Civilization and leisure.

Leisure is one of the main components of civilised life. Indeed, it may be one of the key criteria of civilisation, for before human societies developed economic structures with enough critical mass to be able to escape from the rigours of competitive subsistence hunting and agriculture, it is doubtful that there could be much time set aside from the process of gaining a living. The word civilisation is derived from the Latin civitas, a body of citizens working together as a society (a much older concept than urbs -- whence urban -- a settlement ringed by a wall). Civilisation has always implied a degree of freedom for citizens (hence the medieval 'city air makes men free') -- and a large part of their freedom was to be able to choose to organise parts of their lives without reference to productive processes -- i.e. to take their leisure.

Naturally, this freedom was as far as possible channelled into conformity by authorities. (It would not do to have too many people sitting around possibly plotting against the people in charge). So communal leisure rituals, more or less imposed, have been with us since as long as we can remember -- the Games of the ancients, themselves infused with religious and authoritarian purpose, were succeeded by the rituals and festivals of the Church.

Even in much more secular societies, such as those of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries in Europe, leisure was highly ritualised. For instance, the leisured classes (the people who largely by inheritance had been able to expropriate the leisure of others) would elaborately change their clothes several times a day. This was little to do with hygiene, but gave the rich something to do with their otherwise tedious spare hours and kept armies of maids and valets occupied for a great part of their time. In this period, assembly rooms, gentleman's clubs, theatres, museums, pleasure gardens and opera houses were all invented or rediscovered as building types specifically devoted to leisure and formed key moments in the urban scene as well as in the life of polite society.

Towards the end of the nineteenth century, the working (as opposed to the leisured) classes began to re-invent games as mass entertainment and modern stadia were born, then largely on the fringes of cities where land was cheap enough to allow creation of large structures for spectator sports. Partly as a result, the modern stadium has never been as closely integrated into the urban fabric as its antique predecessors, so the ball parks and soccer grounds of the twentieth century are dislocated from the context of the suburbs in which they are sited -- with disjunction now made more extreme by the need for deserts of car parking round each stadium.

Dislocation of leisure and other aspects of life has been taken to much greater lengths in recent decades. The four Disney leisure colonies take separation to logical conclusion. They are places enclosed, not with walls perhaps, but by the most elaborate security systems available, and in their enclosure they become strange travesties of urbanity. They are pseudo-cities, in which most of the types of building dedicated to leisure have been collected as a series of events which lack interconnecting tissue. Visitors can do everything there but live (except in hotels) and work (though of course, there is an army of servants trained to wait on the visitors and encourage them to spend). Disneyland may in part be descended from the fairs of the middle ages and the pleasure gardens of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, offering sanitised high-tech versions of many of the popular entertainments they offered. But its most obvious (though probably unconscious) precedent is Hadrian's Villa, that rather gross pleasure palace at Tivoli made by an emperor for himself and his favourites. (Copenhagen's Tivoli Gardens -- the only ones of the type that remain to us from the nineteenth century, for all the reference to antiquity in their name, are completely different. Part of the centre of the city, they are much less exclusive and have a delicacy of scale to which neither Disney nor Hadrian aspired.)

Unlike the emperor's palace, at least the Disneylands are open to everyone (who can pay) and they will doubtless remain popular for a long time. But they do demonstrate some worrying tendencies in modern society: the dissection of life into separate compartments (each of which forms a profit centre for some business interest or other), and the privatisation of the public realm. The great leisure buildings of the nineteenth century were admittedly largely designed for the bourgeoisie, but Garnier's Paris Opera, for instance, not only provides a grand ceremonial termination to the avenue from which it takes its name, but a wonderful internal promenade architecturale in which visitors can parade, dine, chat or drink, as well as taking in the performance.

Its twentieth-century successors such as London's Festival Hall and the Pompidou Centre in Paris offer an even greater variety of pleasures to a much wider section of the public. You can drop in on the Festival Hall to buy a book, look at an exhibition, have a snack, cup of coffee or a glass of wine, enjoy the views of the river without having to go anywhere near the auditorium. At Pompidou, the exhibition galleries are enhanced by a host of subsidiary activities. And they are made wonderful by the opportunity of travelling on that most magical of twentieth-century promenades, the escalators on which you drift through the skylines of the Marais to take in the breathtaking views of the city. It is the best free ride in the world.

Looking back, it seems that the Festival Hall and the Pompidou bracket the postwar age of public spirit. They celebrate leisure to which every citizen is by right offered a decent share. The first was made by an exhausted heroic nation, determined to show how a generous and decent public realm could be evolved. The second was created by a government determined to engage all its citizens in an imaginative involvement with the past and the future by utilising to the full the potentially liberating powers of twentieth-century technology and humane artistic imagination. Since Pompidou, technolgical and artistic expertise in provision of public leisure has largely been devoted to serving private ends. (The exploits of the Disney corporation's Imagineers are often stunning visually, even if kitsch.) The subsequent Parisian Grands Projets, although most were intended for the use of the general public, never attained the generosity and daring of Pompidou (and some are downright silly, grandiose presidential gestures like the Tres Grand Bibliotheque by Dominique Perrault, which uses technology at great expense to correct a basically idiotic parti).

This issue looks at rather more humble buildings and tries to find examples that suggest leisure can again be seen as an essential part and celebration of civilisation in plural and democratic societies -- that show its expressions can be formally and functionally of the tissue of urban and suburban communities. And that there is a dimension to the enjoyment of leisured life which is beyond the private, masturbatory pleasures of the television and video screens. P.D.

MARGINALIA 

Model re-assessment

At the Palazzo Grassi in Venice, there is a superb exhibition that re-assesses the whole of the Quattrocento.

Owned by Fiat as its 'cultural institution in Venice', the Palazzo Grassi was beautifully restored in 1986 and now mounts one big exhibition each year. The present exhibition, designed by Mario Bellini, is ambitious -- this is a big building after all -- nothing less than a reassessment of Quattrocento and Cinquecento architecture in Italy. The organisers, Henry Millon and Vittorio Lampugnani, claim to have found the quantity of material available for selection overwhelming, discovering many documents and drawings that had until now remained unstudied.

The exhibition is amazingly rich in both drawings and, most of all, architectural models. Such is the power -- and size -- of these artifacts that all other exhibits take second place to them. This is a curious state of affairs, considering that some large models are of second-rate projects (the model of Pavia Cathedral) and some of the drawings are superb (Federico Barocci's drawing of Bramante's Tempietto). The centrepiece is Antonio da Sangallo's model for St Peter's, newly restored as a direct result of the exhibition, and taking up the whole of the Palazzo Grassi's sizeable courtyard. Here is the 'Client's Model' par excellence, big (7 x 6 x 4.7m), expensive (15 man-years just to restore it), and vulgar. You can sense the architect's question lingering in the air: you aren't going to change the design after all this? Ah, Antonio: they waited for your death.

Alberti, who wrote about everything else to do with architecture, is a natural person to turn to for an early Renaissance opinion on the architectural model. You find he had no time for the Client's Model. Sangallo's model was made about 1540. A hundred years earlier Alberti argued for the Architect's model: 'I must not omit to observe,' he says in De Re Aedificatoria, 'that the making of curious, polished models, with the delicacy of painting, is not required from an architect to show the real thing itself; but is rather the part of a vain architect, that makes it his business by charming the eye and striking the fancy of the beholder, to divert him from the rigorous examination of the parts which he ought to make, and to draw him into an admiration of himself.' Models of this kind were indeed more common in the fifteenth than the sixteenth century, though these tend not to have survived. The exhibition shows several models of this type: that for the apse of Como Cathedral, two vaulting studies for the nave of San Petronio, Bologna and my personal favourite, a bare wooden box representing San Giuseppe (or perhaps San Marco), Florence.

This business of representation is at the heart of the exhibition. For architecture, unlike painting or sculpture, is not easy to exhibit. You can't stick on the walls or stand it on the floor. Architecture is the absent guest here, with friends invited to speak on its behalf. The trouble is that without a great amount of words the drawings, paintings and especially the models at the Palazzo Grassi are bound to strike as objects in their own right, and representations only second.

The captions here are brief, giving only date, author and project -- just as if they were works of art. The catalogue helps to give context to the exhibits, but you can't carry it around -- it weighs nearly three and a half kilos. (Though there is a room at the end of the exhibition where visitors can sit in Mario Bellini's leather chairs at a table where a dozen copies are available for consultation). Nonetheless it is a wonderful book, with essays by Henry Millon, James Ackerman, Christoph Frommel, Richard Krautheimer and others. The quality of colour reproduction is splendid, and the actual catalogue -- the last 350 pages of the book -- is well annotated. Here the objects are put in their place.

The catalogue is silent about techniques of model construction, concentrating on their admittedly fascinating history. (For anyone who wants to know more about sixteenth century model-making and the restoration of the Sangallo model, a separate and fascinating book has been published by Bom Diani called San Pietro: un Droetto e un modello: storia e restauro. It covers everything from the history of the actual building project through to the model's original construction, and a detailed description of the restoration project, complete with enlarged photos of various xylophagous insects and spectrum analyses of paint flakes.)

The stated aims of the organisers were, first, to 'initiate a vast, non-specialist public in the complexities and contradictions of Renaissance architecture', second, to expose the whole of the design process, 'from its beginnings in the quick sketch' to the 'glory of the finished achievement', and third, to 'turn the spotlight on the architecture of the Quattrocento'. The spotlight is there, and it is wonderful to see so much so well, but a few more passes with the searchlight would have suited me. One knows enough about individual projects of the period to be able to look a little more deeply into less well explored areas.

A room devoted to the Medici projects in Rome handles the subject -- all intrigue and revolution -- in a not very informative, cursory way. Drawings and diagrams aren't adequate to describe political manoeuvring and the slow development of the urban fabric. Issues of political complexity are impossibly un-visual. Who would have the spotlight dwell too long on diagrammatic reconstructions and wordy analysis? I would, but the organisers obviously thought otherwise. Caroline Elam, who contributed to this section of the exhibition, surely would have welcomed space to tell us more. But she hasn't even an essay in the catalogue, and that is a shame. There is little to convey that sense of 'complexity and contradiction' of the Renaissance the organisers say they wanted to present. The catalogue does little to correct this. It may be the nature of history writing, but every essay in the catalogue presents a story that is a continuous history, and there is not a sentence of contradiction among them. As for complexity, I can hardly believe the case needed making.

Exposing 'the whole design process' is another sizeable ambition, but one more successfully achieved. There are some striking insights into contractual processes, none more so than the libro della muraglia from 1489-90, relating to the construction of the Palazzo Strozzi. It is one of five such double-entry account books kept during the project, itemising every smallest expense. We are given Francesco di Giorgio's drawings of construction machinery, and a full size partial reproduction of the scaffolding to the lantern of Florence cathedral, together with construction tools and drawing implements. But how do you exhibit the courage of a man like Brunelleschi, who undertook to build that dome with the explicit statement that he didn't know how to build it -- he would sort out the problems as they arose? And the courage of his clients!

Mario Bellini, just to make sure that all architecture is absent from the show, has succeeded in covering up almost all the interiors of the classical Palazzo Grassi behind grey panels of wood and metal, with the usual Italian standard of exquisite finish and minimal detailing. Then he's turned the lights out for good measure. You peer at most of these objects by the light of a few tungsten halogen spots high up in the ceiling. Bellini has kept things strictly mainstream modern, eschewing almost all Renaissance tricks in his design of the exhibition -- all but one.

The Urbino Ideal City panel hangs in a room of its own, a perspective room, where the walls slope, and the floor is paved with trapezoidal panels of tread plate steel, assembled to look like the perspective chequered floors typical of Renaissance painting. The trick, it struck this visitor, is to understand whether the floor really slopes up towards the painting or only looks as if it does. If you are alone in the room this is harder to judge than might be imagined. The slope, if there is one, is too subtle to feel under foot. (There is a way to find out, but you'll have to work it out for yourself.)

This choice of a perspective device is telling. Bellini employs the most illusionistic element of the era -- an element that appeared to promise certainty of a better-than-photographic kind -- and exposes it as a delusion, at least as an element in built form, of extreme physical uncertainty. Fresco, sculpture, classicism -- these other devices are left in the warehouse. The only direct connection Bellini recognises with the Quattrocento is through geometry. Alberti would have been pleased at that.

ANTHONY MCINTYRE

The architecture of refuge

Since the Israel-PLO peace accord initiated partial self-rule in the Gaza Strip and Jericho there has been a new flow of financial support, which is being used to provide Palestinians living in the refugee camps with improved standards of existence -- an immense task. Some 2.8 million Palestinian refugees are dispersed throughout Syria, Lebanon, Jordan and the occupied territories of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.

When hundreds of thousands of refugees were made stateless by the Arab-Israeli conflict in 1948, they were taken under the wing of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees (UNRWA), formed as a pure relief organisation. Forty-six years later, UNRWA's role is more that of a quasi-governmental institution, running hospitals, training centres, schools and clinics.

In the occupied territories, UNRWA maintains 28 camps, employing 8000 people of which 99 per cent are Palestinians. There is no typical example of a camp; each is generated by area, population size and climatic conditions that can vary dramatically.

The camps around Jericho are relatively under-populated. Large building plots lie barren. This is due to the influx of refugees into Jordan where they are permitted full legal status.

