Andrés Jaque e Office for Political Innovation, Mies e la gatta Niebla. Saggi su architettura e cosmopolitica, Siké, 2021
10.6092/issn.2038-3460/17555
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2038-3460
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Alvise Mattozzi
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Tecnoscienza – Italian Journal of Science & Technology Studies
Andrés Jaque and Office for Political Innovation, Mies and Niebla the kitten. Essays on architecture and cosmopolitics, Puente, 2019
Text.Serial.Journal
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Book Reviews
2022-03-26
2023-06-30
2022-03-26
2023-10-23
233-238
TS
Alvise Mattozzi
2021
10.6092/issn.2038-3460/17555
233
Politecnico di Torino
2038-3460
2
en
238
Andrés Jaque and Office for Political Innovation, Mies and Niebla the kitten. Essays on architecture and cosmopolitics, Puente, 2019
https://tecnoscienza.unibo.it/article/download/17555/16404
12
Book Review                                                                    233
References
Barad, K. (2003) Posthumanist Performativity: Toward an Understanding of How
       Matter Comes to Matter, in “Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Soci-
       ety”, 28 (3), pp. 801-831.
Gherardi, S. (2019) Theorizing Affective Ethnography for Organization Studies, in
      “Organization”, 26 (6), pp. 741-760.
Hassard, J., Burns, D., Hyde, P. and Burns, J.P. (2018) A Visual Turn for Organi-
       zational Ethnography: Embodying the Subject in Video-based Research, in
       “Organization Studies”, 39 (10), pp. 1403-1424.
Jarrett, M. and Liu, F. (2018) “Zooming With”: A Participatory Approach to Video
         Ethnography in Organizational Studies, in “Organizational Research Meth-
         ods”, 21, pp. 366-385.
Nicolini, D. (2009) Zooming In and Out: Studying Practices by Switching Theoretical
       Lenses and Trailing Connections, in “Organization Studies”, 30 (12), pp.
       1391-1418.
Orlikowski, W.J. and Scott, S.V. (2008) 10 Sociomateriality: Challenging the Sepa-
       ration of Technology, Work and Organization, in “Academy of Management
       Annuals”, 2 (1), pp. 433-474.
Strati, A. (2007) Sensible Knowledge and Practice-based learning, in“Management
         Learning”, 38 (1), pp. 61-77.
Streeck, J., Goodwin, C. and LeBaron, L. (2011) Embodied Interaction, Language
       and Body in Material World, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.

                                       ***
    Andrés Jaque / Office for Political Innovation
Mies e la gatta Niebla. Saggi su architettura e cosmopolitica, Leonforte, Siké,
2021, pp. 226 [Mies and Niebla the kitten. Essays on architecture and cosmo-
politics; Italian translation edited by Gianluca Burgio and Ramon Rispoli of
Mies y la gata Niebla. Ensayos sobre architectura y cosmopolitica, Barcelona,
Puente, 2019]

