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31 reflections on architecture / (Academical upgrade 05, part 1) / Luc Deleu, on board Malu II, Atlantic Ocean (2005) Reprinted from the original in A/S/L/, Yearbook Academy of Architecture Amsterdam 2004–2005, translation Peter Mason

To decide just what architecture really is, is a difficult question. No one will give the same reply. Architecture will always be elusive and volatile, malleable and changeable. But it will certainly be so that architecture is beyond stone, concrete, steel, glass and insulation and belongs to the realm of the mind. Architecture is a concept, not an object.

I know what I am talking about; since I first started to take an interest in architecture and urbanism some forty years ago, I have seen the world change astonishingly and become entropic, and along with all that I have seen architecture explode in all directions. In short, there has never been so much confusion about architecture before.

Architecture has all the characteristics of human beings and of nature; charm, seductiveness, honesty, correctness, legibility... and also hypocrisy, phoniness, incoherence... Architecture is metaphysical and transcendental. Le Corbusier wrote: ‘L’architecture, c’est pour emouvoir’. 1) Architecture, whether built or unbuilt, is art: the art of (city) building. Building architecture requires for the greater part a Maecenas without ulterior motives or opportunism who wants to build a monument on the one hand, and a designer with artistic ambition, on the other hand.

So if architecture is art, what is the art of architecture? There is the art of building and there is building, and there is urban development and the art of city building. There is construction and there is architecture; there is only a partial overlap between the two, just as texts and literature sometimes coincide. Architecture seems to me to be the preeminent art of laying down proportions and priorities, the art of separating the wheat from the chaff, in every sense and in everything and more, both materially and spiritually, both emotionally and rationally, both consciously and unconsciously.

Architecture is thus connected with the cosmic universe, the Muses let’s say. That is why architecture addresses different levels of consciousness (the conscious, the unconscious and the subconscious), just as all other arts do.

But architecture is also not just art. Architecture is therefore not amoral, and its beauty cannot justify everything. There are taboos, and there can be wrong objectives and programmes for architecture. Dying on an electric throne is more grotesque than dying on an electric chair, and architectonic gas and torture chambers are doubly despicable. Two far too extreme examples? Well then, another, not extreme example for the twenty-first century, now that we can experience every animal in the world in its natural environment in cyberspace: there is not a single reason or excuse to keep on designing zoos to cage animals architectonically. In short, architects better ask themselves each time whether the programme is suitable or acceptable for architecture.

1) Le Corbusier, Vers une architecture, Paris (Vincent Fréal & Cie), 1966

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Luc Deleu

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31 reflections on architecture /

And many places on earth are still taboo for buildings: horizons, vistas, perspectives, landscapes, public spaces, ensembles... it makes no difference whether they are protected by law or not. More and more places on earth should be properly respected and do not tolerate any further architectural addition. In New Zealand the sacred spots of the Maori are not built on as a token of respect; it goes without saying that nothing is built on the Campo in Sienna, a panoramic hotel around the peak of the Matterhorn would be misplaced; the Belgian western (!) North Sea horizon, barely 65 kilometres long, deserves a place on the list of protected landscapes.

Of course, not all architecture has to be built. It may be the case that unbuilt architecture outnumbers built architecture – just take a look in all the architects’ archives.

At any rate, I am not one of those who believe that architecture can only be built.

I have always considered that at a time when the pressure of building on land is increasing so exponentially (probably, more was built in the last century than in all the preceding centuries together!), while space on earth is decreasing at the same rate, it becomes more of a task to practice architecture without building much, and thereby make the world realise the finiteness of the earth, all the more in that a virtual architecture is perfectly in line with today’s so highly spoken of information era.

Nowadays we increasingly see architecture more in images than in reality, don’t we?

And in electronic, digital space, what difference is left between a drawn and a photographed architectural experience? More than that, conceptual architecture setting out to propose something or to give an example perfectly uses the new possibilities of the virtual world.

Scale models, yet another medium and often miniatures of non-existent buildings, present a different though specific facet in the world of architecture. The reduction of scale always has a magical effect, as the viewer becomes like Gulliver.

Marcel Duchamp’s suitcase of miniatures was a shot that hit the bull’s-eye, and look at the large number of construction kit shops with toys for both children and adults.

