Bio Psycho Socio Eco 1: Ecologies Urbaines.

Kroll's new book takes further the line of thinking already evident in The Architecture of Complexity (Batsford 1986), providing further backing for his position and deepening its resonance. Between the pages of theoretical argument, which are important for the history of participation, numerous projects undertaken by the Kroll office over the last 30 years are presented through drawings and descriptions, stressing the interdependence of work and theory. Perhaps most valuable to those familiar with Kroll's way of thinking will be the increased ecological dimension. He has long preferred to use the term paysage - usually translated landscape to describe his field of activity. Typical of his insight is a statement casually dropped near the beginning of his text that fields of corn and rows of social housing represent the same kind of modern monoculture, that the impoverishment of the soil in one and the ennui of the other are but symptoms of the same disease: narrow thinking, exclusive concentration on economic and technical questions, neglect of culture, of memory, of the interrelatedness of things.

Europe is full of little old towns that have grown up higgledy-piggledy over the centuries, whose form lacks the clarity of a single gesture and tends to be dismissed as 'organic' and 'unplanned'. The buildings vary in state of preservation and architectural quality, the technical interventions may be well or badly done, and the inhabitants' taste may be elegant or kitsch, but the whole place fits together and has a rich life of its own. The picturesqueness we admire as holiday visitors is just the surface, for each street carries a thousand memories and the gestures of generations. Given a small site to redevelop, even a mediocre architect has to contend with the irregular shape, the entries at different levels, the limit of party walls and the gift of views, so will do something adequate. Yet when it comes to designing a new town or even just a new street, even the most creative are hard-pressed to produce any identity and content: the 'monoculture' makes itself felt as arrogant and intrusive.

Kroll has always been the champion of the 'grown' landscape and has recognised that it is the result of a process, of political interaction. In attempting to return some life to the urban deserts of the twentieth century he has proposed an aggressive variety through addition, subtraction and rediscovery of elements. The new parts exhibit what is meant to be a nonstyle, but inevitably the signature shows through, and for the visually-led becomes the focus of attention. Kroll makes it clear, though, that this image is unimportant; that it is only a starting point, a catalyst. We must look deeper. Our unthinking orientation to images is precisely what he complains of in the modern commercial world. Through fashion, through advertising, through photographs in pages such as these, disembodied images - even 'virtual realities' - are bought and sold as a substitute for traditional life and culture. Kroll happily calls himself Post-Modern when distancing himself from the technical monoculture of the '50s and '60s, but he has nothing in common with the stylistic free-for-all and the designerism of the '80s. He is only too aware of the underlying politics, of the seductive colonisation by great capitalist organisations which undermine everything he stands for.