reading response

Outlaw Territories

Environments ef Insecurity/ Architectures ef Counterinsurgency

Felicity D. Scott

ZONE BOOKS· NEW YORK

2016

Contents

INTRODUCTION

''Apocalypse Juggernaut, Hello" 9

Instruments ef Environmental Control 35 n Code Wars 73

III Woodstockholm 115

IV Battle for the Earth 167

v Third World Game 225

VI "Cruel Habitats" 283

vn DISCOURSE, SEEK, INTERACT 339

vm Dataland (and Its Ghosts) 383

CONCLUSION

Passages and Passengers 431

Acknowledgments 443

Notes 447

Index 537

CHAPTER SIX

"Cruel Habitats"

On e thing, it's true, hasn't changed-capitalism still keeps three quar-

te rs of humanity in extreme poverty, too poor to have debts and too

numerous to be confined: control will have to deal not only with

va nishing frontiers, but with mushrooming shantytowns and ghettos.

- Gilles Deleuzc, "Postscript on Control Societies," 1990

11 \'isitors to Habitat: Toward Shelter will see an important event in 11 orld architecture," proclaimed Frederick Gutheim of an exhibition 11 the Vancouver Art Gallery about self-help strategies in squat- 11 1 settlements. 1 The principal attractions of the show were prize- 11 inning and other notable entries from the International Design t ompetition for the Urban Environment of Developing Countries I 11rused on Manila. The competition was sponsored by the recently l111med International Architectural Foundation of New York (IAF) 1111 the occasion of Habitat: The United Nations Conference on I luman Settlements. The exhibition's motto read: "Help Make a World Where Hope Makes Sense." Paraphrasing the widely cited 11 N statistic that squatter settlements "now comprise nearly half 1 d the population of Third World Cities" and channeling the fear 111 growing inseeurity born of demographic shifts as the rural poor 1111 grated to urban slums, Gutheim proudly announced, "Here was a pi oblem to which design could contribute solutions and that would 1•ive a new meaning to architecture." 2

Demonstrating the role that architecture and design played or 111 ight play in the complex set of urban and territorial questions 11il(>rming Habitat was the avowed motivation for the competition .111d its reformatting as an exhibition. Put forward as professional rnntributions to the UN conference and as expressions of support

OUTLAW TERRITORIES

for its aims while knowingly benefitting from the expansive world wide publicity and crowds who would come to Vancouver, hoth goals were also symptomatic of the degree to which architectur was largely a marginal concern for the UN. What, after all, could architecture do in the face of a humanitarian emergency born of mil lions of destitute persons "swarming" into cities in the Global South and bringing with them few resources? How could the disciplin help to manage or contain such a destabilizing force? If, Guthcim speculated, the IA F could succeed in helping to shift the valcn of architecture's contribution to housing and cities in developin countries, if it could demonstrate what "world architecture" migh look like or what architecture could "mean" at a "world conferenc , perhaps the profession could find new relevance, even new work within the rapidly globalizing world of the 1970s.

It was not that Western architects had previously failed to pa attention to the problem of "shelter" and informal settlements I the developing world or to the rapid urbanization of the rural poo and the environmental problems that ensued. Indeed, one onl had to look at major European and North American magazin such as Architectural Design, Casabella, L'Architecture d'Aujourd'hu and Progressive Architecture to see that research into squatter settl ments, alternative and appropriate technologies, do-it-yourself an participatory strategies, environmental management, and recyclin had proliferated over a number of years and in some cases decade Yet if one could point to the catalytic effect upon architectur discourse of the work of CIAM-Alger in Algeria and of John F. Turner in Peru as far back as the 1950s or to the work of Marti Pawley in Chile, Yona Friedman in Africa and the Middle East, th Projecto Experimental de Vivienda (PREVI) competition in Peru and "progressive" magazines such as Architectural Design or Th Whole Earth Catalog in the 1960s and early 1970s, among many oth examples, such practices remained peripheral, or at least alternativ within the profession as such. 3 But in the context of Habitat, thos discourses and strategies joined technocratic counterparts (such a Otto Konigsberger's work in India/Pakistan and the Philippines o Constantin Doxiadis's Ekistics) to become the highly visible talk o policy makers, developmentalist economists, and leaders of interna tional institutions seeking new tools of global governance. As New York Times critic Paul Goldberger reported under the title "Radical

CRUEL HABITATS

l'l.1nners Now Mainstream," at Habitat, such ideas "for the first time 1 t ' tT given official government sanction on an international basis."'

The question of shelter, that is, appeared at the center of interna- l 11111al political debate, or at least it was the UN's hope that it might. \1 stake for architects, then, was how to articulate the discipline's

' pertise and techniques with those political and regulatory appa- 1 11 uses geared toward managing to productive ends Third World 1111pulations and the environments in which they lived. That is, how 111d to what ends could architecture interface with relevant institu- 111111al mandates, legal protocols, economic and technical paradigms, 1111 ms of data collection and analysis, territorial and geopolitical 11,1tegies, and discursive or media practices at work within this

l1111political apparatus? l labitat: Toward Shelter and the self-help competition it displayed

1111ght to answer such questions in a strategic manner for the pro- 11 'sion, and in retrospect, they stand as telling attempts by the il1,ripline's mainstream to claim a space for itself within the insti- 111t ional structure of the UN in the 1970s and with it an expanding 1dohal client base of Third World governments. While the Union l11tnnationale des Architects (UIA) proposed an updated "Charter 111 1 labitat," defensively calling for an increased role for the aesthetic d1111cnsion of architecture, the IAF asked how, in response to emer- 1•1 11cy housing conditions, architecture could tend toward shelter, as 1111 · title of the exhibition suggested. 5 Moreover, the competition, 1 hibition, and accompanying publication, a special issue of Architec- t11rol Record, served a particular role at Habitat, one that NG Os were 111< rcasingly coming to play: that of broadcasting the emergency at lt.111d, quite literally helping to "mobilize shame" and pressure gov- ' 111ments to act, albeit with a functional twist. 6 As a medium slightly 11111n' legible or visibly compelling than endless statistical tables and d.1t,1 and seemingly more action oriented than photojournalism, 11 c hitectural designs served as vehicles to capture and mobilize the 1111lilic imagination. They projected not questions, but "solutions" to .1 l111manitarian crisis that seemed poised to threaten world stability,

1 il11tions that avowedly would not be able to solve the problem, but 1.1t hn would lend physical support to the approach being advanced 111 the UN's Second Development Decade. 7 Even as a media strat- 1 ~· y, architecture offered a more material image of change. It was 111 this mediatic reflection and refraction of growing evidence of

OUTLAW TERRITORIES

environmental injustice that Gutheim and his colleagues recognl an opportunity for architecture.

However, as Gutheim and his associates soon discovered, gl I new meaning to architecture by staging an encounter with 'I hi World cities for a UN conference was not quite as easy as prom ing technical and semantic or even economic solutions to sheltr I the urban poor. And as we will see, it is with the eruption on again of a political space within an ostensibly neutral technk I professional one that this story begins to get interesting. No o not even Manila's poorest citizens, even those deprived of aim all rights and then living under martial law, likes to be evicted f their shelter under the promise of hope (to recall the exhibit le motto), no matter how precarious a life their current environm might seem to sustain. In what follows, I want to outline briefly t institutional situation and trace the ensuing resistance, and with the emerging voices and claims, as architects attempted to offer th expertise, designing "solutions" to the humanitarian crisis that the subject of Habitat. My point is not that architecture in its m facets-aesthetic, programmatic, discursive, institutional, or technological-was irrelevant to the concerns of the conference vice versa. Rather, the cynical relation of the exhibition to the poll cal machinations informing the UN's promotion of developm policies - those being advanced by the World Bank and its m j shareholder, the United States-helps to render visible the contou of emerging techniques of power at play.

Experts In May 1973, to recall, the executive director of the United Nat lo Environment Programme (UNEP), Maurice Strong, convt•n d seminar of experts chaired by Barbara Ward. It included St•n t Helena Benitez of the Philippines, who had played an import role in initiating the Habitat conference four years earlier in Sto holm.

8 Benitez was appointed president of the Preparatory Plannl

Group in September, and it was in this context that the idea for t competition and for the founding of the IAF jointly emerged. HI Hughes, owner of Architectural Record, regarded as problematic t lack of opportunities for architects at the UN and founded the IAf a not-for-profit corporation to fill the perceived gap in archik('tU agencies associated with the institution. (If architects played a m I

286

CRUEL HABITATS

111 111 resettling war-torn Europe after World War II, surely, it was I" d, they could play a larger role in the UN's development initia-

l 1 in the Third World.) The !AF received support from Architec- 1· ti Record and its European partner in this venture, L'Architecture I l111ourd'hui, as well as from American corporate architecture firms

1 1111 Architects Collaborative, Skidmore Owings and Merrill, and Ii 1111 son and Abramovitz), architectural foundations such the Gra- 111111 l·oundation, industrial and corporate giants, including Owens-

11111 ing Fiberglass and Hyatt International Corporations, and the I•, 11 kl' feller and Ford Foundations. 9 Benitez worked to ensure the

Ii• 11l'c of Manila as the competition site and to secure the support of I,, 1 1:overnment, including a USO $100,000 commitment. 10

I lughes commissioned Gutheim's recently formed consult- ll r • l'irm-Gutheim/Seelig/Erickson-to research and write the 1 , 1111pctition brief, administer judging, and organize the exhibition. • i111 licim was a Washington, DC-based consultant and architecture 1111c (In 1972, he contributed A World ef Cities to Strong's Stock-

l111lrn Conference series, Man's Home, small booklets funded by the .t.111dard Oil Company of New Jersey with the hilarious caveat: "It

1 , of course, understood that the funding provided should not be 1111npreted as an endorsement of the views presented.") 11 Having 11.1rncd at the Brookings Institute, Gutheim served as a UN hous- 11111 .rnd planning consultant and also listed as clients the Executive 1 lllke of the President of the United States and the Ford Founda- 111111.'2 In 1971, he joined with Israeli architect and planner Michael \ Seelig-who acted as project director for the competition-and I'' nminent Vancouver architect Arthur Erickson. 13 Erickson was , , ,ponsible for another manifestly architectural contribution to I l.d1itat: a spectacular media and information center pavilion. Con- t r ovcrsial on account of its cost, the pavilion was composed of 11~ perbolic paraboloid modules fabricated from cardboard tubes, 111 which thousands of school children applied papier-mache from 11 ·1 ycled newspapers and painted scenes. Finally, as required by pi ofcssional bodies, the competition was administered through the I llA, a UN-accredited NGO, establishing guidelines and protocols 1 li.1t ensured that architects' labor would not be exploited. 14

The competition and Habitat: Toward Shelter have left few traces 111 subsequent architectural debates beyond publications by the orga- 11 i1l'rs. Competition results were presented in Architectural Record

OUTLAW TERRITORIES

in May 1976, and Seelig published a book-length account as lh Architecture ef Self-Help Communities. Yet Gutheim was not mistak111 in imagining the initiative to mark "an important event in worl I architecture." "The constant stream of information about the rnn ference in newspapers around the world," Seelig recalled, "hl'lpc d engender the general public's interest in the subject of urbanization and sustained th e interest of th e architects and plann ers who w1 r actively responding to the competition program." 15 Architects It fact responded in unprecedented numbers- 2,531 registrations from sixty-eight countries, with 476 final submissions from forty· I countries-which to the organizers ensured its "world charackr."1

"While such problems exist in Latin America, Africa and the N East," Gutheim proclaimed, justifying the site, "it is Asia whi presents the most appalling spectacle of on-rushing urbanization an human misery in the homeless millions that surround almost cv large city." 11 Furthermore, it was "the willingness of the governm n of the Philippines to support the competition, to identify a spcdll site, and to guarantee to build the winning design that caus<.>d th selection of the competition site at Dagat-Dagatan." 18 Compctito were asked to offer solutions for resettling residents from the Tomi Foreshore in Manila to an area a few miles north, known as Dag t Dagatan, on land being reclaimed from fish ponds that the govl·rn ment claimed were little used. The Tondo Foreshore was homt• t approximately one hundred and seventy thousand people living o 184 hectares that the Marcos government wanted to develop throu foreign investment as industrial fisheries and a shipping port.

Crisis and Opportunity Although the fact was nowhere mentioned in the competition brl or exhibition material, the Philippines had been under martial I since September 1972, when President Ferdinand Marcos, facing th end of his second and final term as president, signed Proclamati 1081, suspending civil and political rights and placing the count under military rule in the name of national security and prok<'ti democracy, with the avowed agenda of stimulating national t' nomic development through foreign investment. Having effel'tiv I abolished habeas corpus the previous year, Philippine citizens, alt decades of democracy, were denied rights afforded in their constlt tion, such as freedom of the press, free elections, freedom of spl'C

288

CRUEL HABITATS

the ability to strike, the right to leave and return to the country, .111d more, with any sign of dissidence violently crushed as a threat In the state. 19 Having locked up his political opponents (including 111embers of the press), and having taken ownership of the media, Marcos, as Bernard Wideman recalled, "told a nationwide radio and l'V audience that the state was 'endangered by violent overthrow.' l'he imminent dangers which he cited were the communist insur-

1•1·ncy in the north, and th e Muslim insurgen cy in the south." 20 The ! IS-trained Philippine military soon turned to the mass detention 111' rural insurgents and "launched campaigns in several provinces .1gainst the rebels-including the use of Vietnam style 'relocation' 111' villages-claiming considerable success." 21 By the mid-197os, in 1 he wake of the US-led war in Vietnam, the government's security 1 oncerns had shifted from suppressing armed rebellion by rural iH'asants fighting for economic justice, including minority groups .111d the Maoist New People's Army, to threats of urban instability. It was on the basis of counterinsurgency needs that Marcos argued ,uccessfully for an enormous increase in US military aid, multiply- 111g troops and equipment. As many recognized, his brutal counter- 111surgency strategies operated in th e interest of making the country ,,,fe for foreign investment and he nce in th e national interes t of the l lnited States. Qu elling insurgencies was good for business. Far lrom questioning evidence of massive human rights violations, under I he dual guise of humanitarian aid and security, both the United 1.,tates and the World Bank significantly increased aid after the 11)72 declaration. 22

As reported in Architectural Record, the Tondo Foreshore was 11·claimed in the early 1940s, but delays in construction led to its t.1keover by squatters. "Through strong community organization, t lte Tonda squatters have developed a degree of political power, and It.we been difficult to dislodge," the Record explained. "To help solve 1 hi s problem, the adjacent ... Dagat-Dagatan site is being planned lo rehouse them." 23 With no guarantee of secure land tenure for displaced residents or of adequate financial support for housing, .1 rchitects were quite literally being asked to serve as a tool of glo- h.d ization: under the rubric of humanitarian aid and security, they 1H·re to assist in the government's forced dispossession and displace- llll'nt of the urban poor. And they were to do so in order to assist 111vestment opportunities for multinational corporations and local

CRUEL HABITATS

t•lites. This was not a unique story: the violent process of rendering 11ot only the Philippines, but many developing countries safe for the <'xpansion of "free market" capitalism was the "world" condition put into effect by the UN and its affiliated institutions such as the World !lank, itself the largest sponsor of the Dagat-Dagatan project, and an institution to which we will return.

