Communal Spaces / CommunityPlaces / Common RoomsDe-totalized Forms of EncounterInterview with Joseph Vogl

Berlin, October 3, 2003

For the tenth issue of An Architektur, we looked forhistorical and contemporary projects that deal withcommunal spaces. For us, these were all initiallyspaces that, as hippie-like, utopian, or countercultu-ral projects, represented an intensely emancipatoryconcept of community and stood for various appro-aches to liberation. Architectural history, too, sug-gests that this view of communal space is a leftistproject.

In your book “Gemeinschaften. Positionen zu einerPhilosophie des Politischen”1 (Communities. Posi-tions Toward a Philosophy of the Political), youdescribe community quite generally as the refe-rence point of passionate politics. You regard “thelost community and its return as a critical site andunsurpassable horizon of political-social action”2.Why do you attribute so much importance for poli-tics to community?

In my book, I pursue not only a theoretical approach,but also a historical perspective. This historical per-spective consists of the fact that communities are not apolitical entity in themselves, but rather stand in oppo-sition to what one calls society, and this is how theygain contours. Without the societal, the communal isunimaginable. If you will, it is a matter of differing kindsof transparence. In a long political tradition, “society” isconceived on the basis of contractual relations, struc-tures of law, personality, and controlled interaction. Incontrast, community is the site of hidden traditional, butalso biological bonds. And the concept of communitymakes sense only in this opposition and tension.

What interests me is the idea of this tension betweencommunity, on the one hand, and society, on the otherhand – that this opposition is a certain antinomy of thepolitical. Concepts of the societal, of social transpa-rence, of structures of law, must thus recurrentlyappeal to something communal. To some form or otherof the original solidarity. Whereas, in contrast, commu-nities must be understood in the context of an evolu-

tion of the societal: only by dissolving natural bondscan one create equality or justice. This means thinkingin terms of this tension, this intertwining of the commu-nal and the societal. This is the theoretical and histori-cal starting point.

Different forms of politics are involved in both figures –society in the sense of social transparence, on the onehand, and community in the sense of social opacity, onthe other. And different concepts of the political. Forexample, the site of the societal is closely bound upwith matters of the public sphere, transmission of infor-mation through the media, parliamentarianism, repre-sentation, etc., whereas, in the communal sphere, com-pletely different forms of moderation and other socialrelations and forms of intervention prevail, for examplehealth policy or neighborly assistance, family policy orclass affiliation. The two political posts – communityand society – thus develop different teleologies of thepolitical. There is no self-evident concept of the politi-cal that comprises both. The question of politics is de-cided by whether it is oriented toward models of com-munity or of society.

The politics of community, like the politics of a so-ciety, can be very diverse. Its spectrum ranges frompermanent revolution or direct democracy to totali-tarian exclusion. What consequences does this am-bivalence of concepts of community, which contra-dicts our assumption that collectives are a specifi-cally leftist project, have for the concept of a pro-gressive, emancipatory community?

Concepts of community are historically and theoreti-cally extremely ambiguous. They can be charged withand have been colonized by various ideas of totality:the nation or class, mythical communities in general,blood ties or the “natural state”. And again and again,one must liberate the communal from these symbolicreshapings (or clumping), one must liberate it from alogic of results that tells us that we must finally be-come a nation or a people, finally maintain the purity ofour blood, finally create a pure race, i.e., must finallyfabricate some immediate unity or other. And theseemphatic fantasies that have evoked various, often cat-astrophic political constellations, demand that con-cepts of community be subjected to a cleaning-up pro-cess. Designs for community must constantly be cle-ansed of the ideas of totality that they themselvescreate.

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But don’t communities always strive for ideas of to-tality? Are there possibilities of creating communi-ties not based on class or nation? You write thatthe site of community must be defined anew againand again. Does this involve such cleaning-up pro-cesses because once something is realized andcompleted, it automatically becomes reactionary?

I think one must be careful not to “realize” communities.That usually ends badly. Rather, one should open themup, make them permeable. Not so much complete andlocalize them than look for gaps and non-sites. Thereare various images and models for these processes ofde-localization. One can think thereby of concrete prac-tices and on literary ideas. To mention an example: Ithink that something like this has happened in the gaymovement as a consequence of AIDS. That homosexu-als no longer constitute themselves solely in terms ofsexuality, exclusion, or medical procedures, but haveentered into pragmatic alliances with every possiblekind of people.

One can observe atopies in such movements – tempo-rary, ephemeral, and also strategic alliances that arenot oriented toward completing the communal sub-stance. A literary example, almost already a theoreticalconcept, is Kafka’s “The Great Wall of China”. It showsthat the wall that is to surround the “people” must notbe built except rudimentarily, in fragments, i.e., with ho-les. This is an example of the construction of the com-munal. Communities must also fabricate their own dis-mantling, there where they are.

Can the process of de-localization also be found inutopian spatial proposals, which are as a rule stron-gly related to community? They take an imaginary,distant site to formulate their critique of existing so-cietal conditions.

There is tradition of the utopian, especially in architec-ture. Namely, that of the utopian city, which is stronglycharacterized by a totalitarian completion, representedsince Revelations at the latest by the New Heavenly Je-rusalem. Perhaps you are familiar with this architecturefrom Revelations, which consists of stone, light, andencompassed standstill. Nothing moves there anymore.This is the community of the counted and numberedblessed, who have gathered there, a heavenly utopia, autopia that has offered a model for many other utopias.This would be an architecture, an architectonic utopiaas a clearly unfortunate perfection of community. WhenI speak of atopia, I actually mean something else, na-mely the question of when and in what constellationssomething like a political question can arise, somethinglike the political. And I would say it arises everywherewhere de-localization occurs within specific, determina-ble, observable localizations. I.e., where something isnot in its place, where something has become removedand unavailable.

