Prosthetic Theory Disciplining of Architecture - Wigley

Prosthetic Theory: The Disciplining of Architecture
Author(s): Mark Wigley

Source: Assemblage , Aug., 1991, No. 15 (Aug., 1991), pp. 6-29
Published by: The MIT Press
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Mark Wigley
Prosthetic Theory:
The Disciplining of
Architecture
Mark Wigley is Assistant Professor of What is it to talk of prosthesis here in architectural dis-
Architecture, Princeton University. course? Or, rather, what is it to talk of it again, for was not
modern architecture simply the thought of architecture as
prosthesis? Displaced from artifice into the artificial, archi-
tecture became a technological extension of the body that
is neither natural nor cultural. Modern architecture is the
space of the artificial. As Le Corbusier argues,
We all need means of supplementing our natural capabilities,

since nature is indifferent, inhuman (extra-human), and incle-
ment; we are born naked and with insufficient armor. . . . The
barrel of Diogenes, already a notable improvement on our natural
protective organs (our skin and scalp), gave us the primordial cell
of the house; filing cabinets and copy-letters make good the inad-
equacies of our memory; wardrobes and sideboards are the con-
tainers in which we put away the auxiliary limbs that guarantee
us against cold or heat, hunger or thirst. . . . Our concern is
with the mechanical system that surrounds us, which is no more
than an extension of our limbs; its elements, in fact, artificial
limbs.
This concern with buildings as "human-limb objects" worn

like clothing would even become as literal as Gideon's
identification of the nineteenth-century interest in "the
problem of mechanically operated artificial limbs" with the
development of mechanized furniture as an extension of
the mobile body, which, in turn, he identifies with mod-
ern architecture.2 In modern discourse, architecture is no
1. Artificial intelligence? From longer simply the supplement of the body of the building.
Orthopadische Behandlung The classical relationship between structure and ornament,
Kriegsuerwundeter, 1915. always understood as that between a body and its clothes,

141.117.125.173 on Wed, 06 Sep 2023 21:28:33 +00:00
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assemblage 15
has been displaced onto that between body and building.

Traditional ornamentation appears to be removed from the
building at the very moment when the building itself
becomes a kind of ornament worn by its occupant. But
this mechanized ornament is structural. Indeed, it restruc-
tures the body that wears it.
Prosthetic architecture becomes a surrogate body "intended

to second the person as such";3 in this it recalls Freud's
claim, in Civilization and its Discontents, that, like the
other technologies of communication and perception -
the aircraft, the telescope, the photographic camera, the 2. Artificial limb, 1850s. From
Sigfried Gideon, Mechanization
telephone, and writing - the dwelling is a prosthetic
Takes Command, 1948.
extension, an "auxiliary organ," but one worn as a substi-
tute for the woman's body, "the first lodging."4 That is, the
building is the prosthetic substitute for a body already
occupied, in fantasy, as a building. The categories of body,
prosthesis, and architecture slip into one another. Freud
wrote this during the time he was himself wearing a pros-
thetic jaw, which his friends called "the monster" and with
which he was waging, as he put it, a "small-scale war."5
A year after it was installed, in a letter to Lou Andreas-
Salome, Freud asked what she thought the difference
was between a person's relationship to such a prosthesis,
"which tries to be and yet cannot be the self," and to his
body.6 Seeing the prosthesis as the exemplar, rather than a
deviation, of the condition of the body, she replied, "For
that is after all the most quintessentially human thing in
man, that he both is and is not his own body - that his
body despite everything is a piece of external reality like
any other, which can be identified by him with the help of
his sense organs from outside himself."7 The body itself is
a prosthesis of consciousness. But then Freud had argued
much earlier that even consciousness is itself a prosthetic
attachment, worn as a kind of"garment" like any other
tool.8
Such a blurring of identity is produced by all prostheses.

They do more than simply extend the body. Rather, they
are introduced because the body is in some way "deficient"
or "defective," in Freud's terms, or "insufficient," in Le
3. "The iris diaphragm of the
Corbusier's terms. In a strange way, the body depends camera and that of the eye."
upon the foreign elements that transform it. It is reconsti- From Walter Gropius, Scope of
tuted and propped up on the "supporting limbs" that Total Architecture, 1943.

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Wigley
extend it. Indeed, it becomes a side effect of its extensions. is itself established with a certain concept of architecture.
The prosthesis reconstructs the body, transforming its lim- Some of these complications can be unpacked here by
its, at once extending and convoluting its borders. The tracing the role of architecture in the "home" of philoso-
body itself becomes artifice. phy - the university.
Of course, the mechanical eyes, ears, and skin provided by Nowhere is the constitutional nature of the architectural
modern systems of construction/representation have given
"metaphor" more evident than in the university. The uni-
way to technologies that relocate architecture within an
versity is literally the space of the thesis. Since its origin at
electronic space (first mapped by Marshall McLuhan's
the beginning of the thirteenth century, its central activity
Understanding Media, which is, significantly, subtitled
has been the "disputation" in which "theses" would be
Extensions of Man)9 within which the human body, no
defended. The test for all degrees was the ability to defend
longer natural, is but an appliance attached to digital
a thesis by identifying what makes it stand up. This was
memories. So to raise the question of prosthesis in archi-
done by correctly applying the accepted structural/logical
tecture again would be to update the discourse of modern-
rules taken mainly from Aristotle's Topics, a "theory of
ity by examining this strange space of the artificial today.
places" that specified all the different ways a thesis could
But before reviving the question of the prosthesis in archi-
be either "constructed" or "demolished." The key function
tectural discourse, we should hesitate at least twice. First,
of these dialectical ceremonies was to define the place of
because the concept of prosthesis is always already archi-
things by establishing their structural relationship to certain
tectural and, again, because architectural discourse is itself
accepted grounds. This idea everywhere organizes the uni-
a prosthesis.
versity. As Heidegger argues, the concept of the university
The meaning of prosthesis depends on that of the root the- is based on the search for grounds and foundations that is
sis from the Greek for "placing," a "position," a "proposi- philosophy. I In this sense, the university is everywhere
tion," "laid down," to be "maintained against attack," to philosophical. Hence the long debate as to whether philos-
"make a stand." This figure of standing in a place orga- ophy should have a designated place within the university
nizes the Western philosophical tradition in which theory just like the other faculties or have a higher place or
is understood as the construction of arguments that can occupy each faculty in an organizational role. What each
be defended, theses that stand up. Theory has always of the different accounts of the university share is the
described itself as a kind of building. The philosopher is a claim that it is, first and foremost, a space of construction.
kind of architect who pays attention first to the ground, All of the conceptual oppositions that define the limits of
establishing secure foundations, and then applies structural the university turn on this architectural figure. The inside
principles in order to construct a sound thesis, a solid of the university is the space of the well-constructed thesis
structure standing in a place, or, more precisely, a struc- whereas the outside requires structuring, control.
ture that places, a standing that defines place.10 A "pros-
The university has an architecture before it has buildings.
thesis," then, is always architectural. It is always the
Universities were legally established as such with a "deed
supplement of a structure - but one that cannot simply
of foundation" (originally solicited from the Pope) that set
be removed. Grafted on to repair some kind of structural
up the faculty as a "corporation" (universitas) with certain
flaw, it is a foreign element that reconstructs that which
rights. Indeed, the faculty were themselves "founded" and
cannot stand up on its own, at once propping up and
"erected" in a place. Eventually, such an erection would
extending its host. The prosthesis is always structural,
define the place of a discipline, as in a professorship that
establishing the place it appears to be added to.
would be established with its own deed of foundation. The
So in thinking about the status of architectural discourse, university, then, is a system of such places, a topology,
something as apparently simple as a "theory of architec- governed by a theory of place. But while its primary role
ture" becomes complicated because the concept of theory was to define the place of things by developing theses, it

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assemblage 15
was itself essentially placeless. The universities emerged

