How A Map Built A City

HOW A MAP BUILT A CITY

2016 - 2017 Thesis Rhode Island School of Design Bachelor of Architecture

Nadine Zaza

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HOW A MAP BUILT A CITY Thesis Project

Presented in partial fulfillment of the requirement for the Degree of Bachelor of Architecture in the Department of Architecture at The Rhode Island School of Design, Providence, Rhode Island.

By Nadine Zaza Rhode Island School of Design Class of 2017

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To my siblings Anas, Zaina, Sarah, Malik and Hamzah, and my mother, for guiding me and allowing me to follow my passions in life.

To my thesis group and friends, for supporting me. Tyler, Dexter, Lucas, Sahar, Anushka, and Maheera To my Advisor, Hansy, and Emanuel for pushing me to create my best work at RISD. To my country, Jordan, and my people for helping me grow into the person I am today.

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Table of Contents Fall What a thesis is for me A Thesis Artifact 1 | Allah Artifact 2 | Of the Same Thread Program Position Artifact 3 | Mapping Identity Site Position Artifact 4 | A Postcard to Mom Artifact 5 | Typologies Thesis Probe & Reflection

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Winter-session Mapping Studies Winter-session 1st Half Reflection Thesis Work | Woods Gerry

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Spring Early Spring Work The 3 Mapmakers City Dualities Prints City Series Prints Urban Plans Abdali Plan + Urban Imaginaries Amphitheater Plan + Urban Imaginary Downtown Plan + Urban Imaginary Urban Imaginary Amman Final Thesis Pinup

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FALL

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What a thesis is for me …

A thesis for me is an issue that is deeply yearning a representational platform. It is lyrical; a candid examination of events and politically charged occurrences that lead up to my understanding of me. A look into the acrimonious whole rather than a onedimensional image of ‘just the way things are’. A look that embodied my epiphany of the time my elderly neighbor walked around his unfinished home, the steel rods flew into the air and the heavy concrete of nothingness was a testimony to the unrealized visions and multifaceted histories that structured the everyday life and my life. I was the building, and still am. A thesis to me is a poetic investigation, an attempt to unveil unrecognized pasts and trauma and express the painful personal and collective truth of it today. I want a discovery to flex muscles i never thought i had before and collapse time, space, reality and fantasy. The residual threads that depict a locus of shared memory must rupture traumas and it’s people. A thesis for me revolves around an issue that is pulsing and relevant and painful and misconstrued and a taboo and is constantly in my socio-cultural circulation. A thesis for me is searching for that reason why I couldn’t talk about specific ways of living and understanding, It is why I am my Palestinian neighbors unfinished building, it is why I will remain as such.

And they searched his chest But could only find his heart And they searched his heart But could only find his people And they searched his voice But could only find his grief And they searched his grief But could only find his prison And they searched his prison But could only see themselves in chains

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A Thesis How a Wall Built a City There is a testimony in the capital city of Amman Jordan, of the continuous and multiple dimensions of the built environment. My thesis is mapping these dimensions by creating a new city through mapping. In re-representing the city, it exposes the many lenses it has. Liberating and remaking territory over and over again and reveals and realizes the hidden potential of what could be from what wasn’t… and what should be and what isn’t.

For Jordanians their past is neither distant nor over, identities neither similar nor one, and place neither whole nor unique. The idiosyncrasies of this city, my city defy standard conjectures about the historical formation of the “oriental city,” urban morphologies, political restrictions, population structures, aesthetics, or the social and cultural tendencies of community and family. My home and understanding of it does not fit with the dominating regional paradigms and is subject to the continuing political and social acts of conflicts and the need of an ‘authentic’ modernism. Architecture must lift itself from the constraints of purely the gains of issues, and now to the means.

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Allah

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ARTIFACT 1 | Allah

I was in the oldest hotel in Amman, King Ghazi Hotel in the Balad. Our fasts would soon end I was getting tea after Iftar before the movie screening of Arab Cities‌ I was looking at this old ceramic piece.

It said Allah and I remembered religion I was so drawn to it that I took it home with me. I stole it from the oldest hotel.

I was wondering when I brought it home how it mattered to someone.

I was enamored by its beauty and the questions I had because of it.

I was on the roof of our average cookie cutter Arab apartment complex in Rabia.

