ARCHITECTURAL PROMENADE AS SCENE OF WRITING: THE JUSSIEU LIBRARY (1992) BY OMA/REM KOOLHAAS

Abstract

The study investigates implementation of conceptual and textual techniques associated with poststructuralism (such as poststructuralist concepts of writing, text, intertext, discoursive practices) in Rem Koolhaas's project the Jussieu Library (1992) planned within the Sorbonne University complex in Paris. The main hypothesis of the study is that Koolhaas produces in the project for the Jussieu Library transgression of language of modernistic architecture conceiving the concept of architectural promenade as a scene of writing. In other words, from the understanding of the concept of architectural promenade as a self-reflexive, abstract and autonomous concept, we move to the understanding of the architectural promenade as culturally dependent, but also for culture and society determinant concept. How does Koolhaas embody operative ideological practices of poststructuralism in the case of the Jussieu Library? How can we understand the concept of architectural promenade as a scene of writing? In other words, how can we understand the architectural promenade as a field of lines of deterritorialization and reterritorialization of different narratives, discourses, ideologies, contexts? What role could this concept of the architecture have on society? In theoretical context the study refers to the investigations of: Jacques Derrida, Michael Foucault, Joseph Beuys, Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari.