#4 – Points of Departure Literature: Losing control, keeping desire by Doina Petrescu, in Architecture and Participation (2005) You can’t go back (…) That you can trace backwards on a page/map does not mean you can in spacetime. (Massey 2005) As planners and architects we are actors in space and time and we are continuously confronted with the fact that even though we can retrace our footsteps, retell a story or recreate an encounter, the place of origin will always be changed. While the ideal work of architects and planners often resembles what we might consider a utopian notion – it is in our future multicultural and multilayered cities more interesting and of larger importance to investigate spaces of otherness, spaces that are neither here or there and that are simultaneously physical and cognitive – spaces defined by Michel Foucault as heterotopias. Foucault uses the term heterotopias to describe spaces that have more layers of meaning or relations to other places than what immediately meets the eye. (Of other Spaces, Michel Foucault) In this investigation of otherness, a specific awareness is required towards where the plan begins – to what is taken into consideration, and to ‘what we let inform our process’. In our competition entry for the large city-expansion in Nordhavnen (North Harbour) in Copenhagen (winning entry: Excentral Park – Edge Dynamics, 2008, in collaboration with D&U architects), we developed and used a term and a strategy for entering the field called Points of Departure (PoD). The PoD strategy reflects an awareness for changes in time and space that allow otherness and heterotopias, that opens for surprising spaces and chance as a part of a planning process. From the competition entry: Activating the Field is to create a ‘hyper responsive milieu’ where it is possible to leave an imprint – something that one can return to, charge with energy and follow in time. In our strategy for Nordhavnen we insert small enclaves (sociotopes) of free, imaginative and provocative structures to be established now, and continuously, - independent of the plan’s timelines. These Points of Departure can be seen as embedded resistance and meaning in the future urban fabric. The coming urban structure has to embrace and meet these programs in the same way as the Barcelona Cerda-plan is dispersed in the meeting with the old village of Gracia and Paris’ Haussmann axes deviate when encountering ‘les buttes’ (aux Cailles/Montmartre). Strategically this is a new way to establish constructive resistance in large urban projects, learning from historical urban renewal processes. Complex, dynamic fields of life forms and accumulated knowledge exist on several levels in Copenhagen and its region. Through such action this may evolve into a sustainable voice in the urban development process, and at the same time disturb a unilateral and defined developer-run process and imprint it with new meaning. This evidently is true for those people who through time will settle in the area, but also for those landscape structures and events, which will be initiated. In planning terms it represents the importance of weaker economies and voices that, allowed to work on all timescales in Nordhavnen, represent an archipelago of formative opportunities in a constructive resistance to all linear development. This gives us the possibility to create what the voices of the citizens express as: “No-regulation Zones”, “Use temporary functions and features”, “A bit rough, messy and unpolished, it would be great to be able to plan the unpolished”, “The unexpected is attractive”. In this workshop we have been investigating through various approaches using different terms to find and understand the complexity and the multiple strata of information we are continuously encountering as architects. Finally: the way we make and present our findings and maps is highly political, and has great significance for what we can do to the places and spaces we are planning for. MH/GL Assignment: consider your learning from the previous assignments – transfer your new knowledge into a Point of Departure strategy: generating meaning through resilience / interaction / social and biological awareness or simply by creating otherness.....
SLICES THROUGH SPACE – Azrieli School of Architecture & Urbanism, guest studio spring 2012 Magdalena Haggärde & Gisle Løkken – 70°N arkitektur