主体性的物化和建筑的媒介性 —— 从家庭空间到城市领域

The Materialisation of Subjectivity and the Agency of Architecture: From Domestic Spaces to the Urban Realm 



本文发表于《新建筑》2016/05期,请勿转载。

程婧如 Jingru Cyan Cheng (AA, UK; ACROSS Architecture, UK)
布兰登·卡林 Brendon Carlin (AA, UK; Urban System, UK)
玛丽亚·派斯·冈萨雷斯 Maria Paez Gonzalez (AA, UK; Foster&Partners, UK)





ABSTRACT Derived from the relationship between architecture and political economy, this paper examines how the larger framework of structural economic and social changes are manifested and revealed through stories of home and typological compositions of houses, as well as similarities and differences in the way in which similar social conflicts are represented in Costa Rican society and Chinese society. The paper argues that the materialisation of subjectivity is at the core of the relationship between political economy and architecture, and the agency of architecture or spatial design lies in the construction of certain spaces that are able to imply transformations of relationships.

KEY WORDS subjectivity, family, house, home, materialisation

Since 1970s and 1980s, architectural discipline has become increasingly interwoven with changes in economic forms and social structure, which can be referred to as political economy in general. Admittedly, the position of political economy has been much more often enunciated in relation to large-scale urban planning. The urban social theory during the 1980s argued that urban planning could be seen as an essential element of the state apparatus. For example, David Harvey’s The Condition of Postmodernity is one of the classic theories dealing with this matter. However, one should not forget that the word ‘economy’ originally comes from the Greek work ‘oikos’, which means house. And economic forms and activities, either capitalist or socialist, always impose a set of social and personal relations onto subjects they create, for example, the manipulation of how family works in different economies. All of these suggest that political economy can be articulated at an architectural scale through examining the way in which dwellings and settlements are formalised. To this end, domestic space can be seen as both an apparatus of condensing social, economic, political and cultural issues in the society and thus an instrument of the production of subjectivity of its inhabitants.

The work of Topicality workshop in Costa Rica, a visiting school programme of the Architectural Association, is a case in point. Through the conversation with Brendon Carlin and Maria Paez Gonzalez, directors of the Tropicality programme, the following discussion focuses on how the larger framework of structural economic and social changes are manifested and revealed through stories of home and typological compositions of houses, as well as similarities and differences in the way in which similar social conflicts are represented in Costa Rican society and Chinese society.

(Jingru Cyan Cheng - C; Brendon Carlin and Maria Paez Gonzalez - C&G)


1 Home as an Urban Project

C: Could you briefly introduce the subject and context of the work of Tropicality? And what drives you to do so?

C&G: The choice to study housing, and the locations – four cities along the tropic of cancer with a colonial past which are undergoing a shift to fully developed countries - was motivated both by an excitement and optimism about the possibilities for extraordinarily unique houses and forms of life within these regions; at the same time, we are alarmed about the status and direction of architecture and society in these beautiful places. The method we developed for the workshop is intended to the lift the romantic veil obscuring narratives of the tropical home and reveal what we might characterise as invisible, discreet and slow forms of violence. Because we consider housing a fundamental urban molecule, the structural study of which can reveal much about, and is a central component of urban mechanics at large, we believe it is currently at the forefront of an urgent project of the city.

C: Totally agree. A project of home definitely transcends the domestic scale. Family is always at the heart of social organisation and modes of production, and has been thus constructed and reconstructed throughout the transformation of economic systems and alternation of political regimes. And the emergence of new economic and political forms always coincides with the construction of their desired subjectivity. During the process, conflicts, struggles and even resistance are condensed in the domestic domain - the house.


2. The Subjectivity of Inhabitants and the Typological Composition of Home

C&G: Excavating the inhabitant’s idea of self, rituals, meaning and their emotional state’s push-and-pull relationship to the material composition of the home was one of the primary and motivations behind the workshop.

In Costa Rica and the other countries which Tropicality will visit in the coming years, the nuclear family and corresponding typological compositions of the home can be traced to the political projects of colonisation and then industrialisation by Spain, England , France and America. It is often argued and well documented that the contemporary nuclear family was largely a construct of modernisation. As Jordan Sand points out in his book House and Home in Modern Japan, in places like Japan amongst many others, the modern family, house and home were very decisively and aggressively imposed to organise more efficient productive and reproductive potential. This meant that there was a systematic arrangement of roles, through establishing divisions such as gender, age and status or class. These choreographies were formalised through the typological composition of architecture. The formal and programmatic composition of the home was strategically focused on producing or enforcing the modern industrious family and therefore productive members of a new kind of society.

