In any other academic discipline, theorizing is often defined as the practice of looking backwards to clearly ascertain what was happening in a certain moment. But in architecture, theorizing is the attempt to write about the architectural paradigm as it is occurring. Architectural rhetoric is comprised of both built structure as object, with its own semiotic value, and written theory, the enactment of which is dependent on the transaction between the reader and the text that results in theory as a built practice or a different written reproduction that similarly contributes to the architectural rhetorical situation.
Thinking of architecture as a container for rhetorical space while inherently acting rhetorically as an object, mover of people, and enabler of space gives theory the responsibility of identifying the communicative actions of architecture relational to people, the urban context, the environment, and other architecture; then, theory must determine how the resultant changes in space alter the rhetorical situation altogether. Identifying architectural theory as a type of rhetorical analysis, in which architecture communicates through certain devices as might a piece of literature, allows us to understand our urban environments, the space around us, and our physical place as complex networks of meaning that alter ourselves on a daily basis. Architectural rhetoric can further be understood not simply as the conglomeration of semiological practices of architecture altering each other endlessly, but the incessant interaction between humans and their everyday surroundings in the continual meaning-making of architecture itself that extends beyond designers, structures, and programmatic intent.
Architecture, like literature, awaits human interaction for the enactment of its spaces; a text awaits the transaction between itself and a reader for the creation of literature, an infinite variety of mental constructions held within the reader. But unlike literature, architecture can hold meaning as an object acting semiotically or with artistic value without human enactment. Yet when the space contained by and enabled by architecture, whether within it or altered by it, is enacted by humans, we can begin to question what architecture actually is. When we begin to align our definition of architecture with the enactment of rhetorical space, it is evident that architecture seeps into every aspect of the world manifested, crafted, and perceived by humans.
“Plug It in, Rameses, and See if It Lights up. Because We Aren’t Going to Keep It Unless it Works”
The focus of this paper will be the rhetorical analysis of the work of architectural theory, “Plug It in, Rameses, and See if It Lights up. Because We Aren’t Going to Keep It Unless it Works,” by Charles Moore, written for the Yale architectural journal Perspecta in 1967. Perspecta is an academic journal that was fifteen years old at the time of the publication of this artifact, and was then and is still currently distributed by the MIT Press. This journal’s affiliation with Yale and MIT, two considerably prestigious schools, coupled with the fact that graduate students are competitively chosen to edit each issue, gives the pieces in the journal a considerable credibility, and also gives readers insight into Moore’s audience. Because Moore was Dean at the Yale School of Architecture at the time of publication of this piece, he himself had a certain credibility, and wrote for an audience of architectural students, architectural academics, and the highest echelon of the field of architects. Thus, Moore writes with a familiar and informal, rather than denigrating, tone–he is more writing a letter to his contemporaries rather than speaking from the pulpit. This is illustrated in the table of contents of Vol. 11 of Perspecta alone–also in the issue were pieces by Robert Venturi, R. Buckminster Fuller (who Moore refers to by the familiarizing nickname “Bucky” in “Plug It in, Rameses”), and Peter Millard. Moore is keenly aware of the late-Modernist/early postmodernist period in which he is writing, a time when many architecture schools were at the point of beginning to or actively disrupting their Beaux-Arts curricula, and the piece seeks to disrupt. The French-Algerian philosopher Jacques Derrida is also a clear influence in the piece, as On Grammatology was published the same year as Vol. 11 of Perspecta and Moore overtly aligns the “electronic architecture” of the present with “networks of meaning,” a direct result of Derrida and deconstruction theory.
“Plug It in, Rameses, and See if It Lights Up” is self-conscious about the rhetorical situation into which it is entering as well, which is reflected in the intent of the piece. Moore openly acknowledges in the piece that he is writing at the beginning of a new age, and is conscious that he is making a case for a low-brow “architecture of inclusion” in an Ivy League publication. But as Dean, he has the agency to do so, and the formulation of his argument into claims and evidence, coupled with the discursive tactics of familiarization and framing, solidify his argument.
