Journal of Landscape Architecture

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Barcelona's Fossar de les Moreres: Disinterring the

Heterotopic

Anne Marie Hallal

To cite this article: Anne Marie Hallal (2006) Barcelona's Fossar de les Moreres: Disinterring the
Heterotopic, Journal of Landscape Architecture, 1:2, 6-15, DOI: 10.1080/18626033.2006.9723368

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/18626033.2006.9723368

Published online: 06 Feb 2012.

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 Barcelonas Fossar de les Moreres:
Disinterring the Heterotopic
Anne Marie Hallal / History of Architecture and Urbanism, Cornell University
Downloaded by [University of Cambridge] at 04:46 14 September 2017
Abstract
The architectural discourse has eagerly embraced, frequently misinter
preted, and reluctantly abandoned Michel Foucaults concept of hetero
topia since he formulated it in the late 1960s. As a response, this article re
cuperates heterotopia by underscoring its subversive roots, its potential
for revealing the built environments political relevance, and its useful
ness in interpreting urban landscapes as unique elements of everyday life.
By reformulating the idea in terms of Fossar de les Moreres, a Barcelonan
memorial built in 1988 to commemorate Catalan independence, this essay
serves a dual purpose: clarifying the complex meaning of one specific ur
ban landscape while emphasizing the contemporary relevance of hetero
topia, particularly in relation to landscape architecture. As it is most often
landscapes which the concept, in its formalistic guise, is employed to cat
egorize, colonize and, effectively, control, the assertion of a more accurate
definition of heterotopic spaces that is based on engagement, autonomy,
multivalency and change is essential to promoting a landscape architec
ture discourse founded on similar terms. Ultimately, this article is a mod
el for one way to more successfully insert landscape architecture into on
going theoretical debates addressing space, urbanism and design.
Narrative / Design Studio / Landscape Architecture / Pedagogy / Interpretation
6 Journal of Landscape Architecture / autumn 2006
Introduction
In a labyrinthine neighbourhood of narrow cobbled lanes and balconied
buildings, between a gothic cathedral and the Mediterranean, one almost
stumbles across a small plaza tucked beside a dense side street. One first
notices a low blood-red granite bench that runs along the edge, creating an
inner space removed from the exterior hustle-and-bustle of daily life. Upon
rounding the bench and entering the plaza, a subtle topographicchange
surprises visitors, who gradually descend approximately half a metre to
another plane and, on turning towards the church, realize that what had
seemed a low bench is actually a dividing wall marking a solemn memo-
rial space. A dedication to the Catalans who died unsuccessfully resisting
Bourbon forces in a 1714 siege of the city is inscribed on the granite: Al fos-
sar de les Moreres no shi enterra cap traidor; fins perdent nostres banderes
ser lurna de lhonor: Als mrtirs de 1714. (In the cemetery of the Moreres
there has not been buried a single traitor; even if we lose our flags it will be
the urn of their honor: To the martyrs of 1714.) Behind this wall rises the
lovely side faade of the fourteenth-century basilica, Santa Mara del Mar,
a formerly hidden view that emerged as a surprise during early demolition
for the project (Fig. 1). This oasis of tranquility resists the quotidian occu-
pation and rambunctious appropriation typical of urban open spaces chil-
dren do not attempt to balance atop the bench-wall, skateboarders do not
conquer the terrains topographical changes, lovers do not kiss on the se-
cluded benches. While related to the local neighbourhoods improvement
efforts, this subtle and elegant memorial nonetheless remains surprising-
ly aloof from everyday life, enacting the sacredness of the Catalan culture
it commemorates.
This, indeed, is the standard interpretation of the quiet Fossar de les
Moreres, located in Barcelonas newly hip Born neighbourhood [1]. Carme
Fiol and Andreu Arriola designed and installed this petite plazamemori-
al in 1988 and critics consider it an exemplary moment in the city-wide re-
vitalization which Barcelona experienced in the late 1980s and early 1990s.
While undeniably true, this analysis fails to acknowledge the full implica-
tions of the memorial or of Barcelonas renovation. Alternative readings of
both memorial and city become not only possible but, arguably, critically
incumbent. In fact, Barcelonas much-touted urban revitalization is more
accurately described today as gentrification. Middle-class communities,
such as the Born, where residents lived, worked and socialized have been
converted into over-priced leisure zones filled with restaurants and luxu-
Downloaded by [University of Cambridge] at 04:46 14 September 2017
CARME FIOL
Figure 1 View of descending pavement, inscribed wall,
and church wall bearing traces of former construction.
ry shops catering to tourists and wealthy expatriates. In the controversial
re-making of the city, this new population has replaced the Borns middle-
and lower-middle-class residents who were pushed out of the urban core,
their historic home, to Barcelonas outskirts. The resulting demographic
shift has created the effect of a theme park plenty of attractions such as
shopping, bars and restaurants, and historically significant sights such
as Fossar de les Moreres and, in its commodification, the Born has lost
much of the diversity and stability inherent to local relationships and the
rhythms of everyday life. Without resorting to nostalgia for a mythical au-
thentic past, it is nonetheless important to recognize the changing values
that not only enable but celebrate a homogenizing and restricted pattern
of development and their urban ramifications.
The exodus of Barcelonans and influx of foreigners has also cast a
shadow on Fossar de les Moreres purpose. Is it now a didactic statement
educating non-Catalans about Catalan history? Or is it, perhaps, mourn-
ing another Catalan martyrdom, those former residents who were sac-
rificed to the cause of Barcelonas late-twentieth-century revitalization?
Arguably, the memorial has lost its original meaning altogether and to-
day serves merely as the type of generic place-holder and announcement
of historical significance that is currently considered obligatory in every
global metropolis. Qualifying this last suggestion as hyperbolic and
maintaining that the memorial still enacts Catalan sacredness, one must
then confront the implications of the sites overtly nationalistic message.