The Philippine government's development plans involved mov- 111g a little more than half the current residents to the 430-hectare (1062-ac re) relocation site. Within this, a 5-hectare portion was designated as the competition site. (Other areas were designated for World Bank "sites and services" initiatives and a government dem- onstration project.) 24 Designers were invited to offer a prototypical 'olution for a "new community" of 3,500 people, corresponding to the social and political unit called a barangay; they were given 'pecifications to provide drawings ranging from the scale of the overall development area to individual dwellings and rooms. The brief repeatedly stressed the extremely low income levels of the l'ommunity, the low-tech nature of an appropriate low-rise develop- rnent, the lack of government resources anticipated for the project, .ind the need for innovative, affordable, and ecologically sound envi- ' onmental systems, including waste disposal and energy production. "The housing units proposed in this competition," stated the brief, 111irroring World Bank development policy, "must be applicable to a ,t· lf-help program, one in which the entire community can be orga- 11ized to help families build their own homes and the needed sup- porting services."25 Responsibility, that is, had to be displaced from ~·overnments to squatters. As Gutheim put it, noting the centrality ol' unpaid labor: "Countries of the developing world may be poor 111 many respects but they are rich in manpower. To translate this 1 t•source into improved housing through self-help is the challenge t lil' competition provided."26

Low-cost, industrially produced mass housing remained a 111uch-celebrated figure of high modernism's promesse du bonheur, 111' architecture's utopian vocation within modernity. But Habitat 1 .1s focused on a different population and, we might say, on a trans- l or med modernity, raising paradoxes for such a narrative. The ques- t 1011 here was not ensuring the happiness of slum dwellers - that was 1 11nsidered beyond the economic means of governments- but simply

I l1ures 6.1 & 6.2 Shanties in Tonda,

M 1111la, c. 1976 (courtesy Vancouver Art

I 1.1llery Archives}.

r

OUTLAW TERRITORIES

providing conditions for their basic subsistence. Foucault charactrr i~e.d the paradigm of liberal governance as ensuring not only th I c.1t~zens would not die in great numbers, but that they would go from livmg to more than just living. Although this paradigm continu cl to infor~ the liv~s of many in both the industrial and developin world, with housmg for the very poorest, we find ourselves farrc w~th a more troubling situation. This reduced level of felicity w stil l to be, in Foucault's words, "constituted into state utility." However, the goal was not to produce a growing middle class, o e.ven a working class as such, but to manage a sector of the popul tion who would remain "just living" on the brink of disaster. It w a carefully ca librated equation: offering just enough aid to pacify and allow squatters to function as productive bodies in the developm nt process while maintaining their insecurity and hence their avail a.bility .as extremely low-cost labor to attract foreign investment. In lme with Ward and the World Bank, Gutheim posited: "Instead o deploring the squattaments, governments increasingly see them an opportunity for social progress and urban development."28

. For architects to perform this maneuver of care and its susp<•n sion, new concepts and expertise were needed: Architects had to retool, be reeducated. Here is where the competition came in. A Seelig explained, architectural competitions are "a traditional and accepted medium for educating architects and often for reorient ing their professional practices."29 In addition to providing archl tects a means of contributing to and bringing attention to Habit through the project in Manila, the competition hoped to transform architects' terms of reference, advancing low-tech, minimum-co regulat~ry strategies for se lf-h elp housing in the developing world These, 111 turn, helped to legitimize squatter settlements, referr d t~ by Gutheim as "once the 'untouchables' of the housing world."" Fmally, according to Hughes, providing the financial incentives 0 p:ize mon~y ($35,000 for the winning entry) and even the opportu 111ty to build, the competition would "take this problem out of th realm of talk and into accomplishment."3 '

~he organizers engaged social-science consultants to provicl details concerning traditional rural nipa palm huts, thatched with the fonds of Nypa Jruticans, with silongs (downstairs spaces), sil/J (dressing or private rooms) and sala (living rooms) furnished with papag (bamboo beds) and dulang (low wooden dining tables), th

CRUEL HABITATS

use of scavenged materials for squatter housing (flattened-out oil drums, rusty galvanized iron sheets, tin billboards from election t'ampaigns), the condition of intense urban poverty, the stench of toilets in the shantytown and its lack of infrastructure (ten fami- 1 ics sharing one tap, schools on three shifts with forty students per l'iass), informal economies, forms of sociability, and political orga- 11 izations in squatter communities. The brief also included a new vocabulary of urban terms and equipment: barangay, purok (ward), 1ari-sari (sundry or corner) store, tulungan (assistance or support) l'Cnter, talipapa (local market), suki (regular customer), Jeepney, as well as a heroic story of day-to-day survival against all odds writ- ten by social scientist Aprodicio Laquian, "A Typical Day in the I ife of the Cruz Family." "Community members are usually highly organized," competition registrants were warned, indicatin~ pos- sibility for resistance. "In Tondo, one may even say they are over- organized' -a study in 1968 identified no less than 29 organizations .ind associations in a community of 2,000 people."32

Armed with such information and a new vocabulary, teams of ,1rchitects, most having never set foot in Manila, designed strategies l'or displacing the Tondo residents. A little social science and a few words in Tagalog were understood to go a long way as a script in the hands of an architect. It was not mentioned, for instance, that the precolonial term barangay, which once referred to a village or town, was only recently appropriated by the Marcos administration to replace the Spanish term barrio as a designation for a manageable scale of urban political organization. That the country was then under martial law, to reiterate, did not concern the !AF. After all, it was the suspension of democratic rights in the name of suppressing 111surgencies and encouraging foreign investment that made it pos- sible, safe, and even profitable for "world" architects to operate in the Philippines.

In early February 1976, the jury- Balkrishna Doshi, Eric Lyons, Moshe Safdie (a Vancouver Symposium member), Mildred Schmertz, William Whitfield, Takamasa Yosizaka, and Philippine General ( ;audencio Tobias-convened in Vancouver. Tobias was the rep- 11·se ntative of the Philippine government's executive agency, the l'ondo Foreshore Redevelopment Authority, who engineered pre-

l lusion of Tondo residents from participation in discussions with the World Bank. 33 Advisers included Blake, Gutheim, Seelig, and

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OUTLAW TERRITORIES

Erikson, along with Laquian and Teresita Vicera, presented .1 resident of Tondo.

With Laquian, then associate director of the International 01·1 c I opment Research Center (IDRC) in Ottawa, we find ours1·hc again at the heart of developmentalist ideology. According to Ii personal narrative, his family escaped the violence of a Commun I I insurgency (the Huk Rebellion) in a small village to become squ.11 ters in Manila. After receiving a degree in public administr,11 i1111 from the University of the Philippines, he received grants from the Asia, Rockefeller, and Ford Foundations to undertake urban studu at MIT, graduating with a PhD in political science supervised h Lucian W. Pye and dedicated to the role of urbanization in nati1111.1I development. 34

The jury awarded first prize to New Zealand architect Ian Atli field. 35 Athfield 's project was considered notable for two reason first, he proposed that the limited public funding be dedicated 11111 to housing as such, but to providing each barangay with the ml'.111 to construct a "working periphery," a continuous, linear, perimetl"I wall-like structure to house nonpolluting light industry, workshop , small stores, a building cooperative, and community energy ccnt1·1 dedicated to alternative energy technologies and recycling, on top ol which would be community gardens for growing vegetables. A g1· ture toward autonomy, this structure was intended both to enharn employment opportunities in the neighborhood and to give idcnt it to individual communities. In the Philippines, Athfield explainnl, walls had served both as strong defining elements and as securit mechanisms since Spanish colonial times. 36 Few commentators noti·cl the wall's potential security functions from the perspective of tl11 state, but we could imagine Tobias being pleased: there is nothi11 like walling in rowdy protestors to contain insurrectionary thn·.11 or regulate movement. Ian Hogan celebrated Athfield's project in Architectural Design, dismissing such concerns. "The idea of ind11 ing groups of potentially militant residents behind walls -given t lu political repression in the Philippines - created endless para 11111.1 among critics of the scheme at Habitat," he recalled. 37 The propos.11

Figures 6.3 & 6.4 Ian Athfield in front of his

model at the exhibition Habitat: Toward

Shelter, Vancouver Art Gallery, June 1976 (Ross.

Kenward/ The Province); Ian Athfield, model in

Habitat: Toward Shelter, exhibition at the

Vancouver Art Gallery, May 31-July 4, 1976

(courtesy Vancouver Art Gallery Archives).

OUTLAW TERRITORIES

ne.vertheless resonates in an ambiguous zone between housin~· ,111 1 pnson camps, the specter of which haunted the project.

. S~cond, desublimating the modern vernacular hybrid aesl 1i1 I implied b~ the brief, Athfield proposed that houses adopt the l11i•1 of rural. n1pa huts, but emp loy new techniques of fabrication, in t li case, u.smg coconut palm as a material, not the nipa palm, and 1111 t 1 thatch111.g, but ~s logs or as by-products in the form of prefabri

1 ,1t1 I

panels, msulatmg board, plaster, and chip-based concrete bin.~ !hese mat~rials would be prepared in the working perinwti

1

The ~ost Interesting solution to the problem of 'squatter s!'l t 11 ments so far proposed to Habitat," professed architectural ( 11 t 1 Wolf von Eckardt for the Washington Post, "are do-it-yourself hou made of coconut palms."39 The architect's role in this self' 1

11 II

scheme would be reduced to control lin g the distribution ofm, 1 111

als, begin~ing with giving the squatters four poles and a choi< 1

,,f r~of. Athf1eld prepared whimsical drawings suggesting a cei 1.1111 ~icture~que variety. th.at m'.ght ensue from the squatters compl 1 l mg the1~ hou ses .w1thm this basic module. Regulated uniforrnrt of matenal~ was important to him as a means of ens uring a colr1 1 ent aesthetic, but there were aspects over which he hoped to 11 di responsibility. Sporting a long beard and late-hippie look Athf'idd

l " ' we ~arn, wants to leave the politics of the scheme to a Philipprru archi:ect-whether the squatters will own their houses throu~·h contnbuted ~ abor, rent equity or some degree of subsidy. Whal ilrt young.blu e-Jeaned man wants to do is live on the site and \\lllk alongside the squatters with a saw and hammer."•o

Athfield, like most competitors, had never been to M, 1111

1

indeed, .he had never left New Zealand until traveling to Vanc011111 for Habitat. As reported by Mary Mountier, he "discovered ex,

11 II

where the Philippines lay in relation to the rest of the Pacific" 011

1 afte; the results were announced. Yet his expertise regarding scpr.il ten wa~~ of l~fe ~as widely celebrated. As Schmertz summe d up 1

11 Ek1st1cs, Athfield s scheme won the competition because, of all du submissions, his ~~hibited the greatest respect and understandinr ol th~ culture, trad1twn, humanity and needs of the Philippine ur ii.111 ~1gr.~nt. The mos.t si.gni~icant achievements of the I AF com pt t I twn, sh~ added, 111d1cat111g a skewed priority, "were creat ing .

11 1

~pport~m~(., for t~e hit?erto unknown Athfield and awarding lruu first pnze. Athf1eld himself believed that the jury mistook hi 111 lot

CRUEL HABITATS

.1 Philippine architect. 42 When Goldberger asked how he had "come In understand the needs of the Philippines so well," he responded liv suggesting that he sought out what was "meaningful," offering "physical things to symbolize" what was familiar to them. 43 Recog- 111zing connections to the rising postmodern paradigm, Goldberger likened Athfield's aesthetic to the populist work of Charles Moore, I l.1rdy Holzman Pfeiffer Associates, and Venturi and Rauch. Here 11 ,1s an aesthetic that moved away from the abstraction of modern- "rn and even the late modern corporate aesthetic of the competi- l 11m's architectural sponsors toward the embrace of populist seman- t rr tropes assumed to provide "meaning."

A th field enjoyed enormous press coverage and was considered by the IA F to be a media asset; he was widely reported to be likeable, .d'fable , and shy; his alternative dressing style and refusal of corpo- 1,1te ambitions were frequently commented upon, the fact that he prst completed a building for the New Zealand Army less so . Gold- linger described him as "obviously uncomfortable in the three-piece .,11it he had just put on to meet Imelda Marcos."44 William Marlin likened him to C lym Yeobright from Thomas Hardy's The Return ef the Native and in turn to "an inhabitant of Samuel Butler's fictional .1g rarian community Erewhon," suggesting that it was "almost as if iii' had taken his stylistic tenets from Hardy or Butler rather than Ir om the 'masters' of modern architecture."45 "One suspects," he 1 oncluded-ambiguously, given its dystopian undercurrent- "that I· rewhon has finally found an architectural interpretation, and that 11 wasn't "nowhere' spelled sort of backward, after all." Marlin also told the story of Athfield being refused entry to New York's Yale ( 'lub on account of his "wide-brimmed leather hat, open shirt, and love beads." Why he sought entry to the Yale Club was not raised.

For Athfield, the Tondo slums provided a utopian condition for .1rc hitectural work: as Mountier recalled, "One of the joys of the 1 om petition for Athfield was the complete absence of official codes .111d zoning: no fire, earthquake, roading or building regulations, 1\hich are the bane of his life in New Zealand."46 Although, under 111,1rtial law, the entire country had been declared under a state of 1 mergency, the arbitrariness of the suspension of law and the pro- 1 t•(·tion it might afford citizens was felt particularly brutally in such , 1i,111tytowns. Unlike the outlaw territory dreamed of by the Open I .1nders, where regulations were refused as harboring biopolitical

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OUTLAW TERRITORIES

mechanisms of control, in Dagat-Dagatan, no such agency or srlr determination was afforded the resident; architects could operatr once beyond the law and in a register servicing global biopolith regulation.

Hearts and Minds Once the competition results were in, Gutheim/Seelig/Erickmn and the curators at the Vancouver Art Gallery set about preparln the exhibition. As late as February 1976, there was still no consen u on a title. The working title, The Ri9ht to Build, invoked the langu of rights, subtly transforming Article 25 (1) of the United Nation Universal Declaration of Human Rights from a right to the provislo of housing, as provided by a government to its citizens, to that c building, an act to do oneself. 47 In a country where rights had h suspended by decree, the irony could not have been more point d Hughes indicated the IAF's displeasure, noting that the title "h implications that are inappropriate to what we are trying to do." H suggested instead Buildin9 a Better World, behind which architt• t could more easily rally for resettlement. 48 This would also be• I likely to cause alarm among governments, particularly the govc•r ment of the Philippines, which were not interested in expanding th rights of the urban poor. Far from seeking to empower squattc•r es pecially already politicized ones, the underlying goal was devt'lo ment. While the rhetoric had to attend to improving the life oft poor-no doubt the sentiment under which many architects sign up for the competition-the message to governments was that sup port was available to provide minimal shelter to the low-cost lab pools needed for industrial development. Architecture offen·d th smiling face of this paradigm.

An interim report detailed a call to shift attention from pollt cal considerations to aesthetic ones. "Although the title, 'The Rig to Build,' has a socio-political ring," it r ead, "the Vancouver Gallery exhibition would attempt to demonstrate that, given opp• tunity, encouragement and assistance, the poor and humble oft world are capable of expressing the fulfillment of the intrinsic n for shelter as a vigorous art form."49 Beyond an ideology of inn creativity, such stress on aesthetics speaks to the uncomfortah fit of architecture in an art institution, also registering an an I that the aesthetic dimension of architects' work might fall victim

C RUEL HABITATS

11 ·chno cratic initiatives, a concern of the UIA and also expressed in .11 1 Iranian contribution to the Vancouver Habitat conference, The / labitat Bill ef Ri9hts. Another suggested title, There Is a Solution, was i «jec ted by Seelig, who "justifiably objected to the word 'solution' lwcause of its close association with Nazism."