I was shocked to find it broken, so I yelled and asked who broke it and why, I was silent, my mom told me she was praying and had placed it in front of her.

I was stupid because this actually meant something far greater to her.

I was sad when I left because I was mad at something I stole that had no meaning for me other than it being in the oldest hotel in Amman, a hotel that had people coming in and out of it that formed my streets, my city my identity. It meant something else to my mother.

It was fragile and it was full of complexity.

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Artifact 1 | Allah

How an object defined place.

My connection to place, and the significance of identity Both of the streets and myself.

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Of the Same Thread

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ARTIFACT 2 | Of the Same Thread

The hatta is Palestinian, the shmagh Jordan. Black and red but of the same thread.

They look the same‌ really. But they represent different things? I remember a friend told me that the colors are arbitrary that during the Oslo Accords the Arabs started to differentiate the two. A collective color, a collective identity, a collective memory. A continuous sequence of traumas, a perpetuation of statehood manifested in repeated patterns claiming a land and a people. You are political when you wear the woven the threads. You are define yourself at your neck of whether you are Palestinian or Jordanian. The Shmagh and Hatta came from the same dusty knitshop from the North yet defines how I look at you and what you stand for. I always wondered if that was wrong? Our King is Jordanian and our queen in Palestinian, our future leader is both, like so many of us. The Hatta and the shmagh represent our lands and our memories, our history, it represents what was stolen and what was given. It is of the same thread as it is of the same past.

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Artifact 2 | Of the Same Thread

The complexities of identity is woven into the urban fabric, and into our collective memory, and understanding

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Program Position The program addresses is a sequencing of a context driven issue. There is a conscious effort of detail and coherence that plays into making an intimate understanding of the scales of context which span the personal and collective knowings.

It is not passive, and it has an organization like it’s the history this issue and is context driven and relies on the people it’s concentrating on. Program is the expression and holds key points that explain a city of present absence and how its inhabitants create it.

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1,500,000

1,000,000 Settlement Patterns to 2005

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Amman Balqa Boundary | Predicted in 2025

50,000 Amman Border 1988

Border for Municipalities 2008

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Proposed Roads 1988

1967 | City Center

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1,500,000

1,000,000 Settlement Patterns to 2005

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Amman Balqa Boundary | Predicted in 2025

50,000 Amman Border 1988

Border for Municipalities 2008

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1988 | Border and Growth

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1,500,000

1,000,000 Settlement Patterns to 2005

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Amman Balqa Boundary | Predicted in 2025

50,000 Amman Border 1988

Border for Municipalities 2008

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1998 | Population Placement

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1,500,000

1,000,000 Settlement Patterns to 2005

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Amman Balqa Boundary | Predicted in 2025

50,000 Amman Border 1988

Border for Municipalities 2008

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1998 | Amman Border

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1,500,000

1,000,000 Settlement Patterns to 2005

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Amman Balqa Boundary | Predicted in 2025

50,000 Amman Border 1988

Border for Municipalities 2008

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25,000 10,000

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2025| New Border Current State

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ARTIFACT 3 | Mapping Identity

Large circles were drawn over a very defined map. It represented what would come, a people dispossessed.

There were and were not meant to exist in the capital. But he who yielded that pencil drew them as circles. A symbol of an all encompassing future? Possibly?

The routes for these maps lead to Palestine, but before Palestinian catastrophe was clear. The homeland was lost and shattered. The name of Palestine disappeared from the atlas of the globe and the maps of nation states of the middle east. Yet it existed in memory and in these circles.

I remember asking sister why that little boy had blue eyes.

She told me he was Palestinian and that was my first introduction of the ‘other’ in my life. How was I to know his story, his family story defined me? Was that even possible? Would any Jordanian believe they are who are they because of a catastrophe that did not befall them, but the other. The other that is the majority. The irony and beauty. The devastation that became the catalyst to what my existence is in my home? They are stateless, marginalized and undesired everywhere in Israel and Arab countries. The repercussions of the Palestinian catastrophe accumulate with the time and keep shattering the fabric of the Palestinian society more than six decades after the establishment of Israel on the ruins of Palestine. Did the map maker know he was going to create an identity crisis?

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Artifact 3 | Mapping Identity

To understand the identity of a people You must understand the growth, Of their city and existence, And of how they were mapped.