What we saw in Costa Rica are homes largely resembling mid to late 20th century American family homes in internal organisation, but with traces of the colonial Spanish aesthetic features and local adaptations mainly due to climate, economy, materials and geography to name a few factors. At the moment, the kind of crisis and dysfunctionality of the family seen in Europe and America as early as the 1960’s and 1970’s is shaking ideas of family, self and home to their core. In Costa Rica and Latin America the nucleus of the family is almost always multi-generational. Community it seems, is something very fundamental to us humans - tied to our emotional well being and a source of meaning in our lives, but also a very pragmatic tactic for survival; inevitably also a major source of conflict and impulse for new means of mediating it – both materially and immaterially. Unacknowledged and often unrecognised social contracts and material mediations are established in order to co-exist. What we witnessed in our research in Costa Rica is that traditional structures of family, identity and meaning (for instance religion) which have transformed since Spanish colonisation yet remained largely one intact body for centuries are now fragmenting, drifting detached and melting into an increasingly boundless, complex, homogenous global body. We would argue that this tendency and its consequences, and not likelihood of robbery, is the main motivation behind the walls, barbed wire, cameras and security guards so present in almost every neighbourhood in Costa Rica.


(Fig 1a-b: A typical high security suburb with American style suburban types with hints of Spanish Colonial.)


C: How does this on-going crisis represent itself within a family? How do you see the subjectivity of inhabitants in relation to the typological composition of home?

C&G: Within the family this manifests as very different expressions and materialisations of identity and meaning from one generation to the next. The typical grandparent may define themselves almost entirely through their religion, social relationships and moral action, which is heavily reflected in material arrangements as distinct and maintained boundaries within the house including furniture, decoration, abundant religious iconography, utilitary items, and the control of phenomenological qualities like light, smell and air flow. For example, in one home the front door always remained open during the day, the chair was set on the front porch, the religious effigy is dusted and candles lit every morning.

The generation now becoming adults however has largely begun to abandon religion, rigid gendered roles, traditional family obligations, and in many cases the expectations of given roles in society in general becoming diametrically opposed to the values of their grandparents, and parents generation. Many of the participants in the workshop, their friends and the younger generations of Costa Ricans now find meaning and identity in the brands that they consume, personal achievements and individuality and uniqueness from others around them. This manifests materially in their homes through the adaptation of more generic and superficially nostalgic architecture, as if aware that they inhabit a volumetric canvas atop which they can shift material identity at the pace of fashion. Their choice of domestic objects and use of the house is focused on identifying with their profession and status within the society’s body and intellect, in part by expressing creative potency through individuality. For instance, in several of the houses that we studied idiosyncratic combinations of items associated with global culture are displayed instead of religious items, interior and exterior doors are left closed, surveillance and security become a technological replacement of shared-identity social relationships which once constituted a web of security. The gross area and arrangement of the house is becoming driven by greater personal autonomy manifested in and perpetuated by technologically enabled increasingly physical and social mobility – the mass-produced car, the discount airline, cheap internet –a global connectedness. The contradiction at play within these tendencies is between very clear liberative consequences for the individual and the tendency to build new kinds of potentially material and immaterial barriers on the other.

(Fig.2: An older woman’s house in the city)

(Fig.3: Security walls around a suburb)


3. The Idea of Home and Social Conflicts

C: Returning to the urban scale briefly mentioned in previous discussions, how does the material organisation of home and immaterial relationship within a family manifest/reveal the social changes and conflicts in Costa Rican society?