50

Alvin Balkind, chief curator at the gallery, explained that the , 1 uestion they now faced was "to edit, make decisions, and take

11·sponsibility for translating the competition project into a visual lorm." Hughes added of their media strategy that the task was '\ imilar to producing the magazine; material has to be transformed 111to another medium." 51 Moreover, the plan was to supplement do cuments from the competition to dramatic effect, hoping "to ,1· 1l information to the people" so that the show might "trigger [a] ' 1 t•s ponse mechanism' - 'you can do it yourself."' With unapologetic p.1ternalism, Gutheim introduced the need to "present indigenous 111ethods of building by primitive peoples; for instance present a l'ondo community (Manila) to show how a community provides .di its own necessary services."52 This abdication of government 11·sponsibility was the key message he hoped to get across. That his , t rategic agenda extended beyond the plight of Tondo to align with l IS foreign policy quickly became manifest. As noted in the minutes, 111 • "made an impassioned plea for [the] exhibit to change hearts and 111inds of architects, and, in turn, change the public attitude toward

.1rchitecture."53

The rhetoric of hearts and minds had a long and at times troubled .d'filiation with counterinsurgency or counterrevolutionary cam- p.ligns, including struggles against colonial rule and neocoloni~l 111cursions. Although originating earlier, its contemporary usage is rnmmonly dated to British counterinsurgency strategy during the Malayan Emergency in 1952. Conceived as well-intentioned _me~ns of avoiding extended warfare and hence bloodshed by wmnmg l1l'arts and minds through humanitarian aid or hope, this rhetoric \\ ,1s often tragically and violently contradicted by military action 011 the ground. Its well-known use by figures from John F. Kennedy 11·garding Latin America to Lyndon Johnson regarding Vietnam v\ould not have been lost on Gutheim, especially in the wake of l'l't er Davis's searing 1974 documentary film on US involvement in Vil'tnam, Hearts and Minds. 54 Among the most devastating scenes in t hl' film was General Westmoreland 's claim that Asians place little

299

OUTLAW TERRITORIES

ilue on human life With the Ph ·1 · . :ound for impleme~tin b I ipprn~ government then a kstln

h g ur an counterinsurgency t t . , I

f t e United States Gu the. ' b·1 · . s ra eg1es, .111 l ' ims mo i 1zatwn of this ·h t . ( ig y without irony) to institute develo . I . e one_ s1·1·111

1ce again, all too vividly of F I ' f;pmentalist a1<l remrnd~ II . • oucau ts amous i . · f Cl itz: policy or politics is warfare by other means~~5e1 s1011 o .111

pen For Business

1bitat: Toward Shelter opened to f; e of the official UN confi g;eat anfare on May 30, on th e gala event 56 As Schm terence. wd o thousand people attend ii ith the w·d . fi er z.;e~orte of its successful engagem«nl

I er con erence, a private o I . d . hfield was held for the l d. d. . pe_1mg an dinner honorin ce "57 s ·t d . d. ea mg ig111tanes at the Habitat Conf r

. I e Im me lately opposite Erick ' M d. !nter and close to the Q El. b h sons e ia Information nues the exhibit. d ueen_ iza et Theater and other Habit I

' ion rew sixteen th d · · riod of the conference 58 v· •t housan v1s1tors during th was "not possible fi . is1 ors to t e show learned that whll

or govern m e n ts to co t d f• using for the m . b ns ruct an mane(' th

ass1venum ersofsquatt "h. ,the story fo "h · ers, t is was not th(• 1'11CI

• r ope exists when people ar · h help themselves."59 That Athf· ld b . e given t e opportunit · ie su scribed to this b t ·

{1c was recorded in the press "Th. . . oo strapprn ·Teat sense of P 'd . . is is a pro3ect to be achieved with ;. "If you're giv:~ ::e:ert~i~e1~~d of time," he' told the Vancouv r l>pened."60 y g once, you don t respect what h

Entering Habitat: Toward Shelter the vi . . diminary exhibits befio .. ' s1tor was directed throulolh t re arnvrng at com rt· · i; a crafted narrative to naturalize the self-~:/ JOn e~~nes, prov~d i1we might say, the structural d d p para igm and wrth i1erent in globalization Upon :n. er e~elopment and inequit a und the world res . d en er:ng, t ey were told, "architl'l't Aer background . fi pon . to T~~do s willingness to help itself.' .. '

111 ormat1on, v1s1tors were pres t cl . h silarge-format color phot h f en e wit twrnt v bArth E . k ograp s o vernacular architecture sh;,,

ur nc son and described "' h. tt!:s' -indi enous ho . . as arc itecture without ard1I f usrng rn underdeveloped countries "62 Tl n~ rence, o course, was to Bernard Rudofsk ' . . . . 1 A .~itecture without Architects, which h l Y s 19.64 exh1b1t1on, Athe exhibition broch l . e ped popularize the topic."'

ure proc aimed "thr h h · sciety around the world has h'b· 'd h oug ou.t istory hum.in

ex I ite t e capacity of people to

300

CRUEL HABITATS

create their own forms of shelter, appropriate to the environ nu nt, beautiful and serviceable." There was nothing like highly photog('llll .ind visually seductive architectural vernaculars uprooted from their historical context to get this cynical message across: poor people can help themselves, and it can be aesthetically appealing, too.

Even if Tondo residents chose to identify with aspects of their traditional rural cultures, such forms of life were no longer open to them. This was not lost on the organizers, who neatly folded forces of modernization into their narrative. What the brochure cast as an innate "capacity of people for self-help" was now enhanced through research, they argued, in the service of an equally pi c turesque archi- tectural aesthetic during "the rush for modernization" in the Third World.

Only over long spans of centuries have the great building traditions that created the stone trulli of Alberobello or the yurts of the Mongo- lian nomads been able to ex press the coll ec tive wisdom. Now research ca n accelerate this slow process of evolution, and adapt such building techniques to th e more immediate situation of contemporary urban com muniti es . In many places throughout th e world, new materials an d tools have proliferated, do-it-yourself movements have sprung up, and a highly sophisticated search for an alternative architecture is well adva nce d. Architects are learning from th e Cone of Cappadocia, the cave- land of ce ntral Turkey , and th e North American Hopi Indians-as well as from Las Vegas. The tim e has co me to apply this und erstanding to citi es of the developing world. 64

That W es tern architects could "learn from" vernacular examples .1s a means of tempering the shock of modernization dated at least hack to the nin etee nth century. 65 But more proximate to our con- lTrns and informing the rhetoric of tools, do-it-yours elfism and ''.1 lt erna tive" architecture were the new bibles of alternative life- 't yles, such as Stewart Brand's Whole Earth Catalog and its offshoots 111 Lloyd Kahn's Domebook and Shelter, along with Architectural Design .111d other such publications. Across these pages, as noted in previous ( hapters, we find yurts, trulli, and other indigenous dwellings seam- l( •ss ly associated with R. Buckminster Fuller's geodesic dom es , plas- t ll'S, cybernetics, and computerization. Equally symptomatic he re , in .u ld it ion to Architecture without Architects, is the invocation of Robert Vl·nturi, Denise Scott-Brown, and Steven lzenour's legendary 1972

301

I I '

I, I

Figure 6.5 I nstal lat ion view of Habitat: Toward

Shelter, exhibition at the Vancouver Art Gallery,

May 31 - July 4, 1976. Section showing

photographs of vernacular architecture by Arthur

Erickson (courtesy Vancouver Art

Gallery Archives).

Figure 6.6 Installation view of Habitat: Tow 11<1

Shelter, exhibition at the Vancouver

Art Gallery, May 31-July 4, 1976 . Model

in foreground by second prize winners, M1k11t>

Takagi, Kunihiko Hayakawa, Keiichiro Tak.i'>h > I

(courtesy Vancouver Art Gallery Archives).

OUTLAW TERRITORIES

book, Learningjrom Las Vegas, a widely cited embrace of the verna< lar, inviting architects to celebrate unselfconscious manifestatiot of American capitalism. Why, we might ask, had the time coml' "I apply this understanding to cities of the developing world"?

Following Erickson's photographs were two slide shows pn·s nt ing the problem of squatter settlements- Squatters: A World W11I Problem and A Poor Squatter Settlement Today, a Housing Communll Built by and for Squatters Tomorrow. The former offered a panoram of rapid urbanization across the developing world - their ubiqult implying that squatter settlements were immanent or natural to th culture of the urban poor - the latter focused on the Tondo For shore as a "prototypical" example. With a little help from archit t the framing suggested, squatter settlements, too, might take aesthetic qualities to become a new form of self-organizing urb ism from below. How it might do so was answered in the follow! galleries displaying world architecture. Nowhere in this mat rl was the plight of Tondo squatters contextualized with respect the legacy of colonialism, warfare, martial law, or globalization. 8 these images of shantytowns provided something close to the les of Las Vegas's celebration of capitalism, now applied to the develo ing world.

The main north gallery depicted "hope for the future" as d onstrated through self-help proposals generated by the !AF co petition. Visitors were presented with photographic blowup drawings for the three prize-winning designs and the four honorab mentions, along with details from other selected entries. Three sc models were constructed for the show: two by Athfield and on the second-prize winner, the Takagi Design Team from Tokyo. Browsing the galleries, visitors saw variegated attempts to regul and regularize the "spontaneous" aesthetic and organizational log of shantytowns within a process-oriented, self-help approach. Arch tects recognized that their task was not just to reflect extant cultur but productively to shift it, even rescript it, in response to conte porary forces. From systems-based modules of prefabricated pan I kits of parts using precast frames, and arcades aiming to serve legible spines onto which informal structures could attach, to Yo Friedman's more enigmatic proposal for a giant open "self-desig megastructure with an "umbrella" roof and "habitacles" demarcat by matting, architecture was very much on display. Many projl'

CRUEL HABITATS

1 lll'd rural nipa huts or adopted other vernacular tropes, and experi- 1111·ntal environmental technologies were pervasive. A few projects 1111 cgrounded circulation infrastructure, such as roads or canals, and 1111 mal scaling techniques were tested repeatedly, including giant

1111 rtyard-house typologies. Reflecting the impact of recent urban 1 l1rnry, such as the work of Kevin Lynch and Gyi:irgy Kepes at MIT, 111ost offered strategies to produce cluster arrangements or patterns 1 li.1t would bring legible order to the environment, with the poten- t i.il for achieving diversity or variation within a repetitious or modu- l.11 framework being a repeated concern. 67 Some simply replicated tlw planning of suburban America. Only one departed dramati- , .illy from conventional architectural techniques: Brazilian architect

l.1uricio Roberto submitted in comic-book format, declaring his · 11 parture from architectural norms in other domains, as well: "The I" oposed solution is essentially social, economic, urbanistic and uni- 1 1 sa l," he announced. "The contribution of architecture although

111~1·nious, is relatively small."68

What sort of picture of "world architecture," to return to 1,11theim's claim, was on display at Habitat: Toward Shelter? The t 11111petition produced a remarkable panorama of architectural tra- 11 1 tories and conceits familiar from the mid-197os, whether for- 111,d, technical, experimental, mediatic, process oriented, semantic, 111111,rntic, regionalist, pseudovernacular, or whatever, each of these 11111\'cted or sometimes redirected through an encounter with the · 11111petition brief and hence, by extension, with Tondo.

What most, but not all entries shared is circumscription within t 11< problems set by the competition organizers and the institutional l1.1111eworks and economic systems in the interest of which they 111111 tioned. I mention this not to excuse designers from responsibil- 1 , hut to point to the apparatus at work. In being recruited for this

1111,.,ion, architects and planners not only responded to the call to 11111 1 solutions to what were indeed urgent humanitarian problems, h111 submitted their expertise to justifying and giving form (or at 11 ·"' process) to a paradigm of developmentalism then appealing It• "·11 '- hclp. Roberto's scheme was among the few that spoke back, l1111'lying that even the most open-ended, least master-planned "non- pl.111s" played into this apparatus. Prominently on display was the t t"' 1•,1sy translation of architectural strategies into the context of I 1111do, with few attempts to question or interrupt this narrative.

Figure 6.7 Mauricio Roberto, entry for the

International Architectural Foundation's

International Design Competition for the Urban

Environment of Developing Countries Focused

on Manila, 1976 (courtesy Marcio Roberto).

CRUEL HABITATS

I line was nothing more effective than the rhetoric of emergency, . 1 u rity, and a call to offer solutions and translate talk into buildings

I • 111cite architects to act without reflection. 69

My point is not that, having participated in such a program, 1 II -meaning architects should be dismissed as politically com-

i ·111111ised (even if I do want to stress a pervasive naivete), but to 1 ~ how, in retrospect, institutional structures seeking to mask I" ol 1tical concerns as disciplinary, technical, or humanitarian could 1111 vai l to such an extent. Many entries did speak to social and 111d1tical questions, such as the security of land tenure and eco- 11•11n ic injustice. The question is how that "reorientation" of archi- 11 1 tu re toward shelter, that carefully scripted reeducation of the 1•1 nl'cssion through the competition, so effectively perpetuated a .11 1 onnection from questioning the underlying political apparatus 11 play in favor of providing solutions that might help win hearts and 111111cls. Why were so many willing to participate in imagining the 1 1 ms and forms of this imminent dispossession under the rubric of

111111governmental aid?

111•akin9 of Others \ 11ting for the Times ef India, architect Charles Correa (another ,111rnuver Symposium member) singled out an aerial photograph

·ii l'ondo as emblematic of the importance of the upcoming Habitat 1 1111 l'crence.

!"his photograph, without doubt, is going to be one of the monumen-

t.ii images of the last quarter of the century. As final, as simple, as d1•vastating an icon as the great mushroom cloud that dominated the

1onsciousness of man in the immediate post-war years. A great sea of

\quatters, stretching to the horizon. No open spaces. No schools. No

t n-es. No roads. Down th e center, an ironic stream of water reflecting

I he great open sky. 70

l'hc photograph, Correa suggested, intended not only to provoke 11 I 1011- like the threat of atomic warfare-but to speak on behalf of 1I111s1· not given a voice. It was shot by Patrick Crooke, a colleague 1 ii Turner's at London's Architectural Association who was also 1111 nlvcd with self-help projects in Peru; it appeared both as a floor- " 1Tiling installation in Habitat: Toward Shelter and as the cover of I 11 l11tectural Record's special issue on human settlements. In both

AN ISSUE ON ONE Of THE MOST URGENT PROBLEMS or OUR TIME HUMAN SEITLEMENTS

Figure 6.8 Architectural Record, May 1976,

cover with aerial photograph of Tonda

Foreshore (courtesy Architectural Record).

CRUEL HABITATS

1111tcxts, we need to ask how such an image spoke on behalf of those 11111 given a voice and what it was being deployed to say about them.

lrchitectural Record cast th eir special issue as expert knowledge I 111 scnte d "to architects, planners, international aid and lending '•1 ncies, and government officials around the world-on behalf of

1111 more than a billion people who live in urban slums."11 Schmertz I''"\ ided a telling overview. Picking up on Ward's alarmist rhetoric,

111 ,rnno unced that "masses of humanity" were now "swarm[ing) 11110 Seoul, Bombay, Mexico City and Sao Paolo," going on to I 1 t other cities suffering from an "incessant flow" of "unwanted 1111grants."12 Quoting Laquian, she asserted that such people, visibly

11 poverty, "mock the aspirations of all those who yearn to make 1111 1 r cities sophisticated and modern." 73 "These human beings are 111wl'lcome," Schmertz stated of their illegal acts, "because they

l111ild shacks on urban land to which they have no legal right." 11 liough willing to concede why squatters might choose "urban 111.ilor over rural misery" and why they maintained hope, her domi-

111111 concern was not the lack of infrastructure for their ventures, 111 their relation to crime and violence in the "host city," a term

1111ating ambiguously between hospitality and parasitism. Noting 1111 not all squatters were optimistic or independent, she warned: 1 1 iminals, fugitives, mental deficients, alcoholics, drug addicts,

I' 111ps, prostitutes, social outcasts and the indolent are found in 1 1 y slum." "Slums have the potential," she added in escalating

1111 loric, "for mob violence, crime, political revolution and other I •1111s of social disruption." 74

With squatter settlements thus situated on the brink of emer- 111 y, where the role of the police might imminently be replaced

11 t IH· military, architects were called upon not just to alleviate 1•111l1kms of "flimsy construction" and poor sanitation, but "the I 1111•n to the human species posed by the spreading malignancy ii <jllillter settlements." Schmertz's response resonated between I'""' prompted by an encounter with the Global South and a cynical 11111l1ili1.ation offear that might assure a role for architects. Her pro- 1'" 1 cl solution, however, was clear: "The most promising alterna- 1 1 to government-built low-cost housing is the 'sites and services' Pl'' o,1ch combined with 'self-help."' People were to be "counted

1 11·so urce." 75 Even in slums, where to her mind people were 111.1th1·tic, hostile and suspicious," ways and means could be found

OUTLAW TERRITORIES

to motivate them toward self-help solutions advanced by the World Bank and promoted by the !AF.

Among the "world leaders" that the Record featured in the issu were Ward, Enrique Penalosa, J. G. Van Putten, Benitez, and ht• d of the World Bank, Robert S. McNamara. McNamara's text w excerpted from a speech to the World Bank's board of governors In which he stressed the bank's program of financing sites and servic in place of providing finished housing. "The deprivation suffered b the poor is nowhere more visible than in the matter of housing," h announced.

Even the most hardened and unsentimental observer from the dev I oped world is shocked by the squalid slums and ramshackle shant towns that ring the periphery of every major city in the developln countries of the world.

But there is one thing worse than living in a slum or squatter settl ment-and that is having one's slum or settlement bulldozed away b a government which has no shelter of any sort whatever to offer in It place. When that happens - and it happens often - there remains onl the pavement itself, or some rocky hillside or parched plain, where th poor can once again begin to build out of packing crates and signboard and scraps of sheet-metal and cardboard a tiny hovel in which to hou their families. 76

Pointing to illegality while acknowledging the role of unjust e nomic circumstances, McNamara's answer to the problem of urb poverty was, of course, development, this time in the form of "poll cies and actions that will assist the poor to increase their product I ity." He overtly called to integrate the poor more effectively withl the extant socioeconomic matrix in order to boost national econ mies. Cities, he proposed, encouraging USAID and other agencl to do the same, should be "thought of as absorptive mechanisms I promoting productive employment."77

Like other development programs that the World Bank spo sored, such opportunities were not intended simply to aid the po and indeed rarely helped squatters, yet squatters were integral the expansion of global capitalism. As Cheryl Payer explairwd l 1982, the bank was conceived "as a 'safe bridge' across which priv investment could move again into distant and politically volatill' t ritories," whether to gain access to resources and cheap labor po

310

C R U EL H A BITAT S

111 to provide often irrelevant industrial equipment, finance loans, 111d so on. Hence, she posited, it was no accident that so many of the

11 untries receiving extensive aid from the World Bank during the 1•1 /0S were inegalitarian and "notorious for extremely inequitable 11u ·ome distribution and/or violations of human rights." This was "a 11 .1t ural consequence of the Bank's preference for lending to govern- 1111 ·nts that offer favorable conditions for foreign investment, and of 11 ' unwillingness to jeopardize the power of such governments by {' nting pressure on behalf of the underprivileged it champions in 11 ' rhetoric." 78 Developing the Tondo Foreshore for industrial fish- 111~ and export was a seminal case of World Bank ambitions to aid 11111ltinational corporations in accessing "underdeveloped" countries 111d to encourage production for export that benefitted corporations 11111trolling international trade.

