Atlantis #24.3 Spatial Conceptions

ATLANTIS

MAGAZINE BY POLIS | PLATFORM FOR URBANISM VISIONARY Cities, Nature and Utopia The Myth of Utopia Arcosanti Dystopia of an Urban Metropolis

PRACTICE Reactivate!

Urban by Nature Contemporary New Towns in Asia Mosques, Mills and Malls

INFORMAL Appropriation of Modernity by Citizens Da Lang Fever Informality Challenged Informal Bucharest

#24.3 March 2014

SPATIAL CONCEPTIONS FROM UTOPIAN VISIONS TO INFORMALITY

From the board Committees 2013

Dear Polis members,

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

We are always looking for enthusiastic people to join. Interested in one of the Polis committees? Do not hesitate to contact us at our Polis office (01.west.350) or by mail: contact@polistudelft.nl

In front of you lies issue #24.3 of the Atlantis magazine called ‘Spatial Conceptions: from utopian visions to informality’. This Atlantis magazine is the first to be published by the board of 2014 and as the new board we are looking forward to the upcoming year. We are honoured to continue the work of the former boards who made Polis a more open and active study association. During our board year we hope to achieve the next step in the growth of Polis by making it more open, active and popular. This we want to achieve by getting all students involved, improving the quality of education and establishing Public Relations and communication in order to take Polis to the next level.

We believe that by opening up Polis to students we can get them more involved, not only the Urbanism but also the Landscape architecture and the bachelor students. By opening up we mean organizing social as well as informative and educational events. Since Polis is a platform for Urbanism and Landscape architecture, attracting this last group will result in more Landscape related events like a visit to Ebben nurserymen.

During our board year we want to focus on the improvement of the quality of education. Urbanism students are not always happy with the quality but are unheard; furthermore information is not provided in the right way. The education committee we will set up aims to form a bridge between the students and the department of Urbanism in order to provide the right information as well as collect feedback from students about their education.

Furthermore we want to put effort into making Polis better known, not only in the academic but also in the professional field. We introduce a Public Relations function to the board who will concentrate on both improving the connection to the outside world and the presence of Polis on social media. Besides that the Urbanism week and Atlantis are existing elements that will be used to strengthen the position of Polis.

Polis board Eva van Rijen – President Bob Koster – Secretary Martina Gentili – Treasurer Daniëlle Gunnewijk – Public Relations Joppe Kant – Events Ksenia Polyanina – Atlantis

With these goals we want to realize Polis’ potential as a platform for communication between students, academics and professionals in order to bridge education with practice and real life. Realizing this goal is something we can not do on our own, so if you are interested in joining one of our committees or you have ideas, do not hesitate to contact us.

We hope to see you soon at one of our events.

On behalf of the Polis board of 2014, Ksenia Polyanina

polistudelft.nl

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ATLANTIS

Editorial

MAGAZINE BY POLIS | PLATFORM FOR URBANISM

Atlantis Volume #24 Are you passionate about urbanism and would like to contribute? Contact us at: atlantis@polistudelft.nl

#24.1 Conveying Society Keywords: Network, Social Domain, Hard & Soft Infrastructure

#24.2 Emerging Trends Keywords: Digital, Corporate, Healthy, Green

#24.3 Spatial Conceptions Keywords: Utopia, Informality, Practice

The lack of congruence between the conception and implementation of ideas is perhaps the most burdening predicament of the design and planning professions. While students are taught both theoretical and practical tools to find spatial “solutions”, the challenge of positioning oneself amongst the many historic and contemporary traditions of practice prevails. The current issue of Atlantis addresses different incentives and processes, idealistic visions colliding with practical compromises, which lead to our spatial reality. Correspondingly, the issue categorizes the covered interviews and articles into visions, practice and the informal.

The issue opens with theoretical notions or manifestos constituting utopian visions, which Cor Wagenaar describes to be not merely dreams, but are envisioned as realistic scenarios for the future. “In other words, programs for (political) action.” While Rem Koolhaas has stated that “every architect carries the Utopian gene”, Kirk Sun argues for the ideological obsessions of urban planners by describing the ghosts of China’s dynastic utopias.

In a conversation with Jeff Stein we discuss Arcology as a “pattern of inhabiting the planet” in balance with nature, which is famously explored in Arcosanti. Project Tegel, in contrast, renders a “Dystopia of an Urban Metropolis”, by speculating on a future scenario, which fuels Western Europeans’ unrestrained consumption behavior rather than idealizing our ability to stop exploiting cheap labor.

The section on practical terms in architecture and urbanism addresses Western reconsiderations, which increasingly encompass community empowerment, and authoritarian systems in the East. Indira van’t Klooster describes how Dutch architects and designers are searching for “new ground and meaning in society” by zooming into the small scale of the community. In ReciproCities Arjan van Timmeren’s describes how such pro-active Localization is necessary for cities to become lastingly sustainable. An essential reconsideration of our responsibility when considering the Anthropocene and humanity’s irrevocable impact on nature (Dirk Sijmons). In accordance with the global shift of demographic and economic growth towards the East, the latest, and perhaps last, generation of cities entirely springing from the drawing board of planners and politicians are Rising in the East. As globalization has certainly fertilized Chinese developments, Matthijs van Oostrum looks upon Ahmedabad, a city which evolved an eclecticism in the “shadow of globalism”.

The informal processes due to the absence of “better options offered by the government or society” are the subject of this Atlantis’ final section. Selforganizational practice defines architectural development in Colombia (Antonio Manrique G.) as much as it characterizes the social and economic value of urban villages in Shenzhen (Da Lang Fever, Linda Vlassenrood).

Informal settlements likewise endangered by governmental urban transformation plans are the Gecekondus, set in Istanbul, as discussed with Evren Aysev, Ipek Akpinar and Robbert Jan van der Veen. In conversation with Stefan Ghenciulescu we finally hear about projects informally reactivating the urban space in Bucharest.

We would like to remind our readers to find Atlantis online under at http://atlantistudelft.wordpress.com/

#24.4 Keywords: Responsibility, Ethics, Justice

On behalf of the entire editorial team, I want to thank all the contributors, and wish you enjoyable reading!

Emilia Bruck

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SPATIAL CONCEPTIONS From Utopian visions to Informality

PROLOGUE

5 UTOPIC – DYSTOPIA Tanya Chandra

ARTICLE

28 CONTEMPORARY NEW TOWNS IN ASIA A SHORT INTRODUCTION OF THE BOOK RISING IN THE EAST Rachel Keeton, Michelle Provoost, Wouter Vanstiphout

VISIONARY ARTICLE

6 CITIES, NATURE AND UTOPIA Cor Wagenaar ARTICLE

9 THE MYTH OF UTOPIA QUESTIONING UTOPIA BY A CHINESE ARCHITECT Kirk Sun INTERVIEW

12 ARCHITECTURE, ECOLOGY & URBAN SPACE IN ARCOSANTI

ARTPAGE

32 HELIOPOLIS I Dionisio González ARTICLE

34 MOSQUES, MILLS AND MALLS

RETRACING SPATIAL DEVELOPMENT IN AHMEDABAD Matthijs van Oostrum TOP 5

36 URBAN UTOPIAS

SHAPING URBANISM THROUGHOUT TIME

Interview with Jeff Stein

Ioana Ailincai

INTERVIEW

INFORMAL

16 TOWARDS A DIGITAL URBAN AGENDA Interview with Simon Giles INTERVIEW

20 PROJEKT TEGEL

DYSTOPIA OF AN URBAN METROPOLIS Interview with Manuel Aust, by Scully Beaver-Lynch

ARTICLE

38 APPROPRIATION OF MODERNITY BY CITIZENS Antonio Manrique G. COMMENT BOX

40 DA LANG FEVER

A STORY ABOUT THE POTENTIAL OF A SELF-ORGANIZING MIGRANT

PRACTICE

Linda Vlassenrood

INTERVIEW

22 REACTIVATE

Interview with Indira Van 't Klooster

COMMENT BOX

43 IS INFORMALITY UTOPIA OR DYSTOPIA ?

Henk Mulder, Stefan Ghenciulescu, Mary Ann O'Donnell, Rui Chen

INTERVIEW

25 URBAN BY NATURE Interview with Dirk Sijmons

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Prologue

Figure: Discussion as a factor of Urbanism ©Tanya Chandra

INTERVIEW

44 INFORMALITY CHALLENGED THE CASE OF ISTANBUL Interview with Evren Aysev, Ipek Akpinar & Robbert Jan van der Veen INTERVIEW

48 INFORMAL BUCHAREST INFORMALITY AND UTOPIA IN SOUTH EAST EUROPE Interview with Stefan Ghenciulescu REPORT

52 THE URBANISTS IN ISTANBUL

REPORT OF POLIS INSTANBUL STUDY TOUR Mel Tuangthong GRADUATION PROJECT

54 CAN YOU DESIGN SELF-ORGANIZATION? Bert Oostdijk REPORT

56 EVOLVE, IMPROVE & RENEW URBAN CONSERVATION AS A STRATEGY FOR SUSTAINABLE SPATIAL DEVELOPMENT Osama Naji & Todor Kesarovski GRADUATION PROJECT

58 PROTEST UTOPIA BRUSSELS Marcus Parviainen EPILOGUE

60 RECIPROCITIES Interview with Arjan van Timmeren

UTOPIC – DYSTOPIA

Ideologies as similar, as yin and yang, that makes a coin, which is typed-cast; So one would wonder, as the mind goes tender, with one side, smog filled eyes, the other side showing, the green-highline; world apart are these Ideologies, that makes this coin!

On extreme sides, of an oscillating time, these crisis of Ideologies, is making up its mind; Transiting on a hyperbole, like the boom and bust, of an economic overhaul; like a cycle, that is ready for a call; and as a visionary, should I make that toss!

An Ideal man, with his Ideologies, casting his fantasy; with time, which toss would it be, with time, which ideology will hear me; a single thought, with its million effects, is a picture I paint!

A portrait I see, defining my boundaries, some lines I make, some blotched they do, and so the network lives, and I would wonder what I told, to get this complex growth, reaching far beyond my birth!

I called an Ideology, they tossed some philosophy, to make a grid, of them and I, a creation I call Urban!

Tanya Chandra

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| VISIONARY | article

Visionary 'Utopias are not just dreams; they suggest that the future they envisage can actually be made. Utopias are, in other words, programs for (political) action.'

Cor Wagenaar

Cities, Nature and Utopia Cor Wagenaar In 1947, Paul and Percival Goodman published a booklet entitled Communitas. Means of Livelihood and Ways of Life. In it, the two brothers - Paul a political philosopher, Percival an architect - proposed a myriad of minor and major interventions that should transform New York from a city of extravagant waste into a place where everything was customized to fit the citizens’ personal needs. Paul’s anarchist inclinations led him to blame modern bureaucratic society for promoting a lifestyle that frustrated people’s natural longings to create their environment in a way that today would be designated as ‘bottom up’. He saw postwar American society as coercive and destructive - a view that appears to anticipate the writing of contemporary sociologists, notably W.H. Whyte’s Organization Man, first published in 1956.

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In 1960, Communitas was republished with a few lines on the cover of another scholarturned-activist: Lewis Mumford. Now the booklet was included in the mental horizon of the counter cultural movement, which rescued it from oblivion. Although many of the alternative solutions propagated in it appear out of date today, it is still capable of captivating the minds of the readers. The Goodman brothers’ picture of an alternative New York is distinctly utopian: a place that is built around a series of solutions for usually clearly defined social and economic evils, set in the (near) future. Every utopia paints a picture of an ideal society and uses concrete design proposals to give its inherent idealism a realistic ring. Utopias are not just dreams, they suggest that the future they envisage can actually be made. Utopias are, in other words, programs for (political) action.

and urbanism since the sixteenth century at the latest. How fascinating it would be to analyze the many utopias that revolve around this topic. To architects and urban planners working in pre-industrial times, however, the thought that this could be done within the urban tissue of large cities would have seemed highly unlikely and utopian indeed. Until the late nineteenth century, cities were seen as places where nature was virtually absent (no thanks to the public parks that became fashionable in these days). Already in the eighteenth century, this triggered a series of utopian projects that envisaged small-scale, villagelike communities in a natural setting, expressing and actually shaping social and economic principles that broke away from established conventions. Well-known utopias – Charles Fourier’s Phalanstère, for instance - were often seen as revolutionary

Since they were actually realized, they hardly qualify as utopian, though they did acquire a utopian ring when the gardens were no longer seen as reflecting the spirit of God, but rather as embodying the laws of nature and the origins of science - a view that found expression in the English garden, which, as Erik de Jong has pointed out, derived its political overtones from France.1 The complaints about unhealthy living conditions in cities were well founded.

In the late eighteenth century, statistics began to be published that drove the point home: the average lifespan in cities was about half of what might be expected on the countryside. In the nineteenth century, the emergence of the industrial metropolis only made things worse. And that was not the only deplorable quality associated with the metropolis: the result of processes often

'In the concept of the megalopolis, urban lifestyles were theoretically disassociated from the physical construct of cities: in terms of its culture and mentality, the city was believed to be ubiquitous.'

Communitas has all the qualities of a utopian vision. Moreover, it proposes to rethink the relationship between city and countryside, beginning with an overview of earlier planning models that tried to do so: the garden city movement, broadacre city, the ville radieuse. Whereas these models tried to accommodate or redirect existing social, technological and economic trends, Paul and Percival Goodman wished to pave the way for alternative solutions that, ideally, replaced rather than transformed contemporary society. It is hardly surprising that this would result in a green city - when the book was published most urban theorist propagated low-density, suburban structures that should absorb part of the population of the overcrowded metropolitan cities.

Suburbia, however, is not what the authors of Communitas had in mind. They wished to revitalize the metropolis and restore the urban community. Instead of re-adjusting the balance between green agricultural and recreational lands in suburbia, they wanted to achieve this within the built-up area of the metropolis.

The juxtaposition of nature and city is a constant theme in the history of architecture

since they created islands where alternative moral values reigned supreme. Pockets in a sea of greenery, islands in a society awaiting revolution, the relative isolation of these communities was part of the political ideology they stemmed from. Limited in size, these communities represented the largest scale suitable for social and economic experimentation. Embedded in nature, they expresed the belief that they belonged to it, that they gave form to a natural way of life that was in many ways the exact opposite of the lifestyles found in big cities.

The idea that urban lifestyles are unhealthy and destructive continues a long tradition.

In the Netherlands this led to a unique explosion of country estates in the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries.

They were surrounded by sometimes lavish gardens and represented the ideal of a life in harmony with nature. Numerous treatises praised the virtues of escaping the cities which were seen as unhealthy and morally corrupting. In the province of Friesland alone there were dozens of these estates (although here there were no big cities to escape from); in Holland, Utrecht and Zealand especially there were many more.

referred to as urbanization, many theorists saw the metropolis as a new phenomenon that actually destroyed the city, one of the major issues being the conviction that cities coincided with an urban community, whereas the metropolis was a shifting conglomerate of underpaid proletariats, characterized by Reinhard Baumeister as urban nomads’.2 The metropolis lacked the social cohesion associated with cities - in terms ‘of community, there was nothing to represent. Instead, the metropolis was often marked by the palatial mansions of the nouveau riche and spiced with luxurious theaters, museums and concert halls that, allegedly, only represented the (would-be) elite, while the urban poor lived in slums.

Now wonder that the metropolis fell victim to increasing social tension, rebellion and crime. Again, fleeing to small-scale communities on the countryside appeared to be the only way out. The reasons, however, gradually changed: in the late nineteenth century, after spending unprecedented amounts of money in sewage systems, water supply networks and, slightly later, housing for the urban poor, health conditions in the cities reached a higher level than those in the countryside - the main reasons for utopian 7

| VISIONARY | article

1 alternatives were now of a social, economic and cultural nature. The best known of these alternatives is undoubtedly Ebenezer Howard’s garden city concept, which manifested the revolutionary ideal that they would usher in the end of the metropolis.

This ideal soon watered down and in the 1920s the garden city movement merged with the town planning discipline that wanted to reform the metropolis, not destroy and replace it. Compact cities were seen as ideal, but when they exceeded a certain size, further growth should be transferred to satellite towns in the region. Parks and parkways were recommended as design solutions to guarantee easy access to greenery even in the densely built-up urban tissue. In the Netherlands, landscape preservationists warned against the construction of satellite towns in the Randstad, since it would ruin the unique polder landscape, result in a mishmash of urban settlements without a clear hierarchy, and drain the lifeblood of the old towns.

Today, the urban pattern in the Randstad appears to manifest all the characteristics urban planners in the 1920s and 1930s wished to prevent. Between 1940 and 1950, suburbanization was readily accepted as a safety measure against air raids - it is much more difficult to eradicate low density settlements than compact cities. Moreover, suburbia allowed the planners to create separate modules, the neighborhoods, with all facilities needed for everyday life. Thus, they would stimulate the emergence of sound communities, offering - in the eyes of the advocates of this approach - a valuable alternative for the lack of social cohesion associated with the traditional city. Utopian is hardly the word for these settlements: they became the standard units of the urban and demographic explosion that literally changed the face of the earth in many Western countries, and were also applied at a large scale in the socialist parts of Europe.

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2 In the concept of the megalopolis, urban lifestyles were theoretically disassociated from the physical construct of cities: in terms of its culture and mentality, the city was believed to be ubiquitous. This, obviously, implied that erasing the city’s physical appearance had hardly any consequences for the lifestyles they embedded - and this, too, can be seen as a response to the threat of air raids (now enhanced by the atom bomb). Its omnipresent and inescapable nature nourished utopian counter proposals, most of which criticized the oppressive nature of planning, organization, administration, bureaucracy - in other words: modernization processes marked by the consequences of what soon was labeled a ‘managerial revolution’. Integrated in the planning machinery of the welfare state, the discipline of urban planning became part of the establishment the counter cultural movement wanted to overthrow.

Communitas is an early and particularly fascinating example of a utopian alternative.

Often, the urge to break away from postwar society led to a celebration of allegedly natural lifestyles and experiments with communes in the countryside. Although these ideals could not stop the processes of suburbanization, they did inspire a new type of low-rise housing estate where streets regained their traditional qualities of public, social spaces and were no longer subordinated to the car. In the Netherlands, these settlements are often referred to as cauliflower estates (bloemkoolwijken); their alleged more natural characteristics, however, cannot hide the fact that they destroyed the open countryside in much the same way as their predecessors did. In the 1970s and 1980s many were built - and then things once again changed dramatically.

Paradoxically, the emergence of virtual reality, powered by the personal computer and the internet, and the rise to dominance of a service oriented economy based mostly

on companies that, being footloose, do not depend on the physical infrastructure cities offer, did little to revitalize the abstract urban visions of the megalopolis. Quite the contrary: physical characteristics associated with a city’s identity and often related to its marketing potential led to the re-discovery of what one may describe as the non-virtual, concrete urban qualities. This is bound to have an effect on the perception of the countryside as well - especially the parts not affected by suburban sprawl. So far, however, this does not seem to have triggered a return to the utopias set in rural surroundings. No utopian visions have emerged that offer an alternative for the urban lifestyles in the re-discovered physical environment of the city. In all likelihood, the idea that such utopias can really offer a save haven set apart from the morals and values of main stream society are seen as highly unrealistic, the more so since the internet and mobile phone have made isolated islands a thing of the past.

If communes in a natural setting no longer offer a possibility to escape modern society and its morals and values, where should one look for utopian alternatives instead? Maybe utopia can be everywhere, in the cities as well as on the countryside - as long as it succeeds in presenting what, now that the state spies on all citizens, appears to have become the most utopian of all notions: the idea that people have a right to define how they want to live, with whom and in which circumstances, without any party interfering with them except those they themselves can control.

These notions were the basic assumptions of democracy, and probably the only way to arrive at true Communitas. What would this imply for urbanism? Can urbanism disassociate itself from the management and control mechanisms it has become part of?

How utopian are Communitas-like urban schemes now that Western society appears to be on the threshold of a new, post-democratic era? ■

Figure 1. Paul and Percival Goodman, "Communitas: Means of Livelihood and Ways of Life", first published in 1947 2. ‘Communitas’, Ideal City plan ©Percival and Paul Goodman

References 1. Erik de Jong, ‘De jongste zuster der schooner kunsten. Tuinkunst in 18e-eeuws Nederland’, in Nederlandse tuinen in de achttiende eeuw, Amsterdam, Maarssen 1986, 11.

2. R. Baumeister, Stadt-Erweiterungen in technischer baupolizeilicher und wirtschaftlicher Beziehung, Berlin 1876. 17.

The Myth of Utopia Questioning Utopia by a Chinese Architect

Utopia is no longer a popular topic in China. But China still works with its ghost within architectural and urban practice. Kirk Sun, a Chinese architect in practice as well as an architecture critic, questions modern Utopia visions rooted in the western society from the lens of traditions and current rapid development in China. The key question he asks is, whether the over-simplified Utopia visions, either traditional or modern, can solve the complex problems of today's cities?

Unlike Europe after the 15th century and Roman Empire, China has a tradition of Utopia lasting for 2000 years – it is a deeply-rooted national obsession. For certain geographic and geopolitical reasons, the Chinese have already started Utopian experiments, beginning in the Qin dynasty around 221 BC. The Qin was the first centralized dynasty who had enough resources and theory to support this possibility1. For the city, Wu Yue Chun Qiu2 recorded different maximum height standards for the City Walls of different class of feudal states that composed the Zhou Dynasty (around 1000-250 BC). For example, for the Emperor, the height of walls is 14.5m; for the King, Duke, and Marquis, 11.3m; for the Earl, 8m; and, for the Viscount and Baron, 5m. This is a straightforward presence of authority in the vision of Utopia.

This tradition is, on one side, a positive value for improving current China urbanization, but is on the other side, emphasizing the importance of critical thinking about Utopia.

The functional failure of today’s Beijing is an obvious example. This city was planned based on a Centralized/Functional City principle3 since 1950s, and this principle still works in terms of planning up until today.

It has become a living dystopia in its superrealistic smog. The re-thinking on Utopia may just be a dramatic retro-fashion for cities in already developed countries, but for the un-developed, it will be of great value.

• Term

Literally, Utopia was born in Sir Thomas More`s fiction4. This has never changed: Utopia is inherently FICTION. Mentally, Utopia is not More`s initial creation, it has existed for thousands of years. But only after More, did this word become a representation of a certain vision – an active or mental model in the form of design, literature, theory or manifesto.

• Gene

Rem Koolhaas, the architect of the New Headquarter of China Central Television, said “Every architect carries the utopian

Kirk Sun(孫珂) A researcher Landstudio (Beijing); A Senior Architect Warner Architecture Studio

gene”5. Utopia is not only the latent gene of architects, but also the obsession of urban planners for 3 thousand years.

• History

In Eastern Asia, the earliest recorded Utopian concept is mentioned as “State of Anarchy” by Zhuangzi at around 300 BC, and in Europe, it is “The Republic” by Plato at around 380 BC. They are mostly imagining a comparatively better society.

But the fatal paradox is this: the Utopian concept is mostly about the life and order of the majority, but is always designed by the minority - by those writers or Philosophers

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| VISIONARY | article

and Architects. How could Utopia (or those social decisions that were made by a few people, but in name of many) face this paradox, and thus get its rationality?

Through this a priori, tyrants choose to block any arguments or monopolized the right to interpret; and democrats choose to vote for it based on freedom of speech.

• Aesthetics

So, in term of urban planning, most Utopian models in history choose to win this game by gaining aesthetic approval instead of exposing the lack of reason. Therefore, when Speer and Hitler were planning their capital Germania6, the persuasiveness of the scheme is neither rationalizing the demolition of the Jewish community, through state-owned media, nor representing Hitler`s personal desires. Instead it is with the GIANT DOME, the LONG AXIS, the NONHUMAN SCALE AVENUE, and the LARGE MONUMENTS, that Germania wins this game, through the aesthetics of BIGNESS, just the same as what later happened in the USSR, Romania, China, and North Korea, etc. “Wonder is not precisely knowing”(Emily Dickinson). The architecture and planning of Germania is so powerful, so in some way it`s lucky that the Allies and the Russian Army destroyed Nazi Germany before this new Berlin had been built, otherwise how would German people, and today’s architects, face this BEAUTIFUL, but EVIL, heritage? Would the instant demolition that happened to the Berlin Wall have also happened to Germania? Or would it become the physical

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evidence that proved the EVIL - if so, how else could we explain its instinctive spectacularity?

• “Good, Gooder, Goodest”7

Utopia looks GOOD, for it claims the good of the many. But as it can`t provide reason to support this, then it is never ‘REAL’ GOOD. It is beautiful only when it is in a painting or in words. Utopia embraces a simplified understanding of the world and the city, ignoring their complexity. We may love Utopia in the form of art, but should never accept it to be useful as a scientific conclusion.

Utopia is attractive only when we read about it. It would even be boring and destructive if it became true - it has the same regularity and the self-given omnipotence as NEW SPEAK (George Orwell).

needs to import the whole modern system of architect and architecture from the west9.

This might be a common principle in history, but large-scale urban-planning always means possibilities to conceive and apply Utopia; and everyone, including politicians, wants this authority to reveal their desires.

• “Wille zur Macht”10

If Utopia carries a secret desire, is it the reason why people in history are so fond of creating Utopia? Is Utopia subconsciously a political creation for those Utopian schemes that could present one`s vision to society - no matter if it is about software, (a state system) like Plato, or about hardware, (architecture) like Le Corbusier? Utopia is subjective, it is the WILL TO POWER (Wille zur Macht), all that tells us “what the society should be”.

• AUTHORITY

• Mini-utopia

Is not the obsession with Utopia an unrevealed demand for AUTHORITY? It seems to be a professional spirit of the architect and urban planner. This spirit naturally means decision-making power and the authority of designing social activities and its containers - the buildings and cities.

This AUTORITY is not always the patent of architects and urban planners in history though. It used to belong to the businessman and the church, or the ancient Egyptian nobility. In the traditional architectural system of China, only the state owns the authority of urban planning and architecture.

Think about why Forbidden City has the roof type that normal citizens are forbidden to use8, and think about why China now

Everywhere, we see re-generations and mutations of the Utopian gene: broad and symmetrical squares, CBD skyscrapers, polished curtain walls, giant porticos, titanic lobbies, space-age gardens, etc. They are all mini-utopias. And no matter how pretty or ugly, they are popular and auspicious, generic and flexible. They are the basic elements of the contemporary city. They are the progeny of architects` inflated ambitions and the triumph of capital.

If the ancient city referred to one Utopia, the contemporary city is a collection of UTOPIAS. • Principles: Less is More

Utopia is usually a package of theories, or a

Figure 1. The rise of utopian concepts usually means the downfall of human. ©Kirk Sun 2. If ancient buildings are trying to be element that composing Utopia(city), the modern buildings are individually one Utopia. ©Kirk Sun

2 'If the ancient city referred to one Utopia, contemporary city is a collection of UTOPIAS.' bunch of rhetoric. Most Utopia is based on graphic or literal deduction systems with a few principles, such as the Functional City or the Garden City. Those principles could be a manifesto (futurism)11 or a symbolic graphic metaphor (Forbidden City), a politicaleconomic guideline (Moscow and Beijing) or a moral agenda (La Ville Radieuse12), or ecological issues and happiness (this is the most popular propaganda of the 21th century). Creators of Utopia love clear and strong principles, as they are easier to remember. One may wonder if this is also the aesthetics of simplicity and power? It is ironic that usually a short propaganda is more well-known than a long truth. Also, in developing countries’ urbanization, a clean but unstable Utopian model is more easily accepted than those practical negotiation systems between city planners and citizens.

in ruins” (Russell)13. As all rely on principles - principles are faith. Beijing`s faith is the functional city, and it is suffering traffic jams between clear and separated functional zones. Shanghai`s faith is financing, and it is suffering because its private economy sector is shrinking. Detroit`s faith is the vehicle, so let`s drive and flee away!

• Crisis

• “Too True to Be Good”

As Utopia dislikes too many principles and cautiously scientific analysis - the best sold Utopia in history has no more than five principles and with the most radical gestures.

Utopia has an over-simplified theory, which leads to weakness and paradox, a dangerous version of Leibniz`s pyramid with a downward taper, on these basic principles: “the slightest flaw anywhere brings it down

Utopian models had never been successfully applied on social revolution and urban planning. The city is TRUE, and the Utopian model is GOOD. The 20th century has exposed the disparity between reality and utopia at the cost of money and life.

Now the utopian story has ended. It’s a Wim Wanders` century of “too true to be good” instead of “too good to be true”14.■

• Disability

Utopia can`t be both beautiful and true. It is weak and clumsy when confronting the complicated reality, for Utopia needs a clean and powerful model - think about the grand tundra ecological system. It is a beauty of simplicity and weakness in nature. Once we give any model enough autonomy and flexibility, then there will be no powerful and identified structure - therefore no presence of Utopia anymore.

Reference 1.About Qin dynasty as the first unified centralized-empire of China, this could refer to theory on Eastern Zhou dynasty by Prof. Dingxin Zhao 趙鼎新 at Department of Sociology, University of Chicago. What I mentioned“certain geographic and geopolitical reasons”can be presented more in detail in his book East Zhou China Warfare and the Formation of the Confucian- Legalist State (in Chinese 東周 戰爭與儒法國家的誕生). Shanghai: Sanlian Publishing House 2. Wu Yue Chun Qiu 吳越春秋 was written

by Zhao Ye趙曄 around 25-46.AD, originally has 12 volumes, currently 10 exist. This book mainly recorded history of Wu kingdom and Yue Kingdom at Chun Qiu age (770-476.BC, during Eastern Zhou Dynasty) 3. According to 60Years Record on Capitial`s Urbaning Planning From 1949 to 2009 歲月回 響——首都城市規劃事業60年紀事1949-2009, edited and published by Beijing City Planning Bureau, “Beijing Planning was following Soviet Union”, the first group of Soviet Union experts arrived Beijing at 16th, September of 1949.

4. Utopia, 1516, by Sir Tomas More 5. “Every architect carries the utopian gene” Exhibition Progress at Barbican Art Gallery, London. http://www.dezeen.com/2011/10/05/ omaprogress-at-the-barbican/ 6. Germania, “Welthauptstadt Germania”(World Capital Germania) 7. “the second distinguishing mark of Newspeak grammar was its regularity” “Comparison of adjectives was invariably made by adding -er, -est (good, gooder, goodest)...”, page 316, Nineteen Eighty-Four, George Orwell, Penguin Books, 2008 edition.

8. Form must follow the building users` social grade, this is why in ancient Chinese buildings, the roof type and color on state-owned buildings are rare to be found on civil buildings.

Summarized refer to Yingzao Fashi, 營造法式,

by Li Jie(李誡) 9. People’s Republic of China started Registered Architect system since September, 1994.

10.Friedrich Nietzsche 11. Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, Futurist Manifesto 12. Le Corbusier, 1924 13. Page 643, The History of Western Philosophy, Bertrand Russell, Fourth Printing, Simon and Schuster, New York 14. Page 11, “To Shoot Pictures...” Wim Wenders, New York: D.A.P.Publishers, 1993

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| VISIONARY | interview

Architecture, Ecology & Urban Space at Arcosanti Interview with Jeff Stein

The concept of arcology promotes the creation of self-contained hyperstructures aiming to minimise the destructive human impact on the environment. The term was coined by the ItalianAmerican architect Paolo Soleri who demonstrated his ideas in the design of the town of Arcosanti in Arizona (United States). The construction of Arcosanti begun in 1970, but is an ongoing process aiming to explore the concept of arcology in practice. The unique nature of the project defines Arcosanti as an emblematic example of spatial organisation seeking for the creation of a sustainable human habitat. In order to delve into the essence of the theme Atlantis approached Jeff Stein, the president of the Cosanti Foundation, who shared with us valuable insights concerning this mode of space production in the following interview.

Do you define the concept of arcology as a utopian vision manifesting structures that can be achieved within an idealistic context, or can it be utilized as a general mode of space production?

Space itself is certainly the issue; space and logistical considerations – time and energy and materials – for moving people and goods and services through it. Every activity, every encounter, every life – requires space, occurs in space. But how much space is required? That is the question, and our experiment producing compact urban space forms a basis for the work at Arcosanti.

We reject the utopian model embodied in 20th century city-making based on the dimensions of the automobile, resulting in urban sprawl that is entirely unsustainable due to the immensity of the logistics required to support it. Instead, we think we are entirely realistic to continue to produce the space of arcology at Arcosanti, publish books about it, make museum exhibitions about it, and make the results of our continuing work available to others worldwide to develop it further.

With 7½ billion humans on the planet, on their way to 10 billion by mid-century, the rules of producing space must change, our pattern of inhabiting the earth – how we use that space – needs rethinking.

Another way of deciding how we all live together must be imagined.

We are working on it at Arcosanti where we firmly believe arcology can be – should be – developed as a general mode of space production.

What are the major challenges that the arcology concept confronts in reality?

The main challenge is confronting the current culture of hyperconsumption, the result of a (now) worldwide industrial economy that places no value on “externalities”, i.e. the damage done to earth’s ecology in extracting resources, and the further damage done by using industrially-produced products themselves, and discarding them at the end of their useful lives.

Humans have developed a civilization that commands us all to participate in the incremental exhaustion of earth’s finite inventory 12

Jeff Stein President Cosanti Foundation Arizona, United States

of exploitable resources, transforming climate, weather patterns and ocean acidity as we do so. The state of the art of architecture is a big part of this.

Even our language is important: understanding humans are part of the living “ecology” of the planet rather than thinking, as in the past, that man can “manage” a passive “environment”.

Convincing a global elite to reduce consumption so traditionally impoverished peoples might expand their pre-industrial lives in the direction of equality is unlikely without having a new pattern for designing communities that allows for it.

This will not be solved by driving more efficient cars, or by manufacturing solar panels to install on hundreds of millions of building roofs. We must design our way out, create a pattern of inhabiting the planet in which humans can lessen their consumption – a pattern that is coherent with the rest of life on earth. The early work on “arcology” targets that way.

How feasible is it to develop cities which are self-contained and economically self-sufficient structures?

Today, over half the world’s human population lives in sprawling cities, generating a large, interrelated, un-sustainable system, designed primarily by short-term real-estate profits, not by urban designers, or biologists, or people who have studied how life on earth has evolved.

This is a disaster for cities themselves and for their inhabitants.

“Arcology” advocates that cities – like all organisms - be “contained”.

This just makes sense when trying to solve issues of energy, socialization, land and resource use, while addressing the lives of millions of other species whose very being on earth is threatened by urban sprawl. But it has never been our idea that cities could become “self-sufficient”.

Self-sufficiency is neither feasible nor desirable, and is a fallacy when applied to cities or to individual humans. It is a mistaken notion responsible for civilization’s current level of consumption, a condition that both insulates and isolates us while we use more of earth’s life and resources annually than nature can replace.

1 ‘Arcology implies not just “reform” of existing cities, but “reformulation” of how we make entire cities, how we relate to each other in them.’

For arcology, using “desirability” as a guide, our initial ambition still holds: to design the most loveable communities, create the safest towns and cities, allow our buildings to heat and cool themselves, and grow food for their inhabitants. We continue to test form and space to do this at Arcosanti.

Do you think that the concepts of arcology and Transit-Oriented Development (TOD) can complement each other in order to create a compact city form as an alternative to urban sprawl?

TOD / transit-oriented development is not really an alternative to urban sprawl.

Phoenix, Arizona, already sprawled, has a terrific light-rail system, built at great public expense, operating at a huge financial loss, with per-passenger energy consumption much higher than that of driving a car. Even now, one will never be able to rely only on public transit to go nearly anywhere in the city. Building “more” in an existing city like Phoenix, even around transit, is just building “more”, not really changing the equation.

Arcosanti means to achieve the opposite effect. Arcology implies not just “reform” of existing cities, but “reformulation” of how we make entire cities, how we relate to each other in them. We understand that life is “in the thick of things”, that total urban density and intensity – not just nodes around transit stations – is necessary for social relations and cultural institutions to thrive. Rather than continued urban “explosion”, creating a thin layer of life that sprawls in all directions, as most cities have done in the 20th century, we favour a kind of urban “implosion”, building cities “up” rather than “out”. TOD helps only a little to confront earlier problems, but we are engaged in trying to reflect the reality and complexity of our time, the 21st century.

Did the tight relation with nature that arcology manifests pre-determine the site location of Arcosanti in the desert of Arizona? Do you believe that a prototype similar to Arcosanti can be developed in different locations, or be adapted to various climate conditions?

When the possibility arose in 1970 to begin

constructing a prototype town, the urban laboratory Arcosanti, the natural choice was to locate it near where Paolo Soleri already lived and worked, in Arizona. The climate was favourable, land was available, and very little research had ever been done on how to live successfully in a desert environment.

We are performing that research now at Arcosanti. Nearly one-third of the world’s people live in deserts, and as the earth’s climate continues to change, more and more of us will have this experience – deserts are spreading worldwide. Making architecture in a desert calls for thoughtful solutions that can benefit billions of people. So here we are!

A citizen of arcology can be both a “city” person and a “country” person at the same time, part of both an intense urban experience and able to enjoy quick access to the immediately surrounding wild landscape. Arcosanti’s site, a 4,000-acre land reserve in the high desert of central Arizona, does indeed provide that experience.

In the 1970’s, funded by Xerox Corporation and the American Bicentennial, Cosanti Foundation undertook a study – and 13

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2 'Every activity, every encounter, every life, requires space, occurs in space'.

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produced schematic designs and models for an amazing museum exhibition that travelled throughout North America – for arcologies of varied populations in seven different global climate zones. It is clear that this idea can be adapted to particular climates and cultural conditions worldwide.

are not lined up next to car-and-carbon-monoxide-filled streets; rather they form the edge of a performing arts amphitheatre where extraordinary human events take place on everyone’s doorstep.

Adjacent zones of private, semi-private, semi-public and public space create complex, lively urban neighbourhoods.

What are the major points that you can outline in order to describe the essence of arcology in respect to its application as a mode of space production within today’s urban development perspective?

After all these years of developing this experimental project on the basis of the Soleri’s arcology concept, what is the boldest message that Arcosanti aims to confide to the fields of architecture and urbanism?

Problems arise when producing space in today’s car-centred urban environment. At Arcosanti our intent is to produce public space not for cars, nor at the scale of cars, but for people, at a human (and sometimes grand) scale. The USA guarantees a constitutional right to “Freedom of Assembly”. But America’s existing cities have less public space – places where people can actually assemble, meet each other, exchange ideas, socialize – than any other industrialized country.

Public space is arcology’s advantage.

In essence, in arcology, private space is secondary to public space.

Instead, we use the form of private space to create and define usable, memorable public spaces. The first structures erected at Arcosanti have been grand vaulted arches to shelter public space. Not apartments, not stores or shops: public space. The arched forms provide shade, orientation, and breathtaking views of the surrounding natural landscape. They invite people to visit for special events and experience the place and each other as a community, if only a temporary one.

Producing space that connects people to each other and to their surroundings has continued at Arcosanti, at ever-greater levels of complexity, resulting in an integral urban neighbourhood, Arcosanti’s East Crescent. Here apartments, institutional and commercial space

Arcosanti’s message is that “life is in the thick of things”. We are not futurists. We are not trying to predict the future with this project; we are trying to design it out of what we know about the present.

Let me just confide what we do know: the current global tsunami of consumption – of objects, materials, energy and land – is leading to disaster, both economic and ecological. For the whole world’s population – 7 billion people – to live the way 314 million Americans live now, would take 5 earths to support. This is no joke.

Do you think that the contemporary new type of high-tech modification of arcology follows the initial ideology of the concept?

Techno-utopias like the $16-billion half-completed Masdar City, now a college campus; or Peter Eisenman’s unfinished City of Culture at Santiago de Compostela, have little to do with “arcology.” The word itself connects “architecture” and “ecology”. It implies that as we design buildings and cities, we should understand that they affect and become an important part of the earth’s ecology. In recent history, because we have not understood clearly how this ecology works, our houses, factories, farms, highways, the way we have designed our

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'Cities, the newest form of life on earth, need to perform as efficiently as the rest of life does.' cities – how we have failed to design them properly – has resulted in a crippling effect on earth’s ecology. The presence of sprawling cities in just the last 50 years actually threatens the rest of life on earth.

As life has evolved, it has favoured ever more complex and compact containers. Cities, the newest form of life on earth, need to perform as efficiently as the rest of life does. Thus, we ought to design our cities in a way that conforms to how the rest of life is designed: an enormous quantity of events inside smaller and smaller quantities of matter and time. This is how we think about Arcology: coming to an understanding of “complexity” and “compactness” in urban design to sustain cities, so humans might thrive in them.

What is the future of the arcology?

Much of our 40 years’ work at Arcosanti has been exploration, “conjecture” to use a word from Arcosanti’s founder, architect Paolo Soleri. As we continue to move the project ahead, its usefulness as an urban laboratory, an educational resource, becomes clearer. Strategic university partners are applying scientific method to our earlier social and technical conjectures, testing them in real-world terms.

Two things are working for us at Arcosanti: a powerful architecture which has both memorable form and also performs well in terms of durability, energy use, sociability; and a beautiful natural landscape which we have pledged not to destroy by scattering buildings and roads all over it. We have proven our concept on a series of ever more complex prototype buildings; and we continue to attract visitors and people who want to learn and contribute by participating in our Construction Workshop Program. So we are proceeding with humility and faith in our process. ■

Figure 1. Arcosanti’s southern exposure. © Ken Howie 2. West Housing and the Vaults in the late afternoon light. © Ivan Pintar 3. Paolo Soleri, with a crew of students and volunteers, working on creation of Arcosanti (1972). © Ivan Pintar 4. Annual Italian Night concert and dinner at Arcosanti in honour of its founder Paolo Soleri. © Hanne Sue Kirsch

Todor Kesarovski

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| VISIONARY | interview

Towards a Digital Urban Agenda Interview with Simon Giles

The digital revolution that the world has experienced in the last two decades has shifted the perspective towards the urban development projecting new types of utopian visions concerning our metropolitan areas e.g. the highly digital technological cities. Aiming to delve into this topic we now present an interview with Simon Giles who was also one of the keynote speakers at last year’s Urbanism Week in October 2013. Although Mr Giles has only been working for about six years in the field of urbanism, he nevertheless inspired us all with his fresh perspective on topics of urban development. We approached him with a keen interest in both his personal views and project experience relating to the discipline of urbanism. In the following interview, Mr Giles speaks about his often intriguing position in respect to contemporary urbanism, revealing critical feedback on the shortcomings in current practices, while also speaking about his hopes and beliefs for how new digital technologies may impact our visions towards the urban future.

Tell us a little about your relationship to the field of urbanism?

My background, in fact, is not academic. I am fairly new to urbanism, and have been working within the discipline for about fivesix years. What really surprised me when I came into the practice was the substantial lack of inter-disciplinarily exchange within field of urbanism. When you look at cities and the way they function, cities are a complex system of inter-related sub-systems and you need to be able to understand this from multiple/different dimensions. So far, when I have been involved in urban projects, the architects were doing one thing, the engineers another thing, the real estate agents focusing on a third etc. Each professional worked on his/her own specialisation and the level of interaction between them was relatively poor.

What my team and I are trying to introduce is a completely new view on how you can execute masterplans in a much more holistic way by bringing together the various disciplines and changing the focus from real estate-based development towards a broader perspective of how we create sustainable economic ecosystems within cities. At the heart of this concept is a fundamentally human-based approach to urban design, much less focused on the

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physical infrastructure, engineering, and architecture. In contrast, as a basis of our design paradigm, we try to answer questions such as ‘What do I need to do to encourage people to move from one place to another place?’ and ‘How do I create a compelling lifestyle narrative around this destination?’.

By finding responses to these questions, we can understand what services need to be delivered in order to attract individuals and businesses. And only then, can we focus on the required physical and digital infrastructure, e.g. the architecture and engineering which will shape and facilitate the urban life.

What does this mean in terms of the way a masterplan is developed by urbanists?

We need a much broader urbanism education with more emphasis on economics, social sciences, and anthropology. Urbanists should aim to acquire abilities which will help them understand lifestyle-based design, and also digital design. This does not mean that design professionals should simply understand and make use of digital design software such as CAD tools, but, what is more, they need to really understand the fundamentals of digital technologies and what capabilities they provide us with.

Simon Giles is the director of the Intelligent Cities Strategy, a global advisory team that support sales and delivery of Intelligent Urbanisation projects all over the world as well as developing points of view and relationships with partner organisations.

Although Simon has not an academic background he is professionally engaged with urban development projects seeking for possibilities to improve the performance of the cities of today and tomorrow. His prior specialities within the field of urbanism are related to topics such as smart cities, cluster development, open data, digital masterplanning etc.

1 Since your interests are highly centred around digital design, how much of your work involves the smart city concept?

What is the major setback that limits the translation of digital city concepts into practice?

It is not that I do not like the term ‘smart city’, but I think that the term has been hijacked by the technologists and at the core of the ‘smart city’ concept is the belief that smartness is defined by the technologies we are implementing such as smart meters or smart water sensing technologies. In my humble opinion, technology is the last piece of the equation.

What I am trying to look at is smart design, insofar as it refers to how we tackle urban challenges in a more integrated and, essentially, digital manner. This brings us to the issue of the existing institutional settings within which we must operate. The reality is that the governmental institutions are still based upon late 19th century physical industrial paradigm, and they are not designed for the new digital information age. When you talk to urban governmental bodies, they tend not to talk in digital and information terms, nor do they consider themselves as protagonists to the digital development agenda.

I think that there are several barriers to cities becoming more digital. One of them is the lack of lifestyle-based design and focus. If you are defining smartness by the technologies that are implemented, then it is very hard to create a political narrative which is compelling, because people struggle

articulating the value proposition of the digital city in ‘real-world terms’. This issue demands a reframing of the narrative we are utilizing, which is saying ‘We know that the city has problems with the intermodal mobility. This underlines certain operational difficulties and manifests these negative consequences for the city which we can measure. By implementing a solution we deliver savings of X minutes per day on average for people’s commuting.’

From a political perspective, we should think about how to articulate this narrative in terms that people understand the essence of and can relate the proposed solutions to their everyday life: ‘If I can save twenty minutes per day of commuting, this is extra time that I can spend with my kids, at the cinema or whereever I want to be.’ In fact, people do not care whether the delivered solutions utilize this or that technology.

What they are interested in is how the solutions will ease their everyday activities to improve their lifestyle. I believe that the biggest barrier is that planning professionals fail to articulate this value narrative.

“Cities are system of systems and you need to be able to understand this system from multiple dimensions” to comprehend why you are doing what you are doing. Citizens associate with challenges and problems that they confront in their everyday life such as ‘How do I know where the nearest bus stop is?’. People do not necessarily care whether the city implements a smart meter or congestion charging. What they do really care about is ‘What solutions to my problems do you deliver?’.

Therefore, from a political perspective, the urban government and planning professionals should work harder on

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| VISIONARY | interview

2 “From a technological perspective we can be absolutely sure that we can physically create zero net buildings but we cannot be certain whether people want to live in zero net homes.”

There are other barriers, however, which refer to the business models, governmental structures, and institutional frameworks of cities that disable the implementation of different types of digital solutions. These present plenty of barriers that will need to be overcome, but this will take decades and is not something that will happen overnight.

When does the ‘smart city’ stop being smart?

In reality ‘smart’ is a useful marketing tool; after all, no one wants to not be smart. Nevertheless, if ‘smart’ is synonymous with ‘digital’, then the real answer to this question is when a city becomes ‘postdigital’. This can ultimately happen when digitisation is entirely normalised: when people do not consider digital as different and everybody is digital by default. Thus, if you define ‘smart’ as ‘digital’, then a post-digital city is a city where digital technologies are the norm rather than the exception. This is the easiest way of defining a post-digital city; it is a system in which we should not think about implementing sensing and control technologies because it is already pre-defined in every aspect of the urban design and development.

However, we are a long way away from this reality.

Do you think that this kind of highly-digital, technological-city is a realistic or utopian future scenario?

If we speak in technological terms, most things are possible. For me, the question is whether aspects of human behaviour make it

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impossible. From a technological perspective, we can be absolutely sure that we can physically create zero-net buildings, but we cannot be certain that people want to live in zero-net homes. As a consequence, there may well be a gap between technology capability, environmental behaviour, and the norms of human existence. ‘Do people want to live in techno-utopias? – probably not. This refers to the very essence of the personal preferences perspective. People have a desire for aesthetics or messiness and disorder.

All of these things oppose techno-utopian ideas. The trouble with the vision of technological city is that people define technology in utopian terms in order to provide an apotheosis of what this technological concept looks like. By doing this, the expectations, in respect to these types of visions, have always been set so high that they could not possibly be fulfilled. So you end up going through this standard hype curve where you are developing a lot of hype around technology and its capability to solve every single problem that exists in the world but, in fact, you fall a long way short of the ability to do so. This situation does not necessarily occur because of a fault in technology, but often, due to a fault in the soft architectural aspects around it that are impacted by governmental institutions and human behaviour. In my opinion, this is where we are now. We need to spend considerably less time focusing on the technology of smart cities in favour of thinking about the social institutions and lifestyle behaviour around how this concept could be realised.

3 How can we develop a better understanding of these soft aspects of cities?

I think that there is a lack of knowledge in understanding the system dynamics of the city. There is a fair amount of research regarding what is happening within the urban environment, but, on the other hand, we do not really make sense of the city as a complex system of interrelated systems. The issue of how do different infrastructural systems within the city operate, function, and interrelate is largely white space. This, predominantly, is a result of a lack of empirical data. There is not much sensing and control in the built environment, and, furthermore, there is not a substantial amount of data regarding human behaviour and space syntax, for example.

As we increase the level of embedded and passive sensing within the city, we are going to create lots of new data regarding diverse systems such as electricity, water, mobility, food, waste etc. and draw stronger empirical connection between them. What is more, through embedded sensing we will be able to improve our capabilities to collect metadata on cities, i.e. ‘who is living where?’, ‘what kind of lifestyles exist?’, ‘what is the socio-demographic segmentation of the city?’ and so on. Now we do not possess a huge amount of data in this field because we are not actively, dynamically, and passively measuring the urban phenomena in a fundamentally digital way; and what about storing these datasets and providing analyses on them?

What is very important when we are speaking about digital strategy is that we cannot develop the tools for the data processing before obtaining data input. Nowadays, we have the technological capability and algorithms to manage big data and real-time analytics, but we do not have the datasets to be able to execute the analyses. Even if we have the datasets collected, there is a necessity of establishing institutional forms to enable access to the data.

So a lot of the work that I do is to investigate whether there is a broader role for the city, or some other institutional body, to act as

Figures 1, 2, 3 Lunch Lecture by Simon Giles in Urbanismweek 2013

a collector for both public and private urban datasets. For instance, there are very interesting private datasets in cities such as operational data of how many people are logged on to cell phone masters at any point in time owned by cell phone companies. This information provides a real-time proxy for population density. It also can identify how population density changes over the course of a day or a month.

At the moment there is no incentive for these private sector owners to provide access to these interesting datasets on the city and the reason is that there is no central repository or marketplace to enable a market transaction. You can imagine that a taxi company can be really interested in obtaining a real-time population density data, from the cell phone companies, which will enable an increase of taxis’ working efficiency and, respectively, will lead to financial profits.

In this case, it is quite possible to assume that the taxi company would be willing to pay for the dataset as soon as it secures higher profits. However, a hypothetical dataset transaction between the two companies is impossible due to the absence of a digital information marketplace.

In order to improve our understanding concerning the operation of urban areas, the establishment of a mutual organisation, which functions as a data collector and can be trusted by all parties, is absolutely crucial. This will allow dataset transactions on the basis of which it will be possible to enhance the efficiency of the urban systems by both public authorities and private companies. What I am trying to say is that there is a role for the city in enabling this digital marketplace to allow more parties to provide datasets. In fact, this structure does not function substantially differently from a traditional industrial, physical marketplace. The problem is that people are used to the traditional marketplaces even as they are making more use of digital datasets. But they have yet to deal with a platform such as a digital information marketplace. ■ Todor Kesarovski

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| VISIONARY | interview

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Projekt Tegel: Dystopia of an Urban Metropolis Interview with Manuel Aust Manuel Aust Studio BÄNG www.studio-bang.net

“Welcome to Projekt Tegel. An arcadia of the future. Your shopping paradise. Please listen to the following announcement...”. Background messages are projected from the intercom of the nearby Apparatus. After closure of Berlin’s Tegel Airport during the mid-2010s, the area will become evacuated for new development. To meet Western European consumption behaviour, an autonomous free-trade zone on the disposable land, will be implemented. Properties should mainly be given to Chinese investors allowing goods and services to be produced easily and distributed at more efficient levels. Such exchange allows instant advantages for both the city of Berlin, and public enterprises in China. Global transactions, such as the leasing of Piers 2 and 3 of the Piraeus Harbour (Greece) to Cosco and the expansion of Huawei, in the acquisition of multiple German enterprises, demonstrate the marketability of the proposed project.

Projekt Tegel is a design proposal from emerging German design firms Studio BÄNG, Sebastian Schröter and Erik Seyffarth. The proposal is a speculative project on the architecture of a dystopia. Tegel Airport is to be transformed into a shopping arcade where a mechanical puzzle of both mass consumption and production is composed in a dystopian game. Manuel Aust, architect from Studio BÄNG, elaborates in this interview on the project.

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Figure 1. A landscape scenic view of the Tegel airport building.

2. An interior view of the Apparatus.

3. Site plan All images © Studio BÄNG, Sebastian Schröter, and Erik Seyffarth, Berlin, 2014 (Project Tegel design proposal).

3 What is Projekt Tegel and your concept behind the initial proposal?

Projekt Tegel was a competition entry that received honourable mention for the Schinkel Award 2013. Within the competition, the airport had to be reconfigured by creating a new city quarter. Instead of handing in a serious proposal, we submitted a project that addressed architecture and the dystopia.

Our main aim was to sharpen the view of global consumption behaviour. The project combines diverse present realities into an architectural object: the Apparatus.

Could you elaborate on the ‘Apparatus’ in terms of its operative characteristics?

The building is characterized by its bright rectangular-shaped volume, situated amidst a green land field, filled with red flowers. Such is to provide an attractive outer visibility.

The lower-floor levels contain production areas and stocks for commodities. Small housing units for the workers are located on the top upper levels. These units are stacked densely, for space utility purposes. This inner structure of the compound is surrounded by high-rack facilities that supply the underlying shops with goods. The golden arcades encircle the shops to smoothen the intersection between indoor and outdoor and to provide a pleasant shopping experience independent of weather conditions. Even daily human routine has been optimized.

For example, if local inhabitants refused to

work, guest workers from Asia would run the system. The importance here is the strict separation between the inner and the outer world: production and consumption.

In contrast, we distilled the class border to a concrete wall that divides the shops of the apparatus from the inner production facilities.

The project reconfigures the urban landscape with a highly cinematographic quality, acting as a machine. What is the role of architecture, and how may this project inform more pluralistic perceptions?

To reiterate, how does the idea behind the project reflect interdependencies and forms of network in relation to Asia and the global economy?

We feel that the project reflects a more rigorous analysis of architecture, capitalism and consumption. We allow the project to communicate certain market trends that must be revised in an effort to provoke more innovative production models. Architecture has the responsibility to reshape perception.

Andreas Gursky and Johannes Schmidt are just a few contemporary examples that reinforce this position.

What has been a key inspirational tool in the design process?

I would say: film, using Fritz Lang´s Metropolis (1927). The visualized social constellation of this film shows clearly what we attempt to demonstrate here: a lower class supplies an upper class with goods and energy by being part of a huge machine.

Nonetheless, there is a striking deference in the cinematographic articulation of the urban fabric. In the film, the lower class lives underworld beneath the upper class.

The idea of the Apparatus is rooted in Bata, a Czech shoe company that invented factory cities. We wanted the Apparatus to be exportable, similar to that of Bata’s factory cities, which also included housing and facilities for daily goods. Today, Bata has factories in 26 countries with over 40.000 employees. For the dense stacking of housing units, we used Hak Nam, the city quarter of Hong Kong, China (demolished, 1994). On a footprint of 240 x120 m, units were stacked up to 14 floors. The area had a population density of over 1.3 million inhabitants per square kilometre, the densest population on earth. At last, in reference to the direct economic interaction between the lower and upper classes, we used the slums of Dharavi, in Mumbai, India. Dharavi is located in the middle of Mumbai, which supports the surrounding middle to upper classes with goods and services. We see architecture as an agent for mobilizing new possibilities of perception. ■ Scully Beaver-Lynch

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| PRACTICE | article

Practice

'If we accept that maybe a building is not the answer, and we find new ways of being an architect, then it is more than being practical, it’s about finding new concepts and stretching the boundaries of the profession.'

Indira Van 't Klooster

Reactivate!

Interview with Indira Van 't Klooster The economic downturn in the Netherlands brought in a new reality. For architect and urbanist, the reality is defined by the lack of employment at architecture firms, smaller commissions and the sacking of countless hard working aspiring designers. Despite the average firm reducing over half of their staff, many designers are not hanging their disappointment just yet. This has also presented a new reality with new opportunities for designers to become entrepreneurs, focus on non profit projects and think outside the realm of convention.

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Reactivate!

Innovators of Dutch Architecture’ presents these new opportunities with the architecture and urban design industry shifting toward smaller scale and community focused design practices in a declining economy such as the Netherlands. Editor in Chief of A10 and author Indira van’t Klooster showcases the determination and persistence of several young and upcoming architect studios such as POSAD in the Netherlands.

What was the main driving force for your decision to interview those shifting towards a different design practice model of architecture and urban design?

With the economic downturn as a catalyst, I was interested in looking at how architects are stretching the boundaries of the profession by looking for partnerships, collaborating with other disciplines, discovering different earnings models and regaining ground in a difficult working environment.

As a result of the significant shift towards downsizing firms, would it be reasonable to assume that the majority of architecture and urban design students of the present and future would be engaged in small enterprises as a career?

The architectural and urbanism offices in the Netherlands are definitely smaller in size. The commissions of today are smaller and there are fewer opportunities to drive up demand for employment for large offices.

If this continues, small enterprises will continue to dominate the market space for quite some time in the future.

Should universities be allocating time to develop a better understanding of entrepreneurship and business management to help manage the day to day aspects of running a firm?

I am not sure. I think it is essential for architects to learn how to design and construct, to be inventive, to find their own convictions and style, to look beyond the profession, to study the history of architecture, to work with other people. This is the core of every student’s architectural education. Finding sensible ways to not starve in the industry has always been part of being an architect. As it has for lawyers, butchers, IT-specialists, plumbers, etc.

A crash course “How not to go broke for Dummies” might be useful though…

Why did you call your book “Reactivate”?

Why not ‘regenerate’ or ‘restart’, ‘renew’ or even ‘replace’?

Apart from the notion of reviving a profession that was out of touch with society, reactivity is also a chemical concept that refers to the ease with which small units or functional groups enter into a (not irreversible) chemical reaction. I truly believe that the way architects work together in various fields defines the reactivist architect. And when they do, it’s irreversible.

The full title is called “Reactivate!

Innovators of Dutch Architecture.” It is innovation or simply the act of being practical?

I believe the practices in Reactivate! are pragmatic, but innovative and conceptual too. The art of ‘Concept’ is the what made the Netherlands famous. The majority of Dutch architects would be as lo as drummers without sticks, if we forbade them to be conceptual. Reactivate! is about finding new ground and meaning in society. How much architecture do we need? How many architects do we need? If we accept that maybe a building is not the answer, and we find new ways of being an architect, then it is more than being practical, it’s about finding new concepts and stretching the boundaries of the profession. From this, we could call this innovation.

Many firms have adopted a socialfocused business model, is it a sustainable business practice in the long term?

Yes. It has to be. I think architects will get bored soon with all this temporary and pop-up stuff. They will crave for material innovation and permanent buildings in due time. There are clear signs that economy is picking up again to support this craving.

In terms of employment for architects and urbanists, the commissions and employment will occur in housing development. The older housing of stock in Netherlands will require some form of large scale maintenance or renovation. Up to five million post-war apartment blocks, inner city and small scale urban regeneration projects will help drive future employment and be the main focus for

‘Reactivate! Innovators of Dutch Architecture’, written by Indira van ‘t Klooster and published

by Trancity*Valiz, together with a.o. DUS Architects, FABRIC, Powerhouse Company, Space&matter, Superuse Studios and ZUS Architects.

About the Author Indira van ’t Klooster is editor in chief of A10 new European Architecture and the author of various architecture publications in the Netherlands and beyond.

In addition, she works with Architectuur Lokaal and as a visiting lecturer at the Academy of Architecture in Amsterdam.

Favorite architecture word There are many! Favorite concepts: Capsulaire beschaving (Lieven de Cauter), “Barbari” (Alessandro Baricco), Unsolicited (Ole Bouman), Non-places (Marc Augé), Generic (Rem Koolhaas).

Least favorite architecture word Paradigm shift (in architecture, it has usually nothing to do with paradigm shifts at all) Holland's strangest building The Bolwoningen by Dries Kreijkamp in Den Bosch (1984)

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'Apart from the notion of reviving a profession that was out of touch with society, reactivity is also a chemical concept that refers to the ease with which small units or functional groups enter into a (not irreversible) chemical reaction.'

many practices. But the meadows they are waiting, the aldermen they will look at short-term profit, the developers they are ready to pick up where they left the market in 2008. I hope, I do so much hope that we will have learnt something in the last few years and that some of the lessons learnt from the economic crisis will stick. These lessons include to focus less on easy profit and remain strongly focus social components. On the sunny side: metabolisms, sustainability and closed cycles are concepts that will not go away and is here to stay to become apart of standard architectural practice.

process for many architecture and urban design projects.

What do you think would increase the possibility for equal opportunity for those less well connected or inexperienced in the profession?

While your book discusses about Dutch practices, are there any interesting practices or trends from abroad?

If this question refers to the diminishing power of the architect: the practices described in Reactivate! have all found ways to regain control over their projects. Either by bringing new expertise, finding new funding sources or doing smaller scale projects. Most of them could not do this without the support of municipalities, housing corporations and other developers. It is not a question of going solo, it is about finding ways to realize ideas and working with other professionals within the given context to deliver quality projects.

Of course! In Barcelona, self-sufficient architecture is being research

by Institute of Advanced Architecture of Catalonia (IAAC). The institute is not only focusing on sustainable building practices, but also into food production and 3D-manufacturing that are extremely relevant to the topic as hand. Young Bulgarian architects joined in GRUPAGRAD while they fight for transparency in decision making and better quality of public space by blocking the Parliament Building since June 2013. The experiments that took place within the sphere of the Lisbon Triennale, by EXIST, Ateliermob or FRAME Collective – working with neighborhoods and communities that are really difficult to access. And this is only Europe…Outside Europe at least Architecture of Humanity (Design like you give a damn!) needs to be mentioned here.

Practices have realised their work such as the Luchtsingel in Rotterdam through crowd sourcing. Is this a niche?

Over half a million entrepreneurs use ETSY to sell self-designed products, the market reaches a community of over ten million people who are willing to purchase their products. The Fairphone was preordered by 15.000 people before it went into production. Since 2009, over five million people have used Kickstarter to raise over $800 million. This method is now known as crowd funding. Hence, this “informal economy” is not that small anymore. When we take into consideration that many of these people are also looking into ways to start their own banks, money systems, insurance companies and energy corporations, it is clear that the world is changing fast and is having a profound effect on how we live.

The book mentions the difficulty for smaller practices and the self employment to break into the large projects or tendering

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Clients could put their trust in small architectural practices instead of in big consulting companies.

What is the role for the architect or urban design in the production of space such as the public space in the current Dutch society?

Any final words?

When all the projects described in Reactivate! are followed on a larger scale, there is a clear chance to reinvent the Netherlands.

The biggest threat is continuity and coherence in implementing the concept and design in society. Where are we going to find the new financial funding to sustain these movements? Imagine if companies, cooperations and cities could provide a solid financial foundation to allow architectural and urbanism innovations to continue and prosper. In the early 20th century, companies like Phillips and BATA contributed to the public realm with private funding for developing the garden cities. Let’s convince a large cooperations such as Google could play a similar role in commissioning short stay housing. Finally, how can we make sure that all these small revolutions are not confined to the privileged – highly educated, creative and assertive through a superior social, political and economic scope. – but will also bring good to lesser educated, poor and those in need?■ Mel Tuangthong Would you like to hear more about this theme and Indira van 't Klooster?

April 22th Indira will give a lecture at the symposium 'Humble Architecture, Designing by Constraints' at TU Delft. More information will be provided by B-nieuws as soon as possible

Urban by Nature Interview with Dirk Sijmons

Dirk Sijmons is curator of this year’s International Architecture Biennale Rotterdam 2014. Themed “Urban by Nature”, the IABR looks upon and studies the urban condition through the “lens of landscape architecture”. The topics addressed, not only illustrate metabolic consequences of urban planning, but inherently depict the scope of humanity’s environmental imprint in the age of the Anthropocene. As “natural” landscapes have long since become man-made, a redefinition of city and nature’s relationship is at stake. While we might consider cities themselves to be natural environments, our understanding of their planning needs to adjust according to our Anthropocenic responsibility. Dirk Sijmons stresses the reciprocity of urban organization and our contemporary global environmental challenges: “We cannot solve our ecological problems if we do not get our cities in order”.

While “Breaking news rarely comes out of geology”, it was an article by the climate scientist Paul Crutzen in 1998, which triggered Dirk Sijmons to refocus his perception of the world and particularly his profession.

I was taught, as a landscape architect, that there was something like a balance with nature. And as mankind has gone too far, we need to reestablish such a balance. However, today, natural processes have merged to an extent that they are no longer separable. The Anthropocene, which is a term coined by the Dutch Nobel Prize winner Paul Crutzen, indirectly questions and attacks all kinds of morals, including what I have been taught regarding the balance we must reestablish.

The concept of the Anthropocene can be read as a process of hybridization, which implies that what we used to distinguish as either a natural or a human process, has merged. And as the arrow of time only points forward, we have to learn how to ride the tiger. I am not saying that this ends all moralising, however, it is time to reconsider the meaning of responsibility. Why should all that we do be bad?

“Seeing human intervention as a force of nature that affects the earth has undermined the pseudo-opposition between ‘nature’ and ‘human society.’ This opposition (like that between body and mind) has dominated thinking, blinded us and hampered effective action for centuries.

(…) Since the declaration of the Anthropocene, we no longer have to maintain the fiction of a division between what is natural and what is artificial. We can face the fact that they are closely intertwined.” (Source: ‘Waking up in the Anthropocene” by Dirk Sijmons) By what means is humanity causing a lasting imprint on the environment?

From the alteration of the geo-chemical cycles of the planet to the flows of global sediments, humankind has affected the earth to such a degree that geologists have found it necessary to proclaim a new geological era.

As every main river in the world has dams for reasons of energy or navigation, the flow of sediments has also been interrupted.

Rivers are no longer carrying these ‘vans’ of sand banks to the coast, which used to protect us. Operations such as tar and oil reclamation in Canada, in comparison, imply larger amounts of sand relocation than what is carried by the rivers, which still drain to the sea. As humanity influences biodiversity at large, it is not the city, but the climate itself, which has become our largest artifact. The point I try to put forward as a hypothesis is the process of hybridization between what is natural and man-made.

In this Biennale we are, therefore, looking at the city from a slightly different angle. One of the sub-themes of the Biennale are the landscapes of the carpet metropolis, which

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you can see spreading around the coast of this world. The satellite images which illustrate this, show the intensity of humanity’s landuse. What we try to do with the IABR 2014, is to widen the horizon and interest of landscape architects and urbanists to this larger scale, which incorporates also food production areas, airfields and suburbs.

So not only built-up areas, but also their natural context. In this regard, the Oostvaardersplassen, for example, can be considered part of the ABC metropolises - Amsterdam, Brussels and Cologne - which show extensive land-use of the North West European delta. We go on asking ourselves, whether this is not the future of the 21th century.

Must we not construct a dead angle mirror of urbanism? Urban designers and planners tend to focus on the complex high-density zones in this enormous urban metropolis. However, the hard truth is that densities are dropping everywhere in the world. This implies that doubling the population of a city results in a tripling of its surface.

We need to ask ourselves whether this is sustainable. If it is the wrong way to go, what are sustainable answers to this thin layer of spread-out urban soup?

Changing paradigms for practice

"A planet that could soon be supporting as many as 10 billion human beings has to work differently from the one that held 1 billion people, mostly peasants, 200 years ago." (The Economist, 2011) Most of the global environmental problems are in fact urban problems, or rooted in urbanism. If we want to solve the environmental problems of the world, we have to solve our urban problems. This

is our starting point in the search for new strategies at the Biennale.

As a spontaneous process, urban organization has also become a landscape architecture problem. Charles Waldheim, who coined the term ‘landscape urbanism’, incorporates the relationship between urbanism and landscape architecture in its definition. At the Biennale we are looking into how the old and proven means of mediating the relationship between landscape and men, such as gardens, parks, but also nature conservation, can be used today. What is the contemporary significance of these, sometimes very old, traditions in the Anthropocene? In comparison to gardens, which go back to Babylon and ancient Egypt, nature conservation is relatively young.

The Biennale has partnered with the World Wildlife Fund, to research the significance and thereby reconsider the conservation of natural wildlife in the carpet metropolis.

Should we understand the Urban Metabolism as a meta-layer?

