Introduction
In Europe, during the 1960s and the beginning of the 1970s, a series of singular architecture projects were carried out to fix the nomadic and roaming Roma populations. The phenomenon implied a strange paradox as it imposed a model of restriction of movement at a time when human movement was central to productivity and livelihoods, due, above all, to the development of the leisure and tourism industry, but also to the flexibilization of material working conditions. This contradiction with respect to mobility reveals a growing bureaucratization and control of the entirety of space, which makes some communities, whose livelihoods — or survival — are based on displacement that is non-productive for capital, particularly conflictive.
In turn, these projects aimed at settling the Roma, despite their desire for integration, have a clear antecedent in concentration camps, reproduce the same territorial and political logics, and create spaces of exception in which emancipatory and totalitarian practices are confused.
In this article, this controversial genealogical relationship is briefly presented through several significant case studies. On the side of the camps, two specific cases are presented for the Roma and nomads. On the side of housing projects, two constructions carried out in Spain that represent two different types of intervention, and, in relation to one of them, a reference case from France. Through this tour, it will be possible to see how those livelihoods that were first intended to be annihilated via the concentration and extermination camps are later subjected to attempts at redirection, through integration projects, towards hegemonic ways of life.
The Roma people have constantly escaped the captures of capital and the state, which is precisely why they have been persecuted tirelessly.1 Their history is one of constant confinement and displacement. The history of their resistance is not only ideological, but even more importantly, vital. The aim here is to deal with a small episode of this controversial history in relation to movement and subjection, revealing in turn that, in the 1960s, a conception of contemporary space was established based on the control of bodies, which continues to this day.
The conflicts between the Roma population and the hegemonic space have been studied from the fields of anthropology,2 social work, and activism3. In this article, the issue is specifically addressed from an architectural perspective, emphasizing territorial and urban arrangements, questioning contemporary spatial logic through its contested relationship with these roaming communities.
The Logic of the Camp
What is a camp? For Giorgio Agamben, the concentration camp is of special consideration, since, apart from being a considerable historical fact, it represents the matrix that articulates the logic of the modern political space in which we are still immersed today.4 A camp is also an architectural fact: a series of gestures that have to do with the arrangement of space and that articulate specific objectives with respect to the organization and habitation of bodies in a community. The camp is a special configuration of these relations when they are developed in spaces of exception.
Let us also note how the camp model proposed by Agamben for thinking about power relations entails an urban dimension beyond the architectural logic of the building that can be glimpsed in Foucault’s disciplinary proposal.5 If, in order to illustrate a certain discipline of space that emerged in the 18th century, Foucault proposed Jeremy Benthan’s panopticon space as a model of power relations, in which, due to the spatial arrangement, each user became a watcher of himself — a model that appears in prisons, schools, factories, and in all the institutional architectures that emerged in the 18th century — Agamben’s camp model incorporates the urban dimension: The various architectural elements or pavilions include “streets” and “facilities,” and a certain variety of uses that allow for the development of life in its totality, and which therefore require a different kind of enclosure. If life can be developed entirely within the camp, not just a part of it — such as reforming, studying, or working — then what is intended is to establish absolute control over all facets of life, including the movement between them.
For some authors, the dilemma of the camp defines the central question of contemporary space:
“ Camps result from the exceptional circumstances of conflict, natural disaster, displacement, and marginality with increasing frequency and ever-greater facility. How and why these camps are made, where they are located, and how long they endure reveal problems and possibilities associated with our built environment — a context being radically transformed by globalization, mobility, and political flux. Because of their rapid deployment and temporal nature, camps register these forces at their earliest stages and thus provide an important gauge of local and global situations. To understand a camp’s paradoxes is to begin to comprehend our current spaces, inexorably affected by militaristic, political, and romantic extremes.6”
In this work, Charlie Hailey analyzes different “typologies” of camps (for detainees, refugees, migrants, pilgrims, activists, tourists, hedonists, etc.), giving an account of the ambivalence — both political and functional — of these places, as well as their relevance when it comes to understanding the paradoxes running through contemporary space.
On the capacity to generate territory from the logic of the camp, there are many significant works regarding the Palestinian territory,7 and in terms of genealogies, we could highlight the work of Andrew Herscher on refugee camps.8
In this article, we will focus on how camps and their logics have affected (and, in some way, continue to affect) the Roma population, using some significant case studies upon which these arguments are based, established from an architectural perspective in terms of the archaeology of forms and the gestures of urban planning.
Subjection of the Roma
What was considered the first concentration camp specifically for Roma was instituted in the outskirts of Berlin, in Marzahn (Figure 1). Shortly before the Olympic Games of 1936, Berlin’s Sinti and Roma population was arrested and confined in a marshy territory. In this cynically named “rest area,” the Gypsies’ wagons were lined up in rows and surrounded by police. There, they were subjected to the Nuremberg laws and became the subjects of eugenic experiments before they were forcibly transferred to the concentration camps of Sachsenhausen and Auschwitz-Birkenau, where they were exterminated.
Figure 1.
Holocaust Encyclopedia. The Marzahn concentration camp in Berlín, ca. 1936. Source: Holocaust Encyclopedia, accessed January 12, 2021, https://tinyurl.com/yyzhlqwh
Beyond the tragic reality of this camp, like that of so many others, in this spatial arrangement we can recognize the gestures of territorial and body planning that would later on be repeated. In the first place, a group of people was removed from the urban fabric or from the place where they habitually lived or travelled through. It was not a question of expulsion, but rather of relocating and settling a population that was conflictive for various reasons outside of the city, in the outskirts. Secondly, the movements of these communities were restricted or even prohibited, thereby establishing absolute control over them. This project of instituting an isolated and controlled life functioned as a prelude to the genocide of these populations, but in addition to the racial issues imposed on these people, what was intended to be annihilated was a way of life that maintained an organic relationship (playful, productive, and, in many cases, conflictive) with spaces, and which constantly escaped the strict state-nation-territory correspondence. The conversion of these nomadic populations to sedentarism can, therefore, not be understood without considering the extreme repression and harsh discipline applied to bodies in the concentration camps. It seems that, for the definitive establishment of modern space, with its will to homogenize varied ways of life, imparting the trauma of the camps on dissident bodies was necessary.
This violence and the abandonment of the nomadic life are well reflected in the work of the Roma artist Ceija Stojka.9 On the back of her painting Untitled (1995) she wrote a poem, of which the following fragment: “The horses of the Roma did not end up in the concentration camp / But what became of them? And of the wagons they left empty?” reflects the suspended end of the nomadic life that, after the Second World War, would never again have the same meaning.
Another example of the spatial singularity of concentration camps aimed at restricting and ultimately eliminating ways of life associated with spatial mobility, especially of the Roma population, comes from France during the period of 1939–1946. There, several specific camps were created for Roma and nomads, a more or less arbitrary category that in practice comprised Roma — both nomadic and sedentary —, various nomadic or roaming populations (gens du voyage), as well as people living in a precarious situation of mobility.10 Due to the complex situation in France at the time, all of these communities were under suspicion of espionage and smuggling.
Among all of these camps specifically for Roma and nomads, we can highlight the camp of Saliers, in the Camargue, which was called “Village de gitanes” (Village of Gypsies) (Figs. 2 and 4). Giving the camp the name “village” was important in order to establish a progressive vision that masked the totalitarian practices carried out within it.
“First and foremost, the Saliers camp must be an argument of government propaganda. This argument consists of giving the concentration camp the appearance of a village, and allowing therein for family life and respect for the customs and beliefs of the inmates.
The architect of the camp, October 8th, 1942.11”
Figure 2.
Map of the Saliers concentration camp in the French Camargue. Source: Archives départementales Bouches du Rhône / Tous droits réservés.
Figure 3.
The Saliers camp during its construction in 1942 (fragment). Francis Bertrand Collection. Source: Pernot, Un camp pour les bohémiens.
Figure 4.
Model of Gao Lacho Drom, by Mediomundo arquitects, exhibition Machines for living. Flamenco and Architecture in the Occupation and Eviction of Spaces. CentroCentro Madrid, 20.10.2017 – 04.02.2018. Picture by the author.
In this case, architecture functions as a hinge element that coordinates humanitarian discourses with totalitarian practices. The operation produces a series of dislocations between disparate elements: the concepts of village and enclosure; respect for cultural customs and repressive practices of control; propagandistic argumentation and the isolation of the concentration camp. Dislocations, displacements of meanings that occur between the established order and the suspension of the norm, promoted by the threshold provided by the state of exception inherent to the camp. Urban logic is interwoven and intermingled with the logic of the camp, mutually contaminating each other. Further on, we will see to what extent this dangerous mixture was maintained in the project of integration of Roma populations after the Second World War.
A Place in the Outskirts
In almost all cities of the world, there is a region in the outskirts that is particularly troubled. These places, inhabited by marginalized populations — in many cases Roma — reflect a crack in the system, a failure of the city, the failure of so-called “integration” policies. These policies, also called “inclusion” policies, are articulated through social practices, but also through spatial practices, and have been challenged from multiple angles.
“Another strategy of power to justify the persecution of the Roma has been to place the responsibility for their exclusion on their own idiosyncrasies: “It is they who do not want to integrate”. This discourse is based on the supremacist belief that there are ideal ways of life, associated with white and Western paradigms, and that everything at the margins is inferior and underdeveloped. Such a belief holds that groups with “underdeveloped” cultural practices will have to abandon them and adopt hegemonic ones in order to become subjects of rights. After all, they will have to integrate in order to enjoy the universality of fundamental rights.12”
This difficulty that the hegemonic system has in dealing with difference means that one way of life (Western), associated with a certain way of understanding and projecting space, has become dominant and has imposed itself on other ways of life. Within these complex modes of oppression, we can distinguish some gestures in relation to forms and space.
