ARQ-97-Ingles

English versions of the following articles are available online

Title: Value! Patrimonial Auction
Author: Carolina Ilhe. Architect, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, 2001. Master of Science in Advanced Architecture Design, Columbia University, USA, 2013. Applied Architecture Research, Columbia University, USA, 2013. She explores interdisciplinary strategies that problematize heritage value by conducting studies in its multiple representations and constructions. Her work has been exhibited in Santiago, Valdivia, Barcelona and New York. She is an academic of the Institute of Architecture and Urbanism, Faculty of Architecture and Arts, Universidad Austral de Chile.; María José Contreras. Psychologist, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, 2001. Laurea Specialistica in Discipline Semitiche, University of Bologna, Italy, 2004. PhD in Semiotics, University of Bologna, Italy, 2008. Performance Artist. She studies the relationship between body, memory and performativity in the artistic practice. She has published in Chile, Brazil, Argentina, France, Italy and USA. Today, she is the Head of the Doctorate in Arts Program, Faculty of Arts, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile.
Abstract: Since value implies an agreement – a consensus – between two or more people, it may happen that something that is valued within a circuit lacks value outside. The performance VALUE! Patrimonial Auction challenges this problem by recreating (with all the needed paraphernalia to make it convincing) an art auction in which the pieces on offer have evidently no value: literally, bags full of dust.
Keywords: performance; art; conservation; heritage; speculation.
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Title: Lobbying for Value – A Dialogue
Author: The Architecture Lobby, Inc. Is an organization of architectural workers advocating for the value of architecture in the general public and for architectural work within the discipline. It believes that the work architects do – aesthetic, technical, social, organizational, environmental, administrative, fiduciary – needs structural change to be more rewarding and more socially relevant. As long as architecture tolerates abusive practices in the office and the construction site, it cannot insist on its role in and for the public good.
Abstract: Through the claim that architects are precarious workers, the Architecture Lobby gathered and organized to demand a fair valuation of architects’ services. In this conversation between its members, however, they go beyond the architect and deepen into notions of architectural value which end up unpacking the whole system that surrounds our work.
Keywords: labor; profession; market; discipline; added value.
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Title: The Shed
Author: Diller Scofidio + Renfro Office led by Elizabeth Diller, Ricardo Scofidio and Charles Renfro. Founded in 1981, its practice spans the fields of architecture, urban design, installation art, multi-media performance, digital media and print. Has completed two of the largest initiatives in New York, the High Line and the transformation of Lincoln Center campus, and is currently engaged in two other major projects: The Shed, and the expansion of the MoMA. Has been honored with numerous awards and authored several books, including The High Line (Phaidon Press, 2015), Lincoln Center Inside Out: An Architectural Account (Damiani, 2013), Flesh: Architectural Probes (Princeton Architectural Press, 2011(1994)) and Blur: The Making of Nothing (Harry N. Abrams, 2002); Rockwell Group. Cross-disciplinary architecture and design firm founded in 1984, that emphasizes invention and thought leadership merging architecture, theater, craftsmanship, and technology. Current projects include the renovation of the Helen Hayes Theater (New York); Nobu Hotel Barcelona and the new headquarters for Warner Music Group (Los Angeles). Has published three books: What If…? The Architecture and Design of David Rockwell, Spectacle by David Rockwell with Bruce Mau, and Pleasure: The Architecture and Design of Rockwell Group. David Rockwell serves as the Chair Emeritus of the Design Industries Foundation Fighting AIDS (DIFFA) and as a board member of the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum, Citymeals-on-Wheels, and New York Restoration Project.
Abstract: A telescoping outer shell, capable of covering a public square and multiplying the flexibility degrees of a center for artistic invention, transforms this project into one of the most striking of recent years. What is less noticeable, however, is the residential tower on which The Shed is backed and which, in the end, produces and transfers the necessary economic value for this architectural innovation to exist.
Keywords: culture; flexibility; development; tower; Hudson Yards.
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Title: NU Building. Miraflores, Lima, Perú