It is one way of looking at it... It is changing however. We, as urbanists, follow the tradition of designing houses and urban areas with roads etcetera. We are house doctors, but are evolving towards urban ‘internists’. I find the perspective the two professions have on their patients complementary. In Biology Metabolism stands for “the chemical processes that occur within a living organism in order to maintain life”. The city, on the other hand, is constituted by flows of people, data, biota, sediments and food. All these flows are interesting for designers in at least three ways. Every flow has its infrastructure – such as water has sewage. The first interesting angle for designers

'I think we can still detect these huge artifacts, these urban landscapes of the carpet metropolis, with infrared photo’s from satellites that show the intensity of landuse.'

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could be to see infrastructure as a design commission in itself. For centuries, public services have not been perceived as interesting commissions by architects. But sometimes they are fascinating elements, which is what we show in the Biennale. Secondly - the flows of the city. Thinking about how we could link flows, shortcut them and make them recycle. This is the interface between spatial planning and environmental policy, the Urban Metabolism. The third, which I find mighty interesting, is that metabolism is also an instrument for urban design and planning. I have to elaborate on that. You can plan with only infrastructure, as an idiom, which is what prevailed in America during the 19th century. A line is always in its right place, while the spatial order fits itself into the availability and presence of infrastructure. For instance, a time-lapse film of the Los Angeles international Airport, pictures how within years the city grew towards the airfield, finally enclosing it and taking it into its urban structure. With the Biennale we attempt to showcase strategies for mega-cities, in which master-planning no longer does the job. Indirect planning could be formative in the literal sense of the word.

These three elements we show for the nine urban flows that we study.

Nine flows investigated at the IABR 2014

The nine flows that we study are air and heat, sand sediments and clay, biota, food and biomass, fresh water, energy, people, cargo, waste. For the months before the Biennale we set up three project ateliers in collaboration with the municipalities of Rotterdam and Texel as well as the province of North Brabant. As each atelier addresses one of the Biennale’s themes, the Rotterdam Project Atelier, executed by James Corner Field Operations and FABRICations, investigates the value and the potential instruments for directing such flows. In the exhibition each flow is addressed in three or four projects. To narrow down the projects we specified our call for entries with regards to the frontier of energy supply and cities or urban agriculture.

Metabolism can be a rich "Fundgrube", it is a goldmine for urbanism.

Does the increase of collaboratively working experts imply the need for a different governance?

In situations where it is possible - yes, but there are situations where this will be pure luxury. For the Biennale we try to arrange projects that showcase a variety of approaches towards governance and interdisciplinary collaboration. There is a beautiful project

done by the ETH Zurich and Mark Angélil, for which a group of Ethiopians was invited to Switzerland. Following a capacity building course for urban planning, they returned to Ethiopia and founded a school in Addis Ababa. They devised a strategy for smaller cities, which would partially catch the flow of people migrating into this virally growing city from rural areas. In small surrounding villages the potential for condensation points of new cities, of considered scale, was investigated. The project follows a type of governance which nearly bypasses physical design. There was no master-planning involved, capacity building was the only instrument.

Another project example investigates in a three-step research, what the world would look like if the Value Added Tax is exchanged with a Carbon Added Tax in order to reduce global Carbon emissions.

It is a radically decentralizing idea, as in every production step of consumer goods Carbon Added Tax would have to be paid.

The hypothesis is that bottom-up processes result in the optimization of production.

Most importantly, the consumer would become aware of how much Carbon their consumption behavior produces. Rather than sketching a Utopian ideal, the research visualizes the potential spatial implications of such a law.

Is it really all a matter of Urbanism?

It is a question of what we see on the radar.

Is it the spatial expression of our industrial society, which is much more than a city?

Or do we have a consensus that we are not talking about what is usually considered the city? And between these two extremes, is there still a usefully coherent artifact, a real object for study and for design? I think we can still detect these huge artifacts, these urban landscapes of the carpet metropolis, with infrared photo’s from satellites that show the intensity of landuse. One can see the coastal cities and the delta cities, which have a shape and contour distinguishing them from what is on the other side of the border. But it is a difficult definition, as we are closing in on the spatial expression of the industrial society as a whole. In this case what is urban could then also become meaningless. However, we need to ask ourselves what could be the role of “Generalists” like us, with a specific craft such as designing, in a world like that. ■ The IABR 2014 is open to the public from the 29th of May until the 24th of August, in the Kunsthal, Rotterdam and the Natural History Museum Rotterdam.

Dirk Sijmons (1949) studied Architecture at the Technische University of Delft and is on of the three founders of H+N+S Landschapsarchitecten.

Sijmons received the Rotterdam Maaskant price in 2002. In 2004 he was appointed by the minister to 'Rijksadvieur voor het Landschap'. In 2007 Sijmons received the prestigious Edgar Doncker price for his contribution to the 'truthful Dutch culture'. Aside from his function as curator of the IABR 2014 holds the chair of Landscape Architecture at the TU Delft.

The international Architecture Biennale Rotterdam (IABR) was founded in 2001, in the conviction that architecture is a public concern. It is therefore that the IABR focuses on the future of the city, where 80% of mankind will be producing 90% of its wealth.

The IABR–2014– URBAN BY NATURE– will study the city through the lens of landscape architecture. When we scrutinize the relationship between city and nature, or even, when we explore city as nature, as a metabolism, the analysismay produce instruments that can be applied to guide the design, planning and governance of our future cities. Necessary because, in the words of the Curator of the 6th IABR–, Dirk Sijmons: "We can only solve our ecological problems when we solve our urban problems first." [http://iabr.nl/en]

Figure 1. Rainmaker – Towards a Water-based Urbanity for Grand Casablanca. Research and design: SMAQ 2. The carpet metropolis from space (the full extent of the city Cairo)

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Contemporary New Towns in Asia A short introduction of the book Rising in the East

This book, Rising in the East-Contemporary New Towns in Asia, is about the role of architecture and urban design in the genesis of an entirely new generation of new cities and New Towns that is being produced by the burgeoning economies and controversial politics of the Asian continent. The International New Town Institute has taken up the challenge of researching this latest generation of new cities from a mixture of fascination and concern, not to promote the building of even more New Towns. And above all: to see just what the new city of the 21st century is, because - amazingly - there has been done little research on this topic so far. Of course, with many of these cities still on the drawing boards and others just barely inhabited, this is a difficult venture.

• Why build New Towns?

A loose definition of the New Town has been adopted in making the selection of plans and towns for this book. Officially, a New Town is one built from scratch as an autonomously administered town, built according to a master plan and often based on a political decision.

All the same, there are fluid boundaries within that definition, there are small and large New Towns, and the degree of autonomy varies. Historically, the construction of New Towns has almost always been based on a political decision taken by an organ of local or national government. That was the case for New Delhi, New Frankfurt, the British New Towns, and it continues to be true of the towns and cities dealt with here. To provide insight into the material, we have classified the cities in terms of the six main motives for the building of New Towns in recent decades: • Eco-Cities: to achieve the best environmentally friendly performance • Political Cities: to represent (national or local) government • Enclave Cities: to offer a retreat from the existing city • Economic Cities: to attract investment and kick-start the national economy • High-Tech Cities: to utilize technology as an attraction • Shelter Cities: to house the masses For each category, two or three case studies are investigated to unravel which financial, political, social, economic, marketing and spatial principles the city has been based upon. Most cities will, of course, be grounded in a mixture of these motives, as the chapters will show.

• Eco-Cities

Although there is full agreement on the need for more environmentally friendly cities at every level and in every countrymost of the discoveries that we made during our search for the ‘best Eco-City of the moment’ were disappointing. In many cases, the so-called eco-friendly strategies turned out to be nothing more than greenwashing, where sustainability and ecology are used as a form of 28

Rachel Keeton, Michelle Provoost & Wouter Vanstiphout

branding rather than forming an intrinsic part of the urban design concept. Greenwashing is not confined to branding or spin doctoring, but can also be physical. For instance: large- scale office developments that promote increased car traffic because of inadequate linkages with the public transport network actually increase pollution because of the way they have been built. Other strategies, like demolishing existing buildings only to replace them, could have been approached more conservatively by simply integrating less wasteful HVAC systems.

Of course, it is a matter of opinion whether one regards this as greenwashing or as a small but significant improvement. The question is: what do we really expect from an Eco-City? At an urban scale, these questions become more urgent and their answers become more significant. It also becomes glaringly obvious that these extremely ambitious Eco-City projects are only sustainable if we consider them without their surrounding context. If we zoom out, we often find that pollution-spewing industries are built close by, sometimes by the same authorities as those behind the Eco-City. An example of this is Tianjin Eco-city China This city forms a part of a large-scale industrialization of the region. A further paradox is that most of the Eco-Cities that we have investigated for this book are still dominated by car use.

It is difficult to determine whether a city has been genuinely built or designed in a sustainable way, or whether it is a case of greenwashing. Words like ‘ecological’ or ‘sustainable’ have become container terms that are applied with a flexibility bordering on the incomprehensible. Ecology can be about the use of raw materials, but it can also stand for a dynamic economic cycle; sustainable can refer to the effects on the physical environment, but it can also be a question of social sustainability. Moreover, there are almost as many standards and measuring systems for sustainability as there are consultancies and projects, and as many definitions of sustainability as there are manifestos written by well-known gurus and professors.

In most cases it is obvious that only a fundamental and integrated approach to the design of a city offers the chance of achieving a genuine, quantifiable, ecological sustainability. However, that

integrated, environmental approach is hindered by the programmatic segregation that is characteristic of large projects and by the fact that short-term and mediumterm financial and economic considerations usually gain the upper hand - often to the detriment of the project in question. All the same, the Eco-City is the only thematic planning approach currently regarded as the Holy Grail of contemporary urban design.

After all, sustainability is one of the few subjects at the top of political agendas all around the world.

but there are thousands of similar examples scattered all over the world.

These three cases show that although shelter is the basic function of the city and of the New Town, the residential program alone is never enough to produce an attractive city with future value. The addition of luxurious attributes to attract the middle classes to the new upscale suburbs and the disastrous consequences of a pure concentration of thousands of apartments in New Towns like Tin Shui Wai show that a city cannot be based on shelter alone.

• Shelter Cities

The primary function of the building of a city or urban district is to provide housing for the masses that flood the cities from the countryside or other regions looking for work, fortune, freedom, safety, and the chance to improve their circumstances.

The cities classified in this book as Shelter Cities treat this vital function as a priority: they were built in the first instance to accommodate mass immigration. They are concentrations of housing, and all other facilities are derived from that. This can lead to incredible differences in their qualities and characteristics, as the three cities in this selection show.

There is Songjiang, part of the series of nine New Towns built around Shanghai, each of which has a core with a different architectural theme from historical Europe: a Dutch, a Scandinavian, or a British quarter. Artificial environments have been created following the rules of the Experience Economy to enrich the residential environment, which consists of endless rows of standard flats, and to give it an identity.

In Bumi Serpong Damai (Indonesia), priority has been given to a hypermodern combination of state-of-the-art facilities that make this part of Jakarta a comfortable and safe residential environment, complete with a golf course developed by Jack Nicklaus, high-speed connections with the CBD, lavish facilities, and so on.

But to find the bottom line of the Shelter City we have to go to the New Towns that were built solely to accommodate new city folk as efficiently as possible. These are enormous concentrations of densely clustered apartment blocks, often developed by the state, often far from the city center, often lacking in facilities or employment, and often with an extremely bad reputation.

Tin Shui Wai, the ‘City of Misery’ near Hong Kong, is the example in this book,

The rapid urbanization in Asia is often described as a natural process, but it is in fact usually encouraged and exploited for economic development. This raises the question which demographic policy lies behind the construction of cities oriented exclusively towards housing? This is most common in China, where mass immigration has been stimulated by two factors: the economic privileging of the cities above the countryside as a pull factor, and the lack of dynamism and development in the countryside as a push factor. Partially as a result, China has become marked by an increasing inequality between demographic groups. ‘China has travelled the path from one of the poorest and most egalitarian societies to chronic inequality all in the space of twenty years’, is how the sociologist David Harvey puts it. 1 Of course, the Chinese government denies this. It points out that nowhere else have so many people been freed from poverty in such a short time as during the last few decades in China. Cities play a crucial economic role in this massive leap forward. Living in a city is regarded as the most fundamental condition for improving the living conditions of the Chinese citizen. It is thus telling that the theme of the World Expo Shanghai 20 I0 was ‘Better City, Better Life’, and that this exhibition was visited by tens of millions of people from the countryside.

• The architect’s role

The, sometimes stunning, uniformity in the planned structure of the contemporary Asian New Towns, and their throwback to many planning clichés, makes it difficult for architects and critics to imagine that these towns could be the prototypes for an entirely new generation of urban planning. What also makes for a somewhat depressing picture is the fact that the urban plans presented in this book seem to be purely driven by

1 This article is abridged from the book’s introduction chapter written by Provoost and Vanstiphout Rising in the East-Contemporary New Towns in Asia This book aims to illustrate both the opportunities and challenges that present themselves in contemporary Asian New Town planning. In doing so, Rising in the East presents a relatively immediate account of the current urbanization processes that are transforming the Asian continent.

As a key part of this development, New Towns have their own sometimes tragic, sometimes spectacular stories to tell.

Their histories reveal the drama behind the mundane rows of cookie-cutter housing blocks. While globalization continues to blur regional differences, it becomes imperative to ask: what can we learn from these New Towns? (www.newtowninstitute.org) INTI The International New Town Institute (INTI) is a non-profit scientific knowledge institute based in the center of the New Town Almere, close to Amsterdam (the Netherlands). INTI is dedicated to improving the quality of global urban development, with a focus on New Towns. INTI is independent and not necessarily an advocate or promoter of New Town planning. (www.newtowninstitute.org)

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Astana

Tianjin Eco-City

New Songdo City

Zira Island

Songjiang New City Saadiyat Island King Abdullah Economic City

Masdar City

The Blue City

Naypyidaw

Magarpatta

Tin Shui Wai Camko City

Cyberjaya

Binh Duong New City

Bumi Serpong Damai

free

2 quantitative, commercial and technical objectives. They are utterly void of architectural theory, urban ideology, or even design ideas in the first place. If we compare them to the seminal towns of Unwin & Parker, Clarence Stein or Ernst May, down to the massive projects implemented in the post-war period by Victor Gruen, Constantinos Doxiadis or Otto Konigsberger, they are not the practical results of any planning theories that are expressed in books and taught in universities. Baghdad, Islamabad, Marsa al Brega, Tema, Khartoum and Karachi are all predicted and explained in Doxiadis’ Ekistics, Tehran by Gruen’s ‘The Heart of Our Cities’ and Singapore and Bhubaneshwar by Konigsberger’s ‘Action Planning’ courses at the University College London (UCL) during the 1960s. The contemporary Asian New Towns are ideological orphans, giving us no recourse to question, let alone blame, the planner or the architect.

That might be the single biggest difference from the post-war generation of New Towns, also in Asia. While both waves are similar in sheer quantity, their shocking uniformity and the universality of their principles, the towns of the previous generation were wholeheartedly ‘owned’ by the architectural and planning community, while the contemporary designers and planners seem to play an entirely different, even marginal, role.

• Neo-Liberal Cities

What does become abundantly clear, however, is that these cities do have authors; that they do present extremely specific stories and play highly defined roles in sometimes very strong scenarios. Who writes these scenarios? The answer: governments, multinational corporations, consultancies, investment banks, but also (sometimes) social activists or private entrepreneurs. The real dramatic change since the heroic periods of the first and the third quarters of the 20th century is the huge diversification of actors who are responsible for these cities, the way the cities are programmed economically, and the way they are financed, maintained, operated and built.

If we return our comparison of the present generation of New Towns to the post-war New Towns in Europe, major differences in the underlying conditions stand out. What took place in Europe was large-scale spatial development directed by the state, in which the New Towns played a crucial role. They were planned and produced where government, institutes and organizations meet one another.

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partly free not free

According to Freedom House, “A Free Country is one where there is broad scope for open political competition, climate of respect for civil liberties, significant independent civic life, and independent media. Partly Free countries are characterized by some restrictions on political rights and civil liberties, often in the context of corruption, weak rule of law, ethnic strife or civil war. A Not Free country is one where basic political rights are absent, and basic civil liberties are widely and systematically denied.” Data source: Freedom House, 2009

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These diverse parties operated on the basis of a consensus on economic growth, cooperation, modernization and regulation of urbanization.

Later, social themes such as emancipation and the equal distribution of knowledge and income arose as well. This is true to a greater or lesser extent for most of the countries of Western Europe in the period 1950-1970.

A similar structure of cooperation, embedded in society and deploying long-term social agendas, is lacking in most of the countries of Asia when it comes to building and spatial planning. Moreover, while the West took almost a century to make the transition from a pure 19th-century industrial economy to the globalized market economy, the Asian countries are effecting this transition within a couple of decades. The 20th century in the West was determined by both extreme outbursts of war and the construction of a democratic, open society with a state that intervened in all kinds of areas, from the industrial to the socio-cultural. Added to this was an extremely complex and extensive social midfield of public and semi-public organs, institutions, organizations and housing corporations. Our norms and values of spatial planning and urban design arose in a context dominated by bureaucracy and warfare, and they still show these scars. Urban design was partly shaped by social reform movements from the beginning of the century, such as the Garden City movement for good working-class homes and the Functional City. Moreover, World War II contributed to the emergence of a large consensus on the need to involve the entire European population in a renewal of city and countryside based on democracy and modernity, in which the New Towns played a crucial role. As a result, spatial planning and public architecture in Western urban design are still associated with collective social values, reform agendas, democratization and the construction of an open society. Whatever the nature and motives of urban design and planning projects may be in Europe today, the social, collective and idealistic notions still play a role in our appreciation of them.

• Politics

Not only is economic motivation a common factor of the New Towns today, but also the fact that the vast majority of the cities in this book are located in countries with a dictatorship, a semi-democracy or a very young democracy. So the question is raised whether the shared characteristics of this new generation of New Towns are connected

CAMKO CITY

ASTANA

Reference

SAADIYAT ISLAND

ZIRA ISLAND

MASDAR CITY

1. David Harvey, A Brief History of Neoliberalism, New York, 2005, pp. 143144.

2. John Arlidge, “The greenest cities come in a box”, The Sunday Times. 14-11-10, p. 2.

3. Ibid., p. 5.

BINH DUONG NEW CITY

NAYPYIDAW KING ABDULLAH ECONOMIC CITY

MAGARPATTA

Figure

THE BLUE CITY TIANJIN ECO-CITY

NEW SONGDO CITY CYBERJAYA

BUMI SERPONG DAMAI TIN SHUI WAI

SONGJIANG NEW CITY

1 km

with the political systems that have initiated them: the large scale, the generic look, the commercial and economic motivation, the absence of social ambitions, the target group of the upper middle class and foreign capital. What influence does the political system have?

Once again, James C. Scott has published on this. He argues that there is a connection between the simplicity of urban design and the political system. He claims that it is a natural property of the government to want to create simplicity and legibility in order to maintain control over its subjects and their surroundings. When seen in this light, the design of cities is in line with the limitation of the number of surnames, the standardization of weights and measures and the institution of the land registry: they are all ‘attempts at legibility and simplification’. 2 Although Scott’s publication deals primarily with the early modern European countries and the newer, post-war nations, the same principles apply, to a large extent, to the situation today. In Scott’s view, Brasilia and Chandigarh are the prototypical examples of urban plans that have led to a catastrophe and are hostile and unwelcoming to their inhabitants. Like the New Towns of China or of other authoritarian countries such as the Emirates, both cities are the product of a government that satisfies the four essential conditions of ‘a full-fledged disaster’: a well-developed administration, a high-modernist ideology, and most of all, an authoritarian state and a weak civil society. ‘In sum, the legibility of a society provides the capacity for large-scale social engineering, high-modernist ideology provides the desire, the authoritarian state provides the determination to act on that desire, and an incapacitated civil society provides the leveled social terrain on which to build.’ 3 Seen in this light, the rigorous, rectilinear and simplified urban design of many of the New Towns under review bears a direct relation to the political system of which it is the product. Here, without exception, civil society is little developed or nominally influential and where any opposing forces do not modify government policy or market initiatives. According to this argument, the conclusion must be that democratic countries yield better cities, but is that really the case? Have not large-scale plans

4

1. Students arrive by metro to the University area of Songjiang New City in Shanghai, 2010. ©Rachel Keeton 2. Apartment towers from a looming wall around the Tin Shui Wai amphitheatre in Hong Kong, 2010. ©Jeroen van Poecke 3. Freedom map. ©INTI 4. Shape of New Towns. ©INTI

been made and implemented in the democratic West that also led to failures? It’s enough to visit New Towns and housing estates such as Toulouse Le Mirail, the Bijlmer or Cumbernauld to see that wellintentioned plans to create human and humane cities have been made within a solid and stable social democracy with the full consent and consensus of all parties, and yet shortly thereafter it became clear that the result was exactly the opposite.

• Summary

Moreover, this book is written with a full awareness of the distance between the West, where INTI is based, and the subject of study: the Asian continent. This is important to bear in mind, because the expectations we have and the criteria we apply in analyzing and criticizing New Towns are so clearly rooted in our own highly chequered and well documented planning history. Perhaps even more compelling is the fact that we in the West do not limit ourselves to analysis and criticism of the cities in the East, in fact, we also play an important role in designing them. This book presents many projects by architects and urban designers from Europe and the United States whose professional, cultural and ethical baggage is steeped in the Western tradition.

The most striking difference is that the design and construction of New Towns has become a historical phenomenon in the West, while in the East it is part of everyday practice and still has an enormous potential to change the built environment. This book, and in particular this introduction, is therefore written from an ambiguous position. On the one hand, we try to understand and to analyze the Asian New Towns on the basis of the present situation and of their specific geographical, economic and cultural contexts.

On the other hand, it is inevitable that we will bring to bear our own Western experience with designing, building, populating, and even demolishing and restructuring New Towns, without being certain of how relevant our own experience may be for the challenge facing the various Asian countries today. Therefore this essay can be used both as an introduction to the dossiers brought together here, which present common themes, contexts and stories about the implementation of these towns, and as an exploration of the attitude that we Western specialists in architecture and urban design should adopt with regard to the rapid and sometimes astonishing developments on the Asian continent. ■ 31

| ARTPAGE |

Heliopolis I Dionisio González has studied informal settlements all over the world through photography. Ultimately, he is not only interested in documenting a desolate or fractured situation, but to develop images from these fragile foundations interpreting the roles of utopian and dystopian visions while conceiving space.

“Heliopolis I” is part of a series called Favelas, in which the artist reconstructs spatially and socially this complex world by creating a body of proactive relations and arguments between the planned and unplanned architecture. Contents overlap and infer one another to create an “intra-urban structure” shaped and dominated by informal or unplanned settlements. These images introduce the voice of the inhabitants, claiming a space for inclusion, by revealing the identity and virtues of the nonarchitecture, the informal architecture. ■

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| PRACTICE | article

Mosques, Mills and Malls Retracing spatial development in Ahmedabad

Matthijs van Oostrum Urban planner Vastu-Shilpa

Ahmedabad is a city of just under 6 million people in western India. Although most westerners would have a hard time locating Ahmedabad on a map of India, the city is one of the oldest indian megacities. Perhaps one of the reasons for this is that Ahmedabad has developed largely in the shadow of globalization. Globalization is often attributed to be a producer of space, especially gated space. So, being in the shadow of globalization, are there also less gated communities in Ahmedabad?

This article takes a closer look at the spatial production of Ahmedabad and tries to retrace its spatial development in an exploration of Ahmedabad’s four spaces - the old city, the chaalis (working class neighborhoods), the slums and modern Ahmedabad.