C&G: In all of the stories we encountered in Costa Rica drastic change, liberation of sorts and new conflict were present. Costa Rica is a country with no military, some of the strictest environmental protection measures in the world, high literacy, low infant mortality, long life expectancy, modernised manufacture and agriculture, high-tech industry growth, very high tourist numbers and relatively high per capita income. Despite these achievements, Costa Rica is in many ways a country on the brink of either political turmoil or complete submission to the market values many big economies around the world. Like many countries which perform well in liberal-economic indices, display GDP growth and high rates of freedom, Costa Rica also experiences high levels of poverty, income disparity, rural-to-urban displacement and both sanctioned and unsanctioned corruption. Therefore political populism threatens to drive the country towards extreme policy shifts, the likes of which have heralded recent economic collapse and political upheaval in neighbouring Latin American countries like Venezuela. In contrast to the threat of public institution exploitation and economic cronyism – under the banner of socialism - the continued totalising infiltration of corporatism and an accompanying tropical-flavoured version of advanced capitalism is destabilizing and evaporating almost everything one might have once considered Costarricense, which as mentioned previously also brings new freedoms.

This means that the family, in its recent historical form, is experiencing a transformation – multi-generational housing arrangements are increasingly infrequent and rural youth are moving to urban centres. These shifts are driving both new construction, illegal and legal, and the modification of existing housing stock. Conflicts between children and parents, and parents and grandparents are about more than simple human desire for liberated will; they are about dramatic differences in personal and cultural practices and beliefs from one generation to the next.

(Fig.4: An architect designed house in a 1980-90’s suburb)


C: Could you elaborate a little bit more the relationship between the transformation of house, economic shifts, social mentalities, probably through real cases?

C&G: Earlier we had mentioned the changes from one generation to the next in the material appropriation of houses, the shifting aesthetic and typological composition, and the patterns of daily life. These changes manifested clearly in several of the stories from the first year of the workshop. In the story Zurqui conflicts of identity and belief drove a middle-class married couple and their children from their grandmothers home. She is an avidly religious matriarch of the house, as is typical in the Costa Rican home since Spanish colonial times. Her son-in-law didn’t accept her authority and eventually opted to purchase a new suburban home in a gated community at the periphery of the city. Himself, his wife and children now commute an hour or more to school and work, the four family members have one car each. Their home is very large, the type very alike American suburban home of the last 30 years, and is often empty because of their new lifestyle. In contrast to the grandmothers house there is no religious iconography, little to no objects of historical or spiritual meaning, high security walls, gates and cameras and large yards - increasing dramatically physical and social distance between neighbours.

(Fig. 5: The Interior of a new nuclear family house in the suburbs)


At the other end of the spectrum is a story of the urban migrant poor, Carpio & Puriscal. In the film we hear of one rural family’s struggle with poverty in the wake of land privatisation, industrialisation of agricultural production and opening of free trade. The family is provided with social housing by the Costa Rican government after years of living in a sheet-metal shack. During an interview, the family-members conveyed repeatedly that family was the most important thing in life, it was what life was worth living for. However, due to lack of means for the family to sustain itself, the children are moving four hours away, to the city, and will infrequently see their parents and grandparents. The story then took us to a slum at the edge of the city, likely similar to where the children from the previous story will find housing when they arrive in San Jose. These are in many ways not unlike other settlements resulting from urbanisation across Latin America and in many places in the world for that matter. People here inhabit private and state owned land illegally, under threat of eviction at any time. In most cases they build their homes themselves with little planning and often without services like plumbing and electricity. The woman whom tells her story in El Carpio, San Jose’s highest-crime slum, has been expanding her house for several years. They had initially built it with one room for six people, now it has four rooms, one for cooking and dining, one for the children, one for the parents and one that houses the family’s informal grocery at the street front. The woman conveyed an almost desperate sense of homelessness, of not belonging; she dreams of returning to the countryside of her youth where much of her family remains to this day. It was clear in Carpio and Puriscal that for these families ownership is the essential ground upon which the home relies.

(Fig. 6: A village against the landscape several hours drive from the city)


C: Here you mentioned the issue of rural-to-urban migration. As you said, this phenomenon is not confined to Costa Rica. It also prevails in China, known as the floating population. The floating population refers to rural migrant workers who live and work in cities yet are legally registered in the countryside. The dual role of this population is made explicit by the phenomenon that they simultaneously have temporary habitations in the city and permanent family houses in the countryside. The typical story is that adults come to cities to work, leaving behind their aged parents and young children, and often send a large portion of their earnings back home. Families are forced to live apart and villages are economically dependent on urban economies.

