In the September 2020 issue of Architectural Review the Dutch architect Herman Hertzberger writes a letter to his younger colleges asking them to move away from a practice of ”architectural organisations [that] systematically neglect […] social cohesion and conditions for belonging in favor of serving and even stimulating individualism”. The letter echoes an increased concern within architectural discourse addressing multiplicity, collectivity, and matters of care. Hertzberger continues:

^{Instead of designing with exclusively specific purposes in mind we should also include space for alternative interpretations, which are generated by spontaneous situations. Every horizontal plane may become a table under certain circumstances but whether we call it a table is dependent on its context.}

Besides calling for an inclusive mindset in the practice of architecture, the quote also expresses a faith in the power of architecture as an object to create social cohesion and reinforce togetherness. Architectural intentions do matter, says Hertzberger, but they should inform architecture in such a way that it opens for alternative interpretations generated by spontaneous situations. 

The understanding of architecture as an agent for social change is widespread and versions of it can be traced in almost any architectural project description, practice manifesto as well as architectural discourse in general. However, the letter in Architectural Review is intriguing in the way it explicitly situates this notion in relation to concrete architectural form, a position I would like to stay with for a while. What does it mean to take seriously that every architectural configuration – such as a horizontal plane – can be used in multiple ways given the circumstances, and why is it important to distinguish between this kind of relationality and the relations that decide whether something is labeled ’a table’ or not? If the first question deals with the ambiguous character of architecture as concrete form in use, then the second is more concerned with the conceptualization of architectural configurations. This text will foremost engage with the inevitable complexity embedded in first question, but also touch upon the latter since it informs matters attached to inclusive architecture and consequently the act of designing for inclusion.  

Architecture is in one way or another always discriminatory. This is perhaps obvious, but nevertheless crucial to have in mind. Built culture sets limits and creates conditions enabling some usages while making others hard or even impossible. Similar hierarchies are also established through the inhabitation of the built, making it simultaneously inclusive and exclusive. This might sound disturbing, but it is not necessarily an act of oppression or violence. Processes of inclusion and exclusion are present even in mundane activities as when my sitting at the table in a certain way prevents someone else sitting there.¹ 

The interplay between ’him’ and ’her’ constructs a spatial game that configures the male body in relation to the female and vice versa. In doing so architecture inevitably reproduces and reinforces prevailing notions of the other, as in the vertical figure of the showering male and the horizontal figure of the bathing woman who only to some extent can control her visibility while in the tub. But, beyond being gendered the main bathroom is a sexualized space with no definite ’proper place’: not one gaze, but many with opportunities to slide between viewpoints and positions. The articulation of ’him’ and ’her’ enacted by the bedrooms of the two children is somewhat cruder. Both rooms are equipped with basin and bidet placed on a platform along one of the walls inside the bedroom visually veiled by a curved and pivoting perforated screen. However, where the spaciousness of the son’s room is open to be furnished in various ways, such generous variability is diminished in the daughter’s room by a built-in bathtub.⁶ 

The architectural expressions and technological innovations of Maison de Verre might be regarded as avant-garde and ahead of its time. But, as much as it is a reflection of the marriage between two progressive individuals and their children it is nevertheless a manifestation of early 20th century French upper-class culture translated into built form.

The relocation between surgical room, examination room and reception is not only a spatial transportation. It is a shift in bodies that cross categories, and with that the norms mediating their interaction. This might be a subtle transition in the experience of the female patient, given the specific cultural context of Maison de Verre. But reading it from the perspective of the building it carries some learnings in terms of inclusivity and the multiplicity of architecture. Given that spatial memory is embodied, architecture inhabit us. These bodily memories affect our possibilities to associate with others, even moving in and out of different and to a various degree related bodies.

Maison de Verre clearly discriminates between bodies and privilege some over others, making them invisible – or visible in diminishing ways. It differs whether you are madam Dalsace, a female patient at the clinic, the maid employed by the household or the nurse working for doctor Dalsace. In this way the building is a testimony of what we already know from feminist theory, that ’women’ or gender are not homogenous singular categories but relational and dependent on other social and cultural conceptualizations. Perhaps equally important is that architecture sometimes can imprison individuals into certain bodies where the only way to free oneself might be leaving the architecture that shapes that body behind. It is interesting that a building considered to be so ’modern’ and ahead of its time has proven so difficult to inherit and inhabit by the children and grandchildren of Annie and Jean Dalsace.¹⁰ This is not in any way a denial of the many architectural qualities of Maison de Verre, or a dismissal of its intricate spatial matrix and exquisite craftsmanship. It is more a recognition that even in those instances where power relations are reversed or social norms contested, and therefore could be read as ambiguous qualities in the architecture ’open for spontaneous interpretation’, this seems rather to be a reflection of the particular relationship of Annie and Jean Dalsace.¹¹ If there is one body that is given the space to be re-articulated in regards to the social norms of the bourgeoisie, it is madame Dalsace’s. 

Some bodies tend to remain hidden and are therefore often neglected by architecture. When they are put to the foreground and made present, it affects the presence of all other bodies. When Rem Koolhaas was commissioned to design a private residence for the Lemoîne family in Floriac, just outside of Bordeaux the brief was a building that could liberate the husband of the family from the prison of his own body.¹² Paralyzed by a car accident in his late 40s, he was dependent on a wheelchair for his movements. ”’Contrary to what you would expect,’ he told the architect, ’I do not want a simple house. I want a complex house, because the house will define my world’”¹³ The solution is a 3x3,5 meter platform moving by a hydraulic pilar underneath across the three stories of the building. 

From the perspective of the husband the platform is liberating, giving access to the wine cellar of the basement, the living areas on the ground floor and the bedrooms, bath, and balcony at the upper floor. It is however a liberation that comes with a cost. In fact, the extension of his body – the very platform that regains his mobility – reinforces a ’masculine’ hold of the household. When absent he is even more present leaving a hazardous void in floor. To some extent he controls architecture since it is only safe when he is around.¹⁴ Besides the spatial separation into different levels, there is a distinct division within the upper floor separating the parent’s bedrooms from the children’s. Theirs are only accessible through a narrow spiral stair leaving the children’s most intimate spaces inaccessible to their father. Maison à Bordeaux might challenge the boundaries between what is considered an able or a disabled body, but the inclusiveness of architecture is a complex matter. The liberation of one repressed body does not automatically re-articulate other (repressed) bodies, not even the ones carried by the same individual.