Atlantis magazine 30.1 (re)genesis - special issue

COMMITTEES 2019

FROM THE BOARD

ATLANTIS VOL # 30

We could not be as visible as we are without the great effort of a lot of active students.

With their help and the support of our partners and sponsors, 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.

Dear Polis members,

From last year’s theme ‘territor(e)alities’ which addressed the concept of spatiality arising from various networks of processes, we shift the focus to the outset of the ideas, movements and instruments that inform these processes. The aim is to bring attention to the birth of changes. Hence the word ‘Genesis’.

POLIS BOARD Tapasya Mukkamala - Chairman Sankarnath PM- Secretary Mark Scholten - Treasurer Ingrid Staps - Atlantis Tanvi Gupta - PR Oumkaltoum Boudouaya - PR Outreach

JOIN US 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

SUBSCRIBE Not yet a member of Polis? For only €17.50 a year as a student of TU Delft, €30 for individual membership, or €80 for professional organizations you can join our network! You will receive our Atlantis Magazine four times a year, a monthly newsletter, possibility to publish and access to all events organized by Polis.

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

We are proud to welcome the first issue of Atlantis for the new academic year.

This issue is not just a regular issue, it is a celebration. This year Polis and Atlantis celebrate their 30th anniversary with the theme “genesis”, which translates to inception, birth, beginning of something new. We are thankful for this celebratory issue of Atlantis, which is a beautiful synthesis of the past, and it gives fascinating insights into trends and changes that Polis and Atlantis have lived through. It is also an introduction to a year full of amazing events and positive outlooks on the world.

Furthermore, we wholeheartedly want to welcome all our new members of the 2019-20 batches of Urbanism, Landscape architecture and the European Postmaster in Urbanism. We are happy for your enthusiasm for our committees and activities. That being said, our committees always welcome new enthusiastic members.

So if you have great ideas that you would love to share, do not hesitate to contact the committee.

If you have difficulty choosing a committee to join because you think all of them are incredibly interesting or if running a student association is something you are interested in do not hesitate to contact someone in the board of Polis because the initial look-out for board members for the next year has already begun.

This magazine is scheduled to be released right around the time of the Urbanism and Landscape Week 2019, ‘[Un]Ctrl+Shift’.

The board would like to thank the UL Week committee for their incredible work, and we hope this year's UL Week will again be a great success.

Warm Regards from the Polis Board 2019 Tapasya Mukkamala, Sankarnath P M, Mark Scholten, Ingrid Staps, Tanvi Gupta and Oumkaltoum Boudouaya

To start off, Atlantis takes a journey in time through the lens of ‘genesis’ with a focus on renewal or (re)birth of perceptions and practices over time. The theme itself is then viewed under different lenses – from a broad perspective of global phenomena, to a scaled down point of view of local implications, and through methods and tools that could aid the birth of new planning and design perspectives, with the stories unfolding little by little across the issues. These perspectives are based on the way the shift unfolds, the agents and processes involved in the shift and the extent to which they influence contemporary urbanism and landscape architecture.

In addition, the theme of ‘genesis’ wants to celebrate the positive experience of the magazine Atlantis, and the student association Polis, which celebrates its 30th anniversary this academic year. In this sense, ‘genesis’ is not intended as a break from the past, but rather as a metamorphosis, or a shift from it. Many things have happened in the context of our university, our discipline and our world.

This anniversary represents an opportunity to critically reflect on those changes and to start anew.

Interested in contributing?

Email us at: atlantismagazinetudelft@gmail.com

Vol. 30

Editorial T h is i s s u e ma r k s t h e b egi n n i n g of our jour ney throug h ‘ge ne s is ’. Volum e 3 0 , I s s u e 3 0 . 1 – ‘ ( r e ) ge n e s i s ’ , a s the word s ug ge s ts, is a bla s t from the p a s t o f t he me s t h a t s u r fa c e d ove r t he ye a r s. It s e e ks to e ng a ge its re a d e r s in d is c u s s i o n s o n r e l eva n t t o p i c s cove re d in the la s t 30 ye a r s of its exis te nce.

We d e l ve i n t o t h e e me r ge n c e o f p a tte r ns a nd p a ra d ig m s in p la nning a nd d es ig n t h at h ave b e e n d i s c u s s e d a cros s the volum e s in the jour ney of A t la n t i s s t a r t i n g fr o m i t s i n c eption, the inte ntion be ing to op e n up a d ia log u e o n t h e r e l evan c e t h a t thos e the m e s hold tod ay a nd the ir evolution over t i me. I t w i l l b e fo c u s i n g on the id e a s tha t have e m e rge d , the one s tha t h ave b e e n ab an d o n e d , an d t h o se tha t have evolve d for the be tte r or for wor se. T h e ai m i s t o s t r i n g t oge the r the re cur ring the m e s a long na r ra tive s t h a t o f fe r a p o s s i bl e s t ar t i n g p oint for the conte nt of the following is s ue s.

T h is e d i t i o n o f A t l a n t i s fe a t u r es a r ticle s on va rious top ics tha t p rovid e ins ig h t s o n d i f fe r e n t i n t e r p r e t ations of concep ts, ta king exa m p le s from t h e rep o s i t o r y o f t h e ma ga z i n e. S om e of the line s of e nquir y re la te to worldv i ew s an d e me r g i n g t r e n ds s uch a s te m p ora r y urba nis m , new e ne rg y la nd s c a p e s a n d meg a r eg i o n s tha t a re fre que nting conte m p ora r y d is cus s ions, wh ile o t h e r s p l a c e e mp h as i s o n exis ting notions, s uch a s infor m a lity, future c it ies, l a n d s c a p e e c o l og y an d a r t, viewe d und e r d if fe re nt le ns e s.

T h is i s s u e al s o fe at u r e s a n ew s e ction of a r ticle s from our a lum ni, for m e r m em b e r s o f Po l i s an d A t l a n t i s, who s ha re the ir p a s t exp e rie nce s from be ing a p a r t o f t h e t e am a n d t h e fa c u lty, a nd the work they d id d uring the ir te nure.

T h ey a l s o d i s c u s s t h e i r c u r r e n t work a nd a chieve m e nts in p ra ctice.

I n t h e u p c o mi n g i s s u e s w i t h i n this volum e, we will p re s e nt d if fe re nt p er sp e c t i ve s o n p l a n n i n g meg a reg ions, following the a r ticle in this volum e, t it led ‘ M E G A : Sh ap i n g o f t h e Gre a te r Bay Are a ’. The a im is to unrave l the na r ra t i ve ac r o s s t h e i s s u e s, i nvolving inp uts from p rofe s s or s a nd work d one by stu d e n t s t o h i gh l i g h t a l t e r n a tive a p p roa che s to reg iona l p la nning.

T h e t h e me o f ( r e ) ge n e s i s i s exem p lifie d eve n in the vis ua l s tr ucture a nd a es t h e t i c o f t h e mag az i n e, ad op ting a tim e line a s the m od e of exp re s s ion of rev is i t i n g t h e p as t an d fo l l ow i n g Atla ntis ’s jour ney till now. We wis h you a h a p py r e ad i n g !

E d it o r s - i n - C h i e f K av ya K a lya n (c o nte n t ) S t ef a n o A gl i a t i (layo u t ) Po lis B o a rd Rep r e s e n t a t i ve I ng rid St ap s

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ATLANTIS by1 Kavya Kalyan MSc Urbanism TU Delft

Archiprix 2020

In October, the best graduation projects from the Faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment were selected and exhibited at the BK Expo. Out of the 45 pre-selected projects, the students that represented the Urbanism and Landscape Architecture tracks, were Zonghao Wei, Felipe Chavez Gonzalez, Preetika Balasubramanian, Diego Moya Ortiz, Ranee Wan-Yee Leung, Catalina Rey Hernandez, Elissavet Markozani and Aditya Athreya Rao. From the 45 projects, nine were chosen to represent TU Delft at the Dutch Archiprix, the annual design competition.

A jury consisting of six members carried out the selection process, which consisted of Dick van Gameren (Dean), Roberto Cavallo (Director of Education), Paul Vermeulen (Architecture), Caroline Newton (Urbanism), Ana Roders Pereira (Architectural Engineering + Technology) and Kamiel Klaasse (member from Architecture and the Built Environment in practice).

The projects that were selected for the Dutch Archiprix 2020 are: • A Threshold of Evanescence for the Women of Bousbir by Rebekah Tien • Amstel III – The Reuse City: Implementing urban mining as a tool to transform vacant office buildings, reusing 100% of the existing building components

by Dominik Lukkes • Community in the time of market economy by Gonzalo Zylberman • The Space of Dynamic Informality by Jiayun Xu • KNIL Magazijnen, The Creative and Learning Cluster of Plastic Waste: An alternative approach to heritage adaptive re-use in Bandung, Indonesia by Electra Pangalou • Sólido Líquido Lítico - A river garden for Bogotá by Silvia Leone • Permeable borders - Addressing multidimensional conflicts between polarized communities in Rio de Janeiro

by Felipe Chaves Gonzalez • The Zone of Disassembly - Unveiling the hidden flows of e-waste by Martin Kolev • Stadsloket ’t Noord by Hellmer Rahms Martin-Crespo 6

NEWS

October 2019

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ATLANTIS [un]Ctrl+Shift Urbanism and Landscape Week 2019 by1 Jahnavi Bhatt MSc Urbanism TU Delft

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NEWS Greetings for the day! We are happy to introduce you to the ‘Urban and Landscape Week’ 2019, one of the biggest annual symposiums hosted by the faculty, which is entirely organized by Urbanism and Landscape architecture students of the Faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment of TU Delft.

The UL Week is an event of intensive discussion, debates and presentations, which focuses on different themes that affect the

October 2019 built environment. It provides a platform for collaborative and multidisciplinary engagement by inviting students, researchers and faculty members from not just different specialized faculties within the TU Delft, but also from organizations within Europe and overseas.

Urbanism and Landscape Week 2019: “(Un)Ctrl+Shift” will focus on ‘transitions’ as our main theme. Cities worldwide are facing socio-economic, ecological, and

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technological transitions which would affect the dynamics of the urban environment.

The different activities of the event will explore the existing trends that are transversal to the domain of Urbanism and to assess which factors should be reinforced in order to allow positive changes in our cities.

The plan is to further discuss the three aspects of shifts: shift of habitat, shift of societal-systems, shift of tools.

Shenzhen New Delhi Mumbai

Bogotà

by

Ingrid Staps MSc Urbanism TU Delft

Articles across time and space is a visualisation of the locations written about in articles over the last 20 years. The map shows a synthesis of over 120 issues between 1999 and now. You can see that through time, a strong internationalisation took place.

International information sources became more easily accessible, and this affected the scope of the Atlantis articles. As time progressed the scope of Atlantis articles got broader. At first most of the articles were concerning Dutch cities, now a large part of the articles is focussing on international and even intercontinental areas. A majority is still about European cities, but an up and coming favourite focus area is Asia. This phenomenon is mostly consistent with the rise in the number of Asian students that are in Urbanism, Landscape Architecture and EMU (European Postmaster in Urbanism). This division of focus areas has brought new light and fresh perspectives into the magazine, and we hope to continue broadening our horizon.

