Atlantis 28_1

ATLANTIS MAGAZINE FOR URBANISM & LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE

#28.1 October 2017

ACTION • REACTION EUROPE AND AFRICA

COMMITTEES 2017 We could not be as visible as we are without the great effort of a lot of active students. With the help of them we can organise excursions, lectures, workshops, drinks and events. The Polis board wants to thank all the people involved for their great efforts and positive input!

We are always looking for enthusiastic people to join. Interested in one of the Polis committees? Do not hesitate to contact us at our Polis office (01.west.350) or by e-mail: contact@polistudelft.nl URBAN AND LANDSCAPE WEEK ATLANTIS EDUCATION PR COMMITTEE BIG TRIP & SMALL TRIP

POLIS BOARD Harsh Malhotra - Chairman Gereon Rolvering - Vice Chairman Amanda Bryant - Secretary Daan Rooze - Treasurer Nilofer Afza - Public Relations Karishma Asarpota - Atlantis

JOIN US Not already a member of Polis? For only €12.50 a year as a student of TU Delft, €30 for individual professional membership, or €80 for organizations you can join our network! You will receive our Atlantis Magazine (for free) four times a year, a monthly newsletter and access to all events organized by Polis.

E-mail contact@polistudelft.nl to find out more.

FROM THE BOARD Dear Polis Members, We are pleased to bring you the first issue of the next volume of Atlantis as we begin a new year. Our theme for the next year is ‘Action and Reaction’ with a focus on implementation. We will tour the globe with each quarterly focusing on a different geographic time zone.

POLIS kicks off this years with its main event, Urbanism and Landscape week 2017. Like the previous years the event intends to challenge the students with a fresher perspective on issues in the urban and natural environment. Over the course of three days participants will be exposed to a multidisciplinary discourse with professionals and be a part of an intense competition. This year the events brings forward the question of the human impact on the era of Anthropocene and explores where this epoch is heading towards.

POLIS welcomed the new joiners this year in an interactive afternoon ending with a barbeque and drinks. We look forward to new and enthusiastic faces to join us! For more information send us an email or drop by our office for a quick chat or coffee.

Warm regards from the Polis Board 2017, Harsh Malhotra, Amanda Bryant, Gereon Rolvering, Daan Rooze, Nilofer Afza and Karishma Asarpota.

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ATLANTIS VOL # 28 Our theme for the upcoming volume is Action and Reaction. Having successfully discussed novel ideas and concepts in our previous volume - Dialogues - we now set out to see how these ideas can be brought to the real world. When one discusses the realisation of an idea or concept, it is vital to contextualize it. Hence, in the coming four issues of Atlantis we challenge ourselves to consider implementation in as many different contexts as possible. To give our readers a diverse and unbiased picture, we look at the world through an impartial framework of time-zones. Each issue of Volume 28 will be compartmentalized as a set of time-zones to cover a heterogeneous range of content.

We also hope that this unusual lens will focus our eye on parts of the world which we may normally not consider and help us uncover links between those places that only seem to share a common time.

We plan to cover a range of topics like planning in post-conflict or post-disaster zones, how innovations changed specific parts of the world, and design in the face of extreme growth or decline to name a few.

Interested in contributing? Email us at atlantismagazinetudelft@gmail.com

ATLANTIS MAGAZINE FOR URBANISM & LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE

Editorial We urbanists and architects have pledged our lives to the creation and alteration of space. Since everything in the whole universe is bound to space, we have found ourselves drawn in to many alien disciplines. We have been drawn into the issue of equality, because inequality often symptomizes itself through the physical manifestation of the city. We have been drawn into discussion about capitalism, because we have come to know that urbanisation is crucial to the capital mode of production. Many other disciplines have turned to us for help in recent years. The healthcare industry has sought our help to transform their hospitals into healing environments. Mayors have asked us to aid their city in the fight to become most liveable city of the world. Energy engineers have asked for our help to create more sustainable households and cities.

The fact that we are increasingly embedded in other disciplines is cause for celebration. It is a sign of wider recognition for the relevance of our discipline. Yet, there is good reason to be cautious. Having experienced that we are connected to everything, we risk spreading ourselves too thin.

Urban design, landscape architecture and planning are al disciplines which are in between. They are in between scientific knowledge and local knowhow. They are in between abstract visions and concrete strategies.

Our role is precisely in the place where normative ideas clash with an uncooperative context. This is where our value lies. Thus, whatever discipline draws us in, we must never forget what it is that we do, which is to design and plan the physical spaces where people live. The less spatial things we are concerned with, the less capable and therefore relevant we become.

Therefore, Atlantis has attempted to reclaim this aspect of urban design and architecture, by focussing on context. In the coming 4 issues we will try to return to all things concrete and contextual. We will feature stories that relate what actual happens when we try to implement our ideas. As Jeffrey Garten wrote; ‘We often give too much credit to the power of ideas and not enough recognition to the importance of effectively implementing them on the ground; indeed, generating the purely intellectual breakthroughs is frequently the easy part of great transformations.’ IJsbrand Heeringa Editor in Chief

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feeding cities

CONTENTS p.25

p.9

p.63

p.41

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00 #inthenews • Floods by Alexandra Farmazon and IJsbrand Heeringa ......... 5 01 Elusive Discomforts by Michael de Beer with Johnny Miller ............................... 7 02 Feeding Cities by Selina Abraham ................................................................................. 9 03 #graduationexhibition • Flowscapes by Gaila Constantini with Inge Bobbink & Lotte Dijkstra • feat. Barbara Prezelj, Maria Potamiali, Florentina Alexandra Anton... 11 04 Mirrored Landscapes of Power by Alexandra Farmazon................................................ 15 05 #workshop • The Question of Saxon Villages by Corina Chirilă & Andrei Mitrea...... 19 06 Intersecting the zone in Lamu, Kenya by Serah-Ingrid Calitz....................................... 23 07 IN BETWEEN by Michael de Beer with Brygida Zawaska and Doung Vo Hong...... 25 08 #artspread • Akwaba Photo • Youth Photography as a lens to a new Community Perspective by Victoria Okoye.................................................................................................... 29 09 The Intersectionality of Spatial Practice by Khensani de Klerk............................. 33 10 Mussert's wall in Lunteren by Gerdy Verschuren.............................................................. 35 11 Running out of Gas on the Fast Lane by Benjamin N. Kemper.............................. 41 12 Let's talk about Public Participation by Selina Abraham feat. interviews with Nelson Mota, Otto Trienekens and Machiel van Dorst..................................................................... 47 13 On Habitus by Brett Petzer......................................................................................................... 51 14 Skopje • A history of failed plans by Monika Novkovikj................................................. 53 15 Interview with Henriette H Bier by Turkuaz Nacafi............................................................ 59 16 Shrinking Cities • A first world problem by IJsbrand Heeringa...................................... 63

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FLOODS

THE NEW CHALLENGE FOR INTERNATIONAL COLLABORATION by Alexandra Famazon & IJsbrand Heeringa

SIERRA LEONE AUGUST 2017

Source: aljazeera, 2017

Sierra Leone

Msc Urbanism TU Delft

UN-Water defines water security as “the capacity of a population to safeguard sustainable access to adequate quantities of acceptable quality water for sustaining livelihoods, human wellbeing, and socio-economic development, for ensuring protection against waterborne pollution and water-related disasters, and for preserving ecosystems in a climate of peace and political stability.”

Free Town

Hit by flash floods and mudslides

Homes Lost 5.900

Fatalities/missing 400/600 Displaced 10.000

Source: MunichRE, 2017

The year 2016 measured and overall 338 relevant flood events, with over 4,800 fatalities and loses of $57bn to the US alone. Out of which 8 were catastrophic, summing up to 21% of the fatalities and 65% of the overall loses. In the context of climate change, the sea-level rise, precipitation temperature and extreme events scenarios will only intensify the previously mentioned values, exposing entire regions to risk, a hypothesis which raises research focuses all over the world.

Researchers at TU Delft and a number of European universities published a report showing that that the global average sea-level rise has increased much faster over the last two decades than before the 90s, reaching 85cm by 2100 (Rijskwaterstraat,2015). Based on this scenario and the consequences which it bare for the water security of the global population, the worldwide concern is focused on a water secure world, advancing governance and management of water resources for sustainable and equitable development.

WHAT ARE ABOUT THE DATA?

Governmental initiatives

innovation partnership on water, and several others.

The contemporary vision for water safety is based on leading forces partnerships, that activate in the research field and propose international development patterns, which focus on harnessing water’s productive power while minimizing its destructive force, as well as environmental protection and the effects of good governance during crisis. Among the main bodies involved in dictating the guidelines for national and regional water resilience policies are the UN Environment branch, the Global water partnership, the Allied deltas, the European

Oceania Climatoligical

Geophysical

North America

Hydrological

Number of events

Meteorological

Asia

Number of events per continent

South America

Europe

Africa

Oceania Climatoligical

Geophysical

North America

Hydrological

South America

Europe

Meteorological

Fatalities per type

Dealing with extremely vulnerable deltaic conditions, thus advancing rapidly in the research field, The Netherlands is conducting many active projects focused on coastline safety, one of which consisting of establishing alongside UN Environment, Japan and TU Delft a global center of excellence on climate adaptation. Recent researches conducted by DIMI explore the concept of multifunctional flood defenses, questioning the image of the coastline and its potential the transitional space between

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Asia

Number of fatalities per continent

Africa

land and water. However, research solutions needs to be backed up by governmental.

In consequence, the EU floods directive of 2007 requires that each EU member country must produce FRMPs (flood risk management plans) aligned to each river basin district marked at risk. Given this example, its re-applicability on a global scale is questionable, as there is no unifying body to set a response framework.

Civic initiatives The question of water’s risk factor is not only addressed by governmental bodies

#inthenews source: Munich Re, NatCatSERVICE, 2017

RELEVANT FLOOD EVENTS WORLDWIDE IN 2016

237 FATALITIES

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AFFECTED AREA China: Anhui, Huangshan, Xuancheng, Hubei, Macheng, Wuhan, Hunan

254 FATALITIES

1. AFFECTED AREA India: Bihar, Patna, Bhojpur, Araria, Bhagalpur, Darbhanga, Khagaria, Kishanganj,Madhepura, Purnea, Supaul

184 FATALITIES

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AFFECTED AREA India: Madhya Pradesh, Bawadia Kalan, Bhopal, Chhindwara, Damoh, Dindori, Rewa, Satna, Singrauli, Takey, Vidisha

246 FATALITIES

211 FATALITIES

AFFECTED AREA Afghanistan, Pakistan

2. AFFECTED AREA Zimbabwe: Harare, Mashonaland East,

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'The current focus of flood defense lies on ‘protecting’ the land from a given risk for periodic flooding. Where the protection layers are relatively stronger - for example in the Netherlandsdevelopment intensifies in the regions enclosed by this protection promoting intense development activity on the most vulnerable land just because it has a layer of protection with a lower probability of failure. This is a risky strategy. Weak links in this infrastructure can cause horrific damages, as we saw in New Orleans. What is more, the increased likelihood of extreme weather events put to question the sustainability of this strategy.'

S. Krishnan and risk management authorities, but also by communities and social media. Recent flooding in Houston, Texas, prompted the Harvey Hackathon hosted by TU Delft Science campus, that revealed the level of implication and the impact of community crisis response as well as social media involvement. Hence, Airbnb has implemented a crisis plan, making rooms available in affected areas and Google Street View was used to validate and develop flood models by pinpointing aerial images of flooded buildings offering additional information of type of building affected and number of floors flooded.

Mashonaland West, Mashonaland Central,Masvingo, Midlands, Metabeleland North, Binga

Source: Max Roser & Hannah Ritchie, 2017

NATURAL DISASTER SUMMARY 1900 2011 INDIRECTLY QUOTED

Fatalities caused by disasters

500 500

500.000

Number of disasters reported Number of people affected

400 400

400.000 300 300 300.000

200 200 200.000

100 100.000

0

0

1900

1910

1920

1930

1940

1950

1960

1970

1980

1990

Conclusion As extreme events are arising, stakeholders involved also multiply, to an extent to which their contribution, as valuable as it is on a particular region, becomes difficult to align to parallel projects. However, it is important to pinpoint the interdisciplinary collaboration in risk reduction models but also to address the question of motivation – what would motivate regional governmental bodies to take further actions in their vulnerable areas? What happens outside the EU regulation borders? What are the extents of the influence of global multi-

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2000

100

0

2010

stakeholder partnerships on national risk strategies? • References https://staticresources.rijkswaterstaat.nl/binaries/ Annual%20Report%20Rijkswaterstaat%202015_tcm2184089.pdf http://www.gwp.org/en/About/why/the-water-challenge/ http://www.delta-alliance.org/ https://www.tudelft.nl/infrastructures/onderzoek/ adaptive-urban-deltas/ http://ec.europa.eu/environment/water/flood_risk/ flood_risk.htm http://natcatservice.munichre.com/

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ELUSIVE DISCOMFORTS by Michael de Beer MSc Architecture TU Delft

in collaboration with Johnny Miller

“Though we are creatures inclined to squabble, kill, steal and lie, the street reminds us that we can occasionally master our baser impulses and turn a waste land, where for centuries wolves howled, into a monument of civilisation.”

Allain de Bottom (2006 p. 178)

Driving from Cape Town International Airport to the city centre, one is met with a stark contrast: the remnants of Apartheid planning in South Africa that has fuelled rapid growth of informal shantytowns, and the lush central business district that remain a vestige of decadent nostalgia for Europe. It is without question that the layered histories of both the pre-union era and Apartheid city planning have laid their mark on the city, dividing it by race, class and ideology. To the frustration of spatial practitioners, little has changed.

The discourse on the transformation of South African cities is rooted in engaging constant border disputes, both physical and unseen, however it is this second dynamic, the unseen, which is arguably the more challenging issue the city faces.

Enforced through the threat of ‘the other’, the unknown, change, entitlement and unwanted compromise, it goes by many names yet remains intangible. It is this underlying phenomenon of the human condition that is not unique to

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the Apartheid city but by virtue a global dispute.

Kevin Lynch advocates that borders offer legibility to the city, yet, as in the Apartheid city, they also manifest in unseen ways that are underpinned by culture values, identities and desires. Borders dissect the city and form a quasi-hyper reality, where communities continually jostle for space.

Reiterating Jane Jacobs, borders are a continual focus in spatial practice. Yet, the issue is as much spatial as it is social.

Alain de Bottom, in his seminal work ‘The Architecture of Happiness’, emphasises that, “Bad architecture is in the end as much a failure of psychology as of design.” (pg 248) For many this dualism between physicality and socio-psyche is daunting. As spatial practitioners, we are faced with it everyday and everywhere but borders often remain unnoticed, blending into familiarity.

The camouflage of normality left untreated manifests into animosity and social strife often leaving many to wonder what exactly went wrong.

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Go into any city’s history and one will find a nuanced narrative of ‘the other’, which manifests spatially. Be it political, religious, cultural, racial or economic; communities of varying interests and circumstances often coagulate. We are intuitively social creatures and our most instinctive impulses are to protect our social groups. For the Neanderthal this was bad news, and for cities and nations it can be equally destructive. If this is the case it positions a serious problem for spatial practice world-wide. On the one hand, the mantra of integration is professed as a central call to action, while counter intuitively we wish to celebrate diversity. South Africa is the epicentre of this on-going debate, calling for a “rainbow nation” in the “postapartheid” city. A poignant lesson learnt is that change happens slowly.

Claire Janisch, a bio-mimicry specialist in Cape Town, advocates that as spatial practitioners we must change the way we work; moving away from a situation of solving problems as they arise, to building collective visions for what we are working towards. In the case of borders, a twofold approach is necessary; the first is to question normality and uncover the unseen barriers that define the city, while the second is developing a vision for what an integrated and diverse city may look like.

In the post-apartheid city, spatial practitioners and urban advocacy groups have been urging for neighbourhoods that cater for diverse income groups. Pressure has been mounting for city authorities to meet these demands, planning for low income housing in the city centre

of Cape Town. In doing so, calling for variety and diversity in the city to draw on the opportunities that space presents in addressing social-inequality, offering economic upliftment and catering for diverse cultural groups. These efforts, however, are piecemeal and lack a unified vision for the city and most importantly neglect the unseen border, the psyche of space and the public domain. In doing so they fail to recognise and/or address the skeleton in the closet, the social implications of the rapid growth of informal settlement on the fringes of the city. The plans which do engage in resolving these issues continue to apply old top-down methodologies that actively build monotonous satellite ghettos to an urban core – an hour commute away.

The phycological implication – Apartheid is still alive and well, although no longer enforced on racial grounds but economic.

A major stumbling block is psychological as landmarks, statues, and city infrastructure, for many, remain as reminders of intolerance, while for others continue to reflect cultural identity. Commonplace elements such as walls, doors, paving, lighting, ect. - hold deep and meaningful narratives on society. Where informality is met with 30-meter-tall spotlights, other areas have a nuanced network of street and public space lighting, which is warm in colour and regularly spaced. The blatant contrast affects the psyche of residents profoundly highlighting a double standard.

Cementing a notion of the other, which suggests that the city core, is indeed not for them to enjoy but rather a place of labour where one enables a better quality of life for others. If the future of South Africa is to move forward spatial practitioners will need

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to reflect on the psyche of spaces. These unseen but ever-present social constructs must be questioned in order to form a collective future for the city.

The extreme and turbulent case of the post-apartheid city serves as a stark reminder to all cities worldwide that unseen borders are critical to the vitality of our landscapes. Psyche is critical to how cities are understood and inhabited. By implication it calls for spatial practitioners to be psychiatrists of space, requiring introspection to challenge the preconceived notions that one has about oneself, society as well as what defines a “well designed environment”. If our landscapes and cities are to move forward and overcome the many pressing challenges they face, we need not only build collective visions, but ultimately redefine the discipline of spatial practice itself. •

References De Botton, Alain (2006) The Architecture of Happiness.

Penguin Books Jacobs, Jane (1961) The Death and Life of Great American Cities: The Failure of Town Planning. Pelican Books. U.S.A Lynch, Kevin (1960) The Image of the City, MIT PRESS

Photos by Johnny Miller who has embarkered on documenting UNEQUAL urban conditions both in South Africa and internationally. unequalscenes.com/projects 1. Kya Sands / Bloubosrand 2. Masiphumelele / Lake Michelle 3. Vusimusi / Mooifontein

feeding cities

The supply of food to a great city is among the most remarkable of social phenomena - full of instruction on all sides.

