Projective Cities 2013 by AA School

PROJECTIVE CITIES

2011 - 2013

PROJECTIVE CITIES

Taught MPhil in Architecture

THE SOCIAL HOUSING CENTRE

Type, Urban Form, Policy-Making, and Standards

Alvaro Arancibia Tagle

This disserta on challenges the current state of San ago de Chile’s social housing and its dependence on the priva zed housing market. The close rela onship between policy making, minimum housing standards, and urban form, have limited social housing to a reduced type-solu on based on a reinterpreta on of a tradi onal row-house model. This allowed for large-scale social housing provision that eﬀec vely resolved the historical need. However, the success of the housing policy is ques oned when the sub-standard of social housing is exposed, which fails at several scales and spheres of domes c life. A main failure is the inability to procure adequate loca on for low-income housing. In fact, recent projects could only aﬀord plots in far-rural peripheries. This has resulted in a lifestyle of exclusion, as these sites have no access to basic infrastructures and the centre, the largest source of employment, services, and opportuni es.

In order to address the problem of social housing and its urban exclusion, this project proposes a new domes c-economic centre. A radical re-conceptualiza on of the current social housing model is developed, calling for a new model based on four key transforma ons.

First, a non-proﬁt (municipal-driven) procurement with the aim to create a circular system of incen ves. It a empts to increase the social housing budget by incorpora ng private and public funds. Second, a new territorial management

able to create large administra ve en es and infrastructures connected to the urban core and economic centres.

Third, a typological transforma on of the Cité, a typical early-twen eth century housing solu on in San ago. Through a differen a on of this street-based type, a new rela onship between type and urban form is developed, which establishes a clear use and defini on of open spaces - a constant and controversial issue for most housing types. This transformed type also creates more flexible rela onships with other typologies. Accordingly, a large range of different typological arrangements were explored.

The fourth transforma on is concerned with re-thinking the idea of housing standards. Beyond the problem of deﬁning space standards, the project proposes the decompression of the dwelling unit and the distribu on of diverse and associated economic programmes within the city. However, this does not mean a singular scalar shi from the unit to the city, but rather a progressive and mulscalar system of urban rela onships that create diﬀerent spheres of collec vity and in macy. Hence, the new social housing standard is linked to the possibility of both achieving a autonomy from the exis ng urban centre and a simultaneity of domes c urban episodes, which are manifested in the proposed social housing centre.

Current typological s gma za on

Housing loca ons on the periphery

Proposed system of centrali es

Proposed housing procurement

Cite’s simple 3d matrix

The Cité type transforma on

Cite’s unit arrangements

Cité’s urban arrangementsTypical Cité corridor

Cite diﬀeren a on

Cite’s hybrid 3d matrix

Associa on of programmes

Model image

BEIRUT: FROM CITY OF CAPITAL TO CAPITAL CITY

Reconstruc ng a State Iden ty within Neo-Liberal Capital

Yasmina El Chami

This thesis inves gates the poten al of architecture to shape and acquire poli cal agency in the context of the city. Speciﬁcally, it looks at the role of architecture in the construc on of the capital city, and ques ons its ability to both form and signify the state. This is par cularly problema c in the case of Lebanon, a weak quasi-state that - twenty years a er the end of the civil war - is s ll coming to terms with sectarian divisions and poli cal corrup on, and is exacerbated by the priva za on of the centre of its capital by real estate management company Solidere.

Considering the state’s con nuing failure to form a Lebanese statehood, the project

proposes to reverse the architectural no on of na on building - commonly considered the project of the capital city itself - and rethinks the construc on of a func oning state as a process of developing a regional economic role for the city and a produc ve poli cal iden ty for its ci zenry. The premise for such a reversal is the iden ﬁca on and understanding of two related processes, the ‘symptom’ and the ‘symbol’, as representa onal dimensions of power in the architecture of capital ci es. Poli cal power can be examined a er the fact, as a symptom of a speciﬁc policy or rule, or before the fact, as an inten onal projec on of the iden ty and ideology of a state.

The poli cal founda ons of Lebanon - A weak sectarian state

An -Syrian protest in 2005 following the assassina on of Raﬁc Hariri

This dis nc on becomes instrumental to rethink the idea of the city not as a composi on of symbolic urban gestures but as an ar culated space of nego a on and decision-making in which the state is not an abstract ideological en ty but a protractor of values and rights aimed at the forma on and sustainability of a poli cal iden ty.