Author: Sandra Barclay. Architect, Ricardo Palma University, Peru, 1990 and Paris-Belleville School of Architecture, 1994. Master in Landscape and Territory, Universidad Diego Portales, Chile, 2013. Associate Professor at Pontificia Universidad Católica del Peru since 2006. She received a Special Mention of the Jury as a curator, together with Jean Pierre Crousse, for the Peruvian Pavilion “Our Amazon Frontline” at the 15th Venice Biennale. Curator for the Peru representation in the 10th Iberoamerican Biennale in São Paulo, 2016. Fellow by the Fulbright Foundation and the Architecture Academy of France; Jean Pierre Crousse. Architect, Ricardo Palma University, Perú 1987 and Politécnico di Milano, Italy, 1989. Master in Landscape and Territory, Universidad Diego Portales, Chile, 2013. Visiting Professor at the Master in Design Studies, Harvard University (2015) and Associate Professor at Pontificia Universidad Católica del Peru. Has taught at the Architecture School of Paris-Belleville between 1999 and 2006. He received a Special Mention of the Jury as a curator, together with Sandra Barclay, for the Peruvian Pavilion “Our Amazon Frontline” at the 15th Venice Biennale. Curator for the Peru representation in the 10th Iberoamerican Biennale in São Paulo, 2016. Member of the international jury for the 2016 Mies Crown Hall Award, in Chicago.
Abstract: On a privileged site with three fronts – that is, as the prow of an urban block – this apartment building in Lima, Peru, is an example of how a careful design may benefit the city, no matter if the building’s program is private. Or, saying it the other way around, it demonstrates that real estate value does not necessarily go in detriment of architectural quality.
Keywords: apartment; orientation; real estate; city; Peru
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Title: Securitizing the Demos: Constructing the First U.S. Real Estate Financial Index, 1975-1983
Author: Manuel Shvartzberg Carrió. Architect, Bartlett School of Architecture, London. MA in Aesthetics and Politics, CalArts. PhD in Architecture candidate, GSAPP, Columbia University. Current researcher at The Temple Hoyne Buell Center for the Study of American Architecture and Graduate Fellow of the Institute for Comparative Literature and Society, both at GSAPP. His dissertation work, “Designing ‘Post-Industrial Society’: Settler Colonialism and Modern Architecture in Palm Springs, California, 1876-1973”, examines the intersection between architecture, technology, geopolitics and economic discourses on automation and the environment under US hegemony.
Abstract: By exploring the making of the first public real estate financial index in the United States – an effort which begun in 1975 and was completed in 1983 – this text seeks to understand the relation between finance and housing from the perspective of the sociotechnical tools that made these distinct realms commensurable, calculable and, therefore, governable.
Keywords: housing; property; Lyotard; databases; capital markets.
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Title: The value of transforming: Academic building, Faculty of Arts, Oriente campus
Author: Fernando Pérez Oyarzun. Architect, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, 1977. Doctor in Architecture, Escuela Técnica Superior de Arquitectura de Barcelona, 1981. He is currently tenured professor at the UC. He was Director of the School of Architecture between 1987-1990; Dean of the Faculty of Architecture and Fine Arts between 1990-2000 and Head of the Doctorate Program in Architecture and Urban Studies between 2014- 2016. He has also been Visiting Design Critic at Harvard University, Simón Bolívar Professor at the University of Cambridge and Fellow of the Swedish Center for Advanced Studies. His publications include works on modern architecture in Chile and South America. Has worked as an architect individually and as part of larger teams, undertaking various interventions in heritage buildings; José Quintanilla Chala. Architect, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, 1993. Doctor in Architecture, Escuela Técnica Superior de Arquitectura de Barcelona, 2004. He is a member of the Colegio Oficial de Arquitectos de Cataluña, Spain. Since 2010 is a professor at the School of Architecture, Design and Urban Studies UC. In 2007 establishes Opalum, an architecture studio based in Barcelona. Among his collaborations are the studies for the Judicial City of Barcelona and L’Hospitalet de Llobregat (in collaboration with Enric Soria) and the Integral Rehabilitation of La Modelo Penitentiary Center, together with the School of Judges of Spain. Among his publications is the book Los hechos de la arquitectura in collaboration with Fernando Pérez and Alejandro Aravena.
Abstract: An intervention on a heritage building can either increase or ruin its value. Architecture has that power. The fear of affecting the value of what already exists leads many to opt for mimesis. However, such an obvious alternative is not the only one. This building shows that, by means of a careful interpretation of the existing, an intervention can add value to heritage without the need to formally duplicate it.