The two central arguments of the artifact that Moore constructs are that place, once defined hierarchically in relational terms between objects and location, is now electronically determined by networks of meaning; and that there is a difference between “architects of exclusion,” who have failed to address the environmental concerns and social conditions of the past several decades, and the “architecture of inclusion,” which places into contention the subjectivities of beauty and taste and highlights the once-understated importance of the vitality that arises out of vernacular commercial spaces. Moore’s key concern is the rhetorical situation of place in space, and “Plug it In, Rameses, and See if It Still Lights Up” can be identified as theory because its argument is predicated on the assumptions of an existing body of architectural rhetoric.
Findings
Moore addresses the rhetorical situation of architectural rhetoric by breaking down the hierarchical relationships between object-space in the past rhetoric of placemaking by acknowledging and affirming that place is now created by the electronic extension of human bodies. The human scale, or extension of the body, has always been part of the practice of placemaking, but was previously acknowledged as man’s physical body coupled with the extension of that body through mind and thought. The electronic transactions between humans and spaces makes the “human scale” now a constantly-shifting evolution of changing bodies via electronic extensions and recessions of self, and place is thus instantaneously accessible, predicated on networks of meaning. This revelation results in the absolute collapse of place as a hierarchy of place-object relationships in contiguous space.
Moore’s discursive tactics craft “Plug It in, Rameses, and See if It Still Lights up” as a persuasive argument. Moore makes many declarative statements such as “...surely their proper concern must be, as it has always been the creation of place.” (Moore, 34) He uses bold face font to make distinctions, and claims are phrased as fact through his diction. The only other place boldface type is used is to denote Perspecta as a publication–thus, “place” as a definition is elevated to publication status. Rhetorical questions are posed to which he has the answer: “If architects are to continue to do useful work on this planet, then surely…” (34), while adverbs and adjectival phrases are used as modifiers to make us question previously-held assumptions about our world: “This, supposedly, will be useful to help people know where they are which will aid, by extension, in helping people know who they are'' (34). Moore leads readers to challenge this assumption–should this be supposed? Should we take this for granted as true? This isn’t a question–it’s a statement of the hegemonic paradigm about how we orient ourselves geographically, spatially, and personally in our world–but the diction fractures the rigidity of the paradigm.
Moore follows with declaratory statements. In the first paragraph, he outlines the fullest extent of the hegemonic paradigm, the one in which we think we live. He cites evidence of the paradigm of the object-location relational hierarchy at Peking, in Hindu towns, and at Angkor Wat, using the plan of Peking to bolster the argument, as it illustrates the “axis (penetrating) from outside through layer after layer of increasing importance to the seat of the emperor himself” (35). He then draws a direct comparison between the cross axes and concentric rings of temples at Angkor Wat to concentric rings of mountains around the seven seas which center on the sacred Buddhist mountain.
In the second paragraph, he completely debunks the paradigm in which we think we live, the one with which he has just familiarized us. He follows with declaratory, factual statements, showing that he knows where we are now: “Our own places, however, like our lives, are not bound up in one contiguous space” (35). He utilizes anaphora, with the sentences “Our own places…Our order,” a repetition that creates a mentality of us in the present vs. them in the past, further distancing us from where we are to where we thought we were, which actually isn’t where we’ve been for at least the past half century. Further, in referencing Bucky Fuller and Marshall McLuhan, Moore’s statements are given credibility: other people, professionals in the field, agree with him, and by calling Fuller “Bucky,” Moore exhibits a sense of familiarity with someone we should assume is an expert in the field, and because he is familiar with him and we are not, Moore is a credible source. Moore continually uses the words “us, we, our,” “Many of us…” “Even more important, independently of where we move our bodies at any moment, we have as we all know...”, building a heightened sense of familiarity and identifying with the readers makes us trust Moore. “We all know” makes the next part of the sentence even more credible. Moore, previously established as a credible source, asserts that we know as well as he does, so of course it is true.
