Botoxing the Boudoir.

Neo-Picturesque, contamination, and what to do if you really want a style.

And when questioning these distinctions only produces further questions

[...], the Architects Instruction Manual suggests to temporarily press the
pause button on the spiraling self-conscious recursion into architectures
infinite interior - gilded with its psychedelic array of mirrored surfaces,
disciplinary jargon, and fragmented theories.
M. Meredith
I have nothing to say / and I am saying it / and that is poetry / as I needed
it.
John Cage
In case the first trial was inconclusive, heres another test to decide for
yourselves if youre modernist, postmodernist, or ordinary mortals.
Bruno Latour
In the Monadology, Leibniz describes this orgy of organization as the
maximum variety with the greatest coherence; clearly he was Buddha.
J.Kipnis

Dear Initiated to the Discipline,

What Manfredo Tafuri, HVAC and Zombies have in common is something that
might already be clear to you; I will assume this knowledge and not explain it because I
am writing to You and I know I can take shortcuts - you know where Im at and I know
you know - this is just between me and you, it is the gilded interior of Architecture, and
in a way our secret: more importantly, no one else cares. And why would they? I hope
this makes sense. If you need further clarification, however, please do not hesitate to
contact me.
Now, since I am using this opportunity to make a point I am yet to discover, I
have no choice but to suggest rather than describe, and wink wink, hint and nudge relying
on the treacherous fuzziness of the assumption that I know you know. I am talking to you
but Im really just talking to myself, you know what I mean. There is no time for rigorous
arguments. Sorry about that, I promise to elaborate more soon. In any event, what I am
trying to say is that there is something interesting happening NOW in our aesthetics and
connecting the Campo Marzio and L.A., Phenomenal Transparency and Pheromonal
Translucency, the cute and the grotesque, the fake and the natural, the simple and the
complex by way of a sort of Querelle on acid, in such a way that looks like something of

a new style for architecture is finally being produced. I hope you are still with me dont
run away yet.
Before we go any further, let me note in passing (even though I know you
know and you probably dont want to hear it again, but just in case), I was saying - let me
note in passing that it seems obvious that we have to rule out the possibility of The
Style, or even a Style and be content with a style and sub-styles. The Grand
Epochal Style is not going to happen, although I seem to find a perverse pleasure in
listening to a guy talking about such absurdity at least once a year, for three dense days in
a row, and you seem to share my perversity, dear Initiated to the Discipline. I wonder
why, but it seems to have something to do with the notion of our wonderful gilded
interior and how, at the end of the day, we are just a big family(Hernan). It is painful
and delightful and I honestly have no idea how to tell you any more about it other than it
just keeps happening and I like it.
This said, there is nothing really left to do other than jumping straight to the
point - although we do not know what the point is - but we just have to jump, and pretty
quickly. When Bruno Latour says that there is no outside, what he means is that we live
in a world where complexity can no longer be resolved in terms of fixed hierarchies. All
we have is a multitude of shifting boundaries that separate conditions and environments
(fields) rather than objects from backgrounds, none of which is truly understood to have
any preeminence over any other (bubbles, for Sloterdijk, holes for Zaera Polo).
This is of course true of architecture too, we have known that for a while. The
message behind the Campo Marzio is that when the reproduction, multiplication and
fragmentation of the classical element reaches maximum ripeness, each part loses its
individual meaning and architecture becomes impossible in its only possible realm (the
city). Architecture is no longer alive from that moment on, and the process of its
decomposition ensues. This is what happened and is still happening, even though we are
close to the end of that cycle.
I know you will hate me for this, but I am confident we can call pretty much all
of that stuff Postmodernism. This is a key point to me, and will consider it carefully in
my next letter. The good news, I was saying, is that this predicament is nearly over and a
new Thing (Thing in Heideggers sense of we-dont-know-what-it-is-yet-its-right-hereso-what-do-we-do) is peeping its head through all doors and about to replace the old
Thing.
Although I used to think these categorizations were preposterous and just used
at random by people who didnt know what they were talking about despite all this, I
am now convinced that it is actually correct to talk of ontologies rather than fragments
and grafting rather than collage to describe the current shift taking place in the aesthetics
of architecture. This is also a hint as to how we might actually have just managed to
replace Po-Mo with something else.
So what do we do? If we have an irreducibly complex and contradictory
difficult whole, where all parts are, strictly speaking, unrelated or at the very least not
necessary to each other, how do we go about understanding it? Do we try a bit of
everything? Is it all the same? No, no, no! A wise man once told me that a buffet is the
worst type of meal. That was serious advice.

The only really important rule for someone who wants to get to grips with the
current state of our discipline, wouldnt you agree? - is that relativism is totally different
from multiplicity. In fact, its the opposite. Relativism is indifference, whereas
multiplicity implies selection, therefore preference. Relativism will kill you. The fact that
there are indefinitely many multiple choices and none is better in principle does not
relieve you from the burden of picking your own. Indeed, this act was never more urgent
than NOW. You need to make a choice, totally believe it and even fight for it - in the full
awareness that it is in principle indistinguishable from any other possible choice and at
bottom irrelevant. It is the only way to overcome the perils of relativism, and Zago
cogently defines it as post-ironic authenticity. This is very important: it doesnt matter
and yet it matters more than anything. Do you understand what I mean?
Because I really cant give you a clear style to revive architecture after all this
talk, but just a bunch of anecdotes none of which seems much more than a joke, and yet I
am urging you to make a very serious choice and quickly, you might feel somewhat
disappointed or even angered at me. What is he talking about? Why is he wasting my
time? This makes no sense whatsoever, you are probably thinking. Im afraid its the best
I can do. Since I feel bad, however, to have taken so much of your time to no avail, I am
going to compile a bestiary of selected architectural types for the Post-Post-Modern era
soon, especially for you, dear Initiated to the Discipline.
But because Post-Post-Modern seems such a stupid way to define it, I am going
to refer to it as the Neo-Picturesque. This, however, should not be intended as a style as
such, but more like a general mood. It refers to the contaminated, measuredly
idiosyncratic and somewhat romantic tones that can be detected almost without exception
across the board of the several sub-genres we have created for our Initiated talk.
In different manners and degrees it affects the digital freaks, the nerdy
geometers, the automated techno-utopians, the conceptual ephemeralists, the brooding
materialists, the autistic formalists, the slick programmatists, the humourless neopragmatists, the diy-ers, the activists, the do-gooders, the cartoon hipsters, the sustainable
opportunists and many more we failed to mention but are equally relevant.
Right now, for example, I am completely committed to hairy cartoon-formalism
and have several reasons to be. This niche is highly contaminated by many neighboring
types and is certainly also in line with the general tone of the Neo-Picturesque.
In my next letter I will include, as I said, a bestiary of my favorite architectural
sub-genres (no more than three), an explanation of my current sub-genre of choice with
examples, and a detailed explanation of how all of these characters (including myself),
are trying very hard, against all odds, to get away from Po-Mo. My argument is that it is a
tough struggle, but we just managed it. Just.
We still really dont know what it looks like exactly and we are aching to find out.
Yours sincerely,
The Nomad.