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Index

Bologna-Aachen. Two Intensive Design Experiences of the Medium-sized European City Enrico Prandi

The ArchéA Method. Analysis and Design Lamberto Amistadi

Places without Identity? Urban Design on the Periphery Uwe Schröder

The Fabric of the City. A Spatio-textile Experiment Andreas Denk

Aachen/Aquisgrana Morphogenesis. Urban Space as Source Karsten Ley

Driescher Hof. A Multifarious Place in the Periphery of Aachen Nicola Carofiglio, Ilaria Maria Zedda Projects

Driescher Höfe, Aachen Uwe Schröder

The Driescher Hof in the Suburbs of Aachen Gino Malacarne

‘Central Park’ for Aachen Driescher Hof Katarzyna Ujma-Wasowicz

A Metropolitan Centrality for Driescher Hof, Suburbs of Aachen Enrico Prandi

103

Landscape as Structure of Urban Development Vincent Marniquet Foreword

115

The Limit of (Re)Drawing Carlo Quintelli

121

The Sense of the Uncommon and the Structure of the City Domenico Chizzoniti

126

Authors

Bologna-Aachen

Two Intensive Design Experiences of the Medium-sized European City

This book is dedicated to the second intensive design experience—the definition of a workshop or design seminar—conducted within the ArchéA project, which involved the comparison of different approaches on the theme of the redesign of the medium-sized European city. After the workshop on the former Market area of Bologna in the Navile district,1 the first design destination, the theater of experimentation was applied to a peripheral area of the city of Aachen, the Driescher Hof, which offers the opportunity to reflect on the role of urban design in areas without their own specific identity. Before going into the merits of the experience that the book describes, it is useful to briefly reflect on the workshop as a tool for critical comparison of the project. In Italy (where the ArchéA program was conceived), with the exception of a few isolated cases, the experience of workshops (or as they were called until a few years ago Seminars or Symposia of architectural design) is relatively recent history.2 What can be considered nowadays a methodological habit—so much so that it permanently characterizes the educational offer of many schools of architecture— had important precursors in Italy: while waiting for a systematic research that reconstructs its history, we recall the summer courses of the CIAM brought to Venice by Ernesto Nathan Rogers in 1952 and organized by the IUAV under the co-direction of Giuseppe Samonà, Franco Albini and Ignazio Gardella; the Gibilmanna Seminars directed by Alberto Samonà since 1971; the International Design Seminar in Mantua since 1980; the Architectural Design Seminars of Parma since 1987 (also known as La Città del Teatro, CittaEmilia, SS9 Via Emilia) under the direction of Carlo Quintelli; the editions of the International Seminar of Architectural and

Urban Design of Bergamo since 1987; the Architectural Design Symposiums held in Sicily directed by Pasquale Culotta since 1984. In Europe, we remember the famous International Architecture Seminars of Santiago de Compostela directed by Aldo Rossi since 1976 and the International Design Seminar of Monte Carasso founded by Luigi Snozzi in 1979 as an integral part of the planning process of the city of Bellinzona. If we wanted to make a more in-depth distinction, the term Workshop in architecture has a strongly operational and less theoretical connotation, although what is experimented with in the design within the Workshop is still a Theory of Design, i.e. a methodological approach that guides the project from the initial moment, the identification of the idea, to the final moment of production of the architectural form. In our case, and in general in the Italian approach, it links the analysis of the physical and cultural urban context, the choice of reference figures and their interpretation and transmutation into an architectural project. What distinguishes the Design Workshop is basically the “time” factor reduced, in this case, to about a week of setting up and refinement work. By analogy with the usual university design workshops, it is always a matter of project work through students who collect and rework the solicitations of the coordinating professors through the mediation of tutors (usually doctoral students or young PhDs). Other characteristics are face-to-face work and continuous dialogue between students and teachers. In the Aachen Workshop, on the other hand, due to force majeure due to the Covid19 pandemic, face-to-face work was replaced by remote work, now facilitated by information sharing and teleworking