., I , .,-... · ,, *-an -g^out of studium generale, schools that attracted both stu-
V "r~~'" " h m ndents and teachers from outside a local region, but not to a
in the old cities that would frequently be changed. 12 Uni-

versities would often move from space to space within
cities, between cities, and even between countries. The
·u Reuniversity is, by definition, a "corporation," a body of fac-
Ph,.i~-, :ulty independent of any particular physical location. This
constitutional placelessness was written into the original
papal bulls of foundation that established the key right of
'~2c~ _5_ s r! the corporation as ius ubique docendi - the right of any
master to teach at any other similarly recognized school.
Thus the spatial context of the university is not a group of
buildings or a city or even a nation, but other universities,
a space defined solely by a set of institutional practices.
These practices are seen to "shape" the mind, to "build" it
up through the endless repetition of architectonic
principles.
The first university was established in Paris in response to

the growing demands for such an institution to control
teaching practices, of which the final and most influential
came from Stephen of Tournai, who distinguished between
the space of the mind and that of the body. The "stable"
mind is constructed by restricting its mobility:
IIIC -OST ;~*P~ NTKfU~e- ThIjJ I;I[ JLOSOPHitE The freedom of wandering [libertas vagandi] is divided into two:
the movement of the body through different places and the
movement of the mind through different images. The curious
4. Temple of Knowledge: in
wander with their eyes going from place to place, kingdom to
the building of liberal arts
grammar occupies the ground kingdom, city to city, province to province. ... . Those fickle and
floor and theology and unstable in mind also wander. ... . This freedom of wandering in
metaphysics the top. From the mind through different images tires and impedes scholars in
Gregorius Reisch, Margarita their studies and the cloistered in their prayers. 13
Philosophica, 1583.
The institutional architecture built into the practices of the
university resists the "wandering mind" before actual build-
ings are constructed to resist the "wandering body." Archi-
tecture was only used to "stabilize" an already operating
university when cities would offer buildings permanently
dedicated to teaching in order to persuade the highly
mobile faculty and students to remain in one place. 14 Only
then was a deed of foundation granted over the land and
10

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Wigley
buildings. 5 For the first time, the institutional metaphor of books, and treatises began to identify architecture as a priv-
building was applied to actual buildings. In fact, it was this ileged "public" art urgently in need of institutional
very metaphor that the buildings were called in to protect. control. 19 The tradition of architecture as an "extra of edu-
Architecture was used to protect the architectural concepts cation" was opposed in favor of controlling both the educa-
that structured the institution. The first buildings estab- tion of the architect and publications on architecture.20 It
lished solely for the university were special churches used was argued that were architecture grounded in every level
for the disputation of theses;16 the first thing to be given a of the educational system, from high school up to the uni-
physical place, then, was the thesis, the concept of place- versity, "publishers would soon fill the chasm."21 Architec-
ment itself. ture thus became a public art precisely by occupying the
space of publication.22 One of the central functions of the
These buildings, prosthetic supplements to the corporation,
university has always been the control of publication, regu-
remain foreign to the concepts they protect. There is no
lating both the production and distribution of books. The
place for the study of architecture within this institution.
architectural profession, in the form of the American Insti-
As a "mechanical" art, it has no place in the home of the
"liberal" arts. But this distinction between mechanical and
tute of Architects, which was set up in 1856, immediately
promoted the founding of both an architectural periodical
liberal depends on the architectural metaphor. It follows and a school of architecture.
from Aristotle's description of the theorist as an architect
(arkhitekton) placed above the manual laborer.17 It is pre-
cisely the figure of architecture that is used to exclude Such a school became possible because of a transformation
architecture. Ironically, architecture cannot simply enter in the status of the university. Until then, American uni-
the space of the thesis because this space is already orga- versities faithfully maintained the original institutional
nized by a certain theory of architecture, or rather, an structure turning around the disputation of theses. Like the
architectural theory, architecture itself remaining very first university students, the American student had to
untheorized. be "ready to defend his theses or positions."23 Indeed,
many of the theses being defended originated in the thir-
Nevertheless, in the nineteenth century, architecture was
teenth century. This traditional structure was itself
incorporated within the university. This recent develop-
defended by employing the accounts of the university as
ment, begun in the United States, rehearses familiar
providing a "liberal education" that had been developed to
exchanges from the long history of architecture's negotia-
counter the early nineteenth-century critics of the English
tion for a place as a discipline. But it uniquely focuses the
university.24 These accounts reaffirmed the core of the uni-
terms of this negotiation because it involves architecture
versity as architectonic in order to resist its "extension"
claiming a place within the same institution that houses
with new disciplines such as the emerging sciences. They
philosophy rather than within those institutions (like the
opposed not only the attachment of prosthetic disciplines
academies) whose own place was determined by the appli-
to the body of the university but also the idea that the
cation of the philosophical distinctions the universities
university was already a kind of prosthesis, an "instrument"
were set up to protect.
for "extending the boundaries of our knowledge."25 At the
The call for architecture to enter the university to establish same time, they offered architectural education as an
its grounds came at a time when it was seen as groundless. example of what should be excluded from the university.26
Repeatedly, American architecture in the mid-nineteenth Architecture remained at once the model for reason and
century is described as existing in an "abyss."18 This abyss foreign to it. And yet it needed to be governed by reason,
was a scene of theoretical and stylistic "chaos" and "confu- along with the other fine arts, which "are apt to forget
sion," produced by the growing realm of architectural pub- their place, and, unless restrained with a firm hand,
lications that disseminated multiple, partial, and false ideas instead of being servants, will aim at becoming principal
about the art. A series of letters to editors, articles, hand- . . .laying down the law in cases where they should be
11

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assemblage 15
subservient."27 Again, the architectural metaphor was used

to exclude, subordinate, and control architecture.
But the university was eventually expanded through the

addition of both the sciences and the fine arts. They were
admitted by extending the domain of the architectonic
principle rather than abandoning it. Both sets of disciplines
were redefined as an extension of the traditional scholarly
search for grounds and added as the "superstructure" to the
old "foundation" of the university. This displacement of
the university was accelerated with the Morril Land Use
Act of 1862, which established a number of Land Grant
Colleges throughout the country "in order to promote the
liberal and practical education of the industrial classes in
the several pursuits and professions of life." Gradually, the
differences between these new universities and the old ones
were blurred. The more technical universities accommo-
dated a liberal program while the liberal colleges accom-
modated the sciences. By the end of the nineteenth
century, the modern American university had been estab-
lished in a stable form combining liberal arts, fine arts,
sciences, and professional schools. The institution had
extended itself into the traditional gap between liberal and
practical but redefined this territory to preserve its basic
(architectural) principles. This disruption of the traditional
limits of the university created a double opening for archi-
tecture: first, to join the sciences, which were added from
1847, and, second, to join the fine arts, added from 1870.
The first school of architecture in a university was estab-