Keywords: heritage; interpretation; pre-existing; Santiago; Chile.
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Title: The reconstruction of Valparaíso’s urban value after the 1906 earthquake
Author: Magdalena Gil. Sociologist, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, 2006. Master in Sociology, Columbia University, USA, 2012. PhD in Sociology, Columbia University, USA, 2016. Is currently assistant professor at the School of Sociology and the School of Engineering at the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile. She is also a researcher at the Centro de Investigación para la Gestión Integrada del Riesgos de Desastres (Research Center for the Integrated Management of Risk Disaster) (CIGIDEN) CONICYT/FONDAP/15110017.
Abstract: The idea that disasters become an opportunity is almost a cliché; what we never know is who or what will benefit from it. Based on the debates following the 1906 earthquake in Valparaíso, this text argues that when a city is ruined and decisions to rebuild must be taken, the difference between what is valued and what is not is clearly shown. The opportunity, then, becomes a discussion on values.
Keywords: plan; city; land; place; disasters.
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Title: Undo, distill and choreograph: Three notions for the landscape project. Cap de Creus, Cataluna, España. 2005-2010
Author: Martí Franch. Bachelor in Landscape Architecture, University of Greenwich; Engineer in Horticulture and Gardening, ETSAB, Barcelona. Since 2001 he is professor of projects in the Master’s Degree in Landscape at the ETSAB. Has been a visiting professor at ENSPV Versailles, RMIT Melbourne, Academie van Bouwkunst of Amsterdam LUH, Hannover and Suds Lund. Since 2008 is a member of Paisea magazine’s advisory board and since 2011 member of the Board of Directors of the School of Versailles. EMF projects has been recognized with the Rosa Barba award at the 7th European Landscape Biennial at Barcelona, the American Society of Landscape Architects asla Honor Award and the recent Landezine International Landscape Award LILA prize, among others.
Abstract: If revalorizing architectural heritage usually means to take the building back to its original state, the same should be valid for landscape. However, in such case, taking landscape back to its original state implies getting rid of architecture. This project shows how undoing existing buildings can also be a design project to recover the environmental value of a previously inhabited site.
Keywords: deconstruction; subtraction; process; ecology; rehabilitation.
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Title: On non-value and non-identity. Tafuri’s adventures in Adorno’s Enlightenment
Author: Pedro Correa. Architect, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, 2012, M.Sc Critical, Curatorial and Conceptual Practices, Columbia University, USA, 2016. Assistant professor at School of Architecture UC in the area of Theory, History and Criticism, where he teaches subjects associated with aesthetics and politics from the end of the 19th century until the first half of the 20th century. He currently works as a researcher and associate curator at a Fondart project on architectural biennials in Chile, along with Fernando Carvajal, Fernando Portal and Rayna Razmilic.
Abstract: By unfolding Tafuri’s intellectual project and its sources, this text shows how the drainage of values produced by the Enlightenment is but one of the crises through which capitalism reinvents itself to survive. In this way, the crisis of values would be nothing else than the logical result of rationalization and, therefore, of modernity as a process.
Keywords: reason; judgment; critical theory; crisis of values; modernity.
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Title: Post-liberal Valparaíso: 272 political postcards
Author: Grandeza. Constituted by Amaia Sánchez Velasco (1985) and brothers Jorge (1984) and Gonzalo Valiente (1982) – together with the architectwriter Miguel Rodríguez Casellas (1966), share much more than an interest in teaching, and a workplace, the UTS of Sydney. Within different perspectives, they have all experienced the new geographies of neoliberal violence and the need to re-politicize the way architecture is thought and exercised. Far from addressing those commonplaces of reinvention and entrepreneurship, or technological determinism that coined innovation as the only way to relevance, the group explores material and discursive qualities of design as a key tool for emancipation.
Abstract: Within the framework of the XX Biennial of Architecture and Urbanism of Chile, the question about Valparaíso’s heritage could not be postponed. This installation, designed in Australia, delivers an unprecedented response: a new social contract which, based on a land-trust and a new ‘city-brand,’ takes advantage of the bohemian character of the port to exacerbate otherness and, ultimately, generate a parallel State.
Keywords: wall; trust; brand; liberalism; bohemia.
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Title: Proposal for collective living II (Homage to Sir John Soane)
