, who they accuse of following a policy of class .•. • collaboration. With the intensification of the Student struggle in Europe, their tendencies are more determined by spontaneous pressures of their environment than by their ideological link with the politics of the Chinese Communist Party. Dissolved by the Ministere de I'Interieur.

Uiif POll SP

UN MDNDE

......

NOUVEAU 3. L 'Humanite Rouge. Devoted to bringing

about unity of workers and students. Grouped around newspaper 'L 'Humonite Rouge'.

THE ANARCHISTS

Not specifically organized. do not believe in setting up specific groups. Linked with the 'lnternationale Situationiste:

Nixon's visit celebrated by students of UP6... Feb'69

559

I

•

militants however cours 'ilJUI'agc l:Ould be rep resented as a trnunph By l:rcating an apparently random 111cidcnt every day the students were able to guarantee media coverage as well as a certain amount of police discomfiture, furthermore the issues about which they were protesting could scarcely escape public notice. Above all they had succeeded in carrying their contestation into the public arena and out of the confines of the school.

The effectiveness of their operations in specific redevelopment areas such as Belleville was more doubtful which is to say that the people whom they had intended to help still remained at the mercy of the rehousing programme. For this reason, as we have seen, increasing emphasis came to be laid on the activities of small groups often working under the local Comites d'Action (founded dtiring the May events) or in association with Secours Rouge (an organisation founded in November 1969 to carry out activities similar to those organised in Britain by SHELTER, RELEASE and other more militant community action groups).

January 1970. L' Affaire Le Dantee. Le Dantec, ~n a'rchitect and teacher at UP

6 had been for some time a member of the left wing organisation 'La Gauche Pro/etarienne', a group chiefly known for its publication 'La Cause du Peup/e', and its connection with Jean-Paul Sartre. 'La Gauche Pro/etarienne' became a proscribed organisation during 1969, a measure intended to effectively muzzle 'La Cause du Peuple' since censorship by prior restraint is not practised in France. This aim was not achieved, but a consequence of the proscription of the organisation was that its acknowledged leaders were not allowed to consort together in future. Lc Dantec, Director of 'La Cause du Peup/e '. contravened this condition was arrested and charged with 'incitement to crime. murder, pillage and incendiarism.' His arrest ~nd sentence to one year of imprisonment caused uproar and indignation at UP 6. Le Dantec's friend and political ally Jean-Claude Vernier was immediately taken onto the staff in his place an event which was to have consequences one year later.

February 1970. Info Logement. UP 6 begins to operate a citizens' advice

bureau for information on housing matters

560 AD/9/71

every Saturday. Posters request the public to come ak1ng with thc1r housmg problems

May 1970. Visits to Building Sites. Vernier, Le Dantec's replacement during

his absence in La Sante prison. organises· visits to major building sites in the Paris area - notably at Maine Montpamasse. There the students observe the grotesque contrast between the site facilities-installed for the management and the equivalent huts provided for U1e workers: they arrange a display of posters on the site drawing attention to the disparity in luxury. At once permanent ~ite visiting rights are removed. Visits are forced down to one a week, then half an hour a month, then finally canceUed altogether.

May 15th 1970. La Maison du Peuple. Although carried out six months after the

beginning of cours Sauvage, the construction of the community centre in the Rue de Fosse aux Astres at Villeneuve Ia Garenne represents the most charismatic achievement of the students of UP 6 in adapting their own studies to serve new social purposes. By means of a detournement of the conventional construction exercise they were able to convert the building or a roof for a delapidated barn into an act which brought the attention of the French press to the appalling conditions in which immigrant workers live. More than that, they were able six months later to force the authorities to demolish an operational community centre in full view of press and television cameras. The following account is taken from a pamphlet issued by a combined committee of the local Comite d'Action and the students of UP 6.

'Since 1964 Portuguese immigrant workers have been living in a bidonville in the northern suburb of Villeneuve Ia Garenne in extremely deprived conditions. Since 1968 Ole local administration has been attempting to fo rce them to leave the district by harrassment without offering any alternative accommodation. Last November tJ•ey bulldozed five of the dwellings and rehoused t11e inhabitants in hostels lacking inside toilets, showers, heating or visiting facilities. Since t11en, despite some local protest, nothing has happened apart from t11e continued construction of new housing - aU of which is too expensive for the workers to afford.

' In order to improve their own lot the immigrants had been pressing for some time for pennission to use an unoccupied barn on some adjoining land. The authoriti~ utd not even reply to their requests. At this point students of the ex-ENSBA UP 6, together with the local· Comite d'Action resolved to complete the partial roof of the barn and equip it as a community centre with facilities for child-minding and 'olplwbetisotion'. Neither the walls nor the site belonged to us, nor did we possess the resources to purchase the building materials necessary for completion of the roof. But we were confident that the needs o f the immigrants constituted their own legality. We did not bother to ask pennission because we knew it would be refused: the building mat.erials we obtained by ordering t11em through the school for a construction exercise and t11en transporting them to t11e ~ite. Two hours after we began work, the police arrived and t11e mayor was reportedly ready to order bulldozers in to demolish t11e building. lie did not. Today

VWeneuve-la-Garenne: building and demolition.

t11e sixteen families of workers who still Live in the bidonville use the barn as a playroom for their kids. Their parents' use it as a meeting room and we hold information group discussions there, explaining to them how they can combat the injustices which 01ey endure in their daily life, fake salary slips, illegal dismissal and so on.'