Paragraph five is the first instance in which Moore does not use any familiarizing language with the reader, and for the most part stops using that diction for the rest of the piece. Here he makes his first point about the change of human scale in this new paradigm. Moore does not classify the electronic as a world in itself, but simply as the new mode of accessing and experiencing place. This I identify as a precursor to digital space–here, Moore fails to identify the electronic as a space and place in itself but merely defines it as a mode of experiencing other physical places. Because readers are now familiarized with the author, Moore drops the “us/we/our” diction and is able to make claims such as “the hierarchy of importances from private to monumental has vanished” (35) without the same substantial evidence backing them up as he had to on the first page, when he was still seeking credibility from the readers.
While Moore has delineated the hegemonic paradigm we thought we belonged to and outlined the conditions of the new, electronic paradigm to which we actually belong, and have for much longer than we suspected, on page 36 Moore begins contributing to, rather than just acknowledging, the current architectural rhetorical situation. Having familiarized his readers with himself, his expertise, and his framework, he states, “The network, on the contrary, needs help. It needs to be plugged in, into the right markets to make money, into electricity in order to light up, into a sewage system in order to drain, into a working social framework in order to avoid immediately being torn down” (36). Here he demonstrates the influence of Derrida, as the “network of meaning” defined by Derrida in deconstruction theory now takes physical form, albeit not in the semiologies of constructed space but in the multivalent systems on which the architectural paradigm is now predicated.
Moore then begins to question the point of defining cities spatially. He is able to identify the “electronic world,” yet seems to not fully comprehend the scope of an electronic world nor its capacity for hosting/creating space, as he can only elucidate the electronic as a mode through which transactions occur, not a container for interaction. This is demonstrated by the quote “In an electronic world where space and location have so little functional meaning…” (38). Yet at this point in the piece, a little over halfway through the essay, Moore reminds us that he is self conscious of the moment in which he is writing, identifying that he is writing at an “early point in the new age” (38), where he has the agency to both safely critique late Modernist projects while also speculate on the architectural practices of the postmodern period. He refers to late Modernist projects under the category of “the architecture of exclusion,” remarking upon their failures to gain control over the physical environment to create place. He argues:
“If we can presume that the point in ‘organic’ order is to make something with life which somehow grows, reproduces itself, and spreads into other aspects of life, then we have sadly to admit that the (architecture of exclusion) has spawned no legitimate progeny” (38)
Although Moore used tone, familiarizing language, anaphora, and other such discursive tactics to build trust between himself as author and his readers, he provides evidence for this claim; the claim that the last several decades (and it seems he claims also, with the inclusion of Andrea Palladio, centuries) of architecture have been unsuccessful in mediating between humans and their environments would have seemed bold and unsubstantiated. Moore provides evidence for this claim using Frank Lloyd Wright, Mies van der Rohe, Andrea Palladio, and Louis Kahn as examples of “...the enigma in any revelation that plane and solid geometry together have not solved (the) environmental problems…” (39). By capitalizing on the name recognition of these architects and then proving that, semiotically, their architecture doesn’t function as their designs claim they do, Moore claims another degree of credibility as an author, similar to his alignment of himself with Buckminster Fuller on the first page of the essay.
After the weaving together of many prolific architects of the past 150 years to substantiate this argument, Moore has again aggregated credibility with readers by providing more than a page of substantiating evidence outlining some of the most important parts of the architectural canon as failures to address civilization and its most prescient concerns. If the past several decades of architecture have thus been a failure in addressing the vitality of human life, and these architects can be referred to as “exclusive” due to their inability (or perhaps, lack of want) to address the rapid growth, diversity, and creativity of common life, then, Moore concludes, others should be given (and will seize) the opportunity to create an architecture of inclusion. And where he finds that architecture of inclusion is somewhere he identifies as a place the “architects of exclusion,” the upper echelon of the discipline, would abhor: the commercial strip, a vernacular and prevalent architecture that Moore frames as a manifestation of vitality, growth, and furthermore the inevitability growth. He states that the:
“...chance should now be given to, or seized by, some architects of inclusion…make their order with as much of life as they can include, rather than as little, who welcome redundancy and depend on it even as the electronic information networks do, and who are willing to accept into their systems of organization those ambiguities and conflicts of which life is made” (39).