Maastricht Hangzhou

The Ne

S

Cairo

Meertensgroeve Hungary Russia Warsaw Hilversum Tokyo

Latvia Helsinki Rotterdam Zuid Hengchun Louisville Enspel

Hebron

Portland

Alexandria

Moscow

Am

Sofi

Iran MayaBa

Rotterd Ber Cancun Holland Somalia Gdansk

India Egypt

Czeck Republic Pakistan

NorthSea

Arcosanti

Venezuela

Zeeland

Tamil Nadu

Colombia

Singapore

Lithuania Kenya

Valparaiso Korea

United

Turkmenistan Ba

Buenos Aire Elis

1999

1. World map of articles 1999-2019

Pond

Bogota

North Holland

Natural Earth. (2018). Countries | Natural Earth. Retrieved 20 October 2019, from https://www.naturalearthdata.com/ downloads/50m-cultural-vectors/50m-admin-0-countries-2/

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Fukushima Sydney

Thessaloniki Peñalolén Merkato Lalibel

Bangladesh Islamabad

References

Tayuking

Hispaniola Island

Republic Of Dominica

Copenhagen

Karachi Shenzen 's-Hertogenbosch Zaanstad

Alm Tehran Eindhove Terschelling Yongsan

Madrid

2019

Spijkenisse

Latin America

500

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Greenland United Arab Emi Nam An Khanh

Time and Space

Delft Estonia

a

Ahmedabad The Hague Palestine Greece Lebanon Paris Havana GangeRiver

etherlands

dicherry

Samso

Schiphol Airport

Bangkok

Goudsberg

Mekelpark

Taiwan

Town Athens China Istanbul London Venice Los Angeles Sweden Poland rlin

e

Bam Cape Africa

Arnhem

Khorgas

Georgia

Oakland

msterdam

ia

Basel

Deventer

Bergamo

Usa

dam

ay

Barangaroo Finnmark

Skopje

d Kingdom

Japan

Black Sea

Hanoi

Chile

Jakarta

Petare

Miami

Utrecht

Thailand

Sarajevo

Volos

Freiburg

Bole

Harar

Chicago Bucharest Germany Shanghai Kowloon GlobalSouth

Casablanca

Ulft

Antartica World

Teheran

Brazil

Seoul

Syria Toronto

Transylvania

Craiova Guayana Region Lesvos

Kedarnath

Mexico City n Lamu angalore

Hong Kong es

New Orleans

Morocco Austria

Tohoku

Limburg Dubai Prague Rio De Janeiro Europe mere New York Beijing en Accra Tirana Indonesia

Brussels CaĂŻro

irates Bodrum

California Myanmar Abu Dhabi

Caracas

Mars

Kabul

Turin

St. Petersburg

New Jersey Zwolle Bagdad Spanje New Delhi Dehui City 11Budapest Addis Ababa

Denver

Vienna

Nairobi Westland

South Africa Gent Tilburg Croatia Malmo

Belgrade

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POLIS 30 years Brings back good old memories...

Polis was the result of ‘a battle time’… As a run-up of the foundation, a major cost reduction was proposed by the faculty board that would jeopardize the quality of our educational program.

We revolted, protested, wrote letters to heads of the urban departments of Amsterdam, Rotterdam and the BNS (the Dutch Professional Organisation of Urban Designers). They all supported us in our concern.

Letters to Polis

The faculty council meeting was packed with students as never before and we had the opportunity to share our opinion about the effect of the cost reduction for the unique field of urbanism. As a result of our actions, the board withdrew the proposal.

In all those discussions, actions, questions ‘what we wanted and missed’, a much-heared need was to ‘close the gap’ between students and the professional world and so we created one: ‘Polis, platform for urbanism’. The second-year I became a member of the board (10 members!).

The society came to live with its 200 members as we organised lectures, discussions, excursions, an internship office, published the magazine Atlantis and organised the international conference ‘Trains, tracks and town planning’. In those years urbanism got a lively face and voice, again, in the faculty.

After my graduation in 1992 and working for the faculty, I was selected for a post-graduate course at the ‘Institute European d’Architecture et Amenagement’ in Rouen (France). There, I met an international group of Architects and Economists where we shared our visions about Architecture and Urbanism. It turned into a dynamic dialogue when the topic turned upon the importance of urbanism and the education of urban designers/ planners. It was a kind of flash-back because I had the same discussions at the faculty before Polis was founded... The (landscape-) architects thought they could relate to the urban tissue and issues only by their designer skills... The difference in the designs presented was obvious: the architect centred the design only on the building, while the designs I

"That’s what urbanism is all about: questioning, exploring, focusing and cooperating, being aware of everyone’s disciplinary power and use that to design a durable and human solution." presented were an integrated vision where the designed building became part of the urban and in some cases even regional tissue. My design was placed in an environmental, cultural, economic and political context. That is for me the strength of urbanism and what urbanism is all about.

Unfortunately, we missed in the ’90s, in a lot of cases, the ability to present this specific strength in the development of the VINEX-locations.

‘Multidisciplinarity’ was degenerated into identityfree and un-approachable’, as we wrote in 2011, looking back and learning from the mistakes, as workgroup Integrative Capability in a manifest of the BNSP. While the (landscape-)architects and urban planners were in crisis because of the economic crisis, I was questioning and exploring the roots and role of urbanists in a new era by lecturing and writing articles. An human and urban response from the urban planner/designer is much needed to foresee that because of the excesses of liberalization, capitalism, ‘market’ and individualism.

This is what I express in my (re-)designs. Even in the realisation of a new health insurance, in which I am involved, I use this integrative capability to its maximum. Because that’s what urbanism is all about: questioning, exploring, focusing and cooperating, being aware of everyone’s disciplinary power and use that to design a durable and human solution.

Rober t Geelen Po l i s B o a r d M e m b e r

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Letters to Polis

Meeting in the harbour quarter in Deventer

Dear Polis,

"I think it's wonderful how Polis was founded by a group of enthusiastic students [...] and how Polis still exists in 2019. [...] Polis and fellow students helped me to be curious"

Letters to Polis

Looking back at my time with Polis (1995-1998), brings a smile on my face. I think it’s wonderful how Polis was founded by a group of enthusiastic students (and I think teachers as well), and how Polis still excists in 2019. Together with other students I organised lectures, excursions and was chairman for a year. Being a part of Polis thought me a wider perspective on urbanism, gave me a good time and friendships. I guess urbanism is about designing, planning and organising, but also about partnerships, inspiration and human interest.

When i started working as an urban designer in a small office in Delft urban design was mainly about designing the city from an aesthetic point of view. The project was discussed with architects, developers and (local) government.

Since then I have worked in different offices for approximately 10 years and then switched to working at the local government as an urban planner. During the previous global crisis I had the chance to work on the harbour quarter in the city of Deventer. Due to the crisis and the physical en social complexity of the location we had to develop a new approach for area development. The starting point was not a plan, we started with creating a network of people/entrepreneurs/investors who actually wanted to live/work/recreate in the area.

They were not the usual actors like developers and architects, but a variaty of people and parties.

Our role as projectteam (local government and urban planning office “We Love the City”) was mainly to kick-start the developing process and to link initiatives with the area and with each other.

It takes skills to listen, understand how a society works, see opportunities and inspire.

Looking back (I’m feeling really old when I wright this) I think Polis and fellow students helped me to be curious. I think it’s important to be creative, not only as a designer, but especially in our approach towards planning and processes.

Jan Pieter Romijn Po l i s M e m b e r a n d C h a i r m a n , 1 9 9 5 - 1 9 9 8 Senior urban planner at the beautiful city of Kampen 13

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Polis 30 years Agglomeration-programs, station districts, magistralen When I was in the board of Polis in 1997, with JanPieter Romijn and Marjolein Peters, we organized a debate lecture with David Jokinen, a celebrated American urban traffic planner, who advised The Hague and Amsterdam in the 1960s. He was invited at another event nearby and was interested to come to Delft for a lecture before flying back to the USA. As the issue of traffic in the city was one of my main interests, I thought it was a great occasion to organize an event about the fascinating interaction between urbanism and mobility. It was just striking that, except for Jan-Pieter, Marjolein and some lost students, nobody came. Obviously no-one else was interested in this topic. Even more striking were Jokinens ideas about urbanism and traffic. His vision were motorways crossing through beautiful landscapes and dense cities, still proud about the Utrechtsebaan, a realised part of his “Jokinin-Plan” for The Hague. It was the complete opposite of what I had in mind.

Interdisciplinary teamwork

similar projects. Not only in Switzerland, where we made visions and programs for regions such as Basel, Berne, St. Gallen and Neuchâtel, but also in other European countries, from Cologne in Germany to Lviv in Ukraine.

Referendum and participation As traffic needs lots of space, integrally planning urbanism and mobility also plays a central role at urban densification strategies, which cities and communities in Switzerland have to develop since the Swiss population voted against urban sprawl in a referendum in 2013. For the city of Zug we developed a strategy for a compact city with a minimal role for car traffic. This does not only create space for large urban infill potentials, but also makes possible new parks, playgrounds and green streets with lots of trees, supporting a pleasant city climate. As participation is an integral part of urban development projects in Switzerland, we work with well-understandable and inspiring images, which at the same time make possible personal interpretations. Despite new technologies and media, the old and proved hand drawings, learned in Delft, turn out to be most successful.

Letters to Polis

This brings me to Lakshmis request of writing, on the occasion of Polis’ 30th birthday (congratulations!), about my practice and the work I do. Since 18 years I live and work in Zurich in Switzerland, were I have, since 12 years, an urban design office with 7 collaborators from different disciplines (urbanism, architecture, landscape design, traffic planning, sociology). Thanks to this interdisciplinary teamwork we have won over 20 urban design competitions, for housing districts, business and urban transformation sites, cooperative housing developments, touristic alpine areas, town centers and public space design.

However, the integral planning of urbanism and traffic, and doing it in a complete different way than David Jokinen, is still a personal interest where I and my office are often working on. At least in Switzerland, a paradise for future-oriented urban mobility, it has priority on the political agenda.

Swiss Urbanism Award

Sophisticated Agglomeration-programs As the challenge begins at regional scale, we develop strategies for many urban regions. We have worked on so-called Agglomeration-programs, a sophisticated innovative Swiss planning instrument dealing with integral urban development and mobility projects and combining ambitious overall urban visions with fast, cost-efficient, high quality realisations. When these programs were introduced in 2007 we developed the agglomeration program for the French and Swiss urban region of „Grand Genève“, which won the 8th European Urbanism Award in 2010. Since, we are asked for many

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On a more local district scale, we often work on the urban revaluation of station areas and main traffic arteries. We developed masterplans for the central station districts of Geneva, Fribourg and Berne, with 250´000 passengers/day even larger than Amsterdam Central Station. We also designed new tram lines in the suburbs of Geneva, Berne and Zürich, mostly projects defined by the Agglomeration-Programs. In Bregenz we turned a boring access road into an urban life line and with our project „urban boulevard“ for a main traffic road in Dietikon, a suburb of Zürich, we won the Swiss Urbanism Award (Stadtlandpreis) in 2018.

This was one of the reasons why our office was invited at the International Bauforum in Hamburg last August, a much talked-about architecture

Letters to Polis

event, taking place about every 10 years. This time it dealt with the future of the „Magistralen“. These main streets structurize the city, but are dominated by car traffic. We were one of the 13 specialized foreign offices defining new integral guidelines for the revaluation of these urban spaces. The event, during one week, was full of international urbanism prominence. It showed that, even in Germany, dealing with sustainable and futureoriented mobility in the city is a main urban planning issue now.

No more Jokinen-Plan When I visited Holland last year and saw all these new motorways, I had to think about Jokinen again. Either he got active again in urban and traffic planning in Holland, thinking new motorways can solve our mobility problems. Or still nobody is interested in an innovative handling of mobility and urbanism. So, I hope in the future Polis and the TU Delft will have more success to draw attention to the issue of urban mobility. And maybe it is not such a good idea to talk about the Jokinin-Plan as best practice example. I could rather advice the Swiss approach.

H a n v a n d e We t e r i n g Po l i s B o a r d M e m b e r, 1 9 9 7 Va n d e We t e r i n g A t e l i e r f ü r Städtebau GmbH, Zurich, S w i t z e r l a n d ( www.wetering.ch)

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Disvover, reflect and most of all, have fun!

Dear Polis, I had long been in doubt: should I enroll in Architecture or in History? The practicality of being an architect finally sealed the deal. While immersing myself in Delft I discovered Urbanism and I knew I had found what I was looking for. Here, creativity, bringing different interests together and societal challenges combined.

Letters to Polis

During the final years in university I joined the Polis association. I participated in the education committee, the Atlantis team, and joined the board. I was triggered by the opportunity to relfect on urbanism as a profession. A break from classes and credits, instead thinking about what went on in the profession outside the university walls and most of all gaining new insights from working together and from our professional board members. One defining moment was the international excursion to Copenhagen and Malmo. We visited inspiring projects, gained insight into the effect of investing in public transport, or into the opportunities the Sond bridge brought to the region and of course just crossing the city by bike and visiting bars.

Other good memories include ordering pizza at the end of the day while debating our next activity, article or anything.

During this time I had the opportunity to assist professor Han Meyer on several books and expositions about urban development. It will come as no surprise that this was a fantastic time and to be able to see up close how these projects come to life. To meet with city planners and to work on sketches and historical analysis was very educational. After graduation I joined Atelier Quadrat as urban designer and quickly realized I was a long way from being an actual professional.

I got to work on different neighborhoods and squares throughout the Netherlands. The icing on the cake was being able to see designs I worked on

be actually realized. During this time I also studied for a Master of Architectural History. It was always on my mind.. After all, it’s better to have done that instead of having regrets.

My next step was to delve deeper into policy and politics. Where does an assignement for a specific area originate? The Province of Zuid-Holland offered me the opportunity to work on spatial development on a longer timeframe and at a certain distance from the daily urban reality. The connections between the different levels of scale, the lobby surrounding political decisions and the dfifference between influence and power stood out as fascinating elements of that period.

Now I work for AnteaGroup and focus on urban development from a planning and design perspective for a multitude of clients.

The spectrum runs from national government departments to housing corporations and developers, from abstract and strategical levels to small and practical projects. All of this, while being able to draw upon the ready-to-use knowledge of an engineering and consulting firm and the ability to quickly analyse complex problems.

Discovering interests from within different stakeholders - design, public service and consulting - led me to make choices out of understanding different worlds around the same table, all working on bringing an idea to life.

Disvover, reflect and most of all, have fun!

Annemarie Hatzman Po l i s B o a r d M e m b e r, A t l a n t i s c o m m i t t e e m e m b e r, Education committee member

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Letters to Polis

Meeting in the harbour quarter in Deventer

Meeting in the harbour quarter in Deventer

Meeting in the harbour quarter in Deventer

Meeting in the harbour quarter in Deventer

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(previous page) 1.

The communal urban densification strategy of Zug (Stadtraumkonzept Zug) reduces the role of car traffic. This creates large potentials for qualitative urban infill developments, with many new green public spaces. Thanks to understandable hand-drawings a constructive participation was possible (source: Van de Wetering, City of Zug).

2.

During the International Bauforum in Hamburg last August we worked on new concepts for the Magistralen, the main traffic arteries of the city. We proposed an iterative process with a 10 meter long working model (image: Van de Wetering).

3.

This year we won the urban design competition for the station district of Kehrsatz, a small town near Berne (image: Van de Wetering).

4. urbanism and mobility, we also do other things. This year for instance we made the masterplan for the new international “Museumsquartier” in Berne, with an investment of about 250 million euros (source: Van de Wetering, City of Berne).

5.

Unfortunately the Dutch urban planning market is very closed, introverted and not accessible for foreign offices. Maybe this is one of the reasons why abroad Dutch urbanism is not much talked about.

At the moment we only advice the “Rotterdams Woongenootschap” about cooperative housing (image: Rotterdams Woongenootschap).

atlantis

Informality

by

Paulius KliuÄ?ininkas Msc Urbanism TU Delft

What image comes to one’s mind while considering informal settlements? Is it plywood, corrugated metal, sheets of plastic, or cardboard boxes? Is that an image of unregulated urban environment or the traditional slums interpretation?

Over the previous Atlantis volumes this topic has been analysed several times, especially within the last ten years. It comes as no surprise that four of five articles were published only in recent issues. Meanwhile, the UN statistics show that a number of people living in informal settlements is increasing. It is the right time to ask ourselves, why we should consider informality in cities while studying at the university or working on official plans, strategies and overall visions of residential areas.

Informality in cities can be understood in several ways. Informal way of using space is also a part of our everyday life.

As Tapasya Mukkamala mentioned in an article in 2018, the main public space in India is the street, which is the most vital organ. One street can be used for a market, funeral, marriage or festival procession area, all in one day. However, today, usually open spaces are reconsidered and planned to become private because of rapid urbanization in cities. Hence, the informal use of public space has not been accounted for.

Informality has become synonymous with the definition by UN-HABITAT, which states that informal settlements are residential areas where: 1) inhabitants have no security of tenure vis-Ă -vis the land or dwellings they inhabit, with modalities ranging from squatting to informal rental housing, 2) the neighborhoods usually lack, or are cut off from, basic services and city infrastructure and 3) the housing may not comply with current planning and building regulations and is often situated in geographically and environmentally hazardous areas.

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Notwithstanding this definition, we need to look at informal settlements from a new lens. It is not limited to the biggest slums in India or the urban poor. This vision was argued in the issue 27.2 of the magazine.

The article is based on Ananya Roy's theories that encourages us to search for new geographies of territory and informal

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spaces. As the author puts forth Roy's “solidary economy” by Elmar Altvater. The views of informality as something that is professor presented the economic concept not a synonym of the poor, is deregulated which is based on “bottom-top” planning rather than regulated and that the state is principle . He argued that governments an informalized entity. The author mirrors 1 are too weak to tackle the problems in a Roy's understanding that informality is a formal top-down way and that it had to be mode of production of the space which dealt with locally through self-organisation. connects the separated geographies of Solidary economy can basically function in the slum and the suburb and is used as a democratic environment. However, the an expression of wealth and power (Roy, author criticizes Altvater’s vision as not fully A, 2005). This new way of perceiving developed since the theorist takes examples informality leads the observers to search for from dictatorship or semi-democratic a new definition of the phenomenon. countries (Pakistan, Brazil, some African countries) where grassroots organizations Several articles analyzed the term of have strong limits. The main problem is informality and the shifts in geographies that solidary economy is supposed to work of informality throughout the history of independently of the government according Atlantis. Only the Global South was taken to Altvater. However, the author argues into consideration. So what has changed in that such activities or organizations have the field of researching informal settlements to be formalized and cannot work without in ten years between the global economic the support of governments and other crisis and the current state? institutions in reality. He has provided solutions for empowerment, taking into 2009 - localized perspective, informality as account legal legislation, education, equal a tool to tackle the poor, search for relation partitioning of energy, interventions by between formal and informal. umbrella organisations, etc. These solutions 2017 - globalized perspective, search for are: the definition. Formal tools adaptation to always changing informal cities.

1 Set up central facilities and access to information, knowledge, training for Articles: equipped people.

2009 Karachi, Pakistan - Essay: Solidarity and the informal economy: the case of 2 Share business investments and Karachi - critique on neo-Marxist Elmar expenditures for workers.

Altvater's 'solidary economy'.

2017 Mumbai, India - New geographies of 3 Groups of people have to form alliances informality. with other informal economy workers.

2018 Petare, Venezuela - Contested informal city. Fig 2 4 Government also has to take its part by 2018 Global South - Informal Settlements formalizing initiatives and not stopping with Contested infrastructures. half successful projects.

2018 Bangalore, India - The Paradigm Shift: Indian Streets.

Despite the theory that solidary economy is a social state which is meant to balance One of the earliest essays in this topic capitalism, in some countries in the Global observed and criticized the concept of South, the formal system is structured and

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ruled after informal initiatives, sometimes used for illegal regulation. Nevertheless, bottom-up social practices, rooted deeply into planning practices can be considered to adopt it to different environments.

The insights from the previous authors suggest that the topic is not just revealed in older Atlantis magazines, but is also viewed from different angles. It is highly important to notice how informality crosses geographies and appears into elite areas, regulations and the authorities of the state. As it is evident, the evolution of such informal spatial characteristics leads to a new explanation of the meaning. There is also a futuristic element. How can we prepare for another economic crisis by using informality as a tool? Nevertheless, the contradiction between formality and informality in planning and reality of cities will affect the world and planners in a broader way in the coming decades.

References 1. Roy, Ananya 2005. Urban informality: toward an epistemology of planning. Journal of the American Planning Association, 71, 147-158 2. Erich Wolff, Informal Settlements Contested Infrastructures, 2018, Atlantis, vol. 29.2 3. Ignacio Cardona, Contested Infromal City, 2018, Atlantis, vol. 29.2 4. Tapasya Mukkamala, The Paradigm Shift: Indian Streets, 2018, Atlantis, vol. 29.1 5. Kritika Sha, New geographies of informality, 2017, Atlantis, vol. 27.2 6. Shirin Jaffry, Solidarity and the Informal Economy: The Case of Karachi, 2009, Atlantis, vol. 20.1

1. A city in flux, straddling the line between prosperity and decay. Mumbai, India. Source: Johnny Miller, Business Insider.

2. Favelas of Petare neighborhood. Caracas, Venezuela. Source : Vectordragonfly.

atlantis

FUTURE CITIES Mapping the possibilities

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by

Ganesh Babu R. P. & Surbhi Agrawal Msc. Urbansim TU Delft

The profession of Urban design has always been about predicting the future. Interventions in the urban space generally have a lifespan of a few decades. Urban Designers are thus always thinking about how the world will change over time, to try and integrate these potentialities in their designs.

However, few visionaries have tried to look far into the future. It is an attempt to see the evolution of society and with it, our cities. We see that these exercises of “future predictions” are driven by two major paradigm shifts.

One, technological advances (eg: the proliferation of the automobile and FL Wright’s Broadacre city) and two, perceived existential threats to civilisation (e.g.: rising sea levels and floating cities).

Whether or not these predictions become reality, they leave a lasting impact on the collective imagination of the profession. These exercises of “future predictions” continue to be a way in which urban designers see into the future.

Atlantis, over the past 30 years has documented some of these thoughts on the future.of cities Sometimes predictive and sometimes reflective. A few major narratives emerged in this attempt - Digital cities, Production landscapes, and Cities of exodus. We’ve tried to document these thoughts in a matrix that captures various aspects of future cities.

