Writing. Right this second. Doing something. Anything. Doesn’t it seem completely Kafkaesque? How can we go on living as if nothing was up, when we are in the midst of war? Travelling. Going on holiday. Absolute meaninglessness materialising through the sounds of hand dryers, echoing through airport toilets; and the sound of hand dryers echoing through the toilets of the Buchenwald concentration camp. Guided visits through the Buchenwald extermination camp. EXIT signals placed around Buchenwald, reading EXIT.

At the same time, my Instagram feed is brimming with cats in costumes, nail art, ARCO, Fashion Week, memes and Hygge. Dealing with such a mix, how could we not arrive at a feeling of complete and utter nonsense, or, at least, be puzzled at the sight of a seemingly incomprehensible logic, or one that is yet to be known? Immersed within the feeling of incongruity that inhabits us, we come to find ourselves in the company of Albert Camus (1931-1960), whose longlife preoccupation was precisely that: absurdity.A The inevitability of feeling perplexed becomes a demand of sorts, compelling us to plunge into nonsense and get lost in it. Or perhaps, and paradoxically, it compels us to find meaning, because, as the Romanian philosopher Emil M. Cioran (1911-1995) said, “the fact that life has no meaning is the only reason to live”.1

Absurdity

First, let us dive into the sense of bafflement caused by the absurd through an example of architectural practice which, much like an architectural reification of Cioran’s words, can help us find meaning within and through incongruity. It is time to introduce RAAAFB (Rietveld Architecture Art Affordances), a Dutch architectural bureau founded by brothers Ronald and Erik Rietveld, a landscape architect and philosopher, respectively. The experimental studio started in 2006 during Ronald Rietvelds's time as a lecturer at the Rijksakademie of Visual Arts in Amsterdam. Through multidisciplinary research alongside scientists and craftsmen, RAAAF’s real-life thinking models link locality to the past, present and future. For example, Bunker 599 (2010) is paradigmatic of their working method. Grounded within a sense of perplexity that relates to the absurd, their project presents a deliberate and intentional break with the concept of ​​'Architecture'. It is not the aim of this brief essay to reveal the secrets, nooks and crannies of the term ‘Architecture’ — instead, I will simply refer to it as a place where “we deposit our emotions or project our habits and fantasies.”2 In other words, we project our need for protection, shelter and a home onto the realm of architecture. But what happens when architecture is torn down? Note that I do not write 'it collapses': I am not talking about the passivity of 'collapsing' but about the action of ‘being torn down’ or, as Bunker 599 shows, of 'being cut through’.

In the words of the architects: “A striking example of this is the cut-through monument ‘Bunker 599’, which unorthodoxly questions the Dutch and UNESCO policies on cultural heritage.” Here, the most suggestive part of this work is the reason for the architectural intervention: “[This is] a new way to think about monuments and cultural heritage. Through deliberate destruction, radical changes in context, and seemingly contradictory additions, a new field of tension arises between present, past and future. Through uncovering, revealing, cutting open, digging out, etc., we try to show qualities already present at a place.” These lines, taken out of the RAAAF Manifesto Hardcore Heritage,D talk about collapse – the action of knocking down – as one of the main techniques that defines the way they work. For practical reasons, the final result will not ever be collapse per se, but a way to de-use or de-functionalise a building or a construction. In their practice, the act of tearing down, or cutting through, constitutes the practice of an ‘architecture in reverse’: instead of excavating – removing material – to find an object, it is the very action of removing the materiality of the object that creates the work.

Archaeology In-Reverse

Bunker 599 deliberately uses these methodologies of ‘architecture in-reverse’ in order to create a ruin. The work is an intervention of one of the 700 bunkers belonging to the New Dutch Waterline (NDW), a military defense line that, from 1815 to 1940, protected the cities of Muiden, Utrecht, Vreeswijk and Gorinchem against deliberate flooding - thus preventing the advance of the National Socialist Army. Although the chosen bunker was one of the best-preserved within the complex, it was the first time that a deliberate architectural intervention was allowed onsite.F RAAAF decided to open a 2-meter-wide tunnel that would cross through the bunker: following a walkway leading to the lake just in front, visitors could cross through the bunker from one end to the other and visualize its formerly impenetrable interior.

Destroying its walls and splitting a bunker in two by making a giant hole in its structure is reminiscent of the tactics used in military operations. As Paul Virilio (1932-2018) mentioned in his seminal etno-photographic collection Bunker Archaeology, “historically the reduction of obstacles and distances has always been the central problem of military space.”3 In particular the practice of making holes to connect the inside and the outside of dwellings is reminiscent of one of the tactics used by the Israeli army in its manoeuvres in Palestine, which is described as follows by the Palestinian architect and activist Eyal Weizman: “what they are actually doing is turning private and public space upside down. The private space becomes a space of circulation.”4 These actions banish the capacity of the domestic, denying its inhabitants the ability to live there; in that former place. Here, space is referred to in a Serresian sense: rather than turning ‘space’ into ‘place’, these actions deny the possibility for life and incapacitate space, preventing it from being a ‘place’ and reversing the process of habitability.C Michel de Certeau (1925-1986) would have called a process like this “’delinquency’ because it ‘crosses’, ‘transgresses’ and endorses ‘the privileging of the route over the inventory’.” This movement is, without a doubt, an extension of the idea of ​​the ‘Non-Place’ by Marc Augé, which he defines as “anthropological spaces of transience where human beings remain anonymous, and that do not hold enough significance to be regarded as ’places’ in their anthropological definition.”5 Referring to Augé’s thought, it is in those space of impermanence where we find “passing clients”, “passing travellers”, “passing motorists”, or, in this case, passing soldiers.

