Overturning Architecture: Douglas Darden's Frontispiece, Lequeu, Duchamp, Piranesi, and Melville

Frontispiece to Douglas Darden's Condemned Building

About four years ago I first introduced to Douglas Darden's "Oxygen House", a theoretical design of his for a man to die in. I did not think much of Darden at the time, but a couple of years later I was privileged to have met and taken several classes with Peter Schneider, former curator of Darden's work, at UC Denver. Through Peter I was fortunate to be able to look at some of Darden's original sketches for his unpublished but completed "immodest proposal" for Sex Shop (omitted from his book Condemned Building for its controversial subject matter) and another unpublished design called Killing Mountain.

Very little has been written about Darden, though he is very well known in certain architecture circles. I personally have only ever been able to gather fragments of his biographical details, so I suppose I should write the very little that I actually know about the man: Douglas Darden was born in October 1951 in Denver, Colorado. He graduated Magna Cum Laude from the University of Colorado at Boulder in 1974 with a degree in English and psychology. He attended Parsons School of Design in New York City for two years before studying architecture at Harvard Graduate School of Design from 1979 to 1983. Darden's final year at the GSD he took a studio with Stanley Tigerman, whose idiosyncratic approach to architecture and architectural criticism would greatly influence Darden. Shortly thereafter Darden returned to Colorado to teach at the University of Colorado. The Director of Graduate Studies at UCD's College of Architecture and Planning, my former professor, Peter Schneider, was the one who hired Darden. Peter once told me that Darden had sent his resume to him, which was typed on an old typewriter — Peter said he thought this was so cheesy that he discarded it; Darden later came by Peter's office to speak with him, showed him a single graphite drawing he had done, and Peter was so impressed by that one drawing that he hired him on the spot to teach media and drawing. Darden was — from what Peter has told me about the man — eccentric and intense, to say the least. Darden apparently would wear sets of primary colored suits, i.e. one day of the week he would wear a primary blue shirt, blue tie, blue jacket, belt, slacks, shoes, and socks, and all the exact same hue of blue, and then the next day it would be the same thing but this time yellow, then the next day red, et cetera. But his level of intensity is both something to admire and to abhor: Darden would never assign the same studio project twice; between semesters he would think up a new project, then spend two weeks working and refining and finalizing his design proposal for his project, and if he could not do it in two or three weeks, then he would not assign it to his students to complete in eighteen weeks. He would usually work on the project again or work on a side-project of his with his students each semester. But his studios were so work-intensive and controversial that some students' physicians would sternly suggest they drop Darden's studio — that is correct: his classes were physically and mentally detrimental to students' health. Some studio projects were controversial and dark: for instance one project was to design a hospice, a place to die in, and the one-week warm-up project was to design one's own grave or crypt; another project, Killing Mountain, was to design a structure for Jewish priests to sacrifice cattle per Old Testament prescriptions and rites (pictured below). His personal intensity went well beyond academics, art, and teaching. In 1991 Darden was diagnosed with lymphoblastic leukemia. Peter told me in one our talks about Darden that Darden, being Darden, took up exercises and activities that would increase his white blood cell count, namely snowboarding (something he had never done before) and tennis (also something he had never done before). When he started snowboarding he did not just start with the bunny hills; no, he had to start with some of steepest and more dangerous slopes he could find in Colorado. He once broke several bones in his body — practically broke his body — when he ran into a tree. Darden was more intense with tennis than he was with snowboarding. He practice everyday for a year straight, and the next year he entered and won nearly every amateur tennis match he could find in the state of Colorado. That is the intensity that was Doug Darden. In 1988 Darden was awarded the Prize for Architecture from the American Academy of Rome. In 1993 he published his defining work: Condemned Building (dedicated to his parents and Standley Tigerman), a book of ten theoretical architectural proposals, including his infamous "Oxygen House". Over the course of five years of battling leukemia, undergoing chemotherapy, going into remission, then the disease coming back, Darden remained as intense as ever in his work. This is not to say he never rested; he was a apparently a well rested man. I have read that when he would fly somewhere for a lecture or exhibition of his work, he requested a day to rest, as traveling took a lot out of him. Ultimately the leukemia his life in April 1996. He was 44 years old.