Alvise Mattozzi Politecnico di Torino

   It happens rarely – at least to me – to be positively surprised by a
publication. The contrary – being startled and baffled – is more frequent.
But, I guess, the majority of the times one ends reading a book or an article
simply filing it under the “interesting-relevant-worth-taking-into-account-
and-discuss” label or the opposite one.
   Mies e la gatta Niebla. Saggi su architettura e cosmopolitica [Mies and
Niebla the kitten. Essays on architecture and cosmopolitics], Italian
234                                                         Tecnoscienza – 12 (2)
translation of a Spanish publication, is one of the rare cases of a book that
has surprised me positively.
    The book is a collection of twelve essays written by Andrés Jaque,
renown Spanish architect, head of the Madrid-New York based
architectural practice Office for Political Innovation (OPI), as well as
professor of architecture and director of the Master of Science program in
Advanced Architectural Design at Columbia University.
    Except for the first one, Politics of the everyday (my translation), which
through a quick review of Jaque’s past architectural interventions
introduces his approach to architecture, the rest of the essays are quite
autonomous pieces distributed into five sections called “Domestic space as
political space” (my translation), “Mies as rendered society”, “Household
parliaments” (my translation), “Architecture as reproduction of the
biosocial” (my translation), “Sex and the non-city”. As the titles of the
sections suggest, these essays tackle diverse issues like the negotiations of,
and within, everyday domestic spaces, trajectories of domestications of the
built environments, modernity or, better, modernism as purification, the
rearticulation of space and of power through architectures that act as
media and media that act as architectures, urban development related to
luxury and finance. These issues are tackled focusing on very diverse
objects such as: an hospice for priest, Ikea, California residential houses,
television as technology, telenovelas, fertility clinics and luxury towers,
Milano2, Grinder, water lilies and male escorts homes, funeral homes and
no-return valves, gay porn and the New York real estate market, besides
the Barcelona Pavilion originally designed by Mies van der Rohe and Lilly
Reich in 1929 in order to represent Germany at the International Expo of
Barcelona and rebuilt in 1986. The latter is the core of the book and also
at the origin of its title.
    The various topics tackled by the essays are clearly of interest for STS
scholars (and not only). Nevertheless, they and the often peculiar and
unexpected objects at issue are not the main reason of my surprise –
although the unpredictable trajectories and connetions of some of them are
indeed the reason for my apprecciation of individual essays.
    In order to understand in which way the book has positively struck me,
let me start by admitting my initial partial lack of knowledge of Jaque and
OPI’s manifold projects, interventions and researches. Indeed, I knew
about Jaque only because I read, probably without the attention it
deserved, an interview Albena Yaneva did with him (2015) about
cosmopolitical design. Such partial ignorance made me open to surprises
(positive, but also negative ones), given I could not really know what to
expect from the book.
    Moreover, I should also admit my prejudice against architects writing
“theory” or referring to “theory”, especially to “theory” elaborated outside
the architectural field. Such attitude affected my disposition to surprises.
    My prejudice was not reduced by Ramon Rispoli (one of the two editors
Book Review                                                                235
and translators of the Italian edition) introducing the book as coming from
one of the “voices that, in the field of architectural research […], claim
today – from a perspective referable in general to the tradition of […] STS,
and, more specifically to some theoretical orientations like Actor-Network
Theory […] – the necessity to look at buildings as assemblages” (p. 9, my
translation). However, my curiosity was elicited.
     By reading through, one discovers that the book is not at all concerned
with “theory”. It mainly presents accounts related to empirical researches
carried out through interviews, observations or documentary analysis, in
order to design OPI’s projects and interventions. Few other essays are
descriptions and reflections about these very projects and interventions.
Precisely on this lies one of the major sources of my surprise: the book
completely overturned my prejudice.
     Most of the essays are, indeed, the outcome of such research work:
some in a more articulated and thorough way, like the research on Milano2
and the Barcelona Pavilion (see also, Jaque 2018); some are more sketchy,
being in a preliminary, hypothetical or explorative stage, like the ones
about fertility clinics or sex, luxury and the New York’s urban
development; some others are in the form of collections of vignettes and
life stories, like the essay on California residential housing.
     Jaque has thus used Actor-Network Theory as a method – i.e., what it
actually is, despite the name. It is a method enabling researchers to “follow
the link[s] [informants] make among […] elements that [by using another
approach] would have looked completely incommensurable”; and it is a
method that, by following such links, enables to write “good accounts”,
which describe networks, i.e. “a string of actions where each participant is
treated as a full-blown mediator” (Latour 2005, 141; 128).
     By considering buildings and architectural interventions as “material
devices” [dispositivi materiali] and inquiring about them through the
notions of “interscalability” and “trajectories”, Jaque has done exactly
what Latour suggests, providing descriptions of them as cosmopolitical
assemblages.
     For iconic examples of “participant […] treated as a full-blown
mediator”, I suggest the reader checking the story of no-return valves in
waterpipes and their role for New York’s urban development (pp. 202-
204), to which also Gianluca Burgio (the second editor and translator of
the book) turns in his postface; or, the more articulated story of the curtains
used in the Barcelona Pavilion (pp. 102-103). The two kinds of curtain
used – heavy or light – play not only a role into different interscalar
networks related to constructive constraints, industrial districts, craft
