History & Changing. The Convoluted Meaning of Space in the Modern Age

School of Architecture Tsinghua University of Beijing

HISTORY AND CHANGING The convoluted meaning of space in the modern age.

Secchi Gabriele June 2014

EPMA _ Architecture Master Program ‘Comparison of Architectural and Urban Culture between East and West’ professor LIU Jian ass. LIANG Sisi

Secchi Gabriele

June 2014

EPMA _ Master Program

Tsinghua University of Beijing

History & Changing

“If I throw a brick into the waves, after two hours the sand and the sea will have operated in such a way to structure channels and contours around the brick, merging it with the beach.

After five hours the brick will have found itsproper position or ‘place’. I’m interested in finding that ‘place’ for my houses!”

1

G.Murcuttn

Secchi Gabriele

June 2014

EPMA _ Master Program

Tsinghua University of Beijing

History & Changing

Index Abstract ......................... 1 Pills of History ......................... 3 ‘Globalisation‘ and architecture. R. Adam

.........................

6

Actual visions ......................... 9 Rethinking. Necessary questions for the modernity

.........................

10

Ancient Approaches and todays human changing

.........................

10

Worldwide Scenario ......................... 12 “Space” . Convouted meaning in the technology era

1

.........................

14

S. Amourgis, Critical Regionalism: The Pomona Meeting –Proceedings, College of Environmental Design, California State

Polytechnic University, Pomona, California, U.S.A., 1991 Lecture in CSP University, By G.Murcutt, Pomona, 1991.

Secchi Gabriele

June 2014

EPMA _ Master Program

Tsinghua University of Beijing

History & Changing

This Paper could also be titled

MAN. COMMUNITY. SOCIETY. Investigation on the global principles that shape the natural human integrity

HISTORY & GLOBALIZATION Differences and similarities in the ancient & modern way to approach an urban planning

Secchi Gabriele

June 2014

EPMA _ Master Program

Tsinghua University of Beijing

Abstrarct

ABSTRACT

What is the role of the urban planner nowadays in the global – modern society?

How is it possible design a plan for an entire urbanity in an age where the highly globalization is touching the primordial needs of the citizen.

The inhabitant (seen as the brick of the community) is rapidly and intensivly changing his relation with the city.

The ancient value of the land is not anymore seen in the same way as it was before the modern technology invasion in all the scale of the society.

The aim / suggestion of the following thesis is to ponder about the difference role of the planning elements along the history.

Through a brief investigation on the various historic vision of the urban design, and a questioning about an hypothetic pessimist future scenario, the text aim to reflect on the seriousness of the globalization in every scale of the design. From the big modern conceptual master plan, to the intimate dimension for the inhabitant.

KEYWORDS

Historic visions, contemporaneity, modern conceptual master plan, worlwide & future scenarios, society,

community, citizien, elements of planning, meaning of space.

Secchi Gabriele

June 2014

1_24

Tsinghua University of Beijing

Declaration of Authenticity

Declaration of Authenticity I the undersigned declare that all material presented in this paper is my own work or fully and specifically acknowledged wherever adapted from other sources.

I understand that if at any time it is shown that I have significantly misrepresented material presented here, any degree or credits awarded to me on the basis of that material may be revoked.

I declare that all statements and information contained herein are true, correct and accurate to the best of my knowledge and belief.

Secchi Gabriele

18th June 2014 (Secchi Gabriele)

PREFACE

To emphasize and clearly investigate the thematic of this paper, many relations with the local

conditions and the different stage of the development are missing. This has been intentionally done to underline the common and overall similitude in the nowadays countries. The lack in specification is by the way not misleading the general goal of the thesis.

Secchi Gabriele

June 2014

2_24

Tsinghua University of Beijing

Pills of History

SMALL PILLS OF HISTORY. A continuous thread of solutions and interpretations

The role of the urban planners has always been related with the solution of big social problems or crisis

and their attempts to solve them.

Paul Knox2 argues that the profession of planning emerges out of series of crises and people’s responses to them.

Such as health crises, social crises or other climate related circumstances.

It is important look back at the role of the urban design in the history to analyze and try to figure out the key importance points which give to the role of this discipline the actual meaning.

The Marxist inspiration3 with the new questions about the condition of the workers and the relation with the over-crowded cities which were growing so fast and with all the hygienic- social problems related to that.

The Romanticism & the Progressivism, with their attempts to elevated the needs of a well-structured urban planning. The philosophical, intellectual and more often Utopian vision for the new city was only one aspect of these plans: what remains of the importance of the period is the conquered importance for the city to have a multilevel plan. The consciousness rooted way to analyze and try to solve the problem in advance, in order to prevent and strategically design a system for the urbanity.