Enrico Prandi University of Parma Head of Parma unit of the ArchéA project

tools. This change, although sudden and unplanned, did not catch us totally unprepared as already in the preparation of the candidacy of the ArchéA project, in order to meet a request of the call for proposals on the introduction of information technologies in Higher Education, we had hypothesized a system that would allow through a large-format graphic tablet, a large projection monitor and a software for sharing the contents in real time (the cartography and / or sheet to be drawing), the extension of the workshop to students also placed remotely. We wanted, that is, to replicate the direct experience of a continuous revision of the project even remotely by adding the possibility of simultaneously intervening on the drawing sheet with sketches and drawings shared by both parties. In this way, it would have been possible to include the active participation in the Workshop in presence, of students from the ArchéA network located thousands of kilometers away between Aachen, Bologna, Gliwice, Parma and Rouen. The idea that it was possible to operate surgically remotely with great precision, something already successfully experimented in medicine, had fomented in us the image of a large virtual anatomical theater of the project based on instruments replacing the drawing sheet, cartography and pencil.

Previous page: Aachen: the figures and project. Collage by Enrico Prandi.

As Sörgel saw it, given such models, the seeming contradiction of interior and exterior concavity should not be an obstacle to modern city building. “The spatiality inside the building blocks, the correct distribution of air and mass, to shape this Janus face of architecture on all sides in a thoroughly organic way, is perhaps the last secret of city building and the art of building in general”(Sörgel 1921, 214). And Sörgel also gives us some indication of how he envisions the spatial-aesthetic effect of this kind of urban planning: “Every building organism requires larger and smaller subdivisions. The special features will set the tone, the rest can be flexibly grouped into a unit. Thus, the small spaces will have to enhance the large spaces and vice versa. Room parts of the same type will accumulate into an overall impression, and although the observation of architecture requires temporal juxtaposition, the simultaneity of the overarching idea will not be disturbed by wandering through the individual rooms, but rather enhanced. Each part is piece of an experience with the same meaning and is interwoven with the others. [...] And so it is not only with the house, but with the whole city!” (Sörgel 1921, 215).

A Syntax of Spaces Another point of departure for our theory can be found in Bill Hillier and Julienne Hanson’s (1984) concept of “space syntax.” Starting from an abstract example, the two British theorists initiated a simple process to simulate how the spatial groupings of similar three-dimensional objects develop. A complex aggregate object emerged from a combination of simple individual objects, just as settlements do through the accumulation of houses. The elementary objects in this experiment were square cells. Each cell was to be connected to another on one side of the square, excluding special cases such as connections across corners. The aggregation of the individual objects proceeded as a random process in which more and more objects were added to the existing agglomeration. There was only one restriction: each cell had to keep at least one of its four “walls” free of other cells. Regardless of the actual order in which the objects were placed, it resulted in the same generic “global form”: a dense and continuous structure of cells with a number of empty spaces—similar to courtyards—some of which were the same size as the cells, others twice as large, and others even larger. As the object got larger, “holes” started to appear: a “local” rule

became a “global” object with a definite structure (Hillier & Hanson 1984, 35f). Transferring the model to settlement structures in the département of Vaucluse in southern France revealed that the buildings of the villages studied were arranged in a way similar to the “houses” in their example, essentially assuming the shape of beads on a string placed around a larger space. Although the researchers established that the buildings in the villages were laid out according to similar criteria everywhere and their agglomeration always took place under similar conditions, analogous to their abstract experiment, the forms of the French villages developed a tremendous variety of manifestations when viewed together (Hillier & Hanson 1984, 55ff). In Hillier & Hanson’s interpretation, the combination of buildings considered to contain spaces as well as the open spaces assigned to them in each case proves to be a reflection of social relations in the household and in the community, which can be mathematically operationalised (Hillier & Hanson 1984, 55).

