The Importance of an Arcade as Urban and Socio-Political form within a City - Coursework Example

Expanded Text Rephrased Edited The importance of an arcade as urban and socio-political form within a “The brutal indifference, the unfeeling isolation of each in his private interest becomes the more repellent and offensive, the more these individuals are crowded together within a limited space. And however much one may be aware that his isolation of the individual, this narrow self-seeking, is the fundamental principal of our society everywhere, it is nowhere so shamelessly barefaced, so self-conscious, as just here in the crowding of the great city.“ Friedrich Engels, Die Lage derbeitenden Klasse in England, 2nd ed. (Leipzig, 1848) pp 24 The above extract referenced from Walter Benjamin’s works ‘The Arcades Projects’, demonstrates the critical view of nineteenth century society within an urban setting. This summarizes the main focus of the essay, where the aim is to investigate the aspects that define the architecture form such as arcade and how it affects the public life. In attempt to define that relation, ‘The Arcades Project’ will be used as the main material for the study, which will provide a contrasting historic overview of the period; when arcades became a popular aspect of city planning, revealing concealed, multi-fold traces of the daily life of the collective. The aim is to identify the relevance of Benjamin’s analysis to the project of Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II in Milan, and reveal its social and political implications of today. Background The arcade was a commercial use of the street, which lent itself for use as a major urban center. (Rubenstein, 14) This would influence the building of similar areas in other cities wherein there were unpleasant streets or non-existent sidewalks. According to Walter Benjamin (1968): “arcades where the flaneur would not be exposed to the sight of carriages that did not recognize pedestrians as rivals were enjoying undiminished popularity.”1 As it is, the concept of this shopping street without pedestrian or vehicular traffic made shopping more comfortable and safe. This very fact made the arcade a fundamental influence in the modern shopping malls and pedestrian malls. Benjamin’s interest in the arcades was contained in his work, The Arcade Project, written on top of an extensive research undertaken in the course of thirteen years. This research focused on the Parisian arcades – les passages – which he considered as the most important architectural form of the nineteenth century, and which he linked with various phenomena characteristic of the period. The Arcades Project became an accumulation of fragmented images that could be perceived as a dream representation of the period, which had its relation to the nineteenth century surrealism. Through this formation, Benjamin was able to expose new cultural interpretation of history that was communicated by establishing unexpected connection and interrelations. In the introduction to his work, Benjamin stated that his investigation proposes to show how, as a consequence of the reinforcing representation of the collective, the new forms of behaviour and the new economically and technologically based creations that contributed to the universe of a phantasmagoria2. According to Benjamin, the notion of enchantment was unveiled in the architectural form of an arcade, through understanding of social interaction and public life; another words arcade became ‘material replica of the internal consciousness of the collective.’3 In addition to historic and literary critique, Benjamin was also significantly influenced by nineteenth-century philosophers that were attempting to reshape the society. For instance Fourier was positing his own proposition in regard to the uses of the arcades during his time and in the future. Most importantly, in his vision he invoked the Fourierist utopia driven by the arrival of machines where arcades, which originally were designed to serve commercial ends, become dwelling places for the masses. For Benjamin, Fourier’s “street galleries” provided the blueprint for an ideal city that assumes a structure that is ideal for the flaneur. Origin Paris had been cited as the place of origin for the arcades as most were started to be built about fifteen years before 1822. This construction was a consequence of the boom in the French textile trade. The opulence of the period has enabled Paris to afford the construction of “glass-roofed, marble panelled corridors extending through whole blocks of buildings, whose owners have joined together for such enterprises.”4 Over all Benjamin cited two important origins to the emergence and construction of arcades: the invention of industrial luxury and the beginning of iron construction. Consequently arcades became purposely build structures that marked the expansion of market economy, where the owners of the arcade were offered with a financial opportunity of concentrating may rent-paying businesses in one place. In relation to Paris Benjamin more specifically describes the expansion of textile trades as an influential economical factor, where the owners were combing their stores in order to keep their stock on the retail premises. As marked by Benjamin iron and glass were discovered as first artificial building material since the Romans; and it was used in construction of buildings for the new mass culture. Initially iron and glass was applied in buildings of use rather than contemplation, Benjamin noted that those buildings were perceived as being transitory in both spatial and transitory sense. As a result the new production methods that emerged resulting in the use of iron and glass, attempted to symbolize a new social utopia, through development of monumental representation of progress in relation to the ancient, myth image of the past – one manifestation of which was neoclassicism. The Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II Benjamin credited much of the arcade’s success and role to its creator in Paris, the Baron Georges-Eugene Hausmann. As the urban phantasmagoria, the Hausmann arcades developed into grander urban areas. Furthermore Haussmann’s demolition of Paris as part of the ubran ‘renewal’ was justified by the history progress, where new boulevard replaced