5. List of theses publicly lished in the first Land Grant College to be founded, the
defended at Harvard University Massachusetts Institute of Technology.28 It opened as a
in 1646 department within the School of Industrial Science in
1866. The year before, its founder, William Ware,
described the strategy by which it would occupy the uni-
versity: just as architecture exceeds the building it supple-
ments, the new discipline would graft itself onto the
sciences, rationalizing building with the existing technol-
ogy courses, but then importing the disciplinary "appara-
tus" of the library to rationalize that which exceeds
building to become fine art. It was this "essential equip-
ment" that would establish a place for architecture.
The photograph, in the form of prints, postcards, and

stereoscopic views for study and lantern slides for lec-
12

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Wigley
tures,29 was to play the same role with regard to the uni-
versity that the drawing had played in helping architecture
to gain a place in the first academies in the Renaissance.
The photographic image enabled the materiality of build-
ings to enter the immaterial space of the university. All the
different sizes and types of buildings in the world could be
brought into the same frame of the camera, assembled,
and compared. The photograph literally provided the
frame of reference for a new discipline. Ware proposed
that the architecture school would be organized around a
library of photographs, supported by models, casts, prints,
drawings, specimens of decorative materials, tiles, stained
glass, lecture diagrams, and books. In the teaching of both
building and architecture, the central concept was that of
the "collection."
The trouble is technological; there is a want of system and

method, and of means for general collection, and a general
diffusion of their results .... Modern science ... has happily
6. Beseler Oxy-Hydrogen
Stereopticon lantern slide brought it within our power to form collections of any nature and
"used by all the Normal to any extent, illustrating the history of art in all its forms...
Schools in the State of New Photography offers to bring the whole world to our door; and a
York." From The Magic Lantern systematic collection of architectural photographs, both of the
and Its Applications, 1886. ensemble and of the detail of buildings, so arranged as to be of
easy reference, would be an invaluable and indeed indispensable
auxiliary. 30
In emphasizing the collection, Ware had picked up some

of the arguments William Rogers had used in his original
proposal for the university circulated in 1861 to raise
financial and intellectual support for the venture. Rogers
argued for the creation of a central "Museum of Industrial
Art" in which objects would be classified in a way that
would in itself be an important source of "instruction."
Nor, in regard to any part of the Museum, should the great pur-
pose of instruction be lost sight of in the multitudinous gathering
of materials. A mere miscellaneous collection of objects, however
vast, has little power to instruct, or even to incite to inquiry. The
practical teaching and the real suggestiveness of a Museum is
almost wholly dependent on the clear and rational arrangement
of its parts, and the leading ideas which rule in their
classification. 31
7. Lantern slides used at the Ware appropriated and developed this theme in his letter
Massachusetts Institute of of 27 April 1865 to the original members of the institute,
Technology responding to Rogers's proposal of the previous year that
13

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assemblage 15
MIT would, from the start, include an architecture When Ware developed this lengthy letter into his proposed
school.32 This letter, which ends with Ware offering his course of instruction after being given the professorship, he
services and which undoubtedly led to his appointment as elaborated its suggestion that the student, too, might be
the first professor of architecture, begins with the optimistic understood as a collector, not merely surveying a field that
suggestion that a school of architecture would only involve has been newly "classified and arranged in an accessible
a "comparatively slight extension of your programme."33 and available shape" but even participating in the process
Ware identifies "design" as this "extension." But "between" of classification.38 Students would rehearse the teacher's
this prosthetic supplement and the main body of the uni- analysis of the archive rather than simply receiving its
versity is an "extensive region" that is "necessary to be gone results.39 Over the years, Ware gradually designed a series
over by the student, but which is at present almost unex- of exercises, known as "tours," by which students would
plored and in which a great deal of labor must be spent work their way through every object within the collection.
before a road can be established through it and made
practicable for your classes."34 The exploration of this The opening of the school had to be delayed for a year
uncharted territory between the scholarly space of the the- while Ware toured Europe, collecting, in addition to books
sis and the architectural prosthesis, which includes areas of and papers, "2,000 photographs, 500 prints, 400 plaster
both the study of architecture as a fine art and the study of casts, 200 crayon drawings, 40 water-colors, mostly of
building as a technological science,35 requires practices architectural subjects, and 30 manuscript architectural
of systematic collection. These practices are meant to map drawings, large and small, besides 100 sheets of working
this territory and thereby rationalize the connection of drawings, mostly tracings, and some specimens of tiles,
design to scholarship. The lines of the map, the network of pottery and stained glass."40 This collection established the
"roads" established through the region, would stitch design, library around which the school was organized; it grew so
and therefore architecture, onto the university. rapidly that by 1894 it included fifty thousand slides.41 In
the Rogers Building, where all the departments of MIT
were originally housed, a space was designated for Ware's
Ware presents the teacher as, first and foremost, a collec-
collection: the "architectural museum and library." Located
tor, assembling all the available fragments of architectural
above the institute's main lecture hall, scene of the grand
theories and designs in order to extract authorized lines of
public demonstrations of the advances of research, it
argument that can be passed on to students and thereby
marked the beginning of the territory in the building spe-
"fix" architectural practice.
cific to the school of architecture. It lay between the gen-
Any intelligent person by collecting and collating what has been eral spaces of the university and the most idiosyncratic of
said on this subject, discerning the points of agreement and con-
architectural spaces, the design studios that occupied what
tradiction among his authors, would be able at the end of his
was, in effect, the attic. The superstructural quality of this
studies to form a more intelligent opinion of the general question
roof space was symbolically opposed to the scientific labo-
than is probably in existence, and to convey to your classes a
ratories that filled the first floor and the foundational space
greater amount of useful information upon it than ever was
imparted ... The Institute could not do a greater service than of the basement (propping up, as it were, the lecture
to collect opinions and authorities, and by organizing discussion halls), the sites of research that would, indeed, become the
do something to fix professional usage.36 spaces upon which the university would build its reputa-
tion. Architecture was grafted on top of the structure pro-
This "labor" of collection was required because there were
vided by the sciences, its key rooms occupying the vestigial
no definitive scholarly publications on architectural theory
space of the building, the leftover space, or, more pre-
and practice that could be employed in the university.
cisely, the supplementary space.
Indeed, it was as the preliminary work toward preparing
the set of such textbooks that Ware himself would go on to This space was, in fact, the subject of a protracted conflict
publish throughout his career.37 between Rogers and the architects, Jonathan Preston (a
14

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Wigley
8. Rogers Building,
Massachusetts Institute of
Technology, 1864-65
founding member of the institute) and his son William.

Having argued, following a tour of European schools, that
their design for the institute could follow no known prece-
dent, the construction of the building began in April 1864,
but in February 1865 Rogers wanted to change the roof
form to a mansard roof to provide more teaching space.
The architects resisted, proposing to add a clearstory space
behind the building's classical pediment. The argument
became so heated and deadlocked that another architect
was called in to design the roof before the Prestons's pro-
posed addition was, for structural reasons, reluctantly
approved in May 1865, by which time Ware had entered
the picture and was negotiating for the unique require-
ments of architectural teaching.42 Symptomatically, archi-
tectural design occupied this prosthetic supplement to the
building. A space had been made for architecture in the
university that was not completely inside the university.
The world of the collection, and the lectures based on its
classification, inserted itself into the traditional interior of
the building, but the world of design remained outside this
interior, above the original ceiling line and yet underneath
9. Plan of Rogers Building,
the roof. Architecture was inside the university, but inside
fourth floor, showing design
as an outsider. studios
15

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10,11. Rogers Building,
architectural drawing rooms,
1876
12. Rogers Building,

architectural lecture and
drawing room, 1876
16

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13. Rogers Building, design
studio, 1876
14. Rogers Building,

architectural lecture and
drawing room, 1876
17

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assemblage 15
15, 16. Walker Building,

Technology, design studio
and studios leading into the
library, 1880s

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Wigley
17. Pierce Building,

Technology, architectural
lecture room, controlled by
Stereopticon lantern slide, 1904
19