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Site Position The site is the interchangeable and necessary scale of belonging in a place. Exile, refuge and home are synonymic terms.

How a wall built a city is of an estranged apartheid spanning the history of migration and settlement.

Amman was never a Jordanian city, no person can claim to be from there. Amman, is a built reflection of a region in crisis and the literal and emotional gatherings of people wanting a place.

Amman is a cumulative reflection of an diaspora through various dimensions of place making and the building and unbuilding of trauma and life.

Site and locality is scaled between different ideas of where one belongs and claims to be from.

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A Postcard to Mom

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ARTIFACT 4 | A Postcard to Mom

I wrote this postcard to the person who made me believe in the things I do now. Why I’m studying architecture and why I question my place and hers.

The streets are not named after women even though we are raised by them, believed to be reflections of them, their memories and traumas. How we are raised on these streets it is because of them.

Yet‌ I have never once walked on a street named after a woman who is not a princess or queen.

I wrote this postcard to my mother knowing she would never get it, people do not send letters; they show up. It could be because there is no mailbox or that the culture prides itself on family connections and check ins.

Door knobs, special knocks and birds chirping - the doorbell sound; all signs of a culture intact. The ins and outs and togetherness.

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Artifact 4 | A Postcard to Mom

Cultural connections are made, Through people and not streets, In terms of finding place.

Implications of higher order in urbanity.

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Typologies

Thesis

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ARTIFACT 3 | Typologies

You walk around the city, and there a frozen testament to the visions of a country, its economy and it’s pride. Concrete highrises and two bedroom homes, apartment complexes just like the one I live in. Abandoned.

Scales of care and scales of loss. Buildings have become empty promises and ideas of what could and should be. They’ve become apart of the problem. Meanwhile parts of the city flourish with life, too much life, concrete columns stacked one upon the other to fulfill the family’s needs.

From the smallest of homes to the largest of buildings, the sales of abandonment are the testimony to the countries continued pressures of society, its place among other countries, trauma and above all ambition.

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Artifact 4 | Typologies

Understanding the typologies that exist, Is understanding the past and future needs, It is knowing what to abandon and what to Keep. It is knowing the true problems.

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Thesis Probe

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THESIS PROBE | Presentation

“Mapping is a cultural project, it’s creating and building the world as much as it is measuring and describing it. It’s important in constructing our lived space. Mapping is a productive liberating instrument that reveals and realizes hidden potential and remakes territory over and over again. Amman the city I grew up in is made up of different maps and as an unfortunate consequence of attitudes on an ‘oriental city’, political restrictions, population structures, aesthetics, and social and cultural tendencies of community and family. All of which exist in scales of understanding the urban fabric and are in desperate need for inquiry, research and criticism.

This is because mapping typically precedes planning because it’ assumed that the map will be objectively identifying and making visible the terms around which a planning project may then be rationally build. The probe is a map this very city, that is between two worlds, the visions and realizations of those, some of them even in between. My rationalization was to begin to overlap the imaginaries with what exists to then begin a visual remapping and critique of the city”

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Thesis Probe| Presentation

The probe enabled me to condense my thoughts of the city into mapping. With that however comes the underlays and the need of a signifier. In looking at mappings I want to develop this signifier and a technique to portray it.

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THESIS PROBE | Reflection

You walk around the city, and there a frozen testament to the visions of a country, its economy and it’s pride. Concrete highrises and two bedroom homes, apartment complexes just like the one I live in. Abandoned.

Scales of care and scales of loss. Buildings have become empty promises and ideas of what could and should be. They’ve become apart of the problem. Meanwhile parts of the city flourish with life, too much life, concrete columns stacked one upon the other to fulfill the family’s needs.

From the smallest of homes to the largest of buildings, the sales of abandonment are the testimony to the countries continued pressures of society, its place among other countries, trauma and above all ambition.

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WINTER SESSION

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Amman as the Center of the World Dymaxion and Others

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Dymaxion Study of Amman

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A walk from the West to East

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WINTER-SESSION|1ST HALF These studies delved into what it is to create a map. They are projections, of what the mapmaker wants represented. Entire continents distorted. Entire borders made up.

The equator to the seas to the views of it all. An imperial view, a mere representation of hierarchy and order of the colonist. A vision, nothing more, nothing less.

