AlessAndro MArtinelli
2007 / 2009 BerlAge institute Portfolio
Contents prologue p.7
0.1 Masterclass, 10-14 dec. 2007 Living High, the Future of the skyscraper tutor inaki Abalos
research
11
25
47
59
69
1.1 studio research, Winter term 2007/2008 the Bid, the olympic City tutor Winy Maas 1.2 studio research, spring term 2008 Rethinking the All-Inclusive, new tourism Resort Developments tutor olaf gipser, saffet Berkiroglou 1.3 Projective theory, spring term 2008 nL Platitudes tutor thomas A.P. leeuwen, roemer van toorn 1.4 Masterclass, 1-5 dec. 2008 the Politics of the envelope tutor Alejandro Zaera-Polo 1.5 studio research, Winter+spring term 2008/2009 Associative Design, Urbanism in the Age of Biopolitics tutor Peter trummer
epilogue 93 99
2.1 6-11 Jul. 2009 notes for an After-thought
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Addenda
5
0.1 prologue
Living HigH the future of the skyscraper
10-14 dec. 2007 tutor inaki Abalos
7
1.
an archipelago of skyscrapers scenario
When it is successful, urban design is praised for its problem-solving skills. Urban design does not differ from architecture in this capacity. If there is a spatial problem, then a professional process will lead to a solution. It is obvious that the professional merits of a discipline can be measured to a large extent by using the degree of its problem solving skills. In the discipline of architecture, Vitruvius’ utilitas has acquired canonical status. And something that present itself as a solution is usable. In the modern urban design process, the professionalism of the architect and the urban designer is used in a very reduced manner. It acts as a lubricant for a different process in which large yet very specific economic interest determine the direction. One finally could say that finally urban design is dissolved in the process.* A question emerges: is there any specific usefulness in urban design that can transcend economical interest? Skyscrapers, the obsessive iteration of ground floors according financial agencies health, have been produced by the urban design dissolving. Despite this, towers as free-standing vertical objects contain the specific architectural capacity to organize space as soon as they are placed in a coherent system. Profiting from the reduced footprint and avoiding tabula rasa intervention, a skyscrapers urban intervention can be understood as a possible archipelago of vertical elements that spring from strategic voids...
* K. Geers, OverHolland 7 - 5x5 Projects for the Dutch City, 2008
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2008, rotterdam - netherlands an urban environment re-written by an acupuncture strategy of towers displacement
1.1 research
THe BiD the olympic city
Winter term 2007 / 2008 tutor Winy Maas
11
0.
the olympic bid projective framework
The Olympics don’t necessarily have to be negative for the city: nowadays all the economical questions in the Olympics revolve around broadcasting, therefore there are many possibilities in consequence of this exposure, new possible synergies are uncovered. Furthermore, in the Barcelona ‘92 case, it was the first time in 50 years that the local, regional and national authorities sat at the same table. Only 11% of the budget went into Olympic facilities. 65% was for infrastructure, 26% for underground projects. Without this kind of event, it is very difficult to create the right condition for urban projects. The question is: urban transformations should be consequences of what? Of one new masterplan designed by I don’t know who? Of one policy of one mayor that might or might not agree with the national government? It’s necessary to organize an umbrella that brings all the agendas together and makes the project understandable. In Barcelona ‘92, we had a project and we called it Olympics.* The Olympic Project is a “space” that brings together different territorial and often controversial entities with a productive intention, in order to capitalize large amount of money and convert them in urban changes, finally positive or negative depending the quality of the project. Despite this, the Olympic Committee is by itself an entity, an other kind of United Nations, with its own agenda hidden behind the curtain of a political process neutrally called the Olympic Bid. And ultimately it is this international exposure that uncovers new economical and geopolitical relations able to foster the “after-games” development of the Olympic City. In this political battlefield, the success of an Olympic City candidature lays in its ability to broadcast local interests worldwide or relate a global urgency to local solutions: finally an Olympic City Project must be a scenario able, with “local materials”, to architecturally ground international “olympic” politics within actual world urgency... * J. Acebillo, The BID interview @ Berlage, 2008
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The Games are such a big event that they are not affordable anymore. The Games are such a big event that they are not affordable anymore.
the bid™ 2020
olympic olympic trends trends the bid™ 2020
world international tourism
world international tourism
The Games are so commercial that athletes don't belong to brands. The Games are so commercial that athletes don't belong to brands. The Games are so elitist that only few people are able to afford a ticket. The Games are so elitist that only few people are able to afford a ticket. Nobody practices sport anymore. Nobody practices sport anymore.
olympic events
olympic events
world population
olympic sports world population olympic visitors
The Games have an unbearable ecological price. The Games have an unbearable ecological price. The Games are a reality show. The Games are a reality show.
wars
olympic sports
olympic visitors wars olympic athletes
olympic athletes
The Games popularity has decreased to 10% of its 2008 value. The Games popularity has decreased to 10% of its 2008 value.
world democracy index
world democracy index
world urban population
world urban population
The human body is not enough, sport is going beyond. The human body is not enough, sport is going beyond. Sport is the only collective ritual. Sport is the only collective ritual. The Games are too big for any city to host. The Games are too big for any city to host.