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assemblage 15
But the architectural collection, far from staying within its the studio: other places, other times, other architects, other
designated space, spilled out into all the architectural schools, and other disciplines. These tokens bring all of
spaces, covering every surface. The space of architecture in these issues "into" design. The designer is seen as detached
the university literally became the space of the collection. from the physical space of the studio and set adrift among
The school immersed itself in its collection. While the the conceptual space of these representations. Inasmuch as
walls of the lecture rooms were covered with drawings and these tokens are held to be representations of something
projected lantern slide images, those of the drawing and "other," something "outside" the studio, they act to define
design rooms were lined with photographs, prints, draw- the interior, the space of design, the paradigmatic space of
ings, casts, tiles, stained glass - every type of representa- architecture. The whole series of symbolic forms of ritu-
tion that had been collected. These objects packed together alistic interaction with these objects, by students and by
systematically so obscured the walls that the collection teachers, sustains architecture's convoluted relationship
became the walls, defining, subdividing and rearranging with the institutional structure of the university. They at
the space. Students produced and displayed their drawings once define and defend the space of architecture relative to
under the critical eye of the assembled exemplars. This both the traditional interior of the university and its exte-
fetishistic layering of worshipped objects acted as a kind of rior. They construct and maintain a space for architecture
defence, protecting architecture from the claim that might that is neither inside nor outside the university.
come from below that design is not scholarly, that the
The defensiveness needed to maintain this vulnerable
prosthetic extension, in the end, does not really belong in
space was written into the arguments by which architecture
the university.
was first able to occupy the university. Even though in his
This close relationship between the collection and design proposed course of study Ware had argued that building
was preserved when the school of architecture moved into could be classified with technological science and architec-
the Walker Building in 1883, where it occupied the space ture with the technologies of the emerging science of art
above that given to chemistry and physics, and again when history, "design" as a fine art still threatened to escape clas-
it moved into the Pierce Building in 1892, before return- sification and hence the university. But Ware contended
ing to the Rogers Building in 1916 when the rest of the that this, too, was to be rationalized by "sound reason" in
university had moved to a new campus. Architecture occu- order to restrain architectural education to the "middle
pied the original center of the university only when it had ground" between utility and pure art. In describing each
been effectively turned into an extension. In 1938 architec- stage of architectural education, he employed the tradi-
ture left the Rogers Building to rejoin the rest of the uni- tional architectural rhetoric that organized the university.
versity in its own building, but one that was, yet again, an Indeed, the curriculum culminated in traditional fashion
extension of the main university building. With each with a "thesis" project meant as the equivalent of the writ-
move, the ideology of the collection was sustained. But as ten theses with which students in all the other schools in
the place of architecture in the university became succes- the university completed their degrees.
sively more secure, the objects of the collection began to
Rogers had specified the need for such a dissertation in the
be separated off into a discrete but accessible space.43 The
original course of instruction he had proposed for the uni-
need for the defensive walls of representations began to
fade away. versity in 1864.44 Ware's first announcement that an "origi-
nal design" would fulfill this requirement in architecture
The design studios alone remained lined with representa- came in 1868 in a supplement to the university's annual
tions, as they are in most architecture schools today. The description of its courses. But the word "thesis" was not
space of design continues to be defined by layers of photo- used officially to describe such a design until after the first
graphs, models, xeroxes, posters, designs, sketches, maga- one had been successfully completed by Henry A. Phillips
zines, mottos, books, advertisements, fabrics, and so on, in 1873.45 Entitled, in full, "Design for the Buildings of
which act as fetishistic substitutes for what exists outside the Water Works of a City, embracing the treatment of a
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Wigley
system of Beams, of an Iron Arched Rib with bracings, of

the Stability of the Chimney and of the Tower, and of the
pieces of a Roof Truss covering a small building," its topic
was specified by the school and aimed to exhibit archi-
tecture's role as both a science and an art. Its defence
involved the submission of a set of drawings and forty-two
pages of "explanation" that identified the issues addressed
by the thesis and gave a detailed account of the design's
programmatic, aesthetic, and technical properties, along
with extensive structural calculations. Such scholarship was
seen to finally place architecture within the traditional
space of the university.
The graduating architect assembles arguments analogous to

those constructed by the traditional scholar; only what is 18. Henry A. Phillips, design
being constructed and defended is literally a construction, for a "Water Works," first
architectural thesis completed
what is being placed is literally a place. This strange
at the Massachusetts Institute
encounter between architecture and its metaphor was even
of Technology, 1873
written into Ware's claim that not only could architecture
assume the role of a liberal art, but that it was playing the
essentially public role of the liberal arts before the constitu-
tion of the university.46 Consequently, in entering the uni-
versity, architecture reclaimed its own space.
Ware's convoluted application to architecture of an archi-

tectural metaphor, and the resulting course structure orga-
nized around the dematerializing and classifying effect of
the photographic image, provided the basic strategy for all
the new schools of architecture, including those that soon
developed within the new discipline of the fine arts. Archi-
tecture was seen to be central within the fine arts. In fact,
departments of fine arts often emerged out of architecture.
This peculiar disciplinary genealogy can clearly be seen in

the school of architecture that Ware founded in 1881 at
Columbia University after he left MIT. Ware reelaborated
his original strategy for occupying the university by adding
the "apparatus" of the collection to the preexisting institu-
tional structure; he argued that as architecture is a fine art
it "must always be, so far as relates to design, not quite
one" with the scientific body of the university onto which
it is grafted.47 Founded in the sciences, the school soon
detached itself from them, being for some years suspended
without a proper place, then becoming the basis of the
new department of fine arts, and, ultimately, detaching
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assemblage 15
itself from that to form an independent school.48 This cannot be separated from the technical. Indeed, for Hei-
mobility resulted from the demands for independence that degger, the modern domination of technology is precisely
grew as soon as the form of the modern university had the dominance of the architectonic principle that organizes
stabilized.49 Architecture schools began to detach them- the production of theory. 52
selves from their hosts in both the sciences and the fine
arts to occupy the gap between them - the "middle Architecture itself could only be admitted into the space of
ground" identified by Ware. This independence, however, the university when the distinction between architectonic
was not achieved until well into the twentieth century. and technical broke down. Indeed, it could act as a privi-
leged figure for this breakdown inasmuch as Ware had
But, in fact, a certain discomfort remains. Architecture is
always argued that it was the unique character of architec-
still a "misfit," a "black sheep."50 The discipline is itself
ture to straddle all such distinctions. Significantly, Ware
always a prosthesis. The crucial excess, the supplement by
was fired from Columbia for pushing the limits of the uni-
which building is extended into architecture, however
versity even further. He had established the form of the
much subject to control, always remains external to the
modern architectural school by identifying education with
architectonic order prescribed by the university. Even
publication, producing many of the standard architectural
Ware's canonic strategy for occupation concedes that some
books that were used extensively both inside and outside all
part of design exceeds the (university) reason that attempts the universities. But he was dismissed in 1903 when he
to control it.51 That is to say, architecture remains foreign
reported to the trustees of Columbia that he had published
to the architectural concepts it applies to itself. Because
his lecture notes as textbooks for a correspondence school,
these concepts organize the university, architecture is at
a program intended to be a university "extension" course,
once more of an insider than any other discipline in the
through which students who could never enter the physi-
university and more of a foreign agent. This ambivalence
cal, let alone class-specific, space of the university could,
is nowhere more evident than in the final "thesis" project.
nevertheless, eventually earn one of its regular degrees. 53
On the one hand, the project, as creative art, could not be
Ware was held to be subverting the distinctions between
more foreign to the university. But, on the other hand, its
private and public, and between intellectual and commer-
public oral defence by the student is the most faithful
cial, with which the university had traditionally defined
maintenance of the oldest and most central institution of
itself. In such a scheme, the elite space of the well-con-
the university.
structed argument could no longer be isolated even from
domestic space. But, of course, such a transformation of
Architecture remains a prosthetic intrusion into the
the private house into a prosthetic attachment to the uni-
domain of the thesis. But as such, it cannot simply be
versity was as inevitable as the original occupation of the
removed. Like all prostheses, it occupies the host because
university by the technologies of communication that
there is a gap in the main body; it supplements a defi-
would make this attachment possible, and Columbia soon
ciency in the thesis, a crack in the solid foundations of the
launched its own correspondence course as the "Home
university. Suspended between art and science, academic
Study" program. 54
and professional, pure and applied, theoretical and practi-
cal, it fills all the gaps that once defined the outer limits of But in thinking of how architecture participated in these
the university but now inhabit and divide its core. Archi- transformations of the institution, it must be remembered
tecture incorporated itself into the institution by exploiting that Heidegger identifies the ends of modern technology,
this convolution of the borders of the university that went and therefore the university, as fundamentally military. In
unacknowledged until the nineteenth century. The old these terms, it should be noted that prosthetic technology
myth of the autonomy of the university, as a clearly is military technology. The pioneering work on prosthetics
defined place separate from the material world it theorizes, of the sixteenth-century surgeon Ambroise Pare, for exam-
breaks down. In the modern university, the theoretical ple, was a development of the precise mechanisms with
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Wigley
which the surrogate body that forms a suit of armor is con-