the old streets. Additionally the Passagen-Werk depicts this reconstruction as being exemplary of the political effects of urbanism, which intended to secure the city from revolutionary uprising of the working class. In attempt to make Paris, the capital of the world, Haussmann worked on a design with ‘cosmic proportions, monumental solidarity and panoramic perspectives’5. In the Galleria, the urban phantasmagoria was consciously emulated. Under the conditions of competitive capitalism, abundance, excess, monumental size and expansion, the construction of the arcade was required. The Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II was constructed amidst the rapid human industrial activity not unlike the flurry of bourgeoisie activities in France driven by the textile trade. In Italy, this was fuelled by the Italian Industrial growth. The Galleria was also constructed with intention to define a cultural context in relation to reestablished Italian national independence. Arcades where recognized an international style and were used as trademark of the modern metropolis, and it relation to the newly established world totally – were luxurious store represented the image of the Italian “new life.” Designed by Giuseppe Mengoni, the Galleria had not been a purposely built arcade instead it was an urban infill project that combined to major streets under elegant, glass-roof. Furthermore the Galleria combined a full spectrum of urban experience under the same roof, where an individual could live, work, shop and recreate. Consequently the Galleria was built as a link between Milan’s two major piazza’s, which are the cathedral square and the Piazza La Scala with its famed opera house, it occupied a central, symbolic place in Milan as it assembled these major edifices, including itself, it become a civic ensemble. Writing about the Galleria, William Tronzo explained: The evolution of its design, initiated by Mengoni as a single, covered shopping street conceived in the context of public competition to link refashioned cathedral square (add the info about the urban relation of galleria and architects master project before death) with Piazza La Scala, shows how the architect came to combine the arcade with the universalist vision of the World’s Fair buildings, both existing under the metaphorical shadow of the domed Parisian market complex.6 Social and Political Importance As stated previously, the arcade came to be necessary in part because it advertised progress. With Benjamin’s work on arcade it is easier to understand how the arcade - as the new urban form - demonstrated the world as it is transformed into the world of consumption and consumerism. Benjamin illuminates the World Fair, as being the most influential aspect in defining the mass consumerism culture, which facilitated the promise fulfillment of utopia - ‘industry and technology were presented as a mythic powers capable of producing out of themselves a future world of peace, class harmony, and abundance.’7 Along with the political importance, World Expositions also began to translate the collective desires in a ‘new language’ of material form. For instance during the Great Exhibition of 1851, Crystal Palace using innovative techniques in iron and glass construction, presented a building of monumental proportion that was perceived as an the temple for commodity worship, where new industrial product where displayed as art work. Consequently, the arcades were examples of the first international style and they were used as trademarks of the modern city. The Galleria resembled image of the urban phantasmagoria of the 19th century as it demonstrated not only as reified structures but also as enchanted storehouses of dreams and fantasies. The Galleria and the shops, merchandise and the experience therein became the commodity fetishes that inspire dreams, especially the collective dream that characterize phantasmagoria. The Galleria, made it possible for people to dream and acquire what Benjamin’s called the collective fantasy. With it or in it, people finally were able to realize the material of their imagination, particularly with the Galleria’s disengagement to the rest of world. Moreover Benjamin describes the arcade as, perfect miniature world, where the passing through the cover passage becomes a participation in ‘panorama’ of mass consumerism and so individuals occupying the space of display become an integral part of it. It also provided the location where individual and the social are not opposing forces. In effect, the arcade became a catalyst in regard to how public life during the period became overtaken by the fulfillment of individual fantasy and not the overcoming of individual viewpoint. Benjamin stressed, as mentioned elsewhere in this paper, that the relation of the arcade and the street was analogous to the relationship between the interior and the exterior. In this perspective, the arcade becomes the sheltered retreat from the outer chaos found in the streets at the same time, providing a public interior that functions as a unique and separate arena for public life. As a result, “such an arcade is a city, even a world, in miniature,”8 a spatial verse of visual display. A consequence of the arcade, like the Galleria, is illustrated in Benjamin’s flaneur. This man, per Benjamin’s conception, was the archetype in which an aspect of historical reality was made manifest. At one point he was described as a person who “seeks refuge in the crowd… In the flaneur, the intelligentsia sets foot in the marketplace – ostensibly to look around, but in truth to find a buyer.”9 Through the flaneur, the arcade became an ambiguous territory within a city, which cannot be clearly distinguished as neither being interior or exterior space. Furthermore Benjamin through the experience of the flaneur begins to describe transformation of city into one great-interior that is establishing intermediate threshold between the ‘rooms’, which merge into total landscape before the flaneur; where ‘street as a domestic interior, the shops resemble closer.’10 Whats more the contemporary Galleria is described as Milan’s living-room that as an urban link facilitates the modern flaneur with comfort and ‘social legitimation of his habitus.’11 With the appearance of the arcade – its monumentality, its crowd, its