In a city that has attracted waves of immigrants since its establishment
from the rest of the peninsula, not to mention Europe, the Middle East,
and Africa such a nationalistic statement seems overly exclusionary. Re-
sisting entering a debate on Catalan politics, it is nonetheless appropriate
to question the validity of the memorials ostensible memory: the execu-
tion of Catalan resisters on 11 September 1714. While 11 September is cel-
ebrated annually as Catalonias national holiday in a spectacular display
ANNE MARIE HALLAL
Figure 2 Eternal flame atop a 12-metre-high red steel
arc, as seen in 2003.
of flags, fireworks, and festivities, this national fte is, in actuality, a fairly
recent and calculated invention [2]. Aside from acknowledging the ideo-
logical manipulation and arbitrariness inherent in this late-nineteenth-
century attempt to rally nationalistic fervour, it is also important to note
the dubious implications for Catalan identity embedded in commemo-
rating defeat and repression as fundamental national markers.
These concerns of ideology and identity may be intangible, but they
acquire additional solidity when placed alongside the pragmatics of how
Fossar de les Moreres functions within its urban context. While extolled
for providing open space in a congested city, the plaza is in fact rarely
occupied on a quotidian basis. Instead, it exists concurrently as a stylish
void, a tourist amenity and an ideological statement that, arguably, sub-
tracts from rather than improves the quality of urban life. Capable of be-
ing viewed variously from design, patriotic, or urban perspectives, Fos-
sar de les Moreres is clearly a multivalent site whose complexity demands
careful and precise theoretical analysis of its layers of meaning. One pos-
sible strategy to rectify these disparate interpretations is to read the mem
orial as a heterotopia. A concept regularly misconstrued and trivialized
in architectural and urban discourse, heterotopology extends far beyond
formalistic categorizations to engage a spaces multiple uses, shifting
meanings, and socio-political implications. This articles premise is that
applying the idea of heterotopia to Fossar de les Moreres will not only
underscore the Barcelona memorials continued relevance, but will also
clarify the current viability and potency of Foucaults concept in terms of
reading multivalent, temporally layered urban landscapes.
The Theory: Mapping the Heterotopic Terrain
French philosopher and intellectual historian Michel Foucault first in-
troduced the concept of heterotopia in his 1966 text The Order of Things:
An Archaeology of the Human Sciences [3]. Foucaults text outlines the dis-
Journal of Landscape Architecture / autumn 2006 7
 Disinterring the Heterotopic Anne Marie Hallal
Downloaded by [University of Cambridge] at 04:46 14 September 2017
cursive conditions that determine what a society considers acceptable
and true, thus tracing the development of knowledge systems and how
they relate to limitations of language. In his preface, he introduces a
Jorge Luis Borges short story, which inspires a passing reference to uto-
pias and heterotopias [4]. Within this context, Foucault presents hetero-
topia as a metaphor for a disordered space which contains irreconcilable
contradictions and differences that, ultimately, challenge the capacity of
language to name and of knowledge to grasp. Such spaces are disturb-
ing because their existence destabilizes language and knowledge, thus
threatening the very foundations of social order (Foucault 1994: xviii). Ap-
parently, during a radio show shortly after the publication of The Order
of Things, Foucault mentioned his twin concepts of utopia and heter-
otopia. A listening architect, misunderstanding the context, claimed to
have glimpsed a new conception of urbanism and, accordingly, invited
Foucault to speak about urban space to a group of architects at the Centre
dtudes Architecturales in Paris [5]. As an outgrowth of this confusion,
Foucault delivered a lecture in 1967 entitled Des Espaces Autres and his
ideas, contained in a bootleg transcript which circulated within the ar-
chitectural community for the next decade, resurfaced as a tool for archi-
tectural theorizing during the late-1970s [6]. The concept, in this formu-
lation, became a way to talk about the universal and continuous nature
of power which either made architecture politically and socially mean-
ingless or converted the design of heterotopias into a feasible form of re-
sistance and a noble architectural aim (Wright 2005: 437). Regardlessof the
conclusion, Foucaults concept of utopia and heterotopia was treated as
a fixed binary that could be applied, like a model, to architectural think-
ing and design. In the process, architectural theorists excised Foucaults
8 Journal of Landscape Architecture / autumn 2006
largerconcerns with power and ideology, the consequences of language
and knowledge, from a theoretical construct increasingly conceived of in
limited architectural terms.
The unofficial transcript of Foucaults 1967 lecture was eventuallyjoin
ed by an old batch of lecture notes that Foucault had generated whilepre-
paring for this presentation and which were subsequently included in a
Berlin exhibition shortly before the philosophers death in 1984 (Soja 1990:
6). It is this material which was later published, albeit without Foucaults
review or revision, in a 1984 issue of the French journal Architecture-Mouve
ment-Continuit as Des Espaces Autres. These notes apply heterotopia to
physical space and make explicit what was barely suggested in The Order
of Things, thus enabling a more literal interpretation of the idea. The full
consecration of the concept of heterotopia occurred two years later with
the English translation and publication of this essay, entitled Of Other
Spaces, in both Lotus International and Diacritics. Within the realm of ar-
chitecture, the essay became an instantclassic and heterotopia entered the
mainstream architectural discourse. As gallery owner and critic Henry Ur-
bach observes, It is amazing how operative ... this article became in the
context of Lotus, serving to legitimise the work of a select group of Euro-
pean architects including Aldo Rossi, O. M. Ungers, Vittorio Gregotti and
others (Urbach 1998:351). Whether or not it was deliberately applied to
promote a select group of practitioners, Foucaults concept was undeni-
ably appropriated in order to validate a particular mode of architectural
criticism, one which favoured an elitist, closed system in which the built
environment, discussed in formal terms, struggled for power and autono-
my against the outside world.

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ALL PHOTOS BY CARME FIOL
This appropriation relied on conveniently eliding Foucaults broader dis
cussion of heterotopia as a philosophical commentary on systems of know
ledge in The Order of Things, and focusing on the terms literal description
and spatial application in Of Other Spaces. In the later piece, which it
must be remembered is less a formal, resolved essay than a collection of
notes, Foucault begins with the claim, The present epoch will perhaps
be above all the epoch of space (Foucault 1986: 22). This statement pre-
dictably galvanized the design community and ensured a willing audi-
ence. While underscoring the importance of history and time, Foucault
nonetheless considers space the dominant system of the twentieth centu-
ry, particularly in terms of the relations which exist both between spaces
and, in fact, structure what we recognize as spaces (1986: 23). Accordingly,
he conceives of contemporary societies as urban grids in which connect-
ing points and navigating the distances between them becomes the basis
for understanding life. In this schema, normative and subversive spaces
coexist and, in order to better understand how they relate to each other,
Foucault focuses on spaces which upend conventional relations, spaces
which he describes as either utopias or heterotopias. While utopias are
sites with no real place, ... fundamentally unreal spaces, heterotopias
actually do exist, yet are located outside of and apart from a civilizations
real sites (1986: 24). Hence, heterotopias have a real place, in contrast to
utopias, yet are simultaneously removed from tangible reality to the ex-
tent that they contest and invert their own cultural setting. Facilitated by
Foucaults own detailed description, locating, categorizing, and defining
heterotopic spaces a sterile project of limited impact unfortunately be-
came the main objective of this theoretical construct.
Figure 3
Footprint of former buildings echoed in brick pattern.
Figure 4
Leaning red granite bench at one edge of the memorial.
Figure 5
Brick paving in striking contrast to Barcelonas typi-
cal stone.
In describing these other places, Foucault outlines six key points in what
he calls a heterotopology, a sort of simultaneously mythic and real con-
testation of the space in which we live (1986: 24). These defining charac
teristics include manifestations of heterotopias in every culture albeit
with an unlimited diversity of form, fluctuating uses and locations ac-
cording to changing cultural contexts, coexisting multiple meanings as
well as diverse temporal references, a tendency to be physically set apart
yet penetrable, and, finally, meanings derived in relation to physical, cul-
tural, and discursive contexts. Foucaults detailed description, incorporat-
ing examples ranging from boarding schools, psychiatric hospitals, and
cemeteries to theatres, museums, and colonial architecture, suggests sites
outside the norm, yet these other spaces simultaneously frame and rela-
tionally make possible the norm itself. As Foucaults final defining point
implies, not only do heterotopias exist in relation to their context, but
reality itself, the so-called context, exists in relation to its heterotopias.
Analysis of heterotopias thus becomes a way to discuss and understand
the more banal and everyday. In order to clarify what at first glance (and
second) appears ambiguous, inconclusive and hopelessly open-ended, this
article diligently applies Foucaults definition of heterotopia to Fossar de
les Moreres. The result is a more sophisticated and complex reading of the
site as well as a resurrection of heterotopias critical relevancy. By merg-
ing heterotopias original context and more literal application, this essay
converts a misconstrued theory divorced from its socio-political context
into a potent concept capable of disrupting, contesting, and deepening
accepted interpretations of the built environment.
Journal of Landscape Architecture / autumn 2006 9
 Disinterring the Heterotopic Anne Marie Hallal
Mutual Enlightenment: Fossar de les Moreres as a Heterotopia
As his point of departure for transforming his spatial metaphor into an
explicit place, Foucault contends that heterotopias exist in every culture
Downloaded by [University of Cambridge] at 04:46 14 September 2017
and every community yet in an absolutely non-universal form unique to
each society. He reasons that this multiplicity of forms for places which
are both real and outside the real falls into essentially two types of spaces:
heterotopias of crisis and of deviation. The first refers to privileged or sa-
cred or forbidden places intended for temporary use during socially de-
termined moments of crisis such as boarding schools or honeymoon trips
(Foucault 1986: 24). The second form, heterotopias of deviation, refers to
more permanent places for individuals outside of societys norms, for in-
stance psychiatric hospitals or prisons (1986: 25). Beyond these two gener-
al classifications of crisis and deviation however, Foucault argues further
that heterotopias change their use and place according to a dynamic cul-
tural context. A society, as its history unfolds, he states, can make an ex-
isting heterotopia function in a very different fashion (1986: 25). In other
words, a heterotopia of crisis or deviation today may be a communitys con
ventional, non-other space tomorrow, or vice versa. For instance, if Fossar
de les Moreres were ever to be occupied by a group protesting the loss
oftheir homes due to the Borns gentrification or demonstrating for in-
creased Catalan autonomy, it would become a heterotopia of crisis and,
thus, acquire a location and meaning outside its urban context and be-
yond its overt memorial program.
However, this fluctuating identity that Foucault proposes is compli-
cated in the case of Fossar de les Moreres by a certain contradiction be-
tween heterotopias and memorials in terms of change. While heteroto-
pias are inherently dynamic sites which shift meaning, memorials, in
contrast, ostensibly freeze time and place in order to canonize a certain
moment in and conception of history. This paradox, by which commem-
orative architecture is labelled historic and, in the process, removed from
all future histories, results in environments which are no longer living
(Arnold 2004: 262). In fact, memorials, as a genre, tend to reject spontane
ous appropriations and manifestations, particularly those which might
contradict the official vision inscribed in a monument. From this criti-
cal perspective, Fossar de les Moreres memorializing function implicitly
challenges its fluidity and flexibility as an urban heterotopia.