On November 6th 1970, at 2.30 pm when everyone was at work, a bulldozer guarded by police demolished the community centre. The reason given was that the owner of the land on which it had stood had threatened to sue the local authority for permitting trespass. In an article entitled 'Who are the destroyers? the Nouvelle Observateur for November 1970 commented on the fact that the left wing groups who had constructed the building - called by the press 'destroyers' (casseurs) - had with some justice written on the wall of one of the ·adjoining apartment buildings after the demolition MAYOR+ POLICE= DESTROYERS.

On the 8th November eight people were arrested for distributing pamphlets in the area criticising the actions of the Mayor.

:'ON" RASE

Ia maison du peuple

"ON" AUG~lENTE

les lo~er5

~y EN A MARREI Two posters produced after the demolition of Villeneuve-la-Garenne.

.LES HAUTS PLATEAUX · I ou S I~OrtS a il r pcherchr .., V. rr~am pour une 1 yc"'€:,, e

October 1970. La recuperation. With the beginning of the Jcademic year

llJ70/7l. lundamental breaks began to oct:ur m the hitherto united front presented by the students of UP6 now swollen to nearly I ,400 in number. Amongst the more militant the concept of architecture for the people seemed increasingly to lead away from the study of architecture at all. Intensified connections with local Comites d'Action and organisations such as Secours Rouge, together with the apparent political success of social interventions such as Villeneuve Ia Garenne, increased their conviction that only direct social changes could pave the way for a proletarian architecture. Patience with the complex ideas o r detournement began to wear thin, and the microscopic analysis of the social impact or spaces themselves - as practised by Lefebvre and the staff and students of UP 8 had long since been written off as 'an old modernism, but more snobbish for the elite of the left '.5 At such a time the app~rent collapse of the resolve of the teaching staff seemed a typical but still bitter blow. After holdjng out against the Ministerial interpretation of UP course structure for nearly two years, the staff ­fearful of a rumoured closure of UP 6 as a reprisal for the excesses of cours sauvage put forward proposals for the rationalisation of instruction which involved increased emphasis on scientific and technical knowledge at the expense of ideological • purity. llenceforth projects carried out by working groups were to be supervised by multi-disciplinary teams of architects. geographers. economists, sociologists and planners. Irrespective of their effect upon the students many of whom were only too willing to return to a more established framework these changes had the effect of strengthening the intellectual credibility of the staff, whilst at the same time sacrificing much of the Oexibility which had been so passionately defended two years before. As a consequence a new polarisation began to develop in UP6; the militants grew more violent and the passives more technocratic. The principal casualty was the sense of adventurous possibility which had hitlle(to held together the heterogeneous mass, fled by I luet and the students of UP8 a year before. Criticising the behaviour of the staff a working group of students warned:

'Under the pretext of preventing the Ministiy from closing UP6 these measures in fact only presage a return to the teaching methods so heavily criticised in 1968 and before. The more various the credits awarded within the UP become, the less chance will there be of developing parity, and eventual integration, . with the univer~ity system. The value of a cred1t (unite de l'oleur) will become the basis of the system - and that credit will be useless outside the Beau' Arts. All this talk of different disciplines really only means the accretion of bodies of isolated knowledge which never subject their contradictions to outside criticism through consultation or debate. Alienation can be the only result o f this process.'

s. Comite d'A ction: A rchiteccure, 'Plate-form de • Lutte '69/'70,' Novembre I 969

' If ~ome group' insist tha t Ole purpo..e of L'Pfi is as a profc~sional training centre for ardutcl'fural office worker~. a nucleus for contac t with the trades union movement, an infonnation centre for professionals: others are equally detennmcd that it should be a base for intervention in actual ~cial crises, for collaboration with community gJOups, Comites d 'Action, legal and social aid centres. That its working groups should study the realities of the economic and political proccs_..es t11at generate t11e built environment from the standpoint of the users, the worker~. the people.'

Lyceens' hunger strike over political privileges prison.

January 1971. Hunger Strike. Vernier hunger strikes in support of

students imprisoned without political prisoners rights. His strike lasts 25 days - he takes two days to recover. Wall notices appear at ENSBA reading 'We want guy~ like Vernier who reveal the truth: not guys like Faugeron who will do anything to hide jt.'

January 1971. Release of Le Dantec - the man in a glass booth.

Even as the technocratic backlash against the spirit of cours sauvage gained strength, the release or Le Dantec from prison brought about another emotional crisis: Vernier who had taken Lc Dantec's post after th~ latter's arrest. found that his temporary contract was not renewed as soon as Lc Dan tee's return was assured. News of this roused the student body to a fury, representations to the Director being o~ no avail, they bricked up the entrance to hlS office and finally chained the assistant Director M. Bourdale-Dufau inside the booth reserved for the operative of the vehicle entry barrier at the main gate of the school. Locked in for two hours he was fed a number of tracts and copies of the revolutionary newspaper 'TOUT' to read. Slogans were sprayed on the glass whilst he was inside. Appending to this action the justification that 'he should learn to do the

561

job of a worker', the students obta i1~ed the reinstatement of Vernier; hut one of thetr number - an editor of TOUT was later charged with assault on a civil servant.

