Totalitarian architecture
(Rodrigo Peñaloza, 08/23/2021)
The painting (annexed to this post) “Demolitions of the Borghi”, the Borgo Nuovo, by Mario Mafai, refers to Mussolini’s policy of deurbanization of the working class in the 1930’s. As pointed out by Diane Ghirardo, in her book “Italy: Modern Architectures in History”, chapter 3 (Architecture and the Fascist State: 1922–1943), page 98:
“The Master Plan for Rome, the work of Marcello Piacentini and a committee of dignitaries in 1931, renders fascist ideas about urbanism abundantly clear in the manner in which it specified the construction of housing for government employees at all levels as well as for those in the public sector.”
Each level of the bureaucratic hierarchy should be allocated to a specific urban spot. Despite the fact that such urban restructurings are common in Architecture, motivations may vary. Ghirardo goes on to say in the same chapter, pages 127–129:
“Throughout nearly the two decades of fascist rule, debates rages among traditionalists, Rationalists and Novecentisti (…) about the appropriate style for the new regime. In 1926 the Rationalist Gruppo 7 (…) vigorously attacked what they saw as a fascination with the newness for the sake of the newness, but it is difficult to identify the ways in which their own fascination with the avant-garde departed from the attitudes they attributed to their opponents (…). The formal choices of the three groups differed, but no social, political or cultural programme separated them. All laboured to varying degrees to convince regime officials that their aesthetic was the best expression of the Fascist state.”
Though there was an attemptive balance between tradition and modernity, there was no doubt about the insistence on social, political and cultural hierarchies. Each urban subregion was to be allocated to a specific level of the bureaucratic service.
The painting which I chose to adorn this short note illustrates not just the demolition of an architectonic structure, it rather illustrates the demolition of cultural heritage as an expression of freedom. By artificially shaping architecture, Mussolini’s intention was to destroy part of the cultural heritage and to devoid people from cultural values that were incompatible with Mussolini’s totalitarian ideals. All this is part of a broader aspect of totalitarian regimes.
In mentioning the demolition of Borgo Nuovo and the fascist programme to fit architecture into an artificial social design, I cannot, in addition, but mention Brasilia, designed by Lúcio Costa, who was deeply influenced not only by Le Corbusier, but also by his communist ideology. Brasilia’s self-sufficient residential super-blocks, its microsectors, antecede shortly Gutnov’s new elements of settlement, which emphasize the correspondence between urban structures and social relationships in the ideal communist city. Gutnov founded the NER movement, which stands for the Russian acronym НЭР — Новый элемент расселения (new unit of settlement). As Elke Beyer highlights in her paper “From New Units of Settlement to the old Arbat: the soviet NER group’s search for spaces of community”, in Morávansky et alii (eds.): “Re-Humanizing Architecture: New Forms of Community, 1950–1970”, page 214:
“The primary housing unit within the NER provided individual family apartments for 1500 inhabitants in an area of 250x250 m (…) clustered around a green central courtyard (…).”
In its initial planning, Brasilia’s superblocks were devised to segregate the various levels of the bureaucratic hierarchy of the federal government, just like the Master Plan for Rome. That absolutely does not mean that Lúcio Costa was ever inspired by the Italian architects of the 1930’s. The common element is the totalitarian view according to which a superior entity (be it the fascist state or the communist party) is rightly entitled to dictate how people should move and occupy the urban space, leaving, to some extent, no freedom of choice to the citizens.
Gutnov’s group of communist architects published in 1965 a short book about the ideal communist city, “Новый элемент расселения: на пути к новому городу” (The new unit of settlement: towards the new city). Their totalitarian view of life is reflected in their belief that the state, and solely the state, pretty much like Mussolini’s fascism, should design people’s urban lives as if from a cybernetic central facility. From page 22 of Gutnov’s book, I extracted this passage:
“Such analysis allows us to assert that creative communication will be the dominant form of communication in the classless communist society. Each person under communism will have the real and egalitarian possibility to develop freely and harmonically his capacities and to apply them in creative work. Each person, as a creative personality, is the focal point of the communist society.”
Original: Такой анализ посваляет утверждать, что госпадствующей формой общения в бежклассовом коммунитическом обществе будет общение творческое. Каждый человек при коммунизме будет иметь реальную и равную возможность свободно и гармонично развивать свои способности и применять их в творческом труде. Человек как творческая личность — в центре внимания коммунитического общество.
From an economic perspective, Gutnov’s quote is a contradictio in terminis. It is beautiful on paper, because it uses such terms as creativity, real and egalitarian possibility, free and harmonic development. However, creativity can only exist where people are free to create and to internalize the benefits of their creation, a point highly emphasized by Daron Acemoglu, who soon will be awarded the Nobel prize in Economics. In their 2012’s book “Why Nations Fail”, Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson argued that the Soviet Union indeed reached a high growth rate (about 6%) between Stalin’s and Krushchëv’s eras, but it did not provide incentives for innovation (creativity) due to lack of property rights and freedom.
What soviet architects thought about the ideal communist city only makes sense under totalitarian regimes. No wonder Brasilia’s original demographic prospects fell totally apart as the city grew. Both fascist and soviet architecture fail to recognize that demographic movement is not a piece of a cybernetic social device which bureaucrats or “illustrated” intellectuals can design ad libitum. They are as totalitarian as the regimes they intend to please. Furthermore, both presented absolute disregard for the architectonic heritage, under the presumption that architectonic heritage is the product of a past that must be substituted by a new ideology.