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WINTER-SESSION | 1ST Half Reflection

What does it mean to re-orient the center of the world? What does it mean to redefine the basis of one’s understanding. The equator a line of divide, always was and always will be the baseline of what countries matter and what don’t.

For so long we have accepted maps as facts. Yet no matter how many times we try, we will never truly dimension the world’s continents as they are on a globe moving forever in space. To create a 2 dimensional representation of the world, essentially mapping it ultimately takes a bias of how that mapmaker wants it to be. Reflecting on these maps, especially the Dymaxion map where Buck minster fuller unfolded the world to create one ocean, one continent and ultimately a center. These maps are relative to the understanding of the mapmaker. There is a particular reading to every map, and in looking at how the world has unfolded over time, the same must still be done, because no map is accurate or the world, the city or of the street. To create a map you must build on characters and an order. More importantly an authenticity must be attained. In doing so, it becomes a representation that is not authoritarian like the predecessors that gave the map to the common man and told him this is where you live. You are on this map.

They are not represented.

Maps must not only be of what exists but expose it and its inhabitants.

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Thesis Work | Woods Gerry Amman Ya Amman

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Thesis Work | Woods Gerry Amman Ya Amman

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downtown | Where it All Started

Goats that graze in the city

topo | Home

city roundabouts

topo |Jordan gate towers

topo |downtown

postcards to home they never made it

topo | Abdoun

Housing/ Building Typologies of Amman

topo | Abdali New Downtown

Amman to me, is the goats that walk between the city streets and buildings. It is the city in category. A hierarchy of importance to me. From my home to where I fell in love. Is not just the streets, it is the images that have been ingrained in my mind of what it is to walk among my people. I am at home and I belong everywhere. I am confident and I am the mapmaker.

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WOODS GERRY REFLECTION | Amman Ya Amman

I realized there were discrepancies of my place and the place drawn for me. I knew the maps I’ve created of the city made sense to me. The maps made by people who did not live in the city, wasn’t my vision and definitely not the visions and understandings of people living in these maps.

I created what I considered a scaleless and scale bound map of the city. With my artifacts and curiosities placed on it.

Postcards - stand ins for the failures of the city Roundabouts - that all exist on the main arterial street of the city, If one floods the city shuts down.

Pictures - which really are how I remember place, because I believe we are a city of landmarks and visions Topographies - the places I hold the dearest to me and have a significance in my understanding of place.

Topologies - because we do have a standard of housing and planning that is not in previous maps.

And the goats - because shepherds would take them to graze around the city.

All things I felt were not in maps made about me…. I put on that map.

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SPRING

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Mapping the Spatial Conditions and History of the City

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The Hand: A Unit of Measure Exploring that which existed on the grid

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The Hand: As it Exists in dominating the domestic setting

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Early Spring | The hand as a Unit + Measuring Time and Space

With trying to understand the complexities of the research and what I mapped in winter session, I tried to have a more serious look into the unit I used on the woods gerry map, the hand extended from thumb to pinkie. I asked myself “What exists in that unit?”, “Who is the one creating the units?” The possibilities ranged from the male to the mapmaker. Ultimately the Mapmaker is the one creating these understandings and that is the role I want to take.

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The Hand: A Unit of Measure Exploring that which existed on the grid

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Foreign Direct Investment

Government

People

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MAPMAKERS REFLECTION | FDI, GOV, PPL

Attempting to rationalize my memories and place, led me to ask questions of who was responsible and for how long. I defined three actors or three mapmakers of the city, that consistently created master planning, visions and the multiple dimensions of the built environment from the inception of the city.

The government Foreign Direct Investment or Foreign influence And the People.

By defining them, I was able to collapse and understanding of the spatial conditions of the maps and time. I realized what the priorities were of each mapmaker and how they all to an extent fail each other when creating a something new. The people want to live and create homes for themselves, FDI is battling with a developing country trying to make a mark in the world, and the government that has to cater to both and create a stable country in a region filled with turmoil. By identifying these mapmakers, I identified the discrepancies of my place and how it exists in time.

