Collective Dwelling
From the previous entry, it is obvious that the vital counterpoint to Teige's "minimum dwelling" is the collectivization of services and cultural activities. The vestigial, atavistic elements of the "live-in kitchen" can only be eliminated once-and-for-all when they can be taken up by collective organs.
In the present, while the social and material development of cities has far surpassed the cities of Teige's day—the disarticulation of "traditional family life" has progressed dramatically, in step with the advancement of the technology and infrastructure of service—we remain caught in the same chasm. Food service, while widely available, remains too expensive (and inadequately nutritious) to allow for the elimination of home kitchens. This is partially a chicken-and-egg problem—with rents as high as they are, outside food is unaffordable on a day-to-day basis, requiring individual kitchens, which keep rents high, etc.—and perhaps it might be possible to muscle through the affordability issue by a bold leap. (although this re-introduces the problem of nutrition as the main focus in food service...)
Similar arguements could be made for laundry service, house cleaning, etc.
A more intractable problem, and one that doesn't yield to a simple quantitative solution, is the need for collective social space; social space, in NYC at least, exists as an adjunct to other service zones—in restaurants, bars, night clubs, on the streets, in parks—and with few exceptions only function as long as you keep moving through them at a rather brisk pace. The alternative—using your apartment as a social space—is equally fraught, as it means inviting people into your (limited) private space, and not very many people at that. Neither of these options meet even Teige's most rudimentary criteria:
"Clubs (regardless of whether these be regional clubs, clubs joined to dining halls, clubs attached to factories, or even central palaces of culture in the green zone), should not be designed on the model fo ostentations casinos, the clubs of the English aristocracy, or promenades of fancy health spas of the past. In short, they shoulud never take on the appearance of the pleasure palaces of the idle rich. The true purpose of a workers' club is to provide the setting for an integrated cultural development of the working class as a whole. The workers' club is the crucible of collective life, where the character and the psychological features of a new cultural consciousness will be forged into new shapes. It is in the workers' club where the new collective man will be born. It is the workers' club that is to be the center of a new solidarity (about which Jules Romain has no clue). This means: no more bourgeois-type clubs for idlers, but instead new centers of political and cultural life. Such a club will thus become the true "family hearth" of the collective and the very heart of collective living—its common living room, without which the collective dwelling could not exist, and without which these beehives would be reduced to just another version of 'mass housing barracks.'"
Posted by Sam at December 15, 2004 10:43 AM
like your clips from
this chap
but mr T 's rhetoric
seems a bit wide eye fervorous
for my thin only pinkish blood
as toend all
living unit kitchens
aren't they
quite profunctoryenough already?
and
not very costly
if indeed under utilized
I like
your eat out
ground rent
trade off
as to get em out of their philistine dens
clubs?
"voluntary
socio-cultural associations"
matchers and mixers yes
includers and gatherers often
progressive nexi
of transmission yes and no
then again
"position certifying"
club membership
as joyful
exclusion devices
where siftin
and the result
differentiation
becomes
a solid socialized
basis for self dubbing
"uz goods"
then on to
becoming "uz betters"
hell maybe "uz bests "
"prefered types" become" only types"
butfuck
like addiction
the love of a shared looking down
is
always to be with us
in some form or other
whether thru
dark or bright
ordinary or rare
conspiracy or publicity
on down the opposite pairings
we go