Working drawing for studio project, Killing Mountain, Red Rocks, Colorado

There is a long tradition in literature have a frontispiece that artistically illustrates the book in a single image. Giambattista Vico's New Science has a fantastic frontispiece that is heavily symbolic and sums up New Science in a single image. I personally feel that a frontispiece should stand on its own, and Vico felt compelled to give a lengthy explanation of every last object in his frontispiece, which I regard as not only redundant, but unnecessary. A well known frontispiece that stands on its own is the primitive hut frontispiece to Marc-Antonie Laugier's Essay on Architecture. But I must admit that Darden's frontispiece to Condemned Building not only stands on its own, but is immensely rich, enigmatic, and a personal favorite of mine (I personally have a copy of it printed out and hanging up on my wall over my computer where I am typing this). It is this frontispiece that I would like to dedicate this post to: how it encompasses Darden's ideas, how it represents the book it prefaces, and some of inspirations and homages Darden alludes to in its rendering.

Il Est Libre, ink wash rendering by Lequeu

Firstly, Darden was inspired by one of the strangest architects in the history of architecture: Jean-Jacques Lequeu. If Lequeu had to be summed up in a single word, that word would be: insnane. Not much is known about Lequeu: we know he gave up on becoming a professional architect after the French Revolution, and therefore he never built anything, and instead became a draftsman for various government offices, and spent his spare time and the latter part of his nomadic life producing a portfolio of architectural designs for a work entitled Architecture Civile, along with a number anatomical and pornographic drawings. He spent many of his latter days living in a brothel. He was probably deranged and neurotic, and that is greatly reflected in his work, especially his self-portraits.

Lequeu with breasts dressed in women's clothing

One of Lequeu's greatest renderings, Il Est Libre, an ink wash rendering, depicts what appears to be a woman — who is in fact Lequeu with breasts — lying in an archway. This is actually one of my favorite images, as I feel it speaks more to architecture than most buildings. There are two reasons we know this is Lequeu with breasts: firstly, the text written below the lintel between the heads reads: ιλ εςτ λιβρε, which is really il est libre ("he is free") transliterated into Greek letters. Secondly, Lequeu was probably a crossdresser, or at least he liked to draw himself with breasts and in women's clothing from time to time.

To say Darden was inspired by Lequeu is, in my opinion, a bit of an understatement. Peter Schneider was the one who introduced me to Lequeu, and when I went to the library to peruse the book Lequeu: An Architectural Enigma, Peter saw that I had checked it out, and asked if it was the copy Darden had drawn in. Apparently an old copy of Lequeu was in the Auraria Library that Darden would regularly check-out and write and draw in. Sadly the resource librarian of the rare and antique books collection and I never located this copy, but we did find a 19th Century copy of Paradise Lost that was Darden's.

Il Est Libre turned sideways; Duchamp's Fountain, a urinal turned on its side

Duchamp holding his Water Mill within Glider

Darden makes two significant homages to Lequeu's work in the frontispiece of Condemned Building: firstly, Darden takes the archway of Il Est Libre and turns it sideways (like Marcel Duchamp's Fountain, a urinal turned on its side; Duchamp being another influence to Darden) — possibly so that the archway looks like the letter D (it was not uncommon for Darden to work the letter D, and even DD, into his drawings and writings as a reference to his name). At the same time the turning of the archway is probably a simultaneous homage to Duchamp's Water Mill within Glider, a photograph made by Duchamp of himself holding a piece of framed glass with an image of a water mill on the glass; the sculpture itself is supposed to mount onto a wall, but the print of Duchamp holding the sculpture is supposed to be turned ninety-degrees counterclockwise. Darden is simply turning over what Duchamp had already turned over (i.e. normalizing the image)..

The turning of the arch sideways is emblematic of the primary ideological motive of Condemned Building, namely to invert, and "turning over" architectural ideas to examine and understand what truly makes architecture Architecture (with a capital A). This can best be understood with the turtle shells in the frontispiece: the top turtle shell is fixed to a set of cables and is showing its underbelly, while the turtle shell that is hanging from a single cable from the upside-down turtle is showing its topside. The imagery of the turtles is explained in a prose writing of Darden's given on the Contents page:

I am inclined while watching the
turtle to turn it over and study its
underbelly. From this unnatural
position I see how this platonically
solid creature makes its way
through the world.