As we have seen above in the case of the camps, one of the first actions taken to exercise domination over the bodies of the Roma was the isolation and fixation of the population in a place that is understood as being exterior to the space of the city. This operation is closely related to the logic of the space of exception.
“It is not the exception that subtracts itself from the rule, but it is the rule that, by suspending itself, gives rise to the exception, and only in this way, constitutes itself as a rule, maintaining itself in relation to the exception. The particular “vigor” of the law consists in this capacity to maintain itself in relation to an externality. We call such a relation that only includes something through its exclusion a relation of exception.13”
In this case, we can apply Agamben’s argument (the close relationship between norm and exception) to the hegemonic space and places in the outskirts. The first term, the normative space, is defined as such when it assumes its own suspension as an instituting factor, namely the space of the outskirts, governed by the logic of the camp. This fact marks a type of relation to difference, an operation that includes it through its exclusion. This is a highly significant operation in the subject at hand, since Roma populations have always been construed as a kind of exteriority with respect to the political space of cities. Even when they have been included, it has been done through their exclusion, which implies spatial fixation in marginalized places in the outskirts. This relationship of exception has historically marked the pattern of inscription of Roma populations in Europe.
Villages for Gypsies
As examples of such spatial operations that have made the settling of Roma populations at the margins of cities possible, we will consider two case studies from Spain. These two cases represent two significant typologies of this type of settlement: on the one hand, the circular typology, in which the architecture attempts to represent the idea of a community more or less closed in on itself; and on the other hand, the pavilion typology, in which quadrangular elements are accumulated in an orderly fashion. Both types of projects inherently contain a certain utopian character, as they sought to achieve a peaceful and autonomous functioning of the communities for which they were intended.
Firstly, we have the case of Gao Lacho Drom (“Village of the Good Way,” in Romani), designed by the architect Enrique Marimón and built on the outskirts of Vitoria-Gasteiz in 1969. It consists of two large circular housing constructions that form a self-contained complex (Figure 4). The aerial photograph (Figure 5) allows us to appreciate the extra-urban condition of this type of project: connected to the city, but far from it, installed in the middle of a field without qualities. This image suggests a territorial implantation similar to that of concentration camps and is particularly effective for pondering the concept of spaces of exception that inaugurates such places.
Figure 5.
Fragment of an aerial photo taken from above the area of Gao Lacho Drom (Vitoria-Gasteiz), ca. 1970. Source: GeoEuskadi.
In this case, control over the movement of bodies is no longer completely effected by a police force, as in the case of the camps, but rather by a territorial layout that conditions restricted movement through a few connections that are easy to monitor.
Marimón’s project is clearly influenced by the Cité du Soleil by the architect Georges Candilis, proclaimed as the “first Gypsy city” in France (Figs. 6 and 7). It was built in 1961 in the outskirts of Avignon and, as in Gao Lacho Drom, the dwellings are grouped in circular constructions with a large inner courtyard, formalizing a very primary idea of community. The typology of the circle also refers to movement, specifically to the wheel (we are reminded that the Roma community would later adopt the wheel as the symbol of its flag). All this symbolism linked to movement appears in these projects as a formal element that anchors populations that will never again move as they once did.
Figure 6.
Model of Cité du Soleil, by Mediomundo arquitects, exhibition Machines for living. Flamenco and Architecture in the Occupation and Eviction of Spaces. CentroCentro Madrid, 20.10.2017 – 04.02.2018. Picture by the author.
In his memoirs, Georges Candilis describes how the initial project was imagined as a temporary construction, with the aim of housing families in low-rent housing to be built on a nearby plot of land. However, these dwellings were never built, and co-living at the site was complicated by the arrival of migrant populations from North Africa:
“So, the authorities found nothing better than to surround the Gypsy houses with barbed wire, to isolate them.
Instead of offering these people a place to live, they were locked up in a reserve, in a concentration camp.
Today the Cité du Soleil is destroyed.
A work for which I had devoted so much love and enthusiasm!14”
With this act (surrounding the dwellings with barbed wire), the Cité du Soleil became a “concentration camp.” Still, it must be borne in mind that it consisted of a form and territorial layout that were conducive to this. The project was pervaded by the logic of the camp, and this was particularly evident in its final stage.
Both Gao Lacho Drom and the Cité du Soleil were demolished. Both projects were intended to be temporary solutions, but ultimately, as housing experiments that sought to achieve the integration of these populations into modern society, they failed. The communities that inhabited them were moved to various housing estates, and there, to an even greater extent, the homogenizing weight of architecture once again collided with ways of life that refused to be annulled.