I >1·monstrations < >11 June 7, headlines for the Guardian read, "Filipino Protest Rocks 11.diitat." "The Tondo issue has come to Vancouver with a ven- 1' ' .111 ce," reported Clyde Sanger, "because a main feature of Habitat l1.1s been an architectural contest to design homes for at least 500 1p1 .1tter families in a Tondo resettlement area." 79 The protests were

,111 unexpected turn of events for the IAF, which sought a different 11 IH' of publicity for "world architecture"; it was a departure from 1111 script. Given the importance attributed to citizen participation 111 I he UN's goals, the lack of adequate consultation with Tondo resi- d1 11ts targeted for resettling emerged as a contentious issue at Habi- 1,ii l·orum the previous week, but gained little press attention. With 1'11 impending arrival of Imelda Marcos for a presentation to the UN t 11111"nence's plenary session and with her visit coming immediately 111 I he wake of a mass arrest of protesters demonstrating against the I 1111do Foreshore development in Manila, the plight of these people

.1, suddenly news. As reported in a United Press International wire N• 1 \ice, "Police arrested 2,000 slum dwellers and religious leaders

lio held a demonstration today timed to coincide with the United .111ons conference on human settlements."80 Habitat Forum News

l1111,1dcast the UPI wire under the title "Tondo Squatters Answer ll.11 k ," reporting: "A police official said 14 buses with a capacity of I 111111 1 oo to 150 persons carried the arrested demonstrators to a 11limhan military camp."8 '

OUTLAW TERRITORIES

Answering back was not so easy to do in the Philippines, wlwr by martial law decree, protests and sguatting were criminal offerm , and publishing of antigovernment literature was banned, rench·rin any struggle for rights precarious, at best. This was not the first ti111 Tondo sguatters were arrested over the Dagat-Dagatan proj1'< I In January 1976, sguatter communities sought an audience with Imelda Marcos-recently appointed as governor of Metropoli1.111 Manila-to discuss evictions and other grievances promptl'd 11 her beautification drive to restore Manila to its former stall• 111 (colonial) glory in order to attract tourism and investment. Mr Marcos met with community leaders, agreeing to halt demoliti111 temporarily and to meet again four days later. However, as reporll I in Southeast Asian Affairs, "soon after this meeting was agreed to, th sguatter leaders and organizers of the planned rally were arn·st cl by the police." According to Marcos, the slums caused floodin "obstructed the development of projects such as the Tondo hir shoreland Development Plan, the Dagat-Dagatan Reclamation Proj ect and the Marcos Highway; and the shantytowns were 'eyeson·s."'1

Organized resistance to their removal was met with mass arr1·~t some protestors were driven underground, while others joinl'd th swelling ranks of political prisoners detained without due pron· The Marcos regime insisted that protestors were being detain not because of their political views, but "because their activiti1·s .ir extralegal."

In solidarity with the Manila sguatters, two protests wen· h I in Vancouver. The first took place outside the Queen Elizah t Theatre- official venue of Habitat plenary sessions-timed for M cos's arrival and speech. With chants of "Down with the Marl dictatorship" and "Sguatting is not a crime,"83 the rally was jointl sponsored by the Filipino coalition against martial law in Vancou the World Council of Churches, and the Self-Help and Low l'o Housing Symposium at Habitat Forum. 84 Noting the intense l1·n·I security, newspaper reports indicated that forty or more prot!'slo (some counted seventy) were met by an eguivalent number of poll both uniformed and undercover, including Royal Canadian Mount Police with walkie-talkies. "Police video tape cameras constant! panned the crowd as officers on nearby rooftops scanned olll buildings with high-power binoculars," the Province report! ll The city council's unwarranted fear that the PLO's presenc!' wo

312

Figure 6.9 Demonstrations in support of

Tondo squatters' rights during United Nations

Conference on Human Settlements, Vancouver,

June 1976 (Peter Hulbert/ The Province).

OUTLAW TERRIT ORIES

render Vancouver a police state was realized instead during Mr Marcos's visit, but her right to appear was never questioned. Habitat Forum, twenty members of the Committee for Filipin Canadian Understanding gathered for a quieter rally, protesting th forced-relocation scheme and the lack of consultation with resident as well as the Philippine government's blocking of five Tondo com munity leaders from appearing at Habitat Forum as delegates und the auspices of the World Council of Churches . 86

Governor Marcos in sisted that reports of her husband detain ing two thousand demonstrators were false, laughing at the id that they had so many prisons available. Dismissing the Vancouv protests, she scoffed: "I did not see many Filipinos there, I thin the rest were professional demonstrators."87 She failed to mentio that thos e who opposed martial law were considered "securit risks" and refused clearance to leave the country. 88 Marcos's pl nary session address attempted to shift the terms of the debate: sh "blamed Manila's slum s on the Second World War. She said mu h of Manila was leveled in fighting between U.S. and Japan ese force 'The degree of devastation was equa l only to Warsaw .... It's a cit recent [sic] from the ruins and ashes of war, rebuilt with meag resources."'89 However, while she read the city's plight in terms wartime breaches of sovereignty by dueling colonial powers, sh cast its future as distinctly, if ambiguously, postsovereign, shiftin from the rhetoric of Saint Augustine to 1960s ideology: "Our dream is to create in Manila a city of man. Our dream for man is to creat cities for humanity. Our hope is that our earth will become a cit of humanity," she began, then, turning to celebrate a world without borders, she added, "There is a growing realization that our spac ship earth is an inter-dependent life support system."90 The allusion was to the ecological and environmental concerns of the late 1960 , when the rhetoric first took off as a potent image of vulnerabilit and global ecological interdependence. However, such tropes had taken on new valence by the mid-197os. Following the 1973 OPE oil crisis and the decision of the United States to abandon th convertibility of the dollar to gold, which terminated the Brctton Woods system of managing exchange rates by tying currency to gold, such language spoke to the economic fate of developing coun tries, particularly those that did not export oil, and to incursions on their sovereignty, as Geoff Payne noted in Architectural Desi9n. 9 ' Th

CRUEL HABITATS

l'hilippine economy suffered significantly under the inflated price of" oil , and the country was then battling export quotas for and com-

111odity prices of sugar. 92

\'tatements /\s Governor Marcos was aware, her predicament in Vancouver was .dso tied to interdependency born of global media networks, such as 1hose mobilized by the squatters and NGOs in the service of human rights claims. Tondo dwellers could be managed within the Philip- pines- their bodies detained, their critical voices contained, their 1 \'xts banned-but under the intense media scrutiny of the confer- 1•nce, their plight began to circulate in the international press, oper- .1ling beyond the domain of her control. In the context of Habitat, rondo residents themselves answered back through print to acts of dispossession, silencing, and violence, issuing Philippine Squatters 11nd Martial Law Remedies as an effective piece of counterpropaganda directed to the UN delegates and the press . Published by the Coor- dinating Council of People's Organizations of Tondo Foreshore, Navotas, Malabon (Ugnayan Tondo), and circumventing the ban on independent publications and debate, the pamphlet outlined the 1.ffects of government policies and actions bent on demolition and incarceration. Widely cited and helping to give traction to their con- 1 \'ms, it shifted the debate from terms scripted by the IAF in order to facilitate the voices and visibility of Tondo residents themselves, ,, media tactic exploding other facts and arguments into the public realm. (It entirely eclipsed the government's brochure on Imelda Marcos's "socio-civic endeavors," Symbol ef the Compassionate Society, which celebrated her program to beautify Manila, as well as her sup- port for the Green Revolution, Population and Environment Centers, lunds for natural disasters, and a "resettlement program for Manila's , lum-dwellers."93 In a closed media environment, all could be pitched .1s humanitarian concerns.) What Philippine Squatters and Martial Law Remedies managed to do so effectively was to establish a platform upon which to articulate a distinct kind of political discourse about rondo, a discourse in which the residents' plight was not simply a problem to be solved by innovative or low-cost design.

94 Moreover,

the residents did not appear simply as abstractions of a universal humanity and a humanitarian crisis that could be substituted for similar phenomena in other parts of Asia, Latin America, or Africa.

OUTLAW TERRITORIES

However, Ugnayan Tondo did affiliate their plight with squ t ter settlements elsewhere, launching a different narrative of th interconnected global condition. While the IA F's insistence on th worldwide relevance of the architectural "solutions" on displ reminds us that they embraced what Didier Fassin and Mariella J>o111 dolfi have recently defined as a "globalized biopolitics," thost• wh resisted it also recognized the network of forces at play. 95 Squat tin the council explained,

is the natural outcome of the basic economic development sch1•111

followed by many Third World countries, including the Philippin

In general, this basic policy is one of keeping farm income and urh

wages low so as to both attract foreign capital investment and to pro

duce foodstuffs within the budgets of the underpaid urban labor fort This results, in general, in rural peasants migrating to urban centt•n I search of the jobs provided by foreign investment. 96

Given the structurally low wages concomitant with developm policy enforced by martial law, they argued, poverty, urban mig tion, and slums composed of squatter shacks were the inevit hi (if not exactly natural) outcome, one that would not be solvt·d h lower-cost housing, but only by "a complete revision of developm tal policies." At present, profit from industry benefitted only fon I investors and the conspicuous consumption of the Philippine elit

Although Tondo residents were fighting for a right to housin it was not a right to build that they were seeking, to return to t ill-conceived working title for the exhibition, let alone the right build shelters themselves, again and again. They were fighting g< ernment plans to demolish their houses without or before prov id I even minimal shelter and their repeated displacement to unviah sites on the outskirts of the city. "Insecurity of domicile is a con~t anxiety for the squatter," the pamphlet explained, "especially sin the declaration of martial law in September i972," after which "t government ordered stepped-up demolition of squatter shantit•s," I i975, President Marcos repealed a i965 congressional bill allow! squatters to purchase their land for a nominal fee, a bill that althou ineffective, gave the expectation of security of tenure.

Self-help, Tondo residents understood, should not be confu with self-determination or political expression. Both wen· co sidered security risks by the Marcos administration, as Philippi

CRUEL HABITATS

\11uatters and Martial Law Remedies suggested, connecting govern- llll'nt suppression directly to our story:

[ W]hen the World Bank, which is the projected source of funds for

the Tondo Foreshore Development scheme, sent a mission to Manila to

discuss the plan with government and community leaders in 1975, one

of those leaders, Mrs. Trinidad Herrera, was arrested temporarily and

locked in a military stockade until after the World Bank group had left.

Mrs. Herrera was also scheduled to attend the UN Human Settlements

design competition held in Vancouver last February, since the design

was meant for housing in Tondo. But again, an order went out for her

arrest, and she went into hiding, thus negating the possibility of attend-

ing the Vancouver meeting. 97

Herrera was president of the Zone One Tondo Organization (I.OTO), a coalition of smaller organizations. In her absence, the ''l/5 World Bank mission declared, "General Tobias and his team are 1 In· best representatives in expressing the Tondo Foreshore peoples' 111·\·ds and aspirations." 98 Herrera, like the other activists in Tondo, l1o1cl a different idea of how to ease the problem. She might have 11111·stioned on whose behalf the IAF spoke, or might have rendered

1sible the structural violence inflicted on the squatters, or even 111 ight have raised rights claims in the context of martial law; that 1 ., she might have shifted the terms of the arguments made during t lw judging. But precisely because the Philippines was chosen as the .11\' for a Habitat demonstration project on account of the country's 1111l'rest in "resettlement," it was constitutively not a place to dem- 1111strate citizen participation in the expression of "people's needs .111d aspirations."

Philippine Squatters made one further media intervention that \\.mt to outline before returning to the exhibition. It included

111 1 nard Wideman's "Squatters: An Unsettling Problem," initially p11lil ished in a Hong Kong weekly magazine. Wideman told the

t111y of Anna and her friends. Squatting in the midst of tourists, l111sinessmen, and diplomats, Anna was "44 years old, but looks 54, 1 ll·stimony to her daily battle for existence," he began, reminding t lw reader that squatters' very bodies were at risk. Unlike Laquian's

1111 y of the Cruz family, who heroically scraped out a daily ritual 111 Tondo, Anna's family was forcibly resettled in Sapang Palay, on 1I11 · outskirts of Manila, soon after the declaration of martial law.

OUTLAW TERRITORIES

Without food or hope of employment, they, like most of thoS(' r c 111 cated, returned to the city, recognizing life to be better in M.11111 "on the edge of the law and on the brink of disaster." 99 Referri11 1 1 Marcos's beautification plan, Wideman positioned the govern111111t as "caught between trying to help the country's poor like Ann.1 .11111 wanting to turn Manila into an attractive metropolis." While A1111 and her friends "pose[d] no real problem" to the state, squatl('I 111 Tondo, he conceded, had "become not only eyesores but also lm·c cl ing grounds for political dissent." Tondo, he remarked, "reproc·111 a political powder keg. It is the only slum area with strong rn111 munity organizations capable of galvanizing the p eo ple into actio11 Although Wideman set out an ambivalent picture-casting squ.1tlc t as harmless victims of urban poverty and of a humanitarian crisis, 1111 the one hand, and as potential threats to the state, on the other hi position was distinct from Schmertz's. Wid eman, to be clear, w.i~ .ti avowed critic of martial law, and he underscored that squatter's rn11 cerns were not confined to forced relocation, but extended to th suspension of civil liberties and citizens rights under martial law. 111 point was not to cast squatters as potential terrorists, but to sho them as actors with political representation whose insurrectio11o11 acts took the form of demands for a space of political negotiation such as might be provided through an NGO or the UN.

Unlike Tondo residents, Anna and her friends did not have an c to political representation by community groups, and foreign nwcll attention tragically prompted the government to respond with counterattack. The week after Wideman's article appeared, th were "chased from their shanties by police and four of them wrr arrested and are currently on trial in Manila for disregardi11~ martial law decree which makes squatting a criminal offense." Th first trial of its type, Philippine Squatters explained, it was watch 11 with great interest for signs that the government planned to ~ol the problem of squatting simply by mass incarceration. Th<' go ernment's appropriation of Wideman's "Squatters: An Unset tlin Problem" thus called attention to the structural ambivalcnn· 11 media coverage subverting censorship in the Philippines and h implication the squatters' own use of print in an international fi11 urn such as Habitat. It also made evident that the squatters' battk fo shelter and hence their bodies and lives were intimately conrn•c h d to mass-media tactics: the media were not external to their plight o

CR UEL HABITAT S

1 disconnected representation of humanitarian agendas, but had real 1 l'f'ccts, if not always those anticipated. Having led to a public trial rnd hence to legal arguments on the question of squatting, this event , onstit uted a moment when squatters paradoxically gained certain

h . h cl . h . 100 11g ts-as prisoners c arge wit a crime. In this media environment, Habitat: Toward Shelter soon assumed

1 new meaning. Although none of the IAF organizers found their l1vclihood or life at stake, they discovered the risks of media vis- 1hility. In response to the protests, Michael Seelig called a press 1 onference at the gallery: "We feel this project is making a terribly 1111portant contribution to solving the problems of the poor around i lil' world and we feel it's very unfortunate that it has been dragged 11110 the political situation of the Philippines," he stated. 101 Pushed l1y journalists about the fate of Herrera, Seelig "confirmed that one 111' two Manila community leaders who had been invited to Vancou- 1t•r in February to advise the panel of judges, went into hiding just lwfore she was due to leave the Philippines," but denied her arrest. I he government, he stressed, instead, "was very generous to offer 11~ a site where they guaranteed they would construct the project. Wc· wanted this to be a real competition, not just ideas." Politics 111d even human rights violations waned in relevance when building 11 .1s involved.

