Max Frisch (Swiss writer and architect; ) in: The Architecture of Mickey Mouse (1985)

LinesintheLight

Forms which are at random and featureless, have to puzzle. Puzzling is indispensable for any fashion. Style, as opposed to fashion, does not puzzle, but convinces... Postmodernism is no style, on the contrary, it decorates a society not willing to recognize itself and is political without wanting to know: As a building technique of an era of anti-enlightenment. Max Frisch (Swiss writer and architect; 1911-1991) in: The Architecture of Mickey Mouse (1985)

Lines in the Light or what goes on behind facades La Défense is a businesscentre in Northwest-Paris. The first buildings are from the middle of the last century. They are gone now, but new edifices were planned and built. Centers like this one are to be found all over the world: In the USA, in China or in Brazil, in the Netherlands, Great-Britain or Germany. In these quarters one finds the corridors of economic and financial power. Twenty years ago, out of the fifty biggest trusts in the world, thirteen had a branch office in La Défense. Even seventy percent of the twenty biggest French trusts are located here. In three million square meters of office space 150'000 people are employed therein; 20'000 people live in 600'000 square meters of living space if they can afford it. The rent increases were such that more workers and white-collaremployees were exiled from the inner cities to its assemblage than in any other European country. Parisians give a résumé of their everday lifes in three terms: Métro, boulot, dodo. - Subway, work, and sleep. Architecture assumes to be apolitical, architects define themselves as artists. Nowhere in the world, the contradictions between the beautiful facades and the lifes of people become more explicit than here in La Défense. In actual fact, the 'art' of the 'apolitical' architects consists of concealing the ruling circumstances. Glittering facades are to make forget that behind them decisions are made, which again and again even make whole countries stagger. Here in La Défense and in all other businesscentres. The Swiss writer Max Frisch, an educated architect himself, wrote on this postmodern architecture thirty years ago: Ornamentism without any relationship to technical construction... architecture as a pastry shop in reinforced concrete... euphoria before bankruptcy. And he continues: Capital loves postmodernism at first go. It does not want to be obvious for sure, capital needs a disguise. If the government rules Switzerland, or its capital, its banks, its trusts etcetera, who has to know! A facade is a facade is a facade, and what is behind, the lobby knows. 1 Glittering skyscrapers, blinding with their esthetics of vast quantity. Fitted ornaments that do not have functions any more. Forms are to baffle, feign, and disguise. The photographs in this portfolio have been made in a couple of hours on a saturday afternoon in 2013. Photographs cannot keep up with verbal critisism. The English art critic John Berger wrote that photography, unlike drawing, does not possess a language,... Photographs do not translate from appearances. They quote from them... In itself the photograph cannot lie, but, by the same token, it cannot tell the truth; or rather, the truth it does tell, the truth it can by itself defend, is a limited one 2 Forms and facades, lines and reflexions are attractive for photographers. But the life inside remains hidden: The many people moving around behind the glas. What is hidden too, is the aim and the intention of such architecture: Facades, although made from glass, are used to hide and to disguise. Decisions are supposed to be nontransparent. Instead the opposing buildings of the business rivals mirror themselves. 1 Max Frisch: Die Architektur der Micky Maus, 1985 (own translation) 2 John Berger: Understanding a Photograph, New York, 2013, p. 60 f.