As a second particular case in Spain, we have housing for a Gypsy community in O Vao (Pontevedra), designed by architects Pascuala Campos and César Portela and built in 1972 (Figs. 8 and 9). They were formally inspired by the typology of the Galician hórreo15 typical of the region, as well as by train carriages and Gypsy caravans (Figure 10).
Figure 8.
Anna Turbau, photograph from Pascuala Campos and César Portela’s project Viviendas para una comunidad de gitanos (Housing for a Gypsy community) in O Vao, Pontevedra, 1975. Source: The Studio of César Portela.
Figure 9.
Pascuala Campos and César Portela, blueprints of the Viviendas para una comunidad de gitanos (Housing for a Gypsy community) in O Vao, Pontevedra, 1972. Source: The Studio of César Portela.
Figure 10.
Anna Turbau, photograph from Pascuala Campos and César Portela’s project Viviendas para una comunidad de gitanos (Housing for a Gypsy community) in O Vao, Pontevedra, 1975. Source: The Studio of César Portela.
“After several attempts to group the dwellings together into a single building and after listening to the future occupants, it was decided to opt for small, isolated constructions of a very well-defined typology, with antecedents in the Gypsy cart, the hórreo, and the bunk wagon, which resulted in the image of a Gypsy camp made up of carts that also recalls, due to the type of settlement on a rugged topography, a field of hórreos (raised granaries). The dwellings, which were small in area and extremely low-cost, had to house large families of between seven and thirteen members each, which meant that the layout of the bedrooms and beds had to be similar to that of a bunk wagon.16”
As in the previous cases, here too there appears a clear and formal reference to elements associated with movement being used to hold these populations in place. The Gypsy wagon or the train carriage are now anchored to the ground, fixed forever, giving the sensation of having reached their final destination and highlighting with their presence the story of an absence: that of a lifestyle of mobility that would no longer exist, at least as it was understood up until that point.
The experiment once again failed, although we must recognize the architects’ intention to listen to the needs of the inhabitants and to design singular dwellings for these singular lifestyles, as in the previous cases. These particular architectures tried to resist the logic of the camp that ran through them. Nevertheless, the dynamics of transformation of the modes of production were very strong, and these populations were subjected to a terrible process of marginalization. Today, the village of O Vao is one of Pontevedra’s main centers for the sale of drugs, and has been extensively transformed over the years by its successive inhabitants (Figs. 11 and 12).
Conclusions
The projects presented herein, as with many others carried out in the 1960s and 1970s — small projects for Roma communities prior to the housing estates — present an interesting paradox: They are both pervaded by the logic of the camp and, at the same time, resist it. Thanks to their small scale, or to the experimental nature of those years, they assume in their design the explicit recognition of a certain singularity in terms of the way of life of the communities they were aimed at. This is something that did not happen later, for example, with the large homogenizing projects of the blocks in the housing estates, which have led, as we well know, to major problems of dehumanization of the habitants and multiple issues with coexistence. However, at the same time, these small and isolated architectural projects were both accomplices and mediators of the inscription, under the logic of the camp, of Roma populations in the physical and political space of the contemporary city. The comparative analysis has allowed us to see how, both in the case of the camps and in the case of the housing projects, certain gestures relating to spatial arrangement were maintained that continued to enable the subjection and control of the bodies that inhabited the spaces. Between the totalitarian practices of the camps and the supposedly emancipatory practices of the integration projects, architecture has functioned as a hinge, as a bridging element that permitted the circulation of power. The will that pervaded the projects was clearly progressive, with the aim being to improve the living conditions of these communities. Nonetheless, this progressive will had a markedly patronizing character; the aim was to integrate these communities into the uses and modes of production of the dominant society, understanding them as better or more evolved. It should also be borne in mind that there is always dispute between the concepts of emancipation and power in the discipline of architecture: it can improve living conditions for people, but it can also subjugate them and, sometimes, even both at the same time. In this sense, one possible conclusion is that in every operation of emancipation there is an implicit practice of subjection or control, varying only in degree. In the same way that the exception is included in the norm, the camp is included in the contemporary hegemonic space, reinforcing, through its suspension, the norms and protocols that govern it. On the other hand, through this brief comparative study, we can also highlight how Western civilizing logic has attempted (and continues to attempt) to impose itself through forms, and how there are populations that resist this precisely by insisting on their forms of dealing with space. Resistance to these attempts to dominate bodies often takes place through the intensive — and often destructive — use of space. The conflict with space is constantly appearing and reappearing in cities; a sign of the insistence of ways of life which, as a kind of vital deviation from the homogenizing will of modernity, resist being annihilated.