Author: Andrew Kovacs. Bachelor of Architecture, Syracuse University. Master of Architecture, Princeton University. Assistant Adjunct Professor at UCLA, where he teaches design studios and seminars at both the undergraduate and graduate level. His work has been published in magazines including A+U, Pidgin, Project, Pool, Perspecta, Manifest, Metropolis, Clog, Domus y Fulcrum. Additionally, is the creator and curator of Archive of Affinities, a website devoted to the collection and display of architectural b-sides. Kovacs’ design studio, Office Kovacs works on projects at all scales from books, exhibitions, temporary installations, interiors, homes, speculative architectural proposals and public architecture competitions. Recent design work includes a parks network in downtown Los Angeles and an honorable mention at mali design competition.
Abstract: Starting with John Soane’s house – a collection of objects that completely transforms the space of the house – this proposal reconceptualizes the value of accumulation. Turning the interior into an exterior and replacing Soane’s museum-valued objects with cheap artifacts purchased in stores, the collection is transformed into an assembly where the whole worths more than the sum of its parts.
Keywords: model; artifacts; toys; assemblage; Chicago Architecture Biennial.
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Title: The value of the art commodity. Twelve theses on human labor, mimetic desire, and aliveness
Author: Isabelle Graw. Professor of art theory and art history at the Staatliche Hochschule für bildende Künste (Städelschule), Frankfurt am Main, Germany. Together with Stefan Germer (+) in 1990 she founded the magazine Texte zur Kunst. In 2003, she co-founded the Institut für Kunstkritik at the Städelschule with Daniel Birnbaum. Her current research areas are Art Criticism and its markets, and notions of judgment and value-creation under new forms of capitalism. Her publications include Die bessere Hälfte. Künstlerinnen des 20. und 21. Jahrhunderts (2003); Der große Preis. Kunst zwischen Markt und Celebrity Kultur (2008); High Price. Art Between The Market and Celebrity Culture (2010); Texte zur Kunst. Essays, Rezensionen, Gespräche (2011); and Where Are We Now? (2015), among others.
Abstract: The difficulty to know how to calculate the market value of an artwork lies on a simple fact: we don’t know where its value comes from. We may accept that art does have value, but we can’t find a common ground to explain why an artwork has more value than other. Through twelve theses, which recover Marx’s value theory by understanding artworks as commodities, this text provides a response to the question: where does the value of an artwork lie?.
Keywords: Marx; theory; artwork; gift; animism.
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Title: The Villa San Luis: a conflict of values
Author: Gonzalo Cáceres. Bachelor in History, 1995 and Magíster in Urban Development, 2003, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile. Doctorate candidate in Social Sciences, Universidad Nacional de Quilmes. His articles and contributions have been published in Registros, Estudios del Hábitat, Araucaria and Ciudades sudamericanas (Siglo xxi Editores, 2016). Infrequent columnist at El Mostrador, is currently Associate Professor at the Instituto de Estudios Urbanos y Territoriales UC; Emilio De la Cerda. Architect, Magíster in Architecture, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, 2006. Partner in owar Arquitectos, between 2005 and 2016. He served as Executive Secretary for the Chilean National Monuments Council between 2011 and 2014. Currenly he is Assistant Professor and Director at the School of Architecture UC.
Abstract: In a session held on June 28, 2017, the Chilean Council of National Monuments declared the Villa San Luis as a Historical Monument. This happened a few days after the land-owners began the demolition of the last blocks of social housing that remained on the site, as remnants of the original project developed by the CORMU (Urban Improvement Corporation) in 1972 during the Government of President Salvador Allende.
This decree not only paralyzed the demolition but also ignited a debate on the value criteria implicit in presenting a patrimonial declaration. This question becomes more relevant when considering that the Villa San Luis is located in one of the most expensive
areas of Santiago, being both the last remaining plot available for development by the real estate market in the area and the last vestige of a different social and urban project. That is to say, the half-demolished blocks became the protagonists of a dispute between land value and heritage value.
In this context, we ask: does the Villa San Luis deserve the title of heritage? What is its value? Does this patrimonial value matter more than the value of the land? What criteria should prevail in this conflict of values?.
Keywords: heritage; monument; memory; land; demolition.
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Editorial. A Debate on Values