On the other hand, not everything that is built is architecture – just look around you.

Obviously, all buildings lacking artistic ambition cannot be architecture. Of course nothing is wrong with a well designed and sound construction. Better a good construction than bad architecture or fake architecture with all its gratuitous and trendy clichés. Not everything construction can or has to be architecture. Building is as honourable as architecture, but it is important to know what you can, what you want and what you are doing.

Incidentally, building architecture is not always the real answer to the question. Many programmes do not call for architecture. Our flashy cars have no need at all for architecture, not even if they are on sale in showrooms... Cars cannot experience architecture, neither can horses, so as long as their stables are animal-friendly and not a blemish on the landscape... just as legal texts are only required to be unambiguous and clear.

Then again, other programmes can be implemented without building. The Greeks did not build luxury hotels for the 2004 Olympic Games, but they had the brand-new and prestigious Queen Mary II and several other cruise ships come to Athens to welcome the guests there. What a bright solution! A long time ago, when the university institutions of Antwerp were to be founded, instead of putting up buildings I proposed to accommodate the university on three aircraft carriers that would be able to sail the seven seas, connected by satellite with all possible information and communication

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31 reflections on architecture /

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media: ‘Mobile Medium University’. Also cleaning up, consolidating, renovating, adapting and recycling what has already been built is more than praiseworthy today and worth mentioning here.

Which buildings should or should not be elevated to the status of art? Again, there is no unambiguous answer. Everyday functions can always be carried out properly in economical and purely functional buildings, but the architect can always set to work to think up ways of giving the building a soul so that it transcends its time and its programme. The building becomes a monument, acquires a certain eternal value with a significance for future generations, and thus will become part of the cultural heritage. This is where the historical significance of (built) architecture lies, even though that significance has changed dramatically over the centuries. In the past architecture served above all to store knowledge and information and to pass it on (as a medium) to successive generations. Previous generations wanted architecture to confirm their existence for their successors. Since the art of printing, and especially with today’s communication and information technology, this task has been taken over by these media and only the exciting beauty of built architecture has become its sole historical significance.

Whether we like it or not, buildings always make a contribution to society, sometimes positive and sometimes negative. Since building always goes on in the public and collective space, it always bears a social responsibility, and by extension the same is true for built and unbuilt architecture. Architecture bears an enormous responsibility in enormous commissions and a smaller responsibility in small commissions, so much is clear. I am not referring here to the classical professional responsibility for mistakes in the conception or building stage, against which today’s architects are so keen on insuring themselves, but the ethical responsibility vis-à-vis the earth and mankind. After all, buildings are pertinently and for a long time present on earth, they change the landscape irrevocably, and are almost always constructed at the expense of nature. And that responsibility increases in proportion to the steadily increasing pressure on the environment. An additional factor is that the building industry is a primary polluter on earth and, on top of that, a global bulk consumer too. We build with iron ore from Brazil, bauxite from Australia, nickel from New Caledonia, wood from Congo and petroleum derivatives from the sea...

Even unbuilt – conceptual or theoretical – architecture cannot evade its responsibility. Optimistic as it is, having grown on the foundation of social critique, it believes and hopes that it will be the basis of a built reflection in the distant future.

Throughout the centuries, architecture and particularly the art of city building have been an expression of a particular form of society. That is why the art of (city) building is a permanent touchstone for the social thought of its time. Our architecture will be judged by the following generations more than by our own. The generation of ‘68 condemned the Modernists for wanting to over-organise the world, dehumanising the scale of buildings and destroying historic cities, and I fear that future generations will accuse the generation of ‘68 of having looted and polluted the world on an unprecedented scale, leaving it soiled and passing on the problems. Future generations will probably condemn our unlimited egoism as expressed in the built environment.

31 reflections on architecture /

Built architecture can seldom be other than confirming society. Building swallows enormous amounts of capital, and capital is one of those things that particularly confirms society, although it must be said that architecture, when it goes beyond pure construction, retains its value for other generations and other societies. In its purely spiritual state, architecture can transcend the social mindset of its time.

Architecture is not always desirable, not always necessary, and sometimes meaningless. Architecture will not save society, nor is it supposed to – it is impossible for architecture to bear that responsibility. Architecture only makes the world more beautiful, while it sometimes tries to improve and to structure our planet, the last then applying in particular to the art of city building. The art of city building hopes to participate in directing the world both spiritually and materially and to adapt it more and better for people.