The fundamental contradiction is that these rural migrant workers live and work in cities yet are legally registered in the countryside. In other words, they are undocumented migrants. Due to China’s household registration system, rural migrant workers are unable to access welfare services in cities. In this sense, rural migrants are unrecognised by cities, even though they constitute a significant part of the urban labour force, especially in labour-intensive industries. It is incongruous that rural migrant workers fuel urbanisation without themselves having rights to the city. Given that they have no right to subsidised public housing due to their hukou status and that commodity housing in cities is usually far beyond their means, rural migrant workers become tenants in low-quality urban villages on the periphery of a city. These urban villages form enclaves and represent a retrogressive form of urbanisation. Thus, rural migrant workers are involved in the urban economy yet live in rural conditions.

Furthermore, being undocumented, economically unrecognised and spatially marginalised puts this group in a volatile situation. They have been alienated from their own rural communities yet have not been fully assimilated into urban communities. Rural migrant workers become strangers both in cities and in the countryside. Operating on the legal, economic, social and spatial periphery, the subjectivity of migrant families is at stake and identity lost.

Specific to house and home, the materialisation of identity of rural migrants manifests a paradoxical tendency: even though the village is depopulating, the physical scale of construction work is increasing. It is a result of the floating population who leave the countryside to work in cities, yet send back their earnings to build new houses in their home villages where they themselves spend little time. As a shared aspiration in Chinese rural society, building a new family home is an act that celebrates the rising status of a household in the village. These family homes reveal that, to a certain extent, the village still represents home, a sense of belonging and a form of economic security for migrant workers.

C&G: Migration takes different forms depending on economic means and socio-economic status. In the project Los Yoses – perhaps not coincidentally one of the only projects in which its two narrators are actually seen in the film - the two women decided to return to the neighbourhood of their youth near the city centre. This is an unusual move for most middle and upper income bracket families in Costa Rica which typically buy a house within the thickening rings of suburban single family house or condominium growth at the periphery of, and outside of the city. Both of the women in Los Yoses articulate a conscious rejection of developer driven new housing projects as a fully-packaged, idyllic home and lifestyle constructed out of ‘walls that are not real.’ Economic resources play a large role in the production of and manifestation of subjectivity and to the resistance of its prevalent forms here.


4. Open Conclusion

C&G: Across the stories from the first year of Tropicality, we saw expression of subjectivity manifest on different structural layers, from decoration, to surface treatment, to spatial modification, to typological composition.

C: The materialisation of subjectivity is at the core of the relationship between political economy and architecture. If we understand the apparatus of economics and politics as a set of social and personal relationships, rather than pure numbers and political terms, the agency of architecture or spatial design lies in the construction of certain spaces that are able to imply transformations of relationships.

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摘要 
立足于建筑学与政治经济学之间的联系,以建筑联盟学院Tropicality工作坊访问学校的研究入手,着重探讨经济与社会结构性变迁的宏观框架如何在一个个家的故事和住宅的类型学组织中反映出来,并对比在哥斯达黎加和中国社会中相似社会矛盾表现形式的异同。提出主体性的物化是政治经济学与建筑学关系的核心,建筑和空间设计的媒介性在于创造可以影响或是改变社会关系和个人关系的空间中。

关键词 
主体性 家庭 住宅 家 物化

从2 0世纪70年代起,建筑学与经济模式和社会体系变化的关系越来越紧密;广义上来讲,即建筑学与政治经济学之间联系的加深。不可否认,相较于建筑学,大尺度城市规划与政治经济学的关系更为清晰。20世纪80年代的城市社会理论指出,城市规划可以被看做是国家机器(state apparatus)运作过程中的一个基本环节[1]。比如,大卫·哈维(David Harvey)的《后现代的状况》(The Condition of Postmodernity )就是这方面的经典著作[2]。然而,我们不应该忘记Economy(经济)这个词源自希腊语oi k os,原意为房屋。其实,不管是资本主义还是社会主义,特定的经济模式及其活动总是会将一系列关系模式(包含社会层面与个人层面)强加在这种经济模式所创造的主体上。比如,不同经济形态对家庭在社会中的角色的操控就是典型的例子。由此我们可以看到,通过研究住宅和居住形态形成的过程,政治经济学事实上也可以通过建筑尺度得以清晰表达。这样,家庭空间(domestic space)对社会而言,可以被看做是浓缩社会、经济、政治和文化议题的机器;对其中的居住者而言,则是塑造其主体性的工具。