Athfield proved an important media asset here, too. As reported 111 the Guardian, he seemed "bemused by all the dust being stirred 1q1." 102 At the press conference, he clarified that he didn't want to lorce his ideas on the local populace: "If I am not accepted I will go l1ome," he announced. "Filipinos have been 'in the minority' in the \ .1ncouver demonstrations," he argued, reiterating Imelda Marcos's , 1111spiracy claim. He insisted that "his project only provides squat- 11 1 s with 'four poles and a roof' and the rest is planned by the people t lwmselves. 'I don't think that's imposing very much on people,' he .1ul." 103 (If we recognize its similarity to Abbe Marc-Antoine Lau-

,, 11 ·1 's eighteenth-century figure of the primitive hut as an urform of 111 hitect ure derived from nature, it becomes clear that quite a lot '' .1s being imposed.) Athfield, it appears, had not paid much atten- 111111 to protestors' claims. For to reiterate, lack of consultation was , 111 I y one aspect of the larger apparatus of oppression they struggled , •,1inst. He did not seem to consider what drove a situation in which 1111H· Tondo inhabitants would be chosen to get four poles and a

Figure 6.10 Ian Athfield and Imelda Marcos at

Habitat: Toward Shelter, exhibition at the

Vancouver Art Gallery, May 31 - July 4, 1976

(courtesy Vancouver Art Gallery Archives).

CRUEL HABITATS

111of. Despite the belief, widespread among architects, that a degree 'ti formal or organizational choice afforded to residents in complet- 111 g their dwellings constituted agency, self-help, and political self- dl'lcrmination are not, to stress again, identical.

This persistent refusal or inability to situate the work within a l.1rger context was not limited to Athfield. Mountier dismissed the I'' olests as fomented by internal bickering among jealous archi- lt't'ls, arguing that they were led "by a group of young American 111d British architects" who "attempted to force Ian Athfield ... into

1 11dorsing their political demands." Refusing to be "bullied," she 11·ported, he retreated to the Appropriate Technology Village at I l.1bitat Forum: "Athfield quietly went about his business of putting together an on-the-spot illustration of his minimal Tonda house, 111,1de from old plywood, logs and disused timber and covered with l'l.1stered mesh."' 04 Architecture, he believed, should and could stay 1111lside the messy political fray. '05

John F. C. Turner, a prominent spokesperson for the Self-Help ,111d Low Cost Housing Symposium, recognized that more was at 1.1ke and spoke out, going to lengths to ensure that the competition

11ol be confused with his ambitions for self-help and garnering media 11 tcntion for himself in the process. Turner, the Province reported, "s,1id economists, planners and architects unwittingly contribute to the situation in Tonda, where the people have no participation 111 decisions affecting their living conditions. 'The question is, who d!'cides what for whom? Who is competent, who is able to decide lnr people, how and where they should live?"' 106 Raising the ques- t 1011 of responsibility to "the people who will use their work," l\1 mer pointed out to professionals, "theirs is not simply a techni-

1 .d job." 107 On June 8, the symposium issued a damning statement, dr.:iwing attention to the "wider implications" of the competition ,111d its rejection by the Tonda community, structurally excluded I rnm participation. "In displaying the results of the International \ rchitectural Competition for Manila in a prominent downtown g.dl ery, the UN Habitat Conference gives tacit approval to a project t h,1 l was set up in violation of the goals expressed in the confer- 1•11ce's declaration of principles." 108 Even if architects and planners IH'l"e "well-intentioned," idealism was not an adequate substitute lnr taking responsibility. "Technological neutrality," he insisted, "is a myth." 109

OUTLAW TERRITORIE S

The Self-Help and Low Cost Housing Symposium enjoyed va interest and support at Habitat Forum. 110 "On the morning of June 1 500 people fill the amphitheater of Hangar 3, in biting cold , to h John F. C. Turner on the subject 'Self-Help and Low-Cost Hou ing,"' Alfred Heller reported, noting that it was "the first of literal! dozens of meetings on this single topic scheduled for Jericho."1 1 Turner, as noted above, had worked in self-help housing and th informal sector for decades, establishing a model based on securin land tenure, offering technical assistance, financing, and facilitatin minimal building codes. It was only more recently that the Worl Bank, the US Agency for International Development, and the Int r American Development Bank adjusted their policies to co nform t his model. As the AJA Journal reported,

Turner's ideas have been a major influence on the turnaround t

upgrading squatter settlements and sites and services projects in A I Africa and Latin America, and on the World Bank's financial support. I is essential ly the success of these projects, documented in official film as well as in case study presentations in the symposium, which und r li es the absence of controversy over this approach and to [sic] the clarlt

of language in the main conference's recommendation on constructio

by the "informal sector" -peop le building at small sca le. 112

In its statement, the symposium attempted to distance its par digm from the World Bank, insisting that self-help be "understoo as self-government or self-determination rather than the narro sense of do-it-yourself home building." The issue, they stressed, "I control. User control demands a redistribution of power." 113

On June 7, Turner arrived late to a Habitat Forum panel, "Hou ing the Poor," having been held up al a press conference on th Tondo protests. He wa lked in while Shafiq Al-Hout, head of th PLO delegation, answered a question about how to achieve a dl·mo cratic secular state in Palestine. After expressing relief that hl· di not have to speak on the issues that Al-Hout raised, Turner told t audience that protestors in Manila were imprisoned in a "conl' n tration camp." "We cannot ignore this sort of issue," he strl'ssrd "because the principles on which the conference is based are at stak here." 114 (Likewise for Palestine, we might add.) However, Turn did not question the fundamental premise of self-help stra tl·gi for which he would in turn be taken to task. Rod Burgess nott·d

322

CRUEL HABITATS

lt-w years later that "to those in the Third World .. . rarely far from l,Hvation, such appeals to be more self-reliant must seem a rather

• urious form of radicalism." 115

Squatter settlements such as Tondo Foreshore did not emerge by direct force, but nevertheless were distillations of a forceful process 111' dispossession from rural lands by industrial development and 111' migrants' structural disenfranchisement from the mainstream n ·onomy of cities. The people of Tondo were not forced to live in 1 hese precarious legal zones, but arrived fleeing far worse condi- 11ons. Without legal recourse to dispute the ongoing process of displacement and with distinctions between police and military .tt'lions increasingly eroded , forced resettlement sites had become , .imps' haunting twins. 116 Expatriate Filipino journalist Ruben Cusi- p.ig noted this connection to camps . (Cusipag had been detained upon the declaration of martial law and then fled to Canada .) Tondo quatters, he argued, were caught between two forms of detention

1 h,\t were closely intertwined: on the one hand, the Marcos/ World II.wk/ IAF scheme for incorporating them into the development 11rncess, and on the other, prison. 117 Under military rule, he stated .11 the Vancouver rally, "Tondo residents have only two choices: a 'lorced' habitat-the new development-or prison camps. 'Mrs. M,\rcos will be building prison camps for them, not low-income l1ousing,' he said. 'And unless she withdraws her iron fist, she will be d1·vcloping not low income residents but a new breed of penitentiary

. 1 . d h tt "' 118 Ii nants m s um pnsons an n ew g e os.

\ rchitectures of Security hortly after the Habitat conference, William Marlin, associate edi-

l11r at Architectural Record, published "Helping to House Manila's l I 1 ban Poor," hoping to redeem the IA F project. "Trudging through 1 liv ramshackle squalor of Manila's Tondo Foreshore," he mused of 11s imminent disappearance, "it is hard to imagine that, in a few '"'rs, a minor revolution will probably have occurred here." Repeat-

' illy condemning the adverse effect of political activists on govern- 1111·11t plans, he proclaimed in a distinctly Fulleresque tone that it was '\•oi ng to be a revolution by design -design of sites, structures, and

1 1 vices-as some i40,ooo people are relocated to the bleak flats .111d land-filled ponds of Dagat-Dagatan . .. so that the Tondo can be 11.111sformed into an industrial-residential complex." In dreaming

OUTLAW TERRITORIES

of a new gleaming city rising from the slums, Marlin was not, tc be clear, lamenting displacement of the squatters. Rather, he w reveling in the capacity of architects to alleviate a potentially insur rectionary situation that would hold back development. Accordin to him, Architectural Record established the IAF in order to (·air a situation in which "the clash between the urban 'haves' and th 'have-nots' is reaching a crescendo, already creating upheavals 11 seismic social and political force." 119

Architects are of course supposed to imagine and contributt• to better and more secure world; the discipline's dominant narrati are of social and material progress in line with Western Enlight n ment thinking. Yet this was far from Marlin's concern. The comp ti tion did not ask architects to design housing or to address incqult between the haves and the have-nots, but to produce scenarios f minimal shelter that normalized such conditions, effectively scrip ing the troubling underside of that "industrial-residential complt' Whether knowingly or not, Marlin recognized the suspension established standards to be connected to the same dispositif of po driving the rise of gleaming corporate towers. Here, the two slcl of "world architecture" came together.

No longer would Western-trained architects and planners ma back to their developing countries, Marlin speculated, "ready to l 11 quer poverty with concoctions of metal, concrete, and brass," off ing what he called "care packages" of modern architecture. Rath what was appropriate for squatters in his estimation was a dt•jC of architectural modesty that would serve as "a compliment to th potential as human beings." The IAF competition demonstrated t this could take the form of "a workable framework in which lsqu ters] can make the most of themselves through the exercise of inn energies." There would be no more grand hygienic housing t•st schools, or factories to discipline modern citizens, but an app tus to put to work and manage those deemed of modest worth, him, the competition demonstrated updated architectural ml't "subjective preferences as to matters of form and shape seem to h been set aside, with priority given to more objective conditio culture, climate, ecology, and the prevalent public opinion Ith self-help] beyond the inflammatory tactics of certain politil'al ists." Overlooking the persistence of aesthetic conceits, he laid on the sites-and-services paradigm, the need to remove sc1u

CRUEL HABITATS

I 1 om prime development land, and enforcing technical solutions dnived from an expanded field of scientific knowledge. 120

What Marlin insightfully recognized and what he hoped to exploit 1 .1s the unholy alliance between the informality of self-help archi-

l1 ·(ture (or "workable frameworks") and strategics at work within 111 ·ocolonial apparatuses of environmental governance. Both shared t 111· ability to adapt to facts on the ground and to operate at once l.11nally and top-down. Informality was not simply a manifestation .,j the benevolent withdrawal of regulations such as architectural or l'l.11111ing codes in the face of extreme difficulties or a way of ceding 11 1 vncy to the user, as had been dreamed of by experimental archi-

1• 1 ts such as Yona Friedman and other proponents of indeterminate 11 uctures. If fixed forms would give way to flexible frameworks, as

,\1,1rlin recognized, a new type of top-down strategy emerged, one 1 l1,1t was less evident and more dispersed. Inverting grassroots logics, ill' ambiguously announced that the self-help development marked · 1 new kind of revolution .... One in which people at the top are 1t 1t·mpting to pull people at the bottom, not the other way around." I >iscerning the economic and political logics at work, he continued, ·· I hough political obstacles and community contentiousness persist, "1rling around the future of Dagat-Dagatan, the chances are good

il1.1t at least 500 families are going to find a stake in something like 1 l1.1t kind of freedom .... Four poles and a roof can create a revolu- 111111." Here, too, Marlin proves insightful, for the project indeed 1 pressed the free-market paradigm driving neoliberal economic 11 rnlutions expanding into the Global South.

( hher architectural critics responded very differently to this 1•.11,1doxical or cynical schema, in which supposedly humanitarian 1111t·1 ventions did little for the poor or even unwittingly participated Iii .1 process of dispossession. Docomomo founder Hubert-Jan Hen- L • I questioned architects' romantic attitude toward "the fantastic " l11ncments of migrant minorities in their struggle against those

111 power." As he argued in "Cruel Habitats," "We often forget that "'" support for the self-help approach actually stimulates the poli- 1 11 s which make these settlements necessary." 121 He clarified that q11.1t ters do not arrive in such places by choice.

M.1ny politicians in the third world will be well pleased to see the moral 11pport colleagues are receiving for their actions from intellectuals

OUTLAW TERRITORIES

of the industrialized world. If they follow the UN-sponsored Manll competition example, what they have to do is provide minimal infr

structures on the wastelands of their city peripheries and they l

legitimately forget about the real issue at stake, which is that tht• pm shouldn't have to migrate to the cities in the first place. 122

Questioning the statistically driven, bureaucratically impl mented political process at work in Vancouver and the ideali ti rhetoric at play, Henket referred to Habitat as a "mammoth coun I of war." Whether self-help solutions were motivated by econom gain or humanitarian factors, he argued, "ironically the ultimate vi tims will be precisely those who are now so loudly praised for th I efforts: the urban poor." 123 Even Correa recognized that somethl was wrong with this picture. "Self-helpers depress me," he said a taken-aback reporter from Jericho. "By this he has in mind w I meaning efforts at 'moving people out to self-help schemes on t edge of cities where they become a ghetto of cheap labour."' 124

Evictions

Reporting on the self-help symposium for Architectural Desi9n, I Hogan turned to Tondo, providing an account of the neighbor! World Bank scheme to provide sites and services to about tw n thousand people on forty hectares of land, a density far lower th squatter settlements, with a correlative increase in cost. Each faml would receive "a 12m x 4m plot with a 3m x 4m soil/cement fl and a 3m x 4m block wall, upon which are two cold taps, a I and a W.C." Designed to ensure full cost recovery through lea taxes, and so on, the so-called "project beneficiaries," Hogan p ited, would be faced with a doubling of their housing costs, if n more. Hogan nevertheless found both the World Bank and Athfi I approaches "imaginative and commendable," but he, too, remain concerned that current residents might continue to raise cont versy. "The people of Tondo themselves are vigorously reprcsen and misrepresented by numerous clandestine activist groups, m ists and religious leaders," he scoffed. Adding, "there are num<•r emigrant factions, left and right, propagandizing in the USA Canada, putting out suspiciously elegant literature." 125 Squatt and their representatives, it seemed, were not supposed to info development discourse.

326

CRUEL HABITATS

While Architectural Desi9n's special issue, "Habitat Reconsidered," was on the newsstands, Tondo again made headlines. "Slum Evictions 111 Manila Embarrass the World Bank," the New York Times announced 11n October 7. In September, more than four hundred families were li1rcibly evicted from Tondo, their houses demolished as part of Gov- ' rnor Marcos's plan to beautify Manila in time for the arrival of thou- ,,inds of foreigners for a meeting of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund. Some of these properties had legal titles-the squat- l1 ·rs were legal property owners-a fact simply ignored, rendering i IH· hope placed in land tenure effectively mute. 126 "Most of those dis- pl.1ced were carted, many in garbage trucks and with armed police at Ii.ind, to remote sites as far as 20 miles outside the city where they put 11p shanties no better than what they had left," the Times reported. 127

I 1vc days before the IMF /World Bank meeting, Wideman reported 111 the Washin9ton Post under the title "World Bank Embroiled in M.111ila Slum," "Manila officials demolished 50 shanties in Tondo 111 widen a road for the conference delegates' tour of the city. High 'ooden fences were erected around all of the shanty areas visible I 111m the road." 128 The wall was not exactly the perimeter imagined 111 Athfield. But like these violent actions, the eruption of the wall , ,.,<mates poignantly with the governor's aims of visual beautification 111cl the disappearance of bodies. Like the shantytown itself, walls •jl!H'ar, we might say, following Wendy Brown, as a manifestation of 1 post-Westphalian world, a symptom of the waning of sovereignty. 129

1 lw goal was not to keep foreign nationals, the stateless, or even q11.1tters from entering the city. As with walls separating the United t.1tl's from Mexico or Israel from occupied Palestinian territory (of lii1 h Brown writes) the logic was to regulate people's movement

111cl keep the poor and their shanties out of sight. In this case, they had 111 lil' hidden from foreign bankers, diplomats, and journalists so as 11• 11 to contradict the Philippine government's claims for the benefits 111 111,1rtial law: as President Marcos observed, "social injustice [was] 111111111patible with the goals of the New Society."' 30 The Washin9ton f 1111 tl'ported that he was "not at all embarrassed by the existence of 111.11 t i.11 law," which, he claimed, "not only makes the streets safe for 1 11 it< 11s but the country safe for foreign investment." 13 ' Those streets, 1111111 H'r, remained profoundly unsafe for vocal squatters.

