CITYSPACES AS INTERIOR SETTINGS: ON AN INSIDE OUT EFFECT IN THE CITIES UNDER NEW CAPITALISM

João  Borges da Cunha

João Borges da Cunha Universidade Lusófona de Humanidades e Tecnologias, Lisboa [PT]

Resumo

The German cultural critic, Siegfried Kracauer, trained as an architect and active as a writer and journalist under the Weimar Republic, ended his 1930 article “Abschied von der Lindenpassage” [“Farewell to the Linden Arcade”], on the decline of that specific commercial venue, with the following broad question: “What would be the point of an arcade [Passage] in a society that is itself only a passageway?” (Kracauer, 1995: 342). Already suggested in such a perspicuous diagnosis was the fact that the ultimate horizon of the capitalist action on city economy is the overall commodification of urban places. What is implied here, from the onset, is the complete social and economic mobilisation of city spots and urban sites as in a walloping shopping mall (as in J.G. Ballard's dystopic novel Kingdom Come [2006]), resulting on a spatial effect in which no limit can be pointed out between the recognized selling station and the non-buying stand. This means that the first boundaries to be breached are those culturally constructed, dividing the allowed from the non-allowed, the private from the public and the provisional from the perennial, what leads to a ubiquitous marketing and gambling arcade. In terms of architectural space, this comes out as an ever increasing undifferentiation between indoor practices and exterior ones. Actually, on an observable inside out effect, exterior and public spaces are used to pursue inward experiences: building façades support outdoor advertisements as huge one-page magazine sheets; nightlifers roam and dance the streets as if inside vaulted arenas; graffiti and tags mark the city walls as personal and confessional mementos. In short, and paradoxically, the inside invades the outside.

Within an interdisciplinary approach, crossing cultural theory and analysis with urban aesthetics, this paper will address precisely these city phenomena in the context of which the tradition of bourgeois interiors (Lukacs, 1970) and modern public sphere (Habermas, 1971) were degraded by the cultural transformations of New Capitalism, synthesized by Richard Sennett as when “the institutions inspire only weak loyalty, (...) diminish participation and mediation of commands, (...) breed low levels of informal trust and high levels of anxiety about uselessness” (Sennett, 2006: 181): in other words, the stage set of a life drama in which the disappearance of an outer city scape is the token of a full capitalist incorporation and the threat of a vanishing future.

inside out effect; interiors; public space commodification; New Capitalism.

Biografia Autor

João Borges da Cunha, Universidade Lusófona de Humanidades e Tecnologias, Lisboa [PT]

João Borges da Cunha (Lisbon, 1973) holds a Ph.D. in Culture Studies from the Catholic University of Portugal, and a Degree in Architecture from the Faculty of Architecture of the University of Lisbon. His doctoral dissertation, entitled «Representation, immersion and interiors: Cultures of Space in To the Lighthouse and Buddenbrooks», provides a comparative reading of two emblematic novels of the 20th century, regarding their spatial, architectural and cultural backdrop. He is an Assistant Professor of Architecture at the Department of Architecture and Urban Planning in Universidade Lusófona de Humanidades e Tecnologias, Lisbon, where he has been teaching, in under-and-post- graduate level, Visual Culture, Theories of Space, Anthropology of Space, Geometry and Contemporary Culture, and also working as the department’s Teaching and Learning Coordinator. He’s been a speaker at several international conferences on representation, culture, architecture, space, narrative and fiction, and inter-media studies, with published papers on the subjects. He is a researcher at CECC-UCP and LEAU-ULHT. He is also a writer of fiction, having been awarded with the Branquinho da Fonseca, Expresso/ Gulbenkian Foundation Literary Prize, to his novella Amor de Miraflores.

João Borges da Cunha (Lisbon, 1973) é doutorado em Estudos de Cultura pela Universidade Católica Portuguesa, e arquiteto diplomado pela Faculdade of Arquitetura da atual Universidade de Lisboa. A tese de doutoramento, que defendeu em 2014, com o título «Representação, imersão, interiores: Culturas de Espaço em To the Lighthouse e Buddenbrooks», oferece uma leitura comparativa de dois romances emblemáticos do século XX, em trono do respetivo contexto espacial, arquitectónico e cultural. Ensina ainda, como Porfessor Auxiliar, no Departamento de Arquitetura e Urbanismo da Universidade Lusófona de Humanidades e Tecnologias, em Lisboa, tanto nos cursos de Mestrado como de Doutoramento em Arquitetura e em Urbanismo, de cujos ciclos é atualmente Subdiretor, desempenhando também as funções de Coordenador Pedagógico daquele Departamento. Tem participado, com diferentes comunicações, em conferências internacionais sobre representação, cultura, arquitetura, espaço, narrativa e ficção, e estudos intermedia, com artigos publicados sobre a temática. É investigador no Laboratório Experimental de Arquitetura e Urbanismo - LEAU/ ULHT e colabora ainda no Centro de Estudos de Comunicação e Cultura - CECC/ Universidade Católica Portuguesa. Ficcionista distinguido com o Prémio Branquinho da Fonseca, Expresso/ Gulbenkian, com a novela Amor de Miraflores.