Dweller by the Dark Stream

The theme of overturning is taken further with the overturning of gender: as mentioned, Lequeu would often depict himself in drag and with breasts; likewise, Darden depicts himself with breasts in his frontispiece, but with that other great homage to Lequeu, namely Darden directly copies Lequeu's ink wash Et Nous Aussi Nous Serons Meres, Car.........! ("And We May Also Be Mothers, Because.........!") — in which a nun is depicted lifting up her habit to reveal her breasts — but with Darden's face imposed upon the nun's body. It is not unlike Duchamp's quasi-alter ego in which Duchamp dresses up as a woman and calls himself Rrose Sélavy (a pun, which sounds like Eros, c'est la vie, in French, which translates as "Eros [sexual love], that is life").

Et Nous Aussi Nous Serons Meres, Car.........!; Duchamp dressed a woman

This overturning of gender and sex is actually a matter of examining and understanding what gender and sex is. This is the case particularly with Lequeu, who — like Charles Le Brun's studies in physiognomy — believed that a persons personality is dictated or influenced by their physical characteristics (i.e. physiognomy). Lequeu did a number of physiognomical studies in which he tried to demonstrate what the geometry and proportions of the ideal person looks like — down to the exact curves and measurements of the ears, distance between the eyes, the exact shape of the nose, et cetera. Using this geometrical datum Lequeu thought he could discover what kind of a person someone was based on how they diverged from his perfect image (hence why the breasts are perfect hemispheres). Thus personality and character would be the perfect union of masculine and feminine personalities if one were a hermaphrodite; hence Lequeu, and ultimately Duchamp and Darden depicting themselves in drag and with breasts.

Pornographic illustrations by Lequeu (trust me these are not even the worst of them)

Lequeu took the study of physiognomy pretty far. Not only were a number of his pornographic illustrations an extension of his physiognomy studies, but so were a number of his self-portraits; sometimes they were as simple as how character changes when "making a face" (e.g. frowning or winking), but can be as subtle and off-putting as having an extra tooth in the center of the upper jaw.

Self-portraits of Lequeu (note middle tooth in the right portrait)

For Darden overturning does not just occur in images, but in words and phrases. Lequeu's il est libre is overturned in Darden's frontispiece, written sideways and overturned into a question: Is he free? Darden would continue to overturn architectural notions and design around those anti-architectural concepts throughout Condemned Building. He used ten overturned architectural notions; they are described by Darden to be like a plow overturning the soil for further growth and cultivation, and are presented as such:

The ten works of architecture cited in this book were constructed from a particular canon of architecture that has persisted throughout the centuries and the varieties of architectural styles. The buildings are a turning-over, one by one, of those canons. Like the action of the plow, this was done not to lay waste to the canons, but to cultivate their fullest growth. The canons and their reversa are as follows:

Architecture posits the authentic.
Architecture posits the fake.

A monument is for remembering.
A monument is for forgetting.

Architecture domesticates our fears.
Architecture locates our fears.

Light is the revealer of form.
Darkness is the revealer of form.

Architecture is the reconciliation with nature.
Architecture is the irreconciliation with nature.

Architecture takes possession of a place.
Architecture displaces.

Architecture is accommodation.
Architecture is confrontation.

Architecture fulfills desire.
Architecture objectifies desire.

Man is at the center of divine creation.
Man is off-center of divine creation.

A house is for living.
A house is for dying.

 

Title illustration of Condemned Building

In tandem to the theme of overturning is the theme of decapitation. It is subtle in the the frontispiece, but more prominent in the title image. In the frontispiece, just behind Darden is a cable, which presumably connects to the cables above, which in turn connect to what is probably a guillotine. The guillotine is depicted far more prominently in the title illustration, as the metal blade bears the inscription for the title and subtitle of the book. The guillotine hangs over a broken concrete wall with steel reinforcement protruding jaggedly; the concrete ruin even has a rustic channel for the neck to rest upon as the blade falls, and seen just behind this concrete ruin is a metal pan for the head to fall into. Above the guillotine is what is presumably a vaginal-shaped beehive (the vagina might be a reference to Lequeu's pornographic works), half natural and half artificial. Inscribed into the right montant is written (sideways, like Is he free?) the following:

How many, think ye, have fallen into Plato's honey head and sweetly perished there?

The passage is from the 37th chapter, "Cisterns and Buckets", of Herman Melville's Moby-Dick, a very beloved book of Darden's. Peter once told me that Darden had numerous copies of Moby-Dick, each one of which was heavily written in, drawn in, dogeared, unlined, and highlighted; apparently Darden would read and work in a copy until it was so full that he would have to buy a new copy and do more. Darden even dedicates one his ten architectural designs in Condemned Building to Melville, simply called "Melvilla". Darden writes in the introduction to the Melvilla: "The building honors Moby-Dick as the greastest novel in American history."