February 1971. 'Mon Diplome! Gasp.' Filled with contempt at the craven

fashion with which the majority of students seemed to be reverting to the pre· '68 pursuit of a Diploma, at whatever cost in self respect, person or persons unknown set fire to the UP 6 records office. Most of the documents relating to credits and assessments were destroyed, giving rise to the circulation of a Donald Duck poster and a cartoon strip satirising the terror of the ambitious that their Diplomas might elude them after all.

February 1971 . La Majson du Peuple. II. In the depths of this climate of

schadenfreude and profound gloom, a working group of students resolved to produce a newspaper devoted solely to housing, employment and environmental issues affecting the social victims of bourgeois society. Taking the name 'La Maison du Peuple' for its reference to Villeneuve Ia Garenne as well as its ironic reference to 'La Maison de Marie-Claire' the middle-<:lass women's consumer magazine, this group circularised their intentions and endeavoured to raise money for publication. Their request reflects much of the increased desperation and reduced confidence of those who had, as Anatole Kopp observed6 , attempted to re-ignite the events of May every morning since, and failed.

Monsieur, You know as well as we do that it is useless

to try to overcome the absurdity of the old world solely by means of shitty little pamphlets. That is why we have decided to divert our forces to the home front, to the streets and houses of our ci tles, and there to use every possible means to resist the overwhelming propaganda put forward in the in terests of the bourgeoisie by such specialist magazines as L 'Architecture d'Aujourd'lwi and Urbanisme, but above aU by La Maison de Marie-Claire, t elevision, and the special correspondents of the national press.

What we propose to do is indeed ambitious, but its ambition corresponds to the value of t11e goal we have aU sought since May: a new world.

We are ready to hurl ourselves into this struggle but we need the means to do it. We needto be able to avoid gauchiste navel-gazing as well as affiliation with present political parties if we are to produce a journal capable of reaching those people who are concerned about the role of the built enviionmcnt in everyday life.

You are yourself in the service of capi tal, of the bourgeoisie. We do not say this in any spirit of moral condemnation, merely to state an objective fact because it means that you are able to aid us correspondingly: by means of money, as a mark of your commitment to the cause of the people.'

Accompanying 1h1s letter was a brief description of the reasons for the action they proposed to take

fn Pompidou's France, in Pompidou's Euiope, flourishing, wallo ing in capital,

6. In conversation with the authors. Anatole Kopp.

562 A D/9/71

The Assistant Director of the Beaux-Arts chained in a glass booth.

• • • "A t iny spark has burnt all my accumulated marks!" (with apologies to Chairman Mao). The car toon depicts the despair of the ambitious who have been secretly gloating over the prospect of a diploma.

society is dy ing o f its own environmcn t. The chronic shortage of housing has now been jomcd by more profound environmental .:ri~~. overwhelming traffic, poisoned air, polluted water. Like the capitalist system the capitalist environment is doomed .. .'

As well as a list of headings under which articles would appear

Housing, re<fevelopment, bidonvilles, offices and factories, building industzy, urban planning and the misuse of public space, reviews and criticisms, schools of arch.itecture (comment poser 1m probteme aussi [oireux ?) , and an information service of useful addresses and groups.

By May 1971 the impossibility of raising money and some disputes about editorial policy had prevented the project from advancing any further. It was then hoped to start the paper in the autumn of 1971. The group re-directed their attention towards financing the construction of a new permanent creche at the schooL

March 1971 !fn/o· Logement' and the group 'Col/ectif

Logement' (the latter having produced an admirably detailed survey of the history of housing in France and the present operation of housing policy 7 ) join Secours Rouge and move their base away from UP6. They begin to engage themselves more directly in community action in areas threatened by redevelopment or demolition and change of usc.

May 1971. Report on conditions of site workers.

The Vernier visits resume on different sites and 18 of his 70 students take jobs as unskilled labourers at Belleville and Defense. They begin a study of the hierarchy and division of labour on the site, intending to present a report questioning technocratic theories of machine use at the opening of the 1971/72 session. 'The site is organised in relation to machines rather than workmen.' !Jleir report will also discuss the political Importance of students working as unskilled labourers in order to foster links with the workers themselves. Finally they will try to relate a new form of architectural curriculum to the human realities of building construction. 'Let's get rid of this insane teaching about space, this play which has nothing to .do with reality. From now on the

Y 9 C7 ollectif Logement, Secours Rouge. Paris. March I .

building ~itcs wtll bt• lh(• core of milll.tnl wor~ 11 liP(l.'

June 22nd 1971. Community action in the XII arrondissement.

A group of UP6 students working in conJunction with a local Comite d'Action have called a public meeting to discuss the course of redevelopment in the area. The meeting is held in the crypt of a modern church no other community hall is avatlable and the priest is sympathetic to the students - about ISO inhabitants of the area , mostly women, have arrived at the appointed time.

took thcu l'11ildren to our precious "park" then we would be ahh.' to 'e<' just how much open space we really have been given.'

Applause. 'If next Thursday those same mothers took

their children to the creche ·t11ere would be a queue a mile long!'