Power is opera ve in the city when its representa ve dimension is symptoma c, and a strategic ar cula on of the space of the city and the produc ve poli cal engagement of the ci zen within it.

The analysis of the city centre of Beirut through its dominant type - the Lebanese central hall - and its reinterpreta on by Solidere’s reconstruc on project of the centre as an expired symbol of past French mandate-era glory, leads to the search, beyond architecture’s representa ve agency, for a reconstructed type that is capable of shaping both an opera ve strategy for the reconstruc on of the city and a renewed symbolic iden ty for the state.

Transforma on of the city and its dominant typeFrom the Arabic to the French city

Central hall type - A porous and direc onal grid

Typological transforma on - From central hall to direc onal frames

This instrumentality of type is tested in a counter-project for a new capital centre around the historic Martyr Square and its surrounding archaeological sites. The poli cal and economic iden ty of the city and its ci zens is reconstructed through a public, cultural and educa onal campus, which includes private housing. This public-private framework acknowledges the commercial, exclusive and ﬁnancial strategy of Solidere, and addresses the need for a new public common ground func oning beyond sectarian iden ﬁca ons.

Building on the contemporary concept of the development of capital ci es less as administra ve centres and more as concentra ons of human capital and knowledge, and reinterpre ng this shi in the Lebanese context, the domes c central hall type that formed the historic merchant port-city is reassessed and redeﬁned. It becomes the basis of a new cultural campus, which operates through a hierarchy of scales and frames the city and its ci zens.

Martyrs Square: A central strip between the reconstructed French centre and the highway

Strategy: The square as central hall at the scale of the na on, linking the centre and the city

A central spine at the neighborhood scale

The Souk: Series of central strips at the block scale

The new centre: Series of mul -scalar central halls in diﬀerent direc ons

Ground ﬂoor plan: Porous fabric linking the square and the city

Site model: The new Martyr’s Square

Detail model (Secondary School): (a) Public ground layer, (b)First transi on, public ins tu ons, (c) Ins tu onal layer and second public layer, (d) Private residen al layer

Transversal sec on across square, spine and souks

The new ‘symptoma c’ cultural capital

THE LOBBYIST CITY

Brasilia: The Latent Extension

Gabriella N. Pinta Gama

Poli cs in capital ci es today are largely deﬁned by lobbyism, whether good or bad. When Brasilia was constructed, Brazil had recently changed from a military regime to a democracy. Therefore Brasilia was to celebrate a special achievement for the country, and it was designed to represent the poli cal power of the people.

Architecture can symbolically represent a democra c state, yet the symbolic value of Brasilia is a constant burden to the necessary growth and func oning of the capital. The modernist idea of the public in Lucio Costa’s Pilot Plan was expressed through the ar cula on of open planes. However, the inability of the plan to frame the limits and redundancies of the new city, has resulted in constant changes to the original plans by private developers, who were largely responsible for construc ng the new capital.

Brasilia has nevertheless become an emblem of a capital city. In his memorial for the city, Costa stated that the capital, in order to be considered one, should embody both the concepts of urbs and civitas. With the challenge being the crea on of a modern state, the capital city as a representa on of governance was to signify the idea of public power and democracy. This was architecturally expressed through a landscape

Lobbyists Federal Agencies, Berlin

Lobbyists on K Street, Washington DC

conﬁgura on. Today, this idea of a capital city could be considered obsolete. Even though it is widely recognized that lobbyists are a part of the poli cal decision-making process, they have no spa al representa on in the city.

Brasilia’s design was conceived through scales, with the manifesta ons of public space appearing in the endless plinth of the Superquadras to the monumentality of the Esplanade of Ministries.

The public areas in the Pilot Plan have been significantly changed over me, which demonstrates their inefficiency throughout the scales defined by Costa. Even though Oscar Niemeyer’s architecture along with Costa’s masterplan was designed with every Brazilian in the mind, the idea of public space is very li le defined and in reality intended for people working for and servicing the government.