The passage from Moby-Dick is one of Melville's critiques of Platonic philosophy, as it is a reference to Plato's Republic, Book VIII. 552c: "Shall we, then, say of [the beggar] that as the drone springs up in the cell, a pest of the hive, so such a man grows up in his home, a pest of the state?" Exactly what is Melville's meaning in this and why Darden uses it is somewhat of a mystery to me, and is now getting beyond the scope of this writing. I digress: Plato's honey head seems to be allegorically depicted as the beehive situated atop of the guillotine, a device used for taking off heads. (It is also possible that the vagina shape in the beehive is a reference to the hole in the sperm whale's head that Tashtego falls into in Moby-Dick).

Piranesi's Carceri, Plate IX

Two last things about the title image before returning to the frontispiece: in the background behind the guillotine is a heavily darkened copying of Giovanni Battista Piranesi's Carceri (Prisons), Plate IX. Other than Piranesi being an aesthetic and design inspiration to Darden, there really seems to be no other deeper reason for Carceri IX to be in this image. Lastly, the blocks of wood at the bottom with letters carved into them simply denote the names of the ten projects in Condemned Building (e.g. TF = Temple Forgetful; OH = Oxygen House; M = Melvilla; et cetera — interestingly enough, the only block that is not wood is veined marble and is inscribed MI = Museum of Imposters).

Understanding the title images's use of the guillotine as an emblem of the theme of decapitation-overturning, some of the subtle decapitation elements become more recognizable in the frontispiece: Lequeu's nun is decapitated and the head replaced by Darden's head; the four heads supporting the lintel from Lequeu's Il Est Libre has been removed and replaced by two turtle shells; and, finally, the oddly shaped object at the top connected to a series of cables and pulleys can be understood as being some strange modification of a guillotine.

For what it is worth, this does not even begin to sum up Darden — all I have done is give an analysis and interpretation of his frontispiece through his inspiration from Lequeu, Duchamp, Piranesi, and Melville. His work is dark and deathly — but not morbid (the last project in Condemned Building is "Oxygen House", which must have been personal to Darden and reflected his own suffering with leukemia, was designed to be a house to die in) — it is erotic, inhuman, but still very much human, and borderlines on the deranged and insane. The man Darden was intense and eccentric, but I also understand he was kind and warmhearted. A close look at any of his drawings and anyone will realize that not only did he know where every nut and bolt in his designs were, but he even thought about what angle the groove in a flat-head screw is turned. But through the eccentricities and intensity, through the dark and erotic — I would very much like to end on a lighter note — Darden concludes in the Afterwords "Six Aphorisms Envisioning Architecture":

I      Architecture is the meditation on finitude and failure.
II     Architecture is the symbolic redistribution of desire.
III   Architecture is the execution of exquisite barriers.
IV   Architecture is the fiction of the age critiqued in space.
V    Architecture is the history of a place told in broken code.
VI   Architecture is carried out by a resistance to itself.

Further reading:
Darden, Douglas. Condemned Building. Princeton Architectural Press. 1993.
Duboy, Philippe. Lequeu: An Architectural Enigma. The MIT Press. 1986.
LaMarche, Jean. "The Life and Work of Douglas Darden: A Brief Encomium", Utopian Studies, Vol. 9, No. 1. 1998.
Schneider, Peter. "Douglas Darden's 'Sex Shop': An Immodest Proposal", Journal of Architectural Eduction, Vol. 58, No. 2, November 2004.
Schneider, Peter and Ambach, Barbara. "Douglas Darden's 'Sex Shop': Digital Reconstruction of the Situation of Architecture's Dream', 9th Iberoamerican Congress of Digital Graphics (Lima, Peru) No. 2, November 2005.
Neveu, Marc J. "On the Uselessness and Advantage of Studio", Strange Utility Conference (Portland, Oregon), March 2013.
Chapman, Michael and Oswald, Michael J. "The Underbelly of an Architect: Discursive Practices in the Architecture of Douglas Darden", 21st Annual Conference of the Society of Architectural Historians Australia and New Zealand (Melbourne, Australia), Vol. 1. 2004.