In addition to a variety of forms and a variable identity, Foucault con
firms that a heterotopia is multivalent and capable of juxtaposing in a
single real place several spaces, several sites that are in themselves incom
patible, [with] superimposed meanings (Foucault 1986: 25). Such a space,
presumably, could exist as an alternative, subversive space while simul-
taneously manifesting normative relations. Thus, Fossar de les Moreres
10 Journal of Landscape Architecture / autumn 2006
Figure 6 Sharp contrast between memorial and de
teriorating buildings when originally installed.
Figure 7 Adjacent buildings restored and repainted
by 2003, changing relationship of memorial to its
surroundings.
represents radical Catalan patriotism to some while serving as a banal
historical marker and photo-opportunity to others, a multivalence which
Fiol and Arriolas minimalist design facilitates. Even with the inscription
dedicating the memorial to the Catalan martyrs of 1714, occupants and
passersby selectively edit and reconstruct their own readings of the site.
This ambiguity was challenged when a 12-metre-high red arc topped by
an eternal flame was inserted at the centre of the memorials wall (Fig. 2).
Apparently, the very subtlety of Fiol and Arriolas design was problema
tic for some who insisted on a more overt statement of the sites memo
rializing function. The fact that the sculptural piece eerily resembles a
stylized gallows, in addition to disrupting the balance and elegance of the
1988 design, was not enough to prevent its installation. The addition of
the red arc and eternal flame indicate a very real institutional urge to de-
termine and control spatial meaning, while the subsequent protests and
ridicule within the community suggest a more widespread desire for the
flexibility implicit in ambiguous spaces.
Containing a multiplicity of meaning, heterotopias also reflect a diver
sity of times. What Foucault describes as slices of time, heterotopias sug-
gest both an accumulation of time in a palimpsest of historical moments
and a reflection of time in its most fleeting, transitory, precarious aspect
(Foucault 1986: 26). In terms of Fossar de les Moreres, a heterotopic reading
permits acknowledgement of the site as a process of growth rather than
as a finished product, particularly in its layering of multiple time periods.
The memorial overtly commemorates the Catalan resistance and its ulti-
mate defeat, in a two-month siege in 1714 during the War of the Spanish
Succession and, implicitly, the Bourbon victors subsequent repression of
Catalan culture and language throughout the eighteenth century. In ad-
dition, the plazas topographical depression marks not only the level of
the mass grave that used to exist on the site, but also references the year
of 1821 when the Spanish government in Madrid replaced the cemetery
with a paved plaza. Another epoch in the sites dense temporal imbrica-
tion is the first decade of the twentieth century when Catalan intellectu-
als canonized 11 September 1714 as the sacred date in Catalan history. The
national holiday they invented, an outgrowth of the nineteenth-centu-
ry Catalan Renaissance celebrating Catalonias literature, artists and his-
tory, was not physically manifested until the memorials 1988 construc-
tion, nearly a decade after Francos death and Catalonias achievement of
semi-autonomy, resulting in another time period layered into the me-
morial. Furthermore, the sites triangulated surface pattern retains the
trace of the twentieth-century buildings that were demolished to create
the plaza, offering another spatial memory that is echoed in the scarred
surface of the Santa Mara del Mar (Fig. 3, also see Fig. 1). The faade, with
 CARME FIOL
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its graphic evidence of another time and form in this one place, illustrates
the historic memory contained within Fossar de les Moreres. Finally, the
red arc with its eternal flame overlays another temporal reference, this
time to the late 1990s, onto the imbricated site.
Within this web, or perhaps more appropriately, maze of meaning
and time, heterotopias also exhibit an ambiguous sense of restricted ac-
cess that both isolates them and makes them penetrable (Foucault 1986:
26). Such sites are set apart, physically and symbolically, from normal
space, underscoring their otherness. The low wall between the Fossar de
les Moreres plaza and the street, open on both ends, forms just such an
easily transgressed barrier. It serves, in fact, to simultaneously remove the
plaza from its surrounding areas while maintaining its accessibility. Fur-
thermore, the walls functional potential as a bench is complicated by the
tilted angle at which it is set, leaning towards the street and Santa Mara
del Mar and thereby playing with the plazas sense of depth (Fig. 4). Per-
haps stemming from a desire to make the inscription more legible (it is
placed on the side which tilts up), the angle nonetheless discourages sit-
ting and subtly marks the divider and the space beyond as something
Other, if not actually denoting a leaning gravestone of the type found in
an old cemetery. Like the low wall, the topographical depression at the
centre of the memorial also creates a sense of porosity and division. While
symbolically representing the level of the corpses in the eighteenth-cen-
tury graveyard, the topographical change physically sets the plaza apart
from the street and subtly inhibits occupation of the heart of the site.
Many would-be visitors, in an apparent effort to avoid the grade change,
circumnavigate the centre rather than crossing the plaza in the most di-
rect route. Ostensibly open, the memorials centre nonetheless feels closed
off. This may also stem from the designers use of a blatantly different
material brick for the plazas ground plane. Contrasting dramatically
with the stone that predominates in Barcelonas historic neighbourhoods,
the brick and its triangular pattern further distinguish the site from its
surroundings and discourage everyday appropriation (Fig. 5). Finally, the
red granite of the wall, like the brick, is strikingly unique in the city fab-
anne mar i e hallal
ric. While both were chosen for their connotations of the blood spilt on
this site centuries earlier, the granite was also an insiders joke referenc-
ing Lenins Tomb in Moscow (Arriola 1993: 125) and Catalonias fraught re-
lationship with socialism, another example of multiple meanings within
one place. Finally, if the sites physical design were not enough, the walls
engraving honouring Catalonias martyrs explicitly distinguishes the me-
morials solemnity, sacredness and, like the gravestone its tilted wall con-
notes, deadness from the lived spaces surrounding it, further highlight-
ing the difference between inside and outside the plaza.