-George Dodd

(Steel, 2013)

by Selina Abraham MSc Urbanism TU Delft

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What does a pop-up restaurant have to with urbanism?

One such restaurant in Almere has opened this inquiry questioning the relation of food and the city. But indeed, what does food have to do with our profession? This is the ignorant and blissful bubble that we all live in. The struggle to supply our modern-day cities with food is an invisible one. In the pre-industrial city, this struggle manifested itself prominently and profoundly, with streets and roads packed with carts and wagons, docksides lined with cargo ships and fishing boats, streets and backyards home to cows and pigs. Its visible presence “once caused chaos, but it was necessary chaos”. Before the onset of railways, food supply was the biggest concern most cities had to deal with, and the struggle was very real and visible. Urban authorities were reliant on the countryside to feed them, but did all in their power to retain its upper hand. Taxes were levied, lands reformed, deals undertaken, propaganda issued and wars waged towards the sustenance of the city. The threat of starvation was never subtle (Steel, 2013, p. 6-7).

By making food cheap, plentiful, and convenient, the modern food industry has inadvertently set up blinds around itself, concealing its own complexity and importance. Our mental image of the contemporary city often ignores the rural hinterland that sustains it. The ability to store and transport food over massive distances, has freed the city of its immediate farm belt, making way for an invisible global hinterland. The modern day city is just as reliant on the food industry that supplies us as our historic counterpart.

Arguably, more so than ever before with the current rate of urban expansion (Steel, 2013, p. 7).

The rose-coloured glasses through which we see our food sets a dangerous precedent for the future. Cities todays are consuming an estimated 75 percent of the world’s energy and food resources, at some point the balance sheets will stop adding up (Steel, 2013). With more than 50% of the world population residing in urban areas and a projection of two-thirds by 2050 (United Nations, Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Population Division, 2015), cities can no longer be studied as autonomous entities. But instead as a symbiotic entity intertwined with the countryside. The failure to do so will have global consequences.

Developing countries like India and China are following dangerously in the footsteps of the consumerist culture that the West portrays. In India, urban development has come at the high cost of agricultural growth, forcing its dependency on imports.

In 2016, India made its first purchase of corn in 16 years as reported by Reuters (Bhardwaj, 2016). Similarly China is struggling to feed its increasing urban population and has become the world’s largest importer of grain and soya (Steel, 2013). Land rich countries like Brazil and Argentina have benefitted economically from this move, but at what cost? Brazil’s ambitions to meet export demands has pushed soya farmers into encroaching the Amazon forest (Branford & Torres, 2017). The ambiguous nature of the global food industry has drastic but invisible consequences.

Feeding the Netherlands The poly-centric urban structure of the Netherlands makes it uniquely and visibly more intertwined with it rural counterpart.

Historically, “country and city were linked by a closed system of canals, which carried waste from the towns to the farms and brought back food in the opposite direction”. And today, despite its small size, the country is the second largest exporter of food after the United States in terms of monetary value. Though most of the food is not grown in the Netherlands, it is imported, processed and exported again. It is a quiet agricultural superpower, tucked away in a dense urban network (PBL, n.d.).

Hence, the discourse on the flows of food has never taken a back seat. The circular flows of food as a key step towards selfsustenance is now a prominent theme in contemporary discourse. Optimising the flows of food requires drastic changes in production chains like improving resource management, optimum use of food and reusing residue streams for biomass (Rood, Muilwijk, & Westhoek, 2017).

Feeding Almere The pop-up restaurant in Almere is one such project researching the consumer perspective on the flows of food. The project seeks to understand food, how it is experienced and people's behaviour patterns with respect to its consumption and usage. It is an initiative from Veldacademie Flevocampus for Flevo Campus, on food related developments in Almere, together with Echnaton and the Aeres MBO. The AMS Institute (2017) describes food as an aspect that affects all parts of society; making it a challenging and dynamic theme. It “is intertwined with various urban

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issues and can potentially contribute to citizens’ health, stimulate social cohesion, strive to produce less waste, close cycles of raw materials, make transport flows more efficient, or seek to boost employment” (AMS Institute, 2017).

Every other week at the restaurant explores a theme. Visitors to the restaurant - run by students of Food & Lifestyle of Aeres MBO in Almere - contribute to the research, by answering questions about food consumption patterns and are informed about food processes as they eat. Partners from the food sector use the data to improve their activities and understand consumers behavior. One example of themes addressed is food waste. Our inability to accurately judge the right amount of food to cook and throwing out food because we fail to notice the use by date, leads to large amounts of perfectly edible food being thrown out. The theme partner Buitengewoon Almere, a coalition that tackles surplus food discarded by supermarkets to feed poor families in Almere, uses the restaurant to create awareness amongst local residents.

The restaurant is one step towards addressing our disconnected urban food culture. • This article was written with inputs from Lisa ten Brug, from the Veldacademie.

References AMS Institute. (2017, January 12). The Feeding City.

Retrieved 19 September 2017, from http://www.amsinstitute.org/solution/the-feeding-city/ Bhardwaj, M. (2016, February 1). Food imports rise as Modi struggles to revive rural India. Reuters. Retrieved from http://in.reuters.com/article/india-farming/ food-imports-rise-as-modi-struggles-to-revive-rural-indiaidINKCN0VA3NL Branford, S., & Torres, M. (2017, February 8). Soy invasion poses imminent threat to Amazon, say agricultural experts. Retrieved 19 September 2017, from https://news. mongabay.com/2017/02/soy-invasion-poses-imminentthreat-to-amazon-say-agricultural-experts/ PBL. (n.d.). The Netherlands in 21 infographics - Facts and Figures on the Human Environment. PBL Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency.

Rood, T., Muilwijk, H., & Westhoek, H. (2017). Food for the Circular Economy (Policy Brief No. 2878). The Hague: PBL Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency.

Steel, C. (2013). Hungry city: how food shapes our lives.

London: Vintage.

United Nations, Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Population Division. (2015). World Urbanization Prospects: The 2014 Revision (No. (ST/ESA/ SER.A/366)).

Title Image - The city and countryside - a symbiotic entity interwined with each other.

Source - Author (2017)

FLOWSCAPES At the end of the spring semester of 2016/2017, nineteen graduates from the Chair of Landscape Architecture presented their graduation project during the Landscape Graduation Exhibition 2017, including six work-in-progress projects that will be finalized in November 2017. original text by

dr. ir. Inge Bobbink Lotte Dijkstra

edited and adapted by Gaila Costantini

The exhibition took place in the BK Expo space at the Faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment in Delft and was fully organized, designed, and constructed by the students during the final graduation period.

The exhibition displayed a unique look into the Flowscapes graduation studio, with a global perspective, with students coming from China, Cyprus, Greece, India, Italy, the Netherlands, Romania, and Slovenia, and a diverse display of final products, work-inprogress and raw working materials. The overall exposition dealt with the theme of ‘Infrastructure as Landscape and Landscape as Infrastructure’. It served as a guiding theme to the students to explore spatial, societal, and environmental issues through researchby-design, in various context and through all scales.

The display of these materials invited visitors to experience this research process for

themselves, through seeing, touching, studying and engaging with the materials. Behind the final posters and models, translucent curtains hid a wealthy world of models, sketches and drawings, materials from the design locations, and revealed an exquisite display of film material. The students created the films during the research processes, to help the research on movements and transformation processes and to present the final projects. This “secret world” of materialities offered an insight on the development and mental process of the different projects, all united under the common theme of Flowscapes.

Differently from architecture, landscape architecture deals with living materials.

Therefore, the implementation of a landscape project is just the beginning of its evolution, a continuous flow of variations, ruled by natural rhythms. The awareness of these rhythms is what helps the landscape architect to understand the evolution of the territory and gives him the ability of supervising the process of transformation.

In this sense, Landscape Architecture as a discipline deeply reflects and integrates

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the topic of implementation in the design development since an early stage. In particular students are asked to integrate the aspect of time, and design as a process in their “modus operandi”. A design is not imagined merely at the moment of implementation; it stretches in time, with students trying to envision the possible changes that might occur after implementation: after 10, 20, 50 or even 100 years.

The graduates touched upon this theme in different ways: some of them proposed a phased design, some other envisioned different scenarios and speculations; others represented the changes through interactive tools, such as video and animated images.

Between all the great exposed projects we chose to present here three of them, as samples of different approaches to the theme of implementation from a Landscape Architectonic perspective. • Notes To see more graduation projects of the MSc in Landscape architecture check: http://www. howdoyoulandscape.nl/ Exposition pictures © Ruojing Wu All project images are sourced from the respective authors.

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atlantis ‘walk-in’ concrete block ‘walk-in’ concrete block

building / decay through time building / decay through time

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graduation project by Barbara Prezelj mentor team: Inge Bobbink and Heidi Sohn

The project with its alternative take on design methodologies proposes one possible way to change wide-spread design rhetoric of landscape change. Indeterminacy, performativity and emergence that seem unsettling when projects reach their implementation stage, could actually be put into practice. Design proposals that make use of the ‘performative approach’ often fall short of living up to the promise of dynamism and open-endedness implied in the generated diagrams and simulations; their forces remain trapped on screen. It exposed how a design that performs on screen may not perform once it is implemented outside the confines of a computer. In contrast, Unfamiliar Territory’s plan is not to be seen as a direct copy of its envisioned reality – the plan hints at the future and guides it but does not guarantee it in advance. Because the project’s site is mostly inaccessible and its future largely uncertain, the plan could be seen as a ‘theme’. Emphasizing that once implemented, there are multiple possible variations on the same proposed theme, depending on conditions of a specific locality at a given time as well as on the changing relations on and beyond the site. Project therefore looks at a landscape intervention as a constant action, its implementation in time being shaped by (and shaping) larger forces that pass through it.

What follows is that the total implementation of the plan or its completeness is, in turn, seen as project’s failure a design move that reduces the complexity of the site for a chosen, ‘preferable’ future. •

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potential site development in 2030

potential site development in 2047

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HARINGVLIETDAM , A BEAUTIFUL OPERATIVE LANDSCAPE

graduation project by Maria Potamiali mentor team: Inge Bobbink and Susanne Komossa

It could be argued that regarding the implementation of regional scale projects, the aspect of time is the most significant one.

The specific graduation project shows an ambitious design of the slow transformation of the Haringvlietdam along with the creation of barrier islands for protection. The proposed interventions could be consider as a huge change in a very complicated system and due to this the application of the design is done in specific phases that will transform slowly the area in such a way that people will be part of the development and can profit from it. This slow process gives opportunities for the initial plan to change with the proposed monitoring in relation to what is happening in the region, concerning safety issues, unpredicted natural changes or the economic development.

Following this kind of procedure the initial design could be changed, to adapt to new situations. As a result, future problems that may occur could be addressed immediately.

Consequently, the design is considered as an open ended slow process towards an adaptive coastal self-sufficient region. •

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SHAPING THE OUTSIDE SPACE THROUGH

PLAY NARRATIVE graduation project by Florentina Alexandra Anton mentor team: Inge Bobbink and Machiel van Dorst

Once implemented, the design of public urban spaces changes according to the conditions of the site: people, movement, space, and natural dynamics. The project ‘Feijenoord neighbourhood - Shaping the Outside Space through Play Narrative’ takes in consideration the conditions of the site as part of the analysis - through interviews, study of maps, and uses key characteristics, such as ethnicity and water tidal range in the design strategy and public space. With the objective of creating and recreating Feijenoord neighbourhood’s image, the project aims to develop a liveable and dynamic design in relation with the city and with the community.

To achieve this goal, three design principles are used:

through a bottom up approach. For example community public spaces act as meeting points, and the connection route between them as spaces for strolling.

1) Polycentric, by proposing the design of specific centers along proposed routes. While the centers act as landmarks and are designed using a top down approach, the routes are defined by specific actors of the public space,

In conclusion, the design strategy of Feijenoord neighborhood encompasses specific characteristics of the site, with the identity of the neighborhood being continuously created and recreated. •

2) Flexible, by looking into the adaptability of the public space according to factors such as ethnicity, age and activities. It aims to create public spaces that change their main activities according to specific categories of users, e.g. playground transformed in temporary market.

3) Dynamic, referring to the sustainability of the area by focusing on the natural dynamics in relation with the social layer, e.g. public spaces that change their appearance according to the water tidal range.

I hope I get accepted into the programme!

Join us for barbeque this weekend!

Spring has arrived!

Local

A flexible design

Competition Chance

Vertigo

Look at all these people!

Simulation Path

house street

park

small square

park Spring has arrived!

I hope I get accepted into the programme!

park market

community centre

Look at all these people!

Join us for barbeque this weekend!

polycentric design

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Nomadic / The hypothesis of freedom

In a period of concern with sea-level rise, the sea becomes a contested territory, a state of exception, a territory outside the law – totally different regime of the law as on the land, a space of freedom where harbors, dock-yards, ports becomes states of exception because different regimes meet. (Hamed Khosravi) However contradictory and competing the interests on the geo-political sphere, the sea remains an entity of coexistence; the coexistence of diverse ecosystems, hydrodynamics, commercial activities, power productive landscapes, data transfer and social interaction. From the multi-scalarity perspective and the political consequences of Brexit, the territory of the sea becomes a focus point, by extension, the European continent relating to mirroring marine landscapes – the North Sea as an energy transition engine, focused on renewables farms and the Black Sea as a fossil fuel basin, feeding the East. This article puts in balance the resource availability of both entities and addresses the question of the shift between limited and unlimited energy sources.

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A chance for Eastern giants to learn from a landscape in transition

by

Alexandra Farmazon, MSc. Urbanism, TU Delft

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This article posed the question of interrelation between two such complex bodies of water. With what experts may call comparable fossil fuel resources, their strategic location combined with the influence of their coastal nations has driven apart the focus of using a body of water to the extent to which damage to the ecosystem is induced. With the treat of the omnipresent climate change scenario and the EU set goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions and going at least 20% renewable the two mirroring seas could actually redefine the idea of Europe as an auto-sustainable energy entity. However, conceptions are divided. The North Sea has taken upon itself the challenge to expand its renewable exploitations in detriment of fossil fuels. However, the Black Sea has a lot more to encounter down the road before addressing that goal.

A contested territory / geopolitical landscape and global economy impact A competitive and contested territory, the North Sea evolved as a basin for geopolitical discussions, between UK and the Nordic countries, however, its free waters have attracted many varied pirate activities.

Apart from the famous pirate ships, whose black flags dominated the waters of the 19th century with a sort of omnipresent danger, the sea was also the territory of the privateers. They were involved in similar jeopardous activity, however they used a country’s flag instead of the pirate’s black one. The promise of freedom posed by the North Sea international’s waters, attracted in the 60s the first pirate radio ships who were able to broadcast without a clear legal status.However, the impact it has on Europe’s mainland is much greater.

Contributing on the global economy scale by connecting the leading ports to the oceanic commercial shipping route system ensures a leading role as the continent’s economic entry point.

Posing as a common ground, the Black Sea’s pirate activity is not to be overlooked, as the notorious pirate Jack Sparrow sailed across its waters at some point before he joined the East India Trading company.

Ammand the Corsair was the pirate lord of the Black Sea during the time of the Forth Brethren Court. The Black Sea routes were a major link between Europe and the Islamic world. However, trade through the region decreased during the Ottoman, only to increase again once Russia was granted trading permission and gradually introduced freedom of movement through the region. In the context of the heavy Russian investments in coastal

infrastructure, the oil resources from the east of the Caspian Sea, have once again made the Black Sea region an economic crossroads between Europe and the East.

Establishing the overview of both liberal and economic potentialities of the marine entity sets the base for the boom associated with off-shore fossil fuel extraction, that in the context of the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the rise of consumer societies in many of its successor states; Turkey’s increasing demand for raw materials as it strives to achieve Western European standards, but mostly the 1973 oil crisis, gave the region of the Black sea a global economy glimpse.

Resource edge / What lies beneath Though significantly different in size, both seas have a comparable resource level.

Exxon Mobil, Royal Dutch Shell and other major oil companies have already explored the Black Sea, and some petroleum analysts say its potential may rival that of the North Sea. With billions of cubic meters of resources, focused on oil in the North sea and gas in the black sea, the offshore fossil energy production has to provide for up with the high demand that the coastal countries pose – Russia’s oil consumption being 3.4%, Germany 2.8% of world’s total, while Russia’s gas 14.3% and Germany’s 2.5% pose significant pressure on the time span of the resource availability.

Thus, it has been estimated that both extraction activities might come to an end in 30 years time.

This situation requires a strategy for a more durable energy production. However the eastern powers are driven by the idea of exploiting as much as possible before the resources are exhausted, a problematic which has led to dangerous tensions between Russia and Ukraine, and could raise even more risk ahead for the former Soviet Union nations that Russia is still overshadowing.

Disputed territory / The resource chase Originally, nations divide up the world’s potentially lucrative waters according to guidelines set forth by the 1982 Law of the Sea Treaty. “The agreement lets coastal nations claim what are known as exclusive economic zones that can extend up to 200 nautical miles (or 230 statute miles) from their shores. Inside these zones, countries can explore, exploit, conserve and manage deep natural resources, living and nonliving.” (web reference 4). While this situation has been rightfully applied on North Sea’s waters, the Black sea, is

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subjected to intense political tensions from Russia.

In the march of 2014, Russia seized the Crimea peninsula, meaning it didn’t only expand its six million square mile surface, but it had gained a maritime zone more than three times the size of the actual peninsula in addition to underwater resources potentially worth trillions of dollars. This scheme, not only increased Russia’s maritime boundaries and control over the Black Sea, but has altered Ukraine’s plans of becoming energy independent from the eastern giant and has put the previous unsuccessful treaties for energy exploitations between the two under the sign of futility. Although the Russian government denied its intentions for energy exploitations, many experts believe the scheme had that exact particular goal in mind. According to William B. F. Ryan, a marine geologist at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University, said Russia’s Black Sea acquisition gave it what are potentially “the best” of that body’s deep oil reserves.( William Broad, in an article for The New York Times) While Russia and Ukraine disputed their overseas occupancy, the other countries along the Black sea were looking for their own opportunity to grow from offshore energy exploitations and around 2012, the prospects of Romania increased considerably, as it discovered in its territory a large gas field in waters more than half a mile deep, an opportunity which immediately arose the idea of cheap and accessible energy as well as a small boost for the national economy.

