The City of Morphologies

The City of Morphologies Alessandro Magliani 2015

INTRODUCTION Thematic Berlin is an absurd vision of a disciplinary city in which the main driving forces are morphological associations rather than social or political interests.

The forms of this city are centred around several oppositions traditionally related to disciplinary debates.

These are for example oppositions of hierarchical orders vs. pervasive and fluid systems, architectural elements vs. figure-ground, or the specificity of architecture vs. the abstraction of diagrams.

The project is an attempt to critically rediscover the morphological approach in Berlin and contextualise it to the current architectural debate as a possible alternative to the sprawl of digital technologies.

Its aim is to delineate a loop between the real city and its disciplinary counterpart through which an exchange of information between the two is possible.

This loop is based upon analogical and often idiosyncratic processes that start with a thematic analysis of the city’s morphologies.

The interest in the possible thematisation of architecture is mainly derived from a study of Unger’s written and built works.

According to Ungers an architecture project, rather than having the requirements of a potential user as a starting point, should always derive from a concept or idea that he identifies with a theme.

This approach is derived from an interest in freeing architecture from any kind of functionalism on one hand and from an excessive stylism on the other.

The research compliled in this book takes some of the themes developed by Ungers as a starting point to understand the validity of his approach in the context of the contemporary city.

1

THE DOLL WITHIN THE DOLL

Ungers uses the concept of nesting as an analytical operation to read the city in terms of layers of containment.

The city is read as a sequence of spaces that contain each other, starting from the land as a container of urban fabric, moving to different neighbourhoods of the city to blocks, buildings and finally courtyards and rooms.

The theme is extracted from a reading of the city, but is used by the architect at different scales.

An example of the theme of the doll at the scale of a single building is the Architecture Museum of Frankfurt.

Since the theme of the doll was originally extracted from a reading of the city as a whole, these diagrams explore the possibility of applying this theme to the city of Berlin at different stages of its development.

Berlin 1945: The physical destruction of large portions of the city exposes interior spaces to the urban environment , breaking the doll at the scale of single buildings and blocks.

Berlin 1980: The presence of the wall that defines two distinct areas of the city

Berlin Doll - 2000s

Berlin Today: The city is not reductible to the scheme of the doll for its polycentric nature. This starts to suggest a reading that opposes shifting cores to the centralised model of the doll.

2

THE CITY AS A SWAMP

The shifting nature of Berlin suggests that there might be some other readings, which are more fit to the reality of its urban context. One of these is the reading of Berlin as a Swamp.

This reading is developed in the next few pages in the form of an architectural provocation.

This is a deliberate exercise in ‘paper architecture’made to exaggerate certain conditions found within the city.

The swamp, being a symbol of something neither solid nor liquid and very unstable by nature, is used as a tool to emphasise the presence of a pervasive and unordered reality to the city.

This lies in direct contrast with any reading, such as the doll within the doll, which sees the city crystallised into a definite form.

The swamp is able to dissolve the city’s geographical boundaries across different scales and emphasise the importance of a fragmented reading over an unitary one. Its power acts simultaneously to the urban scale, as well as at the scale of a block and a single building.

3

THE

BLOCK

Having experimented with the application of themes at an urban scale, the focus of the thematic research is now brought to an analysis of urban blocks.

Theme of Interrupted Containment Block Analysis

To better understand the possibility of using real urban conditions as a basis to extract themes I started analysing the spatial aspects of some IBA blocks in Kreuzberg.

In the first one the main aspect I looked at is the various interruptions of the block perimeter operated by volumes and surfaces.

The second block presents several variations of the same form, a shallow arch, that is repeated and altered morphologically to fit different functions.

Instances from the real city are used to create fictional blocks more specifically responsive to a single theme.

This block is again focused on perimetral interruptions.

A block about over-containment.

4

THE FICTIONAL CITY

Using instances from the real city to create fictional formal compositions becomes the main methodology for a provocation that takes the shape of a morphological survey of Berlin.

A hundred urban conditions are selected from the city according to their formal peculiarities, then organised into a matrix of 10x10. The matrix is the first step of a gradual abstraction process of real urban conditions.

In a second moment the matrix is translated into a series of diagrams that represent one very basic and simplified principle that drives the urban morphology.

Once this stage of diagrammatic abstraction is reached, the diagrams are again translated into space. However, this time the space is a reflection of a much more simplified principle that discards architectural detail, materiality and program.

This is why the spaces created can be more properly defined as formalised diagrams, which do not really serve a function, but are rather a simplified representation of the city.

These spaces are composed using a very specific architectural grammar, which is as simplified as the diagrams themselves.

The result product of this process of abstraction is a condensed matrix-city of idealised forms, which represent a stylised and immaculate version of Berlin.

7. TESTING PLATFORM

6. THEMATIC ARCHIVE

SAMPLE SORTING

5. BLOCK SORTING

4. BLOCK MATRIX

SAMPLE ANALYSIS AND TRANSLATION

3. DIAGRAM MATRIX

2. SAMPLE MATRIX

1. CITY SAMPLING

U N B U I LT PROJECTS A N A LY S I S

1

2

3

Disciplinary Loop Real urban conditions are selected and reconfigured into a matrix (1).