As his last defining point, Foucault asserts that heterotopias only have
significance in relation to all the other spaces that remain. They serve ei-
ther as spaces of illusion, that expose every real space, all the sites inside
of which human life is partitioned, as still more illusory, or as spaces of
compensation, which create a space that is other, another real space, as
perfect, as meticulous, as well arranged as ours is messy, ill constructed,
and jumbled (Foucault 1986: 27). In the first case, reality appears more
idealin comparison, while in the second, it is heterotopias that are ideal
ized, offering an escape from reality. In terms of Fossar de les Moreres,
its material characteristics, all potent markers, ultimately rely on their
relationship to the sites physical as well as social and historical context
for their meaning. As Foucault emphasizes, Fossar de les Moreres only ex-
ists as Other and different in relation to its surroundings. Its brick and
granite would not be conspicuous and effective as heterotopic markers
if the surrounding neighbourhood were not constructed predominate-
ly of stone. Furthermore, it is the dense urban fabric of the Born rising
on all sides of the site which makes the memorials openness all the more
remarkable. Whether serving, as Foucault might have argued, to under-
score the illusory nature of contemporary life or to compensate for a dis-
appointing reality (1986: 27), Fossar de les Moreres, like all heterotopias,
acquires meaning not in isolation but, rather, only in relation to its ur-
ban and social context.
Journal of Landscape Architecture / autumn 2006 11
 Disinterring the Heterotopic Anne Marie Hallal
This relationship, however, becomes increasingly complex the more close-
ly it is examined. When the memorial was originally installed in 1988, it
contrasted sharply with its deteriorated surroundings, offering a beauti-
ful, well-maintained space that shone all the more brightly in compar-
ison (Fig. 6). Within Foucaults framework of illusory or compensatory
spaces, Fossar de les Moreres would arguably have qualified as a space of
compensation, making the grimness of its surroundings seem more bear-
able and less significant, even if more noticeable. However, by 2003, the
buildings fronting the plaza had been restored and repainted while the
plaza was beginning to show signs of age (Fig. 7). Evolving into a space of
illusion, which reveals the artifice of its physical surroundings, Fossar de
les Moreres thus underlines the neighbourhoods gentrification and dis-
cursive construction. There is, however, another possible reading outside
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Foucaults framework. Like Jean Baudrillards analysis of Disneyland [7],
the plazas artificiality makes the rest of Barcelona, described by many as
a theme park after its dramatic revitalization [8], appear more authentic.
The memorial, in this analysis, seems to hybridize spaces of illusion and
spaces of compensation to create yet another heterotopic subset.
Taken as a whole, Foucaults definition of heterotopia is so malleable
that the issue is less whether a certain site can be categorized as a hetero-
topia, because surely at some point or for some user every place has occu-
pied an alternative, liminal space, but rather whether there is any space
that is not heterotopic. As art critic Benjamin Genocchio posits in his in-
sightful critique of the concept within architectural discourse, the ques-
tion then becomes: what cannot be designated a heterotopia? (Genocchio
1995: 39). This attitude, unfortunately promoted by early formalistic and
narrow applications of the term, often leads critics to futile attempts to
categorize the ways in which certain sites qualify as heterotopias. Upon
confronting the incongruencies unavoidably engendered in any literal
application of Foucaults concept, they either wholly disqualify Fossar de
les Moreres, or whatever place they might be analysing, as a heterotopic
space or, more commonly, proffer a partial reading of the site which cam-
ouflages the problematic contradictions. Neither of these reactions is par-
ticularly productive. Instead, this article suggests moving beyond Genoc-
chios query to another, more relevant, question: how can the concept of
heterotopia contribute to our critical understanding of space?
The Architectural Discourse: Reconfiguring Heterotopia
As a first step to recognizing the full potential of heterotopia as a concept,
it is necessary to expand it beyond a formalistic conversation internal to
architecture and fully insert it in the larger socio-political discourse. Us-
ing heterotopia as a tool for categorizing places is, in fact, not only fu-
tile but antithetical to Foucaults vision of a site that somehow subverts
the spatial order. Indeed, as the geographer Edward W. Soja argues, Con-
ventional formal descriptions of [heterotopias], as empirical geometries
or as sites for the storage, circulation, marking, classification and encod-
ing of areally differentiated human elements ... tend to miss their mean-
ing, to hide the revealing tensions and contradictions that exist between
them and all other real sites (Soja 1990: 8). Reading space in terms of So-
jas relational tensions and contradictions is arguably the most salient
aspect of heterotopology, but also, unfortunately, the aspect that has been
most neglected, particularly in the architectural communitys appropri-
12 Journal of Landscape Architecture / autumn 2006
ation of the concept. In the course of translating heterotopia into archi-
tectural theory, contends Urbach, key elements of Foucaults concept
have been left off, particularly its more contingent and political aspects
(Urbach 1998: 347). Indeed, the contradictions and complexity inherent to
a heterotopias temporal palimpsest, dynamic meaning, porous separa-
tions, and mutual dependence with spatial and cultural contexts inevit
ably call into question a societys status quo, destabilizing spatial, social,
and political order. This subversive effect has, unfortunately, been muted
by a tendency within the architectural community to deny this aspect of
heterotopia and reduce the concept to a question of physical stylistics or
concrete definitions. In fact, the architectural status quo and institution-
al system is one of the very social orders which heterotopia, at its full crit-
ical potential, would likely destabilize and threaten. Today, however, the
principle of heterotopia is No longer a challenge to discursive coherence,
[but] remarkably, a way to protect standards of architectural propriety
(Urbach 1998: 351).