Have they been realised? If yes, how much of the concept has become a reality? How far into the future were they trying to see? What paradigm shift was at the heart of it?

1. New York, Adblock City. Source: Francesco Hashitha Moorthy.

2. 'Obama's' Ark'Siyu. Source: (Frank) Fan, Y5, MArch Architecture Unit 10, UCL.

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29.1 Machinic Utopias, Automated Futures

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Grace Abou Jaoude

The project addresses the potential spatial and social implications of automated technologies on urban space and planning in the specific context of the horticultural production centre in Westland, Netherlands.

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Interview with Bastiaan Kalmeyer In his lecture on Äutomated Eath - A near future reality"during the Urbanism week, he discussed the challenges and potentials of digitalisation for design and planning. The scope of interactive systems such as tacticle surfaces, responsive senors and architectural ecosystems is explored.

26.3 Imagining Fossil-Free futures over contempo rary petroleumscapes

24.2 Urban futures

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Prof dr ing Carola Hein

Integrating novel perspectives into technological debates and in the fields of urbanism and landscape architecture, seems particularly important in the light of contempo rary conversations.

PRODU CTION l a n D scapes 23.1 Facing forward Future city Rem Koolhas

24.2 On the digital and future reality

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DIG ITAL CIT IES

Wired and wireless networked computation is distributed throughout the urban environment to digitally augment the different aspects of daily active living. It is affecting how we live now and in the future.

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26.4 The New Future of a Smart City Driven India 3

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Kritika Sha

Excerpts from a keynote by Rem, where he focuses on the countryside left behind with the exodus of people back to the cities and it's socio-tech nological transformations,

Future Landscapes

Interviews with Mark Shepard and Chris Bosse

The exclusive nature of the smart city program, forgets the social structure.

The project, in its current form and serving a limited clientele cannot serve the aspirations of the people as a whole, which means that it should be overhauled to 'include' rather than 'exclude' the people of India.

Looking at future landscapes as manufactured landscapes and weather manipulation by discussing various possibilities of artificial landscapes and weather as a platform for urban design.

The duality of rural landscapes is explored as being serene and mystic while contrasting the relationships of various urban landscapes.

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18.2 Heterotopian Urbanism

22.4

Interview with Geoff Manaugh

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Wael Salah Fahmi

In the context of global cultural economy of space, capitalist hegemony over space is discussed as interweaving of virtuality into urban real life.

Cyberspace, with its nihilistic logic of early futurism, is viewed in so far as the fulfillment of its visionary dreams are necessarily deferred to a time that one can never witness.

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17.2 Urban design for future cities

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Gordon Li

A thought exercise in coming up with multiple possibilities of futures for consideration. The idea is to pre-empt potential challenges before any of those becomes reality. Most important of all, we should not be afraid to dream big – to come up with creative, wild and contro versial ideas like the floating city.

29.4 Future cities from the past Oumkaltoum Boudouaya

Thinking, theorizing and dreaming about tomorrow aims to influence the nature of the urban field at multiple scales while creating and supporting futures-based policy-makers, academics and practi tioners. What do changing technologies, demographics and lifestyles mean for our cities? How can emerging tools help future proof cities and their citizens?

“ CITI ES OF EXO DUS Future cities

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How do we design disaster-responsive cities in the light of recent natural disasters by looking at Archigram's utopian city models such as the plug-in city and the Walking City. In particular, the ideas for future coastal cities like suspended and underwater cities are discussed in context of rising sea-levels in the Netherlands.

Kavya Kalyan

The projects indicate that there is a clear intention of starting on a clean slate and in the most sustainable manner possible. How can this technology then be implemented, in a cost-effective way, to change the way we build on Earth? If implemented, what will be its social and economic consequences?

Considering the production of space as an intent driven endeavour, the article looks at the aspirations of different time periods to see what was envisioned for the urban landscape These visions like the versatile city, the endless city and the deconstructed city shaped the way in which we see the city environment. The retrospective look is needed to put forward the vision of what the future city should be.

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These are some of the thoughts that were captured in Atlantis through the years.

Readers should be aware that this is not a comprehensive representative sample of the profession of urban design as a whole.

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29.4 Home away from home

Ioana Ailincai

REFLEC TIONS

26.4

Ming Ming Ong

24.3 Urban utopias

Cities are constantly evolving. The rate of evolution in the past few decades has been quite fast. This has lent a certain level of unpredictability to how our cities would transform in the coming decades. This is exactly why we need more of these exercises of “future predictions” to see the possibili ties of future cities unfold in our collective imagination.

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If you have thoughts on how cities would transform in the future, write to us by scanning the QR code, we will feature some of them on our social media pages.

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atlantis

A World within the Gap Leaving room for ephemerality by1 Kavya Kalyan MSc Urbanism TU Delft

Within the last decade or so in the field of urbanism, prefixes such as ‘tactical’, ‘pop-up’, ‘guerilla’, ‘DIY’ and ‘bottomup’ have surfaced. This advocates the idea of temporary urbanism – small, low-cost interventions within the urban fabric in order to improve local neighbourhoods and public spaces. This theme has been covered a few times in Atlantis, increasing in frequency post-2008. While these tactics originate under different conditions, one can find common undertones between the examples that have been talked about. This article will highlight some common drivers, and spatial carriers and qualities of such interventions, as deducted from the articles, and highlight different perceptions of what it means for planning.

Drivers

change in times of crisis’ the authors adopt Holling’s view that times of greatest threat offer the greatest opportunity following the removal of many constraints, and state that in the context of a humanitarian crisis and economic paralysis in Venezuela, many bottom-up initiatives have indeed emerged as responses.

In Shenzhen, one of the ‘arrival’ cities in China (Saunders, 2010), the economic restructuring and industry upgrading from ‘World Factory’ to ‘World City’ has resulted in the transition of society from blue-collar to white-collar, and in turn, a change in needs and demands of the second-generation migrants in the city.

The author of ‘Da Lang Fever: A story about the potential of a self-organizing migrant society in Shenzhen, China’, talks about three elements that shape bottom-up strategies here – a floating population, a young society, and a distant, yet facilitating government.

The commonality between these circumstances seems to lie in the absence of provision and control that reflects the local realities of the context in discussion.

This would mean that temporary actions emergence when the planning authority fails to recognise the needs of the citizens, or is unable to cater to them, emphasising a gap between formal governance strategies and local demands.

Spatial carriers and qualities

Grand Stand

Monolith

Platform

Soto Module

Hammocks

Library Module

In Venezuela, what seems to be the result of the economic breakdown turns into the spaces that could possibly accommodate such interventions – vacant lots and run-

Benches

According to the author of ‘Pop-Up Urbanism: An ‘emergency’ approach to urban revitalisation or fundamental element of contemporary society?’, the

current practice of ‘pop-up urbanism’ arises from the need to bridge the gap between urban necessities and available provisions.

Rapid changes in demands are not often accompanied by rapid changes in the urban fabric, resulting in planning and reality being poles apart. He also emphasises the role that the presence of technological, educational and cultural clusters play in driving innovation and alternative uses of urban assets.

'Hot Dog' Stand

In the article ‘Tactical Urbanism in Venezuela: a possible strategy to promote

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down buildings. There are many examples of vacant spaces being transformed for temporary uses, one of which is Amsterdam’s NDSM wharf - a former shipyard. The authors of Da Lang Fever put forth the idea of using Shenzhen’s vacant industrial buildings from the economic transition to accommodate immediate needs of the public.

To sum up, it is these urban interstices, as the founders of aaa state, which are spaces that have temporarily eluded land development policies and are not controlled by formal frameworks, that have the greatest potential for displaying spontaneity and ephemerality.

In the article ‘From low-level rules to higher level sophistication’, the author concludes that there are some essential spatial preconditions that facilitate self-organisation such as durability and adaptability of elements in the environment, possibility of personalisation of space, transition zones between the public and private, and compactness of the neighbourhood. These spatial conditions enable the dynamics of the everyday to be manifest in public.

One could argue that temporary urbanism is a measure of how (in)efficient the governing system is in providing for its people. However, these temporary practices also empower people to take control of their immediate environs, providing them with means to adapt to different situations.

Through the ECObox project the founders of atelier d’architecture autogérée, in the article ‘At the ground level of the city’, stress on the value of openness, flexibility and modularity in planning and design, in citizen engagement in the temporary realm.

Conclusion

In addition, it brings individuality to the fore. From the examples discussed in the preceding issues, it is evident that the presence of ephemeral practices depends on the conditions of permanence in the built environment. It is, however, important to address how planning frameworks could be more adaptive to uncertainties in that it offers permanence and still allows room for the spontaneous and temporary.

References 1. Oriana De Lucia and Ricardo Avella, Tactical Urbanism in Venezuela: a possible strategy to promote change in times of crisis, 2018, Atlantis, vol. 28.4 2. Todor Kesarovski, Pop-up Urbanism: An 'emergency' approach to urban revitalisation or fundamental element of contemporary society?, 2014, Atlantis, vol. 25.1 3. Linda Vlassenrood, Da Lang Fever: A story about the potential of a self-organizing migrant society in Shenzhen, China, 2014, Atlantis, vol. 24.3 4. Constantin Petcou and Doina Petrescu, At the ground level of the city, 2012, Atlantis, vol. 23.2 5. Pieter van der Kooij, From low-level rules to higher level sophistication, 2009, Atlantis, vol. 20.1

1. Winning submission for the ‘Ciudad Río’ site. Source: Territorio h.u.b.

2. Small-scale architectural elements as public space activators. Source: Territorio h.u.b.

3. Pallet devices in ECObox project. Source: aaa 4. ECObox project. Source: aaa

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atlantis

ENERGY LANDSCAPES From extraction spaces to productive landscapes

by

Stefano Agliati MSc Urbanism TU Delft

Electricity, gas and oil are not the only energies that power our environment: an even more crucial form is our human energy. It needs to be recharged through recreation, and political empowerment.

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To the students currently starting their university studies in TU Delft, the concepts of sustainability and renewable energy production are not new. However, while their necessity has been evident for almost 50 years, only now they are starting to shape our cultural mentality, and with it, the fascination of Urbanism students.

Exemplary of this fact is the utter absence of any energy-related article published by this magazine before issue 25.1 in October 2015. The article reported an interview by Todor Kesarovski of Wulf Daseking, Planning director of Freiburg, german municipality famous for its early development of a nearly-zero-energy neighbourhood. Later in the article we will see how some of the points of that interview are still relevant and partly unresolved today. In the meantime, our engineering colleagues were pioneering new technologies in the field of renewables, as is evident in Prabu Sai Manoi's article in issue 27.1 (October 2016), with a study of the potential of airborne energy generation (fig. 1). Nonetheless, this deep research and innovation in the engineering field was still not matched for a widespread awareness of the role that these technologies can play in the built environment.

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Imagining fossil-free futures The first fascinations from the field of Urbanism and Architecture came with issue 26.3 (April 2016) and were strictly bounded to the dimsissal of fossil-fuel energy infrastructures. Apparently, in the process of awareness-building of the spatial elements of energy generation, the first insights of our disciplines were the tremendous and often hidden impact that fossil fuels cause. In this issue, Carola Hein (April 2016) firstly focuses on the strong "staying-power" of these infrastructure, that only because of their sheer size, they become difficult to remove, both physically (fig. 3) and mentally (fig. 4-5). Just recently we had a clear image of this process concerning the difficult dismissal process of four oil platforms in the North Sea, with Shell (the platforms operator) agreeing with the UK government to leave the rusting pillars of four platforms. (Gosden, 2019).