2

Paul Knox is a professor of urban affairs and planning in the School of Public and International Affairs. He is a University

Distinguished Professor and senior fellow for international advancement. Knox holds a Bachelor of Arts degree and Ph.D. in geography from the University of Sheffield.

3

Friedrich Engels observed the misery of mid-19th century Manchester & wrote:

The Condition of the Working Class in England (1844): - worker oppression; - pollution; - overcrowding; - disease; - alienation; - display of status symbols in the landscape.

Secchi Gabriele

June 2014

3_24

Tsinghua University of Beijing

Pills of History

The Park movement, which took place in the discussion of the Urban Public Health as a focus of concern4.

The contribution of this period is still strongly influencing the modern plan, especially in the Asian countries, where the needs to have foundations from where to start is extremely important. What is recognized in this movement is the schematic and logic way to deal with the current needs.5 To a definite problematic correspond a related nodal solution: a sum of all these terms became the conceptual movement which gave birth to the New York Central Park6.

F. L. Olmstead, Prospect Park Plan, New York, 1901, avaiable online at:

Ebenezer Howard.

Three Magnets, 1898, avaiable online at:

“en.wikipedia.org”

4

“ocw.mit.edu”

Physician Benjamin Ward Richardson wrote:Hygeia, City of Health (1876) envisioning: - air pollution control; - water purifica-

tion; - sewage handling; - public laundries; - public health inspectors; - elimination of alcohol & tobacco; - replacement of the gutter with the park as the site of children’s play.

5

Goals of the movement, in brief: - separate transportation nodes; - support active and passive uses; - collect water; - promote

moral pass-time.

6

Frederick Law Olmstead (1822-1903). New York Central Park 1857. Prospect Park 1865-1873. Chicago’s Riverside subdivi-

sion. Buffalo’s park System 1868-1876. Park at Niagara Falls 1887.

Olmsted’s Parks Design principles in brief: SCENERY. SUITABILITY. STYLE. SUBORDINATION. SEPARATION. SANITATION. SERVICE. It’s intreting look how the strategy of the design is present in all the scale of the urban plan: From the park to the general design of entire parts of the city.

Secchi Gabriele

June 2014

4_24

Tsinghua University of Beijing

Pills of History

The relation between city and outside. The Garden Cities of Owen, Fourier, J.S. Buckingham, and Ebenezer Howard who in 1902 theorized the Garden City of Tomorrow7. Separation between the central city and the city-country outside: the green belt gave birth to the earliest suburbs (seen as a part of the city).

The city starts to be analyzed as a complex System of activity and different identities. The large scale design of the urbanity is seen as a complicate multilevel agglomerate of needs: the earliest attempt of separation between inner and outside part is the response to a new way of how approach the large amount of city’s personalities and differences.

The 1909 with his first national conference of city planning in Washington D.C..

The adoption of an attitude less critical but more related with the modern idea of aesthetic, zooning and social differences. A serious of complicated and specific isolated legal cases8 led the city of New York to develop in 1916 the first law in protection of the Fifth Avenue9.

The city Beautiful Movement of Burnham10 and the following organized Land of Use approaches are in such a way related with the precedent movement for the idea of partition in more elements.

7

Three Magnets.

Town: high wages, opportunity, amusement.

Country: natural beauty, fresh air, low rent.

Town – Country: idealistic combination of the two advantages of them.

8

Yick Wo v. Hopkins (1886).It was the first case where the United States Supreme Court ruled that a law that is race-

neutral on its face, but is administered in a prejudicial manner, is an infringement of the Equal Protection Clause in the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

9

1st NY zoning law (1916) protected Fifth Ave. Luxury store owners from expansion of Jewish garment factories.

Goals & idea: - protected property values and expressed chauvinism; - idea spread to 100s of cities in decade after the NY law was passed, promoting property values and special interests of the upper class, white majority 10

1893 Chicago World’s Fair : - orderly and clean; - aesthetic rather than social sensibility; - grandiose and ambitious.

Secchi Gabriele

June 2014

5_24

Tsinghua University of Beijing

Pills of History

The simplification in smaller sectors controllable and well integrable in the big picture of the city master plan is still a current concept for the micro selected intervention in the western country.

The Land of Use strategy was also the right age for a new generation of modern dreamers11, whose plans are still considered and discussed as modern ideas.