Architecture is the celebration of men on earth. That is the responsibility architects want to and can bear. And it is already heavy enough, while opportunism, ulterior motives and the temptation provided by capital to misuse architecture are always lurking around the corner! The art of building is too readily used for personal and short-term objectives.

Architecture, so elevated above everyday things – and rest assured these words have been given long consideration – should not be used to shamelessly sell more shoes at even higher prices!

For me it has been an open-and-shut conclusion for a long time that architecture cannot rely on something like a day-to-day and volatile programme or intention.

Panamarenko once said: ‘The usefulness of things is a secondary matter, that’s consumption and I don’t believe in it’. 2) Panamarenko’s submarine, airplanes and cars serve no useful purpose but they are very beautiful, appeal strongly to the imagination, and are poetic. The building is functional, but its architecture serves no purpose and is just there, to delight and please people.

Building architecture without a minimum of altruism and with a purely egoistic vision to create, maintain or promote nothing but false myths is ‘applied’ architecture, comparable to the plastic tricks applied by trendy young advertising men and women to sell soap, underwear or suntan lotion.

An architectural practice built on strong theoretical foundations helps prevent this kind of abuse. But what helps above all is not to play up to society, politics and the economy, I could experience.

Of course, everyone has to decide for himself what objectives his architecture can serve. The decision on how far architecture can and may go should better be taken in full freedom, because everyone wants to interpret the task of architecture in a different way and in accordance with his own views.

To conclude: do not forget that only very few people are interested in living architecture, and that those who are interested still sometimes get it wrong. You simply cannot be interested and educated in everything, and there is no need for more interested people and experts. There is no need to preach architecture. People should not be brought up in architecture. Advertising for more architecture, like all advertising as a matter of fact, is unnecessary. Architecture is architecture, no more and no less, and architecture can do without slogans; never again ‘Architecture ou révolution’.

2) Interview with Panamarenko in Janus 18, 2005.

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The Amsterdam Academy of Architecture asked Luc Deleu to investigate the artistic connections between the three design disciplines of the Academy – architecture, urban design and landscape architecture – while exploring the artistic boundaries of spatial design /

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Critical, sociological, ecological / In 1970, the Belgian architect and urban planner Luc Deleu established T.O.P. Office (Turn On Planning Office) and promptly distanced himself from the world of architecture. His oeuvre is characterised by his break with a conservative lifestyle and his search for alternatives. From the end of the 1960s, the visual arts world became Deleu’s base of operations, and from here he struck out in search of an alternative approach to urban development, one that was critical, sociological and ecological. His findings are the wellspring of his frequently startling designs and proposals for a different, utopian and unadapted city, for another form of (co-) existence.

Proposal for the abolition of the law protecting the title and profession of Architect /

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Proposal for the abolition of the law protecting the title and profession of Architect / Deleu developed the concept of Orbanism in the 1970s and constructed a broad framework in which to formulate methods for increasing mobility, improving communication, encouraging city-beautification and securing freedom for the individual.

The proposals contained in his manifesto were provocative and utopian-anarchist, but well-grounded. They included planting avenues of fruit trees, making telephone and electricity cables visible, abolishing traffic regulations and zoos, transforming aircraft carriers into floating universities or homes for the elderly, launching nuclear waste towards the sun, fertilising the Sahara with surplus manure, converting public monuments into social housing, cushioning rather than metalling road surfaces, growing vegetables in flower boxes, cultivating urban orchards, creating pastures for ‘city cattle’, creating city dung heaps, letting ‘public poultry’ walk around, making urban fish pools, protecting weeds, and so on.

These proposals were presented at the 1978 exhibition ‘Proposal for the abolition of the law protecting the title and profession of Architect’.

The Unadapted City / Luc Deleu has been working on the study of The Unadapted City since 1995.

All cities are unadapted. Deleu is convinced that while cities can be shaped as desired on a large scale, they must offer the greatest possible amount of freedom for individual initiatives on the small scale. That is why the proposed volumes, which are the result of a study of required space and infrastructure, are detached from their programme before the city comes into use. Sufficient cinemas are provided, for example, but these may also be used as sport halls, mushroom nurseries or dwellings for hamadryas baboons.