Climate change and beyond / renewables scenario In the context raised by these unspoken tensions and even the danger of an armed conflict, the limitless options have to be considered. With both resources offshore and onshore, East Europe’s economy has grown slowly but steadily, focusing on the fossil fuel extraction. However “in the coming decades, the self-evident nature of the fossil-fuel era will begin to erode”, fossil fuels will gradually move to the margins of a diverse energy mix which will be dominated by renewable sources such as wind, hydropower, solar energy, residual heat and biomass (Sijmons, 2014) .

A question raised by many experts is renewable’s energy ability to meet the worldwide demand without use of fossil fuels. In 2004, the worldwide mean consumption of electricity was around 17.000 TWh whereas estimations suggest that global wind energy only could generate almost 50.000 TWh annually, which gives a

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Skifska

Prikerchinskaya Forosa Tavriya

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strong hypothesis for completely removing fossil fuel extraction.

“Energy is a basic requirement for life and for human civilization. The way we meet our energy needs is distinctive, and is profoundly interwoven with society, culture and the economy. Because of this interweaving, an energy transition can never be a separate task; the entire fabric of society must be transformed. The energy transition needs to be a broad operation, with a complete family of ‘partial transitions’(Sijmons, 2014).”

Therefore, energy is needed for daily human use and not only it is able to meet the demand, but also reduces worldwide risk of extreme events by respecting Kyoto protocol emission limits for greenhouse gases. Therefore this transition could happen in multiple ways, offshore energy representing just a fraction of Europe’s entire potential for renewable energy in comparison to onshore wind farming.

However the limited space on land for this development and the high environmental impact or pollution factors close to urban settlements pose a consistent obstacle.

The main impediment that energy transition faces is the motivation for investment, as the renewables are capital intensive, due to the foundations, electrical networks, construction itself, while fossil fuel based technologies may be cheaper to construct but much more expensive to operate. The second doubt factor is the

prospected price of renewable energy, as higher investments will make energy more expensive. However, a survey held in the UK, that used the choice experiment technique, shows that willingness-to-pay increased as the energy source ensured improvement of the qualitative attributes of the environment (wildlife, landscape employment).

This smooth transition from a landscape of fossil fuel farms to clean energy has been more and more successful in the North Sea, directly opposite to the eastern neglect.

However, it was no piece of cake to set the wheels in motion, it was a question of energy policies and economic models, to which the government and the consumer both had to participate.

Model / Energy policies A successful model for incentives and investments in the energy policy field is Scotland, whose 40% renewable goal by 2020 pushed the country to take consistent and clear action and fundamentally restructure their power industry. The primary policy instrument utilized by the Scottish Executive to motivate the expansion of renewable energy sources was the ROS – Renewables Obligation Scotland, a document which combined a demand-push legal requirement for renewable power usage with a supply-pull financial incentive program to reward

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private industries for constructing and investing. All licensed electricity suppliers were compelled to source specific quantities of eligible renewable energy for sale to all customers, or suffer financial penalties (Bergmann,2004).

Originally, the minimum fraction of renewables was set at 3%, rose to 4.3% the following year and to 10.4% in 2011. But how do we ensure that the actual limit is real? The financial incentives for private investments were determined and regulated by the use of ROCs – renewable obligation certificates, which act as evidence that the required percentage was matched. These certificates were traded separately from the actual energy being generated and earned each renewable power generating company 45-50 pounds per megawatt.

The trigger for the Black sea to become an energy transition territory lies in the governmental view of its coastline nations and their willingness to financially contribute to boost investments. Once there is enough investment, the price of the renewables will slowly drop, permitting the government to decrease the incentives, while the new economy launches itself on the competitiveness market.

The mirror effect / conclusion Many experts doubt profoundly that the Black Sea could follow the footsteps of the North Sea. From the rejected idea

of marine occupation raised by Grotius, until the tensions today, navigation has shaped the global economy through trade routes. However, nowadays the eastern world and the western world mantain their differences in ideologies, the black gold and the technology innovation. Although the North Sea is much more exposed to oceanic currents and has stronger wind power, the potential of the Black sea is not to be neglected. A future step to be taken involes in first instance a smooth change on the political stage. Further, negotiations can be made over the division of the world’s potentially lucrative waters, maybe even reinforce the guidelines set forth by the 1982 Law of the Sea Treaty with a sequel treaty. Therefore, the most important conclusion to be drawn is that the Eastern Europe renewable transition will not be possible on the account of the political climate. The North Sea will gradually move to clean, limitless renewable energy and through that become independent the eastern oil giants, while the former Soviet Union nations will still be stuck in the previous age when Russia was still the stirring force. •

References Sijmons, Dirk. (2014). Landscape and Energy, Designing Transition.

Bergmann, Ariel & Hanley, Nick & Wright, Robert.

(2006). Valuing the Attributes of Renewable Energy Investments. Energy Policy. 34. 1004-1014. 10.1016/j. enpol.2004.08.035.

M. Dolores Esteban, J. Javier Diez, Jose S. López, Vicente Negro, Why offshore wind energy?, In Renewable Energy, Volume 36, Issue 2, 2011, Pages 444-450, ISSN 09601481, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.renene.2010.07.009.

1. https://deltaurbanismtudelft.org/2017/04/20/northsea/ 2. http://www.atlanticcouncil.org/images/publications/ Black_Sea_Energy.pdf 3. http://dadiani.si.edu/blacksea.html 4. https://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/18/world/ europe/in-taking-crimea-putin-gains-a-sea-of-fuel-reserves. html?mcubz=3 h5. ttp://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-scotlandpolitics-26326117 6. http://www.ogj.com/articles/2016/02/governmentskey-to-more-black-sea-energy-amid-low-prices-forum-told. html 7. http://www.nineoclock.ro/black-sea-energy-reservessimilar-to-north-sea-reserves/ 8. https://www.woodmac.com/ms/upstream/black-seaunlocking-its-full-potential/

Oilfields Gasfields Condensate Potential oil and gasfields Coal power plant Nuclear power plant Oilpipeline Gaspipeline Landing point pipelines Existing wind farm Planned wind farm Border Exclusive Economic Zones (EEZ) (200 miles) Territorial waters ‘Mare Liberum’ 17th century (3 miles) Territorial waters (12 miles) Contiguous zone (12 miles)

1. Depth resource exploration Source - D-i Graduation studio, group 2, Ye Hu, Junzhong Chen, Xiaoyue Hu, Alexandra Farmazon 2. Source nl.pinterest.com / theultralinx.com 3. Source - author 4. Source - D-i Graduation studio, group 6, Jan Cyganski, Julia Holtland, Deniz Ustem

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THE QUESTION OF

SAXON VILLAGES

THE

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by

Corina Chirilă, Ph.D.-C

School of Urban Planning, ‘Ion Mincu’ University of Architecture and Urban Planning, Bucharest

Andrei Mitrea, Ph.D.

School of Urban Planning, ‘Ion Mincu’ University of Architecture and Urban Planning, Bucharest

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1. THE SETTING Planning education in Romania is in a state of flux. Curricula are constantly changing, in an attempt to keep up with international discourses on the role and meaning of planning. Simultaneously, academics are searching for a comparative advantage that would render Romanian planning schools attractive to an international audience.

Viewed from a European perspective, this state of affairs is not uncommon.

Saxon villages have played an important - albeit currently neglected - role in shaping the military, legal and cultural history of Transylvania. As such, they serve as fertile ground for academic enquiries. At the same time, they pose a disconcerting task for planners: Saxon villages belong to the lowest rank of the Romanian settlement structure, thereby facing a wide array of demographic, democratic and economic challenges.

Against such a background, conventional planning quickly becomes ineffective. As empty rhetoric seems to pervade current Romanian planning practices, the need for experimental planning instruments becomes ever more pressing.

This article thus chronicles the evolution of an exploratory workshop dedicated to undergraduate students at the School of Urban Planning within the ‘Ion Mincu’ University of Architecture and Urban Planning in Bucharest. The workshop was carefully designed so as to engage students in an open-ended research and planning exercise. We think that both its method and its results are promising enough to be taken into account by a larger and more international audience of students, teachers and planning professionals.

From a Romanian perspective, however, it has proved to be quite a conundrum.

Consider the Romanian urban and spatial planning legacy. For almost half a century, planning, or what was called during socialist times “urbanism și sistematizare”, was the instrument of choice of the Communist Party for accommodating successive waves of industrialisation. Within this context, cities and villages underwent structural transformations in a comparatively short time span, leaving distressing impressions on Romanian society.

On Christmas Eve in 1989, the socialist regime fell. Shortly afterwards, three laws were abolished; the Decree 770/1966, which prohibited abortions and had led to a demographic explosion in Romania during the ‘1970s, the Grand Assembly’s Decision 5/1984 approving the Scientific Nutrition Programme, which was responsible for the rationing of basic foodstuffs, and finally, the Systematisation Law 58/1974, which effectively froze the built-up perimeters for all settlements, in order to increase land use efficiency.

It comes as no surprise then that the planning profession had by the early 1990s completely lost its lustre. Almost a quarter of a century later, planning is still not very palatable to the public.

Apart from such historical considerations, Romanian planning education also suffers from theoretical impotence, and a severe case of teaching inertia, which gradually drifts away from problem solving and thereby tending to become an empty rhetoric. Hence, if theoretical insufficiency is surprisingly European in character, permeating planning practices since the mid 1980s, when theory production ground to a halt, teaching inertia seems to be less international in character, thereby severely undermining experimental, approaches within planning.

2. THE APPROACH Against this background, we decided to organise an experimental workshop dedicated to tackling these issues. The idea was pretty straightforward; to choose a difficult topic, requiring a delicate blend of

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research, fieldwork and creative problem solving. The aim was to push students out of their comfort zone. The design requirements were to allow for experimental approaches, mainly concerning planning instruments.

This idea was not particularly new.

A few months earlier, we participated in The Urban River Corridors of Bucharest (URCB) design workshop, organised by a joint team coming from TU Delft and UAUIM Bucharest, and headed by Ioana Ionescu and Claudiu Forgaci. The URCB workshop proved to be highly successful, and it was during this workshop that the idea of developing instruments gained traction.

We decided to turn our attention to the development of planning instruments, instead of design instruments. The rationale was that our workshop was dedicated primarily to second year students and therefore sought to prepare them for the planning assignments coming the ensuing year.

We kept the design brief crisp. The Saxon Village of Dealu Frumos (Schönberg) would serve as a field laboratory, in which students would gather their ingredients for constructing planning instruments.

We defined a planning instrument as a structured sequence of steps designed to solve a clearly stated problem.

We drew inspiration from George Pólya’s seminal book 'How to Solve It' and devised a four-step planning exercise, based on the following considerations: 1) 2) 3) 4)

understanding the problem, devising a plan, carrying out the plan, examining the solution.

With these four stages acting both as guidelines and as the workshop’s schedule, we invited the twenty-two students to form a total number of five working groups, with each group concentrating on one of the following themes - morphology, society, economy, technology, and particularities.

Each team was invited to produce the following; a keyword describing their approach, the main idea behind the instrument, a clear statement of the planning problem addressed, a short description of the proposed instrument, together with its implementation stages, and, finally, a logo to accompany the project. The five instruments turned out to be highly promising. The distinctive trait of all the instruments was their explicit reliance upon combining existing assets within novel and daring ideas.

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3. RESULTS The team working with social matters carefully studied the perverse intricacies between financial assistance and electoral preferences within the village. That vicious cycle was deemed to be extremely harmful to the community, especially for children and teenagers. They decided to open it by inviting contributions from local opinion leaders, professionals and artists, who would act together with the community’s vocations and interests. In addition, children, teenagers and their parents would be offered study trips, as well as technological training and board/lodgings during exchange periods.

The necessary funding would be channelled through the Saxon Associations, as well as through the Lutheran Church.

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Another proposal in the same vein was produced by the team working on morphology.

Here, the village commons was rethought as the focal point of a new open-air music school, aimed at providing children with a taste of music making, as well as with the democratic exercise offered by the act of playing in an ensemble. The Lutheran Church would again play a leading role in providing children with musical instruments, as well as with diverse settings for their performances.

The other teams focused upon ways to jumpstart the local economy through a modern day rethinking of the guilds and their role within the current society, as well as through an export based agriculture, based on experimental and highly visible cultivated plots of land.

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After finishing the workshop, we contemplated the results. Considering the that for most students, this was their first experience of the kind, we were rather impressed with their output. By explicitly keeping it experimental and open ended, the workshop managed to produce interesting ideas and dedication, both of which come in scarce supply these days, unfortunately.

Furthermore, the workshop served as a proof of concept for reforming current design and planning assignments. It has become strikingly clear that open ended design briefs, with their blend of research, experimental design and rigorous testing, are far more rewarding than their more orthodox varieties. •

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References We would therefore like to thank our students for the wonderful work done, as well as for the rewarding time spent in Sibiu and in Dealu Frumos.

The five teams were the following: Teodora Belețescu, Ana Bogdana Dumitrescu, Raluca Elena Neculai, Dumitru Bogdan Pitrop (Morphology); Bianca Elena Drînceanu, Ana Maria Durlă, Andreea Cristina Ioniță, Andreea Raluca Petcu, Andra Georgiana Taudor (Society); Larisa Cristina Gonțilă, Loredana Andreea Trifan, Marius Vlad Constantinescu, Iulian Poponeci, Iulian Stan (Economy); Ema Theodora Plopeanu, Maria Andreea Popa, Elena Delia Rusu, Andrada Maria Stîrceanu (Technology); Alina Simicu, Cristina Țogoe, Ștefan Cosmin Cornea, Marius Ionel Istrate (Particularities)

6. Focused economy policy 7. Value Technology 8 Revive society 9 Particularities - location of handcrafting studios 10 Morphology - centrality

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INTERSECTING THE ZONE IN LAMU, KENYA On September 1 Kenya’s Supreme Court declared the presidential election of August 8 as unconstitutional. For incumbent President Uhuru Kenyatta a second victory had been brief. In the slums of Nairobi and the port-city of Kisumu jubilation erupted as cries of “Uhuru must go!” made obvious residents’ loyalty to opposition leader Raila Odinga.

In a country where politics is seldom separable from ethnicity, Odinga has gained support beyond tribal divisions with his bold criticism of the Jubilee government’s ‘reckless borrowing spree’ to fund infrastructure projects such as the newly inaugurated Madrake Express. A ‘gift’ from friends in the East; the new standard gauge railway (SGR) bears a hefty US$ 3.2 billion price tag and speaks of a growing partnership with China under Kenyatta.

In the last 5 years Kenya’s total public debt has more than doubled reaching US$ 135.8 billion at 52 per cent of the country’s gross domestic product (GDP). Of this debt 49.5 per cent is external with China signalled out as Kenya’s largest creditor.

Kenya’s romance with Beijing is not unique but rather emblematic of a continent wide

trend. China’s increasing investment and opaque diplomatic engagement across Africa has been met with considerable criticism. Theories of neo-colonialism, brandished by the West and popularised by the media, have served to demonise a country that itself, until recently, was the recipient of the very same aid it is administering in large doses across Africa.

Academic investigation into China’s relations in Africa has been primarily devoted to the ‘exportation of Chinese urbanism’ through the deployment of large-scale infrastructure projects, led by Chinese State Owned Enterprises (SOEs), and a plethora of housing and commercial development projects. This ‘copypaste’ hypothesis is further substantiated by the coding of Special Economic Zones (SEZs) such as Nigeria’s Lekki Free Trade Zone into contexts of obvious political and socioeconomic contingency. Research has thus been limited to a macro-scale conception of the flows of trade, technology and investment between China and Africa - but what of the people following this flow of goods and capital?

Within the Design as Politics studio A City of Comings and Goings my graduation proposal seeks to investigate the migration of Chinese nationals to Africa across a triptych of scales: global, national and local. Oscillating between narratives of state, corporation, entrepreneur and precarious labourer it seeks to conceptualise the territorial intersections of Chinese migrants and local African communitiesin

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by Serah-Ingrid Calitz MSc Architecture TU Delft

the development of the Lamu Port part of the greater Lamu Port-Southern SudanEthiopia Transport Project (LAPSSET).

The LAPSSET Corridor Program is a tripartite collaboration initiated in 2012 between Kenya, Ethiopia and South Sudan.

The mega development consists of several key infrastructure projects that will suture together the three nations. Interpolated with shiny new International Airports, Resort Cities and SEZs the LAPSSET hopes to encourage trade and attract foreign direct investment (FDI).

China’s investment in the LAPSSET is best understood as an advancement of the 21st Century Maritime Silk Road-part of its broader Belt and Road initiative.

Launched in 2013 the initiative seeks to reinstitute economic cooperation along the routes of the ancient Silk Road.

Evocative tales of trade, cultural exchange and, importantly, shared prosperity have enticed African leaders to cooperate in areas of infrastructure connection, trade and investment, resource exploration and finance.

Within this framework Lamu’s coastline is to be transformed into Kenya’s main commercial marine hub. In addition to a 32 berth deep-sea port the development will include the highly contested Amu coal power plant and a series of demarcated zones: an Industrial Zone for oil, petrochemical and food processing, a SEZ for manufacture and warehousing. And of course, the requisite tourist resort, in this instance Collaboration City: a pastiche

atlantis of nearby Lamu Old Town comprising a fisherman’s wharf, cultural centre and ecovillage. A planned metropolis for 1 million people will provide (cheap) labour for both zone and resort whilst a new airport will ferry in businessmen from across the globe.

But Lamu is no new zone. In 1886 when Britain and Germany settled land disputes by carving the territory in two the Lamu archipelago and proximate coastal strip were gifted to the Sultan of Zanzibar.

Bound by geography to the mainland and then British Colony of Kenya but apart in culture and sovereignty, Lamu has from its inception exploited its loosely defined status in much the same manner as the modern zone does today. A vital interface between mainland and sea, Lamu Island operated as the foremost trading point for cattle, ivory, opium, cotton and slaves - a position relinquished with the shifting of trade routes to the east-coast port of Mombasa.

It is this small yet historically significant Swahili port-town (a UNESCO World Heritage Site) that will be swallowed up by the behemoth that is LAPSSET.