There is a famous example of this that has even be-come canonical in political theory: the fable of Mene-nius Agrippa and the exodus of the Plebians from thecity of Rome. The people left Rome, Menenius Agrippaclimbed up the Aventine Hill to bring them back; andthere he told the fable of the political body, of the bellyand the limbs: All the parts – people and rulers – haveto come together or the whole cannot function. Theinteresting thing about this fable is that a lasting topos,so to speak, was found for the political, for politics as awhole, a topos in the double sense of site and mannerof speaking: according to it, the political is the de-loca-lization, but politics is the renewed assignment ofplace.

This moment of de-localization – the people has disap-peared – raises an eminent political question of con-cern to the entire community. Here, something like thepolitical has become visible, through a very elementalprocess of de-localization: The body politic and its qua-lity are the stakes and have become problematical. Iwould like to connect communities with these proces-ses of de-localization, with a movement that renders thepolitical question visible. Here, a political question ari-ses: the political always appears then, when somethingis not in the place it belongs.

Once more and putting a fine point on it: The commu-nity, in the sense I understand it, would be tied to therendering visible of a political question, to a shift ofsite, or to a change of site or de-localization. And atthis moment, the political matter as such manifestsitself.

So do communities always construct themselvesaround political questions?

Precisely. But they are not resolved. That is very impor-tant. For example, if you take the German nation, thenthe surprising thing about its history – and one speaksof the “delayed” German nation – is that one alwayspresupposes solutions – solutions that are mythically orbiologically or culturally encoded: one always knowsmore or less what this nebulous German people is, thatis supposed to become a nation. And the resulting pro-blems lie more in giving the solutions a certain reality,for example a territory in common, a common empire, acommon outfit. But this unity – with a specific descentand a family tree and a specific mythology – is no lon-ger up for debate: There is no longer any politicalquestion, but only programs for realization; this was stillthe case in 1990.

What significance do constructions of identity havefor communities? Are identity and its reflection – asa possible starting point for the capability to takepolitical action – still progressive, or do they have areactionary tendency, in that they represent, solidify,and produce structural exclusions?

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Concepts like identity and non-identity are very formalconcepts, and taken by themselves they do not yetcarry values in a political constellation. To mentionsome examples: For a long time, it made a lot of senseto receive a collective identity as proletarians, in orderto win the struggle for jobs, work times, accident insu-rance, health insurance, etc. In this case, identity poli-tics was necessary and convincing.

Then, in various areas – for example in feminism – peo-ple noticed that insisting on solidarity-obliging identitiescan be a two-edged sword: after all, such attributions –like THE female, THE woman – are always also violentand from outside. Today, in turn, under the sign of in-creased flexibility, one has the feeling that one shouldinvoke stable identities again and question an economythat demands that one be a mother in the morning, acomputer specialist in the afternoon, and a tele-workerin the evening: that one becomes an occupational no-mad. This flexible, dissolved identity has already beenabsorbed by economic processes. What still holds thistrembling identity together? A mildly weak ego, an ele-gant patchwork identity is practically demanded.

That is merely one example showing that identity andnon-identity are, in themselves, concepts to be takenseriously politically. But one must also ask what stakesare wagered with concepts of identity or with the de-struction of concepts of identity.

In research on movements, Alberto Melucci, amongothers, develops a theory of collective identities, inorder to be able to grasp collective actions at all.3

The point therein is, on the one hand, the cognitivedefinition of goals. On the other hand, the signifi-cance of social and technical networks is beingworked out here. How important is the theory ofcollective identities for your concept of community?

I might prefer to approach this question from the otherside. And that is a very general political consideration: Ithink that, for a long time, we have observed the disap-pearance of what was once called “interest”. In thesepost-industrial societies, we have apparently arrived ata situation in which people have ever greater difficultiesdefining their personal, own, or collective interests. AndI think that something like collective identity has always,or at any rate has long, defined itself in terms of theconcept of interest. That means that collective identi-ties are those defined by the pursuit of common inter-ests.

Now we are observing that it is becoming ever moredifficult to clarify common interests. And this makes vi-sible a politics clearly based on reducing solidarity.Risks that once affected everyone and that were orga-nized in terms of solidarity, for example health and so-cial insurance, are being privatized. From now on, eve-ryone is his own biggest risk, and everyone is expected

to insure himself individually, a person-proximate riskadministration. It is getting more and more difficult totie together with common interests even people in simi-lar employment situations, because everyone sees him-self integrated in his own network of company loyalties.And somehow everyone is also supposed to becomehis own entrepreneur.

For this reason, perhaps I’ll give a cautious answer:Collective identity, in my opinion, is a completely neu-tral term for political communication, but one ought tobegin a step earlier and ask once more: Where are re-serves of interest that could found these collectiveidentities? In what interest situations could the peoplein this or that place come together? At the moment,this is not very clear to me. The whole problem of thetrade union movement shows this quite clearly – theerosion of definitions of interest.

But isn’t this erosion of clear and encompassingdefinitions of interests a new quality? Your des-cription of a desirable community as a “heteroge-neous community of singular beings”4 already in-cludes conflicts of interest. Precisely the constant“postponement of their realization”5 indicates thatthe common interest can no longer hope for fulfill-ment at all. Here, the model of community you des-cribe seems to us to display some parallels to theconcept of the multitude developed by Antonio Ne-gri and Michael Hardt6. The “absolute immanence”and the “constant self-creation”, but also “unrepres-entability” that you attribute to communities is com-parable with how, in “Empire”, the multitude – orcrowd – is described as a non-mass, a non-people.

To start with, I think that what Negri and Hardt call multi-tude is strongly tied to certain a prioris of the media. TheInternet is behind it, something like the international net-working is behind it, something like Attac is behind it.So – and this is not an uninteresting view – this meansthat whatever presents itself as apparently natural inpeople coming together is actually reflected on a veryhigh media-theoretical or media-technical level. Thus,one must not forget that all these forms of communitythat appear natural are to a great degree conveyed bythe media. And this technology of conveyance must betaken into consideration.

