Revision as of 11:16, 30 December 2015

THIS IS A DRAFT

Dennis Pohl

“We’re on the verge of a historic moment for cities”^[3]

Otlet, Scheme and Reality

Corbusier, Current and Ideal traffic circulation

When Le Corbusier and Otlet met for the first time in 1927 regarding the competition for the headquarters of the League of Nations in Geneva; they were already familiar with each others ideas and writings. This does not only become evident in regards to the used schemes, but also to the epistemic assumptions that underlie in their world views.

Fascinated by the idea of urbanism as a science, that systematically organizes all elements of life in infrastructures of flows; Otlet was convinced to work with Van der Swaelmen, who already planned a world city on the site of Terveuren near Brussels in 1919.^[4]

Van der Swaelmen - Tervuren, 1916

For the first time two notions of different practices started to match. Namely a environment ordered and structured according to principles of rationalization and taylorization.

“By improving urban technology, it’s possible to significantly improve the lives of billions of people around the world. […] we want to supercharge existing efforts in areas such as housing, energy, transportation and government to solve real problems that city-dwellers face every day.”^[5]

Parallel to that Le Corbusier developed in 1922 his theoretical model of the Plan Voisin, which served as a blueprint for a vision of Paris with 3 million inhabitants. In the publication Urbanisme from 1925, his main objective is to construct “a theoretically water-tight formula to arrive at the fundamental principles of modern town planning.”^[6] Since for Le Corbusier “Statistics is indispensable, [because they] show the past and describe the future”^[7], such a formula must be based on the objectivity of diagrams, data and maps. They “reveal the exact situation at the time [...] (through statistics) one feels confident and can predict the future by following the organization of the statistical curve.”^[8] This convinces him: the analyses and necessary proofs, lead to the conclusion, that the ancient city of Paris has to be demolished in order to be replaced by a new one. Nevertheless he does not arrive to a concrete formula but rather to a rough scheme.

Corbusier - scheme for the traffic circulation

Otlet's Formula

A formula that includes every atomic entity, instead was developed by his later friend Otlet as an answer to the question which he posts in Monde, whether the world is expressible by a unifying entity which could be determined. This represents Otlet’s dream: A “permanent and complete representation of the entire world,”^[9] that is located in one place.

Urbanism played a key role in this formula, since Otlet saw his idea of the book of the books as an “architecture of ideas”, following the contemporary developments of architecture. As the new modernist forms and use of materials propagated the abundance of decorative elements; Otlet believed in the possibility of language as a model of “raw data” reducing it to pure necessary information, while removing all inefficient assets. Furthermore the “regulation through architecture and it's tendency of a total urbanism would help towards a better understanding of the book [Livre sur les livre] and it's right functional and holistic desiderata.”^[10] Due to this Otlet took the “Equation of urbanism” into consideration as a type of sociology: U = u(S), because according to his definition: Urbanism “is an art of distributing public space in order to raise general human happiness; urbanization is the result of all activities which a society employs in order to reach its proposed goal; [and] a material expression of its organization.”^[11] The scientific position, which determines all characteristic values of a certain region by a systematic classification and observation, was developed by the Scottish biologist and town planner Patrick Geddes, who was invited by Paul Otlet for the world exhibition 1913 in Gent to present his Town Planning Exhibition to a international audience.^[12] Inevitably taken further, is the positivist believe in a totality of science, which Geddes unfolds from the ideas of Auguste Comte, Frederic Le Play and Elisée Reclus in order to get a unified understanding of an urban development in a special context. This position would allow to represent the complexity of a inhabited environment through data.^[13]

