Comparison of Walter Benjamin's Arcades Project to the Contemporary Galleria Vittorio Emanuelle - Research Paper Example

Comparison of Walter Benjamins Arcades project to the Contemporary Galleria Vittorio Emanuelle The Arcades, which is the of the essay, is to be understood as an architecture device that ‘acts’ as an agent within the city. The aim is to investigate the conditions that the architectural form of the arcade imposes on the city, and their development over time. The study will begin by considering the origin of the arcade, which will be discussed in relation to the work by Walter Benjamin the Passage-Werk (The Arcades Project); that offers a critique of the nineteenth-century history in a form of a selective historic overview. Revealing concealed, many-fold traces of the daily life of the collective. Using the methods adopted in ‘The Arcades Project’ of focusing on locating ‘history’ in the everyday and contrasting it to the past development of the arcades in attempt to reveal social and political implications of an architectural project, in relation to the ‘Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II’ in Milan. Walter Benjamin began working on his Arcades project in Paris, 1927 and considered the arcades to be ‘the most important architectural form of the 19th century’1. His study of the arcades investigates the composition of an epoch; the age of Industrial Capitalism, as seen and theorized by producers and consumers, politicians and intellectuals. He suggested that the building of the arcades signalled a dynamic shift, a change that was not only economic but also philosophical and technological, which had an effected over the way people thought about public life, interpersonal relations and social interactions. Benjamin had adopted a method of composition analogous to dream interpretation that had its relation to surrealism of the 19th century. Where a dream is compiled through a combination of vivid, fragmentary images that can only be understood once assimilated piece by piece, to be inducted with a route into new forms of historical and cultural awareness by unexpected juxtapositions and connections. Benjamin’s intention for the project was to create a work that intersected on many levels revealing the vast interrelation and collision of multiplicities that occur at any given location. The arcades project took one site and exhaustively explored its meanings, functions and the social relations that occurred within it. Benjamin saw the arcades as a material replica of the internal consciousness of the collective2 in the perspective of the individual and the individuals place in the city. Where architecture and town planning frames the way that the individual behaves, the ways in which one perceives oneself in relation to the world. Benjamin’s describes origin of the arcades as being base on two aspects during the period of 1822. First reason being the expansion of textile trade and the following requirement for keeping large stock on the retail premises. Additionally arcades become a centre of commerce in luxury items that attempt define the alternative universe of consumption, this has been summarised in the Illustrated Guide to Paris: ‘these arcades, a recent invention of industrial luxury, are glassed-roofed, marble-paneled corridors extending through whole blocks of buildings, whose owners have joined together for such enterprise. Lining both sides of the corridor, which get their light from above, are the most elegant shops, so that the passage is a city, a world in miniature.’3 So the arcades were created for purposely of profit, or indeed sheer speculation, offering the buildings owners unrivalled financial opportunities by concentrating so many rent-paying undertakings within a small space. Seen from one point of view, then, they are archetypal manifestations of the expanding market economy - creations of private enterprise and sources of profit, and most certainly not part of any public works project. The goods displayed are commodities - objects existing for profit above utility, manifestations of exchange value rather than use value: for Benjamin, they participate in the "fetishism of the commodity"4. Second condition for the emergence of the arcade was, appropriated of iron and glass in new construction methods, that was perceived as utopian projection of social visionaries of the nineteenth century, embodying the “anticipation and imaginative expression of a new world”5. The Arcades were passages through blocks of buildings, lined with shops and other businesses. With the diversity offer by the imported commodities from across the ‘Empire’, they turned shopping into an aesthetic event. The arcades became a perfect site for lingering that enabled new desires for fantastic commodities. Following the second half of the nineteenth century, after Italy’s liberation from Austrian rule, Milan was marked as a new economical and cultural centre, where the industrialisation and technological innovation that constituted symbol of social change. To celebrate new status of united Italy a great number of monumental building projects were undertaken, that drew its inspiration from urbanization of other European capitals. Named after Vittorio Emanuele II, the first king of united Italy, it was designed by the architect Giuseppe Mengoni in a neoclassical style that was typically used as a contribution to the phantasmagoric illusion of historical progress. Expressed in the form of monumentality, cosmic proportion and panoramic perspective, this style was applied in the design of Galleria facades. The neoclassical style then is an imagistic attempt to capture ancient origins of western civilization: “an attempt to master the new experience of the city in the frame of the old ones of traditional nature.” However Galleria was not a purposely build arcade, it has originally been built over two major streets of Milan (Fig.1) that were covered by an arched glass roof that was a luxury to 19th century shoppers. The Vittorio Emanuele Gallery is a covered double arcade formed of two glass-vaulted arcades at right angles intersecting in an octagon, a covered passage that connects two major landmarks the Duonmon Cathedral on the south and the Teatro Alla Scala in the north (Fig.2). .. . Consequently, the galleria becomes a prominent rout on the way to the opera house, which is predetermined by the typical time table of the theatrical performances that traditionally ends before midnight, this is also described in the observations of Italo Piadeni a retired policeman whose has worked in Galleria for ten years: “Sooon after night establishements empty out, and you see night-club ballerinas, flowergirls, cloackromm attendants, waiters[...]making their last round of the night..”6 The arcade itself create a new form of theatrical spectacle, where window-shopping and observing became an art, summed up in the notion of ‘flaneur’ a term introduce by Benjamin, which describes the activity of strolling that is inextricably bound up with this special for of urban space. The Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II demonstrated an original form, of modernity, that revealed social modes of behaviour. During