DENATURALIZED URBANITY MO HSEN MOSTAFAVI
In recent years. Amencan archItecture has generally deemphasized il spe<:ific and intended relationships with Ihe contexts and SltuBtlOns of new bUildings In the ciry. The term conrel(t, when used, has invariably been limited to a sense of describing the physical and formal attributes of a site Independent of Its cultural and political resonance. At the same lime, some of the more provocative theoretical research on the Socio-9conomic. polttlca1. and cul tural dimensions of Amencan cities has been neither translated. nor translatable into actual prOleCtlve schema 101 urban Intel"o'entlon.
Caught In architecture's formal Bnd SOCial dichotomy, Ihe late Manfredo Talun declared the difficulty if not the Impossibility of a socio-pollllcal arch,tectu,e until such time that the actual political Circumstances governing the production of architecture had changed HIS work cntlcally calls Into question the IllUSive ambitions of those architects who might have oth erwise hoped for a revision of the modernist agenda: an architecture looted In social and political ideals. Tafuri's hypothesis, which appeared first In the periodical COn/roplano In 1969, was later modified arld expanded in hiS book Archllecture and Uroplaof 1975. "What is of Interest here: he writes, "IS the precise identification of those tasks whICh capitalist development has tak.en away from architecture That is to say, what is taken away from architectural prefiguration With thiS. one is led almost automatically to the discovery of what may be called the 'drama' of architecture today: that IS, 10 see architecture obliged to return to 'pure archi tecture,' to form withOut utopia; In the best cases to sublime uselessness.The origins of this 'puflly' can not only be traced to the Enlightenment but also 10 Ihe writings of the theologian turned theorist Abbe Laugler and hiS pronouncements during the mld-tllghteenth century regarding the fOfmal and aesthetiC simllarrtles between garden deSign and urban deSign. According to Laugler: "Whoever ~nows how to deSign a park Will have no difficulty In traCing the plan for the buildings of a City , .. there must be squares, crossroads, and streets, There must be regularity and lanu'lSy, relation-
ships and OPPOSitionS. and casual unexpected elements that vary Ihe scene; great order In the details, confuSion. uproar and tumult in the whole." laugler's application of naturalism and the antl-organic Iheofles of the picturesque to the ci ty radlcaHy modified the naditional and historic divisions between Ihe cIty and the country by introdUCing the idea of the city as discovered or methodized nature. Laugler's formulation further contribu ted to the erasure of dls!1nct dlHerences and disparities between the City and nature and, according to Tafun, between "the value accredited to nature arld the value accredited to the City as a productive mechanism of new forms of economiC accumulallon. " Needless to say, these reciprOCities be tween CIty and landscape were also at the heart of Le Corbusler's ideas about the modern city. proposed as a vanallon 01 urban naturalism, and subtly transformed jfI contemporary practice into a form of "natural urban-
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Thus, among the formative frameworks of our sympoSium, "Denaturalized Urbanity," has been the Implicit task of uncovenng the role of urban naturalism In the schema of contemporary Amencan cilles. as well as the exploration of more speCifiC SOCial and critical spaces resulting from the dlalactlcal connectlons/dlsconnecltons at the Interface of city and landscape The French archi tec t and wmer, Paul Vinlio, +n dealing With the continuous transformations of the City and of urban boundary asks: Docs a metropolis still have a facade? At wha l moment can (he ci ty be said to face us? For Virilio, "The popular expression '(0 go in to the City,' which has replaced last century's 'to go to the city,' embodies an uncertainty regarding relations of opposItes (VIS a VIS arld tace to face), as toough we were no longer In Iront of the city but always inSide 1\ . .If the metropolis stili occupies a piece of ground," Vililio continues, "a geographical poSition, It no longer corresponds to the old diviSion between City and country, nor to the opposi tes between cen ter and periphery The 10calizallOn of the aXiality 01 the urban layout faded long ago. Suburbia was not Single-handedly
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responSIble for thiS dissolution. The very OPpoSlllon IntramuraVextramural was itself weakened by the revolullon In transportation and the development of commUnicalion and telecommunication Yet, despite this weak ening of OPPOSites, much of the recent debate on contemporary urbanlzat!on In the US has been devoted to suburbia as part of the ci ty/suburb dichotomy or 10 the rise of the purportedly new "edge cities" In this nominally "progressive" march towards new frontiers of suburbanlzatlon/urbanizatlon. the "traditional" core city IS left behind, often as a relic of ItS former glory The urban debate, bamng the problematic "renaissance" of US Cilies In (he 1980's, has been pnmarily focused on the clly's Ills, the legitimacy of disurbanlzallon, and the fligh t to the more "pure" landscapes of the suburban fronuer ThiS picture, consistently supparted and constructed by political and economic policy has transformed bo th the city and citizens' collective conSCiousness of ItS criSIS While we should not underestimate the expliCitly construed and the ImpliCitly enforced state poliCies on family life, gender domlnalion, and labor dlSIJlbullon. there are other alternallves The time of cnsis IS also a time of potenllal transformation According to Manuel Castells, spatial forms Will also be earmarked by the resistance from explOIted classes, from oppressed subjec ts, and from dommated women And the work of such a contradictory historical process on the space Will be accomplished on an already mhellled spatial form, the product of former history and the support of new mlerests, proJects, protests, and dreams. ,. What are the Implicallon of the urban CflSIS for us architec ts, landscape architect, planners and urban deSigners? What IS our role In the process of reSIsting certain SpaMlitles, while 路projectlng" others? To address some of these Issues. the symposium Will focus on the Amellcan city as a "landscape" Within a -regional" ma!llx. The conSlderallon of the City as pall 01 a regional terrain and policy IS bo th deliberate and necessary for the constructIon of a more collabora ti ve and less diVisive prOlect of urbanity (I.e., ci ty vs. suburb). The term landscape is used 10 lI S cultural, as well as phYSical sense The mtent IS not 10 separale these two condllions and meanings of landscape, but rather 10 examine through both Ihe phySIcal and cultural landscapes of Ihe city the ramlf,callons arld Infelences of one on the olher, theu common grounds 10 uncommon places Among the implications of dealing With the tenSions between phYSical and cultural urban landscapes IS the recognillon of their uilimale inseparability. Geographical landscapes are as much cultural construCIS as cultural landscapes are physical and spatial. One of the main interesls of the sympoSium will be to debate the Interface between the projects of deciphenng urban landscapes as domains of "covert cultufe," (Leo Marx) and theu receding through future architectural, landscape. and urban design prOlects: the topographical Sites of our future everyday Imaginings The overall theme of the conference will be Ihe tenSions between the spaces of represen tation and the representations of space Ithe localtons of cullure). speCifically developed through he spallali tles of race, gender and ethnlClty, As a prOjec t the symposium Will construct a fragment of an urban landscape - the City, as the hope of democracy. Though It IS a hope that cannot be fu lly leahzed, neverthe less we can move towards an understanding of the dilemmatic spaces of the city as the new sites o f collaboration and contestation. The reahzallon of the Incompletion of such a prOject of urbanity IS a necessary condition of its construction and one would hope a rebuttal worthy of Manfredo Tafuri and the cui de sacs of the formal and the social.