Guy Debord 1959
Source: oeuvres. Gallimard, Paris, 2006;
Translated: from the original for marxists.org by Mitchell Abidor;
CopyLeft: Creative Commons (Attribute & ShareAlike) marxists.org 2008.
The problem of architecture is not that of being seen from without or that of living within. It is in the dialectical relation interior-exterior, at the level of urbanism (houses-streets) and at the level of the house (interior-exterior).
All the facades of a house determine a “clear space” whose function is to play on the contradiction opening-closing.
Build an entire city in order to make love there with only one girl for few days.
The notion of the “street room” (H.O.) [1] reverses the false distinction of open and closed ambiences. The closed ambience itself opens onto the open ambience (which is demarcated by the closed ambiences).
Cf. Ors [2]. The baroque attitude (= contradiction) par excellence is wanting at one and the same time to follow the procession and to watch it pass (being inside the house and seeing it from a neighboring house).
1. Har Oudejans – Dutche architect who joined the Situatonsit international in 1959. Expelled the next year for agreeing to build a church.
2. Eugenio d’Ors, author of Du baroque.