• Modern Ahmedabad

Until the 1920’s, Ahmedabad had developed only on the eastern bank of the Sabarmati River. One of the first buildings on the western bank of the river was the Sabarmati ashram (which can be translated as community or school) that Gandhi founded as a base for his independence movement.

Neglecting the political role of the ashram for a moment, it is striking that even this first assembly of building was a small gated community. All the important modern monuments designed by Le Corbusier, Louis Kahn and B.V. Doshi that followed on the western riverbank are also designed as gated communities. And really, all modern buildings in western Ahmedabad are designed as gated communities.

Every building or housing society has the ubiquitous element of the gate, the wall, the

guard and the common ground. These gated communities are arranged along a supergrid of wide avenues designed for motorized traffic. But this Modern Ahmedabad and its spatial layout cannot be understood without retracing its history.

• Chimneys and Chaalis

The industrial revolution and the introduction of new factories in Ahmedabad led to a huge rise in population. Like cities elsewhere in the world, housing for these immigrants was problematic. The mill owners, who had their own office designed

by Le Corbusier on the western bank of the river, financed cheap apartments for the workers. These apartments, or chaalis, are laid out in long narrow streets usually not designed for cars. Many of these long streets are in fact cul-de-sacs. With a gate

Polls and Chowks

Chimneys and Chaalis

2a 34

2b

at the entrance of the street these chaalis function as small gated communities, using the row houses themselves as the compound wall.

It seems that the gated community as a typology is not a product of globalization, but has older historical roots. The chaalis copied the building typologies from earlier examples that were constructed in the old city of Ahmedabad.

• Pols and Mohallas

Ahmedabad was founded in 1411 on the banks of the river Sabarmati.

It is unsure what the city looked like in these first years, but it is sure that as the threat of Marahathan armies in the south increased, people began building pols. A pol – or mahallah in Arabic – is a gated community based on religion and caste to protect its residents from raiding soldiers. In total there are 356 pols in Ahmedabad. Each pol has a wooden fortified gate and uses its building as the compound wall. But the pol is not just a defensive unit; it is also a social unit.

Each pol has a central chowk or square where people can meet. There is usually a birdfeeder and a community chalkboard. The alleyways are narrow and help to provide shade in the desert climate. All the factors contribute to the fact that the space inside the pol is used as a community space for all people of the pol to share.

• Slums

So far we have traced the historical development of the gated community in Ahmedabad. The elements of the gated community – guard, gate, wall, common square – have changed little over time.

Globalization can certainly not be blamed for the reappearance of the typology. But there is one space we have not talked about yet: Ahmedabad’s slums. The slums of Ahmedabad are concentrated around water bodies on land that are considered unsuitable to build on. The slums usually have a leaf-like structure where a central trunk of a few meters wide gives access to alleyways a few decimeters wide.

The slums clearly constitute their own separate communities, but these slums are not gated in the sense we talked about so far. The slums lack the spatial elements of guard, gate, wall and common square and instead of being gated, the slums are segregated. In this regard, the divided living in the traditional pols, the chaalis and modern Ahmedabad is different from the divided living in separate districts. The spatial quality of small gated communities is not necessarily bad, but when these smaller gated communities are clustered in separate districts and become ghettos it is a whole different issue. Mutual visibility and interaction disappears, and stereotyping and communalism takes over. And that is the real challenge for Ahmedabad.■

1 Modern Ahmedabad

Figure

1. Map of Ahmedabad and its consectutive phases of growth.

2a, 2b, 2c, 2d. The four urban fabrics of Ahmedabad with generic elements: the monument, the gate, the street.

Squatter Settlements

2c

2d 35

Urban Utopias Shaping Urbanism throughout Time

TOP 5

Considering the production of space as an intent driven endeavour, we look at the aspirations of different time periods to see what the urban landscape should be like. TOP5 looks at the most important visions that shaped the way in which we see the city environment. The retrospective look is needed to put forward the current vision of what the city should be.

1. VERSATILE CITY In the 50’s and 60’s, there was a reaction to the exiting urban environment envisioned and constructed by the modernists.

This triggered the realisation within the urbanism and other design communities that researching context is important.

The situationists of the 50’s placed an emphasis on the environment and the creation of situations as a tool of liberation from the consumerist society. The changes in art, music and architecture pushed architects to question some of modernist principles.

These principles included the rigor of the function, the social restrictions of urban planning and the impediments of the city towards a democratic life. Their ideology developed unitary urbanism, and the the construction of context for architecture and urban planning. The experimental architecture of this period played with the ideas of: mobile architecture, modular dwelling that can reorganize the city. The built environment is seen as a continuum of transformations. The building with its surrounding is one of interaction. The urbanism becomes the sum of its parts and it will modify in space and time faster generating new situations.

Constant Nieuwenhuys with his proposal

1 36

New Babylon anticipates the network society at a spatial level, where the earth is covered in internal spaces linked. The environment’s restrictions on people’s behaviour is to a minimum. The architecture and landscape can be easily configured by the need of users, considering everything is automated. The lifestyle of the inhabitants is a nomadic one based on creative play. „The project of New Babylon only intends to give the minimum conditions for a behaviour that must remain as free as possible. Any restriction of the freedom of movement, any limitation with regard to the creation of mood and atmosphere, has to be avoided.

Everything has to remain possible, all is to happen, the environment has to be created by the activity of life, and not inversely”1

2. SPATIAL CITY The late 50s saw the improvement of various means of communication. Yona Freindman’s first manifesto : “Mobile architecture”, argues in favour of architecture and urbanism for the “mobile society. In his Spatial City model he proposes volumes of three dimensional voids lost in the spatial, three-dimensional structure raised up on piles.

The neighbourhoods are self organising

Ioana Ailincai MSc Urbanism TU Delft

and distributing itself inside the grid.

The city is envisioned as a layered entity that can be read either as a residential, industrial, commercial added on top of the existing landscape. The modular grid with its continuous and homogenous network provides the possibility of relocation for the inhabitants as dwellings are freely distributed. Compared to the modernists the flat grid is enhanced by playing on a new spatial dimension, generating interesting and ever changing “artificial topographies.”

“The city, as a mechanism, is thus nothing other than a labyrinth : a configuration of points of departure, and terminal points, separated by obstacles.

3.ENDLESS CITY At the beginning of the 60’s, the idea of using megastructures to expand the city is researched further by the Metabolists.

Metabolism tried to answer the needs of rapid economic growth: high population density and the increase flows of people, products and information. The solution is seen through biological and computer science. The way in which this growth is accommodated is through flexible megastructure that can replicate indefinitely.

Due to it’s large scale and the extent of the

2

projects none have been realised. Plan for Tokyo, 1960 Kenzo Tange: The expansion of the city of Tokyo was seen as a strong axis divided in modules, each module being organised in three levels of looping highways, building zones and transport hubs and included office, government administration and retail districts. The central area of the axis has been transformed into the center, while the residential areas are situated towards the periphery. The key element was assuring the means of communication between the extension and the city and between the facilities and residential areas. From a landscape point of view, the city could expand indefinitely, but had to be connected to the city it was stemming from. Efficient communication system would be the key to modern living.

4. DECONSTRUCTED CITY The late 60’s brought about a reaction to the exiting urban environment questioned the established tradition. The challenge of modernism comes in the form of a satire: the modernist language and the way in which it was designed to work. At its core it investigates the impact of the expanding city grid and the spreading of urban systems.

The model pushes to extremes the elements of modernism: uniformity, the city as a machine, mass cultural consumption, pop art, an industrial-commercial language.

The characteristics of the model is: ‘wellequipped residential parking lot’ composed of ‘large floors, micro-climatized and artificially lighted interiors’, ‘potentially limitless urban structures’ would be ‘made uniform through climate control and made optimal by information links.’ A model of global urbanization where design is the essential conceptual instrument used in the

mutation of living patterns and territories.

Archizoom’s, No-Stop City show a city marked by an infinite grid, with floating elements that mark the grid: walls, natural features such as mountains. The city is an artificial landscape that is superimposed on the natural landscape. The needs of the people are met with necessary objects: tents, appliances, bedrooms. In conclusion there is no outdoor space but a continuum of indoor space, which becomes the new urban space, while the personal design objects represent the individual. This satirical construction holds true even today, in a city which hasn’t quite lost the momentum of the consumer society. “We want to introduce to you everything that remains out of the door: the fabricated banality, intentional vulgarity, urban furniture, voracious dogs. To scientific progress, born out of the intelligence that explains it all, and the elegance that saves it all”2.

new structures keeping both the old and new forms. His vision encompass human fragility, but also resilience and the ability to create from the destruction. In his project San Francisco Project: Inhabiting the Quake, the proposed structures play on the fragility of the buildings in the wake of calamity. The structure in the cities do not necessarily strive for aesthetics but an urbanism of surviving with the natural disasters waiting to occur.

Structures designed for an abandoned waterfront site on San Francisco Bay which use the energy released by the earthquake to ‘transform themselves’, 1995”Architecture and war are not incompatible. Architecture is war. War is architecture. I am at war with my time, with history, with all authority that resides in fixed and frightened forms.”3 ■

5. RADICAL RECONSTRUCTION During the 70’s, the first oil crisis hit the Western World. There is a certain relationship between architecture/urbanism and crisis situations, such as war, political revolution/reaction and natural disasters.

Lebbeus Woods with its paintings strived to see the place of one person - any individual - in the complex, ever-changing landscape of the world” His designs have a political dimension and try to see the survival and reconstruction of the urban environment after crisis situations, be it natural or manmade. The old situation is morphed into a new one that draws inspiration from the old, but at the same time it twists into asymmetrical and organic shapes.

The people try to re-appropriated the

Reference "Radical Architecture, Art and the City"Archilab's Urban Experiemnts 1. Project Japan Koolhaas, Rem Koolhaas / Hans Ulrich Obrist 2. Constant, The Decomposition of the Artist: Five Texts by Constant, The Drawing Center, New York, 1999, a12 3. 1965 issue of Domus

Figure 1. Symbolic Representation of New Babylon, 1969, collage on paper, 55 x 60. Photo ©Victor E. Nieuwenhuys 2. "Ville Spatiale" ©Iona Friedman, from the book "Pro Domo" 3. Tokyo Plan, 1960 ©Kenzo Tange 4, 5. "No Stop City" 1970 ©Archizoom/Gilberto Corretti 6."Uncensored Architecture" ©Lebbeus Woods

4

3

5 6 37

| INFORMAL | article

Informal

'We call informality the urban and architectural interventions that occur without any rules and regulations which are widespread practice: building new extensions to house, closing the balconies etc.'

Stefan Ghenciulescu

Appropriation of Modernity by Citizens Antonio Manrique G. In architecture, perhaps the most interesting example of the appropriation of the early modernist movement’s principles is made, ​​universally, by ordinary citizens in informal settlements.

Naturally and spontaneously, citizens have adopted these principles into their everyday life. Popular neighborhoods and housing construction in the cities of the so called ‘Third World’, provide an interesting scenario where you can observe and verify the above statement. While the many buildings and urban projects built in Europe and North America were the manifesto of the architectural ideals of the modernist movement, which academies and professional architects were responsible for spreading universally, the most extensive and interesting experiments and testing of these ideals is the scene that takes place in the spontaneous neighborhoods and housing constructions we now know as the informal city.

There, the architectural typologies built are undoubtedly and eminently modernist typologies.

38

Figure 1

2

1. DOM-INO House by Le Corbusier. ©FLC 2. The five principles of the new architecture proposed by Le Corbusier in 1926: Pilotis, roof gardens, free ground floor, the horizontal window and the free design of the façade. © FLC 3. Informal construction system in Bogota, Colombia. © Dearq 4. Informal housing in Bogota, Colombia.

3 All cities in America are young. In fact, whoever visits any of the major Latin American cities for the first time, will at first, perceive them as modern. Off course, after carefully observing and studying them a different aspect of modernity is discovered: the modernity built in versions of poor specifications. Nevertheless,this socially and economically complex reality, that highlights the magnitude of many of the problems in the contemporary world, remains a crucial argument for the kindness and virtues of the doctrines behind modernity.

The Dom-Ino house, an architectural typology proposed by Le Corbusier in 1914, as a modern housing system designed to meet the housing demand in Europe after the destruction of the Second World War, or the so called ‘five principles of the new architecture’ proposed by the same architect in 1926, are architectural ideas that have trespassed borders and have been used all over the world. Their presence becomes evident in the way the inhabitants built their homes in poor neighborhoods on the peripheries of large Latin American cities.

These are interpretations of modern typologies, massively appropriated by citizens, self-builders, who attempt to solve their housing problem. In Colombia, farmers since the 1950’s have migrated to the city, either forced there by political violence or attracted by the illusion of being acknowledged citizens. They most certainly have no idea of who the Swiss architect Le

Corbusier was, nor have knowledge of scholarly discussions among theorists about the historical moment in which modernity began. However, while building their homes, often in lots sold by illegal developers within the diverse modern spaces of the city, and only with what they have learned in their work as laborers in construction sites, they do not hesitate to adopt these principles for the sake of technical and economic efficiency.

In the absence of better options offered by the government or society, the adopted modern typology consisting of a construction system of concrete beams, columns and lightened slabs, very similar to the principles for the new architecture proposed by Le Corbusier, which allowed housing to grow or develop gradually, as the residents might have an increase in income and later on evolve as a family, clearly becomes the best alternative.

In fact, there is no other option for those who do not have enough money to have access to the formal housing market. Following this pattern, entire neighborhoods have and are still being built, constituting major urban districts inhabited by millions of citizens.

The interesting thing about this way of building the city, its unconscious reference to the early modernist movement, is also troublesome. It is not only that the urban and architectural technical conditions of the neighborhoods and buildings are not the best - most of them would not withstand an earthquake of a minor magnitude - but

4 also they lack all facilities and public spaces suitable for city life, failing to provide health services, education, recreation, sport, culture etc. Again it is ‘half’ modern - a poor modernity in which it seems that to be modern is just to participate in some aspects of the admirable concepts behind modernist ideals, such as providing an integral and better quality of life for all citizens. Being modern means much more than keeping up on the latest trends in technology or fashion.

In this sense, modernism is a fundamentally political project of democracy, which by definition requires the participation of all citizens to give shape, space and time to its principles, through the architecture we build.

Perhaps, it is for this very reason that we encourage the celebration of all the actions present in the design and construction of the best and most qualified urban and architectural projects, where communities and practitioners of architecture, engineering and all disciplines related to the social construction of the habitat participate.

The informal neighborhood improvement projects through which libraries, museums, schools, community centers, workshops, bike paths, home improvement programs, new housing developments, parks, auditoriums, kindergartens, elderly care centers, and public space in general are being built - all examples of great architecture promoting fraternity and civic life, and also examples of a true sense of modernity.■ Translated by Luis Montenegro

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| INFORMAL | article

Da Lang Fever A story about the potential of a self-organizing migrant society in Shenzhen, China

Shenzhen is upgrading its industry. This results in empty factory buildings and huge demographic changes within the migrant population. It also implies a transition from a blue-collar to a white-collar society. Shenzhen’s economic success is based on cheap labor. Nonetheless, blue-collar migrants are considered to be both problematic and vulnerable. But do we really understand and appreciate the economic and social value of the current generation of migrants in Shenzhen? Da Lang Fever is a story about the potential of a self-organizing migrant society in Da Lang Neighborhood. Da Lang Fever showcases the empowering nature of bottom-up activities for migrant workers.

Da Lang is a migrant neighborhood of 500,000 people located in Longhua New District just outside the border of the former Special Economic Zone. Da Lang became an official sub district of Longhua in 2011. It grew organically until then and now consists mainly of urban villages and factories. Like many other districts in Shenzhen, Da Lang wants to upgrade and modernize its manufacturing industry and urban infrastructure. Da Lang Fashion Valley, an area in the north of Da Lang, represents one such site that attempts to attract creative industries. Simultaneously, road-widening projects are literally ‘opening up’ Da Lang. Despite all efforts, Da Lang still faces the absence of a cultural scene for workers as well as a serious lack of public facilities.

Leisure patterns are rapidly changing in China. The demands of second-generation migrants are markedly different from those of the previous generation—most of whom have returned to their hometowns. They come to the city for earning opportunities and personal development, to find better jobs and learn new skills. More than 50% of the migrants in Da Lang are between 20 - 29 years old.

Born after 1980, they belong to the second generation of migrants in China. In Da Lang, only 8,200 people are officially registered, which means that 491,800 of these migrants belong to the floating population; almost half of the population arrived unaccompanied in Da Lang less than one year ago and roughly 25% will stay between 4 - 5 years.

The Da Lang local government wants to create a more sustainable society by facilitating educational programs and leisure activities.

To accomplish this, the Department of Cultural Affairs has been implementing cultural infrastructure over the past couple of years for volunteer organizations and individuals. They subsidize a community service center with 17 full-time workers who provide support to five volunteer teams who, in turn, oversee education and leisure activities.

Xia Donghai is the leader of one of these teams named Little Grass. In 40

Linda Vlassenrood Program director International New Town Institute (INTI); Architecture historian; Independent curator.

just a few years, Xia grew the group of volunteers from just a handful of people in 2007 to its current membership of more than 3.000. The volunteers organize different kinds of activities, for example they give directions in the metro, help elderly people, organize dances and throw dumpling parties.

The Da Lang Government is currently renovating the run-down Qian Zhen Girls’ School (1891) for educational purposes and, since 2010, organizes the “Da Lang Star” singing competition. The competition provides a stage for talented young performers and music fans, and in the past four years, more then 2,000 migrants have taken part. The event is hugely popular in the district and many people gather for the 39 qualifying rounds and yearly finale with 12 participants. Local enterprises sponsor the event.

Labor Square, built in 2007 as an entertainment district, plays a central role in local activities. There are several parks and other squares in Da Lang, but Labor Square is by far the biggest and most popular. Little Grass, for example, has its information station on this square and the annual singing competition also takes place here. A large television screen displays news and television series. Public space is a relatively new urban concept in China simply because it was never part of the traditional Chinese city; previously, public space was limited to streets and their immediate surroundings. After the establishment of the People’s Republic of China in 1949, the number of parks and squares grew, but it was only after the opening up of the country in 1979 that public space became important in urban development.

In today’s rapidly changing Chinese society where leisure, shopping and sport are increasingly important, it’s logical that new needs are also being created in the public domain. However, as a result of rapid urbanization, public space is often fragmented and piecemeal. Further, clear distinctions can be made between political public space and commercial public space, the former not designed as places to linger in their enormous squares. Commercial public space, on the hand, is facilitated through shopping centers, restaurants and cafés. A large part of the population is immediately prevented from using these, for

1

2

3 Figure 1. The Labor Square plays a crucial role in the bottom-up activities in Da Lang. The government built it in 2007 as an entertainment area for the local inhabitants. ©Fabian Koning 2. Portrait music shop owner Lin Fangxi ©Xia Donghai 3. Portrait roller-skating shop owner Zheng Baojie ©Lin Fangxi 4. The “Excellent” roller-skating team was founded by roller-skating shop owner Zheng Baojie in 2008. ©Ren Huacheng

the simple reason that they lack expendable income. Labor Square, therefore, fulfills the role of truly public space, functioning as a meeting place and the vibrant heart of the district. Because most people in Da Lang live in overcrowded dormitories and shared apartments, the squares offers much needed respite and escape for their free time.

Every weekend and on nice summer evenings, hundreds of people visit the square to skate, dance and sing; others just relax and people watch. Lin Fangxi (31 years old) and Zheng Baojie (23 years old) own a music store and a store for roller skates nearby. Lin graduated from the Technical University of Hunan with a bachelor degree in music education, and first arrived in Da Lang five years ago to work as a school music teacher.

He started the music store Star two years ago

4 and continues to teach while also organizing events and cultural performances. Zheng first opened the Excellent roller-skating shop in Da Lang in 2008. He also provides lessons and organizes different kinds of activities with his “Excellent” roller-skating team including competitions and tours through the city. “Excellent” now has over 1000 members.

Each month, members of the skating club partner with the volunteers of Little Grass to clean the Labor Square and help elderly people. Together, Lin and Zheng play a major role in organizing leisure activities on the square, using their shops as a base to promote an array of activities. They offer a large social network through meetings, performances and competitions. They also educate residents by providing lessons. Their combined activity enable second-generation migrants to meet new people, expand their

limited social networks, broaden their work opportunities, improve their communication skills, gain self-confidence and, last but not least, to have fun.

Bottom-up activities, such as these, are flourishing in Da Lang due to its open and dynamic culture. What circumstances shape these dynamics? Three important conditions often considered to be problematic elsewhere in Shenzhen include: a floating population, a very young society, and a distant, but facilitating government. Shenzhen still implements a top-down urban strategy and consistently neglects and underestimates its own current social capital. Social planning in Shenzhen is generally limited, rather preferring a hard infrastructure approach of infrastructure, buildings and industries to establish urban development and therefore 41

| INFORMAL | article

5 6 7 8 economic growth. It hardly has scope for addressing which existing social dynamics need to be accepted or improved in order to strengthen the city’s potential, let alone the socio-economic conditions that are necessary to successfully regenerate an existing neighborhood, establish a new low-carbon city, or creative industry. Da Lang Fever shows that an encouraging attitude taken by the local government toward secondgeneration migrants, which embraces transience and flexibility, allow for new values that move beyond economic benefit alone. In Da Lang, stepping-stones are put in place for volunteer organizations and individuals to start empowering themselves and others. This triggers further selforganization in which young entrepreneurs play a leading role.

42

In answering the question, could the growing number of vacant industrial buildings in Shenzhen (such as the Guangdong Float Glass Factory) play a role in providing urgently needed public facilities like the Labor Square, only one response seems suitable. It can, as long as the conditions for self-organization and empowerment are embraced and facilitated. This will ultimately be the guiding principle for future recommendations and design proposals in Da Lang. ■

This article was originally published in the magazine Volume 39: Urban Borders, the English catalogue of the UABB/Shenzhen Urbanism & Architecture Biennale 2013.

Da Lang Fever is curated by Linda Vlassenrood (International New Town Institute) in collaboration with the Da Lang Government. Da Lang Fever is the result of research initiated by INTI as part of the international research program New New Towns: Why we need to rethink the city of tomorrow today.

The New New Towns program is dedicated to improving the urban and social quality of eight exceptional New Towns in transition: Shenzhen (China), Chandigarh (India), Nairobi (Kenya), Cape Town (South Africa), Dar es Salaam (Tanzania), Alphaville (Brazil), Medellin (Colombia) and Almere (The Netherlands). These cities are experiencing fast urbanization and they face major urban planning issues. In Shenzhen, New New Towns focuses on the city’s urban renewal in relation to the existing landscape, industry and population. Which social, economic and environmental factors need to be improved in order to strengthen the city’s potential?

Partners in the research on Da Lang are the China Development Institute (supervisor: prof. Li Jinkui), Chinese University of Hong Kong (supervisor: associate prof. Doreen Liu), Delft University of Technology (supervisor: assistant prof. Qu Lei) and University of Amsterdam (supervisor: prof. Arnold Reijndorp). With special thanks to Fabian Koning and Maaike Zwart.