What I meant by community is a little bit different. Andit includes a relatively conservative idea. My interest isto address a few rudiments of democratic theory. Andif the core of a democratic-theoretical reflection con-sists – putting a fine point on it – in leaving the king’splace free, in evacuating the king – however this mayappear: there are, of course, different kinds of kings,pseudo-kings, and parodies of kings – then that meanstaking this empty place into consideration. If you will,this is the spatial order of a surrounded empty spot, themaintenance of an unavailability.

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Incidentally, there are some model cases of this in thehistory of the connection between social and architec-tonic spaces. One example is the courtroom. The pointof court architecture is, of course, that the middle ofthe room always remains empty. That is where the caseis heard. The matter under consideration is put in themiddle, but all the other participants – witnesses, theaccused, public prosecutors, judges, etc. – sit on theoutside around it. And this site of the courtroom is aparadigmatic social space – as an architectonic idea,as well as an answer to the question of how a case isheard.

Perhaps this example is too far-fetched, but to say itonce more: I would place the question of immanenceand of unrepresentability between these two extremes:On the one hand, the concept of the multitude, butwhere the respectively given media-technical condi-tions must be directly taken into consideration. On theother hand, the rudiment of democratic theory, in whichthe point is to keep the site of the king empty and notsymbolically occupy it.

What interests us about Negri/Hardt is that theyactually tie the concept of the multitude to certainideas of work; that they claim that societal condi-tions are fundamentally characterized by work, espe-cially by informal work; and that, under capitalisticconditions and their expansion throughout theworld, the tendency is therefore that everyone is ex-ploited. The continuation and the expansion of thisclassic contradiction, but also the designation of anemancipatory direction – i.e., the designation of thefield of conflict – make the concept of the multitudeproductive for us. This may also go beyond the per-spective, rather neutral in this regard, of the com-munity. The multitude is defined as a kind of resi-stant community, i.e., as a community bearing anemancipatory character within itself.

I would formulate that a bit more cautiously: I think theidea of emancipation – understood in the traditionalsense – is not that virulent anymore. Maybe the point israther two things: That the multitude is, initially, alwaystied to a research program. That means, one tries toconduct research on an unclear status quo. Peoplecome together to formulate a problematical politicalconstellation as a question, to become experts on amatter, a problem case – that’s the first.

The second is that the multitude – and this is what distin-guishes it from traditional concepts of community – car-ries its own expiration date. The multitude is not some-thing that extends itself into a past “once” and into a fu-ture “one day”. Rather, it knows that the operative units,the short-lived coming-together, carries a specific hori-zon of time and of theme within it. One comes togetherfor specific themes and for specific short-term and mid-term times. That is what characterizes the multitude.

Perhaps – and despite all my reservations about whatNegri and Hardt say, this is the interesting constella-tion – one could also say that the multitude itself is aresearch project. One explores a social and politicalfield that, in the process of research, becomes simulta-neously a kind of test procedure and an object of pro-cessing – this is what gives it its political character.One does not have a pre-existing political question, butdevelops it in coming together. And one does not havea pre-existing solution to this political question, but in-vents ways of solving it that are already political inter-ventions.

Does that make sense? It goes in the direction in whichI would like to think. The political matter must always benewly clarified and won, it is not self-evident. There areno political questions that follow us from the cradle tothe grave. For that, there are too many agencies thatclarify or “solve” such political question – parliamentari-anism, elections, collective bargaining, health policy,etc. These are all pseudo-political questions; only in therarest cases do they allow their political aspect to ap-pear, and usually they are resolved in accordance witha programmed procedure, one way or another. Rather,the point is to develop research teams that obtain thepolitical question at the same time as they operate poli-tically. Maybe that is the shortest definition.

For this issue, we researched the Soviet communalhouses that arose everywhere spontaneously inMoscow and Petersburg after the October Revolu-tion. It was pretty clear that these communal hou-ses were actually precisely this kind of test phase,an attempt at practical research and at making thisuncertain situation scientific. This is comparable tohow Negri /Hardt understand Marx: that he tries tograsp a political field by describing a contradictionand thereby makes community – as the workingclass – constructible in the first place.

That is a very important point – and Marxism, and espe-cially Marx himself, provided some key points – that thepoint therein is to gain knowledge. And that is some-thing that actually never enters into things in many ot-her forms of community. All the national and racial, butalso communitarian concepts of community, which areso much discussed for example in the United States,all proceed from a position of having known. We alwaysalready know what family is, we always already knowwhat neighborhood is. But with the Soviet communalhouses, it was really about gaining new knowledge.You can call it subversive knowledge, which of courseincludes the acquisition of knowledge for domination.

We are, of course, especially interested in how suchan appropriation in space occurs. Because therecommunity takes place directly and itself producesknowledge about this. This form of immanence, inour opinion, has a lot to do with the spaces of life

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reality, of everyday life and of special experience.Thus, for example, Seattle has significance for theglobalization-critical movement and Woodstock forthe hippies, and in the 1980s, the anti-nuclear po-wer movement or the huts built against the newrunway at Frankfurt Airport were intentional sites ofresistance. What role does the site play in your con-cept of community?

There is an old and still influential Rousseauian traditionthat always brings the site of community together withthe site of gathering. For Rousseau, it was the spring,the fountain, where one met. It was, for example, the er-ected maypole. It was the festival that the French Revo-lutionaries celebrated. For Rousseau, the practice ofcommon festivals at a site embodies the substance ofthe community, the direct and elemental exchange. Andthis image of festive community still makes the roundstoday – in whatever dilutions.

But if one reads Rousseau more precisely, one notesthe degree to which he was aware that there is no di-rect exchange or direct gathering, but rather that dra-maturgies and staging elements are always in play.One acts out theater, for oneself and for others, andactually one gathers together to be someone otherthan who one is. Part of this is a certain strategy.Today, especially, and especially in the anti-globaliza-tion campaign, one knows that every site where onegathers is at the same time a site that is distributed,that de-localizes itself, that corresponds with othersites, that presents itself on monitors, and that is a the-ater scene. There are no idylls of the political site, butmerely the politics of a site. The search for a site ofgathering, for a site of community, is always alreadypolitical strategy and inseparable from a symbolic andmedia processing of these sites. One constructs politi-cal topographies.