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With my project in its infancy I am at best equipped to begin formulating the right questions foregrounded by the work of Keller Easterling (2005, 2014) and Deborah Brautigam (2009). As oceans are dredged and smokestacks begin to define the horizon how will the endemic systems and flows that have defined Lamu be altered? If globalisation’s major architectures of port, free zone and transportation exist as the materialisation of (digital) capitalism what can be learnt from the confrontation of Chinese migrants and local African communities? Could this confrontation ofter an opportunity to confound the logic and spatial protocol of incentivised urbanism; coding into spatial products such as LAPSSET moments of spatio-political activism and globalisation from below?

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Rejecting totalizing narratives of neocolonialism, global hegemony and resource grabbing, could China’s ‘win-win’ policy in Africa be mobilised to escape ‘the paradigm of development-aid-charity’ which has come to dominate African planning and architecture? •

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References L.,Bremner., ‘Towards a minor global architecture at Lamu’,Social Dynamics, vol. 39, no. 3, pp. 397- 413.

Available from: Taylor & Francis Online K., Easterling., Enduring Innocence: Global Architecture and its Political Masquerades, Cambridge, MIT Press, 2005.

L., Lokko., ‘The paradigm of development-aid-charity has come to dominate African architecture to the exclusion of almost everything else’, Architectural Review. Available from: https://www.architectural-review.com

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1. Lamu Island Source: http://www.africapoint.com/ images/flights/kenya/lamu1.jpg 2. Lamu Port Development Map Source - Serah Calitz, after Bremner & LAPSSET Corridor Development Authority 3. Opportunities for intersection in Lamu Port Source - Serah Calitz, after Bremner & LAPSSET Corridor Development Authority 4. LAPSSET Source: Serah Calitz 5. LAPSSET intersected?

Source: Serah Calitz

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IN BETWEEN -

Bridging conflict in the multivalent city of Belgrade by Michael de Beer

in collaboration with project architects Brygida Zawaska and Doung Vo Hong

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Belgrade’s arduous history sets it apart as a notable case study of a city under duress. Between various wars and political influences, the city’s expansion has been multivalent and divergent. The scars of conflict can still be seen today as districts remain isolated and disparate while buildings are still riddled with bullet holes.

Within this embattled context there is a palpable craving for progress amongst the populace as the city remains active twenty-four hours a day. Protests for civil liberties

and state accountability are commonplace. Yet, the future of Belgrade raises many questions and positions it as being an ideal case study for the focus of TU Delft’s, Complex Projects studio.

It is critical to frame an understanding of the drivers and history that has brought the city to its current complex state, in order to understand the significance of IN BETWEEN, a landmark studio project - aiming to address social, cultural and spatial fragmentation of the city.

BELGRADE | the frontline Present-day Belgrade can be defined as polycentric, given the amalgamation of surrounding settlements. This has been formed through continual symbolic gestures of the “modern city” from various periods.

In understanding the city of today, the systematic destruction and reconstruction has created an urban fabric only one or two centuries old, making Belgrade a young city.

This is particularly significant, if we keep in mind that Belgrade has been the site of human settlement for over 7000 years, due to the city’s strategic location on the confluence of the Danube and Sava River.

The position has been critical for territorial control over the region and an access point into the Europe, putting at the forefront of many a conflict. This has resulted in the city being razed to the ground 44 times in its history.

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Austrian and Ottoman conflict between 1520 and 1690 was focused on Belgrade as a key location. The result was that by 1690, when Ottoman rule took hold, much of the city had been destroyed. 1690 can be argued as being the foundation year of the city we know today. The Ottoman’s authoritarian rule led to persecution of the population and the fortification of the city.

Soon enough, independent forces ignited an uprising against Ottoman rule, leading to a diplomatic solution by 1820 forming the Kingdom of Serbia, with Belgrade as its capital. The following years were marked by a purge of the traces of Ottoman presence with the most notable being the formation of Republic Square on the site where Serbians were hung for crimes against the Ottoman state.

By the end of the century, industrialization had ushered in Belgrade as an industrialized centre. The population boomed and moved away from agriculture, focusing on industrial production and commerce.

The peace Belgrade had experienced in the last century would be broken again in 1914, the beginning of the First World War. Once again on the frontline, the city found its population decimated and by the end of the war the city’s context had dramatically changed. After the war, the city experienced an unprecedented growth and intensive development in all directions.

It bloomed into an international city, with a new airport, regional rail connections.

It became a venue for large events such as

the grand prix, defining itself as a thriving modern metropolis. But this condition was not to last. World War II turned out to be one of the most devastating events for the morphology of the city. Both German and Allied forces extensively bombed Belgrade, leveling more than a third of the city and obliterating surrounding towns. In at the end of the war, Tito took power and with it he envisioned a grand socialist future for whole of Yugoslavia and Belgrade in particular. New Belgrade, a modern city, was to be the landmark of this vision. The new development was both a political statement and an opportunity to address the housing crisis. The city development agenda was marked by rapid state-funded urbanisation, as Belgrade grew from 2000sq/km (1950) to 3000 sq/km (1970).

However, the housing crisis had sparked a prolific growth of informal settlements and buildings that occupied areas around the periphery of the city, spreading in the surrounding territory. By the end of the century, the city was highly fragmented and dwarfed the city of the past.

A new conflict ushered in the new century as the Yugoslav wars broke down Yugoslavia into independent states. The 90s marked the transition between a state-managed socialist economy to a purely capitalistic society.

The transition driven by ethnic conflict, dramatically ended with severe NATO intervention. The change to a capitalist economy brought with it private ownership and a positive impact on the economy. Led

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by market forces, the city grew drastically between 2000 and 2016, amalgamating many of the past rural centers in the municipality, as suburban development took form with a proliferation of housing estates and continued the development of informal housing.

Although Belgrade has returned to a state of stability, the cinders of conflict remain. With a fragmented city form due to its history, urban development remains a primary issue. A recent example is the iconographic yellow duck, representing a call for political accountability, as Emirates positions a mega city development on the banks of the city centre – Belgrade Waterfront. Equally, stark divisions within the city underpin class, racial, cultural and ideological separation. Belgrade’s past will be a major stumbling block going into the future as spatial practitioners aim to address the city’s complex situation. IN BETWEEN, part of the Complex Project studio, offers an insightful objective for spatial practitioners going forward. It calls for new ways for spatial practice to intervene and stitch the city together overcoming its fragmented and conflicted past.

IN BETWEEN In between the city centre of Belgrade and its suburbs lies the Mostar Interchange.

The Interchange came into existence in 1974 as a monument of socialist power and the medium bringing new relation

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between the city and the New Belgrade.

In those days, it stressed the importance of cars. Today, it continuously functions as an infrastructural device. However, it leaves a peculiar influence on the city - in the sense that it functions as a border dividing it. It separates the city from the river, contributing to the emergence of an extensive wasteland between the traffic line and the water. This currently underutilised piece of land has garnered recent attention as it is critically located by the newly planned development of the Belgrade Waterfront. The Waterfront development promises a huge investment that will impact the greater city significantly. However, the generic, vague vision that is depicted, doesn’t seem to promise any valuable spots for citizens. Nor does it promise to solve the key issues of fragmentation and separation.

The project IN BETWEEN characterises itself as a series of urban interventions that aim to improve the quality of the public space in Belgrade. It realizes that through the insertion of a strong urban gesture- the line- which connects not only the citizens to the river but altogether to the Mostar Interchange - sets the frame for developing the space in between. Throughout this action, two landmarks- one of the past and one relating to the present- creates a new landmark- solely designated for the citizen.

The space in between is intended to function as a community hub, offering a variety of public functions - called stations.

The choice of peculiar functions derives from the morphology of the site as well as the analysis of the neighboring context, which is strongly influenced by the railway industry. Hence, the proposed stations are (from the side of the river): the Sava Station, the Waterline Station, the Living Room Station, the Culture Station and the Gazela Park Station. Each of them is different and in its design hints at the past of the site or depicts particular values, In which Serbian culture recognizes herself.

Being in an in-between space, the visitor is able to confront different environments.

However, there is one continuous element, able to connect everything together, becoming “a local landmark” - the line.

Repositioning the City The critical intervention is ultimately a call for unification. By Connecting unassociated spaces, the intervention draws attention to the importance of simplicity in bridging the multivalent city. Positioning the citizen at the heart of the intervention, the project serves the people whom, for so long, have been bombarded by both conflict and grand visions – the Waterfront Development included. Responding to a critical infrastructural need and accepting the context in which it is positioned, it has garnered a new vision for the city - One able to transcend boundaries and years of turmoil. Although modestly sitting within a redefined context - the project draws on hope and emboldens a sense of a positive

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future - in doing so; positions itself as a landmark. Yet, it is not a landmark of some authoritarian figure, nor a scar of war that litters the city throughout, or a statement by a faceless company; but rather a landmark of the citizen drawn back into the public domain.

In this sense, the project is a stark reminder to spatial practitioners that it is in the everyday needs and lives, not grand gestures, where the greatest impact may be made. Through such acts, architects and urbanists are able to gently and precisely reconfigure space and thus redefine places.

The project, although addressing a localized need, is able to reposition the whole city in the eyes of its inhabitants. •

References Complex Projects (2016) Complex Projects Msc1 Research Book, Tudelft Emily Makas, Tanja Conley (eds.) (2010). Capital cities in the aftermath of empires. London and New York: Routledge Grigor Doytchinov, Aleksnadra Dukic, Catalina Ionita (eds.)

(2015). Planning Capital Cities/ Belgrade/ Bucharest/ Sofia.

Graz: Verlag der Technischen Universitat Graz

1. Looking over the Sava River toward New Belgrade - It is just the begining 2. Walking in IN BETWEEN, toward the river.

3. View at the Mostar interchange - a view in between 4. The LivingroomStation 5. The Cultural Station 5

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P ERS P ECT I V E

YOUTH PHOTOGRAPHY AS A LENS TO A NEW COMMUNITY

A K WA A B A P H O T O

“THE MAN IS GOING TO BURN THE GOAT” They are catching the goats and they are sending them to go and kill them. The goats saw them coming, they are thinking, “They are going to catch us to kill us.” So they started running to get away, and they are chasing them. He [man at center] is holding a tire. They will put it in the fire, and they will cut the goat’s head, and they will burn the goat. © Nathaniel Lartey, 14 years old, from Akonto Lante, Accra, Ghana

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“IT IS NOT EASY TO DO ACROBATICS." © Jehoshaphat Okine, 13 years, from Akonto Lante, Accra, Ghana

by

Victoria Okoye African Urbanism

Urban planning and design practice often situates the designer as agent or activist, engaging with community and building a story that can inform an appropriate intervention. After a number of years operating in this capacity in the city of Accra, Ghana, I sought the opportunity to situate myself as facilitator, supporting community members in documenting and telling their own stories of community.

The “Akwaaba Photo” workshops and exhibition represented this deliberate turn.

This effort, a series of youth photography workshops and a community photo exhibition, was borne out of a partnership between African Urbanism, No Limits Charity Organization (a Jamestownbased educational charity), professional photographer Teresa Meka, and 12 teenagers from the Jamestown community in Accra. Meeting on weekends in a community space, Teresa introduced the group to the mechanics of photography, and then we ventured out into Jamestown’s neighborhoods, seaside and streets for photo walks. With camera in hand, the young team snapped photos, capturing their friends, family, neighbors in their everyday activities and environment.

photo, which captures his friend midbackflip. “It was difficult to take these photos, the action is fast! By the time I click on it, he has rolled already.” The shot, captured after nearly a dozen takes, depicts a brief moment in time, but represents negotiation, play and patience between friends.

Following each photo walk, we regrouped to discuss each photo, exploring together each young person’s choices in context, subject, and place, as well as the personal and community stories that emerged from these connections.

See the full photo exhibition online: akwaabaphoto.wordpress.com

The inspired teens moved from the subjects of urban development stories to the storytellers with unique insights, access and agency to document and share the rich culture of their community. For some of the photos, the impressions seemed more straightforward. “I like the action,” explained 13-year-old Jehoshaphat of his

The culmination of the exhibition draws a new lens – perspective - on the narratives of Jamestown, a community that is commonly depicted in negative ways. Through the youth workshop, a first hand account, we are afforded a vision of a unique and complex life, rich in nuance and vitality. • Notes

AFRICAN URBANISM explores West African cities’ development trajectories, highlighting both urban challenges and opportunities through visually exciting and intellectually engaging perspectives. As an offline initiative, we engage communities in targeted public space improvements.

We aim to serve as a local-global platform that pushes for an intricate, nuanced understanding of West Africa’s spaces. africanurbanism.net

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The Intersectionality atlantis

“In contrast, by identifying my position as a participant in and observer of Black women’s communities, I run the risk of being discredited as being too subjective and hence less scholarly. But by being an advocate for my material, I validate epistemological tenets that I claim are fundamental for Black feminist thought, namely, to equip people to resist oppression and to inspire them to do it”

by

Khensani de Klerk

Architect, researcher and writer

- Patricia Hill Collins in Black Feminist Thought

In order for this instigation to be progressive, a collective re-imagination following the debunking of these universal epistemologies is essential.

Ghanaian-Scottish architect, novelist and professor, Lesley Lokko (2000), reveals this hegemonic epistemology and identity exclusion in her White Papers, Black Marks by saying, “The casual omission of Africa from Bannister Fletcher’s 'Tree of Architecture' is evidence” of history erasing the existence of multiple identities in the formation and life of Architecture discourse. The imperceptive reality is that Africans have had little to nothing to say in this discourse.” The emergence of intersectionality has sparked questions around the audacity to design in specific settings, leading onto the collapse of singly credited or authored spatial design.

It has also catalysed a re-imagination of diversifying roles in spatial practice by adapting to various contexts as elaborated in this article.

Audacity, authorship and adaptation.

On a geopolitical scale, context is turbulently changing. A deluge of online news sources report daily on controversial global matters. The #FeesMustFall decolonisation student movements at universities in South Africa is one amongst many.

The speed at which context is shifting continues to affect social, political and economic issues everywhere. However, our discipline remains reluctant to change.

In responding to the needs of the built

environment it struggles to mitigate between technology and society; whilst challenged on a phenomenological level; as well as rationalising its more poetic and artistic forms of expression. The latter makes it susceptible to individualism, which is evident in the constant praising of “starchitects” being idolised for their designs. The Hadids, Koolhaas’ and Fosters have become contemporary moulds of the preserved Le Corbusier, Gropius and Mies idols on our shelves of knowledge. In many instances, the projects of starchitects have been of significant value to the context in which they exist, and that is a constantly critiqued (non)-success from the biggest stakeholder in architecture - the occupant.

And so how do we begin to analyse and explore the role of the architect, as a collective of (conflicting) narratives?

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of Spatial Practice Decolonisation is one such current and assuredly inevitable movement that has recently and unapologetically manifested in South African universities (amongst other contexts) in attempts to question colonial thought and give importance to situated knowledge production. In 2015 RhodesMustFall occurred wherein the statue of Cecil John Rhodes was forcefully removed as an act of reoccupying space and removing oppressive colonial spatial signifiers. The greater mass has control over the spatial conditions of our environments which confronts us with challenging notions of physical and academic access.

Physical access constitutes a variety of situated problems such as mobility and spatial justice. Equally, academic access constitutes a variety of situated problems such as giving importance to vernacular languages at institutions where culture can be retained in writing, and preserving situated spatial practices and traditions that currently lie dormant in folklore.

The way in which we are taught, what is expected of us, and the loosening of our exclusive lexicon are all potential strategies towards achieving this goal. If we are to claim that we can respond to such sociospatial conditions, it is essential for sociosustainable practice to become mandatory in spatial practice. Rewriting the profession into becoming part of a collective authored endeavour seems fitting, where WE make up the Architect as opposed to the single authorship and responsibility of the architect as the single designer of space.

In countries burdened with historically autocratic states, such as South Africa, this single authorship has resulted in the controversial consciousness of questioning the audacity of homogenous institutions designing for culturally heterogeneous contexts. Such turmoil can be prevented by ensuring that authorship of space remains intersectional.

Our job is not easy, it remains a facilitator role, which requires knowledge, skill, compassion and a level of foresight. It is undeniably social, and the image of the architect needs to be displayed with social importance in our knowledge institutions.

Once we begin to realise that the discipline

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is a tool for socio-spatial justice in a world that has never holistically experienced peace and equality, perhaps we will begin to significantly affect a collective vision for humanity alike.

Context is constantly changing. With population growth soaring and urban population accelerating even faster, the physicality of space is under pressure. Not only does sustainability require creative innovation, but adaptation. At the same time, particularly in South Africa, we face the need to micro-localise, engage, and preserve our cultural ways of knowing, in response to the lingering remnants of post-Apartheid mono-cultural learning and global influences. Preservation of such knowledge is key to explore dormant rich ideas of design.

Architectural journalism can act in this context of space and time, focusing on the linguistic interface between the designer architect and the non-professional citizen architect. For example, the blog MatriArchi(tecture) is one such blog that aims at creating an intersectional space where the work and writings of multiple and marginalized identity groups can be discussed and given space to flourish.

Intersectionality of discplines and institutions requires a normalization of maintaining standpoints to retain

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identity. For too long African knowledge(s) have sat in the dusty bottom drawer of miscellaneous goods whilst Western knowledge sits on the shelves of what we see the truth to be. Debunking universal epistemology opens us up to learning from one another. With free mobility in addition to increased access, there is an inevitable progressiveness that the future holds. This becomes the record of intersectional space, which will hopefully evolve the hegemonic notion of history into an inclusive and progressive multi-narrative archive of histories. • matri-archi.com

References Collins, Patricia Hill. 2000. Black Feminist Thought. New York: Routledge.

Lokko, Lesley. 2000. White Papers, Black Marks: Architecture, Race, Culture. Minnesota: University Of Minnesota Press.

1. Removal of the Rhodes Statue on the University of Cape Town in response to student protests, Desmond Bowles, 9 April 2015 2. #FeesMustFall plenary meeting and disruption of the street, 2016, Jembe Moran

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MUSSERT’S WALL IN LUNTEREN Design approaches for perpetrator - victim heritage In the 1930s, a contested wall was built on the Goudseberg near Lunteren. Standing on a small balcony, leader Anton Mussert of the National Socialistic Movement (NSB), allied to the Nazi’s, addressed his ideas in speeches for large groups of followers from this wall.