Concerning the mental attachment to fossilfuel energy and to the goods it produces, a telling image is the Ouroboros, the snake eating its own tail, as Hao-Yeh Lu pointed out (April 2016). In this regard, on one hand, Alexandra Farmazon highlights the geopolitical power unbalances that arise due to fossil fuels extraction. On the other, for Benjamin Kemper the dismissal of fossil fuels will only happen in a post-apocalyptic, utopian scenario.

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Nuclear power and the city

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Another imporant first fascination concerns the use of nuclear energy. This technology, while providing energy with very low greenhouse gases emissions, comes with a considerable amount of negative externalities. These relate to extraction processes, waste dismissal, potential disasters (such as Chernobyl's and Fukushima's) and the emergence of "atomgrads". Atomgrads (Norkunaite, April 2016) (fig. 6) are cities where the high-skilled population required to run a nuclear plant.

Eventually, when the infrastructural decay will render the plant unfeasible to manage, those cities will face a tremendous shrinkage both in population and investments, with the most impact on the unskilled population that settled in the mean time.

The extractive havoc Following the series on fossil-fuel studies, Ricardo Avella (November 2018, February 2019) depicts the apparent paradox of a country extremely rich in natural resources such as Venezuela (whose economy was largerly based on oil exports) able to fall in one of the most severe crisis the modern world has seen (fig. 7).

The sustainable monument

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Finally, it is only with our last issue 29.4 (September 2019) that new energy landscapes start to emerge. This time not with the passive dismissal of fossilfuel infrastructure, but through the active planning of renewable energy developments. Henk Hartzema and Aikaterina Myserli (September 2019) make the observation that the energy transition will take immense spaces and will reach scales of urbanization that only now we are starting to understand and to visualize.

In this regard, they acutely compare the energy transition in the Netherlands (fig.

10) to a continuous sustainble monument, following superstudio's concept (fig. 9).

Similar to superstudio, they are looking for strategies able to cope with the immense scale of modern transformations. However, in a radically different "monumentality".

While Superstudio's future city is seemingly a-spatial and a-temporal in its monotony and separtation with the natural environment, Henk and Aikaterina aim for a more integrated future, where punctual transformations will be able to penetrate the present productive landscapes from within, rather than being superimposed.

In addition, from last issue comes the first published thesis on energy tranistion by Preetika Balasubramanian. She focuses on "just" spatial transition in the Tamil Nadu state, in India (fig. 8). Using her words, "this project [attempts] to design and plan 28

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for renewable energy geographies of the future that reject the extractivist systems of the capitalocene. [...] This strategy aims at dissolving the monopoly of private energy companies in energy production by catalyzing the inclusion and participation of individuals and communities". Fundamental therefore in her project, is to link the monumental transition process to the individual everyday practices, spaces and decisions, that form our society.

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As already Wulf Daseking pointed out in the planning of Freiburg (October 2015), decentralization, site-specific solutions and especially social integration thorugh communication and involvment are the key elements in the energy transition process.

Especially, they are the ones in which our discipline of designers and planners can play a fundamental role. Instead of looking at the transition as a purely technical challenge, we need to study, design and plan its social implications. In fact, as issue 26.3 (April 2016) already showed, electricity, gas and oil are not the only energies that power our environment: an even more crucial form is our human energy. It needs to be recharged through recreation (fig. 11) and political empowerment.

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References 1. Kesarovski T., interviews Daseking, W., Facilitating Sustainable Urbanism in Practice, Atlantis 25.1 2. Hein C., Imagining Fossil-Free Futures, Atlantis 26.3 3. Norkunaite G., Nuclear Power and the City, Atlantis 26.3 4. Lu, H., Ouroboros City, Atlantis, vol. 26.3 5. Avella, R., The Extractive Havoc, Atlantis 29.2 6. Balasubramanian, P., Geographies of Power, Atlantis 29.4 7. Hartzema H. & Myserli A., The Sustainable Monument, Atlantis 29.4 8. Sai Manoj, P., Airborne Wind Energy Technology, Atlantis 27.1

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1. Energy vision 2050. Source: Vereiniging Deltametropool, Energie en Ruimte.

2. Testing airborne wind energy. Source: Kite power research groupŠ.

3. Impression of the Rotterdam harbour.

Source: van Dijk F., Atlantis 26.3.

4. Gas station. Source: Hein, C., Atlantis 26.3.

5. Gas station model by LegoŠ. Source: Hein, C., Atlantis 26.3.

6. Skyline of Kuznetsovsk. Source: Dyakov Vladimir Leonidovich.

7. Illegal mining in Venezuela. Source: R. Avella, Atlantis 29.2 8. Energy and space. Source: Balasubramanian P., Atlantis 29.4 9. The continuous monument. Source: Superstudio, 1970.

10. Oudewater 2050+. Source: Studio Hartezema.

11. The rubber duck. Source: Studio Florentijn Hofman, 2007.

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INTERACTIONS

IN BETWEEN Human(s)

Water

Landscape ecology

by Tapasya Mukkamala Msc. landscape architecture TU Delft

The articles in the domain of landscape ecology and water over the years explored various elements of natural landscapes but primarily from a human perception, the interaction between humans with their surrounding natural territories.

The wide range of themes shed valuable insights on the interactions of humans and their "created environments" with the surrounding natural environments and viceversa. Among the vast spectrum of topics that were talked about, the most prevailing themes were that of the interaction between human settlements and water. The spatial, socio-cultural and ecological relationship of different water systems with the human settlements were discussed widely

Engineered super surface

HUMAN(s)

29.1

28.1 Mirrored- Landscape of power

throughout all the issues. Few popular articles were found repeating in different issues with projects or research on Dutch waterscape being the prominent topic. Apart from that the effects of climate change on human settlements was also widely written about.

Over the later issues themes like production landscapes, energy landscapes, eco-tourism, effects of exploitation natural resources and the role of landscape in social regeneration were significantly explored. Apart from various interesting articles on the topics mentioned above, the Flowscapes graduation studio of the landscape architecture track showcased a diverse range of graduation projects of the students over the last few years on various topics across different geographies of the world.

23.1 The Energy landscapes in Limburg

The magazine, over the 30 years, has not only succeeded in showcasing the intangible relation of conflicts and co-existence between humans and nature but also gave insights into various perceptives of these relations and interactions.

These perceptions span across different geographies, scales and between different subjects. Most of the topics discussed still seem relevant and are still prevailing in our current scenarios. As humankind progresses towards future advancements these relations would get more complex.

Is urban agriculture just a utopia?

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28.1

Floods

28.4

The new Dutch waterline

Like water breaking through

26.1

28.4 29.1

29.2

w A T E R

The sea walls of Tohoku and new divide

The reclamation of the Carioca landscape

The Extractive Havoc

The sinuous horizons

Shelter Landscape

27.1

28.4

All inclusive Ecotourism 31

26.4

L A N D S C A P E

E C O L O G Y

atlantis

MEGA

Shaping of The Greater Bay Area

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Kavya Suresh & Oumkaltoum Boudouaya Msc Urbanism TU Delft

An introduction to the GBA The recently defined Greater bay area (GBA) in China ushers in a new scale of urbanisation and growth that necessitates a rethinking of spatial planning and design tools in order to effectively respond to the challenges found in such mega regions. Constituted by the eleven cities located at the mouth of the Pearl river delta (Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR), the Macao Special Administrative, municipalities of Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Zhuhai, Foshan, Huizhou, Dongguan, Zhongshan,

Jiangmen, and Zhaoqing), the GBA accounts for an urbanising population of more than 70 million people. (Fig.2,3) Its contribution to almost one-third of China’s GDP has resulted in large scale migration to this region from all around the country, resulting in an expected population of 100 million by the year 2030.

Once referred to as the world’s “factory floor” on account of Shenzhen, Guangzhou, Zhuhai, Foshan, and Dongguan’s function as manufacturing powerhouses, these cities are now restructuring to focus on advanced manufacturing, innovation and research, hitech hardware and the service sector. There is a strong initiative to position the GBA as a mega-region of global competitiveness.

From a planning perspective, an urban

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agglomeration of this scale is one of the first of its kind and requires a new perspective to begin to understand the spatial implications of this metropolitan restructuring. Through his work of studying this process of urbanisation in the Pearl river Delta, Rem Koohlaas states that these cities will not form one large urban entity, but rather a co-existence of different elements that, through a constant state of restructuring in relation to one another, would generate competition amongst them, leading to “A city of exacerbated difference” (Chung & Koolhaas, 2001) City fabrics of Shenzhen - re-scaled and restructured The formation of this mega region essentially involves massive restructuring rescaling of the individual cities. This change

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in scale of the urban fabric and networks has a significant impact on the socio-spatial dimension of the city. Several articles and student projects published in over the past years in this magazine have described and analysed this phenomenon.

The articles “Shenzhen as a place of conflicting rationalities “and “Restructuring and re-scaling: “the world factory “in transition” take an in-depth look at the local effects of restructuring a city as part of a mega region, in the case of Shenzhen. (Qu, 2015) (van Oostrum & Reynolds, 2013) “Shenzhen as a place of conflicting rationalities “from issue 24.1 discusses the role of hard and soft infrastructure in a rapidly urbanising city like Shenzhen.

The article describes Shenzhen to be at a cross road, where the previously successful approach of “economic growth at all costs” must give way to a holistic perspective that considers the social dimension of the local scale.

The hard infrastructure in the city is growing rapidly to meet the demands of connectivity and competitiveness of a global mega region. (Fig.2) On the other hand, the soft infrastructure manifests itself in the form of the social ties offered in the urban villages, to incoming migrants, through the communally owned land for housing, ancestry halls which are still used as social spaces and the market halls which are used for trade and commerce. This form of social integration has a direct relationship to hard infrastructure and must be understood and accounted for in the planning process.

Similarly, Restructuring and rescaling: “the world factory “in transition” from issue 25.2 describes the transition of Shenzhen from a small fishing hamlet to “world factory” and now “world city” This process of metropolitan restructuring has a direct effect on the daily lives of people, as it results in the redistribution of urban functions and social groups. The article illustrates with three location studies, the dominant role of the regional scale projects that often lead to neglect to understand the functionality and dynamics of local networks within the urban fabric. This often leads to a mismatch in the growth of the city at different scales. While the cities prepare for global levels of competitiveness at the regional scale, this is undermined by the poor spatial conditions a local scale, leading to lack of public space, poor liveability and a lack of place for social integration. The planning processes must focus on these local spatial conditions as well, in order to grow towards a holistic and integrated mega region.

Implications on the Local Scale - Case of Hong Kong Mr. Luk and his family have been on the waiting list for public housing for over ten years. Due to an error in his application he had to restart the process and join the back of the queue. But Mr. Luk’s story is not an exception; in Hong Kong, the average waiting time for public housing is over 4 years.

In the interim period, where do people go to find affordable rental housing?

The article Affording Hong Kong by Mark Kingsley & Maggie Ma 4in issue 28.3, discusses the struggle of low-income families and the housing conditions in such high density cities.4 As a result of long waiting list for social housing or not being eligible for public housing, subdivided homes started appearing in the cities of the GBA. Subdivided homes are existing apartment divided into two or more smaller units by the landlord.