英国建筑联盟学院(Architectural Association)访问学校Tropicality工作坊探访了哥斯达黎加,致力于家庭空间的研究。以下与工作坊负责人布兰登·卡林(Brendon Carlin)和玛丽亚·派斯·冈萨雷斯(Maria Paez Gonzalez)的对话,着重探讨经济与社会结构性变迁的宏观框架如何在一个个家的故事和住宅的类型学组织中反映出来,并对比了在哥斯达黎加和中国社会中相似的社会矛盾表现形式的异同。

(程婧如,后文简称为C;布兰登·卡林&玛丽亚·派斯·冈萨雷斯,后文简称为C&G)

一 家——作为一个城市项目

C:请你们简单介绍一下Tropicality工作坊的研究对象和背景,以及是什么促使你们进行这样的研究?

C&G:我们研究住宅,在地点上选择了北回归线上的四个城市。它们都有作为殖民地的历史,并且现在正经历着向发达国家转变的过程。研究的动力来源于一种兴奋与乐观的情绪,来源于这些区域里独特的住宅和生活方式所带来的可能性。我们同时担忧着这些美丽地方的建筑、社会所处的状态和未来的发展方向。

总的来说,工作坊试图揭开蒙在热带家庭故事表面那层浪漫主义的面纱,揭示出一种被我们定义为无形的、不引人注意且缓慢发生的暴力形式。这样的研究视角是基于我们对住宅的理解。我们认为住宅是一种基本的城市分子,是城市运作机制的核心部件。因此我们相信住宅的研究位于城市项目最急迫的前沿。

C:相当赞同。一个关于家的项目必然会超越家庭尺度本身。家庭总是处在社会组织方式和生产模式的核心,也因此一直在经济转型和政体变迁中被不断地塑造与重塑[3]。新的经济系统和政治形式产生的过程中往往同时打造能为它们所用的主体性。在这个过程中,社会、文化、经济等多方面的冲突、挣扎甚至是抗争都会被浓缩在家庭领域中——也就是住宅。

二 居住者的主体性和家的类型学构成

C&G:对我们来说,主要目标是挖掘居住者对自我、仪式、意义和他们对家的感性认知与其物质组成之间的关系。这也是我们最重要的研究动力之一。在哥斯达黎加和其他几个我们在接下来几年中即将探访的城市里,核心家庭(nuclear family)及其相应的家庭空间的类型学构成可以追溯到西班牙、英国、法国和美国当时的殖民地化和工业化项目。关于当代核心家庭很大程度上是现代化的产物这一论述已相当成熟。就像乔丹·萨德(Jordan Sand)在《当代日本住宅与家庭》(House and Home in Modern Japan)一书中指出的,在日本和类似日本这样的地方,当代家庭、住宅、家被强加了组织高效生产与再生产潜力的职能,且这种强加的方式是具有决断性和侵略性的。这意味着通过建立性别、年龄、社会地位、社会阶级的分工,个人在家庭中的角色有着系统化的安排[4]。而这些编排通过建筑的类型学构成被赋予了形式。一个家的形式和功能上的构成策略性地关注如何塑造与实现当代的产业家庭——也就是新社会中具有生产力的成员们。

我们看到,现在哥斯达黎加的家庭很大程度上与20世纪中晚期的美国家庭在内在结构上极其相似。但是哥斯达黎加的家庭依然留有西班牙殖民时期特征的痕迹,并有一些因当地气候、经济、材料和地理环境等要素而产生的适应性变化。当下,在欧洲和美国60—70年代间曾出现过的那种家庭危机与功能失调正在动摇着人们核心观念中关于家庭、自我和家的认知。在哥斯达黎加和拉丁美洲,家庭的核心通常是多代的。社区对于人类而言非常重要。 它不仅寄予我们情感的关怀和生命的意义,而且包含着关乎生存的实际性策略。它在不可避免地造成冲突的同时,推动着新的物质和非物质方面的协调。不被认知或认可的社会契约以及物质调节措施被建立起来,并同时存在。在哥斯达黎加的调查中,我们见证了自几个世纪以来从西班牙殖民过程中被完好保留下来的传统家庭的结构、身份和意义(比如宗教)的变化分裂,以及逐渐偏离并融入到一个日益复杂的、同源的全球性集合体之中。我们认为正是这个趋势及其引发的后果(而非为了防止偷盗),才是那些高墙、铁丝网、摄像头和安保人员在每一个哥斯达黎加住宅区出现的本质动因(图1)。


1 典型的高规格安保系统郊区社区类型(美式风格的同时带有西班牙殖民时期的痕迹)


C:这些危机是如何在一个家庭中具体体现出来的?你们是如何看待居住者的主体性和家的类型学构成之间的关系的?