‘The Unadapted City is my method of investigating how a city should be equipped before it can manifest itself as a contemporary metropolis,’ he explains. ‘Instead of concentrating on small problems here and there, I am designing a city on a large scale. A new city.’

monday 10.01.2005 18:00 —saturday 22:30 / Design Stud 08.01.2005 10:00 — 18:00 / Design Studio 22:30 — 23:00 / Cleaning up sunday 09.01.2005 drinks Academy building 09:30 — 13:00 / Expeditions (gathering atclo the Academy building) at 23.0013:00 — 18:00 / Design Studio Academy Programme /

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friday 07.01.2005 09:00 / Welcome and breakfast for chefs and tutors 10:00 / Start workship at Zuiderkerk, Amsterdam (exhibition VIP city) 10:00 — 10:15 / Welcome and introduction by Aart Oxenaar – Director of the Amsterdam Academy of Architecture 10:15 — 11:00 / Introduction Orbanisation by Luc Deleu 11:00 — 12:30 / Presentation assignments by studio-chefs 12:30 — 13:00 / Signing in for studios 13:00 — 14:00 / Lunch break 14:00 — 17:00 / First sessions for the studios at the Academy building 17:00 — 18:00 / Drinks saturday 08.01.2005 10:00 — 18:00 / Design Studio

sunday 09.01.2005 09:30 — 13:00 / Expeditions (gathering at the Academy building) 13:00 — 18:00 / Design Studio Academy building closes at 18.00 19:00 / Tutors diner

monday 10.01.2005 18:00 — 22:30 / Design Studio 22:30 — 23:00 / Cleaning up + drinks Academy building closes at 23.00

building closes at 18.00 19:00 /Tutor’s diner

tuesday 11.01.2005 08:00 — 18:00 / Excursion ‘Holland Tour’ for the foreign guests (gathering at the Academy building) 18:00 — 19:30 / Design Studio 19:30 — 22:30 / Studio presentation and discussion with visiting critics 22:30 — 23:00 / Cleaning up + drinks Academy building closes at 23.00 wednesday 12.01.2005 18:00 — 22:30 / Design Studio 22:30 — 23:00 / Cleaning up + drinks Academy building closes at 23.00

monday 10.01.2005 tuesday 11.01.2005 18:00 — 22:30 / Design Studio — 23:00 / /Cleaning up + drinks 22:30 08:00 —Academy 18:00 Excursion building closes at 23.00 ‘Holland Tour’ for the foreig tuesday 11.01.2005 — 18:00 / Excursion ‘Holland Tour’ (gathering at the guests08:00 for the foreign guests (gathering at the Academy building) Academy 18:00 —building) 19:30 / Design Studio 19:30 — 22:30 / Studio presentation and 18:00 —discussion 19:30with/ visiting Design critics Stud 22:30 — 23:00 / Cleaning up + drinks 19:30 — 22:30 / Studio prese tion and discussion with vis ting critics 22:30 — 23:00 / thursday 13.01.2005 18:00 — 22:30 / Design Studio 22:30 — 23:00 / Cleaning up + drinks Academy building closes at 23.00

friday 14.01.2005 09:00 — 12:00 / Design Studio and preparations on the presentations 13:00 — 14:00 / Exhibition in the Academy building 14:00 — 14:45 / Presentation Studio 1 ‘Antipodes. Measuring the world’ 14:45 — 15:30 / Presentation Studio 2 ‘Features of substitutive urbanity: insight and outlook’ 15:30 — 16:15 / Presentation Studio 3 ‘Urban Scores’ 16:15 — 17:00 / Presentation Studio 4 ‘Slowspeedcity’ 18:00 — 18:30 / Cleaning up 18:30 — 19:30 / Drinks 19:30 — Farewell Dinner Academy building closes at 19.30 Visiting critics: Koen van Synghel Dirk Jaspaert

Orbanism /

Orbanism / In 1980, while in all probability still under the influence of Buckminster Fuller’s poetic description of our planet as ‘spaceship earth’ and deeply affected by the first photos of our globe, I launched the notion of Orbanism into my work. Planet earth is a spaceship, mother and home to us all. From its inception, Orbanism advanced the integration of (urban) development design practices on a planetary scale. It attempted to regard the earth as the spatial and social context of cities and architecture. The goal of Orbanism is the balanced organisation of earthspace.

