Georges Bataille / Architecure - 1929

 L’architecture est l’expression de l’être même des sociétés, de la même façon que la physionomie humaine est l’expression de l’être des individus. Toutefois, c’est surtout à des physionomies de personnages officiels (prélats, magistrats, amiraux) que cette comparaison doit être rapportée. En effet, seul l’être idéal de la société, celui qui ordonne et prohibe avec autorité, s’exprime dans les compositions architecturales proprement dites. Ainsi les grands monuments s’élèvent comme des digues, opposant la logique de la majesté et de l’autorité à tous les éléments troubles : c’est sous la forme des cathédrales et des palais que l’Eglise ou l’Etat s’adressent et imposent silence aux multi­tudes. Il est évident, en effet, que les monuments inspirent la sagesse sociale et souvent même une véritable crainte. La prise de la Bastille est symbolique de cet état de choses : il est difficile d’expliquer ce mouvement de foule, autrement que par l’animosité du peuple contre les monuments qui sont ses véritables maîtres.

Aussi bien, chaque fois que la composition architecturale se retrouve ailleurs que dans les monuments, que ce  soit dans la  physionomie, le costume, la  musique  ou  la peinture, peut-on  inférer  un goût  prédominant  de  l’autorité  humaine  ou  divine. Les grandes compositions  de  certains peintres expriment la volonté de contraindre l’esprit à un idéal officiel. La disparition de la construction  acadé­mique  en  peinture  est, au  contraire, la voie  ouverte  à  l’expression  (par  là  même à l’exaltation) des processus  psychologiques  les  plus  incompatibles  avec  la  stabilité  sociale.  C’est  ce  qui  explique  en grande partie les  vives   réactions  provoquées  depuis plus d’un demi-siècle par la transformation progressive  de  la  peinture, jusque  là  caractérisée  par  une  sorte  de  squelette architectural dissimulé. Il est  évident d’ailleurs, que l’ordonnance  mathématique  imposée à  la pierre n’est  autre  que l’achèvement d’une évolution des formes terrestres,  dont le sens est donné, dans l’ordre biologique, par le passage de la forme simiesque à la forme humaine, celle-ci présentant déjà tous les éléments de l’architecture. Les hommes ne représentent apparemment dans le processus morphologique, qu’une étape intermédiaire entre les singes et les grands édifices. Les formes sont devenues de plus en plus statiques, de plus en plus dominantes. Aussi bien, l’ordre humain est-il dès l’origine solidaire de l’ordre architectural, qui n’en est que le développement. Que si l’on s’en prend à l’architecture, dont les pro­ductions monumentales sont actuellement les véritables maîtres sur toute la terre, groupant à leur ombre des multitudes serviles, imposant l’admiration et l’étonnement, l’ordre et la contrainte, on s’en prend en quelque sorte à l’homme. Toute une activité terrestre actuellement, et sans doute la plus brillante dans l’ordre intellectuel, tend d’ailleurs dans un tel sens, dénonçant l’insuffisance de la prédominance humaine : ainsi, pour étrange que cela puisse sembler quand il s’agit d’une créature aussi élégante que l’être humain, une voie s’ouvre – indiquée par les peintres – vers la monstruosité bestiale ; comme s’il n’était pas d’autre chance d’échapper à la chiourme architecturale . 

Georges Bataille / Architecture - 1929

Architecture is the expression of the very being of a society, just as the human face is the expression of an individual's true being. It is, however, mainly to the visages of official persons (prelates, magistrates, admirals) that this comparison pertains. In truth, only the ideal beings of a society, those who have the authority to order and prohibit, can strictly speaking be expressed in architectural form. And so, the great monuments raise themselves before us like levees, countering all troubling elements with the logic of majesty and authority: it is in the guise of cathedrals and palaces that the Church and State speak to and impose silence upon the masses. It is clear, in fact, that these monuments inspire social compliance and often, real fear. The storming of the Bastille exemplifies this state of affairs: it is difficult to explain the motivation of the crowd other than through the peoples' animosity toward the monuments that are their true masters.