entertainment, its fantasy – there also emerged what could be considered as the experience of the flaneur, who abandons himself in the marketplace. He came to be identified with the archetype of the consumer of the post-modern experience, with its labyrinth-like and splintered array of physical and symbolic representations. With this in mind, particularly with how the flaneur was at home in the arcade, it is easy to see how Benjamin see city streets in the area as some form of mnemonic system that brought images of the past into the present. With all the diversity pandered by the gleaming shops and created by contrived environment, the flaneur was able to find sense and logic: ‘[…]the glossy enameled corporate nameplates are as good a wall-decoration as an oil painting is for the homebody sitting in his living room, or even better; the fire walls are their desks, the newspaper kiosk their library, letterboxes their bronze statuettes, benches their boudoir, and the café terrace the bay window from which they can look down on their property.’12 Benjamin argued that the commodities found in the arcades are about illusion and that the value of these merchandise is eclipsed by representation. Here, one sees how Benjamin emphasized how secularized societies that are found on money and luxury had to construct ways and means of interpreting existential experience. He was able to enlighten us that through the symbolic representations of the world and through the narrative of the tales found in every corner of the edifice, people found in the Galleria the tools to interpretation necessary in the comprehension and the manipulation of experiences in symbolic form. The popularity of the Galleria supported this observation. With The Arcades Project, as manifested in the Galleria, Benjamin was also able to explain to the future generation that building of the arcades during the nineteenth century represented a vital period in the development of capitalism. With the arcade, Benjamin was able to present shopping is centred on fetishistic purpose that separated the public from the consciousness of reality. Here, Buck-Morss added” “This fetishized phantasmagoria is also the form in which the human, socialist potential of industrial nature lies frozen, awaiting collective political action that could awaken it.”13 Conclusion From Benjamin’s perspective, one sees the images that demonstrate the vividness of progress, with its unmediated identification with technological change and social betterment. As with the Galleria’s predecessor it is a huge and monumental edifice for the purposes of commerce. Furthermore, the Italian “new life” with its luxury lifestyle, separation from the world, the abundance of goods - these were all characteristics of the Galleria. The arcade in Milan went as far as eclipsing those earlier built in Paris. The grand size of the Galleria Emanuele is comparable to the interiors of contemporary World Fair buildings and Mengoni took pains in transforming it into unimaginable dimensions. As Tronzo have aptly commented, “The effect of the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele was extraordinary and not to be compared with the response to any earlier arcade.”14 In addition one of the most influential factors that characterize the importance of contemporary Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II in the city is expressed in relation to flaneur. Over time the experience of the flaneur had been formalized and made more evident with intention to profit. For instance, since the opening Galleria visitors were often interested to partake in traditional Italian experience of an aperitif. Consequently one of the most renowned aperitifs Campari was invented by the owner of the first cafe in Galleria, which soon became a popular attraction as illustrate in 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 Besides the physical similarity of the Galleria to the French arcade, it fulfilled the use of the arcade as defined by Benjamin because it was able to introduce the transition from production to consumption in the society. In shopping in the Galleria, an individual is deluged with fantastic images whose purpose is to mystify him, remove him from the confines of the reality of the world, and dive into a dream world of mass culture and consumerism. It ushered in a new era of capitalism that is characteristic of the similar arcades erected in Paris. Overall the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II, as an architectural form of the nineteenth century, has remained critical of consumerist culture revealing the importance of commerce in collective lives. At the same time the Galleria became a social core of the city of Milan and became an alternative to the contemporary street that is overflowed with traffic. As this paper has pointed out, the Galleria offered safety and comfort, particularly emphasizing the detachment that people find so appealing. The edifice itself was characterized by a teeming number of iconography for the purpose of elevating the area into more than just glazed street between two urban spaces. And because of it, the very typology of the piazza where it is located was also transformed. Indeed, up to this day, the Galleria is a high point of Milan’s smart set, true to Benjamin’s concept of the arcade as an architectural and cultural paradigm he called as the “primordial landscape of consumption.” Finally, as an engineering and architectural marvel, it represented an image of the Italian cultural achievement through the ages that is why it deserved to be considered as a bearer of the national identity. References Benjamin, W 1968, Illuminations, Schocken Books. Benjamin, W 1999, The arcades project, Rolf Tiedermann (ed.). Harvard University Press. Buck-Morss, S 1991, The dialectics of seeing: Walter Benjamin and the Arcades project, MIT Press. Engels, F 2009, The Condition of the Working-Class in England in 1844, Cosimo, Inc. Falk, P and Campbell, C 1997, The shopping experience, New York, SAGE. Morra, J and Smith M 2006, Visual Culture: Spaces of visual culture. Taylor & Francis. Ritzer, G 2005, Enchanting a disenchanted world: revolutionizing the means of consumption, Pine Forge Press. Rubenstein, Harvey. (1992). Pedestrian malls, streetscapes, and urban spaces. John Wiley and Sons. Read More