Henri Lefèbvre thinks space on three levels: lived,perceived and conceived space.7 Conceived space,in his scheme, also includes media representationsof spaces, the symbolics of spaces. But on the ot-her hand space also produces subjectivities, it ma-kes possible one’s experience of the everyday andof the exceptional. It is the field where we reside.Did collectively used space in Genoa – such as theNGO and Media Center during Genoa’s Social Fo-rum and the sleeping quarters in a school acrossthe street – , did specific situations in that city de-fine a space of a genuinely constitutive nature? Oris it only the representation of such a space thatmatters? As a whole – and this too is of course hy-pothetical – we are searching for how somethingcan take place, in and through such spaces, thatcarries meaning for the orientation and inner make-up of particular communities. In the present issue,it is those communities motivated not necessarilypolitically but primarily by communal living and wor-

king that can be seen to concern themselves with aconcrete, community-building experience of space.

I would like to turn this question around – if indeed it isa question – and ask what it is that really takes placethere. In situations of that kind, I feel that there is a lotlacking in terms of what was earlier named social expe-rience or communal experience; and that this is some-thing of a free-floating need that continually precipita-tes into gradients of different densities, different con-stellations, different aggregate states. To some extent,this is no longer self-evident. When one examines bio-graphical trajectories these days (including one’s own),what is noticeable is a constant hesitation, arguably la-sting until the very end: where should one invest thisneed for social experience, what should one focus on?Family? Or professional relationships? Friendships, orromantic passion? One thing is quite certain: none ofus really knows (hence the glorification of the ’68 gene-ration), and each of us knows that this need will notfind its ultimate expression in any single one of thoseforms. And this is what makes events such as Genoa,and to some extent also the anti-nuclear movement, sosignificant: they provided this diffuse need for social ex-perience with a place and a date. I believe this searchfor place and date is absolutely crucial in this regard –beyond the political stakes that certainly play their ownrole.

This relationship between community and spacebecomes especially tight in such constructed andarchitectural forms as the monument, the cemetery,the marketplace and the sports stadium. It is aquestion of forms of representation. But we alsosee a further possible theoretical construction ofthe relationship between space and community.Since Henri Lefèbvre, space can be thought in ex-clusively political terms, and conversely every policyis implemented in space. Seizing and expanding onMarx’s analysis of relations of production, he desi-gnates space as the site of contestation, the stageof conflict and the political. By contrast, you desi-gnate community as the site of contestation, the re-ference point of the political. It would seem possi-ble to conceive of this tight relationship betweenspace and community also along these lines – thepolitical.

Concepts of community are in my mind eminently tiedto the question of topos and atopos, that is to say tothe question of localization and de-localization. Whichleads quite naturally to that of space and structures ofspace. And the fact that the relationship of communityto space always implies a fundamental political gesturepermeates political theory.

To name two analogous examples: the first comes fromCarl Schmitt, who saw land and sea as two entirely dif-ferent organizations of space, and tied that to the

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question of the fate of the political. To put it crudely:Carl Schmitt says that political structures can only bebuilt on firm ground. Whether a port city could ever be-come the center of a polity is a question that appearsalready in Plato. He says that it cannot, because thesea imperils political order. There is exchange andamalgamation. People busy around. Hypercommunica-tion. Nothing is stable there.

Earlier I used another example, the “Heavenly Jerusa-lem”, representing a fixed territorial ordering. And thecounterexample is also formulated in John’s Apoca-lypse: the great whore of Babylon, described as a citywhere everyone copulates with everyone, where thereis prostitution. Where ships come and go. Wheregoods get transshipped. Where the many arts flourish.It is a place of disloyal and pagan commingling, anotherplace, if you will, that was built too close to the sea andtherefore not suitable for an ordering of that sort, a“Community of the Blessed”. Similar concepts, similarcontrasts (though assessed very differently) are foundfor example in Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, whenthey speak of striated and smooth space.

Another connected figure emerges with the question:what happens when political orderings are always andnecessarily constructed upon exclusion? It cannot workotherwise. Borders must be drawn. One must discrimi-nate, create differences. A basic political gesture is thatof discrimination, whether it leads to a declaration ofenmity, as in Carl Schmitt, or simply to drawing lines ofexclusion.

Every political gesture – however one chooses to un-derstand it – is tied to processes of discrimination. Andthese are in turn linked to orderings of space. GiorgioAgamben asks the question more or less like this: whatexactly are these peculiar political spaces that havebeen for so long bound up with a politics of the camp?Exclusion and inclusion take place simultaneously: inthe deportation camps, in refugee camps, in centers forasylum seekers. And that is why I would say: in everyspatial ordering, in every architectural ordering there isan explicit political strategy as well as an implicit politi-cal theory. And these can in fact be mapped out ontoa field structured by the sea – smooth space – on theone hand, the land – striated space – on the other.Every typology of political spaces, every scale of politi-cal values plays itself out in one way or another bet-ween these two extremes.

Is the problem not that built space per se has soli-dity and therefore a particular material durability? Ifso, how could one think architecture as emancipa-tory? Many of the community forms we have consi-dered, such as for instance various voluntaristiccommunes that erect borders toward the outsidewhile homogenizing on the inside, function by ex-cluding and rigidifying. There are few examples, it

would seem, of actual built communal spaces of amore open nature. Is such a concept of communityeven buildable, if conceived only as temporary andoriginating in hypercommunication and comming-ling?

There are some bizarre examples of built communalspaces, from our perspective at least: the gated com-munities in the USA. People come together to buildthemselves a small separate community. With its ownrules, with near-masochistic covenants. Where oneagrees in writing to being punished for dropping apiece of paper or forgetting to throwing away a can.Where there are extremely clear conditions for enteringand leaving. With its own security guards and privatepolice. People pay a lot for this. That is, if you will, anew form of disciplinary community, communal livingunder masochistic conditions.