Christopher Alexander: Language or Fabric? Hillier and Hanson assigned a more mathematical meaning to their model—initially obtained by phenomenological and anthropological methods—that was intended to operationalise social and ethnological regularities. The Austrian-American architect Christopher Alexander and his collaborators gave concrete content to these ideas of systematically recording house and city with other models in their far-reaching reflections on a “pattern language” (Alexander, Ishikawa, and Silverstein 1977). Moreover, the pattern language is based on the idea of connecting spaces with different purposes into a coherent fabric. The aim of the pattern language is quite comparable with the research approach of Bill Hillier and Julienne Hanson: “Each pattern describes a problem which occurs over and over again in our environment, and then describes the core of the solution to that problem, in such a way that you can use this solution a million times over, without ever doing it the same same way twice” (Alexander, Ishikawa, and Silverstein 1977, x). Even though the idea of textiles might seem more obvious in the context of Alexander’s interpretation, he explicitly draws on the concept of language—as Hillier and Hanson also did—whose variance he neverthe-less wishes to bring in line with the regularity of textiles: “A pattern language has the structure of a network. … However, when we use the network of a language, we always use it as a sequence, going through the patterns, moving

always from the larger patterns to the smaller, always from the ones which create structures, to the ones which then embellish those structures, and then to those which embellish the embellishments”(Alexander, Ishikawa, and Silverstein 1977, xviii). The network character of his pattern language is analogous to the weave of a fabric: the sequence of patterns in the pattern language “captures the broad sweep of the full network; in doing so, it follows a line, dips down, dips up again, and follows an irregular course, a little like a needle following a tapestry” (Alexander, Ishikawa, and Silverstein 1977, xviii). But apart from this metaphor, Alexander’s pattern language actually follows a syntactical logic: it is meant to be a collection of all 253 patterns (presented in the book), allowing for an almost infinite variety of combinations. The patterns are ordered by size: Alexander starts with terms for regions and cities, then arrives at the fine grain of neighbourhoods, groups of buildings, then ends with buildings, rooms, and building details. “Each pattern is connected to certain ‘larger’ patterns which come above it in the language; and to certain ‘smaller’ patterns which come below it in the language. The pattern helps to complete those larger patterns which are ‘above’ it, and is itself completed by those smaller patterns which are ‘below’ it” (Alexander, Ishikawa, and Silverstein 1977, xii). This linear sequence is crucial to Alexander’s understanding of his pattern language and distinguishes it from the largely non-hierarchical idea of the textile as conceived here. What I mean by this

is a spatial translation of the connective quality of textile fabrics, which, in their varying arrangements, are in themselves logical, continual, and varied connections. The question is: can the fabric-forming elements of warp and weft be metaphorically transferred to architecture or the city in a way suitable for describing or analysing spatial relationships on the scales of the city and architecture without great effort, i.e. without degenerating into a formalism?

Previous page: The hamlet of Perrotet in Vaucluse, 1966 (on the left); Generation process of a “beady ring” structure: 24, 36, 42, and 54 units (on the right). Illustrations from Hillier & Hanson, The Social Logic of Space, 1984. In this page: Groups of workplaces around a public square (on the left); Street café with indoor and outdoor spaces (on the right). Illustrations from Alexander et al.: A Pattern Language, 1977-84.