Due to space limitations, and the tendency to offer private independent spaces, sometimes the bathroom and the kitchen are combined in a single room. The author argues that factors such as: the combination of high housing demand, limited available land, low tax rates, the government being the single land owner and high wealth disparity contribute to this housing situations where the vulnerable find themselves with no choice.

On an architectural perspective, the architects of the tenement buildings could have not foreseen their adaptation into smaller housing units and options for improving the design of the subdivided unit are limited. making a renovation, and subsequently increasing the value of the room, creates the risk that the landlord could increase the rent. Our input was to think of how we could change the flat without increasing the value of the house itself, and how the design

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4

could directly benefit the tenant instead of the landlord.

This developed into an idea of using furniture as a spatial tool to improve the living environment. As you can see in Fig 5 and 6 representing a before and after a furniture intervention.

The furniture design focuses on simplicity, durability, and adaptability. The design is primarily modular with sizes that fit the scale of smaller homes, allowing for personalisation with different options and combinations.

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5

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6

Conclusion Nowadays, cities in the GBA are faced with the following challenge: the push and pull dynamics between population growth and scarce liveability in an increasingly unpredictable urban evolution. Rapid urbanisation has various spatial and social implications on one of the biggest regions on the planet. The transition to sustainable urban forms is inevitable and in order to achieve this, we need to look at innovative solutions taking into consideration the developmental effect on the fragile social and local layers.

In each of the next issues of Genesis, the future of the GBA will be discussed through several scopes and perspectives by putting forward new ideas and projects around this theme.

34

References 1. Chung, C.J., Inaba, J., Koolhaas, R. & Leong, S.T. (2001). Great Leap Forward / Project on the City 1 Harvard Design School. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard Design School.

2. Qu, L. (2015, March). Restructuring and rescaling : the " World factory" in transition. ATLANTIS, 25(2), pp. 38-41.

3. van Oostrum, M., & Reynolds, A. (2013, October).

Shenzhen as a place of conflicting rationalities : The role of soft and hard infrastructure. ATLANTIS, 24(2), pp. 54-57.

4. Mark Kingsley & Maggie Ma (2018, March) Affording Hong-Kong : the struggle of low-income families living in 5. subdivided homes DOMAT Limited ATLANTIS, 28(3), pp. 49-52

1. GBA region. Source : https://www. visualcapitalist.com/pearl-river-deltamegacity-2020/ 2. History of infrastructure development source :Ankit Bhargava 3. "Society of Conscience". Source - Mark Kingsley & Maggie Ma 4. World Map with the most urgent challenges.

5. Furniture (before). Source - Tanya Tsui 6. Furniture (after). Source - Author.

7. Monster Building, Quarry Bay, Hong Kong. Retrieved the 23.10.2019 from: https:// thevalemagazine.com/2018/04/13/monsterbuilding-hong-kong/

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Art noun /ɑːt/ by

atlantis

1. The expression or application of human creative skill and imagination, typically in a visual form such as painting or sculpture, producing works to be appreciated primarily for their beauty or emotional power.

(Oxford Dictionary)

Mathias Gorz MSc Urbanism TU Delft

Introduction More or less, we all know why art is important. After all, the city itself can be considered as a work of art without one author. However, as Atlantis in its first issues focused merely on urbanism from practical and academic perspectives, art was not in the field of interest. Luckily, it began to change in the years 2005-2009 when series of photo reports were published, but the real revolution took place in April 2011 when the Art Page was introduced.

The idea behind the Art Page was to dedicate the two pages in the middle of the magazine to art, and through that give freedom of artistic expression to students and present interesting works by professional artists. Starting from issue 22.4, exactly 30 Art Pages were published in Atlantis up to now. The anniversary issue is a good occasion to rewind previous themes and to explore works created both by amateur students and acclaimed artists.

Photography Since its advent, photography has been one of the basic visual languages that allows us to understand human’s relationship with the built environment. We can even consider the city as the first subject of photography, when looking at the shot of Louis Daguerre, depicting Boulevard du Temple in Paris in 1838. It is also the first photo of a human; two small silhouettes are lost in a pervasive cityscape. Due to a long aperture time, all pedestrians were blurred, and only a shoe shiner and his client remained visible.

For Daguerre and other photography pioneers it took years of effort to achieve satisfactory results. But in the present day, when almost everybody has a smartphone with a camera in their pocket, and the world is overcrowded by unsightly pictures, can we still refer to photography as art?

Well, photography is a technique, one among others that can be used by an artist, so definitely not every picture is a work of art.

At first, Atlantis published photo reports made by students. They could tell a story and show less known faces of a famous city, but with a series, not a single picture. See page XX to get a glimpse of them.

Starting from photo reports, Atlantis also presented more appealing genres, like street photography. It has decidedly human character; people and random events within public spaces are its main topics. Street photography aims to connect interesting compositions with storytelling within one picture, which explains its ever-growing popularity.

Despite its name, street photography does not necessarily have to be set on the streets, or even in the urban environment. Its global career, however, started on the streets of big cities in 1950s, when thousands of selftaught photographers grabbed new portable cameras and began hunting for captures.

In Atlantis only a few pieces of street photography were published. One of them was a series called 'Visual Dictionary – Beijing' (vol. 18.3) by Roberto Dell’Orco which reflects on human’s existence in the modern, rough metropolis and non-places of the city. Series of pictures are juxtaposed with excerpts from vocabulary, which only strengthens the narration.

Another picture takes us to sunny Africa.

Lard Buurman in his series 'Africa Junctions' (vol. 25.3) depicted human interaction in busy public spaces of African cities. The panoramic shot of Clock Tower Ground in Uganda’s capital, Kampala reminds one of Breughel’s spectacular paintings with a vivid crowd of people absorbed by daily activities.

The other genre of photography present in Atlantis was photojournalism. Less emphasis was put on artistic expression, while more on presenting the topic frankly, without staging and with its complexity. For instance, work titled simply 'Manufacturing #17' by Edward Burtynsky (vol. 25.2) gives a striking impression of mass production and human’s place in the system. The shot was taken from above, to emphasize the scale of the assembly line in a chicken processing plant.

While the average user of western cities unconsciously follows all kinds of rules, the lack of rules in African cities means that anything can be done everywhere, if negotiated with neighbors or authorities.

This results in the liveliness of open spaces and an unlimited array of activities happening there, in organic chaos.

To sum up, both street photography and photojournalism offer two different, complementary perspectives for reading the built environment and theirs roles

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2

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3

should not be disregarded by urbanists and landscape architects in contemporary practice. Besides photography, the Art Page also covered visual arts, and a great variety of it, from big data representation and paintings to land art installations. The selection of them is presented on the XX page of this issue.

Public art Public art is shaping our mind maps, even when we do not try to understand its meaning. We tend to set the meeting points by this-strange-sculpture, or remember to turn right after that-funny-mural. When we are tourists, street art offers us an alternative way to get to know the city.

One may argue that it is a popular and slightly shallow genre, but on the other hand, one cannot disregard its important role in involving local community, changing the identity of obsolete places and bringing positive emotions. Public art is closely related to public spaces, so quite a lot of attention was given to this genre.

get people together, create astonishment and open their eyes and minds, in order to be more susceptible to the world around them. An accurate illustration of that is his work in Arnhem, where he was involved in the transformation of the Bartok quarter.

A huge, 30-meters long sculpture of an abstracted aardvark with a party hat is a humorous feature of the new park and a popular playground for children.

We should not look at public art as something reserved for developed countries.

It can preserve its importance and serve local needs even in the war zone. A striking example of that is 'Transforming War Machines Into Works of Art' by artist Neda Taiyebi (vol. 27.1). The Iranian artist painted wrecks of military vehicles in Kabul, Afghanistan to reconceptualize brutal objects of war into playgrounds for children, and tackle the lack of inviting public spaces.

Polis also contributed to rise of public art by creating a mural in the staircase of TU Delft’s Faculty of Architecture.

5

It was painted during Urbanism Week in November 2012 by artists Bas van Oudheusden and Martinus Papilaja who also gave a lecture about art and placemaking. At first sight it appears as an abstract chaos, but if you look closer, you discover a groundplan with structure, balance and even buildings.

Film & literature

3

In post-fordist economy, public art is known as a panacea for cities which want to create a new image to attract visitors and businesses. Visual artist Kamiel Verschuren, in the article 'Responsibility and the ability to respond' (vol. 19.1), claimed that artists should actively find their role in the moment in formation of public space.

In fact, in newly designed public spaces, art is one of the crucial components. An interview with artist Florentijn Hoffman by Shruti Maliwar (vol. 26.3) gives an overview of art’s role in placemaking and leaves no doubt that art is one of the powerful tools of contemporary urban design. Florentijn Hoffman claims that the main goal of his work is to create social installations that

The image of cities can be strongly shaped by film and literature, moreover, the city itself is sometimes one of the main characters. Enough to think of alluring Tokyo from Lost in Translation, idealized New York from Breakfast at Tiffany’s, or dirty Dublin from Ulysses. After exploring one of these suggestive city portraits, the perception of each city will never be as it was before. Issue 26.2 featured a shortlist of films and books which portray the individual’s relation to the city with stunning accuracy. The city can play a role of seducing protagonists of many faces like Venice in Calvino’s Invisible Cities or a villain, like Calcutta in Lapierre’s City of Joy. In 2016, with reference to the aforementioned issue of Atlantis, Polis 37

6

organized a movie night during which the best recent films on architecture and city were presented.

Future The future of art itself is rather vague, it is sure it will exist, but one cannot forecast how it will evolve. However, it is not the case for publishing on art in Atlantis.

Whether it is addressing art in the city or the city in art, new articles will appear and the Art Page will be continued.

What draws attention is untapped potential of street photography and photojournalism.

The topic of film and the city is also worth the exploration, also in the context of Architecture Film Festival Rotterdam which shows, every year, a number of fascinating films relevant in our field.

To conclude, the role of art in the planning and design of our environment must not be disregarded. Art can be used to understand the city, depict its unspoken complexity, to involve local community in placemaking or even to change the identity, ranging from a specific site to the whole city.

References 1. Hoffman F. interviews by Maliwar S., (2016), Art and Energy in the City, Atlantis, vol. 26.3 2. Garcia L., Heerimga I, Sha K., (2016)Urban exploration through literature, Atlantis, vol. 26.2 3. Verschuren K., (2008), Responsibility and the ability to respond, Atlantis, vol 19.1

1. Visual Dictionary Beijing. Phot. Roberto Dell'Orco. Source: Atlantis, vol. 18.3 2. Manufacturing #17, phot. Edward Burtynski, Source: Atlantis, vol. 25.2 3. Clock Tower Ground, Kampala, phot. Laard Buurman. Source: Atlantis, vol. 25.3 4. Transforming war machines into works of art, Source: Atlantis, vol. 27.1 5. UW Mural TU Delft, phot. Mathias Gorz 6. Party Aardvark, Source: Atlantis vol.26.3

Framing

atlantis

Urbanity Framing urbanity

Volumes 16-19 of Atlantis featured a photo report from various cities. Photos made and selected by Urbanism students are showing less known faces of famous cities, author's curiosity and perception of space. In total 12 cities where covered. A selection of them is presented below.Will you manage to recognise them all in the collage?

A

Guess and match the city! Answers below.