After years of neglect, Mussert’s wall is in decay. Because of its loaded history, opinions on monumental status or on future plans are hard to make up. In 2004 and 2015 official requests were send for it to be registered as a national listed monument. Local discussions concerning Mussert’s Wall are centred on two questions; should it have special status as a national listed monument? Can new plans be made on this loaded site?

by

ir. Gerdy VerschuureStuip assistant professor Landscape Architecture TU Delft

1. Mussert's Wall in Lunteren (CC) 2. Mussert's Wall after the war, May 1951 during a scouting jubilee (CC)

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To make a deliberate new step, the Science Shop (WUR) was asked to start a project and students of the elective Heritage Landscapes, a part of the Master’s in Landscape architecture (DUT) were invited to produce some future perspectives.

A, using the narrative/reflective, biographical or landscape thematic approaches The discussions on the status of Mussert’s wall escalated with two official requests to be listed as a state monument (2004, 2015).1 In 2004, the first request was rejected because of protests from both WW II Dutch resistance veterans from Lunteren as well as complaints from the CIDI (Centrum Information and Documentation Israel).

In 2015, a second request was send to the Ministry of Education, Culture and Science.2 Public opinion is divided. There is fear of granting dignity to the mentality of the National Socialistic Movement (NSB) and inadvertently creating a meeting place for neo-Nazis. On the other hand, there is an increasing awareness that we cannot (or should not) remove all negative objects from our past (‘black pages in history’).

It connects to a broader discussion, in which groups of people are re-judging

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events, actions and people, on the basis of contemporary moral values. Should we remove all negative aspects and memories of our past? Should focus be set on commemorating the rights of victims? Can we keep memories of the perpetrators and use monuments such as this to reflect on our past? This discussion is critical, because a large part of our built past is connected to actions of our ancestors which could be defined as wrong when viewed through twenty-first century moral glasses. This is dividing our society.3 In 2017, as few direct victims of the NSBcollaboration are alive amongst younger generation, telling the story of the place and learning from the past becomes increasingly important, as can be seen in a documentary called ‘Mooi zo- muur van Musserts’.4 A National Home In December 1931, the NSB was a political movement based on national socialistic ideas founded in Utrecht in which Anton Mussert played an important role. This movement collaborated with the Nazi’s during their occupation of the Netherlands.

Their headquarters were situated in the centre of Utrecht (Maliebaan 35), but because of its limited capacity to

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accomodate large groups, a new meeting location was needed.5 The NSB chose to create a ‘National Home’ (Nationaal Tehuis) with recreational houses, sporting facilities and a large arena for group meetings.

The new location was a small depression in the hilly landscape of the Goudsberg near Lunteren. Its position exactly in the geographical centre of the Netherlands made it easily accessible.

At the centre of the complex was the arena, which made use of the height differences of the landscape. A large open area formed the seating area, set against a grass covered podium covered and the wall itself. Speeches were given from a small balcony with the audience seated in the open area having a picnic. The wall consists of brickwork, specifically made with larger measurements than normal brickwork.

An iron railing was used to support flags of different departments (cities). On both sides two lower walls were made with natural stones in an irregular bonding. This brickwork referred to the glorious past of the Netherlands as part of NSB ideology.

The wall itself was a double wall and the space in between was used as a study room for Mussert to finalise his speeches.

A flagpole and large clock completed the ensemble, and can be seen in movies and pictures. 6

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Several meetings Every NSB-member was expected to join these annual meetings on Whit Monday (important Christian holiday in the Netherlands). During this day, speeches were given by senior ranking NSB-leaders, to a singing and flag waving audience of the Resistant department of the NSB. These meetings were called ‘hagepreken of hagespraak’, (literally ‘speeches in the bushes’) referring to the start of the Reformation.7 Between 1936 and 1940, six meetings were held. The first one was held on Monday, 1st June 1936, the second a year later. On Saturday, 9th October 1937 an extra meeting was organised, following a great loss during national parliament election. This meeting was needed to settle internal affairs and reinstate confidence in the party. The last two regular meetings were held on 6th June, 1938 and 29th May, 1939. The meeting of May 13th 1940 was rescheduled to Saturday 22th June 1940, following the German invasion in the Netherlands. This final meeting was called

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the ‘Meeting of Liberation’ (Hagepreek der Bevrijding). The irony was that during the Nazi occupation these pro- Nazi meetings were forbidden due to the lack of gasoline for busses needed to transport crowds.

Biography of the location While much attention is given to the seven meetings held in the 1930s, there is more history attached to the site. Traces of earlier occupation have been found, like Celtic fields, a Teutonic road, a Medieval

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3. Reflection Park - Overview 4. Reflection Park - Translucent wall 5. Garden of Choice - Overview 6. Garden of Choice - Two Gardens

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Germanic road, game walls and much more.8 From the Fourteenth century on, a small village was first mentioned in relation to the reclamation of the Veluwe.9 Since 1951, the site has been used by Dutch boy scouts. In the 70s, the wall became part of a camping site. At present, it is used as temporal housing for East European workers.

and actions, which may result in a reaction (Third Law of Newton). The consequences of NSB’s choices and actions, like exposing Jews, homosexuals, gypsies and others, who were deported to concentration camps, were literally revealed in a second translucent, concrete wall, showing groups of people behind barbed wires. A mirrored pond further reflected this choice.

Designing a new future

In the design garden of choice, the wall could be entered through a small narrow path. It refers to the path we all have to walk in life and that our choices have specific outcomes with real consequences. The design was more modest and looked more like a garden in contrast to the larger park idea of the reflection park.

The second discussion is what can be done with the physical remains of Mussert’s wall. How does one design with local and national sentiment as well as the narrative attached to this site for a sustainable future?

In the last twenty years, the discourse of heritage has led to new approaches of transformation and focused on the importance of narratives and authenticity of materials. But which approach is appropriate in this case? The four projects and approaches are described briefly.10 Four future plans In reflection park, the original wall was respected. It presented that every man and woman is responsible for their own choices

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The design food bonding, took a different approach where the National Home for the NSB was framed as one of the many activities that have taken place in Goudsberg. This approach was worked out both on the site itself as well as the macroscale and connected to developments of the new park ‘The middle of the Netherlands’.

A restaurant with a connecting vegetable garden was introduced featuring unique eating spaces, like specific caravans sites and a romantic place on the wall itself.

atlantis The fourth design from one to all, did not focus on the historic layers, but tried to give the site a new meaning by adding a new function. As a counterpart to Mussert’s wall, a new and multifunctional wall was made which enforced the idea of an openair theatre giving a positive atmosphere to the camping site.

Reflecting on the design approaches Two projects (reflection park and garden of choice) used the (NSB) narrative of the site to reflect on what happened. The story was narrated in a reflective way to stress that every choice in life has its consequences.

Reflection park used the strong graphic images of barbed wires in the atmosphere of a public park. Both victims as well as the perpetrators were connected to the place and their harmful relation made explicit. The garden of choice introduced the experience from a personal point of view in a more garden-like design.

Two projects (food bonding and from one to all) tried to diminish the negative history of the place by creating a different focus on the site. Food bonding, showed the layers of stories which were connected to this site as well in the biographical design approach, referring to research method landscape

biography.11 The project from one to all focused on the historic use of amphitheatre but added a new podium to it, so that the functional use was retained but the focus on the site was shifted towards its new use. This last approach can be called the landscape thematic design approach in which one functional theme was reused again.12 These designs led to three different design approaches with new functions, which balance between monumental value, the narrative and nature.

Monumental object, narrative or nature In the last fifteen years, the strong preservation driven design approach focusing on the ensemble (heritage as a sector), has changed from an approach in which heritage is a factor in to an approach in which heritage will be an important vector. When heritage is a vector, narratives and social aspects are integrated in the design as part of a societal discussion and societal value improvement.13 Some places are kept for architectural or landscape beauty focusing on the authenticity, like castles, churches and palaces. Other places have a much stronger narrative than its spatial value. Therefore the focus is less

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7. Food Bonding - Impressions 8. From one to all - new wall.

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on the remnants itself, like the listing of the crossing on Abbey Road in London as a listed A-monument (UK). For Mussert’s Wall, the negativity past of the site is exceeding this site and raises the question: which story should be told and how?

Final remarks Creating different plans for Mussert’s wall is a start to the unravelling of the complexity of this heritage. The most negative part, the small balcony, was removed directly after the war, so the actual feeling of standing in Mussert’s ‘shoes’ is gone. The question on restoration needs to be addressed, because the wall is falling into ruin. The students work shows that Mussert’s wall can be reused. Maybe after its transformation, decisions about its monumental status can be worked out. • References

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1. [z.n] Wat te doen met de Muur van Mussert?, in: Volkskrant 2 december 2015 (katern binnenland).

2. Y. Visser. ‘Muur van Mussert’ staat te vervallen, in: Historiek 26 oktober 2014.

3. For example: J. Schmale. Geen haast met opknap van ‘Gouden Slavenkoets’ in: Algemeen Dagblad 16 september 2017, 3; Van Heijningen. Amsterdam 2015, 13-14.

4. ‘Mooi zo- muur van Musserts’ op: 09-03-2015. Zie: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3s8OAg3KB4o (12-06-

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2017).

5. Van Heijningen. Amsterdam 2015, 39-40.

6. Van Heijningen. Amsterdam 2015, 40-45.

7. Van Heijningen. Amsterdam 2015,11.

8. Goudsberg, het middelpunt van Nederland op; http://www. oudlunteren.nl/bezoekersinfo/Goudsberg 9. Lunteren, een historische schets, https://www.ede.nl/ gemeentearchief/verhaal-van-ede/2-bevolking/lunteren-eenhistorische-schets/ (16.06.2017) 10. G.Verschuure-Stuip, A. Prestasia, X. Zhang, C. Liu, A. Karampournioti, M. Yang, E. Georgali, A. Gnana, M. Sachsamanoglou, A. Anagnostou, I. Rasmussen, N.Alewijn. Mussert’s wall, designing with the narrative of a loaded past. Delft 2017.

11. This research method was first mentioned in 1979 by Marwyn and worked out in the 1990s. This method was described in multiple publications in the Netherlands; f.e. R. van Beek, J.H.F. Bloemers, L. Keunen, J. Kolen, H. van Londen, J. Renes. The Netherlands. in: Fairclough, G.P. Grau Møller (ed.). Landscape as heritage. The Management and Protection of Landscape in Europe, a summary by the Action COST A27 ‘Landmarks’. Bern 2008, 177-203; K. Bosma, J. Kolen. Geschiedenis en ontwerp, handboek voor de omgang met cultureel erfgoed. Nijmegen 2012; J. Kolen, J. Renes. Landscape biographies. in: J. Kolen, J. Renes, R. Hermans. Landscape biographies; geographical, historical land archaeological perspectives on the production and transmittion of landscapes.

Amsterdam 2015, 21-43.

12. G.Verschuure-Stuip. Welgelegen, buitenplaatsen en hun landschappen in Nederland (1630-1730). Delft 2018.

13. J. Renes, J. Janssen, E. Luiten, J. Rouwendal, O. Faber, C.J. Pen, E. Stegmeijer. Character Sketches; National Heritage and Spatial Development Research Agenda; Part 1 Research Agenda. Amersfoort 2014,16, 22-24.

OOGOTFL

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RUNNING OUT OF GAS ON THE FAST LANE [1] by

Benjamin N. Kemper

Graduation Student, Robotic Building, TU Delft

We are living in a wonderful time - dangerous and unstable, yet fantastic. We are surrounded by seemingly endless possibilities and technological advancements that no one could have ever imagined decades ago. However, our world and our lives are threatened by nonhuman reactions caused by human developments and reckless actions now and in the past. How are we going to face our future?

economic pillars of their societies, but to provide soil for new thoughts. “Impacted by the arrival of the “mass consumer age”, the “space age” and the “information age”, Archigram advocated responding with new thought, because the “immutable laws” of existing architecture were already insufficient to respond to the demands of the new age.” [6] In 1963, it was Peter Cook who criticized urban planning and re-creation of the environment as a “ jaded process, having to do only with densities, allocations of space, fulfilment of regulations: the spirit of cities is lost in the process.” [7] Critiques that stated that Archigram only focused on the architectural experiment rather than on its inf luence is incorrect. A high priority was to achieve the ultimate goal, the Garden of Eden on earth embedded in an increasingly developing and digitalizing world instead of an “automated wasteland inhabited only by computers and robots.” [8] The avantgarde group was clearly working towards a “liberat[ion] from the restrictions imposed on them [the people] by the existing

1. Differential growth Living cells Enlarged surfaces 2. Map Platform networks + Randstad network

“Komm in mein Boot Die Sehnsucht wird Der Steuermann” [2] [3] The Past The question is not whether we are approaching or moving away from a utopian world. “Many would today regard the present as the best so far attained” [4] while others would state that “in a world of autocracy, fanaticism and terrorism, it [utopia] seems as far from reality as ever.” [5] It is undeniable that our society is facing threats, that continue dragging us deeper into dystopia. There appears to be a fine line between dystopia and utopia, as history has shown us, which is often overstepped in one direction or another.

The conceptual and theoretical architectural work of the visionary group Archigram in the 1960’s and 70’s builds on some of the ideas of a utopian society.

As architects, it was not their intention to change the fundamental political and

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chaotic situation” [9] in the cities and architecture itself.

The famous dystopian novel Fahrenheit 451 by the American writer Ray Bradbury deals with a future scenario, where society is completely dependant on technologies and life in dull conformism.

Social activities only happen in a virtual cyberspace and moods would be stimulated with chemical drugs. “The living-room; what a good job of labelling that was now. No matter when he [Guy Montag, protagonist] came in, the walls [large TV walls, which are used for virtual conversations] were always talking to Mildred [the protagonist’s wife].” [10]

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Montag, unlike the millions of others, tries to have serious conversations with his wife over and over again, however it seems to be impossible: either she is drugged on pills or completely distracted by loud virtual, unrelated ‘aunts’ and ‘cousins’ on the walls or intense noises like “with electronic bees [plugged in both ears] that were humming the hour away.” [11] This book was written in 1953.

The Present There are three major threats today: first, global warming caused mainly by fossil fuels; second, the disastrous accelerated destruction of our planet through the impact of the oil and gas industry; and third, the new opium for the people: mass technologies.

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Humans are facing the dangerous consequences of climate change. According to the scientist James Hansen, we expose our planet to 400,000 nuclear bombs worth of energy, equal to the one used in Hiroshima – every day, 365 days a year. [12] Through modernization and industrialization, this increasing amount of energy is needed. Oil and gas fields are the most efficient, but a destructive way to create energy. Fueled by money and power, the unfortunate reality is that no consideration to the consequences of this ongoing, ruthless exploitation of our shared planet has been given. In addition to these negative effects to our atmosphere, the harvesting of this black gold has led to another victim. Many platforms and rigs in the oceans can be found in rich areas all over the planet. After an oil or gas field has been exhausted, new fields are found elsewhere and modern supporting structures are built, while the former ones are left behind. According to an Ernst &

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Young analysis from 2015, “17 exploration drillings and 4 appraisal drillings were conducted in the Netherlands” [13]. At the same time, 190 offshore structures [14] can be found in the Dutch territory in the North Sea. Some are passive or abandoned, and others will be sharing the same fate soon once the oil and gas fields they sit on top of are exhausted.

These highly sophisticated and extremely expensive platforms leave massive scars on our fragile planet.

The Future The project Running Out Of Gas On The Fast Lane (ROOGOTFL) weaves the aforementioned ideas and ideologies into an architectural concept. [Fig. 3] It focusses on establishing solutions for the described dystopian scenario, while trying to use cutting edge technologies for social good and environmental sustainability.

Eventually either the oil and gas supply will be exhausted, or society will develop methods to rely completely on eco-friendly energy sources. What will then happen to the oil industry and their factories and structures? Simultaneously, global warming has led to rising sea levels. The loss of building and living area would result in drastic changes to the means of life. We need to research possibilities to decelerate the process, and also change our way of life. However, we must also look for concepts and design proposals to support a lifestyle with radical climate changes. This schematic design illustrates a visualized idea of a different, futuristic life, that deals with recent climatic, demographic, and social developments.

In this hypothetical situation, offshore drilling rigs made of billions of euros worth of steel and concrete will need to be repurposed. They provide society with the opportunity to create new land for living.

With the concept of ROOGOTFL novel urban networks will be created in a space that has been to this point not considered for that purpose.

The developed map [Fig. 2] with all structures in the Dutch part of the North Sea illustrates the density and the number of platforms and rigs, some in a passive or soon to be passive state. These positions were evaluated with self-written algorithms according to position, prominence, importance, and distance. Two facts are striking: a) the proximity to the shore of some platforms, and b) the close distance offshore between the platforms. With those

factors in mind natural growing networks are created. These are often quite denser than the network of the Randstad in the Netherlands. Another algorithm is used to distribute essential functions on each platform, so that already selected platforms are marked with special functions, such as living, leisure, entertainment and sports, green energy, food, distribution, work, and so on. One prominent island is then picked to elaborate further and define a more specific percentage of crucial functions.

These percentages are then translated into volumes related to the size of that platform. With swarm intelligence the functions are distributed in an optimized way in a predefined bounding box volume. Each agent of the swarm carries a defined volume and an exact task: e.g. energy swarm agents try to avoid the rest of the group and seek sunny parts of the volume, whereas living swarms try to cluster in smaller groups and find the most optimal light and viewing conditions. Work swarm members want to cluster to even bigger groups and try to find an optimal position between all the functions. [Fig. 4-10] The ruleset is based on many more rules and priorities, which in the end results in a complex and logical distribution of the basic functions. It is important to know, that the architect is fully in charge of the behavior of a f locking system; they define the rules, so they know what to expect. The machine is just a tool for complex calculations, the “parametric input [is] imposed on the swarm from outside the design system.” [15] At a certain point of time, the swarm simulation is stopped and frozen. This hovering accumulation of spheres representing the volume needed for each function, is then connected with simple pipes. [Fig. 11] The pipes vary in size according to length and priority of the connecting functions. The exoskeleton of this pipe network has two main purposes: first, to create a smart infrastructure between all the functions, and second, to add structural aspects to the schematic architecture. The existing spheres are then converted into a more architectural

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3. Living 4. Work 5. Leisure 6. Freespace 7. Food 8. Energy 9. Swarm Simulation Combined functions 10. Elevation Schematic design North-east view 11. Comp. Strategy Functions + pipes 12. Comp. Strategy Combined geometry 13. Comp. Strategy Smoothed geometry

atlantis form and merged with the exoskeleton into a bone-like, grown structure. [Fig. 12-13] In some aspects, the viewer might compare it to Peter Cook’s Montreal Tower, where he made use of a similar concept of geometry distribution. A much simpler reference is the Atomium, created for the world Expo 1958 in Brussels, by engineer André Waterkeyn.

At computationally defined points on that existing geometry another algorithm is applied to enlarge the existing surface with 3D differential growth. On the living function, the growth is more extreme than on an energy or work volume or connection. Because of that geometric growth, the surface of the start volume is exponentially increased without creating a significantly larger volume. [Fig. 1] Today, we are at war with our own self-created enemies. The concept of ROOGOTFL is fighting against climate disasters and social downfall. As architects, we can provide the framework for a better urban object: “We can not evolve evolution faster than evolution itself.

There is no bypass possible through time.

We have to construct the Master Frame first. […] The complete set of rules forms the Initial Condition, where the hive lives in.” [16] We need the ‘hive’ to evolve itself, “architecture, urban planning and even the design of entire nations have always played a vital role in the utopian imagination.” [17] It must be underlined that neither utopia nor perfection is the ultimate goal. Utopian thoughts work more as guidelines, to an equal and joyful life for the people who seek it. The framework and the location are the start to a growing utopian orientated community. Offshore platforms are perhaps not the most ideal location. Nevertheless, the isolation of each node point in the network needs to provide itself with food, energy, maintenance, and leisure. This immediately creates jobs that do not consume the everyday life of an individual. Through emerging means of transportation, inhabitants can easily connect between the network and onshore cities. The complex macro geometry avoids “the real terror […] that the cities we have will be sacrificed for an overall conformity” [18]. The relationship between the feeling of a familiar environment and a new complexity, which reveals surprises from time to time, is in balance. The meso geometry provides the framework for a commune like, friendly co-living space. All living cells are designed to be optimized for good, and tried to be kept equal. Social difference is not promoted.

Further, leisure activities are supported, as living cell clusters might share common rooms, kitchens, and other facilities. The

urban network “should generate, ref lect and activate life, [its] structure organised to precipitate life and movement.” [19] How are we going to live in the future, and what role will architecture play in a digital world? Every single line, every single location of all the data used in the project is generated by a computer program. The production and realization is planned with robotic operations to achieve a non-standardized, optimized form. It could be described as a gigantic puzzle with an “extreme individualization of the building components to the maximum level of detail” [20]. Smart devices, such as an intelligent, responsive skin will be introduced and controlled autonomously. The complexity and optimized individualization of each single aspect from mega, over macro and meso to micro scale, can only be handled by computer programs. “The computer [is] brought into action to automate certain aspects of the building process. It [reduces] costs of labour, [increases] production speed and [minimizes] human error.” [21] Often, opponents of computational design do not or do not want to understand the power and the design freedom behind computational architecture.

This “hokus pokus” is then simply broken down on a sculptural, egocentric ‘formgasm’. This is incorrect. It is crucial, that nothing is random and everything is controlled by the architect of the algorithms.

Nowadays, it is more important than ever, to distinguish between an appropriate use of technologies and a potential abuse. Our society, human behavior, and cities are changing due to the exponential progress of technology. It might emerge as a balancing act between utopia and dystopia, between the total dependency and repression of the machines and the freedom to achieve more than we ever imagined. Society’s addiction to technical devices emphasizes the urgency at hand to begin to work with new technologies instead of denying the process categorically. We need

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to further develop our profession and work with the paradigm shift in architecture.

Architects need to learn the language and logic of computers, to seize the world of zeros and ones, and not become slaves but masters of the digital world. Architects must seize the opportunities this shift provides us: powerful software and machines, in combination with traditional knowledge, finally give us the opportunity to create the opposite of the sterile and anonymous buildings we know today.

The most frequently asked question concerning the project ROOGOTFL is, who wants actually to live there? Is not it too far fetched to assume that more than a few people would consider to live on an offshore platform? First, we need to get prepared for radical changes in the future. It is absolutely

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conceivable, that soon, most people will no longer be able to choose where they want to live because land is no longer abundant.

Second, even if we are able to choose, there are many individuals, especially from the younger generation, who seek to break out of the status quo and live a life to their own expectations. Woods calls this freespace, and that “[p]eople from every social class inhabit freespaces - whoever has the desire or necessity to transform their everyday patterns of life from the fixed to the f luid, from the deterministic to the existential.”

[22] This future scenario we are facing has from a dystopian origins, a “crisis of knowledge, [a] crisis of geography, [a] crisis of conscience.” [23] These people of the crisis will have the manner and the ambitions to start a better, an ideal life, and to build up an improved society.

Lebbeus Woods wrote the following as introduction in his pamphlet: “Architecture and war are not incompatible. / Architecture is war.

War is architecture. / I am at war with my time, with history, with all authority / that resides in fixed and frightened forms. / I am one of millions who do not fit in, who have no home, no family, / no doctrine, no firm place to call my own, no known beginning or end, / no “sacred and primordial site.” / I declare war on all icons and finalities, on all histories / that would chain me with my own falseness, my own pitiful fears. [...] / I am an architect, a constructor

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of worlds, [...] / a silhouette against the darkening sky. / I cannot know your name. Nor can you know mine. / Tomorrow, we begin together the construction of a city.” [23] •

References Perl, Yeshe. “Romeo and Juliet.” By Perl Cooley. Rec. 31 Oct. 2006. Mickey Avalon. Mickey Avalon. Cisco Adler, 2006. CD. [2] Lindemann, Till. “Seemann.” By Oliver Riedel. Rec. 24 Sept. 1995. Herzeleid. Rammstein. Jacob Hellner, Carl-Michael Herlöfsson, 1995. CD. [3] Join me in my boat/the longing becomes/the helmsman (translation by the author).

[4] Claeys, Gregory. Searching for Utopia: The History of an Idea. Thames and Hudson, 2011. p. 7.

[5] Robinson, Andrew. “Forgotten Utopia.” New Scientist, vol. 231, no. 3091, 17 Sept. 2016, p. 31.

[6] Crompton, Dennis, and Huang Tsai-lang. “Foreword.”

A Guide to Archigram 1961-74: = Jian Zhu Dian Xun Zhi Nan 1961-74: Liu Shi Nian Dai Jian Zhu Ci Tuan Ti. Garden City Pub., 2003. p. 19.

[7] Crompton, Dennis, and Peter Cook. “Introduction The Living City.” A Guide to Archigram 1961-74: = Jian Zhu Dian Xun Zhi Nan 1961-74: Liu Shi Nian Dai Jian Zhu Ci Tuan Ti. Garden City Pub., 2003. p. 76.

[8] Crompton, Dennis, and Warren Chalk. “Housing as a Consumer Product.” A Guide to Archigram 1961-74: = Jian Zhu Dian Xun Zhi Nan 1961-74: Liu Shi Nian Dai Jian Zhu Ci Tuan Ti. Garden City Pub., 2003. p. 92.

[9] ibid.

[10] Bradbury, Ray. Fahrenheit 451: Fahrenheit 451 - the Temperature of Which Book Paper Catches Fire and [1[1]

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Burns. Cornelsen, 2014. p. 43.

[11] Bradbury. p. 21.

[12] Hansen, James. “Why I Must Speak out about Climate Change.” TED2012. TED Talks, Feb. 2012, Long Beach, California.

[13] “Dutch Oilfield Services Analysis 2015.” Ernst & Young, 2016, www.ey.com/Publication/vwLUAssets/ EY-dutch-oilfield-services-analysis-2015/$FILE/EYdutch-oilfield-services-analysis-2015.pdf. p. 31.

[14] Ministerie van Economische Zaken, “Delfstoffen En Aardwarmte in Nederland - Jaarverslag 2015.”, July 2015. www.nlog.nl/jaarverslagen. p. 135-139.

[15] Oosterhuis, Kas. Towards a New Kind of Building. ; A Designers Guide for Non-Standard Architecture. NAi Uitgevers / Publishers Stichting, 2011. p. 162.

[16] Oosterhuis, Kas, et al. Jian Zhu Jiao Xue Shi Jian: Bei Jing 751 Di Kuai San Wei Cheng Shi Jie Gou She Ji. Zhong Guo Jian Zhu Gong Ye Chu Ban She, 2009. p. 3.

[17] Claeys. p. 114.

[18] Crompton, Dennis, and Peter Cook. p. 76.

[19] Crompton, Dennis, and Warren Chalk. p. 92.

[20] Oosterhuis, Kas. Towards a New Kind of Building. p. 162.

[21] Vollers, Karel. Twist & Build: Creating Non-Orthogonal Architecture. 010 Publishers, 2001. p. 13. [ [22] Woods, Lebbeus. Rat i Arhitektura. 5th ed., Princeton Architectural Press, 2002. p. 32.

[23] ibid.

[24] Woods. p. 1.w

For more information:

LET'S TALK ABOUT PUBLIC PARTICIPATI “…getting individual opinion is one thing, but a collective community opinion is nearly impossible…”

Vincent Nadin, Professor of Spatial Planning – Department of Urbanism at a panel discussion during the Urban Thinkers Campus, June 2017

interviews by

Selina Abraham MSc Urbanism TU Delft

with

Nelson Mota

Faculty of Architecture TU Delft

Otto Trienekens Urbanist, Architect Veldacademie

Machiel van Dorst

Section Chairman OTB - Research for the built environment, TU Delft

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atlantis I recently had the opportunity to work on a community engagement research project in Rotterdam Zuid. Rotterdam Zuid is home to Zuidplein, fondly known as the “Heart” of the South or Hart van Zuid. However, the name Zuidplein holds a lot of ambiguity.

It is the name of an area, more so than a square (plein translates to “square” in Dutch). While there is a plaza within extents of Zuidplein, it does not seem to be a significant feature of the “heart”.

Instead Zuidplein primarily refers to one of the largest malls in the Netherlands, the Zuidplein Winkelcentrum. My role involved co-coordinating the project with a colleague collecting data, from the local inhabits as a part of an enquiry into the use and appreciation of public space. The project, a reboot of a 2011 research, used surrogate researchers – 50 local MBO students – to collect data. Partners for the project included the Techniek College Rotterdam with consortium Hart van Zuid-Ballast Nedam\Heijmans. The research question that the project addresses, is: How is the public space around the shopping center, Zuidplein, perceived by both pedestrians and cyclists from the surrounding neighbourhoods?

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However, over the course of the project, I was plagued with existentialesque questions on the tenets of public participation. Conversation with my professional peers about the project, either opened enthusiastic praise for public participation or suspicion and mild disdain for public involvement. So, I set out on my own parallel investigation into what public participation meant for an urban development such as the Hart van Zuid, which resulted in some insightful conversations with relevant academicians and professionals.

Let’s back up a bit. Public participation in planning isn’t new. It developed in the late 1950’s as a product of public hostility towards the profession. In the next two decades seminal works like the crowd favourite, The Death and Life of American Cities by Jane Jacobs and After the Planners by Robert Goodman denounced conventional planning and associated bureaucratic processes. Urban planning and architecture practices that were rooted in the “paternalistic creation and management” of the built environment by experts were

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put under the scanner (Sanoff 2000). This resulted in the need for public to be more involved, rather than just informed at different stages of development. So, the importance of public participation in the creation of the built environment is not in dispute here. But, we do have to consider the possibility of un-informed public and the mythical entity that is public consensus.

Extending my enquiry to three experts on the matter, I approached Nelson Mota, Machiel van Dorst and Otto Trienekens armed with a barrage of questions.

Published below is some of the most insightful results of my communications.

The three interviews were undertaken independently in an unstructured format.

The following are extracts from the paraphrased transcripts.

SA: Does public participation become a bit counterproductive to the design process? Are undermining our own body of knowledge and skillsets in imagining the possibilities of a space? Are we disrupting the possibilities of design and innovation in our field?

Machiel van Dorst (MvD): While working in science, we don’t create answers.

To develop knowledge, we collect data. And as urbanists it is important to understand that there is more knowledge outside the building than inside the building. So, a lot of laymen, or people in practice have knowledge on aspects that we don’t have and it is important to harvest that. And there are different forms of public participation.

Some of them really intervene with people and let them co-design a solution, while

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some participatory practices are about harvesting data. Both ways are interesting; they serve different purposes. When we harvest data in the field, we get closer to the real problems, that we may not perceive as scientists. Additionally, as an urbanist, you are a scientist and a designer. In the field work, amongst all this data, there is inspiration. You may hear or see things that may belong in a desirable future. And when something is desirable and not realistic, there is an opportunity to design. So [public participation] can be a very creative process, or a real research process.

Nelson Mota (NM): Sometimes participation is used and abused as it is instrumental means to get consensus, but at times the result is an artificial consensus.

And it is used sometimes by politicians, real-estate developers and housing agencies, or similar bodies to mitigate some possible tensions that could (for example) have come about during the development of the process. You invite people to have their say, while documenting the process and it results in people feeling like they are being heard and that their wishes are being accommodated. But it is not like participation at all. The most interesting cases of citizen participation is when the designer or the expert is not there to just translate what the people want in to some 1. Zuidplein Winkelcentrum.

Source - Author (2016) 2-3. Student from Techniek College in Rotterdam as surrogate researchers for the Hart van Zuid - Use and Appreciation of Public Space project. Source (Ten Brug, et al, 2017)

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sort of drawing or plan and the other way around, the people are not there to tell the designer what they should do. There should be reciprocal discussion, and everybody in the end will profit from this discussion.

Real participation always includes two fundamental components. One of them is conflict. You cannot avoid conflicts. If there are no conflicts, something is wrong. The second component, which derives from the first, is negotiation. Negotiation is essential.

If the architect just does what the people want or if the people just accept what the architect wants, there is something wrong.

Negotiating is about understanding each other. In my mind, it is part and parcel of real citizen participation in design decision making.

Otto Trienekens (OT): In co-creative and development processes, a lot of people get together to make a compromise.

But in doing this, you evoke ownership in a project. The outcome of a cocreative process may not necessarily be different from an independent design process. Hypothetically, you may have the same outcome but without ownership.

Sometimes, designers intuitively develop a good design, but the community may not be ready for it. Co-creative processes take time, and this sometimes evokes conflict.

SA: While teasing conflict, getting public consensus is not always easy.

When public opinion is contradictory, how do you get consensus to move forward for a project?

NM: That’s what I call the “re-coding” process. That’s where I believe that

expertise is valuable, because getting this input from individuals is important, but it needs to be processed and not just passively collected. It is important to create a context, where everyone is talking about the same thing. For example, you could ask me about the park in two completely different ways.

One way would be, “Do you like the park in your neighbourhood?”. The answer may be yes. But if the question was more specific, like, “Do you like to take a stroll or walk at night?”, the answer may be no. Answers may vary based on safety or cleanliness.

But as a politician or a developer, you could instrumental-ise the answers to your own benefit. So communication should be made very effective, and we must not use and manipulate people, which is the worst possible outcome of people’s participatory processes.

MvD: There are different things there.

First, what is a community? Is there such a thing as community? If we skip it and look at public space, we see that we have different users, there are groups of users and we can look at their behaviour from the perspective or specific groups and see how we can facilitate them in the built environment. And when we design something, it is the awareness that we facilitate different groups or different individuals even.

The other thing that we should be aware of is choosing a meaningful social group that would like to get involved with, in this discussion. So that while processing the results of this negotiated consensus, it is from the perspective of the whole group and not just the individual. Because eventually there will always be conflicting interests. A sum of one hundred individual interests, do not make the collective consensus of the community.

MvD: Of course, that is the difference between the roles of you as an expert and knowing how people might interpret the built environment. But, there is a positive and negative side to this. Indeed, people might like the Zuidplein, because they don’t know the alternative. That might be negative because they are really limited in their view on good solutions. It is also positive, because they like it. I will give you an example there, because it sounds like “… let’s keep the crowd stupid”. For example, what is the quality of my house? It is what it is, but it also related to the qualities of the house I used to have, and the house I want to have. And those two extremes are related to my own experience. So, we can educate people, and when I see all the possibilities of how my house could be, then I might appreciate my house less. So that is

OT: First of all, you have to be aware that individual interest is seldom the same as community interest. For this kind of process, we have to communicate clearly to the public and the participants. Together, we have to work towards collective interest.

While individual interest is important, in the end it is about the collective.

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SA: While people gave a positive rating to the area, closer inspection of the comments showed that it was perhaps because they had lived there all their lives and not a true testament to the spatial quality. How does this affect the overall research?

atlantis the tricky part. We have practical examples, we have row houses where people may give a rating of 7, but the neighbour adds an extension and I see that its possible and I become unhappy even though nothing has changed.

OT: People are very attached to their habits and static situations. Most people dislike change, their common environment is what they are used to. As a researcher, we have to be aware of this risk. It also gives way to follow up questions, such as, “Why don’t you like this change?”, therefore evoking deeper questions. At the same time, we have to understand that a lot of the change that we propose as professional is projection and really not accepted or wanted by people who live in an area. It is not a black and white situation.

SA: And what do you think of the overall research project?

OT: I think it has developed in a very interesting way. We started a couple years ago as a research project that has become a development project. The way we do the research now, we see the social effects directly on the students. There is a return on social investment. It is no longer a research for the sake of research, but social return and talent development. We are evoking conscience in younger people for the environment around them. It also evokes the notion that the individual can influence the way public space is maintained, programmed and how people behave. It is a very important move towards more inclusive public space.

MvD: Of course, I was a part of the original research report (in 2011).

I appreciated that part of the same methodology was used. And it is great to have much more data, with this bigger group of field workers. But it means that this multi-method approach is more important in our field. It is complex, there are different views and we are all biased.

And the great thing is that, the report I made a few years ago, some of its methods are still here. And that is so important, and we never do that in Urbanism, repeating the same research over and over. Because like you say, why does this person give all these answers? Like, “I’ve lived all my life here”, it is practical, and that is one reason, but there could be other reasons, there is so much complexity to this. I did a research in Eindhoven, when we asked people, “How do you like your house?”, the average grade was 7, but in a neighbouring area close by, we asked, “What does your partner think of your house?”, and the average grade was 5 to 5.5. People have a tendency to talk positively about the situation they are in. They like to say and think that they are

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doing okay. There are a lot of things that indicate bias in this sort of research. But we have to do it, to understand this complexity.

Project Reflection In the case of Hart van Zuid, the project is unique that it uses students in the neighbourhood to undertake the research.

