Joshua Comaroff, Ong Ker-Shing, Horror in Architecture: The Reanimated Edition, 2023, University of Minnesota Press, paperback, 258pp + xi, mono illus., $24.95
Joshua Comaroff and Ong Ker-Shing, authors of Horror in Architecture (which has recently been republished in expanded form) describe horror as a means of conveying the sublime, which confounds reason and elicits in the subject a feeling of wonder and fear. They go on to observe that horror is nowadays discredited and low status, the province of pulp fiction and formulaic films, and no longer considered a means of powerful expression but rather one of titillation driven by commercial imperatives. This new edition has reshaped the material of the first and has significant additions. The illustrations are instructive and well selected. The jargon is kept to a low level, so it is an approachable read for anyone not versed in cultural theory or architecture.
A major part of this study, which is often closer to social studies than architectural writing, centres on body horror. Our sense of normality is determined by our understanding of reality as conditioned by the bodies we see around us. Deviation from the norm induces horror and pity, in that order. Any deviation is antithetical to normalcy. Subjects include doubles, exquisite corpses (the hybrid), partial vacancy, reflexivity, incontinent objects, homunculism and gigantism, distortion and disproportion, blobs and other topics.
The authors point out that some early inadvertent monstrosities were the product of classically trained architects struggling to confront the inherent expectations of the commissioners of modern high-rise construction. The morphology of the beaux-arts did not work well when transferred to the outsize structures of the American commercial renaissance of c. 1840-1929, which demanded that they be inflated or repeated to excess, comprising distorted hybrids injured by a contradiction between size and style. Doubled structures (for example, twin towers) sometimes provide peculiar qualities of bifurcation and redundancy, which are sometimes are counteracted by placement or variation that introduces necessary divergence between the components. Otherwise, the sense of doubling has the aura of twins or doppelgangers, which can induce unease. Too great a degree of deviation, especially in attached structures (the British semi-detached house) takes on the air of the hypertrophied or strangely mutated, when one half becomes too distinct from its pair.
Biomorphism of the built is a horrific aberration. In Zaha Hadid Architects’ hotel in Graz (2020) windows “jut from the façade to varying degrees and appear to “look” in different directions. This intentional biomorphism is undoubtedly horrifying, particularly in contrast to the conservative facades of the UNESCO World Heritage Site where the boardinghouse sits.”[ii] The uncanny and perverse are intention when a building starts to mimic living things. The building that echoes the ship or the monument is imitative but it does not possess the characteristics of a living thing, such as the “scales” of Selfridges Building, Birmingham (2003) or the “eye stalks” of Kunsthaus Graz (2000), which ape the animalistic.
The examples of gigantism are mainly unrealised proposals, such as Iofan’s Palace of the Soviets, Moscow (1937) and the fantasies of Piranesi, but could have included the Brussels Palais de Justice, Brussels (1866-83). These are often proportionately unremarkable, simply vastly oversized. Inadvertent distortion (church spire, Chesterfield (medieval)) is compared to deliberate distortion made by Gehry and others. This is prime example of the gameplaying of Post-Modernists. Expressionism is another generator of misshapen structures, not much covered here. The breadth of the topics and the relative shortness of this book mean that a lot goes undiscussed. It is not obvious how much the reader is assumed to know already or whether there are gaps the discourse that arise through the authors having to cover too much ground.
The authors view the proliferation of instances of horror in architecture as a sign of resistance to the state of “late capital”. The playful, inefficient gaps that can be found in Post-Modernist buildings are a sign of a repudiation against pure functionalism, state-socialist planning and rational exploitation engendered by capitalism. The authors quote intriguing ideas of Pierre Bourdieu and Moishe Postone, discussing architecture as something appraised as beyond function and commodity, with a presence that defies human determination. This is perhaps because most buildings are beyond the capacity of the average man to build or even (as in the case of complex buildings) comprehend. The apparent permanence of buildings must also play into this special treatment of buildings.
In their postscript, Comaroff and Ker-Shing devoutly hope for an “authentically transgressive” architecture that will make conventional citizens, mired in late capital, discomforted. “An abject, insurgent architecture must constantly violate the limits of the episteme[.]”[vi] The political function of horror in architecture (“the disobedient building”[vii]) is to reify the abnormal. The rise in active subversion “makes for interesting buildings”.[ix] So it does, but one cannot help wondering about the cumulative effect of such undermining of conventions, not only architectural but socio-political. Perhaps the drive to overturn is found in the envy of lesser men directed towards the pantheon of greats they grew up beneath. Esteem for novelty in itself is the sure road not to abundance of achievement but to nihilism. By judging architecture is Marxist terms, the authors fail to acknowledge the role of psychology and man’s essential nature, unfortunately. Such is the fate of much social studies. Nevertheless, for an overview of the uncanny in recent architecture Horror in Architecture is a stimulating read which will make sense of some deep-rooted reactions we have to the most startling of buildings, especially recently erected ones.
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[i] P. 55
[ii] P. 85
[iii] P. 103
[iv] P. 112
[v] P. 207
[vi] P. 213
[vii] P. 213
[viii] 1-2pp
[ix] P. 213
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