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| Leeser Architecture's 'Glass Bar' Chelsea, NY, 2002. Description on website extracted below* |
Currently reading:
Eric Howeler, 'Anxious architectures: The aesthetics of surveillance' (1 March 2002) Archis.
This is a gorgeous piece of writing looking at the 'erosion by surveillance technologies' of the role of architecture in being an active intervener and the threshold between the realms of what is private and public.
I'm particularly attracted to his take on Thomas Leeser and Marco Bevilacqua's 'Glass Bar' in Chelsea (originally published in Architectural Record, 'Leeser Architecture explores notions of the everyday in three different New York city venues: Glass bar, as well as Bot and Pod restaurant' (September 2001) Interiors, 134). Howeler observes that the Glass bar evokes the 'asymmetrical gaze' that exemplified the mediation of power through the threat of constant surveillance in Bentham's Panopticon. But given the recreational context of the space, this asymmetry is given an additional dimension of performance, where the act of surveillance is coloured by the voyeuristic desires of the observer.
Howeler notes this as a maturing of the shopfront: where at the conception / early stages of capitalism, these were sites of commodities of desire, they are now transformed into a 'late-capitalist surveillance peep show'... which is not to say that these spaces are no longer sites of desire - but perhaps Howeler is noting that that there is a transformation of the act of consumption such that even the action of this 'gazing' (or surveillance itself) is also now commoditised and valued. This transformation pushes Benjamin's theories of these spaces (pieced together from his notes by Buck-Morss (1989)) from (as it was in the interwar period of the 1930s) being merely a part of the arcade and the 'interior dream world of seductive commodities' (Dovey (1999)), to new sites for which the desired, and the act of surveillance can be consumed. In other words, architecture has been made complicit in creating spaces for desiring surveillance
Kim Dovey (who I had the privilege of studying under a decade back), highlighted Benjamin's linking of these mythologising arcades and the flaneur who '[consumes] street life as a spectacle'. Dovey notes that these enclosed arcades 'constructed a protected place for [individuals] in the city, both as consumers and as subjects of the [gaze of others]' [Brydon note: edits to separate out Dovey's consideration of gendered spaces here]. And in a manner, this enclosure of the uni-sex bathroom in Leeser and Bevilacqua's work, re-creates the spectacle that continues the evolution of the arcade.
*Located on Manhattan’s west side reorganizes the conventional bar layout bringing typical back of house element, the restroom, to the forefront. The main wall of the restroom is a one way mirror—giving users on the inside a view of themselves, while giving passersby a full view into the unisex washroom. The activities which are usually hidden behind closed doors are exposed, transforming the façade into an intimate performance space. (extracted from the Leeser Architecture website)