Orbanism seeks to encourage a metaphysical and material ordering of the world for the benefit of all. Orbanism seeks to effectuate a dynamic balance between order and chaos, between architecture and life, between culture and neo-culture.

Orbanism is as environmentally aware as practicable. Because we must organise construction in an ever-diminishing natural space (a global system, incidentally), ecology is the primary structuring principle in humankind’s ever-expanding Orbanisation, or appropriation of nature, by humankind.

Orbanism incorporates solidarity and proper proportions; it is ecocentric, balanced and unique.

The more highly commended globalisation is, the more a generalised view of our planet becomes preferable – even indispensable. We are evolving (at least we hope so) towards a world populated by globally oriented people and globalised institutions – institutions subject to global rights and duties, and with global responsibilities.

Luc Deleu, ‘Outline concept for urban development of the European Quarter in Brussels’, 06.08.2002

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Scale model of VIP City. A nautical mile is equal to one minute of latitude, or 1851 metres. At a scale of 1:100 the model is 18.51 metres long.

Scale model of VIP City / A nautical mile is equal to one minute of latitude, or 1851 metres. At a scale of 1:100 the model is 18.51 metres long. (Photos from the exhibition in the Zuiderkerk, 07.01.2005 to 01.03.2005)

VIP VIP CityCity / The/ The Nautical Nautical Mile Mile

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Design: joseph plateau, Amsterdam / Print: Bevrijding, Amsterdam

Academy of Architecture Amsterdam

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CAPITA SELECTA

october - december 2004

Luc Deleu is architect and urban designer. For the year 2004-2005 he will be the Artist in Residence of the Academy of Architecture in Amsterdam.

This will take place in the context of the readership Artpractice and Artistic Development, an initiative by the Amsterdam School of the Arts.

Luc Deleu will start with a series of lectures called 'Belgian Stuff'. These lectures will inspire the programm for the winterterm in january 2005.

"La laideur a ceci de supérieur à la beauté, c'est qu'elle dure" (Serge Gainsbourg)

Belgian Stuff 28 October Luc Deleu

4 November Luc Deleu

T.O.P.office work in progress

From Ville Contemporaine to Chandigarh

11 November Steven Van den Bergh Isabelle De Smet The Unadepted city, a formal review

18 November Hans Theys

25 November Lieven De Cauter

2 December Filip De Boeck Koen Van Synghel

9 December Nel Janssens

Work & World of Panamarenko

Entropic empire

Kinshasa, The imaginary city

Towards a socially & ecologically 'fair' urbanisation project

Defragmentation /

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Defragmentation / It is an interesting characteristic of the image of the large scale that it has an autonomous identity. Seen from close by, the beach is an unstable jumble of sand, shells, rocks and plants. Viewed from the sea however, the beach offers a beautifully stable and coherent aspect. In the same way, the large scale of the dynamic city is – despite its changing facets and temporary, fickle and unstable programme – an image that deserves artistic urban development.

All human-made structures fragment while integrating.

The world globalises, regionalises and atomises simultaneously. The balanced urban space manifests fragmentation and defragmentation. So cities could also do with some regular defragmentation. In addition to fragmentation, defragmentation must also form part of artistic urban development strategies and means.

The most obvious and comparatively easy approach is to design from large to small, or ‘top-down’. To work from small to large, or ‘bottom-up’, on the other hand, is a far less self-evident option: it is very complex, difficult and confusing. Just look at the European Union (EU). Nonetheless, both have their own significance, their advantages and disadvantages when it comes to urban design. The former method structuralises and the latter destructuralises. The first creates unity and rest, and the second creates diversity and commotion. One tends towards elitism, the other towards popularism.

The bottom-up method guarantees a differentiated result because it takes account of particularities, exceptions and individuality, and it is an important safeguard of individual freedom.

Luc Deleu, ‘Outline concept for urban development of the European Quarter in Brussels’, 06.08.2002

The orbanism workship /

The orbanism workship >>

Rem Koolhaas: ‘Maybe architecture doesn’t have to be stupid after all. Liberated from the obligation to construct, it can become a way of thinking about anything – a discipline that represents relationships, proportions, connections and effects: the diagram of everything.’