M< Namara cosigned an agreement for a $32 million loan for tl11 d1·velopment of Tondo Foreshore with Imelda Marcos in

327

OUTLAW TERRITORIES

Washington, DC, two days after her appearance at Habitat. I I time, World Bank policy explicitly refused loans to govrrnrn practicing slum clearance, prompting critics to applaud thr ho1nk "for opposing a particularly inhumane practice of bulldozin~ 111 out of existence." 132 Following this contractual breach, Tondo .11 ti ists attempted to march to the IMF/ World Bank conferenn· .11111 arrange a meeting with McNamara or a bank representati\'I' In unsuccessful attempt to request that the loan be withdrawn. Al I time the largest financial contributor to the Philippines, thl' Wu Bank "thought it was politically inappropriate" to meet on o1n o of "anti-martial law overtones." 133 The Marcoses' attempt at h1 u fication also failed: the Washington Post reported that the "paint I apparent" suspension of democratic principles under martial law the dramatic contrasts between the two hundred and sixty rnllll dollars spent on new hotels owned by Marcos family memlwr , well as "an opulent convention center for the conference" and I nearby slums "almost sickened" many of the nearly four thouN delegates attending. Although some considered these fiscal prlu ties "obscene," others, such as "businessmen and bankers," w impressed: "Instead of visiting slums, they could attend 1wrl11 mances of the Bolshoi and Australian ballets" under the patron of Governor Marcos. 134

Pushed by the press, a heavily guarded McNamara clarifil'd th he did not question the lavish expenditure on facilities; "he d1·I n it as a source of national pride, much like the Indian decision build a nuclear bomb that the economy couldn't really affonl."' Faced with the question of whether the bank should be "support I a dictator and his martial law regime," McNamara held "the pmltl that almost all developing countries, in one way or another, ('.Jll classed as authoritarian" and that to support the poor, such n·pr sive governments had to be financed. What embarrassed tht· Wu Bank was that "Marcos had rigged the economic system in w completely contrary to the free market philosophy espoused h t U.S. and other democracies." 136

By i976, McNamara and the World Bank had a track n·corcl pushing industrial growth over equity or redistribution, pursul projects working against the interests of the poorest of th!· po precisely those he identified as most in need. Self-help housin~ no exception. In her chapter entitled "Urban 'Shelter' Proj1•!'I

1

328

CRUEL HABITATS

1· 1yl'r turned to the Tondo Foreshore as exemplary of the World j1111k's strategy of encouraging real estate speculation and the ability , ,J 111vestors to recuperate profit and develop a free-market system " 1 he expense of the poor. Having determined (statistically) that

1 11 the "lowest standard of formal housing and services in the 111st locations" would remain too expensive for such a sector in

011 developing world, the bank turned from housing to sites-and- , 1 1 ices projects and squatter upgrading, understanding that any

' 111 l terment" improved land values and hence taxes. "It appears," I' 1\!' r lamented, "that while the poor will not be bulldozed off the I 11ul they are occupying, they may well find that land 'improved' 1111dn their feet to the point where those who cannot afford to put It 1 o 'productive' use ... are evicted quietly by legal process." 137 With 1111 majority of Tondo households relying on irregular sources of 1111 ome and with eviction required by the bank after three months 111 defaulting, "those who cannot afford the betterment of Tondo

ill be forced to move elsewhere, according to the Bank's plan." 138

I lsewhere" typically meant more precarious sites with riskier con- , 11ucnces. This quieter process of displacement was not an anomaly

ti hin World Bank strategy, but appeared in policy documents, ti h the Tondo project "justified in cost-benefit terms through the

1111 it'ipated appreciation of property values." 139 The rhetoric of car- 1111• for the poor by providing "shelter," Payer concluded, masked the 11 ,1 I priority of keeping "the territories of its borrowing countries , •111·11 to capitalist penetration and their policies attractive to multi- 11II1onal corporations, or to aid the designs of an important member •1111·rnment." 140

(amps

111 ,1nother tragic twist to this story, World Bank and US sup- 1•111 l f'or the Philippine government was finally reconsidered, albeit 11111} temporarily, in 1977, when human rights activists successfully 11111hilized a case of abuse as evidence of a wider, systematic use of I''" 1t ical detention without filing charges and the routine practice iii torture. The case was that of Mrs. Trinidad Herrera. On May 11, \ td1·man reported, "The best-known leader of Manila's 1 million 111111 dwellers has been under military detention for the past two 1 l'l 'ks and her lawyer claims that she 'has been the victim of physical

1111 tun', specifically electric shock."' 141 Herrera was arrested without

329

OUTLAW TERRITORIES

notifying her lawyer or family on April 25, a few weeks prio ZOTO's annual meeting. When her lawyer finally located h c_amp Crame, a ~ilitary detention center, she could hardly n (I mze or _speak to him. Inmates, Wideman wrote, "have smuggl1·d unconfirmed reports that Mrs. Herrera was given electrical sho on very sensitive areas of the body, and that she could not fl·1·1I bathe herself for days after the torture. The reports said sh(' wou merely sit and stare blankly with tears rolling from her cy1· ,' Just as the Tondo project was paradigmatic of World Bank t.11 ti for Payer, Herrera's torture became a paradigmatic case of Mar regime violence and of potentials of human rights activism.

Marcos ordered Herrera's release two days after the story of h arrest and torture appeared in the US press, a story that prompt the US State Department to express "deep concern to the Phlll pines government." The World Bank postponed (but did not cam I a $i5 million resettlement loan, citing concerns about the conn tion of the arrest to Herrera's comments on the Tondo projt•t t I The case continued to prove catalytic. On October 18, i977, R rescntative Yvonne Burke (Democrat, California), read a pow ful statement citing the case and questioning the escalation of foreign aid to the Philippine military. Given the lack of delineatl between military and police and with extensive evidence of tortu she. argued, this aid was in violation of the prohibition on providl as~1~tance to foreign police forces and prisons. Training Philippi military and military intelligence units at the US Military Poll School and the Johns Hopkins School for Strategic Studies had to que_stioned. "Even the Pentagon admits that the Philippines is n subject to any viable threat," she stated. "It seems that the d1·fi·n envisioned is, rather, defense of the Marcos regime." 144

Wideman detailed US congressional response along with M cos's "all-out blitz to improve his regime's image before the S!'n would uphold the House's action on his aid reduction."' 45 The Int national Commission of Jurists also reported on Herrera's ahu in The Decline ef Democracy in the Philippines. 146 Drawing on th documents, along with those of Amnesty International and oth NGOs, Richard Claude, political scientist and founding editor Hur:i~n Rights Qyarterly, picked up the case as exemplary of th political use of statistics in human rights activism and off!'n·d gruesome account of Herrera's interpellation into Marcos's hrut

330

CRUEL HABITATS

1 111

litary-police apparat~s. ''.As Mrs. ~errera .. was walking d~wn 1 liico Street, Quezon City, m late Apnl 1977, he recounted, she ,

11 ,t iced some men in a car following her. One of them called out her

o1 . 1 me. When she turned to acknowledge him, she was hustled in the

.11 and arrested." 147 After noting that Herrera accompanied Pope

I' 11d VI on a i970 visit to Tondo, he continued,

On the day of her arrest Herrera was taken to Camp Crame for inter- rngation. There she denied membership in the Communist Party; , 1 cknowledged knowing two priests about whom she was interrogated;

gave her correct address; and explained the relationships among several groups within ZOTO. Nevertheless, one of the interrogators suddenly ,houted, "You are not cooperating!" Thereupon all but two interroga- tors quietly left the room. The remaining interrogators uncovered a box t0ntaining an army crank telephone. Trinidad Herrera was stripped of all her clothing. Wires were attached to her thumb and nipple. She was asked certain questions. Each time the interrogators did not like the answer, and even when they seemed to believe the response, they turned the crank on the field telephone. She cou Id not help urinating l'rom the intense pain. When they threatened to attach an electrode to

her vagina, she agreed to sign any confession put before her. 148

1 11

,1nother version, he added that during US congressional discus- 1.,11s, it was revealed that the hand-crank telephones were part of

11 \ ,1id to the dictatorship. 149

1 introduce these horrific details, which take us to the most

11 t

1 mate parts of Herrera's body, with hesitation. How.ever, it ~as

I'"" t ially on account of the story's dramatic charac~er, its co_u~lmg 1 ,f bodies, urban environments, international media, the military,

d11 police, detention centers, and international law and politics 11

1 .it it was able to "mobilize shame" -that rights denied Herrera

1111dn martial law could be claimed in an international arena. The

1 is

1 • was not the first documented evidence refuting Marcos's 1975

h b d "'so R th il1 •1 l.1ration that "no one, but no one, as een torture . a er,

1 1 \\ ,\S the confluence of details communicated to journalists that

1 111 rnhorated patterns of violation in numerous less documented

1 1 1·s and the connection to religious and human rights groups that

1 ,

11 dned it catalytic. 151 When US embassy staff visited Herrera at the

1111 ut.:in rehabilitation center, Claude noted, they "said that if Her- 111,1's interrogators had been aware of her contacts abroad in church

331

.. ..

Figure 6.11 Pope Paul VI visiting

Tondo, Manila, November 29, 19?0

(© Bettman/CORBIS).

CRUEL HABITATS

.11d human rights circles, they would have been more careful not to 111·rate adverse public opinion."' 52 The visibility provoked Marcos

1 order the court martial of military personnel accused of torturing 111 r. They were acquitted on the basis that her documented injuries 1111ght have been self-inflicted, following the reputed practice of 1111 Communist Party, the "leftist underground," and "subversive

r )'•\nizations."' 53 However, Marcos had learn ed a lesson from media '1 portage: Noam Chomsky and Edward Herman made this point in I ill' Washin9ton Connection and Third World Fascism in 1979, also cit- 111r Herrera's case in their alarmist account of "repacificat ion" and 1 11nstructive terror." Marcos now simply eliminated the evidence,

1111 ning to "unexplained 'disappearances'" of dissidents as common 111 other parts of what they characterized as the US neocolonial 111pire of brutal client stales. 154

1 llw You Give a Damn I lr1· World Bank did not cancel its loan or the wider redevelop-

1111·11l project, which it pursued vigorously and profitably in close 1 ~ociation with the Marcos regime and private developers during rlw coming years. Despite evidence of the lack of affordability, the 11.111 k celebrated the project, publishing an account of its success and 1l1.1t of projects like it in 1979 under the title "Revolutionary Ideas 111 1972 Becoming Today's Convention." 155 The product of a slowly ''' 1 hcstrated global emergency, squatter settlements were now being '' 11dered p ermanent by World Bank's embrace of informality as a 11 \olutionary solution, one that Habitat and the UN sought to insti- 1111 ionalize as national policy and as international agreements and t li.11 the IAF hoped to codify as "world architecture." The visibility dforded by the exhibition did not ensure that A th field's scheme was l1111lt, despite assurances by the Philippine government to the IAF 111d UIA. Reasons alluded to its lack of economic feasibility by World ll.111k standards, landfill and land-use issues in Dagat-Dagatan, and "11cio- political conflicts in the squatter communities," along with tlw fact that it was not to the Marcoses' taste. 156 (The !AF dissolved 111 1978.) We might imagine that Athfield's solution, like other IAF 1 111npetition entries, contained too much architecture, too many

1111·nilies-that it manifested the discipline's inability to accede 1 111 i rely to the regulatory domain or to reduce squatters' environ- 1111 nls and with it their bodies to what Giorgio Agamben termed

333

OUTLAW TERRITORIES

"b 1·c "'57 p h h" are ue. er aps arc itects were unable to abandon entlr I modernism's utopian promise as articulated at the intersection technology, aesthetics, and politics when faced with the often hrul conditions of Third World urbanism.

I am alluding here to the narrative of Kate Stohr's "100 Yl'ar Humanitarian Design," in Architecture for Humanity's Design 11 You Give a Damn: Architectural Responses to Humanitarian Crises.

For decades architects have been called upon to provide solutioru I the world's shelter crises. However, as designers embraced the idNll of the machine age, the increasingly technology-driven, often utopl ideas they proposed would carry little resonance for aid worken others wrestling with the day-to-day realities of providing a roof, d water, and sanitation to families in need. Over time, the world relief and development became divorced from the worlds of arch It ture and design. 158

Architecture's failure to bridge this gap is an ambivalent ou co~e, at .be~t, .but the causes need not be reduced to techno-utop an1sm, d1sc1plmary autonomy, or even architecture's failure to reduced to care for the body, although all remain relevant. For Stoh this "disconnect" raised a set of questions: "What role should de-. I play in providing basic shelter? How could architects best addr the needs of the displaced and disenfranchised? And, at the heart these questions: Should design be considered a luxury or a nee sity?"'

59 These are all good questions and in many regards arc tho

that participants in the !AF competition attempted to answer. But if we are to take the story I have been tracing as a cas I

point, a far more complicated and far more ambivalent, contradl tory, and disjunctive picture of architecture's role in this humanl tarian complex and its relation to the displaced and disenfranchiN begins to emerge. Even the rather innocuous architectural cxhlhl tion that served as my starting point can be read as situated withl a complex matrix of institutional, mediatic, economic, politic I and geopolitical forces. At stake is not simply a choice bctw idealism and utopianism, on the one hand, and realpolitik solutio to facts on the ground, on the other. The exhibition and the c·o petition were embedded in and contributed to a global apparatu of UN conferences, nongovernmental organizations, financial an military institutions, neoimperial development strategies, discour

334

CRUEL HABITATS

.111<1 technologies of security, and media networks. Put forward as ,.jfrring practical solutions to a perceived emergency while acknowl- dg ing that it posed problems that architecture could not solve, the

I \ F competition, Habitat: Toward Shelter, an<l Architectural Record 11 tempted to harness emergent techniques of power by implement-

111 g and deploying dominant relationships of force, to paraphrase I 11u cault. 160 In responding to the competition brief, architects pre- d11minantly chose to operate within a global economic and geopo- 111 ical battlefield by offering solutions to problems scripted by the World Bank and the !AF, and even experimental work came to serve I Ill · interests of global capitalism. It was this alignment, I have been 11 ying to argue, that constituted the "world architecture" on dis- pl.1y at the Vancouver Art Gallery, with its attempted foreclosure of p11litical dialogue in favor of technical demonstrations and images 1 l1 .1t might help win hearts and minds.

It was on the basis of an urgent humanitarian crisis-people 11 n c, and are, suffering-and of architecture's exclusion from it that 111 hite cts were called upon by the !AF to engage with this biopoliti- l·" apparatus. For the IAF, architecture took on a mediatic function 11 ithin it, assuming a role that NGOs came to play at this time: that .,j' pressuring governments to act by mobilizing popular opinion. l, 1vcn the cynical conjunction of architecture, territorial insecurity, 111d neoimperial economic strategies at play, it is an apparatus that would be impossible to negotiate "cleanly" or without taking risks. Io reiterate, there are no easy "solutions" to the "problem of squat-

11 •1 settlements," forced resettlements, and other forms of dispos- 1·ssion arising in the context of globalization. The question here is

,, lti ch risks you choose to take and in which direction they tend. We might still question whether architecture remains doomed

1111ply to reflect such dominant apparatuses and techniques of 1111wcr. In this case, the question is not whether architecture con- ' 1 1 ncd with squatter settlements could or should escape this cynical 111d often opaque apparatus, but whether it operates within it to I" 1 petuate the dominant sociopolitical order or, as I would hope, to lll'clk back to, critique, or otherwise struggle against it. Faced with

111 hitccture's imbrication within such a dispositif, a better formula- 111111 might be to ask what else architects might have brought to the 1.1lik, how else they might have operated within this battlefield, 1 Ii.it other tactics remain open to them. For the ambivalence of this

BS

OUTLAW TERRITORIES

system suggests that architecture might also have a role to play I rendering visible and even recasting it, interrupting and redirect In forces at play. Utopian? Maybe. 161

It is not incidental to my story that an expanded frame of n·fi ence recovers voices that recognized and resisted this conjunctlo of security claims and development while mobilizing the same app ratus- its institutions, key players, the use of media to effect polltl cal will-in attempting to effect a reversal in relations of pow The story of Tondo residents' struggles reminds us that despik th suspension of their rights under martial law and their reduction t humanitarian statistics to be housed on the order of" just living, they were not reduced to bare life, but emerged into visibility political subjects who could interrupt dominant narratives. Todt Etienne Balibar, they "ceased to simply play the victims in order t become the actors of democratic politics." Balibar is speaking of distinct struggle, that of the sans-papier in France during the 1990 but his argument seems apt: "We owe them for having forced th barriers of communication, for having made themselves seen an heard for what they are: not specters of delinquency and invasion but workers, families both from here and elsewhere, with th I particularities and the universality of their condition as modern pro letarians." Because of them, he posits, "we understand better wh democracy is: an institution of collective debate, the conditions c which are never handed down from above." 162

Herrera's case and the repeated dismissal of protests by the an hi tectural fraternity remind us, however, of the violent and persist n resistance to such responses and of the relentless anxiety regard ing insurgencies in a paradigm of security. But architects, too, I traces of dissent- Roberto's political cartoons, Henket's critiqur o the counterproductive effects of self-help on the poor, and Turn<'r' insistence on self-determination, to name a few. The importam· their proliferation should not be underestimated.