By presenting an example quite familiar to architects, Marx explains the need for a third element – a means – to establish a value-relationship between commodities: “In order to calculate and compare the areas of rectilinear figures” – the philosopher says – “we decompose them into triangles. But the area of the triangle itself is expressed by something totally different from its visible figure, namely, by half the product of the base multiplied by the altitude.” Then, he adds: “In the same way the exchange values of commodities must be capable of being expressed in terms of something common to them, of which they represent greater or less quantity” (Marx, 1867(1990):127). That is, in order to establish this value-relationship between different things, a and b, it is necessary to abstract the qualities of both to make them equivalent to a third-factor x. Thus, a = x and b = 2x lets us know that a is worth half of b.

Money is the most common means to establish this value-relationship. It is the x that links a and b. That is why economy arbitrates the concept of value: knowledge about the means of exchange gives it the status of judge over the value of things, in the same way that knowledge of the law allows lawyers to be judges regarding behavior. The problem, as usual, is when means become ends.

We know a lot about this, both in architecture and the city. An urban-land plot with an old building on it (a) has a market value x. When building a tower on the site (b), that urban-land plot will have a market value of 15x. Here, multiplying the means (x) has become the end, and the plot, which is the same, also becomes a means to extract surplus value. As banal and simple as it may seem, this operation is the basis on which urban-land value is calculated.

Still, we can make it more complex. For instance, by considering also the social value of the old building with regards to the new tower. Or by establishing the educational value of the historic building and so on. Perhaps the economists would be reluctant to include other factors in the value equation since it is obvious that they would try to defend a realm of autonomy, keeping the knowledge of the few variables it considers. However, it is a necessary discussion because the status quo on this subject only goes to the detriment of the environment.

Yet, this is not only the economists’ fault. We, the architects, have not done much either. We have not been able to explain – outwards – where the value of what we do lies and why we value what we do. Since value is the result of a social relationship – a negotiation – we are missing a counterpart (maybe we are afraid that, if we include it, our elite position would vanish). Until we do it, the (insufficient but ‘objective’) economic logics will continue weighing more than our (complex but disjointed) architectural arguments.

This issue of ARQ is an attempt to articulate that complexity. In the portfolio, we see an auction in which what is auctioned is simply dust. The conversation between the Architecture Lobby members explores several concepts of value linked to architecture as a profession. The DS+R & Rockwell Group project allows us to see undeclared value transfers. Barclay & Crousse show that architectural and real estate values are not incompatible. Shvartzberg investigates the creation of a real estate index. Pérez and Quintanilla demonstrate that a new intervention can revalue the heritage. Gil explains the debates about urban value after an earthquake. Franch revalues landscape by getting rid of architecture. Correa displays the notions of value in Tafuri. Grandeza presents an architectural installation with a new scale of social values. Kovacs proposes that, in architecture, value does not depend on the price. Graw attempts to define, in twelve theses, where the value of art lies. Finally, in the debate, we have two positions regarding the paradigmatic case of Villa San Luis. Thus, each article presents different readings on value that complicate its definition.

But if we have managed to present so many different readings on value in a single issue (and there are certainly many others), why does the fact that what we do is only valued in terms of money seem so natural to us – so that we accept it with almost no resistance? Is there anything else we can do from architecture to balance the hegemony of economy when it comes to establishing value? Maybe so.

Marx also tells us that the value of a does not derive from its exchange for another a. It is necessary to relate it to something different (b) for value to appear. That is, the value is not an intrinsic condition: it only appears in the encounter with difference. This means, for instance, that architecture’s value can only be found outside. It is not that architecture has no value or lacks a specific field; it is just that, if we want to establish its value, we must put it in relation to something else. In other words, architecture’s value cannot be established from a position of autonomy: it implies, rather, sitting down to negotiate or going out to hold a debate on values. We would like this issue of ARQ to be a step in that direction. ARQ

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References
* MARX, Karl. Capital: a critique of political economy. Vol. 1 “The Process of Capitalist Production”. London: Penguin Classics, 1990 (1867).