'If ~v~ did somctJ1ing like that each week then the Mamster would remember who it was that wrote to him!'

Prolonged applause. 'By God we'd have 1,000 mothers in the

criclle , 500 kids in the park, 2,000 kids in the scrap-yards .. .'

'Violence never solves any ... ' breaks in a C?IJncillor for the district, but laughter drowns htS words. The man goes on to advocate occupy•ng the neighbouring scrap-yards and turning them into playgrounds.'

The equipment ancludes posters, which explain the recent history of the district, and Interventions such as this were being banners with slogans. There is also a film carried out in several areas this summer by projector, tape recorder and multiple slide students of UP6;just as other students and projectors. The posters reveal that the ff redevelopment plan of 19S9 promised the sta were planning the 'reconquest of the construction of 1,400 new flats to replace the city' by repossessing open spaces such as the I ,700 desttoyed. In fact only 171 families out banks of the Seine now cut off more and of I ,270 have been rehoused in the area - the more by urban motorways. At the same time rcs.t !~ave been obli~d to move elsewhere. . the pursuit of objective knowledge in the EvactJon comP.ensation was lOOFr per dweUmg. r f 1 · I' · I' h · Slogans read Who runs your quarter, them or 10rm o_ mu tH tSCtp mary tee mgue also you?', 'What are we offering our children?' 'Better makes mroads, as does the analysts of urban a scrap-yard than a lawn you're not allowed to space itself. The cours sauvages, occupations walk on ' · · d d' f '

The 'ceti' b . 'th . It fiilm mtervent10ns an spora tc protests o the m ng egms WI sunu aneous , miJ't t f UP6 b f

slides and sound track; children are seen playing I an s 0 . arc u_t one aspect o the happily amongst crumbling houses, the former struggle whtch began wtth years of despair life of the area with craftsmen a~ work in small over a monstrously outdated, Malthusian workshops _around_ co~ards, buds and education system· became cn~stallised by the flowers, children sangang. Then bulldozers f ' · 'J • •

appear and demolition begins, voices edited events o May 1968, and IS now mamtamed from actual conversations with the inhabitants. • as much by the fear of a monstrously say thinft like 'Where are the old people going inhuman future in which Its protagonists t? go?'' t's a rat, ~e squashed it in _the door - as would have no place as by the dream of a b1~ as a cat, the children were sleepang.' Next a . h' . vo1ce over gives facts and statistics 'Officially new world m w 1ch It would be you will get a two roomed flat for eight people,' unneccessary a plan is shown, the slides begin to change more At I he time of writing the future of the slowly. The move to the suburbs. A voice Tt d f UP 6 h h intones 'Two to three hours travel a day just to rru I ant stu ents o angs in t e get to work.' 'The young tzy to adapt, for the balance. They are now reduced to three old it is a tragedy.' small working groups; the first centred

Now slides of the area, people laugh as they around Le Dantcc and Vernier's recognise themselves or their colleagues; construction seminar (whose students are snatches of taped conversation, self-eonscious, angry, denouncing the system, their wasted working as labourers on building sites), the lives. A crescendo of sound, endless distorting second composed of the group who corridors in soulless blocks of flats form a attempted to start tllC maga;ine 'La Maison haJiucinatory final image. du Peup/e ';and the third a new audio-visual

Lights. A militant springs up. 'Now you have unit responsible for the fiilms and slide seen. What do you think?' After a time several speak, they arc all concerned, they must have displays used in in tcrven lions of the type another meeting, form a committee, attack described above. Seen ting the weakness of spccitic problems. 'Is this meeting to defend the once all powerful AG, the administration t11ose who have been rehoused or those who have not been rehoused? How many here have now threatens to dismiss Lc Dantec, Vernier not been rehoused?' and most of the part time staff appointed at

Silence. the time of the 1969 strike. The new 'Then why are you all here?' From above M' · t f C 1 t M D h I · t d

comes the sound of the church choir. The tnls er o u urc . u ame IS expec e meeting assumes the aspect of a clandestine to take a stronger line with rebellious Christian gathering in the catacombs. The fifty students than either of his two predecessors, year old representative of the tenants and the demands of October 8th 1969 and association talks of contracts with the April 19th 1969 may now be further away govemmen t - he is greeted with cackles from from achievement than ever. old women - the discussion grows more r,olitical until an architectural student shouts The tide of events however runs in their Let'~ not worry about politics, let's wony favour. The social evils they attacked are real

about action.' and are worsening, and the prise de 'What solutions have you got then?' 'We brought 3 case, not a solution.' The conscience of the revolutionary student is

audience is getting very involved. ' If we're going printed onto our time. fn the end there will to do something for our kids we need tQ pick up be no alternative for the administrations, the a shovel, not a petition. I want to look after my ministries, the vovernments of the world but own in terests, not hand them over to someone 0

else. Forget about 300 signatures, get 300 to listen. people and take them along to the l\Unister. The road of excess leads to the palace of That would be something,' Laughter, applause. wisdom and it is the only one that does.

' If next Thursday al l the mothers in this area Blake.