structed.55 Prosthetic technology alternated between pro-
ducing substitutes for the body parts that military weapons
had destroyed and producing these very weapons. All
weapons are prosthetic. Like all prostheses, they are always
mechanisms of both defence and attack. As extensions of
the body, they are called "arms." One body gains control
of another by being extended further. Theory became the
agent of this control by redefining the possibility of exten-
sion. As the first American university to efface the distinc-
tion between the architectonic condition of theory and its
technological application, MIT, whose original course of
study included military training in the basic program,56
would, of course, go on to become a major developer of
military technology, and effectively a producer of weapons,
through its increasingly close ties to a growing network of
new intermediate institutions, known as the "military-
industrial complex," that has disrupted every one of the
traditional limits of the university.
In entering the university by grafting itself onto the sci-

ences, architecture, the art that was responsible for military
technology before the rise of the sciences as independent
disciplines (all the classical treatises on architecture having
a section on both defensive structures and weapons of 19. "The form of a hand made
attack), is implicated in the operations of this complex. artificially of iron." From
The effacement of the limits of the university, and its com- Ambroise Pare, A Supplement
plicity with the military, does not occur in the applied sci- of the Defects in Man's Body,
1579.
ences alone. Every field has its disciplinary technologies
that sustain specific institutional practices with material
and ideological effects that are strategically exempted from
critique. The traditional space of the thesis is more and
more the space of technical mastery.
Even though the modern displacement of the limits of the

university follows from certain gaps in the architectonic
theory of place itself, architecture did not enter the univer-
sity as some kind of rethinking, or even first thought, of
architecture. Precisely what it is to enter is to take this
theory for granted, that is to say, to take it as an unques-
tionable truth that in some way precedes the university
structure "based" on it, rather than as an ideological con-
struction whose structure can, and should, be inspected.
The university's fundamental thesis, the architectural prin-
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assemblage 15
ciple of grounding, remains undefended, undisputed. The Notes ture of his retina. In the photo-
university does not examine the foundation of its own I would like to thank Elizabeth Per- graphic camera he has created an
instrument which retains the fleet-
foundation. Its architecture is unstable, necessarily erected kins of the MIT Archives and Spe-
cial Collections, Sally Beddow of ing visual impressions, just as a
over an abyss, inasmuch as its inaugural metaphor of gramophone disc retains the equally
the MIT Museum, and Janet Parks
architecture is exempted from its own interrogation.57 The of the Avery Library at Columbia fleeting auditory ones; both are at
metaphor becomes so familiar that it is not seen, even in bottom materializations of the
University for their assistance in the
the moment of being applied to actual buildings. research for this paper. A shorter power he possesses of recollection,
version of this paper was published his memory. With the help of the
It is this blindness that needs to be examined when in Ottagono 96 (1990): 19-26. telephone he can hear at distances
addressing the development of modern architecture as a which would be respected as unat-
1. Le Corbusier, The Decorative
tainable even in a fairytale. Writing
technological prosthesis. In a parallel and apparently unre- Art of Today, trans. James I. Dun-
was in its origin the voice of an
lated history, the discipline of architecture developed itself nett (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press,
absent person; and the dwelling-
as a prosthetic implant in the institutional mechanisms for 1987), 72. On this passage and the house was a substitute for the
whole argument about architecture
the production of theory. Both histories turn on the evo- mother's womb, the first lodging,
as a form of clothing that organizes for which in all likelihood man still
lution of new technologies of communication. As these it, see Mark Wigley, "Architecture
longs, and in which he was safe
technologies begin to breed, the body of the university After Philosophy: Le Corbusier and and felt at ease. Man has, as it
becomes as dissimulated as the human body. The limits the Emperor's New Paint," Journal
were, become a prosthetic god.
and functions of each are no longer clear. But these dissi- of Philosophy and the Visual Arts 2
When he puts on all his auxiliary
(1990): 84-95.
mulations are not independent of each other. With the organs he is truly magnificent; but
continued erasure of the distinction between theory and 2. Sigfried Gideon, Mechanization those organs have not grown on to
Takes Command (New York: Oxford him and they still give him much
technology, the two histories have become fundamentally
University Press, 1948), 390. trouble at times" (Sigmund Freud,
entangled. Civilization and its Discontents
3. "Tools are the useful extensions
[1930], trans. James Strachey [New
For Heidegger, the final collapse of the distinction between of man's arms and legs. This defini-
tion can be stretched to cover cer- York: W. W. Norton, 1961], 42).
theory and technology is the technology of theory itself,
tain products of human ingenuity 5. Ernest Jones describes this
thinking machines, information systems.58 The networks of which are also intended to second implant, added after an operation in
communication have become the new house of theory: the person as such: the dwelling is a October 1923: "The huge pros-
"The philosophical requirement is today best represented tool, and so are the road, the work- thesis, a sort of magnified denture,
by that information technology which, though it seems to shop, and so on" (Le Corbusier, or obturator, designed to shut off
escape the control of the university and thus, in Kantian Looking at City Planning, trans. the mouth from the nasal cavity,
Eleanor Levieux [New York: Gross- was a horror; it was labelled 'the
terms, the control of philosophy, is nonetheless its true and
man Publishers, 1971], 31). monster' " (Ernest Jones, The Life
most faithful representative."59 The contemporary architec- and Work of Sigmund Freud [New
ture of digital prosthetics is what remains of the once-solid 4. "With every tool man is perfect- York: Basic Books, 1957], 3:96).
body of the university. The critical gap between architec- ing his own organs, whether motor
ture and its metaphor has been erased. The uncanny home or sensory, or is removing the limits 6. "I am writing to you from the
to their functioning. Motor power deep contentment of a boundless
of both theorist and theory is electronic. The status of both
places gigantic forces at his disposal, inactivity, interspersed with the
the architectural object and architectural discourse has
which, like his muscles, he can unpleasant sensations of a small-
been displaced, such that the distinction between them can employ in any direction; thanks to scale war waged with a refractory
no longer be made. The way these technologies parasiti- ships and aircraft neither water nor piece of equipment. Reflecting on
cally inhabit, infect, and become the body of architecture air can hinder his movements; by the fine but yet not entirely accept-
means of spectacles he corrects able sentences in which you discuss
redefines the discourse. But this displacement cannot sim-
defects in the lens of his own eye; the relationship of man to his body,
ply be theorized here, or anywhere, as theory is itself I ask myself what you would say to
by means of the telescope he sees
dependent on the very architecture being displaced by its into the far distance; and by means the analogous relationship to a sub-
own technological offspring. In the end, prosthetic archi- of the microscope he overcomes the stitute such as this which tries to be
tecture cannot be disciplined. and yet cannot be the self. This is a
limits of visibility set by the struc-
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Wigley
problem which arises even in the unpredicted possibilities of exten- City, Its Schools, and the Origins of
case of spectacles, false teeth and sion," and "the photographic the University of Paris," 23-25, on
wigs, but not so insistently as in the camera can either complete or sup- the essential "placelessness" of the
case of a prosthesis" (Letter of 11 plement our optical instrument, the institution.
August 1924, in Ernest Pfeiffer, eye" (Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, Paint-