The brief introduction of the well-solved problematic and new ideas in the different ages through the history shows and should remember how experimental and socially unstable and uncertain is the design of an urban space. Taking this short summarization of the history of the urban design as a mere sequence of events, it’s interesting emphasized the rapid changing of the needs and the specific different utopian concepts of each age.

GLOBALISATION AND ARCHITECTURE12 ROBERT ADAM It is summarized by Jürgen Habermas: “By ‘globalisation’ is meant the cumulative processes of a worldwide expansion of trade and production, commodity and financial markets, fashions, the media and computer programs, news and communications networks, transportation systems 11

Le Corbusier 1920’s: skyscrapers in parks. & F.L. Wright 1930’s: with the low-density “Broadacre City” etc....

12

Journal article: “GLOBALISATION AND ARCHITECTURE”. Source: http://www.adamarchitecture.com/images/PDFs/RA-Glo-

balisation.pdf

Secchi Gabriele

June 2014

6_24

Tsinghua University of Beijing

Globalization & Architecture

and flows of migration, the risks engendered by large-scale technology, environmental damage and epidemics, as well as organized crime and terrorism.”13 Globalisation may now have its own global band of protestors but it is generally acknowledged that, save a major catastrophe, “the intensification of worldwide social relations in such a way that local happenings are shaped by events occurring many miles away and vice versa” 14 It is unavoidable and increasing.

Imperialism, internationalism and other forms of interchange between cultures and economies has been taking place for millennia, but globalisation is different in effect, depth and breadth. […]

13

Jurgen Habermas, The Divided West, Polity Press, 2006, p175

14

Anthony Giddens, The Consequences of Modernity, Polity Press, 1991, p64

Secchi Gabriele

June 2014

7_24

Tsinghua University of Beijing

Globalization & Architecture

The effect is described by Helena Norberg-Hodge: “Western consumer conformity is descending on the less industrialised parts of the world like an avalanche. ‘Development’ brings tourism, Western films and products and, more recently, satellite television to the remotest corners of the Earth. All provide overwhelming images of luxury and power. Adverts and action films give the impression that everyone in the West is rich, beautiful and brave, and leads a life filled with excitement and glamour. ….. Advertisers make it clear that Westernized fashion accessories equal sophistication and ‘cool’. In diverse ‘developing’ nations around the world, people are induced to meet their needs not through their community or local economy, but by trying to ‘buy in’ to the global market.”15

15

Helena Norberg-Hodge, ‘The March of the Monoculture,’ The

Ecologist, Vol 29, No 2, May/June 1999, p195

Secchi Gabriele

June 2014

8_24

Tsinghua University of Beijing

Actual Visions

ACTUAL VISIONS. Modern Plans for conceptual scenarios

Saskia Sassen16 (sociologist and economist) described her Utopian scenario for the city of the future in

one interview to an architecture journal in 2013.

She argued about the city, as more than a combination of public space. A complicated organism with a main system connecting and maintaining the balance between the parts.

A combination of sub-economies related with the principal one, in a way that also the independent cities, spatially close to the big metropolis, are taking part of the larger planned system.

A no specified border which let develop in number and quality the relations between the different elements of the organism.

She described the biologic concept as an interesting case from where take inspiration for the big plans.

prof. Li Xiaodong Land - Island concept Sub-division of spaces ready to host an uncertain multitude of functions and activities.

16

Saskia Sassen is a Dutch-American sociologist noted for her analyses of globalization and international human migration.

She is Robert S. Lynd Professor of Sociology at Columbia University and Centennial visiting Professor at the London School of Economics. She coined the term global city.

What will cities be like in the future? Archdaily interview: “www.archdaily.com”

Secchi Gabriele

June 2014

9_24

Tsinghua University of Beijing

Actual Visions

Other futuristic design for the modern new city plan are about the same topic. From the Grapes Concept Idea in where the branch assume an idealistic connection, to the Connected Land-Island Idea as confined spaces where let grow the specific sub – economies, the modern conceptual theories focused on a combination of different parts connected with a general system.

Sub-division of spaces ready to host an uncertain multitude of functions and activities. A flexible and hopeful solution for the uncertain future development.

RETHINKING. Necessary questions for a challenging urban plan

A questioning about what and whit what are we dealing to today is absolutely necessary.

So, in parallel with the ancient approach problem-prevention, simple questions should be asked.

What to do when the problems which are supposed to be prevented are specifically new?

Not entirely tangible and visible? How is it possible in the nowadays role of the profession deal with a society which required more and more micro selected adaptable urban plans? A society in where the needs should be globally related but extremely regional, if not communal.