The matrix is then translated into a series of simplified diagrams, which reflect a single driving force extracted from the sample(2).

The diagrams are then spatialised into a series of spaces(3), that collectively form a stylised and idealised version of the city (next page).

5 6

THE THEMATIC BLOCKS

A fictional block attacked by three themes derived from the morphological analysis of Berlin

Theme of Continuous Interruption The theme of Continuous Interruption regards mainly a specific formal aspect found in the city of Berlin. In the city’s history of urban development a tendency of filling every block to its very edge or perimeter can be noticed. Most of the city’s blocks are characterised by a flat series of facades running parallel to the street grid. These flat vertical surfaces represent a clear boundary between the public space of the street and the semi-enclosed space of internal courtyards.

The theme of Interrupted Containment is based around a few cases in which this basic distinction is no longer applicable. To understand the meaning of this theme it is essential to consider the factor of time and also the aspects of discontinuity and contradiction that all together affect the appearance of architecture within the city.

In a city like Berlin, where major political shifts and conflicts effectively changed its image and form more than once, this theme becomes essential in the development of contextual projects.

Through processes of destruction and renovation many blocks started presenting openings and interruptions of the continuous flat facades. This often led to additions that no longer emphasise the strict division of public street vs. private courtyards that once characterised the shape of the city.

Many perimeter blocks are now interrupted at various points allowing the public to experience and explore a once hidden dimension of the urban environment.

The nature of these interrupting elements varies greatly throughout the different neighbourhoods of the city. In many cases the interruption is represented by a very clear void between buildings, further emphasised by the element of fire walls, which directly show an abrupt “cut” through the perimeter of the block.

In some other cases the interruption is more subtle because its filled in with specific elements. These elements can be divided into surfaces and volumes: In the first case the interruption is filled by a vertical or horizontal surface, for example a wall or a series of billboards, or even a football pitch. These elements are clearly distinguishable from the interrupted block as they are flat and don’t carry any sort of permanent architectural infill within them.

When the interrupting elements are volumes rather than surfaces, a further distinction needs to be considered: this is between filled, programmatic, and circulatory volumes.

Filled volumes are generally smaller than the other types and are often integrated within a project as parts of a design, usually columns or structural elements. An example of this is the imposing round column used by Aldo Rossi in his design for a block on Kochstrasse, which cuts away a corner of the building.

Programmatic volumes are by far the most common elements of interruption found within the city. These are often self contained buildings added in later times, that are more or less detached from the continuous development of the host block. The emphasis is here on the fact that these volumes are self contained and don’t physically connect to the sides of the block that they cut.

The third type of volume indicated, the circulatory one, is less diffused than the other two, but nevertheless represents an interesting condition to analyse.

This is the case where the interrupting component is represented by a formalised vector, or an architectural element of circulation, either vertical or horizontal.

The most striking example for this type of interruption is a number of blocks in the city which are crossed by the railway tracks of the S-Bahn. A horizontal vector and its baggage of infrastructure is in this case a very evident sign of an abrupt cut through the fabric of the city.

Theme of Subtle Remix The theme of the Remix in architecture is derived primarily from an analogy with the world of music. In this field a remix is essentially a compositional technique that involves the use and combination of sampled parts in order to create a whole. This is often utilised to relate and almost reconcile pre-existing pieces which are sometimes radically different. This has often led to debate over originality and copyright issues, which initially undermined its position as a legitimate form of artistic expression.

However, In recent years the sudden sprawl of digital production media has radicalised a trend of considering the remix as a piece of work independent from its original sources.

Most importantly, this tendency is not constrained within the field of music, but it is rather starting to influence other disciplines and fields.

Remix has changed how we look at the production of material in terms of combinations. This is what enables remix to become more of an aesthetic, a discourse that can move through any cultural area and inform it in different ways.

If remix is an aesthetic that can overcome the boundaries of its musical origins, there is no reason, then, that it should not be an influence on the field of architecture as a form of artistic production. Since architecture often aspires to embody certain predominant values of society, the necessity of an architecture of the remix is starting to become increasingly evident in recent years.

The theme of remix is directly observable in many examples both as a theoretical and analytical construct and as a tool for the direct design of buildings.

On the theoretical side, instances of what can be considered as a remix in architecture can found in the writings of Colin Rowe and Robert Venturi.

Rowe suggests the idea of an architecture of the fragment or sample with the term Collage, explained by the author as an analogical tool to describe the heterogeneous conditions of our cities.

The term, however, is mainly utilised in a retrospective way, to analyse the conditions of cities through an observation of what is already there. This highlights the main limitation of the concept of collage as elaborated by Rowe, which is its excessive attachment to an existing situation as a field of study and research. Rowe is almost suggesting that his collage is limited to a reading of the city and does not illustrate a possible application to the active design of an architectural project.

While Rowe’s Collage is mainly applied to the larger urban context, Robert Venturi reduces the scale of investigation to single buildings with his concept of juxtaposed contradiction. Venturi’s concept of superadjacency, elaborated in his book “Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture”, can be seen as a variation on the idea of collage that acts on a smaller and more architectural scale.

The author defines it as an inclusive way of reading architecture, that is able to correlate and reconcile disparate spatial elements that occur in a single composition.

However, like Rowe, Venturi uses this concept mainly as a descriptive tool to analyse past architectures and cases of historical accumulation rather than as a design method.

The thematisation of the concept of a remix implies a more active way of using this technique: What is important in defining a way or a method of using remix as a tool for the design of buildings is to focus on the overall composition as much as on the single components or fragments. The latter can be sampled from other architectural projects and instances, but cannot be represented in the same way as in the reference project. There must be some kind of filtering added onto it, so that the sampled element won’t be completely clashing with the overall appearance of a project.

At the same time the layout of the overall composition should always be a concern, because using samples can lead to a project with no specific rhythm or intensity. Remix in architecture should ultimately try to reach the same degree of refinement that it achieved in the musical field.

Theme of Conflicting Juxtapositions The Theme of Conflicting Juxtapositions regards primarily the concept of a gradient or sequence that involves two disparate architectural elements, which engage in a formal play with each other.

This dialogue between elements is mainly derived from the coexistence of very disparate architectural conditions within the city. When two different elements are juxtaposed onto one another there will always be a struggle between them, which would often result in the dissolution of one into the other or in a mutual absorption.

Instances that suggest this theme are observable in several cases throughout the city of Berlin, especially when the two elements involved are a flat wall and an articulation that is juxtaposed onto it.

Since this theme involves the notion of a sequence, it is opportune to define certain recurring stages that are useful to understand this kind of silent fictional battle: In a first moment two elements are clearly distinguishable from a morphological point of view, since often one is a flat vertical surface – a fire wall, for example – and the other a three dimensional composition or infrastructure.

In a second moment, one of the two elements starts to assert itself as the predominant part by an increase of scale or a slight movement against the other part. In most cases the dominating element is the wall, which often starts slowly absorbing the juxtaposed element with its volume, affecting the overall legibility of the juxtaposition. In a third phase the coexistence of the two parts start to become more and more illegible, as one of them gets morphologically dissolved into the other.

In this final moment often the juxtaposition is only readable in terms of surface and no longer as an opposition of volumes.

There are instances where a fire wall would completely absorb a juxtaposition, so that the latter element would only be readable as a slight change in the texture or the pattern of the wall that absorbed it.

There can be, however, cases where the result of this conflict would bring to an imposition of the juxtaposed element. The way in which an articulation would take over the imposing mass of a wall is through a repetition of some of its parts, that will eventually expand the area occupied by it and completely surround the wall or volume, affecting its overall legibility.

It is opportune to place the theme of conflicting juxtapositions on a slightly different position compared to the other themes previously explained.

Rather than just deriving from a direct observation of existing conditions within the city, this theme takes some of these conditions and tries to combine them into a fictional sequence.

This means that the three phases explained in the previous paragraphs are not observable on the same architectural instance, but are rather a combination of different situations found within the urban environment that get connected into an imaginary progression.

It is also interesting to note that the conflict between the elements of the wall and the juxtaposition doesn’t merely refer to these singular battles or conflicts seen in different conditions; its meaning can be applied to a broader discourse which involves the notions of figure ground and architectural ground.

Since the element of the wall is usually observed and analysed as an ultimately uniform and encompassing volume, it could be compared to the idea of space represented as a figure-ground diagram. On the other hand, the juxtapositions are rarely made up of a single monolithic volume, but are rather compositions or combinations of smaller parts that make up a whole.

This aspect places these articulations much closer to more detailed representations of architectural space rather than the blunt distinction between solid and void of the figure-ground diagram.

This parallel between singular battles and the broader discourse of architectural representations emphasises the potential applicability of this theme to different architectural scales.

A single conflict between a fire wall and a juxtaposed staircase could then carry a hint of a bigger battle happening at the larger scale of the city: this is the opposition of urban space, represented through figure-ground and generally determined by external constraints, and architectural space, defined by its internal logic and by the disposition of its composing elements.

5 7

THE THEMATIC CITY

The elaborated themes with their baggage of formal block variations, together with the more or less spatial diagrams of the previous provocation end up becoming the built matter of thematic Berlin.

The themes and diagrams are collapsed into a single architectural representation where most of the issues addressed throughout the project actively interact with each other.

This is a representation of a city with an identity crisis.

Berlin has realised that no reading of it by any architectural theorist is able to really capture its essence and true identity.

The series of readings or ‘masks’ that architects used to describe and understand it cannot be representative of a city in a constant state of change and are worn by Berlin in an uncomfortable way.

The discomfort brought by these incomplete visions of the city is not accepted by Berlin in a passive way.

The city has realised that the only way of discovering its identity, is to accept the fact that it does not have one. Rather, it is composed by an infinite series of visions that do not necessarily complete or interact with each other.