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CITY DUALITIES | PRINT SERIES

The City Dualities series began my interest in the process of printmaking as well as creating a more holistic representation of mapping and understanding the city. The city dualities included Mosque and Mall Park and Home History and Tradition People and the Streets East and West Hills and The Stairs By creating these prints, I was able to more distinctly understand the various spaces of the city and how they relate to one another or not. For example with Park and Home, there is a dichotomy of how people inhabit spaces. Many homes become spaces of leisure because there is a lack of parks and places for families to go to. The dualities then suggest a merger of the two, the security of home and public space. Ultimately these print series began to help question what are the dichotomies of the city and how can they exist as one in the city. Some of the series questions overlap and begin to create a greater reading of the conditions and how they can translate in programming the city.

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Mosque and Mall

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Park and Home

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History and Tradition

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People and Streets

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East and West

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Hills and Stairs

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CITY SERIES | Mapping and Representation

My thesis is how a map built a city, but I also think that it’s how the mapmaker created it. For me to re-imagine the city in the way that I did, and understanding the complexities that went into making it, is the mapping.

Through mapping and the images resulting from this process, I’ve attempted to reveal a considerable amount of information that is otherwise left “hidden.” I wanted throughout the city series prints to acknowledge the notions of what defines a “map” and redefine that in visualizing alternative depictions found within my city and evolving new and various imaginaries of that in the varied representations that can exist to define that.

All of these prints for me are the city and represent it in various ways. The city series was the most helpful for me to then grasp all of the information I was gathering and all of my interests and create not only a representation through my making of the city but also to imagine the city differently.

The city through this series, was a mean in representing the city. To take control of the map, and the representation is what liberated the city and the research for me. It was a crucial move in how I gaged the city and the questions I was posing from the beginning.

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Street City Looking at Zahran Street, the artery of the city. 8 roundabouts exist on it and reflect the movement o the city and its growth.

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Grid City Breaking the city into a grid and highlighting main public spaces or places of the highest importance within that block.

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Collage City Taking the main streets and collaging them onto a photo of the earliest building downtown with a scene from a downtown street.

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Abstract City Taking the growth patterns of the city out of the downtown area/grid, along with the representation of the populations on older maps.

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Color City Downtown was a fertile area, it was difficult to fix, so they city grew outwards from it and the built environment continued.

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Downtown City The capitol of the Jordanian City was first settled by Circassians and many Palestinians live in Jordan.

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Modeling the City Taking the various representations in the City Series Maps and creating a three dimensional reading of the abstractions.

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Mid Spring | City Series Mapping

Mapping is this series is cultivating the Ammani Palimpsest The map is redefined by the city and the city redefines the map.

It Reveals and Realizes Amman and its imaginaries.

Mapping in this sense is tracing, archiving and creating.

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Above: Abdali | 3 part proposal Bottom Left: Roman Amphitheatre Bottom Right: Downtown/ Al Balad

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URBAN PLANS | Probing the City in Maps

Mapping is a cultural project, it’s creating and building the world as much as it is measuring and describing it. It’s important in constructing our lived space. For that reason I wanted to take the understandings of both the city series prints and the duality city prints and create almost a probing of these ideas into spaces that the city has remapped multiple times or is in current construction. I felt that apart of understanding the mapping process was to create an entirely new reading of the city and add onto the urban palimpsest. The three locations I chose were the Roman Amphitheater Park, where the city really began to settle around. Downtown which is not too far from the Park and where the city grew from, and the ‘New Downtown’ known as Abdali. All three locations are heavily influenced by the three map makers or actors that I found in the beginning of the Spring research and have multiple failures as it relates to previous master planning and the city.

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Abdali: Youth Center

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Above: Youth Center detail Bellow: Abstracted model of elements

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Abdali: Market

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Above: market detail Bellow: Abstracted model of elements

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Abdali: Arts Center

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Above: Art Center detail Bellow: Abstracted model of elements

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With The Abdali Plan, It is the area where phase two of the massive ‘New Downtown’ project would exist. I created it in response to the 1st phase of the project, which is essentially a very Dubai like style with high rises and shops. The representation was taken from both the Downtown City and Grid City Series i created previously. As someone who has experienced Phase 1 of the project, I found that it does not cater to the majority of Jordanians like myself and is made in the fashion to suit a broader western audience. By creating a Youth Center, Market and Arts Center I wanted to deal with issues of unemployment, youth disparity and major populations growth as well as a cultural identity through the three main parts of this plan.