Thinking the Mundaneum

Taken this into consideration, the only person coming into consideration for Otlet in regarding the development of the architectural project for the Mundaneum was Le Corbusier, whom he approached for the first time in Spring 1928.“Both men did frequently use similar terms such as plan, analysis, classification, abstraction, standardization and synthesis, not only to bring conceptual order into their disciplines and knowledge organization, but also in human action.”^[14] Circumstances, that lead both Utopians to think the Mundaneum as a system, rather than a singular central type of building, which was meant to include as many resources as possible in the development process. Because the Mundaneum is “an idea, an institution, a method, a material corpus of works and collections, a building, a network,”^[15] it had to be essentially conceptualized as an “organic plan with the possibility to expand on different scales with the multiplication of each part.”^[16] The possibility of expansion and a organic re-distribution of elements adapted according to new necessities and needs, is what supposed to make this system so efficient, namely by constantly integrating more resources. (LINK to Dick Reckard) Up to the smallest element, modernism propagated a new form of living which would ensure greatest efficiency. Otlet was supporting and encouraging Le Corbusier with his words: “The twentieth century is called upon to build a whole new civilization. From efficiency to efficiency, from rationalization to rationalization, it must so raise itself that it reaches total efficiency and rationalization. […] Architecture is one of the best bases not only of reconstruction (the deforming and skimpy name given to the whole of postwar activities) but of intellectual and social construction to which our era should dare to lay claim.”^[17] As the Wohnmaschiene, Corbusiers famous housing project Unité d'habitation, the distribution of elements is purely shaped according to man's needs. The premise which underlies this notion, is that man's needs and desires can be determined, normalized and standardized in advance following geometrical models of objectivity.

“making transportation more efficient and lowering the cost of living, reducing energy usage and helping government operate more efficiently”^[18]

Building the Mundaneum

In the first working phase from March to September 1928, seemed to be rather a commissioned work than a collaboration. In the 3rd person singular, Otlet submitted descriptions and organizational schemes which would represent the institutional structures in a diagrammatic manner. In exchange Le Corbusier made the architectural plans and detailed description, which lead to the publication N° 128 Mundaneum, printed by the international Associations in Brussels.^[19] After Le Corbusier has been rejected in 1927 from the competition of the Palace for the League of Nations, expressing his anger with a public announcement; he seemed to be a bit less enthusiastic in the Mundaneum project than Otlet, in a letter even expressing his skepticism towards the League of Nations by calling it a “misguided” and “pre-machinist creation.”^[20] However, during the second phase from September 1928 to August 1929, a period of a strong friendship seemed to occur. The rise of the international debate after their first publications; letters written in the 2nd person; and the common agreement of bringing the project to the next level by including more stakeholders and developing the Cité mondiale, just to mention some of the evidences. This lead to the second publication by Paul Otlet La Cité mondiale in February 1929, which traumatized the diplomatic environment in Geneva. Although both tried to reorganize personal meetings with key figures from all stakeholders, the project didn't find any ground for its realization. Especially because Switzerland withdraw from the offer of an extraterritorial land use for the Cité mondiale. For Le Corbusier this was a reason to focus himself on a further theoretical approach of which the Ville Radieuse, that was presented on the 3rd CIAM meeting in Brussels in 1930, was the result.^[21] After this experience Le Corbusier considered the Cité mondiale as “a closed case”, and himself without any political color, “since the groups that gather around our ideas are, militaristic bourgeois, communists, monarchists, socialists, radicals, League of Nations and fascists. When all colors are mixed, only white is the result. That stands for prudence, neutrality, decantation and the human search for truth.”^[22]

Governing the Mundaneum

Indeed there are several evidences where Le Corbusier considered him and his work “apolitical” or “above politics,”^[23] but may be Otlet was more aware of the political force of this project than Le Corbusier. “Yet it is important to predict. Knowing, to predict in order to govern, was the enlightening formulation of Comte. Predict doesn't cost anything, was added by a master of contemporary urbanism (Le Corbusier).”^[24] That prediction doesn't cost anything and is “preparing the ways for the coming years”, Le Corbusier wrote to Arthur Fontaine and Albert Thomas from the International Labor Organization, in order to lobby for the project of the Cité mondiale.^[25] Indeed, it doesn't cost anything because the statistical data is in any case available, but he didn't seem to consider that prediction is a form of governing. Since nevertheless, the use of this data not only in order to standardize units for architecture as well as categories of knowledge is a determination of life, restricting it to the classifiable normality. What becomes clear in this juxtaposition of Le Corbusier's and Paul Otlet's work is that the standardization of architecture, goes in hand with an epistemic standardization, because it limits what can be thought, experienced and lived to that what is already there.

