Power architecture : reading the architecture of electricity

Abstract

Power Architecture: Reading the Architecture of Electricity examines "Text on Electricity," by Francis Ponge, and the architectural design of a series of hydroelectric projects in New Zealand initiated between 1948 and 1956. Through these, it studies the impact of electrification on the built environment. Electricity became a condition of modernisation for both industrial and emerging nations, and as such is intrinsically integrated with the idea of modernity. A utopian aura surrounding electricity at the turn of the century saw projected as significant the role of electricity in the rapid modernisation of all areas of life. This attitude found its way into popular ideology from the electricians themselves to the politicians and moralists who recognised the wider implications of this power. For architecture, this posed an added question of how to engage with new modes of living. This debate primarily engaged with the 'technique' of engineering, associated with a profession moving with the times. By 1954, this integration remained incomplete in France. Architects were lagging behind other professions in their adoption of electrical technology, and in their acknowledgment of the changes life had undergone due to electrification. In France, the Compagnie d'Électricité thus commissioned prose-poet Francis Ponge to "seduce" architects with electricity. Ponge generates an image of electricity completely synchronous with that of the utopian electricians. More importantly for this project, though, is Ponge's exploration of the 'technique' of language. In "Text on Electricity", Ponge actively explores the literary means to approximate electricity and power in writing. With this literary model established, Power Architecture then turns to architecture as another 'technique' exploring the representation of electricity and its significance to a nation. In New Zealand, this process found representation in the architecture and writing of Frederick H Newman, a Viennese architect. He was conversant with the application of ideological programmes in architecture, having worked in the Soviet Union during the 1930s. Through the Hydroelectric Design Office of the New Zealand Ministry of Works, Newman explored not only the role of architecture within infrastructural engineering projects, but also the architectural expression of electrical production. Power Architecture is divided into three sections, each concerned with capturing the spirit of modernity in the guise of electricity. "Reticulating Modernity" looks to modernity as a time of change, in which new technologies fundamentally affected life. In a number of countries, including New Zealand, these changes were explored from legislature through to artistic and architectural practice. "Writing to Architecture" then takes the models developed in the first section and reveals their operation in Ponge's "Text on Electricity." In "Constructing Power in New Zealand", the design work of the Hydroelectric Design Office is studied as both an exploration of architectural 'technique' and an expression of New Zealand's state of modernisation. It explores this primarily through the architectural compromises made to this power's development. Each section also explores a body of creative and historical works intent on understanding the changed modes of life offered by the new technology of electricity. Power Architecture also offers a mode of analysis of the architect, writer, and electrician as 'technicians,' operating within individual specialist boundaries that negotiate their identity through an interaction with each other. Exploring a perception of architecture as a 'technique', this thesis analyses the architecture of electricity as heavily reliant on its context and highly malleable in the face of technological and cultural development. For Power Architecture, that context is modernity and its imperative is modernisation.