One should therefore perhaps look in a different direc-tion. I would say that one of the greatest achievementsof what we call liberal society is that encounters no lon-ger have to be total encounters. That means I am nolonger bound to a real-life, lock, stock and barrel en-counter; we no longer need to rub up against each ot-her body and soul, we can be left alone.

With this in mind, I would tend to consider any form ofspatial and architectural ordering that disrupts the totaland compulsory encounter as community-founding.And especially through processes of uncoupling that,depending on the case, make me prudish or lascivious,focused or absent-minded. The ideal form of encounteris an encounter that is unforced, that allows for a freegame of social positioning. Hence one of the most im-portant architectural inventions: the door and its multi-faceted dramaturgy. An entire universe of social rela-tionships can be generated from the types and uses ofdoors.

With three architectural concepts emerging aroundthe same time at the beginning of the last century,we could return once again to the discussion of therole that space can play for communities. All threeask the question of how a working class that deve-lops self-consciousness searches for spatial forms,and how spatial forms are proffered to them.

The first example is relatively well-known: the Karl-Marx-Hof in Vienna. Here, as in other workers’ hou-sing developments, social democracy attempted toproduce fortified landmarks, symbolic representa-tions modeled after typologies of the bourgeoiscity. The second example is the so-called “Einkü-chenhaus”, which was so fiercely contested in Swe-den, Denmark, Austria and especially Berlin. House-work had to be relocated from the home and orga-nized in a professional and centralized manner. Theidea was to manufacture an infrastructure, a type of

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technical tool. The emancipation from houseworkwould make class culture but also family experien-ceable within a new communal form. Architecture ishere invested with bolstering particular social pro-cesses. And the third example, which we alreadymentioned, are the Soviet communal houses, whichin our view were principally an experiment in spatialand community experience. The objective was tobuild a space open to experience in the context ofa social movement.

Those now would be three models for the relations-hip between space and community. Until now wehave focused heavily on the model closest to us,the symbolic coding of a place, that is to say a parti-cular representation of a nation or class or some ot-her self-contained community. Are these other mo-dels – i.e.: a vision of the technical, a vision of theopen – plausible in your view?

Yes, absolutely. When I speak of the bringing about ofcommunities, it is always of course a matter of particu-lar technologies. That is crucial. Architecture, as well associal technologies, as well as media technologies, be-long among these technologies. Without question.

But we cannot forget that such technologies do notprotect us from accidents, abuses and misuses, inshort: from the unpredictable. Initially, the “Karl-Marx-Hof”, for example, was not only an architectural experi-ment, but a social one as well: a kind of prestige pro-ject, with quotations from the manorly styles of palace-and castle-architecture and even the architecture of theViennese Ringstrasse. And moreover, it did function asa fortress once before, during the workers’ uprising,when it was shelled by the army.

The “Einküchenhaus” (One-Kitchen-House) model toowas a social experiment, though it did not function atall. Built as quasi-manorly architecture, planned for pro-letarian living, it ended up being settled with a down-right petty bourgeois, resolutely non-collectivist procli-vity for the self-contained private living parcel, rededi-cated so to speak, and diverted from its intended useby its residents. What eventually emerged there wasnot a new social type, the proletarian, in a position todetermine his future in architectural terms too; whatthese apartments and interiors really housed were thepetty, very obvious ambitions for social mobility, outfit-ted with a cozy parlor and a nuclear family. One findssomething similar in the Bauhaus estates of Dessautoday, with the old sobriety and frugality overgrown bythe embellishments and stylistic window-dressings ofthe former GDR.

However it is one looks to build “communities”: sucharchitectural projects must always deal with smallcorruptions and flaws of this kind. And I would alwaysentertain some anxiety in relation to “built” communi-

ties: one expects a wonderful community, only to no-tice later it is something of a panopticon.

Here again, the permanence of built space emergesas a fundamental problem. When one considers theKarl-Marx-Hof, the scurrility of such an effort at ma-terial representation is striking. The “Einküchen-haus” too fast became obsolete, while the commu-nal houses proved not adaptable to the economicdevelopments of the Soviet Union. Soon enoughsocial reality finds itself no longer limping alongplaying catch-up, but already somewhere else ent-irely. Is there not a fundamental contradiction here?Can spaces really be produced, of whichever form,corresponding to a community that does not aim forcompletion?

I probably have no answer to that question, perhapsonly a casual and insufficient one. Every architecturecertainly carries within itself a basic social decision inregards to what should be done and how life shouldbe lived therein. Every building is a decision: will it becommercial property, a shopping paradise, will it be aprison, will it be something with a lot of green? But anarchitecture would be very presumptuous if it truly ho-ped to produce social forms, social identities.

You should perhaps ask the question the other wayaround: how can one avoid precisely that, a machineproducing social form? How to provide people withroom for their own dramas? How to build in such a waythat people are able to redraw or transgress their ownboundaries and barriers? Here again it has to do with ade-totalization of forms of encounter.

Naturally this concept of de-totalization and disso-lution of boundaries seems a lot more attractive tous than the rigidification of housing estates and pri-sons. But what kinds of spaces are these, wherenon-identification and non-totalized oneness cantake place? How to provide a potential non-place?Superstudio’s 1972 collages and film scripts for“Five Fundamental Acts” illustrate a totally open,but infrastructurally highly networked space, inwhich individuals or better singularities circulate infull freedom. In such a post-capitalistic structure,communities emerge of their own accord and radi-cally overcome all spatial constraints.

But when on the other hand one thinks of Plato’sport as a free trade zone, when one conceives ofthe flexible work relation of the in-house lounge, orthe desktop-sharing in the open-plan workplace, asopen spaces of that nature, the reference is to anotion of workplace and social relationships that isextremely pervasive these days. Such spaces the-refore denote at the very same time a type of tota-lity: neoliberal open space, and its construction ofcommunity.