Nowadays, public space and public transport – especially European cities – are particularly inefficient. Urban peripheries are out of control and the distribution of urban equipment is highly disturbed. Current town planning regulations are evidently becoming less and less suitable for creating palatable paradigms or meaningful images.

Bearing these facts in mind, I think there is no better aim for the workshop than to search for new tools to manage the form of the intention. In four studios, participants will try to develop an open preview of cities’ futures, to look for new media for proposing town planning rules, and so on.

The networking of public space – public transport, urban equipment, transferiums (car parks) and housing – could be one of the guidelines in the search for urban paradigms. The creation of tight connections between different nodes could be another.

Results can be developed in one respect from a theoretical base, in the other from a specific site.

The core objective for all operations is improvement on a planetary scale.

Luc Deleu

Luc Deleu, ‘Outline concept for urban development of the European Quarter in Brussels’, 6 August 2002

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Workship Studio 1 / Antipodes: measuring the world / Lieven de Boeck Studio

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The need for an architectural concept for the EU became clearly evident during discussions about its future in Dec 2001. A group of intellectuals initiated a debate on how the EU could be shaped.The main topics of this discussion were: Brussels as the capital of the EU, and how Europe as a political and economic entity could achieve a coherent and unique identity. Some conclusions of the debate were formulated in a document prepared by AMO (Koolhaas, OMA). In this document the role of architecture was reduced to a mere marketing strategy.

After the politicians, economists, lawyers and bankers, it is now time for architects to consider how the EU space could be shaped.

Borders shift, multiply or disappear, distances decrease, people move through the European space for work, vacation, retirement and so on: all these elements change our perception of our environment. Meanwhile, new architectural questions and programmes emerge: buildings for the European Parliament and for the Council of Ministers have been constructed; eleven new member countries have recently joined the EU; and the European constitution – although agreed upon in principle – is still being debated at national level.

The EU is founded on the notion of total democracy: each member country decides to participate and can leave at any moment. Democracy is expressed in the public realm, and that is why European space and architecture should be based on new definitions of public spaces and reclassifications of the relationships between the public and the private, and their representations. This could be the starting point for the development of a new urban paradigm. This workshop wants to define buildings and public spaces that respond to a new notion of the public, and reconfigure the relationship between public and private.

We ask ourselves: / What kind of architectural definitions can we develop for new programmes? / Can we develop a new type of public space that can, of itself, construct the European territory? / Can we develop an architectural image that organises the relationship between public and private on a European scale?

Using an atlas, we ask you to select at random one meridian and one parallel. Move along them, measuring elements, quantities and conditions. Concentrate in particular on changes and constants, similarities and differences. Concentrate on the two points of intersection, the antipodes. You are also requested to propose a conceptual project for the meridian and parallel you chose. We ask you to represent the analyses with maps, charts and diagrams (take into consideration the interpretive representations usually found in atlases).

References R. Koolhaas, S. Boeri, S. Kwinter, N. Tazi, Mutations, ACTAR 2000.

Rem Koolhaas, OMA/AMO, Contents, Taschen 2004.

S. Boeri, Mediterranean Migrations, Kassel 2002 Documenta, small catalogue.

M.T. Litschauer, Landscapes, Triton 2002 Atlas.

Workship Studio 2 / Features of substitutive urbanity: insight and outlook / Studio Guy Châtel & Kersten Geers VIP City radically separates dwellings from other urban apparatus. The project foresees housing for 38.000 people in an open field covering more than 100 km2 and parcelled out in 15.140 lots. A 7.5 km long megastructure bundling infrastructure and urban facilities cuts through the gloomy carpet.

As Dominique Rouillard argues about No Stop City by Archizoom, 1) VIP City does not break with contemporary conditions but envisions their extrapolation. It intensifies events and accelerates current propensities. In forecasting a possible future, it provides for a retrospective view on the present, thus allowing a critical examination. It reverses utopia in the sense that it substitutes an imagined finality or a storybound project with the projection of an image. VIP City is the radicalised image of the reality that lies hidden behind the shroud of the everyday.

Accordingly, the megastructure shows what remains of the city – and perhaps of architecture – when dwelling has liberated itself from urban imperatives. It features substitutive urbanity in a structure and an image. However, while the ribbon of VIP City seems to celebrate communal standards throughout its accommodating structure, the question remains: to what extent is it able to actualise ‘democratic space’?