ANCIENT APPROACHES AND THE TODAYS HUMAN CHANGING

The visions of the city through all the epochs have always been seen as a static agglomerate of demands

and obligations: in particular, the inhabitant was considered as an almost unchangeable element in the city.

An element unable to alter the planned configuration of the city.

For example the Land of Use concept is still a proof of how intense is consider the subordination of the inhabitants to a pre-thought urban decision.

Secchi Gabriele

June 2014

10_24

Tsinghua University of Beijing

Ancient approaches

That was considered as true, and a bit it can be still considerable with the same characterisics.

But, what I’d like to give emphasis to is: how about the constant increasing human activity. The larger amount of the single relations. The indiscriminate levels of needs for each citizen. How manage the rethinking of the regionalization of architecture and urbanization in an era when a single person is living in more than two cities distance thousands of kilometers. How study a socio-friendly container for human relax / relations where the sociology of the place is given by the number of the routers allowing the connection to WI FI. Can the predetermined static subdivisions of the land still answer to the necessity of the nowadays and future environment. Are the plans really answering to the actual problems for both the developed and non countries, in an era of big global influences which is also shaping the needs of the single individual.

This is a pessimist scenario for the next decades; but still, these questions should be asked in any case.

The modern era, starting from the 90’s and keep exploding in an uncontrollable synapsis of relation, is deeply touching the base of the society: the human behavior. It’s not an aspect to be consider as a pre – consolidate when is time to conceptualize a plan.

The base of an urban design is the society: depending of the country, culture, costume, history… Well, a society with his own relation with the land, market, local identity…

The base of the society, more or a bit less complex, is the community: a regional one; the district one; the neighborhood, the family…: an agglomerate of inhabitants.

But what it’s incredibly moving the era of the globalization and opening is the brick of the community: the modern average citizen is changing his priorities and needs.

Secchi Gabriele

June 2014

11_24

Worldwide scenario

Tsinghua University of Beijing

WORLWIDE SCENARIO. Different situation under the same cover of the e-globalization

A brief summarization to understand the worldwide influence of the modern problematic is necessary.

Even the extremely localized urban reality is opening itself and touched by the global communication branches.

The thesis doesn’t want to seem a trivialization of the well-known actual situation. it want to be a reconsideration of the importance influences the fact can have.

Africa17, the “dark continent”, not only in the name, but also in the intricate local reality typical of each country.

An acute disparity between one Nation and its neighborhood. Different climate and historic background in where to face the new re-identification of the Continent.

But despite all these phenomena, the man of one nation can easily communicate and move a serious amount of data (economic, cultural, useful for the development,…) through the modern e-world behind the real one.

A serious aspect to re-consider when is time to plan the aim of a new big or small intervention.

Simple element for the urban plan must be reconsider in parallel with the local needs.

I’m thinking of how the important of the infrastructure as a mere connection is changing; how a micro-plan for a new district should take in consideration the modern and future needs of the individual under the global situation... .

17

Gaétan Siew, (1954). Siew graduated from the Unité Pédagogique d’Architecture, Marseilles, France in 1979. He has been in

private practice in Port Louis, Mauritius since 1981, as a founding partner of Lampotang & Siew Architects Ltd. source: ww.wikipedia.org

Secchi Gabriele

June 2014

12_24

Worldwide scenario

Tsinghua University of Beijing

Europe and its long past of static agglomeration of function and solution. A form of the city shaped by the long history of emperors, dictatorship, wars, and still evolving in the new Panorama with micro – intervention of protection and opening.

A great contrast between the morphology and the modern human activity.

A fluent movement of citizens moving inside a pre-ordinated scheme of functions and historic reality.

And all of this in an period when the brick of society is rapidly changing his perception of the reality, his dynamic understanding of the space inside the city.

A long tradition of old generations who never faced the actual problematic / advantage of the planet globalization.

Asian countries: an infinite diversification of reality and development.

The Mainland. The most critical and delicate country in where operate a re-equilibration of the big disparity.

Leaving aside the role of the cities in the dragging of the Nation, China is facing a modern multicolored reality of different society and culture. Not only culture in the regular definition of the term, but even mixed-new culture (especially the youths) really close with the e-space and careless to their spatial role in their cities.

Still a minority of people which aren’t distinguish the importance of the technology as a tool and not as a new e-public space in where ‘live’ for most of the time.

As an old historic crisis, the urban planner is nowadays calling to deal also with these aspects.

More or less obvious, the fact is touching different level of the classes and is rapidly increasing in quality and number.