cultures, nations on display, international market relations, but also, when
in contact with the wind, dispose different compositions of the pavilion,
contributing to generate a controversy about the fidelity of the
reconstructed pavilion to van der Rohe’s and Reich’s design.
     As you have probably understood, the book can be read as a collection
236                                                           Tecnoscienza – 12 (2)
of social researches – precisely as a collection of STS’ social researches.
This has been my approach and the one I suggest Tecnoscienza’s readers
taking if, like me, they do not have a detailed knowledge of OPI’s projects
and interventions.
    The book could – and probably should – also be read by constantly
referring to OPI’s projects and interventions, to which the essays refer.
However, this reading presupposes a good knowledge of OPI’s work or,
alternatively, a back and forth between the book and the OPI’s internet
site, given the frugality of images in the former: they are few, small and
black and white – a very rare configuration for an architecture book.
    The back and forth between the book and the OPI’s site would not
only compromise the autonomy of the book itself, but also a relaxed and
enjoyable reading that it disposes. Each account is, indeed, a narration
written with literary sensitivity, designed to engage and take the reader
through it. As for the Italian edition, this is also the result of the good work
of the translators and editors, the architects Burgio and Rispoli.
    By leaving to the readers the pleasure of diving into the book and be
surprised themselves, I will not say much more about its contents – and
certainly nothing about Niebla the kitten.
    Before coming to the conclusions, I just want to highlight two points,
which I deem can further show the relevance of the book for STS scholars
in general, also for those not especially interested in architecture and urban
studies.
    The first point regards the Barcelona Pavillion (see also, Jaque 2018).
Jaque describes its rebuilding as a way to construct a purified version of
modernism. In the 1986 version of the building, a big and not easily
accessible basement has been added, as storage for maintenance tools,
replaced elements of the pavilion, equipment used for events taking place
in the pavilion and other beings. This basement is invisible and inaccessible
to visitors, who only enjoy the upper part as an absolute example of
modernist architecture, completely detached from the rest, from the
passing of time and the deperibility of materials. Of course, this crystallized
image of modernism is only possible thanks to what lies in the basement
and to the traffic between the basement and the upper part, before and
after the visits. I wonder why Jaque and other commentators did not notice
that the Barcelona Pavilion in its entirety is a wonderful tangible translation
of Latour’s diagram of modernity as presented in We have never been
modern (Latour 1993, 11). There, you see the lower part – like the
basement – called “hybrid networks” where the work of translation takes
place, and the upper part where non-human nature and human culture are
kept separated through the work of purification. As for the Barcelona
Pavillion, the purification of the upper part takes place by distinguishing
what is van der Rohe’s “authentic” design (i.e. his intentions, often
forgetting Reich’s contribution) from the compromises made for
rebuilding it – a game visitor often play (Jaque 2018).
Book Review                                                                  237
    As for the second point, it is related to the essay Transmedial Urban
Planning (pp. 155-174, my translation), which I deem of interest especially
for Italian STS scholar. The essay – a surprise within the surprise – is the
account of an inquiry into Milano2, a semi-gated community Silvio
Berlusconi built in the 1970s, which paved the way for becaming a media
tycoon. Jaque, through documentary research, interviews and participant
observations on site, shows the connection between the urbanistic logic of
Milano2 and the one of commercial television Berlusconi developed later
on, both based on the segmentation of consumers – be they inhabitants or
television viewers. As far as I know, such connection between the two
phases of Berlusconi’s enterprise were never explored in such a way.
    The book is engaging, inspiring and insightful and a recommended
reading for STS scholars in general. Nevertheless, I cannot avoid warning
possible readers against two issues. First, Jaque uses the notion of “black
box” to refer to hidden aspects of buildings or architectural interventions
– for instance, in the essay about the Barcelona Pavilion, he calls the
basement a “black box”. However, as also underlined in Marres et al.
(2018, 26), what he is pointing at is a “backstage” as Erving Goffman
intended it – the “black box” is, in case, the unquestioned well-functioning
pavilion resulting from the frictionless relations between the backstage and
the frontstage, with which Jaque carefully interferes in one of his projects
(Jaque 2018). Secondly – and this is more an issue due to the translation –
by rephrasing a famous Latour’s statement, in the italian edition, Jaque
defines architecture as “technologically represented [rappresentata]
society”. In English, the same definition appears with the word “rendered”
instead of “represented”. Besides the problematic aspect of using the
notion of “representation”, I deem that the two words are not synonymous,
and finding a more adequate translation for “rendered” would suit Jaque’s
approach better.
    The Italian edition includes two contributions written by the editors
and translators of the book, Burgio and Rispoli. The latter prefaces the
book by summarizing Jaque’s research path through his main notions –
assemblages, cosmopolitics, design as intertwining, devices [dispositivi],
interscalar, trajectories. The former, in his postface, recovers parts of the
essays in order to connect Jaque’s research to a broader debate about
cosmopolitics and life with troubles. Both contributions, mainly addressed
to the Italian architectural milieu, highlight the need for such a milieu to
start abandoning the idea of the autonomy of architecture, which, as Jaque
shows, would lead to a dialogue and a collaboration with social sciences,
and especially with STS, grounded on empirical research.
    Let’s use this book also as a platform to develop such a dialogue.