Architecture, as I have been trying to demonstrate, has m n tools-aesthetic, organizational, spatial, mediatic, discursive, dm mentary, institutional, technical, even temporal. And, at lc·ast I principle, it can mobilize them to different and tactical ends- it c turn to other registers of questioning and self-reflexivity: in acid it le to operating through design, it can reject the talk about rcjl'l'll talk in favor of urgent action or solutions and launch alt<.'rnatl

C RUEL HABITAT S

il1 eoretical concepts and research strategies into this domain. There 1' no question that people should be housed, that attempts should be 111 .1de to alleviate suffering and support rights struggles. Nor is there 111 y question that architects form part of this picture of an emergent 111d globalized biopolitics. The question is how architects might p.1rticipate without rendering cynicism structural or ever more 11owerful, how they might interrupt this conjunction of emergency 1 onditions, humanitarian aid, and militarism. Finally, to return to another repeated trope, the semantic instabilities and radical 1111bivalences that I have been stressing point not only to cynicism, li11t also to the potentials of harboring or broadcasting other "new 1111·anings" for architecture. These, too, will be multiple. The ethical 1p1estion remains: to what and whom might such meanings speak, "ho might speak them, and to what ends?

H7

OUTLAW TERRITORIES

1976, p. 80.

185. United Nations, Report ef Habitat, p. 112. 186. US delegate Stanley Schiff, quoted in "Palestine Issue Erupts Again,"

Vancouver Sun, Jun e 11, 1976, p. 28.

187. Philip Quigg, "Habitat: Important Gains Despite Political Chaos," Audu-

bon, September 1976 , p. 115.

188. Quigg, "Habitat: Important Gains," p. 115. See also von Eckardt, "Habitat

Approves Anti-Israel Stand."

189. Farrow, "Conference Leaves Bad Taste," p. 48.

190. "Habitat's Palestinian Gambit," p. 1.

191. Stanley Schiff, quoted in "Palestine Iss ue Erupts Again," p. 28 .

192. Merridew, "UN's 'Habitat' Runs Afoul," p. 13. See also Stanley Schiff,

"U.N. Conference on Human Settlements," Department ef State Bulletin, October 1976, p. 464; and Farrow, "Conference Leaves Bad Taste."

193. Tinker, "Do Not Undervalue the Vision of Vancouver," p. 2.

194. "Palestine Will Be a Key Habitat Iss ue."

195. Said, The Qyestion ef Palestine, pp. xxxv and 47. On Palestinian national identity, see also Khalidi, Palestinian Identity.

196. Said, The Qyestion ef Palestine, pp. xxxvi and xxviii. 197. Ibid., p. xiii. "The actua l significance of Palestinian armed struggle was

complex, but on at least one level it also represented the end of lib eration struggle

and the beginning of a nationalist effort, in which arms (and armies) were used to

protect a central national authority." Ibid., p. 163.

198. Ibid., pp. xx-xxi.

199. Ibid., p. xxxvi.

200. United Nations General Assembly, living Conditions ef the Palestinian People in the Occupied Arab Territories: Report ef the Secretary General, A/J5/533, October 17, 1980. See Economic and Social Counci l resolution 2026 (LXI) of

August 4, 1976 and 2100 (LXIII) of August 3, 1977; United Nations General

Assembly, A/RES/J1/110 of December 16, 1976; A/RES/J2/171 of December 19,

1977; A/RES/33/110 of December 18, 1978; A/RES/J4/113 of December 14, 1979;

A/RES/J5f75 of December 5, 1980. The secretary genera l prepared the report in

collaboration with United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refu ·

gees (UNRWA), the Economic Commission for Western Asia (ECWA), and thr

Special Committee to In vestigate Israeli Practices Affecting the Human Rights of

the Population of the Occupied Territories, among other agencies.

201. United Nations General Assembly, A/RES/J6/73 of December 4, 1981;

A/RES/37/222 of December 20, 1982; A/RES/ 38/t66 of December 19, 1983.

202. United Nations General Assembly, living Conditions ef the Palestinian

502

NOTES

People in the Occupied Territories, 1985, page 33. See also, as cited in the report, Janet

L. Abu-Lug hod, "The Demographic Consequences of the Occupation," in Naseer

H. Aruri (ed.), Occupation: Israel over Palestine (Belmont, MA: AAUG, 1983), p. 255.

203. Ward, in "Comments by World Leaders," p. 158.

204. Editorial, "Habitat Redistributed," Architectural Design, October 1976,

p. 580.

205. See John F. C. Turner, "Uncontroll ed Urban Sett lement: Problems and

Policies," International Social Development Review 1 (1968), p. 119, and Turner, "A

New Universe of Squatter-Builders," UNESCO Courie r, June 1976, pp. 12-14.

CHAPTER SIX: "CRUEL HABITATS"

1. Frederick Gutheim, "I labitat: Toward Shelter," Vanguard: The Vancouver Art

Ga llery 5.5 (June-July 1976), p. 5·

2. Ibid ., p. 3. his language is repeated almost verbatim in Michael Seelig, The

Architecture ef Se!J-Help Communities: The First International Competition for the Urban Environment ef Developing Countries (New York: Architectural Record Books, 1978).

3. See, for instance, "Signa l Service," Architectural Design, October 1976,

p. 580. On the work of John F. C. Turner in Peru, see Helen Gyger, "The Informal

as Project: Self-Help Housing in Peru, 1954-1986," PhD diss., Columbia Univer-

sity, 2012. On architects' involvement w ith self-help and development, see ljl al M.

Muzaffar, "The Periphery Within: Modern Architecture and the Making of the

Third World," PhD diss., MIT, 2007.

4. Paul Go ldb erger, "Radica l Planners Now Mainstream," New York Times, June

13, 1976, p. 21.

5. See Ken Ja cobsen, "UIA Defines Philosophy Behind Habitat 76," Archi-

tectural Record, November 1975, p. 38, and Ja cobsen, "UIA Drafts a Charter on

Human Settlements for Habitat '76,"' Architectural Record, March 1975, p. 37.

6. On the phenomenon of mobilizing shame in human rights activism, see

Thomas Keenan, "Mobilizing Shame," South Atlantic Qyarterly 103.2-3 (Spring-

Summer 2004), pp. 435-49.

7. In announcing the competit ion, the editors of Architectural Record indicated

that "we are not so na'ive as to believe that arc hitecture is the solution to all

problems of the world; that good planning and design is a substitute for jobs that

don't exist, or food that does not exist or is too dear. But housing and a sense of

community are basic human needs-and that is the part of the problem that we

know most about and can best do something about." Quoted in Walter F. Wagner,

"Human Settlements," Architectural Record, May 1976, p. 95.

8 . Benitez had earlier been a member of the governing co un cil of ECOSOC's

OUTLAW TERRITORIES

Center for Housing, Building and Planning and went on to preside over UNEP\ governing council.

9· Seelig, The Architecture ef Se!fHelp Communities, p. 12. 10. See "The Winning Designs," Architectural Record, May 19

7 6, p. 113 . StT

also "Manila Became the Focus of the International Design Competition," ibid., pp. 106-11.

11. Maurice Strong, quoted in Frederick Gutheim, A World ef Cities, Man's Home no. 3 (New York: United Nations, 1972), frontispiece.

12. Office brochure sent to City Clerk's Office, City of Vancouver Archivt's,

henceforth CVA, folder 548-A-2. Seelig noted that Gutheim came with "high lev!']

public service for the President and Congress of the United States." Seelig, Tht Architecture ef Se!fHelp Communities, p. 12.

13. Seelig was born in Tel Aviv and received a diploma in architecture from

Hammersmith University and a masters degree and PhD in community plannin~ from the University of Pennsylvania. On his attitude toward the Israel/Palestinr

conflict, see Michael Seelig, "Palestine Revolution Article Questioned," UBC

Alumni Chronicle 26.1 (Spring 1972), pp. 33-34.

14. Seelig, The Architecture ef Self-Help Communities, pp. 1o-1 4

. 15. lbid., p. 5·

16. Wagner, "Human Settlements," p. 95.

17. Gutheim, "Habitat: Toward Shelter," p. 3. 18. Ibid., p. 3.

19. Occupied by the United States during the Spanish-American War of 189 H,

the Philippines became a self-governing commonwealth in 1935, at which tim<' d

republican constitution went into effect. The Philippines officially gained indt' -

pendence from colonial tutelage on July 4, 1946. As in other former colonit's,

massive social inequity and ongoing economic ties born of colonialism persistt>d,

largely to the benefit of multinational corporations and the local elite. Rich in

natural resources, the Philippines exports sugar, timber, and coconut products,

with the United States secured as a major market through colonial-era economic

ties. Primary imports have included oil and machinery, driving the national clt•hl and hence inflation.

20. Bernard Wideman, "The Philippines: Five Years of Martial Law," AA1PO: Japan Asia Qyarterly Review 9 (1977), p. 64.

21. David Wurfel, "Martial Law in the Philippines: The Methods of Rl'ginw Survival," Pacific Affairs 50.1 (Spring 1977), p. 6.

22. Cheryl Payer, The World Bank: A Critical Analysis (New York: Monthly Review Press, i982), pp. 326-27. .

23. "Manila Became the Focus of the International Design Competition,"

NOTES

Architectural Record, May 1976, p. 107.

24. Imelda Marcos staged her own demonstration project in Dagat-Dagatan,

launching government rental housing a few weeks before Habitat as a sign of her

government's benevolence and "revolution against impoverishment." Priced at two

to three times the squatters' current rate, it was less a solution than a media stunt,

one requiring "soldiers of the Presidential Guard Battalion wearing combat fatigues

and carrying M-16 rifles" and a government agent sweep of a neighboring slum,

Barrio Boulevard, to mask the systematic dispossession taking place. See "Philip-

pine Squatters and Martial Law Remedies," statement by Coordinating Council

of People's Organizations of Tondo Foreshore, Navotas, Malabon, for the U.N.

Human Settlements Conference, Vancouver, British Columbia, May-June 1976, np.

25. The competition guidelines are reprinted in Michael Seelig, "Tondo and the

Competition Program," in The Architecture ef Se!fHelp Communities, p. 30. 26. Gutheim, "Habitat: Toward Shelter," p. 3.

27. "This felicity, as the individual's better than just living," Foucault argued,

"must in some way be drawn on and constituted into state utility: making men's

happiness the state's utility, making men's happiness the very strength of the

state." Michel Foucault, Security, Territory, Population : Lectures at the Colli!9e de

France, 1977-1978, trans. Graham Burchell (New York: Palgrave, 2007), p. 327.

28. Gutheim, "Habitat: Toward Shelter," p. 5.

29. Seelig, The Architecture ef Self-Help Communities, p. 10. 30. Gutheim, "Habitat: Toward Shelter," p. 5.

31. Blake Hughes, quoted in "The Vancouver Art Gallery to Present Four-Part

Program During Habitat," press release, April 2, 1976, p. 2, CVA.

32. "The International Design Competition for the Urban Environment of

Developing Countries Focused on Manila," July 22, 1975, p. 8. Document sent

to participants, Archives of the Vancouver Art Gallery, henc efor th VAG. For an

example of Tondo residents' engagement, see Zone One Tondo Organization,

People's Participation in Urban Development Plannin9 (Manila: Zone One Tondo

Organization, 1975).

33. Payer, The World Bank, p. 328.

34. The Wilson Center, "Wilson Center Experts: Aprodicio Laquian," avail-

able at http: //www.wilson ce nter.o rg /sta ff/aprod icio-laquian. See also biographi-

cal note in Architectural Record, May 1976, p. 101, and Aprodicio A. Laquian,

"The City in Nation-Building: Politics in Metropolitan Manila," PhD diss.,

MIT, 1965.

35. Julia Gatley discusses Athfield in "Counterculture Themes in the Growth

and Development of Athfield Architects," paper presented at the Society of Archi-

tectural Historians of Australia and New Zealand, Gold Coast, Queensland,

OUTLAW TERRITORIES

Australia, July 2-5, 2013, p. 30.

36. Athfield's design report explained, "A se nse of pl ace must be stro ngly

defined ... hence the use of a strong physical barrier around the Baran gay ... within

which are housed the industrial and c raft workshops .... This barrier would be a

'working periphery."' Press release, p. 2.

37. Ian Hogan, "Self-Help/ Tonda, Manila," Architectural Design, October

1976, p. 594·

38. For the most compre hensive acco unts and images of A th field's sc he me, see

Seelig, The Architecture ef Se!fHelp Communities, pp. 37-47; Architectural Record, May 1976, pp. 114-23; Joan Lowndes, "New Zea lander Exh ibits Winning Settle-

ment Design," Vancouver Sun, May 31, 1976, p. 35; Mildred Schmertz, "The 'Tonda'

Competition: The Internat iona l Architecture Foundation's Compet iti on for Squat-

ter Resettlement in Manila," Ekistics 43.252 (1975), pp. 292-95.

39. Wolf van Eckardt, "Squatters: A Palmy Solution," Washington Post, June

5 , 1976, p. Bi.

40. Lowndes, "New Zealander Exhibits Winning Settlement Design," p. 35.

4i. Schmertz, "The 'Tonda' Competition," p. 295.

42. '"You know, before ripping open the sea led envelope to find out whom

they had chosen, everyone on the jury was convinced that a Filipino was behind

the design,' said Mr. A th field recently, having never set foot outside New Zealand

until his proposed community, or barangay, was a star exhibit at Habitat." William

Marlin, "Ian A th field-Architect Thinks of People First," Christian Science Moni-

tor, August 13, 1976, p. 19.

43. Paul Go ldb erger, "New Zealand Architect Flouts Rules," New York Times,

June 22, 1976, p. 30.

44. Ibid.

45. Marlin, " Ian Athfie ld -Architect Thinks of People First," p. 19.

46. Mary Mountier, "Self-Help Housing," Designscape, September 1976,

PP· 29-30.

47. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article 25 (1) reads: "Evt•ry

one has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of

himself and of his fami ly, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and

necessary socia l services."

48. Blake Hughes to Alvin Balkind, chief curator, Vancouver Art Gallny,

September 24, 1975, VAG.

49. "The Right to Build," interim report, September 15, 1976, np, VAG.

50. "Habitat Meeting at the Vancouver Art Gallery, Feb. 18, 1976 at 10 a.111.,"

VAG.

51. Recounted in "Notes from Meeting held at Kovach's Office, Feb. 6, 1<176

506

NOTES

at 1 :45 p.m. to discuss the Habitat exhibition to be displayed at the Vancouver Art

Gallery, May 31- July 4, 1976," p. 4, VAG.

52. Ibid., pp. 3 and 2.

53. Ibid., p. 2. 54. Hearts and Minds received wide visibility at Cannes in 1974 before its

release was delayed by a legal suit bought by interviewee Walt Rostow. On the

film, see Peter Siskind, "Hearts and Minds," Cineaste 7.1 (1975), pp. 31-32, and

Bernard Weiner, "Hearts and Minds," Film Q::arterly 28.2 (Winter 1974-1975),

pp. 60-63. 55. Michel Foucault, "Society Must Be Defended": Lectures at the College de France,

1975-76, trans. David Macey (New York: Picador, 2003), p. 15.

56. Seelig, The Architecture ef Se!fHelp Communities, p. 18. 57. Mildred Schmertz, "Habitat: The U.N. Conference on Hum an Sett lements

in Vancouver Was Hampered by Political Posturing,'' Architectural Record, August

197 6, P· 37 · 58. Seelig points to this as a benefit in The Architecture ef Se!J-Help Communi-

ties, p. 18. 59. Habitat: Toward Shelter, exhibition brochure, VAG.

6o . Lowndes, "New Zealander Exhibits Winning Settlement Design," P· 35·

61. Video recording of John Turner, "Housing the Poor," lecture delivered at

Habitat Forum, Jun e 7, 1976, University of British Co lumbi a Archives, Centre for

Human Settlement fonds, videotape 5 17 .

62. Gutheim, "Habitat: Toward Shelter," p. 5.

63. See Bernard Rudofsky, Architecture without Architects (New York: Museum

of Modern Art, 1964).