Heterotopias destabilizing potential, its very cultural claws, has been
lost in a process of taming and appropriation. From an invitation to ac-
knowledge the disorder always implicit in societys ostensible norms, het-
erotopia has been converted into little more than a theoretical deus ex
machina or a handy marker for a variety of centreless structures or an
elastic postmodern plurality (Genocchio 1995: 36, 42). Heterotopia, thus,
has been used to sustain architectural criticism without threatening ac-
cepted ways of reading space in terms of distinct limits, static meanings
and unambiguous chronologies. In other words, the term justifies and
limits existing architectural discourse rather than expanding the realm
of possibilities in terms of discussing space as a dynamic, discursive con-
struct with radical historical, social, and political implications for the dis-
cipline as well as the sites themselves. The resulting bankruptcy of the
concept and its subsequent irrelevancy contributed to its decreased popu-
larity and general absence from the current architectural discourse. In or-
der to salvage the validity of heterotopia in relation to the built environ
ment, then criticism must begin to treat Foucaults theory as an an idea,
or perhaps a practice, that challenges the functional ordering of space
while refusing to become part of that order (Hetherington 1997: 47). Rath-
er than concretizing a definition of the concepts possibilities and, thus,
impossibilities, Foucaults six points become instead a jumping-off point
from which to chart non-conformist spatial as well as critical practices and
their slippery, ever-changing past, present and future manifestations.
The tension implicit in understanding-without-fixing reflects a larger
ambiguity underlying much of Foucaults work: the coexisting impulses
towards control and resistance that he identifies as the twin forcespresent
in all social order and, by implication, disorder. Never just one or the oth-
er, both forces are always present, promoting continued ambivalence and
contradiction instead of tidy conclusions. As the sociologist Kevin Heth-
erington notes, The power of the concept of heterotopia lies in its ambi-
guity, that it can be a site of order just as much as it can be a site of resist-
ance (Hetherington 1997: 51). This recognition of heterotopiasas sites that
express resistance as well as order can be nuanced further, however,to un-
derscore their function as embodiments of social practice rather than as
geographic entities. In other words, such sites not only exist within and in
relation to a larger physical and social context, but are, in fact, defined by
 their manifestations of constantly changing social relationships. Hetero-
topia are spaces in which an alternative social ordering is performed, em-
phasizes Hetherington. These are spaces in which a new way of ordering
emerges that stands in contrast to the taken-for-granted mundane idea of
social order that exists within society (Hetherington 1997: 40). Such an un-
derstanding moves heterotopia firmly beyond the formal into the realm
of socio-cultural analysis. Art and architecture theorist John Rajchman ar-
gues that Foucault did not object to formalism for its reliance on forms,
but instead for its related removal of form from social specifics (Rajchman
1983: 55). Indeed, Foucault advocated linking form to subject in order to
ask how various sites constitute a political reality (Rajchman 1983: 57).
The discontinuous montage of obsessive assemblage which we identi-
fy as heterotopia (Genocchio 1995: 41) a collection of disparate temporal,
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functional, and physical elements is never merely a stylistic coda punc-
tuating a city but, instead, embodies a reciprocal relationship with its ur-
ban, human, and rhetorical surroundings. It is through this relationship
that order and disorder are continuously expressed, co-opted and remem-
bered, thus endorsing a more relevant formulation of Foucaults spatial
concept.
Conclusions
Fossar de les Moreres, Landscape Architecture and Heterotopia
If heterotopology is allowed to extend beyond being a mere tool for for-
malistic analysis, its socio-spatial ramifications are unlimited. According-
ly, it becomes impossible to perceive Fossar de les Moreres as an isolated
site since it effectively becomes part of a much larger physical, discursive
and historical system and, as such, both reflects and helps to construct so-
cial realities. From this more expansive perspective, Fossar de les Moreres
role as a memorial can be interrogated not only in terms of its designs
symbolism, but of its active participation in the ongoing construction of
Barcelonan and Catalan history. In this process, the plaza becomes inher-
ently politicized, as the contested terrain of collective memory merges
with that of Catalan identity and the controversy surrounding autonomy.
Instead of a mutually exclusive equation in which heterotopic fluidity
clashes with memorializing fixity, as suggested above, a heterotopic me-
morial is not only possible but probable. Through their implicit embrace
of temporal, physical, and interpretive ambiguities, heterotopic memori-
als reveal the very process of memory construction and, as such, embody
Pierre Noras lieux de mmoire, places which effectively merge memory and
history to promote a sites continued dynamic identity rather than freez-
ing it in time. As architectural historian Dana Arnold asserts, Although
lieux de mmoire symbolize a will to remember and record, their meaning
is not fixed and may change over time... Nora himself relies on the pas-
sage of time to explore fully the slippage between memory and history.
This can be used to examine the appropriation of forms and spaces for
political end (Arnold 2004: 263264). By resisting the sacredness so often
attributed to memorials and instead connecting the dynamic exchange
between institutional history and individual memory to the capacity for
political control, Arnold offers a critical bridge to understanding hetero-
topias subversive potential. Her analysis develops, in fact, into a discus-
sion of memorials as either state-imposed symbols or the result of human
interaction, contextual exchange, and the passage of time. While I would
argue that every memorial is eventually both officially imposed and so-
cially constructed, with individual memories and quotidian life adapt-
ing to and influencing governmental programmes, Arnolds analysis is
a refreshing recognition of heterotopias political potential and a useful
model for analyzing Fossar de les Moreres. From this perspective, the Bar-
celona memorial is notable not for its innovative design, restrained ele-
gance and effective use of materials, but rather for the ways in which it
contains, expresses and helps to form an array of inherently political be-
liefs and attitudes concerning Catalan independence, Barcelonas histori-
cal and social status, and the Spanish states legitimacy. This interpreta-
tion depends on embracing instead of simplifying multiple time periods,
fluctuating meanings, and shifting context, all hallmarks of Foucaults
concept of heterotopia.
