The Story of a Section

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

BEFORE THE TRANSFORMATION INTRODUCTION

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ARCHIVE A BEGINNING THE PROJECT [19 — 21 December 2017]

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— The lonely sketch — The WeChat message — The site visit — The working dinner B PRODUCTION AND EXCHANGE [4 — 15 January 2018]

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— The converging form — The last deviations — The final presentation

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H BEYOND CONTROL [9 July 2018 — 31 December 2019]

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— 3D model as control avatar — Debate on the construction design — Farewell to Shougang

— The construction of a multisite team — The presentation at Shougang — The dinner at the embassy C ORGANIZATION OF THE ATELIER [24 January — 16 February 2018]

G THE PROJECT THEATER [24 May — 5 July 2018]

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SYNOPTIC ARCHIVE Camilla Forina

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CREDITS

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COLOPHON

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AFTER THE TRANSFORMATION

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— The construction of a working protocol — The production of internal exchanges — Outreach to the Department of Architecture D OPENINGS OF THE PROJECT TEAM [20 — 22 February 2018]

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— The workshop with the design professors — The reworking in four diagrammatic scenarios — Two design versions E PARALLEL DESIGN STRATEGIES [23 February — 13 April 2018]

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— Interaction with technical expertise — Assessment of the design workshops — Stop and go — Plan B F HONING IN ON A SOLUTION [14 April — 22 May 2018] — The organizing committee — The informal meetings — Consultants

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ORO Editions THE STORY OF A SECTION

A THE LONELY SKETCH Beijing, 20 December 2017 — Cafeteria of the School of Architecture, Tsinghua University, 11:00 Michele is sitting at a table, armed with a notebook and a pen purchased for the occasion. In a few hours he will be having dinner with Zhang Li, professor of architecture at Tsinghua University and design coordinator of the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics Masterplan, for the sites of Chongli and Shougang. The latter is the location of the Big Workshop of the Shougang Oxygen Factory (hereinafter called “the Oxygen Factory”). The building is part of a larger group of more than fifteen industrial facilities that, within the former Shougang Steel Factory, formed the plant generating oxygen. For its transforma-

tion, the Politecnico di Torino has just been called by Li on the basis of what by now is a decade-long collaboration.

Michele is both very excited about the new opportunity and a bit discouraged by the situation: considering the urgent invitation received from Li, he had imagined an intense series of workshops, heated discussions, and incessant exchanges in the barely two days of his mission in China. Instead, he finds himself suspended in a wait–interrupted only by a short meeting with other colleagues of Tsinghua–between two crucial, dense, but limited moments: a site visit the previous afternoon, to gather all possible information firsthand in order for the project to begin, and a meeting/ work dinner during which to discuss the theme and the beginning of this collaboration. No staged performances, no formal encounters between the envoy of the Politecnico and an attentive audience, with respectful consideration of the guest-expert. Instead, a

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[ 1.1 — A ] bit of quiet and solitude in which to think, trace, draw something that could define the next steps, establishing certain premises of a process that is still an utter mystery. Probably something will happen at dinner [1].

[1] This first scene is not just a narrative ploy. The choice

This time of suspension is strategically productive: the lack of an important setting of institutional exchange permits Michele to get away from the role of a “diplomatic” representative for a while (he is the Rector’s Delegate for relations with China), and to find a way to make an initial, tentative design move of his own initiative, at the table of a café. He has no surveys at hand, he has to work from memory, improvising his role along with the composition of the information gathered during the site visit. Developing his sketches, Michele is influenced by certain criteria that seem crucial to him in that moment (though they would later turn out to be partially irrelevant): faced with Li’s request to transform the abandoned factory into a visitors center for those who will arrive to watch the olympic competitions at the Big Air, he has also understood the need for speculative exploitation of the project once the games are over, for a return on the investment of the Shou’ao Real Estate Co., Ltd, a subsidiary company of Shougang Co. (hereinafter called “Shougang Co.”).

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[2] M. Bonino (Guest Editor), “Torino. Sustainable strate-

gies”, in SHIJIE JIANZHU–“World Architecture”, 2013, Vol. 275 (05).

