Book Review: Architecture and Anarchism: Building without Authority
From Anarchist Studies Volume 32 (2024) Issue 2
Paul Dobraszczyk, Architecture and Anarchism: Building without Authority
London: Antepavilion in association with Paul Holberton Publishing, 2021; 248pp; ISBN 978913645175
Paul Dobraszczyk is a collector, and his recent Architecture and Anarchism: Building without Authority is another example of his research methods in the history of architecture. He lists, categorises, taxonomises, and contextualises. The book is thus structured into eight thematic chapter, each of which uses seven or eight case studies to detail a particular motivation and/or method for architectural invention. Such methods are useful for the way in which the categories and case studies might serve future research, and because they prompt the reader to identify omissions and other possible categories, frames for thinking, and contexts in which the examples or categories might be evaluated. Throughout my reading of Architecture and Anarchism I found myself wishing for further inclusions or, indeed, worrying that some examples should be excluded. This is both the blessing and the curse of Dobraszczyk’s methods.
Chapter 1, ‘Liberty’, emphasises self-governance and organisation and aptly insists upon anarchism as a theory of organisation, an art of living, and a model for thinking and acting: ‘a delicate balance between freedom and control’ (p27). The focus is on intentional communities: ephemeral, such as Rainbow Gatherings, or more permanent, such as Christiania. Here, the book’s tensions are already evident. Burning Man, which has come to represent a form of ‘tech bro’ libertarianism, is ill-placed in a collection that otherwise celebrates more mutualist or communitarian models. The inclusion of Vienna’s Hundertwasserhaus also poses the question of whether it is appropriate to include work which is anarchistic rather than explicitly anarchist, though Dobraszczyk does make a case for doing so.
Chapter 2, ‘Escape’, groups projects that seek to reimagine social relations in new landscapes – separatist or informal settlements and intentional communities. Drop City and the anti-airport ZAD near Nantes make the list, as do the Essex Plotlands and junk playgrounds. Chapter 3, ‘Necessity’, extends this to settlements brought together by shared need. This includes The Jungle in Calais and Kowloon Walled City. Again, some blurring of the categories happens. A squat might have equal measures of need, ideology, and social experimentation in evidence. Migrant camps are a more extreme category: there were sterling examples of mutual aid exhibited in The Jungle, but predation by gangs and organised crime poses the problem of differentiating between anarchism and lawlessness. Dobraszczyk’s inclusion of The Jungle is problematic, but usefully so: the tensions are food for thought
In Chapter 4, ‘Protest’, anarchist ideas and social and architectural experimentation are clearly aligned and expressed in protest camps such as Grow Heathrow or Occupy Wall Street. Here too there are fruitful tensions. Can the protests in Tahrir Square or Hong Kong’s Umbrella Movement be seen as anarchist? They draw from a toolbox crammed full of anarchist actions and theories, but when the intention is limited to replacing or reforming the state, questions arise.
Ruin and reuse tie together Chapters 5, ‘Ecology’, and 6, ‘Art’. In the former, Dobrasczyk returns to more recognisably permanent architectural forms, presenting buildings which fit Murray Bookchin’s model of social ecology. What stands out is the fully anarchist Ruin Academy in Taipei, which employs ruination as an ecological tool. As the building disintegrates it becomes host to ever more species. At the intersection of art and architecture is Gordon Matta-Clark, whose methods were clearly anarchist (‘anarchitecture’). His 1975 ‘Conical Intersect’ carved an entirely new architectural order out of a condemned building in Paris’s Marais. Its titular cone-shaped voids penetrate the walls and floors, providing a neat metaphor for how anarchism concerns itself with both order and disorder.
Many of the projects here arise from the detritus of capitalism and consumerism as adaptive reuse and creative reinvention, a continued theme in Chapter 7, ‘Speculation’. This chapter presents speculative or utopian projects. My favourite amongst these is Clifford Harper’s 1976 drawings for the ‘Autonomous Terrace’. It re-envisions a British terrace as a communal dwelling with shared facilities. Adaptive reuse of existing architecture as an anarchist practice could form the theoretical basis for further work, tying together histories of squatting, protest, and urban, social, and architectural invention that take place with minimal means but an abundance of shared effort.
The book finishes by foregrounding mutual endeavour in Chapter 8, ‘Participation’. Dobraszczyk perceptively identifies a key quality of anarchist architecture: ‘there is no such thing as building without a community; and there is no freedom for oneself without, at the same time, there equally being freedom for others’ (p209). Buildings (both edifices and landscapes) are here processes rather than products, which is immensely fruitful as the most cherished social goods – freedom, equality, democracy – are practiced and mutually assured in (architectural) space.
This sensibility is the backbone of Dobraszczyk’s Architecture and Anarchism. Following Colin Ward, he shows the potential of bottom-up power and mutual aid, seeing ‘revolution as an emergent process that is already evident in the world, observable in practices of all kinds’ (pp16-17). These practices are forms of citizenship in which people are participants, not recipients. If this book is also seen as an open-ended practice, in which it is up to readers and future researchers to chase down the gaps and omissions and pregnant possibilities, then it will have justified its collector’s methods admirably.
Tim Waterman, University College London
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Anarchist Studies 32:2 (2024) is out now!
The latest issue of AS features 4 original articles, 2 review essays, and 6 book reviews.
Contents
About this Issue’s Cover: Ben Benn’s Portrait of Hippolyte Havel, pages 5‑6
Allan Antliff Free to download
Colin Ward: An Ambiguous Legacy , pages 7‑14
Matthew Wilson Free to download
The Story of Czech Anarchism: Ideas and Practices of Czech Libertarians, 1883-1930, pages 15‑43
Ondřej Slačálek, Michael Polák
Politics Walking The Tightrope Of The Law: The New York Criminal Anarchy Act Of 1902, pages 44‑74
Claire Aniel-Buchheit
Insurrectionary Anarchism in Poland: The Case of the People’s Liberation Front, pages 75‑102
Grzegorz Piotrowski
Review Articles
Three Recent Introductions to Anarchism, pages 103‑108
Robert Graham
The Spanish Revolution, Revisited, pages 109‑113
Morris Brodie
Reviews, pages 114‑127
Kathy E. Ferguson, Letterpress Revolution; The Politics of Anarchist Print Culture Reviewed by Constance Bantman
Benjamin Franks, Anarchisms, Postanarchisms and Ethics Reviewed by Iwona Janicka
Paul Dobraszczyk, Architecture and Anarchism: Building without Authority Reviewed by Tim Waterman
Tom Wetzel, Overcoming Capitalism: Strategy for the Working Class in the 21st Century Reviewed by Nathan Jun
Tim Waterman, The Landscape of Utopia: Writings on Everyday Life, Taste, Democracy, and Design Reviewed by Rhiannon Firth
Richard Gilman Opalsky, The Communism of Love: An Inquiry into the Poverty of Exchange Value Reviewed by Koshka Duff and Chris Rossdale