1. ↑ 1
2. ↑ 2
3. ↑ Dan Doctoroff, New York Times 11.06.15, http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/11/technology/sidewalk-labs-a-start-up-created-by-google-has-bold-aims-to-improve-city-living.html?_r=0
4. ↑ Giuliano Gresleri and Dario Matteoni. La Città Mondiale: Andersen, Hébrard, Otlet, Le Corbusier. Venezia: Marsilio, 1982, P. 128; See also: L. Van der Swaelmen, Préliminaires d'art civique, Leynde 1916, pp. 164 – 299.
5. ↑ Larry Page, Press release, 10th June 2015, http://www.sidewalkinc.com/
6. ↑ Le Corbusier, “A Contemporary City” from “The City of Tomorrow and its Planning”
7. ↑ Le Corbusier, Urbanisme, Paris, Flammarion: 1994, pp. 114-115.
8. ↑ Ibd., P. 100.
9. ↑ Rayward, W Boyd (1994), "Visions of Xanadu: Paul Otlet (1868–1944) and Hypertext", P. 235.
10. ↑ “La régularisation de l’architecture et sa tendance à l’urbanisme total aident à mieux comprendre le livre et ses propres desiderata fonctionnels et intégraux.” See: Otlet, Paul, Traité de documentation, Bruxelles, Mundaneum, Palais Mondial, 1934, P. 329.
11. ↑ “L'urbanisme est l'art d'aménager l'espace collectif en vue d'accroîte le bonheur humain général; l'urbanisation est le résulat de toute l'activité qu'une Société déploie pour arriver au but qu'elle se propose; l'expression matérielle (corporelle) de son organisation.” Otlet, Paul, Traité de documentation, Bruxelles, Mundaneum, Palais Mondial, 1934, P. 205.
12. ↑ Thomas Pearce, Mettre des pierres autour des idées, Paul Otlet, de Cité Mondiale en de modernistische stedenbouw in de jaren 1930, PhD Thesis, KU Leuven: 2007, P. 39.
13. ↑ Volker Welter. Biopolis Patrick Geddes and the City of Life. Cambridge, Mass: MIT, 2003.
14. ↑ W. Boyd Rayward, European Modernism and the Information Society: Informing the Present, Understanding the Past, Ashgate Publishing, Ltd., 1 jan. 2008, P. 129.
15. ↑ Paul Otlet, Monde: essai d'universalisme - Connaissance du Monde, Sentiment du Monde, Action organisee et Plan du Monde, Bruxelles: Editiones Mundeum 1935, P. 448.
16. ↑ Giuliano Gresleri and Dario Matteoni. La Città Mondiale: Andersen, Hébrard, Otlet, Le Corbusier. Venezia: Marsilio, 1982, P. 223.
17. ↑ Le Corbusier, The Radiant City, P. 27.
18. ↑ http://www.sidewalkinc.com/
19. ↑ Giuliano Gresleri and Dario Matteoni. La Città Mondiale: Andersen, Hébrard, Otlet, Le Corbusier. Venezia: Marsilio, 1982, P. 128
20. ↑ Ibd., P. 232.
21. ↑ Ibd., P. 129.
22. ↑ Ibd., P. 255.
23. ↑ Eric Paul Mumford, The CIAM Discourse on Urbanism, 1928-1960, MIT Press, 2002, P. 20.
24. ↑ Paul Otlet, Monde: essai d'universalisme - Connaissance du Monde, Sentiment du Monde, Action organisee et Plan du Monde, Bruxelles: Editiones Mundeum 1935, P. 407.
25. ↑ Giuliano Gresleri and Dario Matteoni. La Città Mondiale: Andersen, Hébrard, Otlet, Le Corbusier. Venezia: Marsilio, 1982, P. 241.