This claim is supported by evidence of Robert Venturi, who Moore denotes as a paradoxically conscious architect of inclusion, with interests ranging from “the history of architectural composition (with an encyclopedic knowledge of its hallowed monuments) to the popular roadside manifestations of our own time” (39). Still, with the same familiarizing tone that entrusts readers to Moore and unrelinquishing structure of claims, evidence, and analysis that comprise Moore’s arguments, he follows with examples of what he cites as the architecture of inclusion, starting with an example most likely to be accepted by the architectural establishment to whom he writes–Venturi is on equal footing with Moore in the publication, as he is among the authors featured in the issue of Perspecta. Moore then takes readers from Venturi down a spectrum of examples of the architecture of inclusion, to a strip commercial street in Monterey, California mostly attributable Donlyn Lyundon, then to Peter Millard’s Whitney Avenue firehouse, to what he calls “one of the century’s great monuments of the architecture of inclusion” in the Santa Barbara County Courthouse, and finally culminating in the Madonna Inn south of San Luis Obispo, California, which Moore readily admits “...would never get a passing grade in a school of architecture where tastefulness was prized” (43).
By taking readers down a gradation from establishment-approved Robert Venturi to a lowbrow joint gas station motel off a California highway, Moore is able to convince readers fully of his argument. Had he started after his bold claim that vitality lies not in the existing canon of architecture, but in the commercial strip, and then followed that claim with the evidence of the Madonna Inn, the argument would have been much less convincing. By appealing to what his readers know first and then slowly whittling down the argument until he reveals at the core that the truly exciting and creative architecture is really the common, the mundane, and the everyday, readers arrive at the conclusion of the essay with the assertion that the Madonna Inn is the epitome of an exciting architecture of inclusion, rather than a failed point in the argument. It is here, in the final two sentences, that Moore bridges the gap between the two central concerns of the essay:
“It is not at all disquieting, but rather exhilarating to note that here there is everything instead of nothing. A kind of immediate involvement with the site, with the user and his movements, indeed with everything all at once, with the vitality and the vulgarity of real commerce, quivers at a pitch of excitement which presages, more clearly than any tidy sparse geometry, an architecture for the electric present.” (43)
Discussion
“Plug It in, Rameses, and See if It Lights up” is architectural theory because it engages with and alters the architectural rhetorical situation of its time. No work of literature that does not engage in the rhetorical situation can claim to be theory; theory must disrupt or alter the situation that authors, architects, historians, and students are constantly contributing to, that which we may even generously call the architectural canon, that defines the paradigm in which we practice as academics, designers, and builders.
What Moore achieves in “Plug It in, Rameses, and See if It Lights Up” is a successful argument for the serious consideration by the field of architecture what had previously been disregarded as unserious, or even not part of the architectural discipline at all. At the end of the Modern era, the juncture between two movements of the twentieth century, Moore is able to assess the efficacy of Modernism and its forebears to produce a sense of place and simultaneously acknowledge that, regardless of that assessment, humanity and its accompanying technologies are advancing at a pace so rapid that architecture and its placemaking strategies will be radically outpaced before the field ever realizes. Moore looks past the highbrow Modernist projects of the day and sees what’s right before him, and everyone, as the prolific typology of the day: the common “commercial strip,” a vernacular typology that has brought more vitality to the urban environment in its growth and inevitably of reproduction than any other architecture of the twentieth century. Moore asks correctly–has it been more effective at producing a sense of place? Looking around the United States, united by ribbons of asphalt from sea to shining sea and the consumerist ideals that accompany car culture, Moore finds that the commercial strip sympathizes with the “vernacular desire to embrace rather than exclude.” This realization significantly fractured and indeed shifted the entire assumed paradigm, as the upper echelon of the field to whom Moore was writing realized that the prevailing typology of the twentieth century was not anything that had been designed in the Bauhaus, in Holland, or in any of the Ivy League architecture schools, but instead had been mass-manufactured and stamped across America with the same rhythm and regularity as powerlines. More than any Corbusian or Miesian project, the commercial strip is the single most defining architecture of the 20th century.