the period of construct of the galleria in Milan, it is important to understand the significant effect that the World Exhibition had on the appropriation of arcades in the European cities. First exhibition that was held in London had used iron and glass constriction in erection of Chrystal palace, which portrayed in itself an image of monumental proportion. Where, all under the same roof, “industrial products were displayed like art work”7 along with ornamental gardens, statues and fountains. Thus the street-galleries where perceived as “buildings for the new mass culture that the principal of iron and glass construction proliferated”8. Consequently, the arcades were products of the first international style and they were, used as trademarks of modern metropolis, its wealth and imperial domination. The Galleria Vittorio Emanuele, was also perceived as monument in celebration of recently united Italy that was striving to relate itself to the new concept of world totality, a total market that began to unify the world through trade. The notion of ‘unity’ was inspiration to the idea of mass-consumerism that suppliesd the collective demand, and the promise of fulfilment of the utopia - ‘that industrialism in its own is capable of eliminating class divisions’9 by transferring the unresolved social difference on to the ‘exhibited objects’. Benjamin argued further the presents of the ‘commodity fetish’ that produces dream images of promise for the purpose of capitalism and the state, also described as a phantasmagoria of the ‘new nature’. Therefore, the arcades became the original temples of ‘commodity worship’ where “fashion prescribed the ritual by which the fetish commodity wished to be worshiped”10(Fig.3). In order to understand the influence of fashion and consumerism on to the collective, it is important to consider Benjamin’s analysis of collective dreams of the nineteenth century. The Arcades Project, as a collection of images revealed the existence of the dream in the collective mind, where arcades were perceived as a source of deceptive illusion. In contemporary Milan Galleria, leading fashion brands use advertising to create a separate identity that would differentiate itself from similar products and become more appealing. These brand characteristics also feed the commodity dream world that by each individual is imagines being uniquely personal, and who identify themselves as being as a separate entity an anonymous component of the crowd. .. . Along with the commercial aspects the Galleria Vittorio Emmanuele as an urban infill project, also provides a diversity of function that contribute to the full spectrum of urban living, where under the same roof one can live, work, shop and recreate. In order to further, appreciate the importance of such projects in contemporary society, it is important to refer back to Benjamin’s description of the fleneur (Fren. stroller, idler, walker). The fleneur is a member of the crowed that populates the street; the appearance of such character in the city is directly associated with the emergence of covered passageways (arcades) that created a new urban space, which could not be distinctly indentified as an interior or the exterior: “For if flanerie can transform Paris into one great interior-a house whose rooms are the quartiers, no less clearly demarcated by thresholds that are real rooms-then, on the other hand, the city can appear to walking through it to be without a thresholds: a landscape in the round.”11 The flaneur becomes a shopper with no intention to buy, but instead become an observer of the world, which requires him to be at the centre of the world at the same time remain undiscovered by making oneself feel everywhere at home. Benjamin contrast the importance of flaneur in the city, to Friedrich Engles description of contemporary society as having ‘brutal indifference’12 which brings about privet isolation of individual within the crowd. Consequently, Galleria that is often called Millan’s living room has established itself as the ambiguous space of inhabitation for the modern flanerie, expressed in the form of – distraction, seduction by the commodity spectacle, shopping as leisure activity, self-display that becomes more evident in response to development of modern consumerism. Furthermore the galleria as a type that arose during the 19th century, attempted to structure boundaries of modern capitalism, that was expressed in the form of public and privet, labour and leisure, personal and communal as described by Benjamin: “just as the living room reappears on the street....so the street migrates into the living room”13. One example of such transformation can be demonstrated in relation to unique Italian idea of daytime hotel, were Galleria users could take a brake form their activities and afford with convenient luxuries such as bath, haircut, theatre tickets, umbrella rental etc. However now it has been replace with seven star hotel (Town House Galleria), where the occupants become the spectator of the panorama offered by Galleria’s interior. Referring back to the observation made by Benjamin “Arcades are house or passages having no outside – like the dream”14 that brings about a characteristic of self-containment, and in the case of the ‘Town House Hotel’ became a spectacle. Additionally the contemporary flaneur experience within the Milan Galleria has been formalised, where individuals would visit the galleria with intention to take part in experience that over time became a tradition. One such attraction is the little cafe located near the main entrance that faces Dumo cathedral, which had been established after the first opening of the Galleria by the inventor of the Campari, a famous aperitif. The significance of the aperitif culture is better express through a fantasy tale " On the 25th April 1926, a gift one eighteen year old will never forget": “and so he decided on the spur of the moment that he too was going succumb to the strange Milanese custom of the aperitif. He immediately ordered a Campari, to give himself the airs of a man of the world...”15 Overall the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II, could be criticised in relation to The Arcades Project, as still retaining its image of phantasmagoria and being a ‘temple of commodity worship’. Even though, the Galleria can, no longer be considered as an image of the social and political aspects of today. Instead, the Vittorio Emanuele becomes a representation of current ‘economic progress’ which is failing to be defined in the cultural, as described by Benjamin: “It is not the economic origins of culture that will be presented, but the expression of the economy in its culture” and, again: "The economic conditions under which a society exists not only determine that society in its material existence and ideological superstructure; they also come to expression"16 However in contrast to the development of contemporary department store, exhibition centers – another words example of ‘commercial world’. They no longer attempt to define the ambiguous contrast of interior-exterior space present in the Galleria, but instead they only tend to exploit the commercial aspects of construction. Read More