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From this perspective, the project will also have to be a densification that maximizes the square meters of the new construction. But there are also the claims, such as Li’s expectations with respect to the involvement of the Politecnico, derived more from his visits to Turin than from the intrinsic characteristics of Shougang.

Michele is also aware of something else: the image of the great empty space designed by Peter Latz for the Parco Dora in the “Spina 3” area of Turin, published in 2013 in a theme issue of the Tsinghua magazine World Architecture [2] focusing on the urban regeneration of Turin as a model of sustainability, had a great impact on Li.

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of starting from a contingent situation is also a statement of method and of theoretical positioning: the design action does not have an origin, but can be re-examined through countless traces deposited along a certain trajectory. Nevertheless, we need to begin our story at one point, because we cannot overlook the need to give it a meaning, at least in its modes of functioning: “Origin, for man, is much more the way in which man in general, any man, articulates himself upon the already-begun of labour, life, and language.” [M. Foucault, The order of things: An Archeology of the humans sciences (1966; Routledge: London, 2002), 360].

B THE CONSTRUCTION OF A MULTISITE TEAM Turin, 4 January 2018 — Castello del Valentino, Politecnico di Torino, 10.00 Michele and Edoardo are at Castello del Valentino, which is mostly empty due to the holidays still in progress, and they are thinking about how to organize an initial team with an eye on the meeting scheduled in Beijing on 15 January, the first deadline of the project.

The presentation will be an important opportunity to test their expertise in relation to the clients, prior to the long break for Chinese New Year, in mid-February. The start of the project coincides with the usual short circuit between the western Christmas break and the Chinese Spring Festival, which take place in close succession: Michele has to translate the information and the intentions he has been able to formulate through the first site visit to a dedicated team, which can act rapidly, in

a flexible way. This now seems to be the main priority with respect to wider sharing, of an institutional nature, that will have to be developed within the pertinent departments of the Politecnico. The decision is to concentrate on an initial team inside the China Room, on a volunteer basis. The resources called into play are also in different places–some are on vacation, away from Turin, while others are departing for China. In this phase, Michele and Edoardo are joined by Maria Paola Repellino, Valeria Federighi, and Francesco Carota, researchers of the China Room who have already had the opportunity to come to terms with projects in China. Maria Paola, thanks to her experience in the field of industrial regeneration, is charged with the selection of a number of case studies. Valeria and Francesco focus respectively on the present condition of the area, with some exploratory project diagrams, and on some early visualizations of the spaces. Edoardo, on the other hand, works on developing an architectural propos-

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The problem of the site’s current condition is part of a framework of scarcity of information made available for the start of the project: knowledge of the work area is limited to what Michele has seen, photographed, and discussed during the short site visit in December. A program, and the square meters to be developed remain still indeterminate. The group is aware of the fact that such conditions are customary in the context of work in China: often this situation can become an advantage, granting the designer an added role and recognition of expertise, to take an effective part in the pre-project briefing phase. The task is not to solve a problem, but first of all to find it and describe it: in this situation, the production of alternative designs is also a way to trigger reactions, making the clients take a position, discussing the functional program, and bringing new information to light. The lack of information about the conditions of the site, however, becomes more critical, presumptively reconstructed by Valeria in the previous days by combining the photographs, the oral descriptions of Michele, and a 3D model in SketchUp of the entire area supplied by Bai Xue (Sophia), senior designer at TeamMinus. [ 4 — B ]

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al starting with the first sections sketched by Michele during his trip to Beijing. Rather than relying on brainstorming of the whole group (there would be just one “plenary” session on Skype on 8 January, but without Michele who was on his way to China), the work begins directly with a subdivision of tasks, to adapt to the tight schedule and the issues of long-distance collaboration.

Two actions seem to be necessary, then, in order to organize the production in the days to follow: the creation of a drawing of the present state of the Oxygen Factory, and the production of a synthetic representation of the two design alternatives requested, to then develop in the presentation.

The sketch prepared by Michele after the first site visit forms the basis on which to develop an initial version.

But this starting point also seems to imply certain risks: Li has made some comments to Michele, to the fact that such an intervention might not fully convince the owners of Shougang, for reasons regarding the impact on the present structure as well as the insufficient density of utilization of the available space, especially with an eye on post-Olympic development.

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This is why it seems to be necessary to develop a second option, less invasive on the existing structure and at the same time capable of maximizing its density. The section of both versions will have to widen to the adjacent tower, in keeping with Li’s request to also provide initial ideas on its transformation. With respect to the first sketches in December, the section changes its meaning: from an initial tool of problematic formulation of requests and expectations, it begins to also become an element of organization among the parts, almost on the level of urban design [1].

C THE CONSTRUCTION OF A WORKING PROTOCOL Turin, 24 January 2018 — Loft of the China Room, Castello del Valentino, 14:30 Back from the trip to Beijing, Michele organizes a meeting in the offices of the China Room to update the work group on the latest developments, and above all to discuss the operative methods with which to continue the project. The meeting with the clients has not brought out a clear preference between the solutions presented, but at least it seems to have had the effect of qualification of the Politecnico team. At this point, the priority shifts to the organization of action for what promises to be a particular intense phase, from the viewpoint of production and development of design configurations: one month after the first visit to Shougang, the China Room

decides to implement a sort of protocol [1], to make the phases of internal production more efficient, in keeping with well-defined work procedures and roles.

[1] In effect, the “protocol” corresponds in this case to a convention inside the small group, and the term points more at a diplomatic sense–as the ceremony in which “form becomes substance”–than a sense related to data processing, and certainly not a meaning on a philosophical level. See Ministry of Foreign Affairs – Diplomatic Ceremonial of the Republic, Cerimoniale Diplomatico 2.0. Tradizione ed innovazione al servizio della politica estera (Roma, 2014),15. [translated by authors].

Michele has already spoken with Paolo Mellano, director of the Department of Architecture and Design,

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Camilla Forina is already on hand for the meeting of 24 January, with the task of developing the architectural drawings. Andrea Tinazzo joins the group about one month later. Camilla works on the assembly of the results of the work sessions, so that the results drawn and gathered during the meetings are subsequently processed, inserted in updated drawings and then made available for discussion at the next meeting.

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about the need to activate research grants, in order to find the most qualified figures to work with Edoardo on the project development. Procedures of evaluation are started, whose outcome is the insertion on the team of two new members, seen as the best candidates to respectively develop the technical representation of the project and its 3D visualization. On the basis of these first investments made by the Department, on 22 January Li and Michele exchange a summarized letter of intent. This does not set economic parameters of engagement, but it does trace a parallel between the progress of the negotiations on the masterplan between TeamMinus/THAD and Shougang Co. (this too recently addressed by an initial letter of intent) and the relationship between TeamMinus/THAD and the Politecnico, which will be the two parties of the contract.

Through the intense and cyclical production of documents, from 24 January to 16 February 65 working sections are created, corresponding to about one fifth of all those produced in the five subsequent months.

The productive density of these three weeks is also the result of a change in the way of working, which concludes the phase of involvement on a volunteer basis.

With respect to the first proposals outlined from 4 to 15 January, where the resources were sought inside the research group, at this point the team takes on a more structured configuration, where the people have specific tasks. Getting away from the initial fragmentary and unstable composition–in which the forms of expertise for action were mobile and depended not on the role of the people involved, but on the circumstances in which they had to work–the China Room constructs a small team totally oriented toward production-discussion-inscription across successive work cycles.

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From a strictly organizational standpoint, this passage would not be particular important (we are talking about just a few people who agree to assign themselves tasks for a phase lasting a few weeks), were it not for the fact that it points to a typical need of professional studios, which nevertheless in this case has to be addressed inside a university department. The distinction between these two design work contexts, as we have seen, depends first of all on the different institutional consistency of professional firms with respect to university groups. The necessity for an entity like the China Room to always play “with the cards on the table” (inserting individual and informal actions inside already established channels) comes into tension, in this situ-

C correspond to the needs to “take into account” and to “put in order” which Latour has identified in the so-called “collective” cycle, to describe the ways in which a process of construction of a decision, a regimen of truth, a political act takes place: “The first set answers just one question: How many new propositions must we take into account in order to articulate a single common world in a coherent way?...The second set answers another question: What order must be found for the common world formed by the set of new and old propositions?” See B. Latour, Politics of Nature. How to Bring the Sciences into Democracy (1999; Harvard University Press: Cambridge Mass., 2004), 110. In the more specific context of architectural design, the passage from a phase of opening to one of closing, at the various scales on which it can be defined (a single transaction, a phase or an entire trajectory of the process), constitutes the place in which the project can converge toward an ulterior, more decisive phase. This does not only imply a panel of subjective actors who decide, but also a space in which entities of many

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different types can intervene, each with their own capacity for action. Yaneva defines this space as a “hybrid forum”: “Forum refers to those particular spaces in which various groups can meet and debate different issues and the technical choices that are of importance to the community. They are hybrid because the people involved and their representatives are heterogeneous: experts, politicians, clients, architects, technicians, and concerned lay people. Hybrid because the questions to be tackled are of a different nature: from political and ethical concerns through to mechanical engineering and aesthetics” (A. Yaneva, 2012, 60).

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Giovanni and Michele stipulate perhaps the only rule of reference: a field with boundaries is to be shared, in which to welcome other proposals, but without challenging the general premises that are slowly taking on a status of stability.

D THE WORKSHOP WITH THE DESIGN PROFESSORS Turin, 20 February 2018 — Room 1V at Castello del Valentino, ore 10:00 Punctual and rather diffident, about fifteen professors attend the workshop organized by the China Room to discuss and modify the progress of the Oxygen Factory project. The experience is a new one: it is a rarity to discuss a project in progress with colleagues, even when the project has been developed inside the School of Architecture. Those who take part in the workshop–a total of fifteen people, besides the design team, mostly professors of architectural design, but also of interior design and, eventually, structures, and technology–have received an invitation from the director of the Department, but they do not have a clear idea of what

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Due to these questions and others, in a more or less openly stated way, the invited professors tend to move when the work has already begun. There are those who rely on their drawing skills and spend little time listening to the descriptions of the surrounding conditions, rapidly retreating to a drafting table and starting to produce a new architectural form of the solution on sheets of tracing paper. There are others who are convinced of the need for the project to provide specific responses to specific questions, and therefore listen very carefully to the presentation and raise precise questions on physical conditions, expectations of the clients, and bu-

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To what extent can the drawings hung on the wall be modified? What is individual participant’s degree of freedom to propose changes? Or, instead, how much is the proposal subordinated to conditions of necessity that only the design team can know about? And what figurative intentions might the team be hiding, behind the presumed necessities of which only they can be aware? The perplexities are not limited to disparities of knowledge (and hence of relationships of force) between the team of the China Room and the professors invited to the workshop, but also have to do with the productive efficacy of the workshop form, which–as many observed–might be well-suited to the development of a student project, but might not represent the best way to make responsible choices for a project that is supposed to be built. These initial perplexities are soon joined by others, lurking in the whispers of several young colleagues, regarding the true conditions of democratic participation in the workshop. How can the impact of an individual contribution of an invited professor be measured? Will only the specific merits of the contribution be considered, or–as often happens in hierarchical structures like the university–will the role (and thus the power) of the professor making the contribution prevail?

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is expected of them. Although the setup of the room seems to be designed to encourage open, cooperative discussion, those who enter and take their places at the tables have an air of hesitancy, uncertain about the real aims of the session. Tables and chairs have been placed in such a way as to form functional spaces. In one corner of the space introductory videos are screened, and on a table there are documents related to the project; on the long windowless wall, materials already produced by the work group are displayed (the two solutions presented in January, the drawings of the latest phases, the present condition of the area and the factory). At the center of the room three large tables have been prepared with work copies of the main drawings hung on the walls, along with markers, tracing paper, and rulers. In another corner stands the video camera with which Alberto will film the proceedings.

The setup of the space explicitly suggests active participation, but the first timid questions of the participants reveal strategic concerns.

D possible variants, calling for a third appointment, set for May, to focus on the necessary technological and operative aspects. There will no longer be time, in that phase, for new openings or revisions. The objective will be to solve each particular aspect, in order to be able to deliver a definitive and technically impeccable project solution to TeamMinus, and from there to the Design Institute of Tsinghua University. It is still not possible to know that neither of the two solutions will survive the scrutiny of the Chinese counterparts in the weeks to come. [5]

[5] The group of teachers working in the hall resembles

(paradoxically) the multitude of the enchained in the myth of Plato’s cave, for at least two reasons. The first is that the

participants do not see the material space to which the project refers, and have to rely on indirect information, on the “shadows” that reach them from those who have prepared the drawings and put the data into order; the second is that they do not see the process, nor its genealogy in retrospect, nor its strategy in prospect. But while the first condition depends on banal limits and would be easy to overcome with an increase of information, the second is instead due to the object at the center of the workshop’s interest–which is precisely an architectural object, and not a diachronic concatenation of actions, fixed by means of inscriptions; a final scenario and not a trajectory. The separation between questions of architecture (on which a position has to be taken based on one’s own expertise) and questions of process (with which to cope on the basis of assessment of opportunities) is involuntary but clear in this circumstance.

The illusion of playing the part of those who leave the cave, as bearers of wisdom, while remaining “chained” inside the

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room, is particularly significant: the problem is not between those who are inside and those who are outside, but lies with the topology of the cave itself. When Latour suggests “getting out of the cave,” he means (referring to a wider ambit that covers the field of knowledge and the sciences) the possibility of challenging this type of preliminary separation (everyone gets out of the cave): “...In this Constitution dispensed by (political) epistemology, how are the powers in fact distributed? The first house brings together the totality of speaking humans, ...The second house is constituted exclusively of real objects that have the property of defining what exists but that lack the gift of speech. On the one hand, we have the chattering of fictions; on the other, the silence of reality. The subtlety of this organization rests entirely on the power given to those who can move back and forth between the houses” (B. Latour 2004, 7).

F reveals that the last act of constitution of the document, with an eye on the presentation that has just been concluded, remained in the hands of the Chinese partners.

Li emphasizes the design contribution of the Politecnico to preserve the concrete cooling tower against possible demolition. Subsequently the Number 2, in a very cordial and concise way, expresses his preference for the solution with the small houses on the roof, indicating on the pages, and invites everyone to lunch, leaving it understood that this is the solution with which to move forward. This approach turns out to be very instructive later at the time of preparation of the final materials: without any real contract yet, the drawings and their presentation take on a contractual character, beyond their design value, exerting a power that has to be foreseen and organized. [6]

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[ 227 — F ] [6] This “packaging” of the documental object in relation

The third act takes place in the dining hall: in front of the buffet, Michele has an opportunity to informally converse with the other designers, particularly with Nicolas, who has evidently also worked on the Oxygen Factory in the past, when he was in the running to design the master plan of Big Air. Nicolas makes a few small sketches to illustrate the structural problems of the Oxygen Factory, which should be a particular focus in the project: in spite of the fact that he has not taken part in the meeting with Number 2, he understands that the Turin-based team is passing from a creative phase of openness to a more concrete phase, striving for closure. To Michele, his words sound like an invitation to make the solution just confirmed become concrete, initiating in-depth studies that are not only architectural in nature. So at the margins of the formal meeting held by the organizing committee, two other fundamental meetings take place: between the few minutes spent with Number 2 and the lunch in the dining hall, the perspective on the project seems to have forcefully changed.

The phase of possible alternatives (which had suddenly opened up with the WeChat message in December [7] ) has been concluded, and it has become clear that work must be done to make the proposal concrete, striving to rapidly resolve the issues that have to do with its implementation.

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to decision-making situations that arise in an instantaneous way (as in the case described, in which a subject endowed with great authority can rapidly indicate a solution, decreeing its survival) simply brings out the potential force of the inscriptions, in the moment in which they record that authoritative choice.

[7] See Archive A. [ 219 — F ]

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To confirm this change, on the very next day two aspects that had been awaited by the China Room team emerge: Michele receives a definitive survey of the factory, and returns to Shougang where for the first time he is able to enter the Oxygen Factory, where he takes many photographs to send to Italy. In the midst of this action, Michele immediately informs the team: the drastic selection of the more recent of the two versions, the urgent need to explore the structural aspects, the importance of responding suitably to the theatrical requirements dictated by television coverage, all become the spectrum inside which to develop a completely new proposal, which began just a few days earlier. While on the one hand the team has to set aside much of the work done in the previous months, on the other there is an awareness that the project now has more tangible prospects of realization. The solution chosen by Number 2, though only slightly developed, foreshadows from this point on certain characteristics that will be conserved all the way to the worksite.

H chele’s next visit to Beijing, when during a meeting at TeamMinus on the construction drawings, Li says that the clients are considering the possibility of eliminating the houses [ CR, THAD 290 — H ]. The China Room decides to proceed with an action of interference, convinced that it is necessary to defend the project and its three-part logic (playground-building-inhabitable roof).

The team intervenes directly on the construction drawings, defying the agreement on exchange done only through the 3D model. On 25 October construction details are sent that not only cover only the houses, but also reformulate the entire section of the building on a scale of 1:20 [ 301— H ] [ 305 — H ].

One year later, when in October 2019 the last version of the construction drawings is approved, when the building is already at an advanced stage of its construction, there are two remaining houses, placed on the eastern

side of the roof, at the position of the vertical distribution volumes, capable of bearing a greater load and, if necessary, of making the houses completely independent in terms of layout. The “little houses” are vulnerable inside the process, because they do not constitute an element of association, on which different claims, constraints, and interests converge; instead, they are a solution urged by only one part of the designers, striving to make it accepted by the others without ever fully establishing itself as necessary.

The proposal of a completely glass façade also runs into obstacles. The construction drawings received at the start of September surprisingly call for various portions of the elevations to be opaque: the explanations on the part of the Design Institute indicate that the reason is connected with recent orientations of the Chinese government, which recommend reduction of

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energy consumption in new buildings, and above all set out to limit the use of large glass façades, seen as being extraneous to Chinese architectural traditions. [6]

[6] We have never obtained direct evidence on the new reg-

ulations imposing limits on glass façades, but the climate of recovery of Chinese identity in architecture is described well in a CNN article “’Post-weird’: How Chinese architecture evolved in the Xi Jinping era” written by Oscar Holland in 2019, https://edition.cnn.com/style/article/chinese -architecture-xi-intl-hnk/index.html. This regulatory irruption, which was completely unexpected, raises question about the sovereignty of the project, which in its implications of a symbolic nature may extend to a very wide collective dimension, beyond that of the clients themselves.

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While other exchanges at a distance continue, as in the effort of clearer definition of the playground [ CR, THAD 295 — H ], Edoardo and Michele await an opportunity in person to try to reach a final understanding on the façades. They take advantage of the next mission to Beijing, scheduled for 5 November, to organize a workshop at the headquarters of TeamMinus, similar in its ritual form to the ones organized in the Department, but in this case involving the experts of the Design Institute. As happened in Turin, various design alternatives on façades are hung on the walls, including the proposal of the China Room to preserve the vertical bands, but also to alter their rhythm.

The alliance is ratified, from this version onward, by the insertion of the Politecnico logo on the definitive drawings. To maximize its own control over the definitive project, the China Room has to operate not only through drawings. Following the dinner at the embassy in January 2018, the prospect arises of the possibility of certain Italian companies well-established on the Chinese market to contribute to the Olympic project,

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The opaque areas are unified where they correspond to service spaces in the interiors, while the glass areas are utilized to ensure views of the lake, of the sports facilities, and the urban context. The strategy of associating the desired configuration with the calculation of the required floorspace indicates willingness to accept the percentages suggested by the colleagues of the Design Institute, but not to accept overly simplified configurations. The workshop makes it possible to form alliances in the name of a shared configuration, which can then be inserted in the construction drawings and then on the worksite.

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The terms of this reduction are not totally clear: the new standard would seem to refer to a ratio of 30% glass and 70% opaque surface, which later changes to 50%. The Design Institute’s proposal is to organize the façade in vertical bands, alternating panels of prefabricated concrete with the glass.

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