/ ,

~~ff~:f. f'ol.lll.,..oliS' l 01 l..EGPLITf <'e.n l ll S,.,,.,f',..<.T•oN I~"I'E ~lATE I>IS 8t'SoiOS .-i,t$ •'-' PE. 0 f'(.E

' o~ONS PRENDRE CE C(}Ori ..

ARCHITECTURE VERSUS POLITICS

'As we were walking, my wife and I , we saw from afar a squatting man making incomprehensible movements- a madman. As we walked closer, we noticed that this man was sharpening a knife on the edge of the pavement.'

Leo Tolstoy - as quoted on a wall at the Beaux-Arts.

If effective political action is impossible without some understanding of the contradictions which exist in contemporary society I ; then just such a contradiction that of the bourgeois university - lies at the heart of the student revolt. French universities have, dunng the last decade undergone an immense expansion, and a partial result of that expansion has been the unpalatable fact that the degree, once a passport not only to a job, but also the privileges of an elite position in society, has

1. Andre Glucksmann, Srrategif' et Revolution en France. 1968

564 AD/9/71

NOUS f\EF'US ~ L~ C .. A,"l"iEA ~~VII'~t

FoSJLJIIJJ( A!!RES

"Dare to take what they won't give you."

now become a qualification incapable of guaranteeing either.2 l t is in this paradox that student insurrection has found its practical justification; its theoretical aims however require it to go beyond this position, to integrate itself into a broader revolutionary movement by forging Jinks with the embattled working classes and becoming co-belligerents with them. For th1s reason student dissatisfaction docs not cease with its opposition to elitism within the university, it goes on to question the social division of labour; the origin of all elitism. This process can be clearly seen in the activities of some of the students of Unite Pedagogique No 6, ex-ENSBA, Paris.

Destruction versus detournement. These students, unlike many in the

university (who sought principally to gain control of their faculties so as to redirect them according to party political objectives),

2. Andre Gorz, Les Temps Modemes. Nov. 1970

began instead to rebel against their probable fate as architects - 'guard dogs of the bourgeoisie' - and to choose between the destruction of the institution within which 'guard dogs' were trained, and the subversion of the aims of the institution whilst maintaining it in existence. The first alternative was followed for a time: 'Destroy the University' was a popular slogan both during and after the May events; the statues at the old Beaux-Arts were toppled by the old regime. But to some extent also the second alternative triumphed in the end. To close the school utterly and completely ~s to destroy any real possibility of systematiC analysis and critique, there was stiU ~uch that the school could do as an analytical tool for the study of the real process of construction of the built environment - not as an alibi for bourgeois involvement in it but as an exposition of the repression and injustice at the very heart of the proce~s d which architects had hitherto been trrune

1 ) manipulate. Detournement of this kind •rmed the basis of much of the action

~.-arried out by UP6. The 'fn[o-Logement' report on housing, the idea for the newspaper 'La Maison du Peuple' (intended as a counterpart to La Maison de Marie-Qaire), the subversion of construction exercises by operations such as Villeneuve>la-Garenne - all represented skilful means of keeping the school in being whilst changing the meaning of its curriculum.

Real objective versus clever feint. 'Contestation: the state of continual

confrontation and debate, 'is in itself constructive ; it creates conditions in which political life is possible.' So wrote Glucksmann in Strategie et Revolution 3, and his words have been echoed by more than one UP6 student who has made a life out of such conflict in the belief that it will inevitably lead to revolution. 'When one is figh ting one cannot at the same time weQke~t. '.Yet Hubert Tonka - professor of urbanism at the experimental university of Vincennes - doubts the ultimate credibility of a detournement such as that practised at Villeneuve-la-Garenne in the context of the great revolutionary struggle which the students have essayed to join.

'To use a military analogy,' he explains4, 'Villeneuve>la-Garenne and the plight of the working classes are a clever feint, not a real attack on a real objective. The real objective is within the university, within the experience of the student-s themselves'. Yet Tonka withholds his final judgement ; 'A few intellectuals arrive with bricks and construct a small building for immigrants, socially the action is useless because it is done for and ·not with the population of the area. But politically it does succeed, it displays the oppression of the oppressed, the immigrants become conscious of class realities, of their position vis-a-vis the capitalist system.'

The students themselves see Villeneuve-la-Garenne as a myth - a distorted representation of reality in which the collective for an instant recognises itself. Whether the immigrant workers or the students of UP6 benefit most from this process is immaterial, 'The primordial value of an act of revolt resides in its spiritual liberation of the oppressed.'S Such myths are necessary to all revolutionaries in order to sustain them in their trials.

Rival ideologies If we temporarily disregard Tonka's

suggestion that the operations of cours sauvages are but clever feints, it becomes necessary to relate them to revolutionary theories such as rose to prominence during ~ay 1968. These theories are of great mterest because they extend beyond the point of seizure of power, in their concentration upon the theory of 'contestation' or struggle. After May, actions

3. Glucksmann, op. cit. 4. Hubert Tonka, in conversation with the authors. S. Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth.. 1958

became subject to reinterpretation; manifestatio ns became mere performances, revolutionary thought mere information to be homogenized by mass media. At this point the development of the technique of random action assumed great importance. The cours sauvages, in their unpredictable, symbolic intervention penetrated the media blanket ; they attacked not only the ministry but also public apathy over the environmental crises they pointed up; they gave the students a new (and much needed) consciousness of what was possible. 'Mastery of content, fonn and conununication constitute the essentials of a tactic that must shock in order to gain attention and gather support to ensure the growth of an idea.'6