Figure 5. The Da Lang Government has been organizing the “Da Lang Star” singing competition since 2010. ©Da Lang Government 6. Migrant Worker Da Lang: A 16-year-old migrant girl (name unknown) working in one of the manufacturing factories in Da Lang. ©Maaike Zwart 7. Volunteers Little Grass: The Little Grass volunteer workers union currently has 3.000 members and friends. ©Da Lang Government 8. The “Yang Taishan” performance team consists of young volunteering migrant workers from Da Lang. They sing and dance especially for young migrant workers on cultural events all over Da Lang District. ©Da Lang Government

Comment BOX Is Informality Utopia or Dystopia ?

Henk Mulder Elderman of Urban Development Almere, the Netherlands

Stefan Ghenciulescu Architect and Editor Zeppelin Magazine

Mary Ann O'Donnell Co-Curator Handshake 302 Art Space Baishizhou, Shenzhen

CHEN Rui Urban Planner CAUPD, China

The City of Almere’s response to the request of the central government to expand with 60.000 houses is a move towards organic growth. Six years ago, the government gave people the freedom to build their own house under the belief that the inhabitants would be better suited to create their own community and society. Today, the latest urban expansion in the city is Almere Oosterwold.

This project is devote to rural urbanism, where people and organisations can design, develop and build their own society, within a minimal set of rules. We do not know how this will turn out, but we believe that the more freedom and responsibility we give to people, the more quality we add to our city. Informality as a utopia or dystopia is a non-thesis, since informality is not an absolute concept: it is on one end of a scale. The City of Almere is moving towards the informal end of that scale, but without completely disregarding a sense of uniformity. Without the formal spatial outline of green and water, designed by our founding fathers in the 1970s, and without the facilitating role of a (formal) government or other political party, self-built housing could not have thrived here and will not in the future.

Informal urban development occur in relation to the environments they exist in. One of them might be the expression of the individual, whist others come across as repurposing the space, due to different needs and urban actors. The results can be read by different stakeholders, the users may see the outcome as a way of appropriating the space, while the authority as an affront to the designated use of the space.

Informality can generate the premises of building strong communities, by furthering the dialog between stakeholders, thus the utopian environment is one of civic responsibility and action. On the other hand it can generate dystopian environments if the community that generates it has certain social issues concerning poverty, lack of education etc. The clear outcome of formality is shaped mostly by the direct users of the space, and less by the authority that wants to implement rules.

Since 1980, Shenzhen has offered rural migrants the opportunity to realize the Chinese Dream—a wellpaying job, home ownership, and hukou welfare benefits, including medical care for parents and education for children. Nevertheless, as the inequality gap widens, dystopian anxieties have surfaced in Shenzhen migrant stories.

Consider, for example, the case of Mr. Zhu. In 1990, Mr. Zhu migrated from rural Hunan to Shenzhen, sending remittances to his family. In 2002, Mr. Zhu opened a hardware store in a large Shenzhen urban village.

Several years later, his son graduated from high school and joined him. At the time, their China Dream seemed within reach. Today, however, Mr. Zhu has begun to question the viability of the China Dream because neither he nor his son has managed to secure a well-paying job, a home, or a Shenzhen hukou. His wife remains in Hunan, taking care of his parents. Mr. Zhu’s outrage is Confucian. “Does General Party Secretary Xi Jinping know?” he asks, “Does he know that in Shenzhen sons cannot take care of fathers?”

Informal urban developments are bottom-up initiatives which contributes to our built environments. It is very different from formal developments, and often clashes the established views in modern urban planning. It is often viewed as dystopian. But to some extent, we have to rethink about what is utopian or what the city of tomorrow could be.

In Wenzhou, the Chinese city’s urban development is guided by the free market economy. The wide spread of informal urban developments has created a scattered structure. Urban planners can view these developments as dystopian. Unexpectedly, the random city form does create an efficient social structure. If we choose to shift to a more utopian view, the well-organized structure could be damaged, and past urban renewal projects from across globe have demonstrated this damage it could have on the individuals and community.

Therefore, this demonstrate that the concepts of utopian and dystopian might have little connection with the city form of formal or informal. What truly matters is recognising the different patterns of an individual city and observing the trends in the urban environment and infrastructure to truly know what to plan for in the future.

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Informality Challenged

Interview with Evren Aysev, Ipek Akpinar & Robbert Jan van der Veen

The metropolitan area of Istanbul has become one of the fastest growing urban regions in the world in recent years. Current estimations project that the city will continue to increase in its economic attractiveness on both national, as well as international scales, defining Istanbul as one of the major metropolises in Europe.

Traditionally, a considerable amount of the newly arriving, mainly local, immigrants have settled in informal urban formations, initially intending to adapt to Istanbul’s urban life. However, the high economic pressures of today oppose the existence of such structures, and promote an urban expansion via large-scale projects. In the following article, our editorial board aims to explore the tension between the formal planning approach and the existing notions of informality within the city, by juxtaposing internal e.g. EvrenAysev and IpekAkpinar, and external perspectives e.g.

Robbert Jan van der Veen, regarding the subject.

How did the rapid urbanisation and new developments in Istanbul in recent decades influence the city in terms of urban form, typology and environment?

EvrenAysev (E.A) & IpekAkpinar (I.A): The most drastic changes in the macro form of Istanbul, being a city of 8000 years, have taken place in the last sixty years - starting in the 1950s, with rapid industrialisation and population growth, picking up after the 1980s with the efforts of integration into the global capitalist system, and reaching a climax in the 2000s, with the adoption of an intense neoliberal urban regime.

Today, the rate of urbanisation, together with the scale of land speculation and real estate investment has been growing enormously. Every inch of the urban land is conceptualised as a commodity to be capitalised by the current government. This neoliberal mindset has many controversial implementations, from the privatisation of public land to the urban transformation of the historic centre.

One of the most crucial and large-scale implementations of this urban regime is the project of establishing a “new city” around northern İstanbul, backed up by mega infrastructural projects like the third Bosphorus bridge, a new airport and a secondary Bosphorus project called the “Canal Istanbul”. The construction work of the third bridge has begun in 2013, despite the environmental objections and protests. Five hundred thousand trees are planned to be cut for solely the construction of the bridge and the Northern Marmara Motorway, causing huge damage to the Istanbul forests. Yet the real damage of the project will be the urbanisation of the forest area, irreversibly corrupting the natural resources of the city and welcoming millions of immigrants towards Istanbul.

Robbert Jan van der Veen (R.J.V.): Whereas New York, Barcelona, Madrid and Paris are built with the principles of a GRID system, Istanbul is built on the system of the topography. This naturally means taking the easiest and most logic place to build. The city planning is, in fact, a collective trust on organic grow. The DNA of this trust results in more city expansions and also urban infill. These projects are designed and build as singular developments, not integrally embedded in the city as a whole. The impact of this DNA on Istanbul is now resulting in a massive city which is convulsive and almost squeezed, so it cannot breathe anymore. Traffic is stuck, healthy environment is missing, shopping malls are placed right next to each other, and the typography cannot logically carry this heavy blanket of concrete and asphalt anymore.

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Evren Aysev is founding partner of Acikofis Architects based in Istanbul.

Her architectural work ranges from architectural design to interior and environmental design. She has obtained her Masters degree from Columbia University, Advanced Architectural Design Program in 1998 and her PhD degree from Istanbul Technical University in 2013.

Ipek Akpinar is academician at Istanbul Technical University (ITU) who has obtained at a PhD degree at Bartlett School of Graduate Studies, University of London in 2003. Her fields of interest are architectural and urban design, urban culture, architectural education, the global city and Istanbul.

She is currently regional editor of the Journal of Architecture (Routledge / Francis&Taylor) and advisory board member at the UCL Urban Laboratory.

Robbert Jan van der Veen is a creative director at plein06 located in Rotterdam; a design office which focuses on the development of highly sustainable assignments of the future.

As an academician Robbert Jan is a guest lecturer in TU Delft (Netherlands) and TU Istanbul (Turkey).

1 'The tolerant approach in line with the populist policies of 1980’s and 1990’s is acutely shifted to a “no tolerance” policy for informal settlements.'

Do you believe that the traditional and local character of Istanbul is somehow endangered by the economic pressure on the city?

E.A. & I.A.: One of the highly controversial implementations of the urban governments of Istanbul is a series of urban transformation projects targeting the historical residential areas. The main goal of these projects is the total incorporation of these areas into the capitalist urban regime. Sulukule, Tarlabaşı and FenerBalatAyvansaray Urban Regeneration Projects are some of the projects issued by the local governments in the 2000s. These projects, implemented for the sake of a new urban economy, rather than the well-being of the citizens, are highly problematic in many ways. First of all, they are based on the physical and social destruction of the existing urban texture for the sake of building a new, historicist simulation. Through this process, not only is the physical surrounding, carrying a historical and spatial quality, compromised, but also the real-life practice and neighbourhood texture is destroyed through the mechanisms of displacement and gentrification. These implementations not only destroy the historical fabric, but also create major social and legal problems. In short, the urban transformation processes issued in line with the neoliberal urban agenda become tools for a profit-based new urban economy, reflecting the speculative pressure exerted by private capital.

R.J.V.: The new developments are spatially self-framed as individually closed, gated areas. Very often real estate entrepreneurs purchase a land plot in-between the street network of the city and develop a large mix-used project. It is very common that these developments are high-standard with gates and guards. What is interesting, when I talk with local academics and different private companies, is that they acknowledge the appearance of these phenomena not as a sign of social insecurity but rather as a symbol of the socio-economic status of the users who inhabit these places.

Do you think that the urban projects which characterise the recent development of Istanbul are able to incorporate

adequately the local needs of the already established residents of the city?

E.A. & I.A.: The new urban forms of today’s İstanbul seem to be the gated communities, mass produced housing blocks, mixed-use prestige projects and high-rise office blocks and shopping malls funded by large scale capital. The consequences of the rapid change in the urban form of the city are two-fold. First, the everyday practice of public space is transformed. The new public spaces of today’s Istanbul become the shopping malls or the theme parks that offer a manufactured and paid-for experience, instead of a free space of urbanity. This results in the loss of the “right to the city”, as the public area is turned into a privatised enterprise with controlled access (1996, 2008). The second consequence is the loss of green areas and parks. One of the most striking examples of this situation was the governmental attempt to destroy Gezi Park, being one of the few green areas around Beyoğlu (adjacent to Taksim Square, and the most significant public area of the city), in order to build a shopping mall.

The reaction of the citizens to this attempt was quite strong. One of the most influential civil protest rallies in the history of Istanbul was held for months all around the city, as the Istanbulites defended their “right to the city”. In short, Istanbul is currently a battleground where the neoliberal agenda of the urban governments clash with the welfare and civil rights of the citizens. The upside of the coin is that a civil reflex and an urban awareness to protect their rights and their city are emerging among the inhabitants of the city.

R.J.V.: In my opinion, a real problem in Istanbul is that the urban scale of planning and design is missing. The metropolitan scale of development is well-considered by the government. This scale is illustrated by a large-scale, rough masterplan, indicating the giant projects, such as a new airport, bridge, highway, etc. On the other hand, the urban scale of development is under the authority of the local municipalities and they do not possess the right power and structure to deal with the local design challenges, I believe. The local government utilises zoning plans to manage the development but does not comprise an urban design department as in the Netherlands,

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2 for example. The common practice is to arrange the zones with general building requirements and afterwards sell urban plots to private developers who are responsible for the specific design of the areas. This somehow limits the capability of local authorities to work with and manage the very interesting urban scale of development in Istanbul.

What is the importance of informal settlements for the functional, economic and socio-cultural characteristics of Istanbul?

E.A. & I.A.: Since the end of the 1940s, a large number of immigrants have arrived to the city in pursuit of a better life. They set up informal settlements (Gecekondus) that have not only been a self-made habitation on the Treasury Department’s land but also a nucleus of social interaction and local collaboration. In the absence of a national law system guiding industrial establishments to set up habitation for their workers, immigrants had to establish their own way of setting up a ‘home’. The human scale of gecekondus was in harmony with the natural environment and topography, being a valuable quality in terms of place-making. In short, gecekondus were an instantaneous solution brought by the new Istanbulites to the housing problem of the city on the verge of rapid industrialisation. Dolmuş, being an informal mode of transportation, was a similar practical remedy invented by the citizens.

However, until the 2000s, major informal settlements have gradually turned into mediocre building blocks via authorisation policies, changing the low-rise and humane spatial quality of the settlements.

Coming to the 2000s, the urbanisation policy of the government has drastically changed. The current urban administration, having zero tolerance for the informal settlements, has been issuing a number of urban transformation projects that aim to demolish the existing settlements and produce high-rise mass housing blocks. In short, the informal solutions to the rapid urbanisation of Istanbul that existed for the large part of the twentieth century are no longer appreciated or tolerated by the current urban governments and are being systematically obliterated.

R.J.V.: What I like about these informal settlements is that they serve a considerable amount of functions, especially the ones in the city centre. You have a shop on the ground floor, combined with some rental spaces, i.e. hotels and residential spaces, on the upper floors.

Sometimes there is also a restaurant on the roof, and in the end you have buildings which accommodate various functions. This creates 46

a very vibrant and interesting urban environment. In my opinion, they can absolutely contribute to the urban quality of Istanbul, but the problem is that they are physically vulnerable to geographical hazards (e.g., earthquakes). Therefore, they are being demolished and replaced by new structures, but the latter do not possess the same features of an extremely high mixture of uses. These kinds of areas seem to represent the very special character of Istanbul.

Nevertheless, the physical and service conditions of some informal settlements really demand a certain renovation or re-structuring interventions, but when one does so, the same urban environment’s principles and concept should be followed. If we speak about Istanbul’s transport system, I am not completely sure about the importance of the informal public transport, but the issues of the city in these terms are substantial. The whole metropolitan area is organised in a way which pre-determines constant massive flows of people that could hardly be served efficiently by any means of transport. Thus, if you ask me how essential the impact of these informal transport networks is, I would say that we should think about another solution on the conceptual level, such as reducing the necessity of travelling.

What is the overall attitude of the planning professionals and politicians in Istanbul towards these notions of informality?

E.A. & I.A.: Until the beginning of 21st Century, housing provision for low-income migrants depended on the legalisation of unauthorised appropriations. Continuous plan revisions supported a populist coalition between the industrial capital in need of cheap labour and urban governments. In short, the lack of pro-active planning supported the populist gecekondu regime. But, with the Criminal Act of 2004, gecekondu construction was made a criminal act (punishable by five years in prison). As a result, from 2004 to 2008, about 11,500 units in Istanbul were demolished. In 2005, re-defined as “criminal, derelict, obsolescent, unsafe and slum areas”, gecekondus became the target of the new Municipality Law on urban transformation.

Having been accepted as the location of the ‘other,’ gecekondus were demolished and the inhabitants were relocated towards the urban periphery by police-forced evictions. Thus, the emergence of new and financially-powerful actors within the real-estate market of the city (large developers, real-estate investment trusts, state agencies) ended the populist regime of informal settlements.

R.J.V.: To be honest, I have not been involved in projects which require an insightful knowledge regarding these informal settlements, and I have not approached residents who inhabit these areas. However, my

3 general perception is that politicians do not tend to respect the notions of informality.

This concerns not only Istanbul but also the majority of all other contexts around the world. The planning professionals and designers, on the other hand, show some interest in these informal structures because they recognise certain qualities of the (re) produced environment.

Is the planning framework in Istanbul capable of incorporating these informal structures within the general course of urban development?

E.A. & I.A.: It is hard to talk about an integrated planning framework of Istanbul. The plans prepared for Istanbul are subjected to alterations forced by the central government. For example, urban interventions as harsh as the Yavuz Sultan Selim Bridge and the third airport could be executed despite the rulings of the Istanbul Environmental plan. Therefore, it would be more accurate to say that instead of an integrated action plan, Istanbul is governed by partial plans and projects, that are issued by the profit-based agenda of the governments. These plans and projects are supported by legal alterations and laws issued by the central governments.

In the last decade, the main policy of the urban governments is to incorporate all the urban land into the capitalist system.

Therefore, the tolerant approach, in line with the populist policies of 1980s and 1990s, is acutely shifted towards a “no tolerance” policy for informal settlements. In fact, a number of urban transformation projects are being executed by the Mass Housing Department, aiming to demolish gecekondus and build mass housing blocks in their place.

With the profit-oriented urban political agenda shaping today’s Istanbul, it is rather

unlikely for the informal structures to be incorporated into the general course of urban development.

R.J.V.: People involved in urbanism in both the academic and practical fields have very positive attitudes of employing integral and bottom-up approaches, in order to align efficiently the local need together with large-scale developments. Everybody is talking about themes such as phase-to-phase developments, questionnaires on the street and integral design techniques. This makes me feel that the planning professionals have a clear idea and certain motivation to incorporate the local actors, their needs and demands in the design process. However, as far as I am familiar with Istanbul, it does not yet seem that these approaches are utilised in practice.

How realistic is it to manage a regeneration approach based on incremental improvements in Istanbul relying on the local potentials in terms of planning programming and economic viability?

E.A. & I.A.: In a post-Gezi period (protests of June 2013), architectural and planning domains need to develop a new language and approach towards future designs.

Processes of incrementality and informality - in other words, reflections of everyday life - can provide patterns for participatory design processes for a democratic and open city. Looking at everyday living practices specified as trivial, boring or banal, as well as “chaotic” and “informal”, and making a reading of the urban space that reveals the seemingly inconspicuous parts of life, may give important feedback. In order for these incremental tactics to work as urban regeneration strategies, it is imperative that

the urban governments should be open to civil participation, discussion and the production of an open platform of dialogue.

The civil initiatives that have emerged in the post-Gezi period might have the potential to compel the authorities to such a dialogue.

R.J.V.: This could be realistic if we design urban business models instead of only doing urban planning. It is about transparency and understanding.

Decision-makers, banks and investors should be convinced by the value of incremental improvements in the short-term and with that, anchoring a sustainable identity for the long term. A layered framework with different qualities and identities is crucial for the facilitation of initiatives, and for stimulating new investments in area development. It would be a strategy to start area development with the realisation of an attractive public space. We have to bridge the gap between universities, real estate developers, local governments and biennales. It is a matter of understanding and a matter of working together out of the same interest. This interest is in a sustainable and ecological highly qualitative daily life, but also an economically fortunate future. ■ Todor Kesarovski

Figure 1. Sulukule Districs, demolitions and after. © Najla Osseiran, 2009 2. 3rd bridge construction. © Hakan Öge, 2013 3. Gezi park protests, 2013. © wikipedia

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Informal Bucharest

Interview with Stefan Ghenciulescu

As the issue focuses on utopia and informality of urban space, a chosen case study would be Bucharest, for the understanding of processes taking place in the South-Eastern part of Europe. Its location as well as its background underpins different methods of dealing with utopia and informality. For this interview, Atlantis has approached Stefan Ghenciulescu, architect, editor-in-chief of Zeppelin magazine, and co-founder of Zeppelin Association, Bucharest.

Can you give us a short background information of your interests and projects in the field of architecture and urbanism?

I am an architect and teacher at the Ion Mincu University of Architecture and Urbanism (UAIM) in Bucharest, Romania. In addition, I am also the editor at Zeppelin Magazine and the cofounder of ONG Zeppelin Association.

Zeppelin Association consist of three major contributors Constantin Goagea, Cosmina Goagea and myself. Through this association, we initiate events, exhibitions, edit and launch books, and critical research on the practice of architecture and urbanism. The themes are diverse, touching on various disciplines, ranging from: the rehabilitation of the built environment constructed during the Communist era, to interventions in the public space, the contemporary processes seen from an architectural and urban perspective, to new technologies and their relationship with the urban space and community.

Through the programme Urban Report we follow the urban processes taking place in different countries from the south east area that were part of the communist block, to give a general perspective of the urban phenomena at a regional level. The projects range from conventional architectural projects to urban interventions that have two components: research base and practical initiative. It is a pendulum between practice, writing and design.

What are the main events and initiatives you have coordinated or took part in that touch on the subject of informality in the public realm?

We had an array of interventions and events, that tackle the theme of informality and utopia in cities in the Balkan region Examples include Magic Bloocks, the Balkanology Exhibition andthe Urban Report Platform Magic Blocks was a research base intervention on what can be done with the existing communist residential built urban fabric, which takes up most of the city’s areas. The focus of the research was on Bucharest in some specific detailed locations, which was coupled with an array of urban interventions with direct participation of the residents. The programme was thought as a way of reactivating the

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Stefan Ghenciulescu editor-in-chief, Zeppelin magazine; co-founder, Zeppelin Association

collaborative process in the areas.

The programme Urban Report started as a collaboration between professionals from different countries: Romania, Bulgaria, Hungary and Serbia, and refers to the study of the urban processes from southeastern Europe. There is still the Urban Report Platform, online publications, and now the ongoing rubric in the Zeppelin Magazine.

There were various publications and exhibitions that referred directly to urban space activation, collaborative interventions and mostly based on voluntary work, which are meant to resolve common problems in the civil society. Mostly our discussion today I think will revolve around urban projects without preliminary theme, that construct their own programme with the people they target.

What is the image of the city of Bucharest from an urban and architectural point of view?

Bucharest, can seem like a strong acquired flavour, which is very dissonant and eclectic. It can be seen as a museum of urban and architectural models from the last 150 years. In Barcelona,there was an exhibition about Bucharest, in which I referred to it as’Jukebox city’.

That’s because all these models live together, they are superimposed on one another, or placed side by side.

On the same street,you can pass through modernism, to eclecticism, to socialism and then after a few steps wild capitalism. This is one of the most important aspect about Bucharest, which is a Balkanic its core, having references from SE Europe, such as Athens or Istanbul. The city was subject to a process of modernization in the 19th century. The modernization models between the start of the century and 1940 were never fully carried out: Haussmann interventions, and the modernist intervention between the World Wars. They had the scope of making a coherent new city, which at the same time were negating the existing one.

Thus Bucharest can be considered a palimpsest, with an emphasis on discontinuity. None of the projects were seen through, and the city is a layering of all these “projects”. In its most valuable parts it is the expression of a specific continuity and energy of modernization coupled with a certain human scale. Bucharest is an oscillation between the ambition of a medium size metropolis and a certain bigger village

1 Figure 1, 2, 3, 4. Magic blocks, 2010 ©Zeppelin Association

in which everybody knows everybody, and there are some community relationship between neighbors. This layering of rural, urban, metropolitan and different architectural and urban models make the city very interesting and experimental.

What is the linking element between these different layers?

For each city, which is not completely wiped out, there are some elements of continuity that can be traced, for instance the road system, the forms of the lots, some landmarks that are considered valuable. What I consider to be the continuity element in Bucharest is the multitude of layers (Neoclassic, Eclectic, Modernist). Considering the fact that the city already has an extended form, the logic of modernization is not that of adding land but that of building on top, and is one of the elements of continuity.

All the above mentioned models implemented in the city are articulated in a characteristic way which pendulates between urban and rural. There was a constant negotiation between modernization and the existing city. The cities main characteristic as seen today is the toned down modernity and the discrepancy between the liberal city and the totalitarian urban intervention of the 80s, which is one of the biggest and partially realized projects in Europe at that time.

How can the informal Bucharest be described today? Can you give some examples?

I think the best way to describe informality in Bucharest today is by putting the situation in a historical perspective. Before the December

2 ’89, informality was a form of resistance, against the state, which was the client, the investor and the design firm at the same time. There was a total control on what was being built, that was part of a nation wide social planing process that wanted to build a new society. The informality was the only way of resistance by filtering the individual aspects in the general framework.