References
Jaque, A. (2018) Outing Mies’ Basement: Designs to Recompose the Barcelona Pavil-
238                                                              Tecnoscienza – 12 (2)
       ion’s Societies, in N. Marres, M. Guggenheim and A. Wilkie (eds.), Invent-
       ing the social, Manchester, Mattering Press, pp. 149-172.
Latour, B. (1993) We have never been modern, Cambridge, MA, Harvard Univer-
       sity Press.
Latour, B. (2005) Reassembling the Social. An Introduction to Actor-Network The-
       ory, Oxford, Oxford University Press.
Marres, N., Guggenheim, M. and Wilkie, A. (2018) Introduction: From Perfor-
       mance to Inventing the Social, in N. Marres, M. Guggenheim and A. Wilkie
       (eds.), Inventing the social, Manchester, Mattering Press, pp. 17-40.
Yaneva, A. and Jaque, A. (2015) An Interview with Andrés Jaque, Office for Political
      Innovation, in A. Yaneva and A. Zaera-Polo (eds.), What Is Cosmopolitical
      Design? Design, Nature and the Built Environment, Farnham, Ashgate,
      2015, pp. 57-78.

                                       ***
    Veronica Moretti e Barbara Morsello (eds.)
Interferenze Digitali. Prospettive Sociologiche su Tecnologie, Biomedicina e
Identità di Genere [Digital Interference. Sociological Perspectives on
Technologies, Biomedicine and Gender Identity], Milano, FrancoAngeli,
2019, pp. 184

Angela Balzano University of Bologna

    When students ask me how to evaluate the quality of a book, I use to
answer: “a book that deserves to be read is a book that teach us some-
thing”. However, this sentence needs to be at once amended: a book must
teach us something not recurring to any universalistic methodology, rather
grounding its insights in embodied and embedded cartographies. That’s
exactly what Interferenze Digitali does, it provides us new pieces of situated
knowledge (Haraway 1997) that take its own space and time in the frame-
work of posthuman knowledge (Braidotti 2020). Reading Interferenze Dig-
itali, edited by Veronica Moretti and Barbara Morsello in 2019 for Fran-
coAngeli, we not only learn a lot on cutting-edge bio/infotechnologies, but
we also know more about our bodies, ourselves in the biomedical arena.
Interferenze Digitali it’s a cartography of the bodies that we are becoming.
We are not all man and neurotypical, there is a plethora of non-conforming
subjectivities that simultaneously upsets both male-centered medicine and
male-centered sociology. Interferenze Digitali helps us in knowing these
non-conforming subjectivities: in this book you will encounter non-stand-
ard bodies with all their living questions, not depicted as isolated and ab-
stracted, rather as part of a natureculture continuum. All the essays col-