C&G:在家庭中,这些危机在不同世代有着不同的表现方式,对身份认知和意义也有着非常不同的物化方式。典型的祖父母可能会完全通过宗教、社会关系和道德行为来定义他们自己,并且这些方式从家里的物质安排上可以清晰地反映出来。通常表现为住宅里明确的界限,包括家具、装饰、丰富的宗教性标志、日常杂物,以及对光、气味和空气流动这样一些现象性的品质的控制。比如,在某一个案例中,白天前门总是打开的,椅子摆在门廊上;每天都会为宗教肖像除尘,肖像前的蜡烛每天早上都会被点上。

然而,很多正在步入成年的这一代人已经开始放弃宗教信仰、刻板的性别角色、传统的家庭义务。在很多案例中,他们已开始拒绝社会对既定角色的期望,逐步走向与他们祖父母和父母这代人价值观完全相反的方向。不少工作坊的参与者,他们的朋友以及哥斯达黎加的年轻一代,在他们消费的品牌、个人成就和个性,以及与众不同的表现中来寻找意义和身份认知。这样的方式同样在他们家中的物质空间里有所表达,表现为对更普通的、表面上看起来怀旧的建筑的适应。这仿佛表示,他们清楚地认识到他们不过是居住在有体量的画布中,这种物质上的身份认知可以随着潮流而变化。他们对于家居物品的选择和对住宅的使用,主要关注于对职业和在社会中身体与智力状态的认同,部分表现为通过个性表达而显示出的创造潜力。比如,在好几个我们研究过的案例中,相比于陈列具有宗教性质的物品,他们更倾向于选择陈列带有全球化文化意味的物品,且室内室外的门都是关闭的,监视和安全系统替代了具有共同身份属性的社会关系(过去的安全网络正是依赖于这样的社会关系)。住宅的面积和组织形式更多地受到个人自主性的影响,并体现在以科技为主导的全球一体化趋势中(大批量生产的汽车、廉价航空及互联网等)。这其中的内在矛盾在于,一方面有着非常清晰的个人主义的释放,而另一方面又有试图建立其他潜在物质性和非物质性边界的趋势(图2,3)。


2 城市中一位老年女性的住宅

3 郊区的安保围墙


三 家的观念与社会冲突

C:回到在前面的讨论中提到的城市尺度,在哥斯达黎加社会中,家的物质组织和一个家庭内的非物质关系是如何体现/揭露社会变化和冲突的?

C&G:我们在社会激变下的哥斯达黎加遇到的所有故事中,族群的解放和新的冲突是决然存在的。哥斯达黎加虽然没有军队,但有着世界上最严格的环境保护措施,它的教育普及率高,婴幼儿死亡率低,人口寿命长,有着现代化的工业、农业、高科技产业,人均收入相对富足,每年吸引着成千上万来自世界各地的游客。除了这些成就以外,哥斯达黎加与政治动乱绝缘,不屈服于经济大国控制下的市场价值观。像诸多在自由经济下表现良好的国家一样,哥斯达黎加在国民生产总值(GD P)稳步增长和拥有高自由度的同时,陷入了严重的贫困、收入不均,农村到城市的转移以及贪污腐败丑闻。因此平民主义威胁将效仿拉丁美洲邻国委内瑞拉近年经济崩塌和政治动乱之后的举措,推动哥斯达黎加进行极端的政治改革。对比于公共机构对民众的欺压和裙带经济的威胁,极权主义的持续渗入和具有热带地区特征的先进资本主义将每个人心中“哥斯达黎加人”的认知瓦解了。但与此同时,这样的变化也带来了新的自由。

这意味着家庭正处于转型期——多代共居的情况正在逐渐减少,农村的年轻人逐步搬到城市中心居住。这些变化驱使着新的合法或不合法的建设,以及存量住宅的改造。孩子和父母之间、父母与祖父母之间的冲突不仅仅是简单的对自由意志的渴望,而且是不同世代之间个人和文化实践以及信仰中显著差异性的体现(图4)。

4 20世纪80—90年代的郊区中一个建筑师设计的住宅


C:你们可以通过实际案例进一步阐述住宅的变化、经济转型和社会心态之间的关系吗?