15. For examples of the close rela-
ed., Sigmund Freud and Lou ing, Photography, Film [1925;
tionship between legal documents
Andreas-Salome Letters [London: Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press,
for buildings and professorships, see
Hogarth Press, 1972], 137). 1987], 15, 28).
the documents assembled in John
7. Letter of 3 September 1924, in 10. For a development of Heideg- Willis Clark, ed., Endowments of
ibid., 138. ger's account of the architectural the University of Cambridge (Cam-
metaphor that organizes theory, see bridge: Cambridge University Press,
8. "We are not accustomed to
Mark Wigley, "The Translation of 1904).
expend much thought on the fact Architecture: The Production of
that every night human beings lay 16. The first such dedicated build-
Babel," Assemblage 8 (1989): 7-22.
aside the garments they pull over ing constructed for the first uni-
their skin, and even also other 11. Martin Heidegger, Der Satz versity (the university "in" but,
objects which they use to supple- vom Grund (Neske: Pfullingen, significantly, not yet "of" Paris),
ment their bodily organs (so far as 1957). Cf. Jacques Derrida, "The that is to say, arguably the first uni-
they have succeeded in making Principle of Reason: The University versity building proper, was built in
good their deficiencies by substi- in the Eyes of Its Pupils," Graduate 1322 to lure back the masters that
tutes) - for instance, their specta- Faculty Philosophy Journal 10, no. had migrated to Siena the year
cles, false hair or teeth, and so on. 1 (1984): 12. before. See Ferruolo, "Parisius-
In addition to this, when they go to 12. "Each of the faculties that con- Paradisus," 23.
sleep they perform a perfectly anal- stitute the university had some 17. Aristotle, Metaphysics, 981b.
ogous dismantling of their minds church or convent which was usu- Cf. Derrida, "The Principal of Rea-
they lay aside most of their mental ally borrowed for its meetings; but son," 23.
acquisitions; thus both physically the place of the meeting was not
and mentally approaching remarka- invariable, and neither the univer- 18. Despite their radically different
bly close to the situation in which sity nor its constitutional bodies operative agendas (beaux arts, mod-
they began life" (Sigmund Freud, assembled in a building of its own. ern, postmodern, etc.), all the dif-
"Metapsychological Supplement to . . .Wherever there were rooms to ferent historical constructions of the
the Theory of Dreams" [1916], in be hired for schools, and churches architecture of mid-nineteenth-cen-
General Psychological Theory [New and convents to be borrowed for
tury America share the figure of the
York: Macmillan, 1963], 151). congregations, a university could "abyss" (sometimes referring to it as
make itself at home" (H. Rashall,
a "chasm" or "schism").
9. "During the mechanical ages we
The University of Europe in the
had extended our bodies in space. 19. See, for example, Minard La-
Middle Ages [New York: Oxford
Today, after more than a century of fever, The Architectural Instructor
University Press, 1936], 1:406.
electric technology, we have (1856).
20. Prosthetic arm and extended our central nervous system 13. Cited in Stephen C. Ferruolo,
20. "Architecture, A School
package. From Orthopadischeitself in a global embrace, abolish- The Origins of the University: The Study," The Architectural Review
ing space and time" (Marshall Schools of Paris and their Critics,
Behandlung
McLuhan, Understanding Media: 1100-1215 (Stanford: Stanford Uni- and American Builder's Journal
Kriegsuerwundeter, 1915. (December 1869): 308.
Extensions of Man [London: Rout- versity Press, 1985), 275.
ledge and Kegan Paul, 1964], 3). 21. Ibid. 309. "Education must be
This identification of the technol- 14. For an analysis of the "fragility" liberal and comprehensive as well
ogy of the media with extension is of the relationship between the as universal and cheap, or the result
written into modernist theory. For early universities and the cities they will remain incomplete. To secure
example, "Painterly methods of rep- occupied, see Thomas Bender, ed., anything permanently satisfactory in
resentation suggestive merely of past The University and the City (New the matter of architecture, profes-
ideologies shall disappear and their York: Oxford University Press, sors of ability, workmen of ability,
place be taken by mechanical means 1988), in particular, Stephen C. and an appreciative public are nec-
of representation and their as yet Ferruolo, "Parisius-Paradisus: The essary. . . . With reference to the
25

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assemblage 15
appreciative and able public, the ground good as he goes." The "sta- 29. The lantern slide was begin- ment, however large the general
press is the improving power that is ble" core of the university is always ning to play a crucial role in the mass of its collection" (ibid.).
mainly to be looked to" (Calvert described as building: "He is accus- emerging institution of the modern
Vaux, Villas and Cottages [New tomed to a chain of deduction in university lecture. In 1875 MIT 32. Rogers proposed a department
York: Harper and Brothers, 1857]). which each link hangs from the offered a course of eighteen public of "Building and Architecture" that
22. On the constitutional relation- preceding, yet without any insecur- lectures, called "Lantern Projec- would begin with engineering and
ity in the whole; to an ascent begin- tions," on "the use of lantern slides only in the fourth year would offer
ship between architecture and pub-
ning from solid ground, in which as a means of illustration in teach- "lectures on Architecture as a Fine
lication, see Beatriz Colomina, ed.,
each step, as soon as it is made, is a ing" (President's Report for the Year Art" (William Rogers, Scope and
Architectureproduction (New York:
foundation for a further ascent, no Ending September 30, 1875 [Bos- Plan of the School of Industrial Sci-
Princeton Architectural Press,
less solid than the first self-evident ton: A. A. Kingsman, 1876], 97). ence of Massachusetts Institute of
1988). "Until the advent of photog-
truths" (William Whewell, Of a And in 1876 a regular course on Technology [Boston: John Wilson
raphy, and earlier of lithography,
the audience of architecture was the Liberal Education in General [Lon- lantern projections began within the and Son, 1864]).
don: John W. Parker, 1845]). Physics Department (President's 33. "There is not now in the coun-
user. With photography, the illus-
Report for the Year Ending Septem-
trated magazine, and tourism, 26. See Newman, The Idea of the try any adequate instruction in
ber 30, 1876 [Boston: A. A. Kings-
architecture's reception began to University, 61. Construction and in Design none
man, 1877]). For a brief account of
occur also through an additional whatsoever, while the demand for
27. Ibid. 62. The expressions the passage of the lantern slide from
social form: consumption. With the skilled draughtsmen and competent
"place," "firmness," and "laying entertainment to education, see
enormous amplification of the audi- architects is rapidly increasing in
down" come from the very architec- Elizabeth Shepard, "The Magic
ence, the relation to the object every part of the country. To meet
tural domain they are used to Lantern Slide in Entertainment and
changed radically. The audience exclude. The architectural meta-
this want would require a compara-
Education, 1860-1920," Journal of
(the tourist in front of a building, tively slight extension of your pro-
phor is always employed politically the History of Photography 11, no.
the reader of a journal, the viewer gramme" (William Ware, letter to
as a conservative agent. For ex- 2 (April-June 1987): 91-108.
of an exhibition or a newspaper John Runkle [secretary of the Insti-
ample, the inaugural address by
advertisement, and even the client tute], 27 April 1865, p. 1, Massa-
Charles Eliot on becoming presi- 30. William Ware, An Outline of
who often is also all of the above) chusetts Institute of Technology
dent of Harvard University in 1869: a Course in Architectural Instruc-
increasingly became the user, the Archives and Special Collections).
"A university is not built in the air, tion (Boston, 1865), 9.
one who gave meaning to the work. 34. Ibid.
but on social and literary founda-
In turn the work itself changed" tions. If the whole structure needs 31. William Rogers, Objects and 35. Ware identifies "the history of
(Beatriz Colomina, "Introduction:
rebuilding, it must be rebuilt from Scope of an Institute of Technology;
On Architecture, Production and architecture, the theory of architec-
the foundation. Hence, sudden Including a Society of Arts, a tural ornamentation, the laws of
Reproduction," in ibid., 9).
reconstruction is impossible in our Museum of Arts, and a School of proportion, of harmony and of geo-
23. S. E. Morison, The Founding high places of education" (S. E. Industrial Science (Boston: John metrical and naturalistic decora-
of Harvard College (Cambridge, Morison, ed., The Development of Wilson and Son, 1861), 13. "In tion," on the fine art side, and
Mass.: Harvard University Press, Harvard University 1869-1929 organizing and conducting the "mechanic arts employed in build-
1935), 337. [Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Uni- Museum of the Institute, reference ing, supervising, specifications,
versity Press, 1930], lxi). should be had rather to the extent
24. Peter Slee, "The Oxford Idea of contracts, lighting, ventilation,
a Liberal Education, 1800-1860: of practical instruction to be derived heating, etc.," on the scientific side
The Invention of Tradition and the 28. Before then, there had only from it rather than to the multitude
(ibid., 2).
been supplementary courses on of objects which it might embrace.
Manufacture of Practice," Histories 36. Ibid., 6.
architecture in the university, start- Its several departments therefore,
of the Universities 7 (1988): 61-68.
ing in 1852 at New York Univer- should aim, in the first phase, at 37. In his first annual report to the
25. John Henry Newman, The Idea sity, Yale, Michigan, and Harvard. forming a collection of objects of president in 1872, Ware argues that
of a University (1852), xxxix. Rea- Likewise, in England, supplemen- prominent importance. . . . As "it has been necessary to give a
son is "exercised, unfolded and tary courses were started in 1840 at specimens of materials, workman- good deal of information, viva
confirmed" but not extended. King's College in the University of ship, and machinery accumulate, voce, that might better have been
Instead, the university seeks to London and a year later at Univer- care should be taken to preserve this obtained from text-books, if proper
establish "principles laid down sity College. But it was not until method of arrangement, wherever text-books were to be had. Indeed a
within them as a foundation for the 1894 that the first university school practicable; and to accord a promi- chief part of my own labor has con-
intellect to build on" following the of architecture was founded at the nent place to what might be called sisted in collecting and putting into
traditional method of "making his University College of Liverpool. the typical objects in each depart- shape the common-places of archi-
26