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I believe that the promises that spaces of that naturealways carry with them are always unintentional promi-ses, that is to say promises that are not truly thoughtthrough. And what is a promise that is not truly thoughtthrough? It is the possibility of abuse. All of these spa-tial concepts carry in them possibilities of abuse, of mi-suse. So as I look at spaces, I ask myself: where canthat happen? Which spaces are most efficiently ab-used, led astray, misemployed?

This is a question, I think, that is tied to the new tech-nologies of government. One tries to reduce the possi-bility of abuse by expanding the margins of flexibility.Which means: when spaces are usable both privatelyand professionally, when spaces are both intimate andpublic, when spaces are defined in every respect by ahigh diffusion coefficient, then the possibility of abuse,of corrupted mutation recedes.

As to the extent to which neoliberal economic con-cepts are also tied to particular spatial concepts: firstof all, we can see – this is certainly widely accepted –that along with the modernization of concepts of go-vernment, configurations of space also underwent tho-rough reform. What Foucault called the disciplinary so-ciety was characterized in a significant way by the crea-tion of address spaces, the localization of people. Wesee that in the example of the Panopticon. But also inthe history of cities, in the introduction of streets ofhouses and house numbers, in the drainage of base-ments and the thinning of attics. The rehabilitation of alldisorder. It was about the production of transparentspatial orders and parcels of space. And above all, theassignment of places and individuals.

In such a constellation it was abundantly clear that thetransgression of boundaries – one could think for in-stance of the hordes of girls in Kafka’s Trial, oozingthrough every doorcrack – are evidence of the collapseof the disciplinary regime, or at the very least that theyprefigure it. The new situation that has emerged – thisis also well-known – is characterized by the fact thatthere are today fewer prohibitions on mobility thanthere are imperatives of mobility, which once againdeeply transforms the configuration of space.

That is one issue. The status quo. The other question,which one cannot get around, is that every one of thesehistorical transformations of the relationship betweenthe political, the social and the architectural asks for aphenomenology of space. What actually takes place inwhat spaces? Today there is a definite tendency, at le-ast in our cultures, towards multi-purpose spaces. Spa-ces are fundamentally multi-purpose spaces. And thebest example, perhaps even the utopia of these multi-purpose spaces, is the so-called loft. In a space onceused for work, we can now sleep, eat, work. Lofts, in acertain sense, are total-body and total-mind spaces. Sothe question must be posed again: in these nomadic

spaces, in these spaces for the nomads of career andlove, which technology of differentiation should we useto re-insert discrimination?

Why discrimination? Do you mean a kind of activedrawing of boundaries?

Yes. Boundaries, for instance, to keep work out of cer-tain spaces. For me that isn’t so easy. The same proba-bly goes for you. We even work in bed. How are spa-ces generated that produce places of concentration,however improvised? Amidst a generalized deconcen-tration of spaces, we sometimes find ourselves longingfor what we know from childhood: the space that con-sisted of covering a table with a tablecloth and squat-ting underneath and not being seen.

1 Joseph Vogl (Hg.): Gemeinschaften. Positionen zu einer Philosophie des

Politischen, Frankfurt am Main 1994

2 Vogl, S. 8

3 Alberto Melucci: Challenging Codes, Cambridge / New York 1996

4 Vogl, S. 23

5 Vogl, S. 20

6 Michael Hardt, Antonio Negri: Empire. Die neue Weltordnung, Frankfurt am

Main 2003

7 Henri Lefèbvre: The Production of Space, Oxford 1991

Joseph Vogl is Professor for History and Theory of Artificial Worlds, Bau-

haus-University Weimar

Translation by Matthew Gaskins (first part) and Eric Anglès (second part)

Proofreading by Micah Magee

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01 Soviet Communal HousesAfter the October Revolution in Russia the pressingquestion was how could the everyday life of people li-ving under Socialism be imagined, how should theirwork, their buying habits, their relationships, their lei-sure time and their living quarters be organized. Inspi-red by the communal living, which emerged spontane-ously in the expropriated apartments of the bourgeoisiein the cities, the architects sought new communistforms of habitation to radically overcome the individuali-zed forms of family life of the bourgeoisie.

02 Globalization-critical groupsIn the field of social movement research Della Porta etal. developed an approach to broach the issue of com-munity according to which the construction of collec-tive identity is characteristic for the globalization-critical

movement. In Genoa and elsewhere very diverse indivi-duals and groups protested together despite differingpolitico-moral convictions and thereby advanced a glo-balization from the bottom up. The social and age-ba-sed heterogeneity of the base is explained by the cog-nitive definition of goals and means. Apparently a newproletariat of students, intellectuals and unemployedhas developed. A politicization of the youth has takenplace.

03 En RondaThe “Ciudad Abierta”, the “Open City” is a teaching fa-cility and living quarters of the Valparaiso School(Chile) where communal design and construction isbeing practiced since 1971. An important working me-thod of this communal approach is the “Trabajo enRonda”, a working in a circle that is never completedbut rather is a cyclically ongoing process and is develo-ped as a collective group. Designs and buildings arecontinually revised and modified in a succession ofoperations.

4 Paris Commune 1871The Paris Commune declared in March of 1871 onlyexisted for 72 days, after which it was brutally defeatedby the troops of the reactionary French government.Based on the model of communal self-government anew model of society was developed which envisioned

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a fundamental reorganization of state and society. Theseparation of church and state, a free secular educa-tion system for everyone, the creation of unions and theinitiation of workers’ councils, laws for occupational he-alth and safety and labor contracts were all included inthe innovations of the provisional government

05 Universal EmbassyIn December of 2001 a group of Sans Papiers (peoplewithout legal documents) occupied the building of theformer Somalian embassy in Brussels and establishedthe Universal Embassy there. This served on the onehand as a temporary shelter for the de-legalized, but atthe same time it was also symbolically declared the offi-cial representation of the Sans Papiers community. It isan embassy, which stands for the rights of migrants andthe radical renegotiation of the status of citizenship.

06 The End of Social housingIn February of 2003 the local senate of Berlin decidedthe immediate discontinuation of public subsidization ofsocial housing. With this act it ended a practice of fun-ding, which saw the creation of living space with soci-ally compatible rents for “the broad levels” of the popu-lation as a function of the state government and conse-quently tried to regulate the housing market. In responsethe Berlin Sistra Management Company successfullysued the regional government of Berlin, which now mustcontinue payments until a final ruling has been reached.

07 The Pope SquatTaking the visit of the pope to the “World CatholicYouth Days” as occasion, the “Ontario CoalitionAgainst Poverty” occupied on July 25th, 2002 a houseon King Street West in Toronto as a call against theCanadian housing crisis. Once “The Pope Squat” theyrenovated the building themselves it served as a self-governed living space for three months and became acultural venue. The squat was protest made manifestand was marked by a wide community of supporters.

08 Zusammen Wohnen (Living Together)Micha Fedrowitz and Ludger Gailing observed a newtendency towards communal forms of living and descri-bed them as a reaction to current shifts in society andas attempts to realize ecologically and socially alterna-tive outlooks on life. Communal Housing Projects can

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thereby go beyond their function as a means to sha-ping one’s life and can be understood as strategies fora social and ecological urban development.

09 Family and Youth Living FloorsIn a complex of buildings established in 1974 by theprotestant church of Berlin-Lichtenrade 32 “Familien-und Jugendwohnetagen” (family and youth living floors)were offered in different areas. These are open spaceswith kitchenettes whose configuration and use the sur-rounding tenants could determine themselves. Theywere furnished and painted collectively, arranged asplay areas, communal living rooms or libraries. Thespaces are used for playing ping-pong, cooking andwatching TV together or they are used as hobby roomsor storage areas.

10 Co-Housing ProjectThe “Wohnhöfe” (residential courtyards) built in Graz(Austria) in 1975 were planned to enrich the co-habi-tation of multiple families: “There already exists – spon-taneously occurring – a good deal of practical colla-boration: transportation to kindergarten and school,carpooling, collective gardening, anything not fixed islent out, mosaics are laid, the connecting passage ispainted, people cook together, the sick are cared for,children sleep over at and occasionally live with neigh-bors, adults and children sing together and muchmore.”

11 Squatter Camp against the New West Runway From October 1980 until November 1981 citizens’ initi-atives, freaks and student groups erected a squattercamp in the Flörsheimer Wald near Frankfurt am Main(Germany) in the area of the planned extension to theFrankfurt Airport. Together they built and inhabited over60 huts for community use and housing, to prevent theextension of the airport through the occupation of theconstruction site and the protest actions generatedfrom the site.

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12 Archology ArcosantiArcosanti in Arizona is based on a master plan by thearchitect Paolo Soleri and is so far the only attempt torealize his concept of “Archology”, the synthesis of ar-chitecture and ecology. Alongside the planning guideli-nes however an unplanned camp developed on theoutskirts, which is primarily occupied by youths. Sole-ri’s rejection of this camp reveals the normative natureof his projected spatial counter proposal.

13 1km CorvialeTowards the end of the 1970’s an Italian group ofarchitects developed in the northwestern periphery ofRom the housing project “Corviale”, a 1km long slab,which offers space to 8500 tenants. The Corviale wasrealized with the inclusion of all architectural ideals ofthe 1970’s: teamwork, theories of neighborhoods,mega-structural thinking, standardization and mass pro-duction. Ample shopping and service infrastructures onthe 4th floor however were never built. The promenadelevel was nevertheless used by the residents and others.Soon after the completion of the building around 700families squatted parts of the building and occupiedunfinished empty areas of the structure.

14 Asia Pacific Center5000 to 10000 immigrants of Vietnamese origin live inthe Eastern part of Berlin most of who had arrived inthe GDR in the late 1970’s as immigrant workers. Withthe collapse of the GDR however they lost their jobs inthe factories. For most the regular job market remainedclosed. The Asia Pacific Center, a Vietnamese busi-ness and service center in Berlin-Hohenschönhausen,which was operated from 1997 to 2002 in a formerwarehouse, was a possibility of autonomously makingmoney for the Vietnamese community.

15 The Human DriftIn 1894 the inventor of the disposable razor, KingChamp Gillette, describes and works out the socialutopia of an immense metropolis, which was to be hometo all people. The electrical power gained from the diffe-rence in elevation of the Niagara Falls would transformthe large central city into a wonderland. 60 million peoplewould live in huge, hotel-like apartment towers and werethus freed of the nuisances of housekeeping chores.

16 Gallaratese occupata!In the Gallaratese quarter on the periphery of Milan thearchitects Carlo Aymonino and Aldo Rossi built a newhousing complex, which refers typologically and spati-ally to the Italian worker’s housing and to social utopianconcepts of community. This architectural order, whichalludes to a proletarian self-consciousness, was occu-

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pied in 1974 by people seeking housing whereby therecovery of the buildings social function was reclaimed.

17 Zanon es de los ObrerosThe ceramic tile factory “Zanon” in the Argentinea is oneof about 160 factories, which in the course of the natio-nal economic crisis was occupied within the last twoyears by the workers. Zanon together with textile factory“Brukman” in Buenos Aires, which in the meantime hasbeen vacated, and the supermarket “Ex-Tigre” in Rosariois one of the currently best-known and largest workerrun companies in Argentina. Since early 2002 the wor-kers co-operative self-runs the production of ceramictiles after heavy disputes with the company managementover unpaid wages and violated security regulations.

18 Life as Fundamental ActThe Florentine architecture group “Superstudio” deve-loped with their “Five Fundamental Acts” a utopia of atechnologically overstocked non-hierarchical lands-cape. In this non-architecture, community was to spont-aneously evolve of its own accord in continuous modifi-cation without being constrained by the repressions ofcapitalist space.

19 Christiania SelvforvaltningConcurrent to the attempt of the new ultra right wingpopulist Danish government to end Christiania as a so-cial experiment there is a large counter movement ofsolidarity – not with the currently existing, inhabitedChristiania but with the historical image of the place asa countercultural Freetown. This lead to an increase inpublic protests, petitions, and cultural events, whichmade Christiania once again, contested space.