Another consequence of expanding Fossar de les Moreres heterotopic
interpretations beyond the formalistic is a renewed appreciation for the
sites urban ramifications. Similarly to the political implications of the
plazas role as a memorial, Fossar de les Moreres has played a significant
part in the controversy of the Borns urban development. The site can be
seen as embodying a policy of physical renewal that dominated Barcelo-
nas urban design from the early 1980s. Indeed, through the emotional
and historical message it evokes, the memorial was an active participant
in the Borns gentrification, arguably helping to legitimize development
that might otherwise have proved too controversial. Yet in the nearly
two decades since its installation, Fossar de les Moreres has evolved to in-
corporate a range of meanings, including more positive representations
of open space, well-cared-for streets, and collective memories. Through
an accumulation of daily events, individual experience, and shared his-
tory, Fossar de les Moreres has been incorporated into a densely imbri-
cated urban web in which it is no longer just a memorial, just an open
plaza, or just a forerunner of urban development, but rather something
that resists precise definition. In fact, reading and appreciating the site
in its full complexity requires recognition of the continuing evolution of
meaning, linked to the passage of time, which is especially ambiguous in
urban conditions. It is this complex juxtaposition and cosmopolitan si-
multaneity of differences in space, argues Soja, that charges the hetero-
topia with social and cultural meaning and connectivity. Without such a
charge, the space would remain fixed, dead, immobile, undialectical (Soja
1990: 9). Thus, the only way to perpetuate the continued vibrancy of urban
spaces is to celebrate and promote spatial complexity without imposing
meaning and, hence, immobilizing potential. In this sense, it is crucial to
critically revisit contemporary design in the years and decades after their
installation in order to trace the accumulation of meaning and connec-
tivity. This reappraisal of sites and their contexts allows a criticism of the
built environment based less on physicality and more on the relational
aspects of a design which promote, permit or prohibit certain meanings,
modes of appropriation and, ultimately, repercussions.
Fossar de les Moreres implications for urban development and memo-
ry construction are just two examples of how the contextualizing implicit
to a heterotopic perspective enables a socially relevant, politicized inter-
pretation of space. As with much of Foucaults philosophy, the concept is
meant to challenge instead of reinforce the prevailing discourse through
its focus on multiplicity, its tolerance of ambiguity, and its awareness of
Journal of Landscape Architecture / autumn 2006 13
 Disinterring the Heterotopic Anne Marie Hallal
constant change. Urbach underlines heterotopias potential for resistance
and subversion when he summarizes what he considers the concepts sa-
lient aspects:
It represents the apparent normality of other spaces as fictitious and
restrictive. It maintains heterotopic effect by concretising ways of think-
ing and practising space that loosen the hold of dominant codes, chal-
lenging structures of regulation and control that obtain elsewhere. How-
ever momentarily, it dissolves, destabilises and interrupts power. (Urbach
1998: 351-352)
While concretising is an unfortunate word choice in this context, in
that it implies a fixing of meaning antithetical to heterotopias effective
application, Urbach nonetheless touches on how a new spatial discourse
can participate in re-ordering systems of control. When repeatedly creat-
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ed and perceived anew in a perpetual open-ended assertion of order and
disorder, heterotopias indeed offer a way to challenge power and author-
ity through constant reinterpretations of the designed, discursive and so-
cial landscape. Moreover, since heterotopias display the incoherencies,
fissures and contradictions that inhere in social arrangements and expose
their shaky legitimacy (Urbach 1998: 348), they become crucial communi-
cators of cultural conditions in the case of the Barcelona memorial, gen-
trification, historical editing or politicized machinations which it would
be negligent to ignore. Clearly, sites such as Fossar de les Moreres can no
longer be analysed solely as the idealized fictions which their designers
and patrons present, but instead must be discussed in terms of their rela-
tion to social and urban realities. Heterotopias expanded definition and,
hence, relevance, compel critics to confront, and interfere with, the im-
aginary coherence of spatial practices in the present, concludes Urbach.
We might, in this case, be delighted to discover that we confront a socio-
spatial terrain already full of fissures, overripe with heterotopicpotential
ready to implode (1998: 352). It is this rejection of standard readings and
embrace of a fractured landscape which leads to more socio-political ana
lyses such as those concerning Fossar de les Moreres role in constructing
Barcelonas larger lived and imagined landscape.
In terms of the discursive landscape, this essay has already examined
heterotopias problematic interpretation and eventual dismissal within
the architectural community. More promisingly, several architectural
historians, notably Gwendolyn Wright (2005) and Sarah Chaplin (2000),
have recently addressed the details of this process and suggested ways to
critically reincorporate the concept into architectural analysis by wel-
coming Foucaults ambiguities as productive and unique. What has not
been discussed is heterotopias apparent absence from the landscape ar-
chitecture discourse [9]. While architectural theorists regularly used the
concept to analyse urban landscapes of various scales, landscape archi-
tects have failed to claim heterotopia as their own, even within an active
campaign of framing (and, thus, controlling) their own discourse. This
is particularly puzzling since, as a discipline intrinsically linked to other
systems, from the hydraulic to the regional, landscape architecture is es-
pecially well suited to the multi-layered complexity of heterotopology.
Rather than the more clearly bounded analyses appropriate for architec-
ture, landscape has always required a critical shift in order to encompass
and appreciate the conceptual multiplicity of an urban landscape that is
founded on temporal evolution, spatial porosity, multiple meanings, ac-
14 Journal of Landscape Architecture / autumn 2006
commodation and adaptation, and the surrounding context. Heterotopia,
in fact, offers the ideal theoretical language to discuss the social, physical,
and political environments which are inherent to critically understand-
ing the built environment.