The importance of a barricade does not lie in its being a traffic hindrance, but in its power to reveal the violence of the regime through being also a symbol and a catalyst. Concentration on this theoretical understanding o f revolutionary action always leads to the fonnation of factions, and the case of UP6 is no exception. Representatives of one group (or 'Groupuscule', as small groups are called after the famous L 'Humonite jibe of May 2nd 1968) constantly emphastse their differences from other groups. First come those subject to the Leninist theory that 'Political class-consciousness can only be brought to the workers from outside, that is to say from outside the sphere of relations within which workers and employers interract. '7 Thus UP6 students work in fac tories and ~ve in slums, trying to bring about just such a class-consciousness. The next group has faith in the self-representation of popular will. As Trotsky wrote: 'On one side we have a party which thinks [or the proletariat, which politically substitutes itself for it; on the other a p arty which politically educates it and mobi/ises it in order that it may exercise its own pressure on the will of all groups and parties. •8 Both these attitudes are present in those actions ofUP6 epitomised by Villeneuve-la-Garenne, as is a third, a Maoist belief in a 'spontaneous upsurge' of the popular will. Beyond all these positions lies the almost William Morris stance taken by one of the putative editors of lA Maison du

.Peuple, who observed. 'It is impossible to stop capitalism, so it is p ointless to struggle for industrialisation at all: we should concentrate on marginal p roduction, by people for themselves. ' Recognition of these divisions should not however obscure the remarkable unity of effect that has obtained since 1968: today the architectural student endeavours to engage in the dialogue of international political life - instead of passively accepting its conclusions. Possessed of this enquiring confidence, students have discovered new forms of action and social forces hitherto unrevealed; more importantly they have resisted the tendency of revolutionary movements to ossify and

6. Glucksmann, op. cit. 7. Lenin, 'What Is to be done, • 1902 8. Leon Trotsky, Our political tasks, 1 904

duplica te the bur ea uc1,rcy of the sy~tem they daun to opposl'.q l hC) fL 1IO\\ Glucksmann in ltis assessment of the ro le of the movement in hais1ng between d1screte Comites d'Action, each able to exploit a local advantage such as has begun to be revealed in the rcdcvl'!opment areas of the XII arrondisscmem. Dunkerquc and Ulle.

The Comites d'Action themselves have developed in embryo new socwl structures and relationships w1thin the cxtstmg structure, much as rc~istance networks developed during the war11me occupation. This has enabled them to challenge at many levels, thus avoiding the danger of bourgeois society assimilating isolated cconom1c or political activities which in unison might achieve considerable gains.9 Such flexibility has not however been achieved at UP6; partly because many militant students already belong to political organisations outside the school, they have always been obliged to use their speciality, the1r expertise, when operating within or from it. Collectif Logement and Villencuve-la-Garenne represent classic approaches-to-the-people with the aid of specialist skms. The students of UP6 share the Comite d'Action understanding of the importance of acting on many levels simultaneously; but mcrcasingly they find it un~ossiblc to do this without sacrificing therr own speciality into the bargain. Within ~he specificity of the Construction Industry

·· ihterventions can be carried out with flexibility outside it this tlcxibility ts doubly necessary particularly as 'part of the future of UP6 lies in the actions of the Lyceens. •t 0

Political space versus the specificity of architecture.

Three postures have emerged m response to this apparent weakness beyond the specialist area. The first holds that space has a political meaning, and thus that space can be conceived as a socialist product as distinct from a bourgeois one. The second denies this and thus moves steadily away from the speciality of architecture itself into direct political action. A third holds that an analysis of the building process in terms of the class struggle will clarify the question; without such an analysis the matter cannot be clearly understood. Hcnn Lefebvre, an exponent of the first hypothesis. maintains that: 'Space is not a scientifically measurable quantity which has been detoume by ideology or by politics, it has always been political and strategic in itself. If a space loo ks neutral, indifferent to its contents, therefore 'purely fonnal', abstract in a rational sense, it is because it is already occupied, organised, already the object of old or lost strategies. Space is produced from historical or natural elements, it is always political and idcologicaJ.'ll

9. Jean-Pierre Vigier , Thf' action committees. Reflections on the Revolution in France: 1968, Pelican 10. Candilis, in conversalion with the authors l J. Henri Lefebvre, 'Rel1exiuns sur lc Politiq uc de

565

Students at UPS often go beyond even this position: they consider space n<?t merely as a social product but even as a soctal accelerator, a tool capable o f speeding up social tendencies o f o ne kind or another: 'We say that space has a certain influen~ on social behaviour, it does no t transform tt , but it does act upo n it in such a way that we as architects can perhaps make possible certain unspecified and unexpected possibilities through the spaces we design.' 12 This expression may in itself be the last attenuated cry o f the theory of archit~cture for the people, such as is to be fo~~d 10 Melnikov and the other constructivists who strove to make out of socialist art 'an instrument of social transformation, a revolutionary tool, a means to transform the relationship between the individual and society by means of generating a new . lifestyle, new environmen~ and, new pnvate and public codes of behavlOur. 13

Groups such as 'Utopie' reject this hypothesis utterly. T hey main~ain that even if the technical aspects of architecture are abstracted, still architecture in itself is never political, neither can proble~s be solved or social goals achieved by architectural means, or indeed by means of space at al~. W.hether it expresses bourgeois or proletanan mterests architecture has always been linked to social repression because it remains external to the quotidian experience of people.