Moreover, anywhere architectural composition manifests itself other than in monuments, whether in physiognomy, clothing, music, or painting, one can infer a predominant taste for authority, human or divine. The grand compositions of certain painters express a willingness to constrain the spirit toward official ideals. The disappearance of academic construction in painting, on the other hand, leaves the way open for the expression (hence the exaltation) of psychological processes deeply incompatible with social stability. This explains in large part the wild reactions provoked for over half a century by the progressive transformations of painting, which up until then had been constructed upon a kind of hidden architectural skeleton.


So, it is clear that this mathematical decree carved in stone is nothing less than the culmination of the evolution of earthly forms, manifested in the biological order by the passage from simian form to human form, the latter already displaying all the elements of the architectural. Man appears to represent but an intermediate stage in the morphological progression from apes to great edifices. Form has become increasingly fixed, increasingly imposing. And human order increasingly bound to architectural order, which is its ultimate development. So much so that if one attacks architecture, whose monumental productions all across the land are our true masters, gathering servile multitudes in their shadow, inspiring admiration and astonishment, order and constraint, then one is also, somehow, attacking man. A whole sphere of current practice, without doubt some of the most intellectually brilliant, is tending in this direction, challenging the predominant anthropomorphism: so, strange as it may seem when it comes to a creature as elegant as the human being, a path forward has been opened for us - by the painters - toward the bestial and the monstrous; as if this represents our only true chance of escaping the architectural overseer.

(Translation to English: Archiwik )

A Manifesto for Free Architecture

(first published on 14 August 2012)

Free Architecture is architecture made for Free. Free architecture is made by free architects, by architects who works for free.

In fact, this is not a new idea. Most of the architects work most of their time for free. When they are young, they work as apprentices and interns; when they grow up, not only they work for free but they even invest huge amount of money on lost competition entries and phantom projects. In any international competition, for only one winning project (and one paid architect) there would be dozens and sometime hundreds of architectural offices who worked for free and very often even pay (collaborators, consultants, models, 3d animation, and that besides the admittance fees and the price paid for the program pdf file) for the privilege to work for free. 
That may represent efforts of a much larger number of young people that over-worked themselves for months, days and nights, for the only sake of satisfying one's - not always their - ambition to be chosen to be paid for his work. In some cases, doing free architecture for lost competitions became a specialty of certain practices. Financially, sometimes the winners should not be envied neither, as the winning project only enables the office to lose more money for a longer period of time. 
Free work is of course done massively on a daily basis in any private architectural practice in order to get new clients or to keep the old ones.

The actual economical regime of architecture is governed by the idea of an architectural paid practice but in reality enslaves so many talented professionals and make them work for free at the service of the ones who promise that they can afford to build (and therefore to make them work for free). Never in the history of architecture so many architects have been working so hard, doing so much unnecessary work  for so few and sometimes even ill-interested people and very often for no-one. In other words, most of the architectural work that is being done today is done for nothing.

This had disastrous effects on the morality of the architect and on his position as a social actor. Hoping to be paid, he cannot speak for himself anymore nor for the public, but for the one who pays. An architect's word is today as trustworthy as that of a lawyer or a businessman. This regime has been corrupting the whole profession as a social body turning it into a vain, ridiculous star-system and is actually corrupting the whole environment all over the world, populating it with a mass of empty, expensive and useless "landmarks".

This regime has also decreased the number of people that are served today by architecture. If the architects work only for the few happy ones that can pay or that can say that they can pay, there would be a much greater number of people who even when they are in great need for architecture cannot afford to pay nor to promise to pay an architect and therefore will not be served by architecture. In fact, the vast majority of constructions on earth is done without architects. Today, architecture is a luxury.

The choice is simple: it is between doing architecture for nothing and doing architecture for free. If you can afford doing architecture for nothing, do architecture for free: Do architecture, do not take money.