20 Einküchenhaus (One-Kitchen-House)At the turn of the century the German feminist LilyBraun already calls for the “Einküchenhaus”. By relie-ving women of housekeeping duties through the esta-blishment of professionally run canteen kitchens in hou-sing developments and other technical facilities andservices the emancipation of the woman was to beenabled. This project was vehemently criticized withinsocialist circles as a dangerous attempt “to realize theideals of socialism in the midst of capitalist society”.Soon thereafter the project was built in Berlin, Copen-hagen and Vienna by bourgeois reformers.

21 SteilshoopIn the 1970’s radically participative decision-makingstructures were initiated in the construction, the useand the administration of the most prominent Germanexperiment for subsidized housing. In the apartments,apartment shares and the entire building the tenants

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established a number of community rooms including aday-care center, a bar, a woodshop, a photo-lab and asauna.

22 AurovilleSince its establishment in 1968 Auroville (India) isbeing realized in a continual process of anarcho-spiri-tual cohabitation. From the teachings of “integral yoga”by Sri Aurobindo the founder Mira Alfassa known as the“Mother” developed a concept of city and community.Auroville is a continuation of this teaching and suspendsthe distinction between life and spirituality. Up to nowonly parts of the utopian city model have been realized.Following the teachings of Sri Aurobindo this modelhowever cannot be an ultimate conclusion of Auroville,but rather only one, which can be interpreted and furt-her, developed. The “Matrimandir” is the center ofAuroville which functions as a place of congregationand in whose center stands the symbol of Sri Aurobindo.

23 Border camps EuropeSince 1998 every summer border camps were held Eu-rope wide, which acted against the capitalist logic ofexploitation and the racist marginalization of the EU-Mi-gration Politics and advocated for a global freedom ofmovement. The camps are a type of leftist, politicalsummer camp with actionist interventions, with collec-tive protest, provocation and party or autonomous sum-mer school. Organizationally the individual border

camps are increasingly connected through the Euro-pean “No-Border-Network” and define themselves assuch as a leftist counter community against the supra-national entity of the European union.

24 BofælleskaberOver 100 mostly privately initiated co-housing projectswere built in Denmark in the 1970’s. Translated theterms means “living community” and stands for a formof communal living where the floor areas of the privateliving spaces are proportionately reduced in favor ofcommunity spaces. The individual apartments are arran-ged around a community building which can include alarge dining hall, a common kitchen, a lounge, con-ference rooms, recreational facilities, a library, woods-hops and areas for children.

25 Coop Siedelung FreidorfThe “Freidorf” in Muttenz near Basel, Switzerland, wasinitiated in 1919 by the governing body of variousconsumers’ cooperatives as a sample estate for future

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cooperative housing estates and was conceived andbuilt following designs by Hannes Meyer. Hannes Meyerhimself lived in the Freidorf for several years until hisappointment to the Bauhaus Dessau. However shortlythereafter he criticized the project as bourgeois and asa doomed attempt at reform.

26 Wagenburgen 1988-2003Mobile squatters, which in the early 1990’s began tosettle the inner-city districts of Berlin are exposed tocontinuously changing pressures of land utilization.Most of the time they had to make way for representa-tive investment projects. The conflicts over their locationwere however not only with real estate investors butalso with the respective districts and neighbors whichdue to the presence of the “mobile squatters” worriedabout the decrease in value of their own properties.

27 Lama FoundationIn 1967 New York artists established the “Lama Foun-dation” in the Sangre de Christo Mountains of NewMexico. The community life of this spiritual communetakes place according to the seasonal rhythms. Severaltimes a day the members congregate in the communityhut to eat and pray. For part of the year most membersusually retreat to their solitary huts to spend their timein hermitage. As a source of income summer classesare offered. The members also self-publish books andprint cloths, t-shirts and bags.

28 Communes in the New WorldLiselotte and Oswald Mathias Ungers analyze differentutopian communities in North America and see thereinpossibilities for a co-existence of man, which is not ba-sed on an ideology of profit and competition. “The prac-tices of the utopians cannot simply be transferred intoour industrialized mass society, but insight can be gai-ned from their experiences for today’s experiments.”

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29 Communes in BrandenburgSince the beginning of the 1990’s several political, spi-ritual, ecological, psychosocial or cooperative projectsor communes were established in Brandenburg (Ger-many) as a result of the low cost of local real estateand the proximity to Berlin. Many of the projects survi-ved less because of agricultural self-sufficiency but rat-her due to offered products and seminars or becauseof visitors and guests, which participated, temporarily inthe everyday life of the communes.Translated by common room.

30 NORC Co-op VillageOne of the largest and oldest Naturally Occurring Reti-rement Communities in the US, the NORC Co-op Villa-ges was established out of the need to help the increa-sing senior population of the Lower East Side coopera-tive housing developments age in place. In addition tomedical services provided for the senior residents theNORC facilitates the continued integration and partici-pation with society keeping up a long history of grass-roots activity of the local community

31 ABC No RioThe Lower East Side, NYC arts center ABC No Rio be-gan when a group of visual artists staged a building oc-cupation as exhibition called the Real Estate Show. In1983 a group of performing artists took over. In the

early ’90s, control passed to a collective of punk rok-kers. Today a group of collectives runs ABC, producingart shows, music and poetry events, and runningworkshops in screen printing and photography. TheABC community shares values and convictions, inclu-ding commitment to social justice, equality, anti-authori-tarianism, autonomous action, and collective proces-ses. It is a community both local and international.

This booklet is a shortened and revised reprint of An Architektur 10: Gemein-

schaftsräume. It is published as a supplement to the exhibition “Communal

Spaces / Community Places / Common Rooms” at Common Room 2, NY,

June 12 - July 20, 2007.

No. 01-29 by An Architektur

Translation by Common Room

No. 30-31 supplement by Common Room

Alexanderstraße 7D-10178 Berlinredaktion@anarchitektur.comwww.anarchitektur.com

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