On May 29, 1985, there was a slow moving but devastating and destructive collision between architecture and the crowd at the Heysel football stadium in Brussels (Belgium). About one hour before the kick-off of the 1985 European Football Cup final, Liverpool fans breached the fence and overpowered the police line that separated their section from that of the supporters of the rival team, Juventus. What ensued was pandemonium, a clash with fatal results. Thirty-nine people died and six hundred more were injured. Most died from suffocation, after tripping or being crushed against the wall of the football stadium, before a part of this same wall collapsed, relieving the pressure and allowing those trapped inside the building’s confines to escape. The Brussels police and emergency services took much of the blame for their ineffective and ultimately insensitive response to the altercation (they allowed the match to proceed while 39 corpses lay strewn in the car park). But neither does architecture emerge unscathed from this sad story. Even if poor organisation had placed the rival football factions too close to one another, it was the failure of architecture—the collapse of a wall— rather than its clever design or carefully organised plan of egress that prevented more casualties. Architecture has an ambivalent relationship with crowds, which is compellingly expressed in the sequence of events that occurred at the Heysel stadium. First, there was the build-up of crowd enthusiasm ahead of the game: the gathering of fans, the almost ritualistic taunting of the opposing teams. Then there was the disaster: the upsurge of the angry mob, the crashing of bodies in space, the collapse of a wall, closely followed by the thrilling spectacle of the football match—a cynical act of appeasement by the responsible authorities. To, finally, the joy of the Juventus team and its supporters upon winning the final. Taking place in a time-span of only a few hours, this chain of events reveals the potential duality embedded in architecture designed for crowds: from gathering cheerful troupes to harbouring an angry mob, from facilitating mass spectacle to enabling mass disaster. The potential of architecture to encourage crowd formation as well as to induce crowd dispersal, and its ability to serve as a backdrop for momentous and joyous occasions as well as a setting for mass hysteria and trauma, has resulted in a complex relationship with the phenomenon of the crowd. When crowd theory and historiography flourished in the 1960s, some writers drew explicit connections with architecture. In his famous treatise Crowds and Power, the Bulgarian emigr e writer Elias Canetti, for instance, describes architecture’s ability to shape and harness the power of crowds:

中文翻译：

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建筑与人群的幽灵

1985 年 5 月 29 日，在布鲁塞尔（比利时）的 Heysel 足球场，建筑与人群之间发生了缓慢但具有破坏性和破坏性的碰撞。在 1985 年欧洲足球杯决赛开球前大约一小时，利物浦球迷冲破围栏并压倒了将他们与对手尤文图斯队的支持者分隔开的警戒线。随之而来的是混乱，一场具有致命后果的冲突。三十九人死亡，六百多人受伤。大多数人在被绊倒或被压在足球场的墙上后窒息而死，然后同一堵墙的一部分倒塌，缓解了压力，让被困在建筑物内的人得以逃脱。布鲁塞尔警方和紧急服务部门对他们对争吵的无效和最终麻木不仁的反应负有很大责任（他们允许比赛继续进行，而停车场内散落着 39 具尸体）。但建筑也没有从这个悲伤的故事中毫发无损地出现。即使糟糕的组织使敌对的足球派系彼此靠得太近，但建筑的失败——墙壁的倒塌——而不是其巧妙的设计或精心组织的出口计划，防止了更多的人员伤亡。建筑与人群有着矛盾的关系，这在 Heysel 体育场发生的一系列事件中得到了令人信服的表达。首先，比赛开始前观众热情高涨：球迷的聚集，对阵几乎是仪式性的嘲讽。然后是灾难：愤怒的暴徒高潮，太空中的尸体坠毁，墙壁倒塌，紧随其后的是足球比赛的惊险奇观——负责当局愤世嫉俗的绥靖行为。最后，尤文图斯队及其支持者赢得决赛的喜悦。发生在短短几个小时的时间跨度内，这一系列事件揭示了为人群设计的建筑中潜在的二元性：从聚集欢快的剧团到窝藏愤怒的暴徒，从促成大规模的表演到促成大规模的灾难。建筑在鼓励人群形成和促使人群分散方面的潜力，以及它作为重要和欢乐场合的背景以及大规模歇斯底里和创伤的场所的能力，造成了与人群的复杂关系的现象。当人群理论和史学在 1960 年代蓬勃发展时，一些作家将建筑与建筑联系起来。例如，保加利亚移民作家埃利亚斯·卡内蒂 (Elias Canetti) 在其著名的论文《人群与力量》(Crowds and Power) 中描述了建筑塑造和利用人群力量的能力：