64. Habitat: Toward Shelter, exhibition brochure.

65. See, for instance, Barry Bergdoll, foreword to Jean-Fran~ois Lejeune and

Michelangelo Sabatino (eds.), Modern Architecture and the Mediterranean: Vernacular

Dialogues and Contested Identities (New York: Routledge, 2010), pp. xv-xix.

66 . The third prize went to Sau Li Chan of Malaysia, with four further designs

receiving hon orable mentions: Holl, Tanner and Cropper of San Francisco; Robert

F. Olwell and Jim Fong from San Francisco; Hector Giron de la Pena and his team

from Mexico; and Akira Kuryu and his team from Japan .

6 7. See, for instance, Gyorgy Kepes, The New Landscape in Art and Science (Chi-

cago: Paul Theobald, 1956), and Kevin Lynch, The Imag e ef the City (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1960). See also Reinhold Martin, The Organizational Complex :

Architecture, Media, and Corporate Space (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2003).

68. Seelig, The Architecture ef Se!f Help Communities, p. 108. 6 9 . Maybe some of the nearly two thousand registered competitors who failed

OUTLAW TERRITORIES

to submit did so as a form of refusal, although I have not yet found evidence to this effect.

70. Charles Correa, "Wall-to-Wall Squatters," Times ef India, May 16, 1970 , p. 10.

71. Wagner, "Human Settlements," p. 95.

72. Mildred Schmertz, "From Slum to Community, from Despair to Hope,"

Architectural Record, May 1976, p. 96 .

73. Aprodicio Laquian, quoted in ibid., p. 96.

74. Schmertz, "From Slum to Comm unity,'' p. 97.

75. Ibid., pp. 99 and 98.

76. Robert S. McNamara, in "Comments by World Leaders," Architectural

Record, May 1976, p. 158.

77· Ibid., and Rob er t S. McNamara, "The Significance of Habitat," Finance and

Development 13.1, March 1, 1976, p. 5.

78. Payer, The World Bank, pp. 22 and 21.

79· Clyde Sanger, "Filipino Protest Rocks Habitat," Guardian, June 7, 1976,

P· 4· See also "Imelda Marcos Dodges Demo to Speak of Manila Squatters," Prov -

ince, Jun e 8, 1976, clipping, CVA.

Bo. "2,000 Seized in Manila During Habitat Protest," Vancouver Sun, June s. 1976, clipping, CVA. See also Sanger, "Filipino Protest Rocks Habitat," and "Mar·

cos Opponents Schedule Demonstration," Province, Jun e 7, 1976, p. 25.

81. "Tondo Squatters Answer Back," Habitat Forum News, Jun e 11, 1976, p. 2.

82. R. Rajaretnam, "The Philippines: A Survey for 1976," Southeast Asian Ajfam

4 (January 1977), p. 189.

83. "Mrs. Marcos Defends Gov't Slum Action," Vancouver Sun, June 7, 1976,

P· 41. 84. " Imeld a Marcos Dodges Demo."

85. Ibid.

86. "Filipino Raps Gov't: Plea for Place to Live," Province, Jun e 10, 1976, dip · ping, CVA.

87. Anne Harvey, "Press Reports of 2,000 Jailed False, Mrs. Marcos Allegrs,"

Vancouve r Sun, June 8, 1976, p. 16.

88. Wideman, "The Philippines: Five Years of Martial Law," p. 66.

89. "Imelda Marcos Dodges Demo."

90. "Mrs. Marcos Defends Gov't Slum Action."

91. See Geoff Payne, " In ternationa l Agencies and Third World Developmt•nt,"

Architectural Design, October 1976, pp. 601-603.

92 . See Wurfel, "Martial Law in the Philippines."

93· Symbol ef the Compassionate Society: Imelda Romualdez Marcos, First J ady 11/

508

NOTES

the Philippines, four-page brochure, np, nd.

94. I am thinking of the argument made by Thomas Keenan in "Drift: Politics

and the Simulation of Real Life ," Grey Room 21 (Fall 2005), pp. 94-111.

95. As they exp lain, "This state of exception is inscribed in a temporality of

emergency, which may become perennial through successive plans and missions,

confirming the impossibility of reestablishing normal order, and in a spatiality of

exclusion manifested in relief corridors and protected enclaves within territories

that are no longer subject to a state monopoly of legitimate vio lence." Didier

Fassin and Mariella Pandolfi (eds.), Contemporary States ef Emergency: The Politics ef Military and Humanitarian Interventions (New York: Zone Books, 2010), p. 16.

96. "Philippine Squatters and Martial Law Remedies," np.

97. Ibid . See also Aprodicio Laquian, "Habitat: The End of the Beginning?"

IDRC Reports 5.3 (1976), pp. 12- 14, where he indicates that the IORC spo nsored

the participation of Tondo residents in the judging without noting that Herrera

had been blocked.

98. Payer, The World Bank, p. 328.

99. Bernard Wideman, "Squatters: An Un settling Problem," Far Eastern Eco-

nomic Review, March 5, 1976, reprinted in "Philippine Squatters and Martial Law

Remedies." Wideman was a lso a correspondent for the Washington Post, and his

reporting on the Philippines made him a target of attempted censorship.

100. I am thinking here of the argument made by Hannah Arendt in "The

Decline of the Nation State and the End of the Rights of Man," in The Origins ef Totalitarianism (San Diego: Harcourt Brace, 1966), pp. 267-302.

101. "Prize-Winning Architect Reacts to Slum Protest," Vancouver Sun, June

10, 1976, p. 8 1. 102. Sanger, "Filipino Protest Rocks Habitat," p. 4.

103. Ian Athfield, quoted in "Prize-Winning Architec t Reacts to Slum Protest,"

P· 81. 104. Mary Mountier, editoria l note accompanying "Self-Help Housing," p. 31.

105. Mildred Schmertz defended the Tondo competition in Ekistics. Although

Dagat-Dagatan was to her large ly "ideal" as a "prototypical site for an international

design competition," she was forced to acknow ledge that problems ensued. See

Schmertz, "The 'Tondo' Competition," p. 292 .

106. John F. C. Turner, quoted in "Marcos Opponents Schedule Demonstra-

tion," The Province, Jun e 7, 1976 , p. 25.

107. Ibid.

108. John F. C. Turner, "Local Participation Lacking in Tondo Competition,"

Ekistics 43.252 (November 1976), p. 296.

109. Turner, "Local Participation Lacking,'' p. 297.

OUTLAW TERRITORIES

110. Turner did not organize the Self-Help and Low Cost Housing Symposium.

Through Monica Pidgeon at Architectural Desi9n, in 1974, he proposed a related

program to Habitat Forum under the rubric of the Architectural Association's

Program on Alternatives in Housing, Local Building and Planning, but they were

informed that foreign initiatives could not be funded by the Canadian government.

The symposium was organized by two recent graduates from the University of

British Columbia: Bruce Fairbairn (a planner) and Charles Haynes (an architect).

As outlined in a brochure, their stated ambition was to take advantage of the vast

numbers of people interested in self-help and low cost housing who would br

attending the conference in order facilitate meeting, information exchange and th1·

establishment of an ongoing network or international association. Self Help &_low

Cost Housin9 Symposium: Pro9ram Guide, Association in Canada Serving Organiza-

tions for Human Settlements, Association in Canada Serving Organizations for

Human Settlements fonds (aka Habitat Collection), University of British Columbia

Library Rare Books and Special Collections, henceforth UBC.

111. Alfred Heller, "The View from Jericho," Sierra Club Bulletin, Septemh1•r

1976, p. 12.

112. Joseph Handwerger, "Meanwhile, the Nongovernmental Habitat Forum

Emphasizes Self-Help and Smallness," AJA journal, August 1976, p. 44.

113. "Habitat Forum Symposium on Self-Help and Low-Cost Housing," Ekisllrs

43.252 (November 1976), p. 296.

114. Video recording of Turner, "Housing the Poor."

115. Rod Burgess, "Petty-Commodity Housing or Dweller Control?: A Critiqur

of John Turner's Views on Housing Policy," World Development 6. 9-6.10 (Septem·

her-October 1978), p. 1130.

116. Giorgio Agamben, "What Is a Camp?," trans. Vincenzo Binetti and Cesari•

Casarino, in Agamben, Means without End: Notes on Politics (Minneapolis: Univ1·r·

sity of Minnesota Press, 2000), pp. 37 and 39.

117. See, for instance, the obituary note on Cusipag by Ted Alcuitas, Baliu,

August 2, 2013, http://www.balita.ca/2013/08/ruben-cusipag-pumanaw.

118. "Local Filipino Group Protests Arrest of Squatters," Vancouver Sun, Junr

7, 1976, P· 41.

119. William Marlin, "Helping to House Manila's Urban Poor," Christian Sr1

ence Monitor, August 6, 1976, p. 21.

120. Marlin even cast the IA Fas "unusually attentive to the indigenous ('Ul

tural character and deeply felt concerns of the people in defining the guiddi1w~

in consultation with the distinguished design and development firm of Guth1•i111/

Seelig/Erickson." Ibid., p. 21.

121. Hubert-Jan Henket, "Cruel Habitats," Town and Country Plannm.q 44

510

NOTES

(September 1976), pp. 390 and 391.

122. Ibid., p. 392. Henket's more romantic solution was to encourage decentral-

ization and to facilitate the preservation of traditional forms of life.

123. Ibid., p. 390.

124. "Conference Profile," Jericho: The Habitat Newspaper, June 8, 1976, P· 3·

125. Hogan, "Self-Help/ Tondo, Manila," p. 594·

126. Payer, The World Bank, p. 407 n. 26.

127. "Slum Evictions in Manila Embarrass the World Bank," New York Times,

October 7, 1976, p. 69. '"What they said was that the First Lady said there are

some tourists coming and we must have the place cleaned up,' he said," another

squatter recounting that they were requested to paint their houses. '"The next

morning,' he went on, 'the captain came down with some police and the civil

engineers and they said our house was being demolished."' They were then forced

to live on the sidewalk for five days before being taken by dump trucks and garbage

trucks to the outskirts of the city, three hours away from their work.

128. Bernard Wideman, "World Bank Embroiled in Manila Slum," Washin9ton

Post, October 6, 1976, p. A3.

129 . See Wendy Brown, Walled States, Wanin9 Soverei9nty (New York: Zone

Books, 20IO).

130. "Philippine Squatters and Martial Law Remedies," np.

13 1. Hobart Rowen, "A Deep Divide in the Philippines," Washin9ton Post,

October 16, 1976, p. A15.

132. Payer, The World Bank, p. 319.

133. Wideman, "World Bank Embroiled in Manila Slum."

134. Rowen, "A Deep Divide in the Philippines."

135. Ibid.

136. Ibid.

137. Payer, The World Bank, p. 321 and 324·

138. Ibid., p. 333

139. Ibid., p. 338.

140. Ibid., p. 345.

141. Bernard Wideman, "Manila Slum Leader Detained and Tortured, Lawyer

Claims," Washin9ton Post, May 11, 1977, p. A15.

142. Ibid.

1 4 3 . "Philippines Slum Leader Freed after U.S. Protest," Washin9ton Post, May

14, 1977, p. A4.

144. US Con9ressional Record, House ef Representatives, H 11211, daily edition October 18, 1977, P· 34113.

145. Wideman, "The Philippines: Five Years of Martial Law," p. 66.

511

OUTLAW TERRITORIES

146. William J. Butler, John P. Humphrey, and G.E. Bisson, The Decline ef Democracy in the Philippines (Geneva: International Commission of Jurists, 1977).

147. Richard Pierre Claude, "The Decline of Human Rights in the Republic

of the Philippines: A Case Study," New York law School Review 24 (1978), p. 215 .

148. Ibid., pp. 215-16.

149. Richard Pierre Claude, "Information Technology and Statistics," chapter

6 in Claude, Science in the Service ef Human Ri9hts (Phi lad elphi a: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2002), pp. 100-25.

150. Wideman, "The Philippines: Five Years of Martial Law," p. 66.

151. See Claude, " In formation Technology and Statistics." As Claude explained,

by 1976, the Task Force Detainees of the Philippines (TFDP), an NGO founded

in 1974 by religious leaders, had six thousand dossiers detailing the systematic

vio lation of human rights in the extensive network of political detention ce nters

in the country.

152. Cla ud e, "The Decline of Human Rights in the Philippines," p. 216.

iSJ. Ibid.

154. Noam Chomsky and Edward S. Herman, The Washin9ton Connection and

Third World Fascism (Montreal: Black Rose Books, 1979), p. 237.

155. See Payer, The World Bank, pp. 333-39 on evidence documented by Dieter

Obendorfer, and "Revolutionary Ideas of 1972 Becoming Today's Convention,"

Report: News and Views from the World Bank, September-October i979, pp. I, 3, 6.

156. See See lig, The Architecture ef Seif-Help Communities, p. 183. In his August 4, 2009 obituary in Architectural Record, "Remembering Blake Hughes, A Noble

Publisher," Martin Filler indicated that the project "was never implemented by

the regime of Philippines president Ferdinand Marcos, who preferred to build

more grandiose monuments to his rule," available at http://archrecord.construc·

ti on .com/news/daily/ archives/ 090804blake _ hughes.asp(subscription required).

157. On bare life, see Giorgio Agamben, Homo Sacer: Soverei9n Power and Bare

l!fe, trans. Daniel Heller-Roazen (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1998), and

Agamben, Means without End. On subjects refusing to be reduced to bare life, st•t·

Judith Butler's remarks in Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak and Judith Butler, Who Sin91

the Nation-State?: lan9ua9e, Politics, Belon9in9 (London: Seagull Books, 2007).

158. Kate Stohr, "100 Years of Humanitarian Design," in Architecture for

Humanity (eds.), Desi9n Like You Give a Damn: Architectural Responses to Humanitar·

ian Crises (New York: Metropolis Books, 2006), p. 34.

159. Ibid.

160. Power, as Foucault reminds us, is not a given, but the "implementation and

deployment of a relationship of force." Foucault, "Society Must Be Defended," p. 1 s. 161. For a compelling articulation of such dilemmas, see Alessandro P1·1ti,

NOTES

Sandi Hila!, and Eyal Weizman, Architecture efter Revolution (Berlin: Sternberg

Press, 2014).

162. Etienne Balibar, contribution to Emily Apter, Thomas Keenan, et al.,

"Humanism without Borders: A Dossier on the Human, Humanitarianism, and

Human Rights," Alph abet City: Social Insecurity 7 (2000), pp. 43 and 42.

CHAPTER SEVEN: DISCOURSE, SEEK, INTERACT

1. Lawrence B. Anderson, "School of Architecture and Planning," in "Report

of the President, 1968," Massachusetts Institute efTechnolo9y Bulletin 104.3 (Decem-

ber 1968), p. 29.

2. On the federal government's understanding of the "urban crises," see Senate

Committee on Government Operations, United States Congress, Subcommittee

on Executive Reorganization, Federal Role in Urban Affairs, Hearin9s, Ei9hty-Ninth

Con9ress, Second Session and Ninetieth Con9ress, First Session (Washington, DC: US

Government Printing Office, 1966-68).

3. To make this shift clear, we need only to mention the founding of the Center

for Urban and Regional Studies in 1957 and, two years later and in coll aboration

with Harvard University, the estab li shment of the Joint Center for Urban Studies.

Moreover, in October 1966, the Department of Architecture hosted a conference

entit led " In venting the Future Environment," which brought architects together

with economists, political scientists, planners, philosophers, social psychologists,

and "futurists." The proceedings were published as Stanford Anderson (ed.), Plan-

nin9for Diversity and Choice: Possible Futures and Their Relation to the Man-Controlled

Environment (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1968).

4. See Stuart W. Leslie, The Cold War and American Science: The Military-

Industrial-Academic Complex at MIT and Stanford (New York: Co lum bia University

Press, 1993).

5. J. William Fulbright, "The War and Its Effects: The Military-Industrial-

Academic Complex," in Herbert I. Schiller (ed .), Super-State: Readin9s in the

Military-Industrial Complex (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1970), pp. 171-78.

Reprinted from Con9ressional Recard, 9oth Congress, First Session, December 13,

1967, vol. 11 3, part 27, pp. 36181-84. Today, Fulbright explained, "Our country is

becoming conditioned to permanent conflict. More and more our economy, our

Government, and our universities are adapting themselves to the requirements of

continuing war-total war, limited war, and cold war." Ibid., pp. 173-74.

6 . Charles L. Miller, "Urban System Laboratory," in "Report of the President

and the Chancellor Issue, 1973-1974," Massachusetts Institute ef Technolo9y Bulletin 110.4 (November 1974), p. 122.

7. Charles L. Miller, "Urban Systems Laboratory," in "Report of the President,