This essay asserts that not only will the concept of heterotopia enable
a richer, more sophisticated appreciation of landscape architecture as
an autonomous discipline, but that landscape architecture provides the
quintessential subject matter for Foucaults theory. Genocchios celebra-
tion of heterotopias as an unpredictable nexus of imagination, ideology
and power (Genocchio 1995: 43) can, in fact, apply equally well to any land-
scape. Furthermore, this idea of unpredictability suggests a final quality
which landscapes and heterotopias share: they both provoke active en-
gagement on the part of users, designers, and critics. This idea that inter-
action constructs theoretical concept as well as lived environment affirms
Endnotes
1. Two examples of Fossar de les Moreres typical analysis are:
Andreu Arriola, Building the City Out of Empty Spaces, Topos 5
(Dec. 1993), 122133; Anita Berrizbeitia and Linda Pollak,
Inside/Outside: Between Architecture and Landscape
(Gloucester, Massachusetts: Rockport Publishers, 1999).
2. According to Joan-Llus Marfany, this invented tradition of
celebrating Catalonias national day on 11 September was es-
tablished in 1895 with a ceremony memorializing the martyrs
of 1714. Marfany, La Cultura del Catalanisme (Barcelona: Edito-
rial Empries, 1995), 193.
3. The text was originally published in French as Les Mots et les
Choses: Une Archologie des Sciences Humaines and was translated
into English in 1970 as The Order of Things.
4. The Borges short story is The Analytical Language of John
Wilkins and involves an absurd, arbitrary system of animal
classification which is nonetheless carefully alphabetized.
5. The radio lecture, entitled Literature and Utopia, was given 7
December 1966 and referred to different spaces which contest
the space we live in and, further, not a science of utopias but
of heterotopias, a science of absolutely other spaces. Foucault
ridicules the architectural misunderstanding in a Spring 1967
communication in which he reminds a friend of the telegram
that gave us such a laugh, where an architect said he glimpsed
a new conception of urbanism. Roland Ritter and Bernd Knal-
ler-Vlay, Heterotopia, in Other Spaces. The Affair of the Heteroto-
pia (Austria: Haus der Architektur, Redaktion, 1998), 14.
6. An early adaptation of heterotopia to architectural theory
is found in Massimo Cacciari, Franco Rella, Manfredo Tafuri,
Georges Teyssot, eds., Il Dispositivo Foucault (Venedig, 1977).
Another formative text was George Teyssots Heterotopias
and the History of Space published in Architecture and Urbanism
in 1980. See Wright 2005: 437 and 439.
7. Jean Baudrillard declares that, Disneyland exists in order
to hide that it is the real country, all of real American that
is Disneyland... Disneyland is presented as imaginary in order
to make us believe that the rest is real. Baudrillard, The Pre-
 that both are sites of dynamic exchange and appropriation. In short, het- as landscape, is thus the only way to maintain the continued vitality and
erotopia is not an answer, but rather an invitation to another question, critical relevance essential to effectively building, studying, and occupy-
part of a social space that is inherently polysemous and contestory, made ing our built environment.
from a woven thread of some still enchanted fabric which must always be
questioned, fought over, altered and most of all, unravelled (Genocchio Acknowledgements
1995: 43). Similarly, landscapes are never pristine, finished designs, as they I would like to thank Professor Jeremy Foster for his generous encourage
are so often presented photographically, but rather are porous, evolving ment and support in submitting this article for publication.
spaces that exist only so long as they are actively appropriated and con-
textually connected. As opposed to a prescription or recipe for analysis,
Foucaults descriptions suggest that we scrutinize and question the im-
plications and possibilities of the slips, exceptions, oddities lurking at the
very limits of the system that defines for us what is thinkable, sayable,
knowable (Genocchio 1995 : 43). Disobeying the rules, straying off the
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path, and occupying the liminal spaces, of theoretical construct as well

cession of Simulacra, in Simulacra and Simulation, Sheila Fe-
ria Glaser, trans. (Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press,
1994), 12.
8. For an insightful discussion of Barcelona as theme park, see
Donald McNeill, Urban Change and the European Left (Lon-
don and New York: Routledge, 1999), particularly pages 44-54.
9. Simon Swaffields 2002 Theory in Landscape Architecture: A
Reader includes no references to heterotopias. Elizabeth Mey-
er, in the excerpt from her 1992 essay Situating Modern Land-
scape Architecture, recognizes the extent to which built land-
scapes are implicated in Foucaults power structures (Swaffield
2002: 31) and Peter Jacobs, in the excerpt from his 1991 essay
De/Re/In[form]ing Landscape, hints at a new definition of
landscape implicit in Foucaults analysis of the relationship
between nature and culture (Swaffield 2002: 120). Unfortunate-
ly, neither author fully attempts to adapt Foucaults spatial
theories to landscape architecture, perhaps due to incomplete
or flawed definitions of heterotopia.
References
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Ballantyne, A. (eds.). Architecture as Experience, London and New
York, Routledge: 261-276.
Arriola, A. 1993. Building the City Out of Empty Spaces.
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Berrizbeitia, A. & Pollak, L. 1999.
Inside/Outside: Between Architecture and Landscape.
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Biographical Notes
Foucault, M. 1986. Of Other Spaces. Ms Hallal earned a Masters degree in Landscape Architecture from
Translated by Jay Miskowiec. Diacritics 16 (1): 22-27. Cornell University and is currently pursuing a doctoral degree in the
History of Architecture and Urbanism, also at Cornell. She spent nine
. 1994. The Order of Things. New York, Vintage Books.
months in Barcelona researching and writing her Masters thesis on
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Journal of Landscape Architecture / autumn 2006 15