The research not only had the means to engage with residents to evaluate and consider their surroundings, but also with the students acting as “surrogate researchers”. Towards the end of the project, the students reported that they had developed a sense of ownership for the spaces that they use. The ability to influence future generations of leaders and evoke community stewardship is a key aspect of this project, and a more powerful result than the numbers and statistics published in the actual research report.

Conclusion To conclude, public participation is an extremely complex and nuanced process.

There are various stake-holders with varying interests involved in projects like the Hart van Zuid. The search for community consensus in such a project might be futile.

In such a context, defining the concept of ‘community’ in itself might be questionable.

Surveying the community results in multiple individual opinions, as opposed to a collective consensus. As urbanists, we are tasked with negotiating spaces that brings together the needs of both individuals and collective user groups in harmony. The awareness of this role is more critical, than searching for mythical community consensus in design development.

While engaging with different user groups and individuals, the urbanist is also tasked with the role of teasing conflict, and negotiating different needs and desires into a single project. Public Participation in

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development is crucial in facilitating these conflicts. It not only adds to an urbanist’s knowledge about the space, but also an important step in the creative process.

That said, public opinion in co-creation or co-evaluation of space without misusing said public opinion should be a big concern for urbanists. Such projects run the risk of making people feel heard, but this has the potential of being abused or just a means for people to vent and complain. This could possibly have a negative impact on future projects, where people feel less inclined to engage with urban developments, if they feel their opinions have not been considered in the past. But at the same time, even if these projects are a means to complain, it opens up users to feel more aware of their surroundings and evokes ownership in the built environment. • The interviews were edited and published with permissions from Nelson Mota and Otto Trienekens, with permission pending from Machiel van Dorst.

References Hart van Zuid (n.d) Over Ons [Heart of the South: About Us] Retrieved from: http://www.hartvanzuidrotterdam.nl/ over-ons/ [Accessed on 01 Jun 2017] Kickert, C., Derksen, A., Trienekens, O., Van Dorst, M. J., Arnold, J., Tragter, M., ... & Dox, R. (2011). Naar een kloppend hart: Gebruik en waardering van de buitenruimte in Hart van Zuid [Towards a beating heart: Use and Apprecieation of Public Space in the Heart of the South].

Veldacademie Nadin, V. (2017, June 9) Symposium conducted as a part of the Urban Thinkers Campus: Education for a City We Need, TU Delft Sanoff, H. (2000). Community participation methods in design and planning. John Wiley & Sons.

Ten Brug, L., Abraham, S., Trienekens, O. (2017) Hart van Zuid 2017: Onderzoek naar het gebruik en de waardering van de openbare ruimte in het Hart van Zuid in Rotterdam. Veldacademie. Rotterdam

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On Habitus I recently hosted a highly experienced bicycle infrastructure planner from South Africa at my flat in Eindhoven.

We were both attending VeloCity ’17 in Arnhem and Nijmegen, the largest cycling conference in the world. She was my former employer, having given me the opportunity to work on real-life bicycle network plans for South African cities throughout my Master’s degree. As such, she had also provided a vivid insight into how bicycle infrastructure is actually introduced into a context in which, to most people, it is a foreign import, with no local history. The question of habitus - the collective lived reality of society and their perceived social world constituting reaction and organization- is positioned as the central challenge.

While we cycled around the Netherlands, my colleague’s astonishment at the quality of Dutch cycling infrastructure grew steadily, from ‘thoroughly impressed’ to ‘hushed and humbled’. Switching between outrage and disbelief when she saw Eindhoven’s Hovenring, and the various bike overpasses and underpasses that carried the stately Dutch stadsfietsen under motorways and over rivers and canals. For this veteran of tense public meetings and baroque public tender specifications, the lasting impression, on her last day, was a sort of despair at the high-quality, fine-

grained, consistently excellent network of Dutch bicycle infrastructure. She said, more than anything, that what stunned was the legitimacy it enjoyed in the eyes of Dutch people: it was not something cities were pressured to provide by a vague national policy, or blackmailed into building by a highly vocal activist majority. It was simply a system that hummed along in the background, like infrastructure should, enabling spontaneous, human-powered mobility across neighbourhoods and entire cities and even the rural landscapes between cities, as in Arnhem and Nijmegen. It rolled on ahead of us, in every direction we could think to go. As long as we had air in our tyres, we could unlock the whole of the Netherlands with a few bottles of water and a bag of sandwiches.

South African vehicle centric mobility sits in stark contrast to the multi-modal movement in Netherlands, leaving one to sit in wonder of the gross inefficiency and persistent presence of the car in the South African city. Although I have nothing like the experience of my colleague, I have sat with her in some meetings, and without her in a few more, arguing that cycling infrastructure deserves investment and expansion in South Africa because it is cheap, efficient, time-saving and healthgiving. Opposition to it was always great, as was opposition to the act of cycling itself, in my four years of being a commuter cyclist in Cape Town. What I remember from that

by

Brett Petzer

PhD candidate TU Eindhoven

1. 'Ludiek protest' against sharedbikes schemes (deelfietsen). The Image sourced from Echt Amsterdams Neus, shows the discarding of shared bikes by a rubbish collection points in Amsterdam.

Source -at5.nl 2. Open Streets a movement-taking place across the world has taken root in Cape Town where the organisation advocates for multimodal transport and better public space. Putting the pedestrian first. In doing so the organise street closures in various communities to create a day of events where pedestrians can reclaim the city.

Source - Open Streets Cape Town

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time is a lasting sense that I was playing with fire, because I was part of a visible minority that is mostly middle-class. Those who could afford a car but had chosen instead a slow, emasculating, laborious mode of transport that exposed one to the constant risk of collision with cars or mugging or bikejacking.

Arising as early as Aristotle, habitus has been advanced by sociologists to gain insight on how communities and individuals act. Arguing that when people act and demonstrate agency they simultaneously reflect and reproduce a social structure.

The term designates a set of national habits that surround a practice, such as driving.

The South African habitus of driving your car powerfully and as fast as you can was something I trespassed against by riding my bicycle up and down roads where very few bicycles went. Where most people on bicycles were captive cyclists, unable to afford even the next-cheapest mode of transport- informal mini-bus's.

Recently, in Amsterdam, another habitus was transgressed. This one had been well described by the Dutch sociologist Giselinde Kuipers, who has extensively studied Dutch cycling culture. For Kuipers, the Dutch habitus of cycling represents a form of ‘conspicuous non-consumption’ – that is, a conscious decision to avoid spending money, and to be seen doing so. This practice went along with others, such as the accepted anarchism of bike parking practices, to make up Amsterdam cycling culture – a woolly term, to be sure, but not totally resistant to definition.

After the OV-Fiets had spent years establishing itself in this context as a sturdy, staid, predictable and durable national icon of shared mobility, the years 2016 and

2017 saw a sudden rush of new bikeshare schemes into the Dutch market, with a handful of cycling-as-a-service providers arriving in Amsterdam almost overnight.

These schemes were all dock-less, meaning that their providers forewent the years of painstaking negotiations with local government that are usually required for the installation of dock-based bikeshare systems. Instead, in a matter of weeks, lorries full of bright new shared bikes parked alongside canals and parks and squares to offload what would be the next great revolution in Dutch mobility – the dockless deelfiets. This innovation was to permanently wean central Amsterdammers off their own bikes, and usher in the future – in this case, shared, efficient, spontaneous mobility. Alas, none of this happened.

The promoters of this service had not reckoned with habitus. Instead of studying Amsterdam’s unique cycling culture, centuries in the making, service providers showed up with a commodity – bicycles, not very well made – and proceeded to flood the market with them. Local government, as well as organised civic opinion, reacted like an immune system presented with a fatal pathogen. Within a matter of a few more weeks, all of the dockless bikeshare schemes were banned, and the canals were swept of strooifietsen - a new word coined to describe, for the first time, the bicycle as a kind of litter. The official statement was that the dockless shared bikes were taking up valuable public bike parking space without providing private benefit – for, while Amsterdammers might enjoy their temporary use, all profits and control belonged to a faceless private company.

Amsterdam’s public spaces and streets have for years been festooned with bicycles from end to end, but these were private bicycles, none quite like another. Looking

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at a square full of them immediately and closely symbolised the people to which they belonged. Privately owned bicycles can be messy, but they cannot be ugly, because they are owned by people, cherished and individualised and worried about by people – they symbolise independence and individualism.

The flood of shared bikes aroused a storm of protest, hard questions on the council chamber floor, and, finally, a backlash: Amsterdam has temporarily banned dockless shared bicycles, and has removed every last one of these bicycles from the streets. Something in the national habitus had been touched. Habitus succeeds and endures. Like a heat haze, a distortion on the horizon, it is most often discovered as a collective reaction to a disturbance of the norm and the generally accepted. The failure of dockless bikeshare in Amsterdam highlights the hegemony of habitus – a stark warning for those calling for change.

South Africa is a middle-income country.

There has never been a time when a majority of South Africans owned a car; there has never been a time close to it.

Cycling and walking should be respected because they make South African cities work. Yet they are despised, because most walkers and cyclists are modal captives; meanwhile, car-driving is prized, because while few will ever get there, everyone regards it as proof that you have made it.

This fable about habitus is my account of a lesson that has been difficult to learn – namely, that plans for wide and deep urban transformation have no basis unless they have an empirical basis of recent, close, extensive observation. Like a heat haze, habitus looks like a ripple in what we should be seeing, but gestures towards great heat just out of sight. •

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SKOPJE

A HISTORY OF FAILED PLANS In the past 50 years two crucial urban episodes have shaped Skopje. The first is the post-earthquake reconstruction of the city and the second is the ‘Skopje 2014’ project. They represent the two largest acts of investment in the urban and spatial growth of the city within a span of 50 years and are at the same time small-scale urban interventions. Undoubtedly, to a certain extent they are responsible for the current mono-centricity of the country.

Historical Context In 1945, Macedonia became part of the Yugoslav Federation as the least developed country of the Federation. However, in the following years Macedonia began to pick up slack. The energy network was expanded and the first highway was built.

Macedonia’s first university was established in Skopje. With that Macedonia started the process of industrialization.

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Monika Novkovikj Post-MSc Urbanism TU Delft

1 1. Model of the central city Source - United Nations, 1970 2. Central train station, Skopje Source - www.skyscrapercity.com 3. Diagrams of population growth Source: Author

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Post Earthquake Reconstruction from the ashes On July 26th, 1963, a severe earthquake of 6.9 magnitude (Richter scale) struck Skopje and its surrounding. Approximately 2100 people lost their lives, 4000 were injured 200,000 people were left homeless and 80% of the city’s built tissue was obliterated. Fast and organized intervention was essential for the city to be able to function again.

Money, medical care, engineering and building teams and supplies were offered by 78 countries from across the world.

Skopje came to be known as the ‘City of Solidarity’.

Post Earthquake Reconstruction 'MASTER PLAN', 1965 In January of 1965, the United Nations body invited Kenzo Tange to participate in a competition for a new urban plan for the center of Skopje. The reconstruction of Skopje began with the ‘Master Plan for Skopje’ in 1965. The plan was created by Doxiadis Associates from Athens and the Institute for Spatial and Urban Planning of Macedonia, based in Skopje. The vision of the plan was as follows:

-The capital [was] to become a large regional center in the Balkan by presenting a longterm strategy for spatial development of Skopje with the aim to double the size and the population between 1965 and 1981. The new capital should have a representative and modernly built central area.Study for the Masterplan According to the setting in which the planning was conducted, all economic investment was directed to the centrality and all land-using activities were controlled.

The master plan was an administrative instrument formally delegated by the responsible authority. The plan was expected to break new ground. With the urgency to accommodate day-to day reconstruction needs, the plan had to recover the city from scratch in a rational and effective manner. For this to be done in less than a year the process had to be both flexible and formative, down-to-earth and far-reaching.

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‘City Center Plan’ 1967 As a result of the afore-cited vision and the immediate necessity for a representative city center that would mark the beginning of the ‘resurrection’, a detailed plan of the city center was commissioned. The last, and ninth version of the plan, was predominantly shaped by Kenzo Tange. At the time, Tange was already a renowned architect and planner and a member and co-founder of the Japanese avant-garde establishment, ‘The Metabolists’. The proposed design was a quintessential example of the Metabolist spirit, including mega structural buildings, high-rise towers and transportation infrastructure on various levels.

The vision for this project was that the politics and aesthetics should merge into one shape. The essence of Tange’s plan was the ‘nucleus’, the clearly marked zone along the river banks, reinforced with multiple architectural and design objects of public character and with public functions. This space was envisioned as a spatial symbol of a transition from the river as a natural and historical border into a public space of unity.

Tange proposed conversion of the space along the river Vardar into a vibrant stage of public interactions, where on both sides of the water public buildings would stretch as well as office blocks and other commercial buildings. In the plan, Tange incorporated the concept of ‘binary city squares’, which would spatially and symbolically unify both sides of the river through the idea of the social dimension.

They would appear along the path of the2 running water and would be embraced with the buildings that house public programme (Figure 9).

Equally important, the project had the aim to unify all the public spaces in the city center of various sizes through a system of pedestrian paths, which emphasized prioritizing the citizen as the most important actor in the hierarchical pyramid of well-being. Again, this pedestrian network was envisioned to stretch on both sides of the river and give the opportunity to the people to freely commute from one to the other side, from the historical to the modern (Figure 8).

The reconstruction of the city core was based on four symbolical urbanistic structures: 1.

n intercity/ international train station A lifted on massive concrete columns 2. Eight tall buildings surrounding the train station composing The City Gate 3. Massive longitudinal structure of residential blocks embracing the central city area in a manner of a walllike formation called The City Wall 4. T he main city square, called The Republican Square that was supposed to be the nucleus which unites the other urban elements.

The plan, however, remained uncompleted.

With only the residential complex the City Wall and the train station being built, Skopje did not become the cultural and economic center that it was envisioned to be. Due to the partial realization of the 3

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project, instead of a unifying element, it became an urban void. Up to today, it remains a buffer zone dividing the city, being everybody’s and nobody’s place.

The Spatial Growth of Skopje from 1945 to 2002 Several planning attempts have existed for reinvention of the city center that has marked the history of growth of Skopje.

However, as a result of the privatization processes laws were established that shifted power to private companies. In 1995, power was passed down to local municipalities.

New laws gave autonomy to municipalities and marked the departure from central approach. Furthermore, the political transition marked the beginning of a period prone to destabilization, illegal construction and extensive sprawl. Urban planning was no longer in control of protecting and promoting public interest, but instead triggered speculative developments within the city as well as on the fringes.

Towards ‘SKOPJE 2014’ After 2004, a service driven period followed, characterized by the interest in the individuals and their investments. As a consequence further fragmentation of the urban fabric occured and the local planning bodies issued building permits for buildings defined by law as ‘locally important’.

The city center was injected with highly increased program via speculative strategies by only a few planners, without fulfilling the responsibility of transparency and public discussion. The described circumstances set a fruitful ground for the initiation of the ‘Skopje 2014’ project, which was to be implemented by the ministry of culture in collaboration with the city of Skopje, the municipality of the city center and the ministry of transport and communication.

The project came to be the second largest investment into urban development, for which purpose the Detailed Urbanistic plan was changed eleven times (in a span

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of five years). Unlike the vision of Tange’s post-earthquake plan, this project rested on somewhat peculiar and vague vision.

‘SKOPJE 2014’ Project The ‘SKOPJE 2014’ project is highly criticized by the professional community as a non-transparent and non-democratic process, from its idea to its execution. The argument that the project compromised the public space is undeniable. Overall, the project offers variety of buildings of undefined design typologies.

Drawing a Parallel If the project of 1965 put citizens in the foreground, the ‘Skopje 2014’ put the concrete buildings at its focus. If the project of 1965 opened the city to public spaces for people, greenery for the city to breathe and qualitative designing and building of housing and cultural projects to raise living standards to an avant-garde level, ‘Skopje 4. Skopje sub-region development plans Source: United Nations, 1970 5. Masterplan 1965_land use Source: United Nations, 1970 6. Image of Skopje before the earthquake; high quality public green space on both sides of the River Vardar, in the center of the city Source: whereismacedonia.org 7. Comparison of green areas in the center before and after the project Source: Milan Mijalkovikj, 2011

2014’ neglected all aspects of common good and gave priority to individuals who benefited from the speculative functioning of the governing institutions. For that the city failed greatly and instead of building upon the modernist milestone its development, regressed to a point where the paradigm of a contemporary European city, which keeps up with the challenges of the time, is not even addressed.

What could have been done better and should be an aim for the future According to the document of Macedonia for a strategy for regional development between 2009 and 2019, there is a proposition for the country’s relevant actors to focus on redistribution of the regional budget so that the Skopje region would share its funds with the other regions more equally. Unfortunately, these goals are only met on paper and there is still no physical initiative.

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What the country lacks and is in immediate need of is a creation of high and stable growth level with equal distribution of spatial opportunities with robust and clear long-term planning agenda, backed up by efficient and transparent institutional work. Cooperation between citizens, NGOs and the private and the public sector is required in order to transform existing mono-centricity into more balanced and equal spatial system via implementation of contemporary methods of citizen participation, workshops and interactive debates and discussions. In this context it is extremely difficult to initiate a substantial shift from a mono-centric to a poly- centric system of governance and planning. This is partially because the country has been building upon mono-centricity for more than two decades and any radical systemic change would pose a complex challenge.

One of the possible alternatives could be developing polycentricity on municipal scale. • References

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Jasna Stefanovska, Janez Kozhelj ‘Urban planning and transitional development issues: The case of Skopje, Macedonia’ Irina Grcheva ‘The Growth of Skopje and the Spatial Development of Macedonia 1965-2012’ Faculty of Architecture and Design, University American College Skopje Ivana Dragsic ‘SKOPJE FACELIFT: MEGALOMANIAC PROJECT DEVOURS THE CITY, A story of How Skopje 2014 Annihilated Skopje – a review of the lost commons’, Skopje Leonora Grcheva ‘The urban planning legislation as a tool for citizen marginalization’, American College, Skopje, 2015 United Nations ‘Skopje Resurgent’, New York, 1970 Milan Mijalkovikj, Katarina Urbanek ‘Skopje - Svetsko kopile: Arhitekturata na podeleniot grad’, Skopje, 2011

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8. Transportation plan Source: Milan Mijalkovikj & Katarina Urbanek 2011 9. Land-use plan Source: Milan Mijalkovikj & Katarina Urbanek 2011 10. Model of ‘The City Gate’ and the Train station Source: Jasna Stefanovska & Janez Kozhelj, n.d.