'There are many problems which are not clarified at all by the militancy of UP6. If the newspaper 'La Maison du Peuple' is meant to be a proletarian equivalent to. 'La Maison de Marie-Claire' then it stiU represents only an undercapitalised attempt to use the methods of the bourgeoisie against itself. It is in any case~ political error: there is no spe,cific archttecture for the people, all architectu~e is for the ~eople. There is no proletarian sctence, there ts no bourgeois science. No one has e~er shown me what is specifically bou rgeo1s about the plan of a bourgeois house. . .

'Two tendencies are developmg at UP6. on the one hand, o utside organisations like Secours Rouge to which many UP6 ~tudents belong, try hard in the field of ~ousmg to help people reduce their exto~t10nate. rents, fight eviction etc. They do ~his by usmg t~e law. Now the idea of studymg law and usmg it does not seem bad in itself; but no architectural training is necessary at all . As at BelleviUe, what started out as a protest over the environment ended as an attempt tc save old people. Now l have no objection to that - but one does not need to be an architect to do it.

'The opposite tendency is to be seen amongst those of the staff and. studen~s at UP6 who, growing old or cauttous, stnv~ to produce an 'architectur~ fo r the peopl.e. Villeneuve-la-Garenne lies at the meetmg point of these two tendencies. In the future I think we shall see an extension of both. Political acts involving building - for

12 Bernard Huet in conversation with the authors 13: Anatole Kopp, Espaces et Societes, Novembre 1970

566 AD/9/71

t. ES VIE.fJ1 sow'11'0IIS C>lS c.oiiS !

. ? co~rltc ~111 •

• I c hr PI!S lET(·

mstance erecting buildings for the people on pnvate or ~tate property but there the spec1ficity of the action w~l be in the seizure of the land, not in the destgn of what is built. Also increasing efforts to prove that

.·certain buildings or designs are political, or 'for the people', by means of more and more signs and 'explanations' t<? tha~ effect. Both attempts are hopeless; to lffiagme - as do some at the Beaux-Arts - that it is possible to act politically through urbanism, archjtecture, or the detoumement of either is a dream.' 14

The last of the three stances mentioned at the beginning of this sec tion concerns the rediscovery of the social repression which ex ists within the building process by means of direct experience. This programme, presently being carried out by students in the Vernier, Le Dantec group has resulted in much political activity on building sites, in attempts to generalise the realities o f the workers' approach to building, and in experimental course structures utilising the knowledge thus gained. Here is no dream, and the proletarianisation of the profession foreseen by Lefebvre l5 becomes a reality.

Order versus disorder

The principle of detoumement, which has run as a leitmotif through the present article, is important in that by subverting the end instead of the means, it turns the fmal pro duct into a powerful ~gent of ~hange. Each o f the actions descnbed earlier effectively challenges societies' capacity to 'control unknown threats by eliminating the possibility of experienc~ng su~ris~s . .. By taming the paths of soctal actions. 16 Through actions such as Villeneuvre or cours sauvage 'the replanning of a transcen.den! order of living that is immune to vanety 17 is rendered impossible.

Beyond their role in the relief o~ obvious social evils such actions tend to bnng about an upheav~l in the division of labour itself. The clever feint becomes an integral part of the real objective as the general effect of th.e whole disturbs the organisation of bourgeots society: 'A disordered, unstable social !if~ would lead to structural changes in tl~e c1t~ itself, as well as to the individual in his soctal milieu.'l8 .

In this sense the conflicting theones surrounding the political value of space serve themselves as generators of a transcendental disorder for the time being. Judging the students o n their actions rather than theu 1deologies, one would expect in future that this effective alliance would lead to furthet development of the concept of random. opportunist, guerilla tactics so. that centres of fertile disorder will emerge m cl.ear opposition to the official sanctuanes of

0 order.

14. Hubert Tonka. Op. Cit. /e 1 s. Henri Lefebvre, 'La vie quotidienne dans - m onde rnoderne . r 16. Richard Sennett. The Uses of Drsorde' Penguin, 1971

Operation smile! Student poster deriding Police attempts to court poputanty.

J 7. Sennett. Op. Cit. J 8. Sennett. Op. Cit.

The following reports are from H. ERG (Housing. Experimental Research Group). H. ERG is an interdisciplinary group and is based in London and in the U.S. Its principal investigators are Stephen Bodington, Royston Landau, Howard Perlmutter and cedric Price.

Evolutionary housing: Notes on the context and the problem Royston Landau

The theme of this outline is housing and the time·scale; why it is considered that the circumstances of the present day are requiring a new appreciation of the time dimension; and how a revised approach will open up new ranges of possibilities for future' h!5using and for future physical environments.

For more than 200 years Britain and western societies have p roduced multiple·tO·mass housing through a developing series of "house-producing systems". House-producing systems were first privately owned, later company owned and then through a critical reform trad ition there emerged public sponsored systems. House-producing systems in both public and private sectors have predominantly aimed to produce "fixed package" house types which would be conceived as suiting the life-style of potential users.