The civic pride is represented by the first town hall (Grashaus, 1267) and an ever-growing self-confidence against the collegiate. Louis IV. (c. 1282-1347) gave the ruinous council hall to the city for the use of a larger town hall, at the same time obliging the city to include a «Krönungssaal». Louis’ successor Charles IV. (131678), raised in Paris, affected the building process by promoting what we today call Gothic architecture. Thence a «Glashaus» was built to extend the church as the original space could no longer accommodate the clerigy, the coronation-guests and the plenty reliquaries given to the collegiate. These (e.g. Mary’s dress and Jesus’ diapers from the Holy Night, the waistcloth he wore at the cross and the decapitation-cloth of St. John) drew even more pilgrims and visitors to Aachen. Eventually the center of the city featured two new stylish buildings reflecting not only the coronation process, but also the counter-position of the sacred and the secular realm, which determined the whole Middle Ages. Between the church and the king, the civic population, however, gained a so far unforeseen power—at least regarding their own affairs. The extension and stabilization of Aachen’s urban form The success of the city is represented by its quick population growth, which resulted in the plan for a vast urban extension in the late 13th century. The encircling fortification of the Barbarossa Wall was offset some 260 to 650 m for a second fortification with a length of 5.3 km, a height of some 10m and a thickness of 2-4 m. The main roads remained in place, calling for corresponding new gates, while the extant ones became «Mitteltore». Substantial proof to this impressive building process that took some 50 years give the two remaining city gates of the Ponttor in the North and the Marschiertor in the South as well as five towers, which partially survived—from a total of 11 gates and 23 towers. However, with the new wall the first one was not demolished. It remained in place and served as supporting wall other buildings, physically preserving them. While the inside of the Barbarossa wall was highly built, the outside was almost without any building activity, apart from 32

Aachen, after 1175—Barbarossamauer and high medieval quarters (graphic: Andreas Schaub 2009). The area of the Aachener Pfalz, today, extant building substance, and reconstruction (graphic, Judith Ley/Frederic Schnee 2013).

the monastery St. Adalbert (1005), which now became proper part of the city. The existing wickets of the wall yet induced a quick land division of the new urban grounds. This can be seen with two examples: the old Ursuliner gate related to St. Adalbert, calling for the new Adalbert’s gate; the former New Gate gave way to a steep ascent (Berstraße) with the concluding new Berg gate. While these main streets quickly filled with houses, the remaining fringes remained mainly agricultural. Also, some new monasteries made use of this excessive offer of land and included large gardens into their compounds. Inside the «old city» however, urban grounds remained quite expensive, as can be seen with Großes Haus, built around 1495 by the merchant Heinrich Dollart, who lost his life over the building of this unbecomingly large house that took up the space of three regular houses. The urban landscape of Aachen An often-forgotten characteristic of cities is their intrinsic relation to the hinterland, or more specifically the «umland» (surroundings). During the Middle Ages Aachen acquired a quite substantial amount of ground outside the city limits. These were called the Aachener Reich (Aachen Realm), consisting of the Glockenklang. This area, that was determined by the sound of the alarm bells, consisted of the quarters of Vaels, Orsbach, (Laurens-)Berg, Soers, Würselen, (Broich-)Weiden, and Haaren. In addition, the Aachener Heide (heathland), and Aachener Wald and Reichswald (forests) granted a security cordon as well as plenty agricultural land for the sustenance of the city. The only alien estate fully encircled by the Aachener realm was the Imperial Abbey of Burtscheid.

Cathedral and City Hall within the urban fabric today (google Earth). Vault of the Carolingian Octogon (photography: Robert Mehl 2014).

In the 15th century the administration began to build a Landgraben (linear earthwork) fortifying almost 9000 hectares at a length of c. 70 km. This defense system was finished only in the early 17th century and was almost forgotten after the siege of the French revolutionary troops in 1792 and the liquidation of the Aachen realm in 1794. But already before, the city’s significance on the political stage slowly decreased and alongside the success in gaining privileges. With the socio-political 33

give recreational spaces to the inner-city population. Of this plan we find implementations after all in the suburban areas towards the West and the Southwest at Königshügel including the green fingers. An extension plan from 1931 by the government building officer Otto Ophey pinpointed Henrici’s planning characteristics, which included already several features to become common understanding in the modern movement: At first we have the establishment of green enclosed building activities at different densities with different building typologies (blocks, row houses, strip development). Secondly, we find a growing independency of the buildings from the street scape. And ultimately, Ophey locates different functional focuses (recreation, education, convention, health etc.) as crystallization points for the individual areas. While the political development left little time for implementation and today’s concrete urban layout and typologies bear no immediate congruence, it seems permissible to relate the postwar development, for instance of the housing estates of Hanbruch (1960) and Driescher Hof (1967-70), with this plan, which was very much ahead of its time. Obviously, the instant post-war period was earmarked by reconstruction activities for residential use. Yet, the planners already paid attention to increasing car traffic, so wherever possible they widened streets and looked for smoother routing and introduced multiple-lane roads and highways (e.g. the outer ring). Otherwise, there is hardly any urbanistic design in the last two plans, which are part of this presentation: The official Leitplan 1956 (expansion plan) and the Flächennutzungsplan 1977 (land-use-plan) merely seek to provide for sufficient site development and best possible access. When 1972 brought the incorporation of seven surrounding towns including Brand, the quarter which will be in the spotlight of the workshop, also the planning of the then much larger city followed far wider considerations. New residential quarters were envisioned as well as a new university city in the wets including a large hospital—intriguing developments, which cannot be reported at this point.