C&G:之前我们提到了每代人在住宅材料、美学品味、类型组织和日常生活习惯的转变。在我们第一年工作坊的几个故事中就清晰地表达了这些变化。在祖尔圭(Zurgui)的故事中,一对中产阶级夫妇和他们的孩子与其祖母的冲突在于对身份和信仰的不同认知。与众多自西班牙殖民时期起的哥斯达黎加家庭一样,祖母是家庭中热衷于宗教的女族长。她的女婿不接受她的权威并最终决定购置一套位于城郊封闭社区内的新房。女婿女儿和他们的孩子现今每人有一部私家车,每天花一个小时以上往返于家与学校/工作单位之间。他们的新家很宽敞,非常类似于美国30年代市郊的住宅,并且由于他们新的生活方式而非常简洁空荡。与祖母家不同的是,他们的新家里没有任何与宗教相关的肖像以及具有历史和精神象征意义的物件,取而代之的是高高的院墙、严密安保的大门、处处安置的摄像头以及大面积的庭院——从物理和社会层面与邻里之间逐渐扩大的距离(图5)。

5 郊区一个核心家庭住宅的室内


另一则故事是关于一对贫穷的城市移民卡皮奥(Carpio)和普瑞斯卡(Puriscal)。在电影中,我们看到了在土地私有化、农业生产工业化以及开放自由贸易等时代背景之下一个贫困农村家庭的挣扎。这个家庭在栖居于棚屋多年之后,搬进了哥斯达黎加政府提供的福利房。在采访中,他们的成员虽然反复强调家庭是人生中最重要的组成部分,是生活值得存在及付出的理由,但是由于生活难以为继,家中的孩子被送去了离城市4小时之远的地方,与父母和祖父母相见的机会极少。于是这个故事把我们带到了城市边缘的贫民窟,类似于前面一个故事中孩子们抵达圣何塞(San Jose)之后会去住的房子,类似于很多拉丁美洲和世界其他地方因城市化而形成的街区。这里的人们非法居住在或私有或国有的土地上,随时面临着拆迁的威胁。在很多调研案例中,他们在没有任何规划知识的前提下自建房屋,很多住宅甚至没有基础的排水和供电设施。在圣何塞犯罪率最高的贫民窟El Carpio给我们讲故事的妇女已经私自扩建自己的住宅好些年了。最初她搭建了一间房,供6个人居住。如今她家一共有4间房:一间作为厨房和饭厅,一间给孩子们,一间给她和丈夫,最后一间作为他们家在临街一面的小杂货店铺。她强烈地表达了那近乎绝望的无家可归感,并热切地渴望能回到年轻时候居住的乡村,和其他家庭成员团聚在一起。在卡皮奥和普瑞斯卡的案例中,我们可以清楚地看到,所有权是家庭得以存在的基础(图6)。

6 市区几小时车程以外的一处村子


C:这里你提到了城乡之间移民的问题。正如你所说,这个现象不局限于哥斯达黎加。事实上,城乡移民在中国也是个非常显著的问题,我们称之为流动人口。中国的流动人口指的是户籍上注册在农村但在城市里生活与工作的人群。从空间角度说,他们在城市里有临时的住所,在农村里有相对稳定的家庭住宅。这两者的共存清晰地体现出这个人群的双重身份。通常,家中的青壮年去城市工作,将年迈的父母和年幼的孩子留在村里,并寄回他们在城里的大部分收入以供家用。在这样的情况下,家庭成员被迫异地而居,而村子也在经济上完全依赖于城市经济。

这个情况的核心矛盾是这些外来务工人员的身份注册状态与实际工作生活状态的不匹配。换句话说,他们是城市中未被记录的移民。依据中国的户籍制度,这些打工者在城市中无法享受和城市居民一样的福利。从这个角度来说,这些外来务工人员依然没有被城市认可,即使他们是构成城市劳动力的一股不可忽视的力量(特别是在劳动集中型的产业中)。这些劳动者一方面“滋养”着城市化,另一方面却没有面对城市的权力。在大部分城市中,他们的户籍状态导致他们无权享受当地的福利住房,而商品房的价格通常超出他们的经济承受能力。在这样的情况下,他们成为了城市边缘地区低质量城中村的租客。而这些城中村形成了城市里的飞地(enclave),是城市化倒退的一种形式。因此,从某种意义上来说,这些外来务工人员在积极地参与城市经济的同时却居住在类似于农村的物理环境中。