Subversions

In Bunker 599, the openings in the walls subvert de Certeau's statement because, although materially speaking, they are almost exactly the same as those excavated by the Israeli army, the intentions of RAAAF could not be further from them. Performed on a former war infrastructure, the intervention serves to undermine war practice itself. Literally, it is the very same practice of carving out a place and creating pathways inside a building. A walkway crosses through the bunker, creating a path to walk on, a reflection of Weizman's words – turning private space upside down and making it walkable, inviting in “passing people”, as Augé also reminds us.

However, Weizmann also states that “the spatial and intellectual methods of revealing what is no longer in sight are similar to archaeological practices”. Equally related to archaeology and to warfare, Bunker 599 subverts this notion. Furthermore, the wall openings subvert the archaeological practice of digging by switching up both the plane and the aims of this applied technique. RAAAF uses the conventional process of excavating, which is usually aimed at finding the Archaeological artifact – as the very essence of the work. What is inside the bunker is not that important – rather, it is the split itself.

As briefly mentioned before, there is still another subversion within the realm of the archaeological: the horizontal split in Bunker 599 also contradicts the commonly vertical axis of the technique of digging within the discipline. Instead, here, we have an infinite projection, a line, cut through the bunker, resulting in a feeling of never-ending openness. Unlike the Israeli manoeuvres in Palestine, where the straightforward practice of opening holes becomes an exercise of vertical possession, or a belligerent top-down panopticon of oppression, here, the use of a horizontal plane means that there is no space for occupation or possession. The line projected within the bunker is still a place for passing through; however, in this case, it is followed by a sense of reflection and introspection, which accompanies the visitor. A place for thought, and a contemplative experience are created, which deliberately throw light upon the absurdity of the place, mirroring that of war itself.  

Destruction as Creation

Both of the cited methods – splitting in two (warfare) and excavating (archaeological) – relate to the idea of destruction. Put in place ‘in reverse’, both of these practices materialize in this suggestive work. In this way, through an apparent practice of destruction, conservation is achieved: "a seemingly indestructible bunker with monumental status is sliced ​​up. Monuments are typically considered immutable and untouchable and, as a result, tend to fade from the public's imagination and memory. Paradoxically, after the intervention, Bunker 599 became a Dutch national monument."A This contradiction could be understood as a quasi-materialization of the Hegelian concept of Aufhebung; a term that can literally be understood as a container split into two halves. On the one hand, it means “to abolish”; on the other, “to preserve”. In this context, Aufhebung “is the mechanism by which negation and the negation of negation realize a determinate self-(re-)formation.”6 Using destruction as a creative force, RAAAF created a ruin. And herein lies the brilliance of their work: this ruin is not just any ruin, but a specific kind, which I have previously referred to in other studies as a “ruin as replica”: although they look like archaeological structures, these are newly created ruins that come into being through the use of methodologies, strategies, formalities, etc, which subvert the archaeological.

A bunker, an impossible destruction, a metaphor for the power of verticality, is pierced horizontally, using tactics of decontextualized warfare as well as archaeological practice. Thanks to this intervention, the bunker could be preserved. Isn’t this paradoxical? Through its destruction — or its emergence as a ruin-replica — the bunker became eligible for maintenance within heritage policy. Bunker 599 outlines another way of dealing with ‘hardcore heritage’, as RAAAF would call it: one that goes beyond simplistic ideas, from destruction to preservation, meaning ‘taking it away into the depths of the museum’ or ‘leaving it where it belongs’. Displaying the power of RAAAF’s puzzling and poetic approach, Bunker 599 can be seen as the embodiment of a manifesto for ‘hardcore heritage’ or ‘experimental preservation’.

Perhaps, Bunker 599 has a meaning because precisely because it has no use as a bunker. Such a deactivation reminds us of the importance of preserving these kinds of infrastructures through transforming them. This seems particularly urgent at the time of writing this essay, when there are several major armed conflicts active around the world. But let us delve deeper in order to think about other possibilities. How could we use this intervention as a means to develop new ways of seeing? The fertile ground of philosophical questioning seems to be an ideal place to unpack these ‘disciplines in reverse’. Creation processes stemming from the destruction of traditional disciplines constitute the founding paradox of RAAAF. Granted, the choice of these two fields - architecture and warfare - is far from coincidental.

Thinking in terms of warfare, architecture is created precisely through the very destruction of war architecture. The site – not the space – becomes inhabitable thanks to the operation that has led to its destruction. In RAAAF’s work, this very operation (which has to do with colonising in the case of warfare, and is related to Non-Places in Augé) works as a gift that allows the place to be inhabited and visited. And so, the 'passing visitors' arrive. This ‘collapse of decoration’ is, once again, a transgression: what Augé sees as pernicious opens up new avenues for exploration in the work of RAAAF. Also, from the point of view of archaeology, it is important to remember that this discipline has always been considered one of the auxiliary sciences of History. Through its subversion, another story, or another narrative possibility, is being created. Or, perhaps, more than History – Geschichte – it is a poem – Gedicht, or a metaphor – a metaphorai, the word used to refer both to stories and public transport in modern Greek. Both take you places, both physically and mentally, much in the same way as RAAAF’s walkable path leading to the lake.

Reflecting on Certeau’s texts once again, the set of elements that RAAAF produce through Bunker 599 – architecture, place, movement, and metaphor/poem – crystallize in a citadel for reflection. A reified ‘Reductio ad absurdum’, not only in its literal meaning – that of a 'reduction to absurdity’ but as a 'redoubt of the absurd': that which we find within the absurd. Protecting the absurd through deploying the absurd itself. A fortress, of course: a bunker. And what is this fort of possibility but a gift for new futures?