After 1989, the break was in the form of a pendulum move, to the opposite direction: from total control to an absolute individualism. And thus, informality was a modus operate for the official way of operating in the built environment. Since most of the people had an adverse reaction to control, they tried to bypass the rules, regulation; the governing principle is the absolute individualism. So the informality becomes a planned informality if it can be called that.

Beyond this, we call informality the urban and architectural interventions that occur without any rules and regulations which are widespread practice: building new extensions to house, closing the balconies etc. Pure informal urban actions are at the extreme end and they represent the poor people’s houses from outside the city or in hidden places inside the city, which people prefer to ignore.

Can the informal Bucharest be defined as a place between trivial, improvisation and illegality? What are the downpoints of informality in the context of Bucharest?

3 The illegal production of architecture and urban spaces in the Balkans is everywhere, most of the things built are without formal papers. The top down planning – derogatory urbanism. When people come to Bucharest and see the chaos, they ask themselves if there is any urban planning involved. In Bucharest mostly urbanism is in the service of the investor, even though there are general plans to guide the development of the city.

The municipality is not capable of fitting effectively the private needs into the city’s urban planning framework (detail urban plan, and zone urban plan). The urbanism, thus becomes informal. The interest of the client and not the common interest in the area are mostly seen through.

We have seen the picture from the city point of view in term of informality, but at the small scale how do the citizens react to informal growth?

I think here the biggest problem of the Romanian post-totalitarian society is absolutely understandable, after a totalitarian regime the swing is towards a lack of control, and strong individual expression. Everything that was common goes towards the individual person. Before the public space was the space of authority, and the private space was the space of the individual, whilst now the public space becomes a none space, and our private space is the most important one.

The production of space at the city level is not the big totalitarian project, but a sum of individual projects, each with its own goal.

The collective space is almost gone. For most people the terms common,

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5 ativist, have negative connotations. What is not mine, belongs to no one; the city becomes an archipelago of individual spaces. Thus the informal takes up this sort of reasoning, this sort of acting, on individual impulse. The collective house is a very good example because they were though for the generic person, with the same needs and aspirations, and now they are vertical villages, because every person, according to their financial possibilities and taste refurbish their apartment as if they were an individual house.

The is a strong discrepancy between the common areas and the private house. A lot has changed in the past 10 years, but the big stake in this is that the recuperation of the common, and social aggregation that can facilitate negotiation of common needs and goals. Because right now is a pendulum between two spheres: what is done through authority which is not very effective and what everyone of us does.

The mechanism of the individual production of space inside the city is the same for the big investor and for the regular person.

Since we have talked a lot about the individualized production of space, are there any public interventions that target the common?

Activist projects in the context of Bucharest represent an effort in consciously organizing an urban normality and a common space.

What do these projects have in common? They have a long term goal and an immediate one, no matter how diverse in theme they might be: the production of a small public space, building an art center or protecting a landmark.

In the long run, you can say they have an utopic goal, but at the same time act imeddiately with small steps in a certain direction. In the a city that sees the start of many projects and none are completely finished, urban activations are very effective in making a difference.

They have both the vision, and the strategic plan, that can be started with small steps and at the same time, has the possibility of adapting, accelerating, slowing down depending on the context. A good example is that of the Verona Street in Bucharest, in which once a year the street is cleared of cars and a festival takes place (Street Delivery).

What people don’t know about it is that there is an urban project with a goal that follows the transformation of it in an exclusively pedestrian area. The people involved in the project, started Street Delivery as a way of gathering awareness of the potential of the area as a mainly pedestrian in nature, before executing the project. The event activated the area, and cafes and terraces have been opened not only during

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6 the festival, but also permanent. The space became attractive, even though only one small portion of the street has been redesigned.

This represents a starting point for future development. This is a negotiation between the more or less conventional planning and what the community is willing to accept to participate in.

Another examples is that of art centers all over the country. The represent project for the reuse of the industrial built environment, without any national or local strategies or backup from the government.

The first stages of the process of gentrification takes place, the artists rent the area and use it as a workshop, and exhibition. An interesting exmaple is Fabrica de Pensule, an old factory that manufactured brushes, situated in Cluj-Napoca, which is now converted into artist studios and exhibition halls.

The same thing is happening everywhere in Europe, the only difference between Romania and Western Europe is that this is a grass root intervention, without any government support, and is a self organization process. The local authorities lack the organizational skills to direct such projects, and do not have the best intentions in developing such projects for the public good. The scope of any activation is to have a big impact and change a lot of strata, while having very small steps in the begining, that can be built up, and possibly gain momentum. To do with what you have and have this positive bricolage skill to achieve. The constant search for positive counter models to what is taking place.

With this in mind, should the role of the architect and urbanist be different?

The architects and urbanist as a purely technocrat is a dying profession, and it doesn’t have any chance of survival if is not part of the negotiation between the civil society, authority and investors. The profession should strive to go beyond the mere theme and program, into social activism. The best skills of the urbanist is that of a negotiator and coordinator between different actors. The urbanist and architect will create their own projects and themes that tackle the social and community sphere and will find their own clients who don’t know yet that they need their help. In the eastern Europe the divide between the individual and community is very big. The crisis is not merely an economical one but a social one. The elements that are interesting in the Balkans than in Western Europe is the strong divide between individual and community, formal and informal, due to the change of regime.

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7 The phenomena taking place are more poignant than in the western part. The privatized public space and atomization of society, are taking place everywhere, but here these processes can be seen very clear.

Thus the grass-root initiatives seem more like positive guerrilla interventions, in a very institutionalized and productive way. They are trying to shift the balance more towards the community and public goods.

How are the projects seen by the users and those who participate in them?

The is a big dilemma about starting the projects, do you choose to institutionalize them or build momentum for them in an informal way. Each scenario has its limitation, from a certain scale, the community and voluntary work cannot be continued, while institutionalized project have the risk of being built in time, but not being used by the people they target. The inertia of big social and administrative apparatuses, and the bad habit of wiping out what was done and redoing it all over again don’t make long term projects very effective. For a society, which is in constant change and the politic layer has lower standards in quality, the grass root and private activations have a bigger chance of continuity and survival as urban interventions. The new utopic project for Bucharest is to reactivate the social collaborations through urban interventions.

What would be the key difference between urban interventions in Western Europe and Southeast Europe?

To answer this question it is very interesting to situate the city in a timeframe for the urban interventions seen in Bucharest. The city lives in four historic periods at the same time,

which is very interesting and takes a certain toll on the users. The periods are: firstly the remnants of the old totalitarian regime, a mode of operation and administration before the socialist period 1920s (semi rural and conservative), the modernization from the 60s and 70s and then the modernization from 2010.

Bucharest is living right now the a fast paced modernization of the western world after WWII, the 60’s and 70’s capitalism by having big scale infrastructure interventions, such as motorways and passages, and at the same time the modernization of 2010 by: reconsidering the communities, ecology, protecting city values. Beyond the social discrepancies in the city, possibly seen as a Land Rover and a cart on the same road, the people live in an array of historic periods, which transform and borrow from one another and are being fitted in the existing fabric. This is very interesting and very demanding on the city users.

In terms of informality, the difference between the Western Europe and Romania is that there is a strive to do things right, to have a lot of parties involved, while in the Balkans and particularly in Bucharest, it’s a struggle to strike a balance between the individual and the common, and save the community values.

From this, stems the idea of positive guerrila activism by reconstructing the communities through common goods. The destruction of these goods initiate the solidarity and formation of communities. This phenomena of urban activism seems to be more strong than the cities in the near future, due to the big distractions of the buildings of value, the strong individualism, and thus the reaction is even stronger. The solution for this would be the crossing of this big divide through collaboration with the administrative

Figure 5,6,7. Street Delivery, 2010 ©Zeppelin Association

mechanisms, more democratically and more efficiently. So the big utopic project for Bucharest would be the founding of a dialog between the informal and the institution.

To sum things up can you please redefine the informality in Bucharest?

Also, if you were to write a book called Learning from Bucharest, what would the main design principles be? What could Bucharest as a Balkan city bring to the “design table”?

Firstly, the informal has double connotation in the balkan environment. One is the modus operandi of the entire society, from the above mentioned reasons, a informal of planning and the other the apparent informality of community activism, which is a positive informality.

Secondly, there are several principles of design that can be extracted and transplanted from Bucharest. One of them is cohabitation of different scales and models and timeframes of urbanity. Nothing should be necessarily extremely organized or coherent.

Another principle is that of reconciliation of different scales, a metropolitan scale and a rural one. That is due to the fact that the urban world today is changing drastically, having the possibility of superimposing the rural, the urban, and the metropolitan. The third principle of design would be a smartly managed informality, by collaboration with the authorities, the users, the investors. A big emphasis is on the bricolage of the urban intervention depending on the opportunities presented. The end goal is the preservation of the individuality and the building of the community. ■ Ioana Ailincai

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| INFORMAL | report

The Urbanists of Istanbul Polis Istanbul Study Tour

Twenty-five TU Delft students who participated on the Polis Study Tour were privileged to meet Istanbul’s urban designers and planners and discuss the development of Urbanism in Turkey. In this article, we will uncover the challenges that our colleagues in Turkey face in improving the quality of life in the public realm.

Historical monuments, non-stop traffic and countless people... the city of Istanbul has plenty of experiences to delight the eye and soul of an Urbanist. Istanbul is every bit important today as it was historically to every empire that has conquered it. Political, economically, socially and environmentally, it is a link between Asia and Europe, unmatched by any other city on the planet. This position lends itself to an amazing opportunity to discover how to understand, plan, design and operate a city of 14,000,000 inhabitants.

Mel Tuangthong Atlantis editor MSc Urbanism student TU Delft

streets. He also highlights the lack of urban planners and designers in Turkey, which has contributed to the lack of planning in the country as well. The business of creating strategic urban plans rest with politicians and large businesses, while architecture firms fight for the marginal right to conceptualize and visualize their visions.

Regardless of the political and social difficulties facing the profession of Urbanism, the Professor remains optimistic that today’s and future generations will be able to respond more effectively to future urban issues.

• The Pioneer - Professor Huseyin Kaptan - Atelye70

We had the pleasure to meet Professor Huseyin Kaptan, who is a pioneer in developing urban planning strategies for Istanbul. He explained the national government’s vision to change Istanbul from an industrial and agricultural city into a financial and cultural capital of the Middle East. The rapid construction of high rise buildings, migration from the countryside and affects of a growing highway system influences the government’s vision. Nevertheless, these rapid developments have introduced negative side effects, environmental damage to the water supply, the urban vegetation and the agriculture of Istanbul. Currently, the government has implemented a broad strategic plan called “ Istanbul 2030” to deal with these significant changes. The professor has argued that a general strategic plan such as ‘Istanbul 2030’ does not tackle the issues of daily life and has called for more localized planning to safeguard the quality of life on the

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• The Architect and Masterplanner - PAB Architect

Established in 2007, PAB is a highly experienced architectural firm in developing numerous masterplans for their clients across Turkey.

Ms Pinar Gokbayrak is the principal architect at PAB and has kindly provided an insight into their develop process of an urban masterplan.

The firm is creative yet practical in detailing their tailor made solutions to each client. PAB projects are spread throughout Turkey.

Ranging from a neighborhood urban renewal project in CentralTurkey’s Bor to a social sustainability project on the Western Izmir Peninsula. The architecture firm does not lack any technical knowledge or vision in detailing their masterplan. Many of their architects were educated in the Netherlands. The Dutch education has strongly influenced many of their projects, such as the university masterplan in Adana which creates functional public space and a

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1 vibrant student quarters. However, none of their masterplans have been realized. Ms Gökbayrak highlighted the disconnection between the development and vision stage of urban developments in Turkey.

The business oriented framework of many land developers and the National Government have led to some developers create masterplans purely for publicity. She claims some alter the overall structure of the masterplan after the bureaucratic and red tape process to suit their business needs rather than greater good of the general public. Those who hold the position of power or investment funds prefer to stick with the status quo. For example, PAB’s large scale neighborhood development in Istanbul initially proposed an open neighborhood.

However, the client requested an enclosed neighborhood because they strongly believe that their development would have a better market value and encourage wealthier people to purchase their housing stock. While the firm has not been able to realize any of their masterplans, PAB Architect remains confident that the status quo will chance to the advantage of the public and that many good urban design practice that have become normalized in Europe will be incorporated in Turkey’s future urban design.

• Urban Planner and Civil Servant - Ulas Akin - BIMTAS

The Bosphorus Construction Consultancy Incorporation (BIMTAS) is a government owned corporation. Separated from the direct political influence of the Istanbul Municipality and National

Government of Turkey, BIMTAS provides technical expertise in civil engineering and urban planning to many projects across the nation such as the Istanbul Metro. Senior Urban Planner Ulas Akin attempted to explain the complexity of Istanbul through the collection and processing of quantitate data. Mr Akin acknowledges the rapid industrialization of Istanbul which has caused a rapid population boom, a lack of affordable housing and a significant social change within the expanding metropolitan area. Unlike the other Urbanists in Istanbul who focus heavily on urban design rather planning, Mr. Akin focuses on the fundamental issues of the future of cities from the political and economic point of view. He poses several questions such as, is it possible to find a balance between the interested parties, inhabitants and environment? Furthermore, in order to improve the quality of living conditions in the city how to catch up and outrun the predictable needs of the city? While there were some general responses to these open ended question, Mr Akin was passionately advocating for improved relationships between the different level of government, professional industries and community. He is currently working on the challenge of improving the understanding between the different government departments and of streamlining the working process to ensure urban projects are not delayed by red tape or human error. He believes that this project will help make better connections between projects, other governmental departments and hopefully the nation wide private industry. ■

Figure 4

1. Istanbul, the metropolis with a remarkable history and culture. © Mel Tuangthong 2. Ms Pinar Gokbayrak, the principal architect at PAB. ©Mel Tuangthong 3. Professor Huseyin Kaptan ©Mel Tuangthong 4. Students of Polis Istanbul study tour with BIMTAS.© Robbert Jan van der veen

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| INFORMAL | graduation project

Can you design self-organization?

Providing affordable housing in Houthaven through building groups

Today’s vision of Utopia is a place where individuals work together in pursuit of their selfexpression, resulting in a stable and prosperous society without the need for governments or large corporations. The idea of Utopia as a self-organizing system originated during the hippieera. It can be recognized in Utopian designs such as Constant Nieuwenhuis’ New Babylon, and in writing, such as Buckminster Fuller’s Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth. From the nineties onwards, this idea was popularized by Silicon Valley dot-com entrepreneurs like Steve Jobs. The internet would make person-to-person communication so cheap and easy that it could replace the role of governments or large corporations in keeping society stable. This vision appeals to activists protesting against oppressive governments and multinationals, but also to entrepreneurs who believe that the invisible hand of the free market can realize a selforganizing Utopia. This is the kind of Utopian streak present in contemporary urbanism, for example in the crowd-funded ‘Luchtbrug’ by ZUS in Rotterdam.

Politically, the self-organizing Utopia appeals to liberal conservative leaders such as David Cameron and Mark Rutte. Cameron won the 2010 UK elections advocating ‘Big Society’, in which the government hands many functions of the welfare state over to civil society. Rutte introduced the ‘participation society’, a similar concept, in the Dutch King’s first ‘troonrede’. Both notions are used to promote the idea that shrinking the government apparatus is not a mere budget cut, but a step towards a better society. Left-wing politicians deride such concepts as a feel-good justification for policies that favor the rich and unfairly disadvantage society’s weakest.

• Are housing corporations necessary?

The same discussion on Utopia can be recognized in the debate about affordable housing in the Netherlands. Is the dismal state of housing corporations a slight to low-income people struggling with rising housing costs?Or are housing corporations obsolete mammoths who prevent people from realizing affordable housing themselves? In the 20th century housing corporations and municipalities had a very close relation. As they provided affordable housing, housing corporations became one of the main pillars of the Dutch welfare state and grew into large institutions. However, the current crisis has ended the central position of the housing corporations. They are in financial trouble and politically out of favor, plagued recently by corruption.

As a result no new social housing is being built while their existing stock is consistently being sold off. In Amsterdam, the social gap between the gentrifying neighborhoods within the ring road and persistent poverty outside, for example in Nieuw West, is widening.

• Self-organization in building groups

For my graduation project, I took the Utopian perspective. We no longer need housing corporations to create affordable housing. People will do it themselves, by working together. Building groups offer a

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Bert Oostdijk MSc Urbanism Graduate TU Delft

way for people to cooperate and build their own apartments, even within a limited budget. Compared to other approaches for collective building and living, building groups are especially concerned with the development process, in a way which allows people to shape their own environment. Because residents reduce costs by cutting the developer out of the process and by sharing facilities, building groups can be a way to realize affordable housing without subsidies.

In Germany whole neighborhoods are built this way, for example the Mühlenviertel in Tübingen.

In the Netherlands building groups have remained experiments, a fun exception for pioneers and architects. I wanted to see how a Dutch neighborhood could be developed by building groups exclusively.

Therefore I chose an ordinary site with an ordinary brief, and made a plan optimized for building groups. The goal was to accommodate a wide range of building groups, to have spatial quality resulting from this diversity, and to create a significant amount of affordable housing.

• A new plan for Houthaven

Houthaven is a disused waterfront site just west of Amsterdam city center, located next to the poor but rapidly gentrifying Spaarndammerbuurt neighborhood. Due to an expensive and restrictive urban plan, which would require a large amount of digging to create artificial islands, plans for redevelopment have remained in limbo for years. A pilot project with building groups is currently in progress, but because the proposed building groups are developer led they will offer few shared facilities or cost-savings for future residents. As the municipality continues to wait for better times and large investors, a more simple and flexible plan is needed.

The new plan presents a more affordable alternative that can accommodate a wide range of building group typologies. It consists of twelve building blocks, grouped around two green central spaces.

Each block in the urban plan has a side facing the main road or a public (green) space. This way each separate building group has the building typology and location best suited to its members, while being close enough to groups with different profiles to foster cooperation between them.

De Vrijhaven

by Hein de Haan

Our-Loft

by Anton Brink

De Hoofden 4

by Ferdi Koorneef

SOEK

with Vincent Reijnders

Eureka

with Anne Stijnberg

QUE65

with Bert Pijnse van der Aa

Each block has a side facing an urban public space, a green area, and a side street. There are four important public spaces: • A lowered main road connecting Houthaven to Spaarndammerbuurt, • a commercial axis through the area connecting the new ferry landing to Spaarndammerstraat, • a quay joining the buildings on land to piers with floating houses and other functions, • a pocket park consisting of the piers in the eastern corner No land is zoned for shops or small businesses, all such functions will be realized within the building groups. The plan contains only small amounts of true public space, because the green space will be collectively owned and maintained by building groups themselves.

• Design based on real proposals for building groups

An inventory of building group typologies was made to understand how building groups could make use of such a plan, according to four important attributes: big/small, high-rise/low-rise, open/closed and individual/collective. To really understand the wishes of building groups I interviewed seven people who represent a current proposal for a building group in Amsterdam.

One project, Our-Loft, was so commercial that the label building group seemed nothing more than a trendy slogan. QUE65’s proposal for a community of self-sufficient elderly was so hopelessly idealistic it seemed impossible to realize. SOEK, a building group of culturally and collectively minded young elderly, had specific wishes about building type and the surrounding public space. Eureka, a project for people hypersensitive to sound, would be happy just to realize their community in any type of building. These differences show the variety of whishes the plan needs to accommodate, but also the opportunities for cooperation between different groups.

The site will be developed block by block. For each block targets have been set for the amount of affordable housing and public functions.

Building groups submit a statement of intent rather than the usual draft design. Applications which contribute to meeting those targets and which are financially viable get priority. A block manager from Houthaven development agency invites a matching set of building groups to develop a block, and makes a draft plan. The building

Blijf-huis

with Cleo Westermann

groups then negotiate and cooperate until they are all satisfied with the plan, with the block manager ensuring that they collectively realize the set amounts of affordable housing and public functions.

To simulate how this process might work in practice, I designed a block containing all the building groups I have interviewed. Some groups, such as the Vrijhaven building group containing many selfemployed people, prefer a place along the road where they can build high and do business. Others, such as the silence-loving Eureka, need a sheltered position on the inside. QUE65 has little money but the skills to help more affluent groups with interior construction works.

Blijf-huis, a combination of a regular building group with a youth shelter, can rent street-facing space f­ or their vocational training coffee shop from De Hoofden, which has no interest in offering facilities.

The busy young professionals of Out-Loft can sell their green space to the young elderly of SOEK, who enjoy having such space.

• Self-organization needs a framework

The designs show that it is possible to create a diverse and affordable neighborhood through building groups, without major investments by housing corporations or the public sector. Building groups do not have the bureaucratic neutrality of housing corporations, and create dwellings for specific groups of people, including the most vulnerable groups in society. However, a lot of coordination is required to make such a neighborhood a success. The individuals who make up a building group have to stick together, and then building groups have to cooperate to come to a federative block design. You cannot get mortgage approval based on small scale cooperation and mutual trust. In such a process, it is easy for ideals to get diluted. A powerful block manager is needed to ensure both commercial and idealistic building groups contribute to the facilities and the affordable housing necessary to make the neighborhood attractive and equitable.

A lot is expected from self-organization nowadays. It has proven to be a good way to crowd-source ideas and to create diversity. However, I do not agree with the idea that self-organization means we no longer have to think about social justice. The real test for the self-organizing Utopia will be whether it can provide goods like affordable housing to those who need it. Such a self-organizing Utopia will not happen by itself, but requires planning and design. ■ 55

| REPORT |

Evolve, Improve & Renew Urban conservation as a strategy for sustainable spatial development

Our world is undergoing an unprecedented demographic shift of global urbanisation. Cities are growing and projected to accommodate almost all of the world’s population by 2050. Apart from demographic increase, the process of rapid urbanisation inevitably leads to spatial expansion in the form of urban sprawl. These two conditions pre-determine a constantly rising pressure on energy and mobility systems with implications for urban sustainability. Aiming to deal with these challenges, the existing building stock and technological networks demand certain adaptations. We believe that this is the frontier where the battle of sustainability will be won or lost.

Todor Kesarovski Student, MSc 4 Urban Planner

• Solar Decathlon

• Home with a Skin

• Vision

The Solar Decathlon is an initiative from the U.S. Department of Energy that, since 2002, aims to demonstrate the applicability, feasibility and quality of solar technology for the housing industry. It is a competition between universities which challenges teams to design and build a zero-energy house.

It takes the air of a building fair meets the Olympics! The competition proved so successful that, over the past decade, it has expanded to Europe and Asia where the state-of-the-art is continuously being redefined. With over 300,000 visitors, this is an incredible opportunity for companies, students and universities to showcase their know-how and products on the world stage.

The Prêt-à-Loger team consists of Students from TU Delft looking to change the world. Our project ‘Home with a Skin’ will compete in the Solar Decathlon Europe 2014 competition in Versailles and aims to redress several problems relating to the current building stock on the basis of conservation principles by laying a new skin over existing houses. In this way, homes can be preserved while creating new spaces to the front and rear of the house. The insulated skin provides a climatic buffer zone to the outside, generates its own power and reclaims the somewhat lost relationship to the public street, thus tackling the interrelated issues of ecological and social sustainability.

Prêt-à-Loger aims to transform existing houses and neighbourhoods into sustainable homes and communities. Our motto “Evolve, Improve & Renew” stems directly from the belief that there is a priceless character and quality to existing buildings that cannot simply be replaced. A visionary statement by Team Captain David Jacome underlines this idea: “We are not designing a house in the future, we are designing so that our homes will make it there”.