We propose the acceptance of the drastic separation as a given. We will explore the surrogate city as a reality. The primary focus for our investigation will be the issue of democratic space.

What community is there for architecture to embrace and represent when all the city’s users are visitors or consumers? And what is the position, the accountability and the capability of architecture under these circumstances?

Participants will work individually or in elective associations.

They will elaborate on clusters of amenities taken from or inspired by Deleu’s VIP City project.

Plan and section will be used as tools to investigate relationships, proportions, connections and effects, to create the diagram of everything.

Ultimately the outcome of the investigation will be cast in a compelling image and statement.

As a collective work, the results of the process will be formatted as an exhibition and as a booklet.

1) La Ville, Art et Architecture en Europe 1870–1993, p.432, Paris, 1994

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Workship Studio 3 / Urban Scores / Studio Steven Van Den Bergh & Isabelle De Smet

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The Unadapted City (De Onaangepaste Stad) is a project by Luc Deleu & T.O.P. Office which began as a research project involving categorising all the amenities that create the urban fabric according to a common criterion: the number of inhabitants. The result of the project, with the collective name of The Unadapted City ‘95, was a total of ten tableaux that visualise the relation between amenities and inhabitants. Each tableau, with its own colour range and graphics, represents one of the ten classifications of amenities described in the list below.

01) Bars, Restaurants and Hotel 02) Social Facilities 03) Medical Facilities 04) Distribution 05) Sports, Recreation and Special Facilities 06) Education 07) Universal and Commercial Services 08) Culture and Entertainment 09) Worship 10) Arts and Crafts Whether or not the groups and the figures used are exact is not the issue. Because they are based on various existing cities, the result is a collection of spaces – large and small, high and low, designed and undesigned, pleasant and unpleasant, adapted and unadapted – into which urban life can fit.

Since 1997, T.O.P. Office has sought to develop a city for 192.000 inhabitants, based on the The Unadapted City ‘95 project. The entire focus of this project (The Unadapted City ‘98 – The Unadapted City XXI ) is on the backbone of amenities.

It is an investigation into how form and master plans can be generated by figures.

It is an investigation into how numbers can be managed to create form.

It is about creating tools for recording urban life (in a team context and in a short time).

It has something to do with linearity, concentricity and clustering.

The goal is clear; its method of achievement as yet undefined.

Our workshop is about urban scores: how urbanism and the formulation of urbanist rules could (more) closely resemble the writing of scores – with particular attention paid to the formal aspect.

The starting point is the figures provided by The Unadapted City ‘95. Given the limited length of the workshop, they are not open to discussion, but since they are unadapted, they are very open to interpretation. In fact, they are more about form, scale and frequency then they are about function!

The ten tableaux provide the numbers constituting the given data.

A possible strategy might be to search for an identity for each part within an overall idea. The studio will try to write (draw, model) ten formal scores for a chosen number of inhabitants (1.000.000?). << Work from Workship 3

Workship Studio 4 / Slowspeed City / Studio Wouter Veldhuis with Rowin Petersma and RenĂŠ van der Velde Currently, the length of the average journey on the national road network is less than ten kilometres. Most travel is local. There is, then, a strong argument for making more space available on the road network for local traffic, and less for large-scale infrastructure for through traffic. This would mean lower speeds, more slip roads and junctions and an improved local road network. The number of opportunities for interaction between driver and surroundings would increase significantly as a result. The total road network would require less space and the large-scale no manâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s land that characterises contemparary motorways and their surroundings would acquire human proportions.

In Slowspeed City, hard shoulders are walkways, verges are parks. Housing replaces acoustic fencing. Dedicated rush-hour lanes are substituted with bicycle paths. The intensity of use is sufficient reason to intentionally design motorways in urban areas as public space with a choreography of movements. Inversely, the pedestrian could also delight in traffic dynamics: as yet there are no motorway promenades where they can parade themselves. There is no place or space for the citizen to make him or herself visible to passing cars. Are those few Romeos who take up their white paintbrush and make their feelings for their Julias known to the world on the viaduct pillars the only ones who understand that life is, for a large part, played out on the roads?