A2 A3 B1

B2 B3 C1

C2 C3

B

1

2

3

CORRECT ANSWERS: A1 - MAASTRICHT, A2 - LOS ANGELES, A3 - SYDNEY, B1 - SARA JEVO, B2 - NEW ORLEANS, B3 - TEHERAN, C1 - SHAGHAI, C2 - CARACAS, C3 - JAKARTA

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16.4 SHANGHAI 17.1 JAKARTA 17.2 LOS ANGELES 17.3 SYDNEY 17.4 TEHERAN 18.1 NEW ORLEANS 18.2 SARA JEVO 19.1 MAASTRICHT 19.2 CARACAS

A1

C

Art Page

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rewind

1.

22.1 1. VACANT NL, RONALD RIETVELD, ERIK RIETVELD - The first Art Page was introduced in April 2011 and it presented the Dutch entry at the Venice Architecture Biennale.

Installation depicts all 4326 vacant stateowned buildings in the Netherlands and reveals its enormous potential and diversity.

22.4 27.2 2. RUNNING FENCE, CHRISTO AND JEANCLAUDE - Running Fence was built across the fields of California in 1976 for only 14 days. A 39 km long and 5,5 m high structure from fabric was playing with the wind and landscape.

3. UNSETTLING TOPOGRAPHIES, MATTHEW CUSICK Artist usues inlaid maps for his acrylic paintings: “Each map is an index of a specific place and time, so I could construct geographical timelines within my paintings”.

28.4 4. TIDAL DUNES, MICHELLE SIEMERINK - In recent issues, Atlantis presented also artworks made by TU Delft’s students. This one is an illustration for the poem also published in the magazine.

1. Vacant NL, retrieved from: https:// www.raaaf.nl/nl/studio ©Rietveld Architecture.

2. Running Fence, © Christo and Jeanne Claude.

3. Tidal Dunes, © Michelle Siemerink 4. Course of Empires, © Matthew Cusick.

5. Residential Web, image courtesy of Amy Casey & Zg Gallery, Chicago.

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22.2 1. RESIDENTIAL WEB, AMY CASEY - This series of paintings by American artist can be read as depiction of precarious, post-crisis reality.

atlantis

planning & design through

digital tools by

Dhushyanth Ravichandrakumar MSc Urbanism, TU Delft

Sensing the City

Stefan van der Spek Associate Proffesor, Director of the Geomatics Educational Programme TU Delft Atlantis, vol. 24.2 2013

Digital tools The graphic of this article represents the evolution of the role of digital tools in urban design as seen through the articles published in Atlantis over the years.

Is evident that the use of digital tools has become more integrated with the design process over time allowing for new modes of data collection and analysis. This has given rise to multiple choices, options and has transformed the design process itself.

A look at the last 30 issues shows that digital tools have sprung up predominantly over the recent years and are rapidly changing and informing the way cities are designed.

Mapping an urbanizing planet using gridded cartograms to represent complex structures Dr. Benjamin D. Hennig Researcher, University of sheffield Atlantis, vol. 23.1 2012

Our image of the world is based on centuries of cartographic representation.

Conventional cartographic methods are associated with significant limitations for population related questions, because they cannot provide a comprehensive representation of the social dimension of the earth. Especially the representation of the complex structures of a globalized world comes to its limits when using the common cartographic projections that determine our image of the earth.

New techniques for drawing cartograms like gridded cartograms have great potential and practical use for a different reading and understanding our human landscapes.

Using these new mapping methods help to visualise the human space in a new way and thus have the power to support the understanding of the social dimension of our planet significantly.

Volume 40

People are increasingly acting as not only sensors of our society, but also sensors of our built environment.

Traditionally, data is collected through various research methodologies that can reveal valuable user information and feedback, but can be time consuming. In an attempt to improve the reliability and accuracy of qualitative data, a number of dedicated devices have been developed to collect information in real-time with minimal researcher interference. Big data may be the largest game-changer to emerge from this trend, leveraging crowd-sourced contributions to amass information on a number of topics, including the urban environment.

Thanks to many new technological tools, visualization and mapping have transitioned to sophisticated Geographic Information Systems (GIS). This way, data is not only projected with a specific legend, but also used for calculations and correlations between ‘topics’ and ‘sources’. The natural next step is to use the data for modelling processes and behaviour of so-called ‘agents’, or for rule-based parametric design and data-driven evidence based design.

In this way, the creative process inherent in designs is underpinned by measurable results or even based on artificial

Vol. 30

intelligence.

Space syntax

Akkelies van Nes Assistant professor of urban design TU Delft Atlantis, vol. 24.2 2013

Space Syntax is a tool to analyse spatial relationships. It provides a set of techniques which assist us in analysing space. Through these tools, you can analyse the spatial configuration of larger metropolitan areas, and test your empirical database.

It is very important that you can analyse the space separately from social-economic data, and correlate them to see how one influences the othe r and find out what is the relationship between space and society.

The method is a degree of testability and force viability which also contributes to the theory of development. If you can start to apply space syntax within your design practice, you can develop urban plans based on more scientific and objective grounds.

New media new cities Francesca Perry Editor, Thinking City Atlantis, vol. 25.3 2015

The role that the media plays in our city

today is essemtially the role that the media plays in our culture: it can be powerful in enforcing stereotypes - or challenging them; it can retain attention on well discussed topics - or it can shine a much needed light on underrepresented issues.

Media has the power to inspire and help effect change, but it cannot drive the change in and of itself: that is up to people.

The most important thing media brings to the practice of city building and urbanism is public participation.

The media can also be interactive, harnessing stories from people and broadcasting the experience of city life around the world. Understanding these can help develop public opinion of what cities need to do to improve life for their citizens.

The videogame

Zoe Diakaki & Christos Mellios Architects Atlantis, vol. 29.2 2019

The 'videogame' is introduced as a vehicle capable of renegotiating our relative positions and the limits of our perception.

The subject enters the virtual realm and

becomes a player, navigating their avatar through an overlay of bizarre aesthetics, textual information and contradicting phenomena. It is a world built with the sole purpose to mock traditional thinking and subvert conventions. The player is asked to create his own narrative by participating in a series of events that constantly undermine the notion of 'the normal state'.

The videogame, as the narrative progresses, allows us to re-imagine ourselves, others, how we engage with our immediate environments and exchange information.

Ultimately the videogame demonstrates the conflict between the known, identified and inscribed-with-meaningful-actions space and its potentialities. Going back to understanding urbanity as a complex system, videogames can be stretched infinitely to describe any physical or imaginary form in order to produce new innovative conceptualizations and equally engage all actors.

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Permeable borders addressing multidimensional conflicts between polarized communities in Rio de Janeiro

by

Felipe Chaves Gonzalez Urbanist and architect

State of Rio de Janeiro

City of Rio de Janeiro

Planning Area 4 Vulnerable areas

1

2

'Permeable borders' is a master thesis realized during the MSc Urbanism course at TU Delft. The research project addresses the topics of rapid urbanization processes, social inequalities and informal urbanization. In this article the main conclusions and strategies developed throughout the project, will be elaborated in three parts: . Part I. Research framework . Part II. Multidimensional borders . Part III. Permeability strategies Part I Research framework Over the last seven decades, the world has been witnessing rapid urbanization processes that change the way population and resources are distributed. However, even though cities might represent spaces for opportunities, innovations and integration, they can also generate conditions of risk, deprivation and exclusion.

One of the main challenges for spatial practitioners and city makers is to reach for alternative development processes that

The research focused the investigation on the case of Rio de Janeiro, in Brazil - a city developed through processes of rapid urbanization, wealth concentration, marketoriented development, governmental neglect and socio-spatial segregation. The urban development that produced a ‘Broken city’ (Ventura, 1994), where fragmented communities and landscapes are subject of the vulnerable conditions of the territory.

Reinforced by the inability and neglect of the government, the structural conditions of city have been limiting the development of those groups located in vulnerable contexts.

In part, those contexts are comprised of communities that resisted the neglect and segregation, through a strong collective identity and self-organizational structures; categorized by national public institutions into three types of precarious: favelas, social housing, irregular settlements.

Urban gradient

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Rio de Janeiro, a fragmented city

irregular settlement

favela

informal

social housing

integrate and empower the communities located in these conditions.

favela

private service

ir egular set lement

social housing

formal

gated generic community neighborhood

private service

generic neighborho d

gated community

gre n spaces

public space

favela

ir egular set lement

social housing

private service

generic neighborho d

3

In many cases around the world, the accelerated urban development was articulated by processes that generated discrepant socio-spatial contexts, where polarized communities are situated in conditions of high or low vulnerability.

As described by Judy L. Baker (2008), even though the population that lives in poor and vulnerable conditions are very diverse among different regions, they tend to face similar situations of deprivation.

Objectively, Baker defines six critical issues for the urban poor: (1) limited access to income and employment; (2) inadequate and insecure living conditions; (3) poor infrastructure and services; (4) vulnerability to risks such as natural disasters, environmental hazards and health risks particularly associated with living in slums; (5) spatial issues which inhibit mobility and transport; (6) inequality closely linked to problems of exclusion.

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Permeability

Opportunities

Infrastructure

Collaboration

Potentiality

4

Integration and Capacitation

Co-production of spaces

Integration and adaptive capacity

The strategic approach undertaken in the research is a response to the failure of planning and governmental institutions to address the housing deficit and the integration of fragmented contexts in Rio de Janeiro. The research defends the idea of co-production of spaces (Wolf, G. and Mahaffey, N., 2016) as a medium to reveal potentialities for an alternative development process; one that engages with vulnerable areas and is co-created with the local communities. The concept of co-production defines the designer and the community (or user groups) as equal partners in the generation of knowledge about a place.

The role of the designer becomes then to “to facilitate the continuation of the feedback loop of spaces of potentiality and spaces of difference, which can be constantly evaluated and managed through architectural autogestion.� (Wolf, G. and Mahaffey, N., 2016, p. 7).

One of the objectives of the research was to recognize the bordering conditions of the territory and their impact on the built environment. Defining the communities and landscapes to be prioritized and integrated through the development process. The aim of the project is to increase the integration between communities and landscapes, and reinforce the adaptive capacity of vulnerable groups to withstand temporal uncertainties - economic, ecological and political.

Part II Multidimensional borders

How can spaces of co-production, within polarized communities, enhance socio-ecological resilience and promote the integration of vulnerable contexts with the city, in Rio de Janeiro?

Throughout the last fifty years, PA4 has been subject of rapid urbanization processes, guided by car-oriented developments, real estate speculation, land concentration, privatization and segregation. Nowadays, the area is constituted by two administrative regions: Barra da Tijuca, along the coast, which consists of a corridor of services couple with gated communities and privatized public spaces; and JacarepaguĂĄ, in between the rugged topography, was subject of a heterogenous development that produced a diverse urban gradient that embodied from enclaved to segregated communities.

Analytical dimensions

The fragmentation in Rio de Janeiro transcends multidimensional conditions: ideological spatial, economic, ecological and institutional. To further elaborate on the bordering dimensions, the research took the case of the Planning Area 4 (PA4) of the city, a region with high societal discrepancies and ecological risks.

The process of recognition of the borders was conducted through a cartographic exercise, supported by literature review, interviews and field observations. The analysis of the PA4 was carried out through four dimensions: topographic, economic, ecological and institutional. Through the agency of mapping, the research

6

7

5

-

10

vulnerability

15 km

5

+

43

8

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investigated on bordering and vulnerable conditions, such as socio-spatial segregation, infrastructural deficiency, governmental neglect, flood and landslide risks, among others.