进一步看,不被记录、经济上不被承认、空间上被边缘化的状态使这个人群处于一种不稳定的境况中:一方面在原来的农村社区中,他们已经是异化了的人群;另一方面他们又未完全被城市社区同化。就这样,这些外来务工人员成了城市与农村双边的陌生人。游走在法律、经济、社会包括空间上的边缘,这些劳动者家庭面临着身份认知和主体性的危机。

尤其是针对住宅与家,这些外来务工人员身份认知的物化表现出了一种矛盾的趋势:村子人口在减少,物理尺度的建设量却在增加。这些建设量主要来源于那些离开乡村在城里打工的人用城市的收入在乡村建造的家庭住宅,而他们本人很少真正回村使用这些住宅。作为中国乡村社会中一种普遍的渴望,修建新的家庭住宅是显示和提高家庭甚至家族在村里社会地位的行为。对于城市里的外来务工人员来说,乡村在某种程度上依旧代表着故乡、一种归属感和某种形式上的经济安全性。

C&G:我们观察到移民行为的发生有不同的形式,这取决于不同家庭的收入和社会经济地位。在洛斯·约瑟斯(Lo s Y o s es)项目中,两位女性叙述者决定搬回她们幼年时在市中心附近住过的街区。这对于哥斯达黎加中收入的家庭来说是个不寻常的行为。这类家庭通常会在市郊购买独栋家庭住宅,或是在城市边缘地区和市外购买独立产权公寓。而在洛斯·约瑟斯项目中,两位女性都表现出了对开发商主导的新住宅项目的有意识抗拒。她们认为这些项目兜售的是刻意包装过的家的形象及相应的家庭生活方式。经济能力在塑造和体现主观性上有着重要的作用。这个案例则体现了经济能力在抵抗普遍主观性形态时的作用。


四 开放式结论

C&G:总的来说,在Tropicality工作坊第一年的故事中,我们看到了不同结构层面上对主观性的表达,从室内装饰,到表面处理,到空间改造,到住宅的类型学构成。

C:回到开篇的主题,由此我们可以说,主体性的物化是政治经济学和建筑学之间联系的核心。如果我们能够将经济和政治理解成一系列社会和个人的关系,而不是单纯的数字和政治术语,那么建筑和空间设计的媒介性就在于创造可以影响或是改变社会关系和个人关系的空间中。
  


本文通讯作者为Brendon Carlin , Maria Paez Gonzalez,联系方式为tropicality@aaschool.ac.uk。

图片来源:文中图片来源于Tropicality工作坊第一年研究成果,由Brendon Carlin提供。



注释

① 本文话题来源于建筑东西(ACROSS Architecture)与伦敦大学亚非学院孔子学院(London Confucius Institute, SOAS, University of London)联合举办的交流会——家(Home)。“建筑东西”是由英国建筑联盟 (Architectural Association School of Architecture) 的中国在读学生和已投身于建筑实践的毕业校友共同组建的独立学术联盟。“建筑东西”致力于开展广泛且深入的学术讨论活动,从学术到实践,从建筑到城市;在东西方文化的碰撞中,建立一个分享与交流建筑和城市思想的平台。

② Tropicality工作坊详细信息,请访问:https://tropicality.aaschool.ac.uk。


参考文献

[1] Cuthbert A. The Form of Cities: Political Economy and Urban Design[M]. Malden, MA: Blackwell Pub., 2006.
[2] Harvey D. The Condition of Postmodernity: An Enquiry into the Origins of Cultural Change[M]. Oxford: Blackwell, 1990.
[3] Goode W. World Revolution and Family Patterns[M]. New York: Free of Glencoe, 1963.
[4] Sand J. House and Home in Modern Japan: Architecture, Domestic Space, and Bourgeois Culture, 1880-1930[M]. Cambridge, MA: Harvard U Asia Centre, 2003.
          
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