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Wigley
21. Man with seven legs. From

Orthopadische Behandlung
Kriegsuerwundeter, 1915.
tectural information, things which existing schools, and time spent in

every architect knows, but which learning what can be had and in
are not as yet accessible to students" making judicious selections, would
(President's Report for the Year End- be well spent. ... I should also
ing September 30, 1872 [Boston: propose to prepare accurate lists of
A. A. Kingsway, 1873], 41). the collections and apparatus
needed for my classes" (William
38. Ware, An Outline of a Course
in Architectural Instruction, 15. On Ware, letter to William Rogers, 24
April 1866, MIT Archives and Spe-
the library, and photography in par-
cial Collections).
ticular, as a surveillance device, the
disciplinary apparatus responsible 41. See Caroline Shillaber, Massa-
for the emergence of art history as a chusetts Institute of Technology
science, see Donald Preziozi, School of Architecture and Planning
Rethinking Art History: Meditations 1861-1961 (Cambridge, Mass.:
on a Coy Science (New Haven: Yale MIT Press, 1963).
University Press, 1989).
42. I am indebted to discussions
39. "Where so much is to be done
and correspondence on the question
in the collecting of information it
of the roof design with Joan Follett
would of course be profitable to the
of the John Nicholas Brown Center
whole class and stimulating to each
for the Study of American Civiliza-
member of it to put them upon the
tion. For details of the argument
search, making them contribute the
over the roof, see Joan E. Follett,
result of their reading or of their
"The Business of Architecture: Wil-
conversation with mechanics and
liam Gibbons Preston and Architec-
experts to the common stick. I have
tural Professionalism in Boston
practiced this method with my own
During the Second Half of the
pupils" (Ware, letter to Runkle,
Nineteenth Century," Ph.D. diss.,
16).
Boston University, 1986, 65-71.
40. Ware's report on the school of
architecture, in President's Report 43. The beginning of this trend can
for the Year Ending September 30, be seen in the official description of
1872, 36. More than just collecting its first move: "Opening directly
material that would then be classi- from the main drawing-room is the
fied in the library, Ware prepared department library comprising six
detailed lists of thousands of objects hundred and fifty volumes, and
in Europe, and their prices, that some three thousand photographs
could be ordered from the United bound in books. The library and
States as the school developed. photographs are entirely free to the
When Ware wrote to William students, who are encouraged to use
Rogers, then president of the uni- the collections very freely. There is,
versity, asking for permission to also, quite a collection of casts and
travel to Europe, he argued that he models of architectural fragments,
needed to prepare such a catalogue and a very fine lot of French school
in addition to studying different sys- drawings, including some of the
tems of architectural education and envois de Rome, which were
collecting the "necessary equip- secured by Professor Ware, some
ment": "The collection of drawings, years since, in Paris. In addition to
models, photographs, casts and the special library, several thousand
other necessary equipment of an photographs, prints, drawings, and
architectural school could be made casts have been collected to form a
at the same time with this study of nucleus for an architectural
27

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assemblage 15
museum. Models and illustrations refers to it as a successful "graduat- its three branches are certainly in this Country have been estab-
of architectural detail and materials ing thesis" (Tenth Annual Cata- more germane to scientific pursuits lished in connection with schools of
are arranged in the rooms of the logue of the Officers and Students than to painting and sculpture, and Engineering. This connection
department, but the chief part of with a Statement of the Courses of it is easier and cheaper to add the though a great advantage in starting
the collection of casts of architec- Instruction 1874/75 [Boston: A. A. apparatus needed for the study of is soon felt to be a hindrance, but
tural sculpture and detail belonging Kingsman, 1874], 51). The require- elementary design to a school of our school is the first that has
to the department has been, for ment for "thesis work" was first science than to bring the work- undertaken to put this work on an
want of space in the Institute Build- added to the list of courses in the rooms and laboratories of a school independent and purely professional
ings, deposited in the Museum of catalogue of 1876, at the same time of science into a school of art. Still, basis" (William Ware, letter to Pres-
Fine Arts. . . . The students of the as it was added to the list of courses it needs to be distinctly recognized ident Low of Columbia University,
department have free access to them in all the other schools. But not that the atmosphere of exact science 12 September 1892, MIT Archives
at all times; and as the Museum until the catalogue of 1880 did the is unfavorable to the growth of the and Special Collections). On the
building is close at hand, no incon- university spell out what a thesis artistic sentiment; and that in tem- period in which the school of archi-
venience results from the change" entailed. For the student to be enti- per and methods a school of architecture had no designated place, see
("Architectural Education in the tled to a degree, "he must, more- tecture must always be, so far as Stephen M. Bedford and Susan M.
United States," pt. 1, "The Massa- over, prepare a dissertation on some relates to design, at least, not quite Strauss, "History II: 1881-1912," in
chusetts Institute of Technology," subject included in his course of one with the purely practical Richard Oliver, ed., The Making of
The American Architect and Build- study; or an account of some schools with which it is associated. an Architect, 1881-1981 (New
ing News 24, no. 658 [4 August research made by himself; or an It must accordingly require special York: Rizzoli, 1981), 23-48.
1888]: 48). original report upon some machine, pains to create for it an atmosphere
of its own, favorable to the harmo- 49. In 1902 Ware described this
work of engineering, industrial
44. Rogers first specified that to
works, mine, or mineral survey; or nious development of its own process in a letter: "Abroad, Schools
obtain a degree the student must of Architecture are associated with
an original architectural design students" (William Ware, "Memo-
"prepare a dissertation" in Scope
accompanied by an explanatory randum as to the Proposed Course Schools of Painting and Sculpture,
and Plan of the School of Industrial or of Decorative Art, and it was
memoir. This thesis or design must of Architecture in the School of
Science of Massachusetts Institute of
be approved by the Faculty" (Fif- Mines," School of Mines Quarterly only in the lack of a more conge-
Technology, 18. nial field that some of those in this
teenth Annual Catalogue of the 3 [November 1881]: 4, emphasis
45. The first description of the the- Officers and Students with a State- mine). In a letter to President Bar- country were planted in Scientific
sis project in architecture appeared Schools. . . . Architectural schools
ment of the Courses of Instruction nard, Ware discussed extensively
in an 1868 supplement to the third 1879/1880 [Boston: A. A. Kings- the foundation and use of the col- were needed, and the simplest way
annual catalogue of the university: man, 1880], 51). lection: "In establishing a School of to start them was to take advantage
"The Diploma of the Institute, Architecture it was obvious that the of the courses in Physics, Chemis-
46. Ware, An Outline of a Course
declaring its possessor competent to first thing to do was to form a suffi- try, Geology, Mathematics, and
in Architectural Instruction, 3. On
practice his profession as an Archi- cient collection of books and photo- Civil Engineering already estab-
Ware's repeated insistence that
tect, is given only to those students graphs, prints and drawings, so that lished. A single instructor in Archi-
architectural education should be,
who, having passed a satisfactory ample illustrations of the subject tecture was all that was required to
first and foremost, founded in a
examination in the studies pre- matter might be at hand. But it was set the new branch of study on its
general liberal education, see John feet. But all these schools have
scribed for the Regular Students, not so obvious how such collections
Andrew Chewning, "William Rob- found, what we were ourselves
presents Original Designs, upon a could best be utilized in the daily
ert Ware and the Beginnings of
prescribed subject, satisfactory to routine of instruction." He quick to discover, that the condi-
Architectural Education in the
the judges appointed to examine described his "revision of the mate- tions were unfavorable to its growth
United States, 1861-1881," Ph.D.
them" (A Supplement to the Third rial collected so as to make sure and development. Schools of Archi-
diss., Massachusetts Institute of tecture are first of all Schools of
Annual Catalogue of the Massachu- that it was in presentable form" and
Technology, 1986. Art, and in the somewhat sandy soil
setts Institute of Technology: The the way the students systematically
Programme of the Course of Instruc- 47. "The question is raised went through the content of the suitable to Schools of Applied Sci-
tion in the Department of Architec- whether, architecture being counted library in a succession of studies ence, they were in danger, like the
ture [Boston: Alfred Mudge and among the fine arts, it does not called a "tour" (William Ware, let- seed sown among the rocks, of
Sons, 1868], 6). But the first men- belong in a school of science. But if ter to President Barnard, 1887, springing up quickly indeed, but of
tion of the word "thesis" in the a thorough and comprehensive MIT Archives and Special presently withering away because
school of architecture came only course of study is to be established, Collections). they had no richness of earth. All
after the completion of the first the- a school of science seems the most these schools accordingly, have
sis in the catalogue of 1874, which convenient place for it. Two out of 48. "All the Architectural Schools from their inception endeavored to
28

