IDENTITY OF THE GENERIC
Research on systems of power and order regulating the physical realm in the scheme of socialist microrayons. Imposure of ideology as an algorithm transforming space into a foundation for behavioral programming. Mechanism of bonding with stigmatized places, urban trauma and imprints of emotion in space. Role of identity and collective efforts in a search for psychological balance. / link
Mathematically produced space of the mass housing estates was a programmatic solution to the reorganization of society, adjusting spatial schemes and typologies of standardization aiming to create egalitarian structures and flat hierarchies of 20th century socialist regime. A mass housing inhabitant
served as an inceptive point for calculations and development of technocratic urban design with little to no opportunity of subjective input, adaptation and acting in space. After the collapse of the ideological structure serving as a centralized pillar for social coherence and (mandated) collective behavior, Petržalka estate rapidly descended into decay and chaos of post-socialism. The inhabitants issued a collective effort to search for a new way of identifying with their surroundings while overcoming stigmatization, imprinting the space with new types of action and claiming their urban origins.
Project investigates dimensional possibilities of generically produced space, looking to incorporate the universalist design of socialist modernism to serve as a container for developing radically inclusive space. In terms of convertive adaptability extending beyond the given functional boundaries, it shows potential to accommodate current organic developments and existing incentive of the communities in Petržalka.
Space-tied identities
Identity of a place is more difficult to define, because the »place« itself is too complex to describe. The term »place« itself also already contains a distinctive component. A place is a place for its specificity, as there exists a plurality of different other places. So by using this notion, we know that it always operates within a different context, deals with different level of complexity, the specifics of the social and psychological dimension. Space is an abstract term for a place and objects define space, giving it a geometric personality.
“Every place is to be considered a specific cognitive database that is being experienced by a person with a specific self-concept.”
Throughout the life, considering the social and environmental skills, we learn to use different lenses through which we evaluate and categorize places and how they look to us, what they mean to us, how we interact with them, think about them and how we remember them, as well as how we negotiate what they mean or defend them. In Proshansky and Fabian’s research from 1987, it is described as five functions of the place identity: recognition, meaning, expressive-requirement, mediating change and anxiety-defense mechanism.
Cognitive Dissonance and the Microrayons
The planned socialist districts were the spatial and ideological units where each building, street and other built element has its position, value and meaning. The buildings did not emerge individually, they were planned as collaborative collective entities — microrayons. While the other cities and towns resurrected their pre-socialist past via the coping strategies, the removal of this type of legacy would be very difficult to achieve. Strategies as decontextualization, spatial isolation or spatial reframing are therefore hardly possible. Narrative re-framing is the strategy the current municipality is trying to apply, influenced by the efforts to re-frame the narratives on the national level. When it comes to choosing this strategy, we speak about re-narrating both discursive and material politically fostered systemic structures involving and developing an entire new type of community and collective personality. Even though the names of the streets and squares dedicated to the important socialist figures were all changed after 1989, the physicality of the district remains the same. Combination of strategies of narrative re-framing and
Europeanization prove that beyond the typical challenges of the post-socialist transitions (privatization, change of the legal basis, social crisis, etc.), a further remark of the place identity is on the agenda of the district management. However, identities pursed by the officials and identities expressed by the inhabitants are rather incompatible. These discrepancies are also obvious from the way the public discourse is held. Despite the efforts to pronounce the socialist past as »erased from the minds of the people« and the prejudices as »eliminated thanks to the intervention of the officials«, these remain only vague statements that do not reflect the reality. Additionally, it is a sign of denial and even confirm the lack of exchange and focus on the inhabitant. The real »organic« identity is proven to exist and rests on the foundations of the original community, experiences and memories of the residents related to the existing environment — the socialist urban design. The »real« identity cannot be artificially constructed or ordered like a product. The integral component of identity relies on the individual memories functioning as puzzle pieces creating a mosaic of the collective experience.
“The still ongoing transition is engaging in a veritable orgy of historical revisionism of writing the communist period out of the past. It is an ongoing negotiation of what is privileged to be remembered, what is officially disregarded, and what, in spite of official efforts at suppression, resists forgetting.”
Reconfiguration of spatial entities over time
Post-modernism ultimately urges everyone to see the world in a fragmented state. It rejects the grand visions, and by that it rejects forcing the entities to reconfigure themselves during the process of using the space. At the same time, spaces could also not have to be elements with fixed position, belonging to a certain realm, or with fixed function. In both cases — space and social entities — the problem of interface emerges. Most of the times, we are surrounded by defined spaces and act as defined entities. If the interface acts as an agent of inclusiveness, it allows the spaces and entities to change and redefine their use and purpose according to the current convenience.
“Fragment urbanism and local narratives as integral to post-modern urbanism constitute the definition factors that transform the whole (the space), yet the time constant is not easily changeable. In the upcoming era, these definitions of time might and will fluctuate.”
A multistory housing block is a successful attempt to claim the same place by many people. It allows to manipulate the space across time. The stretching the time factor would be one the techniques allowing the inclusivity — the same space being used by different users for different purposes at different times — is the point of liberation from the boundaries of space and time. A concept requiring a use of a different logic of space and time would be a subject to a revolutionary change. Radically inclusive architecture can be architecture of the new era. It can be the era of post-definition, where spaces do not need a stable definition in form or a function, as well as people would not have a constant need to use spaces only for a specific purpose. Architecture that is freed from the expectations to stable consistent affiliation (not only a function, but potentially freed from generating profit or looking good).
The New Collective
How do we think of collective and community in the current world? „We are all in this together“ is the slogan that is often being used to persuade others that we are on their side. To claim being »we« can be profitable, it can win over the political votes. »We« is powerful. Yet, when I say, that the community can also be exclusive, it sounds like a contradictory statement. It is not to discard the concept, it is to bring the awareness of a multitude of meanings and understandings — its comforting togetherness as well as sharp edges. »We« is the agent of cultures, politics, religious beliefs, it comes in various sizes. Being a community, therefore defining the aspects to collectively identify with, automatically excludes everything that does not meet the criteria.
But the real »we« is not only people coming together to renovate a garden. It can be a collective of people losing jobs, struggle with life and share the decline with the others who are present and aware that they can succumb to the similar misfortune. Facing the adversity, the community is reborn — as a selfless act and as a necessity. This study has focused on examining the kind of collective that has been emerging from the depths of chaos.
“The »we« that emerges from sharing the chaos, is the genuine one. A collective with a stigmatized past, resting on sharing the negatives and developing a defense mechanism holds an additional bonding element.”
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