The cartographic method enabled the spatial translation of the border conditions of the area, displaying how they systematically fragment communities and landscapes. The triangulation between the dimensions was realized by the superimposition of the analysed layers, revealing the relationships between the different borders on the territory.

Meanwhile, it also revealed opportunities and strategic locations to address the integration and empowerment of vulnerable contexts.

In order to determine the local contexts that are situated in the areas of highest V1. fragments

Praça Seca in between zones

V2. fragments

vulnerability, the analysed dimensions were overlaid with a grid of one 1 by 1 kilometer, that enabled to identify three main locations: Praça Seca, Curicica and Gardênia Azul. Following that, the investigation on the borders analysed further aspects, to comprehend the dimensions of the fragmentation on the local scale.

V1

V2 V3

Fragmentation matrix The matrix represents the spatial translation of multidimensional and multiscalar aspects of the territory. As an analytical conclusion, it clarifies the relationships between the conditions that stimulate the fragmentation of the city, revealing strategic opportunities.

Moreover, the matrix illustrates that the fragmentation phenomenon is not defined by singular borders, yet it is produced by multidimensional conditions that generate Curicica in between zones

V3. fragments

V1. Praça Seca V2. Curicica V3. Gardênia Azul

9

Gardênia Azul in between zones

Dimension

Scale

1. Topographic borders

2. Economic vulnerability

3. Ecological vulnerability

4. Institutionalized borders

Planning Area 4

5. Technical infrastructure

6. Landscape system

7. Restrictive spaces

Local

8. Open spaces 0 0.1 0.5

10 fragmented areas

1 km

-

44

in between zone permeability

+

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a permeability gradient on the territory whose degree operates according to three zones: fragments, borders and in between zones.

Such conclusions supported the definition of strategic locations to be addressed on the elaboration of development actions: . Activate fragments . Permeate border . Connect in between zones Part III Permeability strategies Defined by a set of socio-ecological actions, the project provides a palette of opportunities for an inclusive development in Rio de Janeiro. The actions aim to increase the socio-spatial integration and adaptive capacity of the vulnerable areas of the city. Defined by four supplementary strategies, the project is subdivided into actions that explore spatial and institutional opportunities on the fields of social urbanism, landscape ecology, public space and housing:

A. Social Empowerment Promote the integration and socioeconomic development of vulnerable contexts. Possible to be self-organized by the community, the actions involve the provision of decentralized service points, creation of civic infrastructure, increase of local economic activities and the reinforcement of collective identity and local institutions.

A.

B. Ecological Capacitation Increase the capability and integration of the landscape. Reinforcing the adaptive capacity of the socio-ecological systems to withstand climate uncertainties. The systemic (re)integration of green and blue structures with the built environment, addresses urgent issues such as flooding, landslide, soil permeability and socioecological connections.

B.

C. Public Spaces Expand and capacitate the public domain, enhancing the connections between and within communities. The open system is defined by proposed and existent public spaces and networks, that strengthen social interactions in multiple scales in the city, connecting different social groups.

C.

A. Social Empowerment B. Ecological Capacitation PA4 - 3D Socio-Ecological Strategic Plan C. Public D. Housing and Densification PA4 - 3DSpaces Socio-Ecological Strategic Plan D. Housing and Densification Provision of housing as a living space and housing as access to land. Addressing the substantial housing deficit and recurrent Civic center Instant identity eviction/displacement measures of Capacitation Civic center center New space Instantpublic identity Multifunctional buildings Capacitation center hard New surface public space ‘informal’ areas. The actions are developed Solar energy production Multifunctional buildings soft hardsurface surface to promote local densification, land tenancy Services and retail Solar energy production public space soft surface ocio-Ecological Strategic PlanExistent and affordable housing.

Infrastructural equipment Water transportation Services and retail Water transportation

Existent public space Infrastructural equipment Public space network Cyclepath Public space network Cyclepath

Ecological corridors ocio-Ecological Strategic Plan Supportive corridors green network Ecological

ldings

ction

n ldings

ction s

etwork n ation

s

etwork

ation

Instant identity Mangrove rehabilitation Supportive green network New public space Hillside vegetation Mangrove rehabilitation hard surface Green envelope Hillside vegetation

soft surface Green envelope Instant identity Existent public space New public space Infrastructural equipment hard surface Public space network soft surface Cyclepath

D.

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Community Land Trust Densification Community Land Trust Affordable housing complexes Densification Affordable housing complexes

Existent public space Infrastructural equipment Community Land Trust Public space network Cyclepath Densification

Affordable housing complexes Community Land Trust Densification Affordable housing complexes

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atlantis A

A

A

A

A

A Jacarepaguá Lagoon

Jacarepaguá

Activate new uses in monofunctional buildings

Generate civic centers

B

Establish capacitation centers

B

Stimulate the exchange of collaborative services

B

Promote networks of commercial and services activities

B

Marapendi Beach Canal

Barra da Tijuca

Connect through water transportation

B

13

50 m

Create ecological corridors

Expand the green network

C

Activate neglected areas in iconic community spaces

Rehabilitate the mangroves and the restinga ecosystems

C

Generate new public spaces

D

Grow retention vegetation and agroforest

C

C

Equip existing public spaces

D

Stimulate green envelopes

Qualify the network between public spaces

D

C

Expand the public domain to household roofs

D

CLT

Develop Community Land Trust’s in nonregularized settlements

Densify low populated areas

Open project The design, as an open-project, intends to inform on strategic locations and opportunities for an alternative development in the city. Showcasing spatial, functional and institutional strategies that can initiate a dialogue for the co-production of spaces in Rio de Janeiro.

Autonomous, yet supplementary, the strategies were designed to construct a continuous development process, one that can be driven by bottom-up and top-down approaches. Through actions that can be implemented and managed by multiple stakeholders iterations - self-organization and/or collaboration between civil society, private and public sectors. The adaptability of the development process increases the capacity of the process against temporal uncertainties - social, economic, ecological and institutional.

Build affordable multifunctional housing complexes

Reinforce the development of flat roofs in new housing units

The open project is not stagnant, nor definitive, yet it urges potential ideas and dialogues among the actors in the city.

Initiating a process where local actors can be actively shaping the project according to their contexts, resources and demands.

“By simultaneously withdrawing from the ‘potential to actualize’ and engaging with the creation of ‘spaces of potentiality’, the act of design becomes 1) a withdrawal from and resistance to forces of development that create inequality and exclude sections of society and 2) an engagement with dynamic, hybrid processes that enable a multiplicity of actors, other forms of knowledge, other forms of production, and other potentialities to manifest.”

(Wolf, G. and Mahaffey, N., 2016, p. 2).

46

1. Brazil - Southeast region. Rio de Janeiro.

Source: Author.

2. Geographical frameworks. Source: Author.

3. Topographic borders - Urban gradient.

Perspective view of the Planning Area 4.

Source: Author.

4. Research aim diagram. Source: Author.

5. Suporimposition of bordering conditions on the Planning Area scale. Source: Author.

6. The 'laje' (roof). Location Gardênia Azul.

Source: Author.

7. The living room. Location Gardênia Azul.

Source: Author.

8. Community infrastructure. Location Curicica. Source: Author.

9. Multidimensional and multiscalar conditions. Highest vulnerability areas. Source: Author.

10. Fragmentation matrix. Source: Author.

11. Strategic layers. (A) Social Empowerment, (B) Ecological Capacitation, (C) Public Spaces, (D) Housing and Densification. Source: Author.

12. Socio-ecological strategic plan for the Planning Area 4. Source: Author.

13. Strategic actions. Source: Author.

14. Local scale design. Location Curicica.

Source: Author.

15. After / Before illustration of strategic opportunities for a wasteland in Curicica.

Source: Author.

Vol. 30 References 1. Corner, J. (1999). The agency of mapping: speculation, critique and invention. In Mappings, edited by Denis E. Cosgrove.

213-252. London, Reaktion.

2. Baker , Judy L. 2008. Urban poverty : a global view (English). Urban Papers ; no. UP-5. Washington, DC: World Bank.

3. Davis, M. (2017). Planet of Slums. London, Verso.

4. Habraken, N. J. (2000). The structure of the ordinary: form and control in the built environment. MIT press.

5. Herzog, L. A. (2013). “Barra da Tijuca: The Political Economy of a Global Suburb in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.” Latin

American Perspectives 40(2): 118-134.

6. Holling, C. S. (2001). Understanding the complexity of economic, ecological, and social systems. Ecosystems, 4(5), 390-405.

7. Lefebvre, H. (1996). Writting on Cities. Oxford, UK, Blackwell Publisher Ltd. 8. Perlman, J. (2010). “Favela: four decades living on the edge in Rio de Janeiro”. Oxford, UK. Oxford University Press.

9. Rauws, W. (2016). Civic initiatives in urban development: self-governance versus self-organization in planning practice.

Town Planning Review, 87(3), 339-361.

10. Rolnik, R. (2011). Democracy on the edge: limits and

possibilities in the implementation of an urban reform agenda in Brazil. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 35(2), 239-255.

London.

11. Ventura, Z. (1994). Cidade Partida. Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, Companhia das Letras.

12. Wolf, G. and Mahaffey, N., (2016). “Designing Difference: Co-Production of Spaces of Potentiality”. Urban Planninig Cogitato Vol 1 Iss 13. UN-HABITAT (2016), World Cities Report 2016: Urbanization and Development - Emerging Futures, UN, New York,

1x1 - 3D Isometric Desi

Civic center Capacitation center Multifunctional buildings

Solar energy production14 Services and retail

1x1 - 3D IsometricCanals Design

Ecological corridors Supportive green network Hillside vegetation Civic center

Green envelope

Capacitation center

Mangrove rehabilitation

Multifunctional buildings

Instant identity

Solar energy production

Elevated public domain

Services and retail

public space -hard surface

Canals

public space - soft surface

Ecological corridors

Existent public space - infrastructure

Supportive green network

Cyclepath

Hillside vegetation

Building mass

Green envelope Mangrove rehabilitation Instant identity Elevated public domain public space -hard surface public space - soft surface Existent public space - infrastructure Cyclepath Building mass

14 47

ATLANTIS Magazine by Polis | Platform for Urbanism and Landscape Architecture Faculty of Architecture, TU Delft Volume 30, Issue 1, November 2019 Editors-in-Chief

Kavya Kalyan, Stefano Agliati

Public relations

Oumkaltoum Boudouaya

Polis Board Representative Ingrid Staps

Editorial Team

Dhushyanth Ravi, Ganesh Babu R.P., Lucas Di Gioia, Jackson Kariuki, Kavya Suresh, Mathias Gorz, Maud Ebbers, Oumkaltoum Boudouaya, Paulius KliuÄ?ininkas, Surbhi Agrawal, Tapasya Mukkamala

Printer

Drukwerkdeal.nl

Cover Design

Lucas Di Gioia, Maud Ebbers

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 Atlantis appears four times a year.

Number of copies: 500 This issue has been made with 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.

The views and opinions expressed in this magazine are those of their respective authors and do not necessarily reflect the position of the Editorial team of Atlantis Magazine or Polis.

ISSN 1387-3679

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Henk Ovink, Rijksoverheid, United Nations Bart Schrijnen, Factual Design.