Traditionally, the life·style/physical-form connection either would not have been recognized by the house-producing systems or else would have been implicitly assumed. But a gradual acceleration in the rate of social behavioural change and the emergence of new theories caused t he new concern for human life-styles and behaviours, to be exploited as an explicit aid for the design of environments. Thus, the assumption was made that the study of existing human behaviours in their settings would provide the basic facts for the making of future settmgs.

Such an assumption raised a new series of problems:

In mass housing it would hardly be poss1ble to know those people or groups of people for whom it was being built.

Even if this were possible, new housing could be expected to outlast its initial (studied) occupants, who would be replaced by "unstudied" ones.

People for whom fixed housing packages were built, could themselves change their life·styles during the occupancy of a single house. Life·style change could affect family cycles.

Rates of change of life-styles would be unlikely to be constant. With the current state of exponential growth curves in

lation and technology alone, life styles

could be expected to alter substant ially within one generation.

The same people could show d ifferent behaviour in different settings. The detailed study of a group in a particular setting may have little bearing on the rehousing of that same group in a new setting. Thus it cannot be shown that form ought to o r can be val idly derived from behaviours in t he context of mass housing, but this raises a further clcsely related range of problems which ask to what extent a fixed form of housing may be considered a veh icle for life·style and to what extent a maker of life·style. The Evolutionary Housing programme centres attention on an approach and a vocabulary of components for the analysis and solution of this problem.

The acceptance of a behaviour concept which has a potential for continuous change raises the problem of how to devise a house (or a building) to accommodate future changing needs, making the assumption that the programme for the study of existing particular. house·related human behaviour is inadequate.

II Assuming then, that the major obstacle

for the house-producing system is future changing needs , then how to provide for them becomes a new concern.

The design of any artifact assumes a prediction by its producer on its future use (as distinct from immediate use). The future·use aspect is not always expressed explicitly , and sometimes not felt necessary to be considered at all it it is believed that future use will not be d ifferent from immediate use.

But the time·concern will relate to the class of artifact. Certain classes of artifact may not benefit from future·use predictions e.g. in a design for a short·life,low cost ceramic tea cup. it may be justifiable to expect the style of tea-drinking to outlive the life of the cup, and if it did not the economic and resource waste would not be significant. Prediction here is not a crucial concern. Other classes of artifact may expect longer lives e .g. the new city of Milton Keynes will have a structure and components which will be expected to remain satisfactory for many generations to come.

The new housing need has been expressed in terms of a long·life multi.generation facility . The Greater London Council has stated in respect to the half million new homes it requires, "We cannot afford to put capital into someth ing that lasts less than 60 years, and we have to be sure that dwellings put up in 1970 are not considered substandard by the year 20001 ".

The problem of predicting housing socio·economic possibilities through identifying variables and showing their interactions in the environment, is o ne

1. Greater London Council, T omorrow's London, London, 1969.

involvmg mu ltl·variables in open·systems. Model techniques for the characterization of such p roblems have two major diff iculties: first, the question of multi·variable complexity, second, the problem of unpredictable new variables entering the system. The degree to which the multi-variable complexity quest io n is exposed to d iff iculty in social programmes can be illustrated by showing that,even in a simple system involving just ten variables, the number of possible orderings would be in excess of three million. But if the problem becomes one of considering possible orderings open to massive,environmental systems, the task becomes impossible using an objective, combinatorial approach. But secondly, there is always a chance of the intrusion, into a social open system, of new variables, to be called here "unpredictables", and the most revealing thing to be said about unpredictables is that they cannot be predicted. There is no way of taking them into account,whether one resorts to extrapolative, probabi listic or stoch<>stic predictive methods.

The key to the difficulties lies in not distinguishing between deductive and non-deductive methods of inference. Using rules of logic, certainty can on ly be transmitted through deductive inference, so <;ertainty can only move in the direction of

·,;'articular conclusions from general assumptions. Predictions, however, are non-deductive, they attempt to arrive at general conclusions from particular conditions; there is no way for them to transmit certainty, only, at best,high·level style guesses under certain favourable conditions.

But it would be wrong to infer that if truth transmission is logically impossible that pred iction must be abandonned, for it has been shown that there are classes of events that have been consistently predicted with great accuracy. For example, it would not be irresponsible to assume that accurate predictions for solar eclipses can be made for the next 500 years. Why, therefore, shou ld there be difficulty in accurately predicting city futures for f ive years?

In understanding this question t he concept of the system becomes useful. Systems are not concerned with truth or certainty transmissions. They are, however, valuable in exposing the structure and the complexity of the problem. Systems have been characterized as relative sets of components ranging from closed systems to open systems. Popper's analogy of closed, clock·like systems and open,cloud·like systems2 classifies systems according to their predictability characteristics. A closed (or relatively closed) clock·like system is discrete and highly predictable. An open cloud·like system is interactive beyond its own parts, it responds or exchanges with its environment and it is likely to behave in an unpredictable way. 2. K. R. Popper, Of Clouds and Clocks, Washington University, St. Louis, 1966. Also short version A D,

. 1969.