Garden of the Alte Redoute, etching from 1736. (https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:1736_ poellnitz_wandelplaats.jpg). Alte Redoute, the first ballroom building from c.1670, demolished in 1902. (https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/ File:AlteSuermondtMuseumAachen1900.jpg).

Aachen, 1802—Survey by geometer Michel Maissiat. Dauber, R. and K. Winands 1985 (Curdes, G. 1999:68) Proposals for the development of a boulevard in lieu of the second city wall, 1813—(a) first plan from St. Adalbert to Cöllntor, (b) second plan from Cöllntor to Krefelder Straße. Dauber, R. and K. Winands 1985 (Curdes, G. 1999:70). Plan for the transformation of Lousberg into a public civic park by Maximilian Friedrich Weyhe, 1815. Stadtarchiv Aachen.

Driescher Höfe, Aachen

Department of Spatial Design, Faculty of Architecture – RWTH Aachen University

Uwe Schröder with Felix Mayer and Timo Steinmann Students: Franka Bienstein, Valentin Burkhardt, Philipp Pelzer, Frederik Schumacher, Michael Weyck

Places, like this, there are apparently many, not only in the periphery of Aachen, also in many other cities, in other countries, one could almost speak of a continental place, but that only applies to the architecture and to the city. Because the landscapes are always different, show different characters. According to Christian Norberg-Schulz (Genius loci, 1979) we could assign a romantic character to the Aachen landscape. And also, to the city, because the landscape had given its form to the early city. The forms of the city reflected the forms of the landscape and the architecture of the city followed these. Out on the periphery, in the Forst district, there is no longer any sign of this romantic attachment. The landscape is present, but the city is formless, sprawled, disordered. What should be complementarily connected—landscape and city—appear here only roughly mixed. The scattered objects seem to occupy indeterminate positions, a coherence does not arise, is at least not perceptible. The desolate architectures appear here like old acquaintances—déjà vu—one believes to have seen it all too often before. A romantic place? Not at all. Red-blue map With the red-blue mapping we describe the reality of the spaces of the city as spatial situations perceived in such a way, which appear here more interior and there more exterior and affect us accordingly. It should be noted that we have an established theoretical discourse and a differentiating typology of spaces regarding the interior city, which have produced an encyclopedic collection of references for urban design. Of course, the same cannot be claimed for the exterior city, since it was—at least in the tradition of

Previous page: Driescher Hof, red-blue plan. In this page: Perspective view of the inner “blue” courtyard.

The barracks buildings which could contain dwellings (for youths, the elderly, students, or as short-term lodgings) will be preserved (for their value and also for the historical testimony of the place), consequently, the enclosed internal space offers itself as a possible public square/garden laid out linearly. The ground plan of the barracks area, its geometry, delineates the ordering matrix of the settlement. 78

The resulting compositional axes organize the system of streets and also identify residential blocks, public spaces including parks, and community buildings. Meanwhile, the compositional axes of the project, the first urban streets which cross the residential blocks, are transformed into pedestrian routes which run through the urban park to then join the existing buildings on Königsberger Straße.

In this page: Plan with shadows. Next page: View from south-west; Planimetric schemes.

Aerial views of the masterplan.