In bleak contrast to Jericho, the most extreme living conditions are found in the Gaza Strip, a narrow stretch of land 46km in length and 6-10km wide. With more than half of the Palestinians living in eight camps and population densities of up to 100 000 people per [km.sup.2] living mainly in single-storey housing, these are some of the most densely populated areas in the world. A handful of Jewish settlers live among the 900 000 Palestinians in highly secured settlements that resemble suburban enclaves on the Mediterranean Coast. These Jewish settlements are a result of determined planning policies and generous subsidies of the Israeli government in the '70s and '80s.

In the Gaza Strip, sanitation conditions are dire. Children play among rancid rubbish tips carved out of abandoned areas of land, and open sewers carry effluents and muddy rainwater directly into the sea. Urban redevelopment and masterplanning are not on the UN agenda, since their mandate is under renewal every three years. One proposed scheme -- to secure the coastline as a thriving tourist resort -- seems an intangible dream.

However a feasibility study is under way to build a sewage works and fresh water supply system, which most of the camps are still without. Paradoxically, among these extreme circumstances, inflated land prices are quoted as high as $1000 per [m.sup.2] in Gaza City.

The principal objectives of UNRWA's engagement in building is provision of basic living areas. These are implemented within various programmes, including the shelter rehabilitation project targeted at families who qualify as hardship cases. At least 20 000 families in the occupied territories are registered in this category, often living in decrepit and unhygienic shelters built decades ago. The average area of the new shelter type is approximately 25[m.sup.2]; it comprises a living room with kitchen facilities and a bathroom unit. Windows are placed above eye level in an attempt to prevent them from being smashed by patrolling Israeli soldiers.

During construction, which takes on average six to eight weeks, the family is moved to other rooms within their homes. The shelter is incorporated into the existing space, which attempts to feature a traditional communal area in the form of a courtyard. Glazed panels act as a primitive solar heating system to provide hot water. Construction is of reinforced in-situ concrete. Costs are between $4000 and $8000. The shelter provides bare necessities, often merging unnoticed into the assembly of ad hoc structures propped around it.

In some circumstances a surrounding concrete frame allows the families to expand their homes vertically and horizontally to meet individual needs. UNRWA will contribute cash grants and technical guidance. The refugees are encouraged to participate in the construction and repair by providing their own labour, materials and assistance from relatives and friends. Access to materials is limited, concrete blocks being the most easily available.

Projects on a larger scale are difficult to administer within the boundaries of the occupied territories. Construction workers are relatively skilled due to the Palestinians' experience on Israeli building sites, an important source of income for a region where unemployment is almost 40 per cent. However, high taxes imposed by the Israeli authorities and limited local resources mean that demands of large-scale production are difficult to meet. The building of a $35 million hospital with 232 beds in Rafah, near the Egyptian border, was put out to international competition and won by a practice from Northern Ireland. The design incorporates traditional elements of Arabic architecture -- a rare example.

The majority of buildings within the camps are constructed independently of the UN. Showing little reference to tradition, they consist of an amalgamation of forms, flat-roofed with small openings. A jamboree of urban configurations mushroom to form a maze of back streets and congested living spaces. In the West Bank, where overcrowding is not so severe, the houses are free-standing and display a diversity of personal building styles. In Kalandia camp, striped buildings cling to the rocky hillside with protruding balconies. There is a variety of appropriated materials: walls are constructed of weathered corrugated steel, intricate displays of ironwork grace internal courtyards and bright pigmented rendering is splashed across facades providing a vivid backdrop to the political graffiti, protests against the Israeli occupation.

The level of interference imposed on building by the IDF, Israel's defence forces, is high. Afraid that the camps' boundaries will be used as strategic points for launching attack, the construction of any building over the height of three storeys is forbidden. The three-storey school built by UNRWA in Aquabat Jabr Camp, near Jericho was taken over by the IDF and used as a military post; its boundaries posed a potential threat to the army checkpoints regulating the flow of traffic to and from the city. In the centre of Jabalia camp, close to Gaza city, a 25m-tall watchtower scans the surrounding areas.

While the signing of the Cairo agreement has triggered the erosion of some of these restrictions, the Israeli administration will continue to intervene in security matters in the settlements.

Despite their tumultuous conditions, the camps provide a nucleus for the refugees. Markets in most of the camps flourish; the mosques daily call their disciples to prayer. Compared to the original tent structures, in use until 1959, the present conditions are a vast improvement.

But according to an UNRWA official, the Palestinians are impatient for change: 'They want to be employed and [have] their circumstances improved -- now -- not in five years' time. They want to have what everybody else has.'

CORINNA DEAN AND KLAUS WURSCHINGER