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INTERVIEW WITH

HENRIETTE H. BIER

With Prof. Kas Oosterhuis' retirement Hyperbody has ceased to exist but Robotic Building continues its legacy. The Robotic Building group builds up on the expertise developed at Hyperbody. The group has 6 members and is led by Prof./Assoc.Prof. Henriette Bier, who established the group as part of Hyperbody in 2014. interview by 1

What research are you engaging in and how does this impact the future of architecture?

The topic of my research is Robotic Building, which refers to both robotic building processes and robotic buildings that integrate robotic devices. My research is concerned with these two areas and I would say that this research is revolutionizing architecture because buildings are not anymore static and inert but they are starting to become dynamic, adaptive and responsive to user's needs.

In addition to this, production processes are robotically driven. These are relatively new developments in architecture, which have been embraced by an international community that is trying to push these developments and bring them to the market. However, the building industry is quite conservative still and slow in picking up these developments.

How do you see the future of parametric design? How could it aid in the situation of extreme growth of population or decline of common wealth?

Well, one of the many advantages of parametric design is that as soon as you define a problem parametrically, the process is data driven and can respond to changing requirements. Without parametric modeling each time a design requires revision the design needs to be remodeled. Needless to say, this is not very efficient. Now, however, when you define the design problem parametrically, you are actually able to revise on the go

Turkuaz Nacafi

MSc Graduation Student, Robotic Building, TU Delft

and generate several versions. With that being said, I would not necessarily call that parametric design, but rather data driven Design-to-Production and -Operation (D2RP&O) of buildings. D2RP&O allows not only to design and produce but also operate buildings implying the ability to adapt and change/reconfigure to users and environmental needs. Reconfiguration of space is relevant when it comes to urban population growth: For instance, in Asian metropolises several generations often share a very small apartment. In response to these conditions, they have been developing reconfigurable apartments and what we are doing is we add to this manual reconfiguration another layer consisting of robotic or mechatronic devices that allow even children, old or handicapped people to reconfigure the apartment according to their needs. But this is only one of the problems that we are facing. We are also facing many other problems as for instance scarcity and environmental pollution. With the technology that we are developing we are able to introduce new ways of building that are optimized with respect to material and process efficiency. For example material use is minimized through multiobjective optimization procedures and by using sensor actuators, the use of energy is reduced because climate control is then locally implemented meaning that we are not going to heat or ventilate the whole building but only where needed and as needed. These are in short some of the advantages that this technology can bring.

For example projects like Benjamin's (see page 41), proposing inhabitation of structures that are

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not in use or soon to be abandoned like oil platforms seem really far in terms of what people expect from architecture. Most people may not like such ideas and may not see this happening; do you think projects like this will be implemented successfully?

Well, I would not know if people would like such ideas. This is just an assumption. I think it depends on how the design is and performs in terms of what it facilitates/ offers to people. Actually some of these abandoned platforms are already in use.

There was a CNN story describing the use of such a platform as an alternative hotel for people who want to be away from the busy life for a while without having to be on a boat all the time. On top of that, if you consider overpopulation and rising sea levels, then such ideas present a potential that can be exploited and naturally not only in terms of leisure but also work and living, which in the future will anyhow change dramatically.

Related to that, we and our grandparents were used to being in an orthogonal space with a defined f loor, wall and ceiling but for instance in the designs that are developed at Robotic Building formerly known as Hyperbody those limits are very much blurred. How do you respond to people who just reject this way of designing based on their preference for traditional architecture? Presumably, if our children are born into that kind of new environment, that would be

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their “normal” and they would be just as comfortable as we are or even maybe more so. How do you respond to people who refuse such ideas?

There are different layers that need to be considered. What we have to be aware of is that architecture has been dependant on the material and technologies that were available. So as soon as, for instance, we started to have reinforced concrete and mechanical production we started of course to have different degree of freedom in terms of architectural expression.

Today, new materials and technologies give even a higher degree of freedom of expression. The only difference is that these developments in previous centuries have been happening much slower so people had time to transit from one phase to another.

In general, all innovations as for instance the introduction of glass in architecture were and are still debatable. Some people would like to and others not to live in a “glasshouse” or in a “concrete bunker” and this is why I think this question cannot be answered in couple of sentences because it implies a cultural dimension in terms of technological developments and acceptance of technology. In my opinion, what is going to be relevant is that certain designs and buildings are going to be more successful because of them being more versatile and/or addressing sustainability and economical aspects. Beauty is going to be not only a question of aesthetics but also a question of ergonomics, efficiency, and comfort.

In principle, if you look at orthogonal structures, a lot of space is actually unused.

What do you need the corners of the building for? The movement of humans in

the space is much more f luent - does not follow grid lines - so I think that research into what human beings really need is extremely important and that has been in many ways neglected.

How do you respond to criticism about computer-aided design and its relation to causing architects and urbanists to feel uncertain about their future role?

As stated by several scientists, technology develops today so fast that we lose the ability to understand it. Our ability to keep pace with it is rather limited which is a problem. And this is why I understand that architects and urbanists may feel uncertain. I understand that this is a threat or it is perceived as a threat but we cannot stop development. From my point of view, we have two options. Either to embrace technological development and go with it, really try to find out what we can do with it in a meaningful way and be a part of how this is going to change our profession or simply stay aside. When standing aside the danger is to become obsolete. Let me put it this way, with technologies like Internet or cell phones and many others, we have witnessed rapid development and we learned to embrace them. The opposite we can’t imagine our lives without them.

Today if you do not have an email account or a cell phone, you are disconnected. This is why staying in the sideline is not going to be a real option for most of us.

What is your opinion on the position on Robotic Building (formerly known as Hyperbody) with respect to education in architecture and design in terms of satisfying the needs of today and shaping the future? Where does Robotic Building belong?

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I would say that the Robotic Building f.k.a Hyperbody education is very much at the forefront of developments in architecture with respect to the use of new technologies. That is the main focus and the explorations generally are about finding out the relevance of these technologies for architecture. Because in principle we are confronted with all these technologies and you can do this and that and many more other things so to say but what is the relevance? In which way do these technologies have an impact on architecture? In which way architecture eventually changes fundamentally through these technologies? These are basically the questions we are asking ourselves and this is what we encourage our students to explore, the potential of these technologies in architecture.

Why do you think some academics are less involved in this?

I assume, it is lack of expertise. Often I think that our students are challenged more than most students who go through a more conservative academic approach.

Because even developing the required skills to deal with the new technologies is an extra effort and then in addition to that to push and experiment the architectural side. It is a challenge. You have to embrace this challenge, if you want to go with it, otherwise it will be very difficult or even impossible. In principle the way I see it, our students are very dedicated students.

They are very inspired and inspiring to me so for me teaching them is a very enjoyable activity.

1-2. Source - Robotic Building (Formerly known as Hyperbody)

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How will this approach to architecture impact cities? Could this transform entire regions or countries?

Yes. I have to say I do believe that D2RP&O can have a big impact even in the developing countries. My experience with the students showed me these possibilities. As soon as we started using robots with them, upon graduating they opened their own offices and started to work themselves with robots. Our former students basically became our competitors.

For me, this is a confirmation that this technology is embraced by students who have been in touch with this technology and understand its potential. Because this technology frees the architect from the dependency on the contractor. You need material and you need a robot but then you can do what you need to do and not depend on a large industry that is eventually very slow picking up these developments.

To go back to the question, at the moment we are trying to move away from software, at least in certain areas, that is proprietary, and use open source. This could make our technology accessible to everybody.

Whenever I visit developing countries my observation is that the Western world is exporting technology that is outdated, we

know it does not work, and that makes these countries dependant on import of materials such as cement, etc. While these countries have their own materials, they have their own ways of building.

At the moment the university sends old computers to Africa and I was proposing to send not only refurbished computers but also robots and introduce them to these technologies, encourage them to become their own constructors and using their own autochthon ways of engaging with buildings and building construction.

I think this migration happening at the moment is exactly a response to the fact that western part of the world or the developed part of the world is often disrespectful towards what these people can do. So what is essential right now is to have a more respectful and more embracing attitude towards what they can do and instead of putting a way of building in front of them that we have been exercising in the past and making them dependant we should rather think of how they can be empowered to do what they want to do and thus make them independent and able to act on their own.

What may be the inf luence on people's social life and social structure? Do you think these developments in technology will result in a more of a borderless

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society throughout the world based on similar ways of building or the borders will still be there but in a more differently constructed way?

I think that this technology is empowering.

I feel that the technology is not going to be expensive in the future I think the whole economy is going to change and we are going to become more and more producers, not consumers. These technologies allow/ empower us to become producers. I often think that the D2RP&O system that we develop now will become accessible to everybody and people will be able to get/ rent some robots , modify a parametric model on the Internet to fit their needs and start to build.

So an average person will become a designer, programmer or as what you have said, a producer?

I do not think that average people are going to need a lot of programming in the future I have to say. In the last 10 years everything became more and more user friendly. My observation is that the students who start with us in masters-1 and continue all the way through graduation become experts; easily surpassing previous generation who surpassed their precedents, which is amazing to see. It goes fast and I assume that what at the moment seems

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still difficult is going to be easy in a short while. Even if you think of the cumbersome way you would have to program cell phones in earlier times today a child can do that. My 11-year-old-daughter is already using programming tools to program behaviors of figures interacting with each other in self-created movies involving virtual characters.

This also gives a little insight into the question of what we will do as architects and urbanists, because there is also the concern of losing control as the programs are doing everything?

I do not think losing control is of concern because you would not say when you have a pencil in your hand that you lose control just because the pencil or the brush are doing certain kind of lines or strokes. You know what the pencil can do that for you, just like the way you know what a brush can do for you. These are instruments. The same goes for computer programs. They can do certain things for you but they are not going to be able to do everything or for that matter anything without you. You are going to use your pencil, your brush,

your computer program or whatever you need to achieve something that otherwise would not have been possible to achieve.

If you use only pencil and ink to design a building, there are certain constraints and if you use computer software of some sort you still have them but on a completely different scale. I also say that from the perspective of the time I was a student.

When I was studying we were using pencils and ink pens. Little computer programs that we were experimenting with they did actually just do the same like you could do manually. The only difference was that if you wanted to correct something you did not have to use the physical eraser but the virtual one. In principle they were exactly the same. While now, processes are helping you to find answers to certain questions or develop alternative designs, etc. The computer is just a tool. It has constraints, limitations and potentials.

What do you think are the most exciting implementations right now?

What are you looking forward to working on?

What the next step for us is looking into human-robot collaboration.

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How is that different from HRI (Human-Robot Interaction)?

Well it is different in the sense that you need to identify what tasks are better and more easily implemented by humans versus what tasks are better implemented by robots and then develop a choreography of interaction that will accomplish a task.

And we are researching into it now as HRC is going to be the next step. •

3-4. Source - Robotic Building (Formerly known as Hyperbody)

SHRINKING CITIES A first world problem.

Looking at the current narrative in spatial planning and design one could be forgiven for thinking that the future is all about expanding cities. According to the UN, 7 in 10 people will be living in cities by the year 2050. This is a monstrous challenge. Yet, this huge task that lies ahead is overshadowing a less dramatic process, shrinkage. With the world population graphs more or less plateauing, the enormous growth of these cities is coming from migration, both internal and external. The question that arises from this is; what are these people leaving behind when they move to cities?

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by IJsbrand Heeringa MSc Urbanism TU Delft

Title Image: Lake Văcărești, Bucharest Source - Monika Novkovikj

atlantis In the developed world this topic is becoming more and more relevant. Cities in Europe, the US and Japan can no longer expect growth (UrbactII, 2013; McKinsey, 2016). On the contrary, the majority of the cities in the developed world are or will be facing shrinkage.

Why do cities shrink?

The literature surrounding the topic is not yet clear on the factors that lead to urban decline. However, there are strong correlative factors (ShrinkSmart, 2012; Wiechmann, 2008): (1) Economic restructuring; as our economies shift from one emphasis to the next, say from industrial economy to a service economy, certain infrastructures and clusters become obsolete. This can have dramatic effect upon those regions or cities that have devoted a disproportionate amount of development to a single economic sector. Many cities in the developed world have had to cope with this (Wiechmann 2008, Wiechmann 2012, Wiechmann and Pallagst 2012, URBACTII 2013, Institute 2016). Think of cities like Detroit or cities from the Ruhr-area in Germany.

(2) Demographic change; as people gain mobility across internal and external borders, they disperse unevenly across countries and regions. What is more, is that as our society develops, fundamental patterns change such as household typology, fertility, and aging.

(3) (Sub)urbanisation; as our urban structures develop the type of growth we choose will have a huge influence . For instance, the US suburbanisation has been destructive for downtowns, whereas the European flight to the cities is leaving the countryside barren.

(4) Political and environmental transformations; movement of people is often triggered or catalysed by specific events in politics and our environment.

Think of the fall of the Berlin Wall, which caused a major migration from the east to the west, or the ending of civil conflicts in Northern Ireland and Northern Spain.

Which cities?

The type of cities that are most affected by this phenomenon are mainly the smaller second- and third-tier cities, of Europe, Japan and the US. They are relatively low on national agendas and therefore get far less attention than their more successful counterparts, making it increasingly

difficult to mobilise action. These are cities like Sheffield, Dresden, or Youngstown.

Naturally, the situation in the countryside is even more dire. Here shrinkage can be even more severe, yet resources to tackle shrinkage remain few and far between.

What does it mean to shrink?

Shrinkage largely impacts the economic performance of a city. According to a recent study conducted by McKinsey (2016) up to 60% of the GDP of cities is generated by their population growth. Furthermore, it can damage virtually every other domain of urban planning and governance. Social isolation can occur due to selective outmigration of the young and educated.

Business and employment opportunities can start to dwindle as no labour force is left.

Social infrastructures like education can no longer function effectively due to dropping numbers of pupils and available staff.

Technical infrastructures become redundant and relative maintenance becomes increasingly expensive. Municipal tax bases dwindle leaving increasingly less space to manoeuvre (ShrinkSmart, 2012). However, though shrinkage can severely damage a city or region it can also open up space for non-traditional land uses that would have been too expensive in more competitive land markets.

Prospects for spatial planning and design Urban geographers have been working on this topic now for some time, gaining more insight as to why and how cities shrink though they are apt to point out that it poses a challenge for spatial planning and design. Strategy suggestions are still relatively underdeveloped. What we can do as planners and designers appears to be still largely reliant on our own creativity.

A substantial number of voices in the planning circles are calling for smart regrowth. A couple of case studies have been concerned with a select group of cities that have managed to turn their fortunes around, cities such as Leipzig, Bilbao, and Torino. However, though we do stand to learn from their examples, the basic fact is that unless the macro-trends of urbanisation turn around, shrinkage shall remain a negative-sum game. Whatever is won by one city or region will be lost by another. What is more, the consequences of planning for a regrowth that does not succeed can lead to a severe waste of resources (Wiechmann, & Pallagst, 2012).

The second dead-end is immigration.

Especially in Europe, the influx of migrants has often been hailed the solution to

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Europe’s falling birth rates and aging population. Leaving aside the political nightmare that would ensue once the governments of Europe start filling theirs sometimes two digit negative growth gaps with immigrants, the influx of migrants does in no way map on to the most severe shrinking cities. Like the rest of us, they are drawn to settle in the growth poles of the continent, in other words capital and first-tier cities, which aren’t facing mayor shrinkage to being with.

So what should we do? One of the most important tasks of the spatial practitioner is to safeguard the quality of the environment.

We need to figure out how we can maintain an acceptable living and quality standard on a shoestring budget. Rethinking and recycling existing structures will be vital in achieving this.

We should work together with engineers and geographers to figure out where we can expect the consequences of decline. How can we actively bring down infrastructures and housing stocks to the minimum, so as to prevent perforations as in the case of Detroit? But most importantly we need to remain open to options. Many cities have made great steps, owning up to shrinkage and looking to the future with realism and pragmatism. But only focusing on realism and damage control will leave us blind to the potential that shrinkage brings with it. Laying bare this potential is our prime strength as planners and designers. Moreover, the ability to identify this potential will be critical to mobilize resources towards these shrinking cities and regions. The ability to look beyond decline will be of crucial importance to redefine the shrinking cities of Europe, Japan, and the US. • References Institute, M. G. (2016). Urban world: Meeting the demographic challenge. URBAN WORLD. J. Woetzel, McKinsey Global Institute: 48.

URBACTII (2013). From crisis to choice: re-imagining the future in shrinking cities. Cities of Tomorrow-Action Today.

H. Schlappa and W. J. V. Neil. 5, Rue Pleyel, 93283 Saint-Denis, France, URBACTII: 56.

Wiechmann, K. M. P. T. (2012). “Urban shrinkage in Germany and the USA – A comparison of transformation patterns and local strategies.” International Journal of Urban and Regional Research: 38.

Wiechmann, T. (2008). “Errors Expected — Aligning Urban Strategy with Demographic Uncertainty in Shrinking Cities.” International Planning Studies 13(4): 15.

Wiechmann, T. and K. M. Pallagst (2012). “Urban shrinkage in Germany and the USA: A Comparison of Transformation Patterns and Local Strategies.”

International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 36(2): 261-280.

Colophon

ATLANTIS Magazine by Polis | Platform for Urbanism and Landscape Architecture Faculty of Architecture, TU Delft Volume 28, Number 1, October 2017 Editors-in-Chief IJsbrand Heeringa (content) Selina Abraham (layout) Public relations Alexandra Farmazon Board Representative Karishma Asarpota

Editorial Team Gaila Costantini, Nagia Tzika Kostopoulou, Michael de Beer, Turkuaz Nacafi, Aikaterina Myserli Editorial Address Polis, Platform for Urbanism Julianalaan 134, 2628 BL Delft Office: 01 West 350 tel. +31 (0)15-2784093 www.polistudelft.nl atlantismagazinetudelft@gmail.com Printer Drukkerij Teeuwen Atlantis appears four times a year.

Number of copies: 475

This issue has been made with great care; authors and redaction hold no liability for incorrect/ incomplete information. All images are the property of their respective owners. We have tried as hard as we can to honour their copyrights.

ISSN 1387-3679

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