Brasilia was not designed in a grid but

Visual manifesto

Brasilia was originally planned for 500.000 inhabitants but currently has over 2.5 million people, only 12 % of which reside in the Pilot Plan and the rest in satellite ci es. Brasilia’s satellites were ini ally illegal appropria ons of land to provide housing for the workers building the new capital. Today however, new satellite ci es house the large number of people coming to Brasilia, a racted by the job opportuni es oﬀered by the government. With most government jobs located

within the Pilot Plan, the satellite ci es have therefore become dorm ci es. They are treated as an extension of the Pilot Plan - although there is a clear inversion in the new ci es that differs from Brasilia’s idea of the city as a civitas. The satellites completely disregard ideas of the public and the common. This is largely due to insufficient regula on by state authori es, which allowed real estate specula on and a highly priva zed housing market to effect the design of the ci es.

Slab level plan

level plan

and lobbyists in and for the capital city. More speciﬁcally, how to rethink their role in the satellite ci es, which can be seen as an integral part of the capital. Along with a spa alized lobbying, the project revisits the Superquadra as a poten al megaform for the satellite ci es. Thus, the project proposes a new type of satellite city for Brasilia: A Capital Satellite City. This is only possible by considering lobbyists as stakeholders and providers for this new

idea of capital city. It is a city for lobbyists that have no space in the original plan of Brasilia by Costa. The project is a simple gesture that gives form to a poli cal reality that has to be increasingly acknowledged in capital ci es, which are in fact: Lobbyist Ci es.

The inner city campus as an element of the city

CENTRE AS VOID

Hangzhou’s New City Centre

Yuqi Huang

Throughout history, Chinese city centres have been composed of voids with changing meanings: from a philosophical, poli cal, public to a landscaped and ﬁnally economic meaning.

However, many of the currently proposed city centres are civic voids in spa al and func onal terms. They are framed by semi-representa onal buildings and ﬁlled with landscapes without any func on. They are a varia on of the mega-plot, large-scale plots ﬁlled with repe ve highrises. They lack a hierarchical or nego ated space between the ‘private’ realm of the plot and the ‘public’ realm of the city.

The thesis discusses the meaning of the ‘void’ in tradi onal Chinese periods and

philosophy, when it was perceived as a posi ve, meaningful space and regarded to have a complementary rela onship with the solid. This dialec cal rela onship is embodied in tradi onal architecture, in which the void is always constructed as part of the solid and both together create a speciﬁc meaning. Tradi onal Chinese architecture conveys the harmonious and balanced rela onship between the void and solid, natural and ar ﬁcial, and landscape and human.

Envisioning a diﬀerent role for the contemporary city centre in China, the proposal transforms the current plans for a new centre of Hangzhou into a civic centre, and posits a new urban and spa al paradigm for the mega-plot.

Centre as philosophical void: The Forbidden City

Courtyard houseCentre as poli cal void: Tiananmen Square

Courtyard house and skywell houseScholar’s Garden: Lingering Garden

Centre as philosophical void: Ancient Beijing

Scholar’s garden: Interface between void and mass

Scholar’s garden: From natural to formal landscape

Reinterpret the city centre as a void

Void for in-posi on viewing

Current new city centre in Hangzhou

At the typological scale, this project inves gates the redundancy of stadia, their speciﬁcity and diﬃculty of conversion; it also examines the dominant typologies of Barra da Tijuca - gated communi es and their physical and socio-economic exclusion.

This project a empts to ar culate and redeﬁne the role of Olympic legacy for the city and the poten al of its main typology - the stadium. The proposal considers the legacy as the ﬁrst and main goal, with the Olympics Games only a temporary condi on of the masterplan.

Master plan: Legacy mode

Typological transforma on

Visual manifesto

Stadia deep structure analysis

Olympics mode: Tennis stadium

Legacy mode: Oﬃce block

The studied urban conﬂicts directly relate to ques ons of ci zenship. There are two proposed ways to deﬁne ci zens. One is through the social events that compose ones life, whereby typical events can be regarded the commonali es experienced by all. The other is through the social es that one either is born into or establishes.

According to these deﬁni ons, the city can be read as diﬀerent scales of spaces within which the typical lives occur and social networks are created.

However, urbaniza on has fragmented

these spaces and stretched the social networks across the city. A series of urban conﬂicts have therefore emerged. And This project argues that it is impossible to solve these conﬂicts within a market-oriented urban context, instead: we must rethink the power of the state as a responsibility.

The thesis proposes that architectural and urban space is primarily a social and poli cal construct, embodied throughout history in the Chinese urban unit, the courtyard house, the Danwei (work unit), and the contemporary mega-plot.