These different projects have the power to revitalize abandoned, empty spaces and blind spots in a city. The 1m2 house and the Keret house are vertical housing prototypes that could fit anywhere in the city, without disturbing any urban regulation. This leads to the following question: why should architecture be located on a precise and defined plot that has formal access when it can fit in unusual places that are denied by the inhabitants? This parasitic architecture is also an answer to the cities that are nowadays in a phase of densification and where the easiest and common answer by western architects and communes or governments is the construction of high-rise buildings or skyscrapers. Here, it breaks the preconceived idea or image in which high-density cities must be composed of architectures that host the biggest number of people in a smallest footprint area. It can revitalize the interior image of a city without changing its skyline. This new dynamic acts moreover on existing architecture. Lebbeus Woods’ drawings in which these forms/machines attach to the ruins resulting from the Bosnian war answers to an important debate: what should we do with ruins: renovate them or destroy them to rebuild a new building from scratch? His answer is none of those. For him it is important to keep the building its way, but adding these structures revitalize them without erasing a part of the collective memory. If we translate his theory in a traditional urban context we can conclude that parasitic architecture can be valuable for old abandoned, or any uncompleted or unsatisfied architecture. Parasitic architecture can be defined “as an adaptable, transient and exploitive form of architecture that forces relationships with host buildings in order to complete themselves.”1 But this definition is approaching the subject in one way only, which is how existing architecture completes parasitic architecture, while here we can demonstrate that the opposite is also true: parasitic structures can positively transform an existing one. “A parasitic construction redefines and reconfigures a built structure and provides a new perspective or orientation to the public and potentially offer a new space.”2 The existing structures don’t have to be buildings, in the example of the Bridge city, the parasitic modules forming a vertical architecture, are attached to an abandoned infrastructure. The city and the existing built environment is revitalized by this parasitic architecture because this latter has no rules, it adapts where it can, according to its needs. If now we analyze those projects in term of the spaces and uses they provide, we realize that they activate an interesting and critical debate on architectural conventions. Since this kind of architecture doesn’t result from an usual process of conception, it ends creating unusual and unconventional spaces. In fact, the form here results from the leftover space of a site or a building where the parasite attaches. In the case of Lebbeus Woods’ drawings, verticality is not a typology anymore. It is not a form or an axis but a position, a context: the verticality is created and so is dependent to the existing building to which the parasite plugs. The unpredictable forms leads to the creation of unpredictable new uses and programs. According to Lebbeus Woods, “architecture, as a social and primarily constructive act, could heal the wounds, by creating entirely new types of space in the city. These would be what I had called ‘freespaces,’ spaces without predetermined programs of use, but whose strong forms demanded the invention of new programs
corresponding to the new, post-war conditions.”3 In these study cases, vertical architecture doesn’t relate anymore to the image of stable high-rise constructions in which the structural part becomes more important than architectural and spatial innovations. Here, vertical architecture can be, on the opposite, flexible and temporary. In the case of the 1m2 house and the Keret house, verticality remains a typology because of its narrowness and height, but verticality still results from the lack of space and the context created by existing buildings. The constraints of the site provide also new ways of living to maximize space: minimum shelter at its more extreme sense, imposing a restricted behavior to the human body. “The edge is a limit, in the first place of our knowledge. We have to push ourselves to get to it. (...)Architects rarely work anywhere near the edge. They usually operate well within the boundaries of what they comfortably know and what others know, too.” 4 Lebbeus Woods’ text called “The Edge” is about “the necessity of architects to work as tight rope walkers instead of working “within the boundaries of what they comfortably know and what others know, too“.5 In this last part, we decided to talk about urban and architectural experiences and sensations. Nowadays, the standardization of space and life in western cities engender a lack of experiences in our life. What we define here as parasitic architecture creates, by their randomness, a variety of interpretation or absence of clear definition, new experiences that break with the routine and universal model of urban life, avoiding therefore architectural repetitions and going beyond standardized models of comfort.
CONCLUSION Vertical architecture is a large subject that can be understood in many different ways. The purpose of this chapter on parasitic architecture is to interpret vertical more as a context than a form, a height or a typology. Verticality doesn’t depend necessarily on the object itself, but on where the object is implanted: abandoned narrow spaces, buildings, and infrastructures. But if we define vertical architecture in this way, what is the limit of this definition? Can this kind of vertical architecture exist without an existing built environment? 1 Sara, ‘Parasitic Architecture’, Citymovement, [web blog], 29 March 2012, http://citymovement.wordpress.com/2012/03/29/ parasitic-architecture/. 2 Ibid. 3 Lebbeus Woods, ‘The Reality of Theory’, Lebbeus Woods, [web blog], 6 February 2008, http://lebbeuswoods.wordpress. com/2008/02/06/the-reality-of-theory/. 4 Lebbeus Woods, ‘The Edge’, Lebbeus Woods, [web blog], 21 February 2010, http://lebbeuswoods.wordpress. com/2010/02/21/the-edge/. 5 Léopold Lambert, ‘(UN)Wall ///The Edge - Lebbeus Wodds / Philippe Petit’, The Funambulist, [web blog], 23 December 2010, http://thefunambulist.net/2010/12/23/unwall-the-edgelebbeus-woods-philippe-petit/. 6 Shags, ‘A Perilous Hobby: Vertical Camping - All That Is Vertical shelter6
Interesting’, Imgfave, 2011, http://imgfave.com/view/1425200