Not only does this essay bring forth mass-produced vernacular typology for serious consideration by the architectural establishment, but it also asserts the absolute dissolution of hierarchical place-object relationships in contiguous space, replaced with networks of spatial relationships and constantly changing meanings. Moore is one of the earliest to assert that the “electronic” has a significant role in placemaking strategies, and goes so far as to say that not only has it impacted architecture’s ability to create place, but it has also become “the one true architecture, the electric architecture” (38). Although in this essay Moore fails to grasp the electric’s capability for being itself a place (indeed, an infinite multiplicity of places), and mostly relegates it to “electronic glue” that connects people to physical places, he recognizes that the probable conclusion, when this new paradigm has been iterated upon to the nth degree, is an aspatial electronic world.
Further, “Plug It in, Rameses, and See if It Lights up” is one of the first to shift architectural rhetoric because of Derrida, inciting what would become Deconstructivism in architecture arising from Derrida’s deconstruction of meaning into endless networks of signs and signifiers. On Grammatology, published in the same year as Vol. 11 of Perspecta in 1967, immediately impacted the architectural rhetorical situation due to Moore’s analysis and translation of Derrida’s theory from semiotic networks to electro-spatial networks of place. Not only does the introduction of deconstruction into architectural rhetoric significantly alter the rhetorical situation, but this happening in the very same year that the book was published signifies another major shift in the discipline: architecture, classically one of the slower disciplines to evolve due to the time-consuming nature of building projects, was immediately impacted by an academic discourse outside itself. Although this has happened before through history and is how the discipline evolves, the fact that deconstruction was absorbed into the discipline, discourse, and rhetorical situation of architecture so instantaneously signifies a shift toward interdisciplinarity as the field rapidly accelerates towards building quicker–more mass-produced.
Conclusion
“Plug It in, Rameses, and See if It Still Lights up” is an impactful piece of architectural theory because it highlights two seemingly unrelated things–electronic communication and commercial strip malls–and combines them into a new way of understanding architecture as object, place as a network of conditions and meanings in both physical and digital space, and the recognition of a spatial order that is at once mundane and dynamic, mass-produced and hegemonic yet exciting and worthy of study. Moore was early to the understanding of the digital world as a mode of extending the human body outside its physical into physical space and thus transforming the meaning of place, and although he did not understand the that human bodies could extend too into the digital world itself and create place within that ephemeral electric architecture, he saw that instantaneous communication changed the previously hierarchical relationships between architecture and its physical geography. The conclusions in “Plug It in, Rameses, and See if It Still Lights up” foundationally shifted the architectural rhetorical situation at a critical juncture of the twentieth century, socially, politically, environmentally, economically, and architecturally as well. Moore’s findings spurred the beginnings of the Deconstructivist movement and certainly contributed to what were the core principles of postmodernism (though no postmodernist ascribed to any “core principles” or rules, and those are retroactively applied).
“Plug It in, Rameses, and See if It Still Lights up. Because We Aren’t Going to Keep It Unless It Works” is worthy of study as a piece of architectural theory because of how deeply it impacted the course of architectural history. But on a much more significant level, the essay demonstrates that if Moore was able to introduce and seriously, critically consider things we in the discipline hadn’t previously seen as architecture (and perhaps looked down upon), then we must continually ask of ourselves what it is now that we are not seeing as architecture that is worthy of serious consideration and study.
This requires exiting the discipline of architecture, embracing with fervor the interdisciplinarity that drew Moore to include Derrida’s theory of deconstruction in his essay so soon after the publication of Derrida’s book, and closely examining both the rare and the hegemonic mundanities of everyday life. Rhetorical space and its relationship to placemaking only grows ever more complex; we live now in a different world than Moore, where physical space has not at all vanished but exists in contention with the digital-electric world and generates hybrid places in their interaction.
It is not the job of architectural theory to advance the field of architecture by finding new building techniques or representation styles. We must self-consciously define ourselves as we evolve, rationalize our movements in the very moment they occur. Architectural theory must contend, indeed, with everything all at once.
Reference
Moore, Charles. "Plug It in, Rameses, and See If It Still Lights up. Because We Aren't Going to Keep It Unless It Works." Perspecta, vol. 11, 1967, pp. 32-43. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/1566932.