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Top & Middle: Abstracted Models of the elements Bellow: Model 1:1000

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Top: Market for majority of Jordanians example Middle: Perspective Proposal Bottom: Plan Proposal

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Top: 2nd Phase Proposal Middle: High Rise Proposal Bottom: Current state in Phase 1

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Top: Satellite Image of current state Bottom: How Abdali Sits in the City

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Urban Imaginaries: Abdali Youth Center

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Urban Imaginaries: Abdali Market

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Urban Imaginaries: Abdali Arts Center

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URBAN PLANS | Abdali Plan

Accompanying each plan is a series of drawings that exist in various drawing styles that explain the experience or translation of the move I’ve made in that space. In essence I was also trying to redefine the architectural drawing or representation of the map. Rather than a realistic perspective that becomes a convincing tool for a user, the Urban Imaginaries Print Series become interpretive drawings that deal with issues of scale, people in space, technical representation through perspective, top view and elevation. For me this type of representation was necessary in also re-representing the map and I’d also consider it a type of mapping as well as it allows a more liberating way of imagining the city.

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Roman Amphitheater Park Plan

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Above: Roman Amphitheater Park detail Bellow: Abstracted model of elements

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Top: Roman Amphitheater before settlement Middle: Perspective with some Settlement Bottom: Master-plan of city growing out of area

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Top: focus on fixing area Middle: Perspective of current state Bottom: view into the space

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Top: The current are where park proposal will take place Bottom: Roman Amphitheater location in relation to downtown and 1st Circle

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Urban Imaginaries: Roman Amphitheater

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URBAN PLANS | Roman Amphitheater Park

With the Roman Amphitheater Park, I noticed there was a consistent need in all master plans and even in the one made for the year 2025 to revitalize the area and have it cater to more tourists.

In an attempt by masterplanning and the city, the area was redone several times, the last time being in my opinion at a loss of catering to the people living in the area. Many families would leave the city and have picnics on the side of the highway where there is some shade bridging the public and private realm. The unfortunate thing in this custom is that is does not exist in the actual heart of the city. The proposal I’ve made gives families that ability and deals with more issues of space for children, young people and families. In doing so it wages the gap between tourist and citizen, something that in previous master planning wasn’t taken into consideration.

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Downtown Balad Plan

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Above: Market Detail Bellow: Abstracted model of elements

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Top: Downtown street in the early 1920s Middle: Masterplan of City with Downtown Bottom: Downtown Masterplan renewal

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Top: Roman Amphitheater before settlement Middle: Perspective with some Settlement Bottom: Master-plan of city growing out of area

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Top: Current Middle: Perspective with some Settlement Bottom: Current Site, Downtown adnd relation to first circle

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Urban Imaginaries: Downtwon

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URBAN PLANS | Downtown AlBalad

For the Downtown Area AlBalad, there have been many attempts to create a more cohesive space.

All master plans from the inception of the city, dealt in some part with ‘fixing’ downtown. Parking and congestion are a main issue as well as abandonment. The first artifact titled Allah in my thesis work, was found in an abandoned hotel, and one of the first hotels in Amman in that same downtown region. Many of the shops as well cater to tourists and the area itself from its early formation was meant for the ‘visitor’ rather than the inhabitants. Considering previous existing conditions, like the wide streets that this area had before and the centrality to the Roman Ruins and tourist needs, I wanted the street to be open back to the public. The Market then floods into the street and the attempt at creating a public realm will enhance the appeal of the Balad as well as rejuvenate and encourage the abandoned top stories of the buildings in downtown to have program. This considerably simple attempt at giving the street back to the people also comes at the price of the public taking over the streets. Foreign influence comes from the tourists, while the government and people exist to create a functional space for both the needs of the country and also the needs of the people. In this sense opening the street for markets opens the street for a more cohesive development of the city and the downtown.

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Urban Imaginaries: Amman With this mapping and representation, I wanted to create a fuller understanding of the probing of plans and the urban imaginaries into the city.

With the same respect to my work for the Woods Gerry Map, the drawing exists in a scaleless and scalebound way, taking multiple dimensions of the city and creating a palimpsest of architectural representation and visual imaginaries to create what I think is a new reading of the city. A re-representation and a new city through that.

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Detail of the Urban Imaginary: Amman

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Final Thesis Critique May 26, 2017

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