Slowspeed City takes a specific position within the context of city and infrastructure. It is a quest for an attractive metropolitan fabric on the scale of the Randstad.

By downgrading the motorway network and tying it in with regional and urban networks, a new metropolitan road network would be created for the Randstad. 1) In doing this, it would provide an unexpected boost for urban renewal, both in residential areas and on company premises. The ultimate goal is to increase the level of interaction between urban and regional infrastructures, to develop new types of cities and to add new types of public space to the Dutch urban landscape.

Using the prototype, which is 40 kilometres in length and six lanes in width, the various components of Slowspeed City will be surveyed and named. In addition, small groups will pay particular attention to the most important functions: service clusters (such as hospitals and stadiums), shops, work areas, recreational areas and residential areas. The main focus will be the spatial and functional relationship between these functions, and junctions, slip roads and main roads as public space.

The various spatial components of the prototype will be merged into one coherent design: a prototype of Slowspeed City. Elements crucial to the prototype will be developed using scale models, cross-section and collage. The prototype will be applied to an existing situation in the Randstad. Simultaneously, at the level of scale of the Randstad, an argumentation will be composed about the impact of Slowspeed City.

The most important issue in this context is how this superstructure can contribute to a new step in the development of the Randstad metropolis.

1) Dutch conurbation of Amsterdam, Rotterdam, The Hague and Utrecht

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A contemporary theory of public space /

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A contemporary theory of public space / Since the fall of the Berlin Wall, globalisation and deregulation are reflected in just about everything, and thus also in urban development and in the city. Public administrations must increasingly share power with private institutions, whereby public space becomes increasingly privatised. This being so, are the forces of urban development democratically controlled in our nominally democratic Western world?

Can they even be controlled at all? Can public space still be formed democratically and do people still believe that it can come into being democratically. Although, at present, a limited architectural vision holds sway that rejects this social and political debate, might it be possible to conceive of a new, twenty-first century approach to pressurised communal spaces (among other things)? This could provide a new ethical paradigm to those private institutions that are increasingly encroaching on public space and which will thereby, perhaps unintentionally, acquire a public responsibility.

It would be preferable if democracy was to permanently exercise its authority with regard to the design and organisation of open space. The design and the protection of public space – the forum – should (in the interests of the individual, of the electorate and of security) be under the auspices of a civil administration, unconditionally, and must be considered an urgent priority of the art of urban development.

Now that the world is moving so quickly, a new and freer definition of universal space is emerging. The communal space in general (our environment) calls for a much finer differentiation and simultaneously acquires a planetary scope of vision. There are, to name a few scales, global communal spaces (oceans, for example), national and regional spaces (landscapes, for example) and urban spaces (plazas, streets and alleyways). Our public spaces might be prohibited, inaccessible, partially accessible or entirely inaccessible.They might be easy or difficult to reach,or sometimes concealed and dangerous or safe, attractive or repulsive and so on and so on, but each in their own way deserves the specific attention of the politically authorised body. It is clear that a fundamental investigation, involving the naming and cataloguing of types of space according to (planetary) scale would lift environmental planning to a new level.

The urban scale covers a whole range of public and private spaces. The urban communal space begins at the surrounding landscape (usually a neo-landscape), a small or large piece of which is, in certain cases, a fully integrated component of the city: a view of the sea, a river, a panorama or the horizon, for example. >>

Luc Deleu / ‘Outline concept for urban development of the European Quarter in Brussels’ (06.08.2002)

A contemporary theory of public space

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The negative city – the city landscape, the form and the spatial quality of the city or the urban void – is universally evident. Within this, the public space – the forum – is a highly specific part that in its turn also contains various spaces, each of which may be outdoors, covered or indoors. Furthermore, the city consists of an amalgam of communal spaces such as free spaces or residual spaces, infrastructural spaces, spaces for road traffic, for cyclists and pedestrians (together or separated) as well as pseudo-public, semi-public and semi-private spaces. I believe the interconnectedness of all these spaces, and their relation to the private world, would be an interesting programme for artistic urban development.

Luc Deleu, ‘Outline concept for urban development of the European Quarter in Brussels’, 06.08.2002

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31 reflections on architecture / 02 Orbanism / 14 Defragmentation / 19 The Orbanism Workship / 20 A contemporary theory of public space / 29 32