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Osama Naji Student, MSc 4 Marketing Manager

• Dutch Case

As representatives of TU Delft and the Netherlands in the Solar Decathlon

competition, the Prêt-à-Loger team aims to address the global challenges confronting urban areas building from the Dutch context and conditions. In the Netherlands, every year 13 thousand houses are demolished. Those that are not consume a massive amount of energy and are largely environmentally unsustainable. Currently, less than one percent of the seven million homes in the country are replaced by new houses. Apart from this, according to the professional estimations, around 80% of the existing building stock will remain until 2040. These conditions define the context as an essentially suitable case for utilising the architectural preservation as a means to build a brighter urban future comprising sustainable homes and communities. The neighbourhood of interest, whose context our project adopts, is located within the town of Honselersdijk. It lies in close proximity to Delft and is famous for its acres of greenhouses and horticultural industry. With a focus on the row-house, Prêt-àLoger takes on a typical Dutch issue. Six out-of-ten Dutch live in their so-called ‘Doorzonwoning’ – more than any other European country. This typology also makes up 42% of the current building stock and represents a mass market for the application of the proposed architectural solution.

• Urban Scale

According to our beliefs, it is beneficial for society to have energy neutral buildings; combining these in a street layout shall take us to the next level. The urban dimension of the project concept is developed utilising the architectural / technological solution for energy self-sustaining units (houses) and a visionary design able to facilitate energy self-sustaining habitat on an urban scale. The essence of the strategy relies on the promotion of distributed energy generation, storage and re-distribution where local residents will be actively involved in the production and managing of the electricity.

The major motivation underlying the establishment of decentralised, renewable energy technologies is that they can be located closer to the demands. In this way the distribution and transmission cost, and consequently energy and capacity loss, are reduced. Furthermore, this concept seeks to raise public awareness and shared responsibility regarding energy production and consumption.

In order to enhance the transport network efficiency, an integrated strategy, established on bicycling and shared vehicles, is established to link Honselersdijk with the existing mobility nodes (e.g. the

Hague, Schiedam and Rotterdam) and networks (e.g. NS & Randstad Railways) on a metropolitan and regional level. On the urban level, we aim to promote green mobility (e.g. cycling and walking) as primary mode of circulation. For this purpose, a plan to pedestrianize numerous service streets, with lower connectivity frequency, within the urban area has been devised. This strategy does not aim to promote a totally car-free town. Rather, what we promote is a smarter and more efficient usage of private motorised vehicles.

Therefore, the concept proposes collective parking areas which are strategically located in order to provide a parking spot for every household within a maximum of 150 meters. The collective parking would be clustered around energy micro generators or other electric hubs aiming to incorporate electric, hydrogen and hybrid cars to plug into the town’s electric grid. In particular, the urban mobility strategy seeks for establishment of walkable neighbourhoods contributing to lower vehicle travel and energy use; what is more, it provides new possibilities to incorporate community gardening and gathering spaces on the street environment..

• Ambition

In particular, our ambition is to develop an urban concept where sustainability is not just about creating energy efficient and comfortable spaces, but is fundamentally about promoting a balanced lifestyle with the environment and based on shared communal responsibility and awareness regarding the performance of the urban energy and mobility systems. Related to the Prêt-à-Loger toolbox, an ‘urban toolbox’ is created. This consists of various solutions that municipalities can choose including urban gardening, waste and water management features, street light technologies, etc. The strength of this concept is the combined and enhanced performance of the various tools. The urban part of Prêt-à-Loger project seeks to go beyond the scope of the experimental architectural design common to previous Solar Decathlon competitions by attempting to make a real difference on a larger scale: from self-sustaining home to selfsustaining street to self-sustaining neighbourhood and town. In this sense, the urban concept not only concerns the physical adaptation and connection of the house with the surrounding public space. But also utilises the design of the house as a technological solution on the basis of which a comprehensive vision and strategy for achieving a self-sustaining habitat is possible. ■

Figure 2

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1. Conceptual urban design vision © Prêt-à-Loger 2. Private garden design © Prêt-à-Loger 3. Final competition 1:1 model © Prêt-àLoger

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| GRADUATION PROJECT |

Protest Utopia Brussels

Recent protest movements in Europe, the Middle East, and Wall Street, have highlighted the increasingly uneasy relationships which exist today between state and society regarding the use and appropriation of public space. This situation is particularly troubling due to the crucial role which the act of protest plays as a mechanism for change within democratic societies. Nowhere in Europe is this condition more evident than in Brussels; its de facto capital. As a city which hosts the majority of the European Union’s institutions, it has become both a regional and a global hub for expressing dissent. The dispersed, urban organization of these institutions, however, has resulted in a condition where public space and the ability to effectively stage a protest have become compromised. This project, investigates what role architecture can play within this socio-politically charged environment.

This project was developed under the Border Conditions and Territories Master track at TU Delft. The stu- dio’s focus was centered on designing experimental public buildings within the sociopolitical context of Brussels, Belgium. The Brussels Capital Region is a city of enclaves and fragments. It exists as a conglomeration of fragmented urban structures, several of which are decidedly Utopian in their under-laying ideology. Beginning with the pentagonal fortress walls which originally enclosed the historic city of Brussels, a succession of ‘pocket utopias,’ as described by Colin Rowe and Fred Koetter in their book ‘Collage City’, have propagated throughout the city. This project began with a mapping of these ‘Utopian’ fragments, and from there focused on one of these fragments, which was the European Quarter. Buildings, or clusters of buildings (either built, partially built, or speculative projections), were considered to qualify as ‘Utopian’ if they in some way proposed an alternate ordering of society, and where the result of spacializing a specific social and/or political agenda.

Utopian thinking is historically rooted in the work of Plato’s Republic. In his text, he describes a rigidly hi- erarchical political and social re-structuring which leads to the creation of a perfect world.

The Modern movement found resonance in Utopian thinking, and promoted a vision of a future world liberated through a devotion to science, technology, and rational thought. During the 1970’s, in reaction to the then obvious shortfalls of Modernist Utopian planning, architects began to question the merits of the ‘tabula rasa’ and autonomous object design methodologies. It was in this context that Colin Rowe theorized that a city comprised of separate Utopian fragments could be a potential path towards a Utopian state. Arguing that the non-total realization of each ‘pocket utopia’ neutralized the ideology of each other fragment within the city through the method of collage. Rowe explains that: “...Pocket utopias, might be a means of permitting us the enjoyment of Utopian poetics without our being obliged to suffer the embarrassment of Utopian politics.

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Marcus Parviainen MSc Urbanism Graduate TU Delft

Which is to say that, because collage is a method deriving its virtue from its irony, because it seems to be a technique for using things and simultaneously disbelieving in them, it is also a strategy which can allow utopia to be dealt with as image, to be dealt with in fragments without our having to accept it in toto, which is further to suggest that collage could even be a strategy which, by supporting the Utopian illusion of changelessness and finality, might even fuel a reality of change, motion, action and history.”[1] What the modernists proposed was a homogenization of space which would lead to an ideal city environment. What makes this approach problematic is that the richness and diversity of conditions which characterize any site are disregarded, and instead are replaced by an ideological model conceived of in isolation from the actual site conditions. What Rowe proposed with the collage approach, was a means of achieving a heterogeneous space which would provide a way around the dilemmas faced by the architects of the Modern movement. In the case of the European Union and the city of Brussels, the buildings which make up the European community are not idealistic in their architectural realization, but rather in their program. The organization and actualization of space does not correspond to any explicit ideological model, but rather results as an outcome of available real estate, and the lack of a clearly defined architectural agenda.

This project was developed, within this theoretical framework, as a pocket utopia collaged into the existing urban fabric of Brussels.

The site for this proposed intervention is the Schuman roundabout, in the heart of the European-Quarter of Brussels. The Schuman round-about is situated along Rue de la Loi, where four radial streets intersect this major east-west axial boulevard. Located here are the headquarters for the European Council, the European Commission, the European External Action Services, as well as other European Union departments, embassies, and international banks.

It is therefore unsurprising that it has become a center for protests directed towards European Policy makers. The scale of the space, its

traffic infrastructure, and the organization of buildings on site, however, are all ill suited to deal with the daily protests which occur there. In the event of large European Summit meetings, for example, the roundabout and surrounding streets must be physically barricaded with razor wire and armed police officers to allow politicians and diplomats safety as they pass from one building to the next. In these cases, not only is public space no longer public, but the adverse effects on the city’s traffic and mobility patterns are significant. This project, therefore, attempts to remedy this existing situation by connecting diplomatic buildings to one another and providing a freely accessible public space. The program is multi-functional and combines a contemporary agora type space with a public space suited for social protest, as well as flexible spaces for offices and meeting rooms. Simply stated, the project consists of an elevated ring wall which connects together the various European Commission and European Parliament buildings that define the site, and while doing so, frames the act of protest within.

The agora is formed by a distorted field of cruciform columns which creates a space that is both flexible enough to accommodate a large number of programs, and specific enough to provide articulation between large open spaces and smaller more intimate spaces. The plan of the column field is generated by distorting a regular structural grid to match the structural grids of the car park, road tunnels, train tunnels, and metro station which already exist beneath the site. In section, the ground plane in the agora is articulated in the form of a shallow bowl following the contours of the distorted structural grid, and slopping towards the Rue de la Loi axis. It acts as both a circulatory device and a habitable public landscape. In some spaces, such as along the Rue de la Loi axis, a clearly legible enfilade through the building occurs, while in other areas the route through spaces is less clear to promote a sense of meandering. The steps of the agora landscape are penetrated by an existing underground highway tunnel, which creates a visual interaction between previously unseen site elements and user groups. This forced interaction of the agora and the tunnel, establish- es the subterranean space as a kind of gateway to the city for anyone entering from the east.

The protest space, in contrast, is vast and empty. It’s lack of articulation, save

for a service lift and a vehicu- lar ramp, provide a sheltered pocket of the city where any number of large scale exhibitions or demonstrations can be staged. The institutional buildings which surround the Schuman round-about are connected together by a large, ring shaped, inhabited wall encircling the space of protest. This simple organization of forms and programs results in a reconfiguration of the existing power structure between protest groups towards the European Union, as well as the historical power structure of the site. The ring wall is composed entirely of offices, meeting rooms, and circulation spac- es. This condition, combined with the protest space in the center gives the building a panopticon like spacial quality. The panopticon is an 18th century prison typology devised by the British social reformer Jeremy Bentham.

It’s circular form and central watch tower purely represents the almost diagrammatic relationship which existed between prisoners and guards in this prison type. In the traditional panopticon plan, prisoners are located in cells at the exterior and the authority/security are placed in the center, in this project however, the power structure of the panopticon plan has been inverted, so as to locate the rotesters

/ dissidents in the center and the authority/ law/policy makers at the exterior. A cladding of armored privacy glass encloses the office ring and simultaneously provides both security and privacy. The office space itself is conceived as one continuous spiral, shortcircuited by ramps at regular intervals.

This allows for the possibility of flexible growth and reorganization over time within

a finite space. The ring is lifted off of the ground to a height of six meters, allowing the continuity of public space at ground level to be preserved. It has no barriers or opening/closing mechanisms, and is both a continuation and a pedestrianization of the street. At a height of thirty meters, the ring wall blocks all views to the city from within the central space. In fact, the only fragment of the city which is visible from within is the central meeting room of the European Commission’s headquarter building, which peeks out over the wall. The act of placing a wall at this site symbolically subverts the existing power structure of the ur- ban fabric by transforming the round-about, a relic of Haussmannian military defensive planning, from a historically strategic vantage point in the city to a simple terminus of radial streets.

Due to the fact that all visual connections with the surrounding city have been blocked, the protest space takes on a characteristic of absolute placelessness. In this way, the space is both physically part of the city of Brussels, and also a satellite space hosting fragments of protests occurring simultaneously in other parts of the world. ■

Figure 1. Utopian brussels map ©Marcus Parviainen 2. Connecting Concept icon ©Marcus Parviainen

Reference 1. Colin Rowe, Collage City (Cambridge: MIT press, 1978) 149

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Epilogue: ReciproCities Interview with Arjan van Timmeren

The sharp rise of global urbanisation and the astronomical carbon consumption in cities has called for the profession of urbanism to re-address the climatic impact that cities have on the environment. Professor Arjan van Timmeren’s book ReciproCities1 argues for a holistic reconsideration and reinterpretation of urban planning and design. The book acknowledges the city and immediate environment as “communicating vessels”. The interdependency of (urban) resource flows and consumerist behaviour demands an empowerment of local communities and the integration of technological solution with them. Curious about this reconsideration and reinterpretation, Atlantis asked Professor Van Timmeren how his vision would transfigure and improve the current practice of urbanism.

• Vision

In your book ReciproCities - A dynamic equilibrium (Van Timmeren, 2013), you mention the rigidity of urban planning practice as a current problem we are facing. How do you perceive the current rigidity and why do you consider the notion of Reciprocities crucial for the future of urban development?

Among others, the rigidity can be found in the relation between infrastructure and planning. The ideal way of development would be that infrastructure follows planning or functional change of land use, growth or shrinkage. However, most of the time it is the other way round. Infrastructure is planned first, which leads to fixed ends with little alternatives to elaborate on urban schemes. I see this kind of paradigm of infrastructural pressure as the main problem.

Reciprocities is essentially about people’s tendency to forget that because of infrastructure we are not only globally connected, but that the hinterlands of our cities are actually in Kenya or all over the world. Trade, technology and infrastructure make this possible. In the coming decades the situation will become more complicated, due to cuts in resources, policies and carbon reduction strategies. This is why I address the issue of Localization. Localization is a tendency which is not widespread yet, although you can see it popping up all over.

Examples include bottom-up initiatives. This type of community building can be understood as one where the hinterlands are closer to or even inside cities. This is what I call ReciproCities. We should pay more attention to the resource potentials of our surrounding living environment.

Could you elaborate on how global trends pressure the specialization of infrastructure on serving the flow of resources and materials, rather than being an integral part of urban planning?

I think it started at the beginning of the 20th century, when the Dutch Woningwet imposed the separation of technical criteria for buildings and built environments from their spatial elaborations. You can see this division also has taken place at Universities, which is why one of 60

Arjan van Timmeren Professor Environmental Technology & Design the faculty of Architecture TU Delft

my key goals is to reintegrate infrastructure in the practice of urban design and planning. But the separation also happened in governance.

In cities, Rotterdam for instance, the responsible departments were separated from each other, and often don’t even know about each other’s design considerations, while working on the same projects.

It’s living apart together, in a way. After a period of specializations, integrative planning is the current tendency. Of course we still have space for optimization within the individual domains, but it is limited.

Most of the current gains, of environmental, social or economic nature, are from emerging and in-between domains. That is why we should integrate these domains in governance, schools and practice. If we take it a bit further and link it to the earlier mentioned grass roots movements, even stakeholders should be included. Especially when looking at planning from the perspective of Co-creation. I think that the concept of Co-creation as an active process of realization, design and development will take the lead in this century. Co-creation is the only way in which we can make lasting changes. If you want to achieve sustainable changes, not only in terms of being “green”, but also by being able to sustain itself through years and changes - even disruptive change - then you need to involve people. This is a step further than mere participation.

• Practice

For a successful practice you propose a set of necessary policy changes, which would give more power to local communities.

If we take Lanxmeer as a case study, what are the indicators for its success?

Lanxmeer is an initiative for which people from all over Holland came together. There was this group of pioneers and a group of followers, as in any social initiative. It is still debatable whether it could be extrapolated to any other place in the Netherlands, or the world. But yes, it is considered as a success, and one of the main aspects for its success is, of course, Co-creation. The second aspect being the semi-formalization of the scale-level, which is the level of the neighborhood, building block ensemble or the community building.

Which is in general not supported in a formal way. Essential in Lanxmeer is a gradual privacy zoning. Six different zones, from very public to very private, were subdivided and planned carefully next to one another, and in some cases even mixed. In this way the residents have semi-courtyards as common spaces where they can meet and realize their essential needs. Of course there are many, mostly not visible, technological aspects integrated, but it is the community itself that supports this technology. An important aspect is the integration of different scales, the community, the district, but also the individual urban farmer with active tasks for the community.

How did the project team differ from a conventional planning project, to work on those multiple scales?

Well, of course there were the common suspects, such as the Urban and landscape designers and the municipality, but then there were also stakeholders and external advisers involved. Amongst others, the architects of the building blocks, the Cocreation specialists and people like me from the perspective of sustainability. Financially, the people were supported in such a way that part of the budget, from the people who bought houses as well as the corporations, was donated into a fund, which was then used for additional measures such as sustainability and livability, but also for the realization process itself. Particularly after the project was delivered, a series of workshops was organized, together with the residents, me, the landscape designers and the municipality, regarding the design of the semi-courtyards.

The fund finally also supported the spatial realization itself. Such an approach is referred to as a "Sandwich Approach", which includes not only bottom-up efforts but also strategic top-down support.

Does the ‘Sandwich Approach’ suggest the need for a new kind of operational body, which is neither governmentally nor locally bound, but brings together all different experts?

If you look at the ladder of participation, you see different levels and Co-creation is one of the higher ranking ones. Its formal support is sometimes called “Strategic Niche Management”, basically providing a protected environment, which is the top layer of the sandwich. The other essential layer, especially when talking about larger spatial scales, is the regional layer. If we refer to the Dutch context, we have much formal power in the municipalities, the provinces and the national authorities. But on the in-between layer of regional development or EU-regional, there is a lack of formal organization.

At the moment, we just finished some studies for the Dutch Omgevingsdienst West Holland. The province of South Holland is subdivided in four Omgevingsdiensten, which have a regional focus, but are not a formal body. An Omgevingsdienst is hired and payed by the municipalities, and then hires Universities or practitioners to develop projects on that scale. This is a scale on which you can bring together "smart coalitions", which are practical and aimed for realization.

You might have read that I am very critical of the Dutch, who have excellent ambitions, but are a bad example for implementation.

Strangely, many students, but even more postgraduates and practitioners, think that the Dutch are an excellent example of sustainable development and urban plans. Of course, we have some good examples, which have been formalized on many levels, but we are being taken over by many countries.

Another issue in your book is the integration of natural environments in

Dr A. van Timmeren has been appointed the professor of the chair in Environmental Technology & Design at the faculty of Architecture at TU Delft as of 1 September 2012. Van Timmeren has had a rich career and is specialised in the integration of sustainable technology in buildings and area development.

Reference 1. Reciprocities, A Dynamic Equilibrium, A. Van Timmeren, 2013, Delft 2. Pattern Language, C. Alexander, S. Ishikawa, M. Silverstein, 1977, New York, Oxford University Press,

Figure 1. Semi-courtyards, Lanxmeer, Culemborg (NL) © A. van Timmeren 2. UrbanAgriculture_Rotterdam Nieuw Mathenesse © A. van Timmeren

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1 urban designs, which could imply the spatial expansion of cities.

Yes, this is the risk. The pressure of merging urban and rural landscapes exists and will not go away. If we find solutions in the environment around, it will automatically lead to further pressure on the surrounding rural areas. Together with the Wageningen UR, we did research on integrating functions of nature back into the city. The only way to avoid urban sprawl eating into the remains of the rural countryside is by doing the opposite: introducing these green functions inside cities. We need new ideas which deal with this complexity. On the other hand it is also very basic, because this is where the paradigm of technology and change come in again.

For instance, parking is really dictating the way we develop existing, but especially new towns. But if we review the idea of mobility, such as car sharing and related services, we might save much space. Just one shared car can mean six to nine parking places less.

The economy of services, including urban mining, is just a new way of organizing our economy, which might lead to the retrieval of a great amount of space in cities which can be used for these new essential green services. So the statement of ReciproCities is really about redesigning cities at large.

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existing Eco developments. For instance in Amersfoort Nieuwland, which includes one of the first energy-zero urban neighborhoods in the Netherlands. However, people are often not very rational. They know that their settlement is energy neutral, so they assume that they can spend as much electricity as they want. As a consequence, the district is known for not being energy neutral any longer. So, this is an example of Eco Cities, which shows that a true awareness of sustainability, can only be created with the citizens, by a bottomup or a sandwich approach. Involving people is nothing new, but we can have new ways to approach it.

• Informal

We talked about self-organization, which might be an answer to many urban challenges, if we give more responsibility to the people themselves.

Yes, but organization is also about clustering, it is not only about empowerment at an individual level, organizing your own ideal world, but it is also about integrated and interconnected communities in complex hierarchical and heteronymous networks.

The next step is that self-organization will also need to evolve towards larger-scale levels.

But you also mention the trap of East Asian Eco-Cities, which tackle the integrative sustainable urban approach merely in superficial terms. How do you distinguish the approach?

Interestingly, self-organization conventionally takes place due to a specific party’s exclusion or pressure of unfulfilled needs. How can it be formally organized?

The East Asian Eco-City development is a perfect example of in general achieving sustainability only from the technological point of view. We need to be aware that Eco-City developments emphasize control, which is generally not accepted by people.

So, why isn’t this the way we should walk?

Because in the long run it simply won’t work this way. There are studies being done in

This is the crucial question. One of the first projects I did with Machiel van Dorst back in 1996, was in Ruigoord, an artist colony in Amsterdam, who was put under pressure by the harbor’s expansion plans. They were an example of a self-organized community, which was very sustainable, but needed help in becoming aware of how they organize their community and space. We quantified

2 their use of energy and space. The result showed that they had an awareness of their surrounding environment, precisely because they were self-organized and could see the linkage between their behavior and environment.

So, how do you extrapolate this to society?

I addressed it before, every one of these examples needs a small group of pioneers, while the majority can be followers.

Embracing pioneers is essential. We can strategically give more opportunities to creative ideas and self-organization, then combine it within a sandwich approach. It can be done, though it is more difficult as well, because essentially it is about letting go of control, while not losing responsibility.

“Who is responsible?” is always the main question and relates strongly to essential states of livability and sustainability.

So the challenge is to formalize something which is informal by breaking up the rigidity of the current state of formality.

Yes. So where should you start? In our chair, we take the methodology of Christopher Alexander as an example. His Pattern Language (1977)2 is a way of subdividing the double complexity of urban environments, of Anthropocene systems, into a language of patterns in the analogy of words with which you can make prose, but also poems. We are doing this now both in education as in research projects, like on the airport regions, in which we deliver different pattern phrases for governance, the environmental perspective and spatial quality. All together they form a phrase, which is a part of a larger language. We think that some answers might lie in such an approach of self-organization in realizing complex interconnected projects in Co-creative processes. ■ Emilia Bruck, Jiayao Liu, Yos Purwanto

Polis Partners

Colophon ATLANTIS Magazine by Polis | Platform for Urbanism Faculty of Architecture, TU Delft Volume 24, Number 2, December 2013

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Editor in Chief Emilia Bruck

Editorial Team Ioana Ailincai, Todor Kesarovski, Jiayao Liu, Ksenia Polyanina, Tess Stribos, Jessica Vahrenkamp,

Yuhui Jin, Min Jung Kim, Luis Montenegro, Yos Purwanto, Mel Tuangthong, Harm van der Zanden

Editorial Address Polis, Platform for Urbanism Julianalaan 134, 2628 BL Delft office: 01 West 350 tel. +31 (0)15-2784093 www.polistudelft.nl atlantis@polistudelft.nl

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