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to the States, as a matter of fact. The States
was a big shock for me.
RM: I think that the big difference between
what is happening today and what happened,
say, in the period between the two great wars
and developed in the 1950s and 1960s, is
that in the 1920s we still had the sense that
progress could be designed. You were able to
think utopically in terms of how the idea of
city could be. Now, I don’t believe we are able
to foresee how things are going to be. And yet
everybody believes in the future, but a future
that is formless. Nobody knows exactly how
this future is going to be. Therefore, archi-
tects are unclear today about times to come.
I believe that the future is going to happen
in a positive way but I wonder if we are
able to foresee, and therefore to design, and
therefore to think about ideas like Zeitgeist,
now. That has been such a crucial word to
talk and think about. How many times has it
been said that we should be the spirit of the
times? Right now, who is able to decide what
today’s spirit is?
KF: I think one of the things that we haven’t
quite yet embraced is to recognize the limit
of the question of progress. And one of the
things that have replaced the idea of progress,
in my opinion, is the idea of maximization.
So that in medicine, agriculture, and many
fields, above all of course in late capital-
ist development, maximization is the driving
instrumental force in society – such as to
maximize agricultural production, maximize
the direct treatment of sickness through phar-
maceuticals, maximize development of cities
in the sense of capitalist development. When
you think of all these high-rise buildings ev-
erywhere, like London, they are so meaning-
less from the point of view of culture. They
are simply machines to make as much money
as possible.
RM: What comes together with this is that
we have lost confidence in the value of the
word ‘reason.’ We have to give reason another,
different way of being understood, because, for
instance, at this moment in time, that which
can be rebuilt is reasonable. People often talk
about architects who build, architects with a
commitment to reflection, but where are the
discussing architects nowadays? Architects
now spend more time discussing the means
of production at all the design moments. For
instance, it would be difficult nowadays to
establish the bridge between the work of art-
ists and the work of architects.
KF: I think that one of the problems is
that art itself, also, is becoming commodified.
And commodification is one of the problems
because architects tend to think of their work
as large art. The problem with that is there
is not the same dialectic between architecture
and art that there was in the 1930s. When
architects think in terms of building as large
art, they run the risk also of the general com-
modification of art. That is the problem today.
Shaping the Void
RM: You used the term ‘commodification.’ It’s
true that when architecture becomes that, it
enters another order of things that doesn’t
fulfil the duty of serving reason. Something
that happens a lot nowadays and didn’t hap-
pen before.
KF: Somewhere, early on, Van Eyck, for
example, says this aphorism about how ar-
chitects can build if the society does not have
form? How can the architect build the ‘coun-
terform’ if it doesn’t have form.This is almost
“When architects think
in terms of building as
large art, they run the
risk also of the general
commodification of art”