Secchi Gabriele

June 2014

13_24

Different Meaning of Space

Tsinghua University of Beijing

Even the advanced countries as Hong Kong and Japan18. Theirs modern / futuristic design for intelligent cities, super-studied interventions to increase the exploitation of the land. But in parallel to this land of use and advances plans there are still social scale problems (the individualism of many, lost of identity, discrimination…).

The global aspect is really deeply touching the base of the society. The consequences of the fact are worldwide present and is truly important define, analyze and integrated the case in each discipline on every scale plan.

“SPACE”. A convoluted meaning in the technology era

When is time to set up a new generic place in the design of a contemporary area it is obvious the

different requirement and association (compared to the past) which consciously we give to the term “space” (not only the public one but in all the scale of its definition).

Never as today the discussion of the symbiotic demands (human – space) of a particular area is fundamental.

The modern meaning of the term space is changed.

In a general overview, the increasing specializations in profession (more related with the citizen) are discovering new effectiveness ways to associate the space with the man. The space is leaving his historic definition of a static character in favor of a dynamic idea behind it, which can modify also in volumes and areas the new urban plans.

Space is not anymore only a pawn to oriented a good plan: a static container of opportunity and a core of relations and economic affairs.The space is developing in importance and character: the ancient idea of space can became an old field in where operate if not “controlled” as a mutable blob in relation with the time and the different users.

18

Source: http://www.japansociety.org

Secchi Gabriele

June 2014

14_24

Different Meaning of Space

Tsinghua University of Beijing

The contemporary citizen is rethinking the importance of the land in relation with his demands. For example, the easy way to access to different and cheap form of e-entertainment or on-line working environment is deeply affecting the singular integration of the person in the city. The modern zooning of the land seems to don’t take serious the characteristic to host disparate and controversial classes.

It’s indeed in this period of changing that the city should go back to the interaction with the inhabitant: leave a bit behind the fundamental political and economic aspects and focus more in the man-metropolis relation, with the aim to reach a challenging future - flexible Urban plan.

A necessary understanding of what is happening is crucial for a challenging urban plan.

Big localized studies of how the contemporary era is affecting the human needs (primary and not) are crucial.

The investigation of how various culture answer to the globalization should be just the beginning for the definition of a well - integrated urban design.

A combination of new experts into the design of cities or part of them is unavoidable: the diversification of the professions involved into the urban planning is going to be the key for a competent urban design.

Secchi Gabriele

June 2014

15_24

Tsinghua University of Beijing

Related Citations

RELATED CITATION

On a larger systemic map about cities, I think that the desirable, optimistic format is multiple articulations of the territory—not one endless metropolitan zone. I think we will have understood that the vast metropolitan area does not work.19 S. Sassen

“Architecture has always represented the prototype of a work of art the reception of which is consumed by a collectivity in a state of distraction.”20

W. Benjamin

We also have a cultural phenomenon: the emergence of a global culture, or of cultural globalization.

Peter Ludwig Berger

19

What will cities be like in the future?

Source: archdaily interview “www.archdaily.com” 20

S. Amourgis, Critical Regionalism: The Pomona Meeting –Proceedings, College of Environmental Design, California State

Polytechnic University, Pomona, California, U.S.A., 1991

Secchi Gabriele

June 2014

16_24

Tsinghua University of Beijing

Bibliography

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Saskia Sassen, Losing Control? Sovereignty in an age of globalization, Columbia University Press, New

York Chichester, West Sussex, 1996.

Giò Ponti, In Praise of Architecture, translation by Dodge Corporation, New York, 1960

K. Frampton, “Towards a Critical Regionalism: Six Points for an architecture of Resistance”, in The Anti-

Aesthetic: Essays on Postmodern Culture, By Hal Foster, Seattle, Washington, Bay Press., 8th October 1979

S. Amourgis, Critical Regionalism: The Pomona Meeting –Proceedings, College of Environmental Design,

California State Polytechnic University, Pomona, California, U.S.A., 1991

Zhang Bo, En Jingxuan, Luo Zhongzhao, Comparison Of Chinese And Western Architecture, China

Intercontinental Press, 2008

L. Lefaivre & A. Tzonis, Architecture of Regionalism in the age of Globalization: Peaks and Valleys in The

Flat World, Routledge, , Abingdon, Oxon, 2012

Marco Casamonti, Sentimental education: a dialogue among Marco Casamonti, Pier Paolo Tamburelli and

Cino Zucchi, Milan, 2012

Secchi Gabriele

June 2014