141.117.125.173 on Wed, 06 Sep 2023 21:28:33 +00:00
Wigley
differentiate their work from that of years he was interested in education tactics; and, for this purpose, will
the scientific departments. ... In by means of the correspondence be organized into companies, to
this endeavor some of these schools system, diffusing in the widest pos- meet on stated days for military
have indeed met but indifferent sible way some knowledge of the instruction and exercise" (The First
success" (William Ware, letter to principles of architecture. I assisted Annual Catalogue of the Officers
Mr. Mitchell, 11 January 1902, him in getting up a text-book on and Students and Programme of the
MIT Archives and Special the architectural orders. . . . This Course of Instruction of the School
Collections). year Professor Ware reported [to the of the Massachusetts Institute of
board of trustees of Columbia Uni- Technology, 1865/66 [Boston: John
50. "The truth is that owing to this
versity] the success he had with the Wilson and Sons, 1865], 25).
condition of misfit, schools of
text-book he had prepared for the
architecture, while located at the 57. See Derrida, "The Principle of
International [Correspondence
university, can seldom be said to be Reason," 10.
School of Scranton, Pennsylvania]
in and of the university" (Henry N.
and outlined a scheme of credits to 58. Heidegger, "The Principle of
Cobb, Architecture and the Univer-
beginners for entrance to the Ground," 216.
sity [Harvard University, 1986]).
School of Architecture for students
"From the administrative point of 59. Jacques Derrida, "Mochlos, ou
taking the correspondence course. le conflit des faculties," Philosophie
view architecture is often thought of
They listened without comment, 2 (1984): 21-53.
as a 'black sheep' of university
and said they they would adjourn
courses" (F. H. Bosworth and Roy
for luncheon. Mr. Ware ate his
Childs Jones, A Study of Architec- Figure Credits
lunch and upon going to his office
ture Schools [New York, 1932],
before rejoining the Trustees, found 1, 20, 21. Orthopadische Behandlung
129). The specific needs of archi-
there a letter delivered by hand, Kriegsuerwundeter (Berlin, 1915).
tecture schools "and the academic
stating that he was therewith retired 2. Sigfried Gideon, Mechanization
points of view of the American
from head of the Architectural
University were points of view that Takes Command (New York: Oxford
School" (William Thomas Par- University Press, 1948).
could not be completely harmo-
tridge, A Few Reminiscences of Prof.
nized in the American University" 3. Walter Gropius, Scope of Total
W. R. Ware, ms., Papers of Wil-
(Arthur Clason Weatherhead, The Architecture (New York: Collier,
liam Thomas Partridge, William
History of Collegiate Education in 1943).
Architecture in the United States Ware Collection, Avery Library,
Columbia University). 4. Gregorius Reisch, Margarita
[Los Angeles, 1941], 71).
Philosophica (Basel, 1583).
51. In architecture, reason is 54. "Some time afterward I asked
5. Harvard University Archives.
"influential" yet its control is not one of the trustees the reason for
"absolute": "but even here [architec- 6. The Magic Lantern and Its
their action. He said they were
ture as fine art] intelligence and Applications (New York, 1886).
panic stricken at the thought that
sound reason exert a controlling he, as head of a Columbia School, 7-18. Collection of the MIT
influence, and elsewhere they rule had committed them too far with a Museum.
with absolute authority" (Ware, An
purely commercial project ....
Outline of a Course in Architectural 19. Ambroise Pare, "A Supplement
Within a few years afterward
Instruction, 17). of the Defects in Man's Body," in
Columbia University embarked on
The Collected Works of Ambroise
52. "The perfection of technology
a huge 'Home Study' program
Pare (Paris, 1579).
by correspondence, of course!"
is only the echo of the claim to the
(ibid.).
perfectio, that is, to the complete-
ness of the foundation" (Martin 55. See Ambroise Pare, "A Supple-
Heidegger, "The Principle of ment of the Defects in Man's
Ground," trans. Keith Hoeller, Body," in The Collected Works of
Man and World 7 [1974]: 213). Ambroise Pare (Paris, 1579).
53. In his unpublished reminis- 56. "The regular students of the

cences of Ware, William Partridge School will be taught the use of
described the event: "For many small-arms, and the simpler parts of
29

141.117.125.173 on Wed, 06 Sep 2023 21:28:33 +00:00

Prosthetic Theory Disciplining of Architecture - Wigley

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Prosthetic Theory: The Disciplining of Architecture

Author(s): Mark Wigley

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/3171122

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We all need means of supplementing our natural capabilities,

This concern with buildings as "human-limb objects" worn

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has been displaced onto that between body and building.

Prosthetic architecture becomes a surrogate body "intended

Such a blurring of identity is produced by all prostheses.

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was itself essentially placeless. The universities emerged

in the old cities that would frequently be changed. 12 Uni-

The first university was established in Paris in response to

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subservient."27 Again, the architectural metaphor was used

But the university was eventually expanded through the

The first school of architecture in a university was estab-

The photograph, in the form of prints, postcards, and

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The trouble is technological; there is a want of system and

In emphasizing the collection, Ware had picked up some

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founding member of the institute) and his son William.

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12. Rogers Building,

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14. Rogers Building,

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15, 16. Walker Building,

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17. Pierce Building,

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system of Beams, of an Iron Arched Rib with bracings, of

The graduating architect assembles arguments analogous to

Ware's convoluted application to architecture of an archi-

This peculiar disciplinary genealogy can clearly be seen in

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which the surrogate body that forms a suit of armor is con-

In entering the university by grafting itself onto the sci-

Even though the modern displacement of the limits of the

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August 1924, in Ernest Pfeiffer, eye" (Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, Paint-

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21. Man with seven legs. From

tectural information, things which existing schools, and time spent in

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53. In his unpublished reminis- 56. "The regular students of the

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