2020 2020
2012 London 2012 London
2008 Bejing 2008 Bejing
2004 Athens 2004 Athens
2000 Sydney 2000 Sydney
1996 Atlanta 1996 Atlanta
1992 Barcelona 1992 Barcelona
1988 Seoul 1988 Seoul
1984 Los 1984 Angeles Los Angeles
1980 Moscow 1980 Moscow
1976 Montreal 1976 Montreal
1972 Munich 1972 Munich
1968 Mexico 1968 Mexico City City
1964 Tokyo 1964 Tokyo
1960 Rome 1960 Rome
1956 Melbourne 1956 Melbourne
1952 Helsinki 1952 Helsinki
1948 London 1948 London
1944 1944
1940 1940
1936 Berlin 1936 Berlin
1932 Los 1932 Angeles Los Angeles
1928 Amsterdam 1928 Amsterdam
1924 Paris 1924 Paris
1920 Antwerp 1920 Antwerp
1916 1916
1912 Stockholm 1912 Stockholm
1908 London 1908 London
1904 St. 1904 Louis St. Louis
1900 Paris 1900 Paris
1896 Athens 1896 Athens
No Global opposition threatens the Games. No Global opposition threatens the Games.
The consumption era is over. The consumption era is over.
the bid™ 2020
world world trends trends the bid™ 2020
international tourism arrival
international tourism arrival
Cities are about to lose the battle against sprawl. Cities are about to lose the battle against sprawl. Randstadt is the only city in NL. Randstadt is the only city in NL.
productivity
productivity
The city is trapped in security devices. The city is trapped in security devices. All non-renewable energies resources are exhausted. All non-renewable energies resources are exhausted.
world population
desertification
The city is just a place for consumption. The city is just a place for consumption.
world population
pasture land need desertification
energy consumption pasture land need
energy consumption
total migrants
temperature rise
european flood disaster total migrants urban population temperature rise
NL have to double active population in order to counteract demographic trends. NL have to double active population in order to counteract demographic trends. Sea is menacing 2/3 of NL. Sea is menacing 2/3 of NL.
european flood disaster
urban population concentration of CO2 fertility rate built-up area
oil consumption average travel distance concentration of CO2 fertility land rate need arable built-up area
oil consumption average travel distance arable land need
average travel time
average travel time
2020 2020
2012 London 2012 London
2008 Bejing 2008 Bejing
2004 Athens 2004 Athens
1996 Atlanta 1996 Atlanta
2000 Sydney 2000 Sydney
1992 Barcelona 1992 Barcelona
1984 Los 1984 Angeles Los Angeles
1988 Seoul 1988 Seoul
1980 Moscow 1980 Moscow
1972 Munich 1972 Munich
1976 Montreal 1976 Montreal
1968 Mexico 1968 Mexico City City
1960 Rome 1960 Rome
1964 Tokyo 1964 Tokyo
1956 Melbourne 1956 Melbourne
1952 Helsinki 1952 Helsinki
1948 London 1948 London
1944 1944
1940 1940
1936 Berlin 1936 Berlin
1932 Los 1932 Angeles Los Angeles
1928 Amsterdam 1928 Amsterdam
1924 Paris 1924 Paris
1920 Antwerp 1920 Antwerp
1916 1916
1912 Stockholm 1912 Stockholm
1908 London 1908 London
1904 St. 1904 Louis St. Louis
1900 Paris 1900 Paris
1896 Athens 1896 Athens
2020, trends in front of the netherlands olympic Committee international “olympic” urgency vs. world urgency
Artificial is the new Natural. Artificial is the new Natural. Middle class is dead. Middle class is dead. Freshwater is lacking. Freshwater is lacking.
1.
an olympic dyke scenario
It’s 2028. 7 years passed since the last time it snowed in the Netherlands. The temperature increased a couple of degrees and people spend more time outside. Nevertheless, sea level is raising slowly and bigger variations in its level are appearing because of the increase of the seasonal ice in the polar caps. Sea and salt water are expanding relentlessly through a continuous and broader variation among winter levels and summer levels. In the meanwhile a progressive heating of air temperature is increasing the effect of evaporation through which subsidence of Dutch territory is speeding up. Dutch soil will then sink at least 1m in 100 years. Many countries in the world have to deal with massive flood problems and consequent mass migrations. Thunderstorms are flushing European cities during winter and are raising water level of the rivers suddenly. This progressive seasonal behavior of the rivers makes waterways impracticable during summer and adds new significance to sea ports as unique interchange between water and dry land. As the Dutch nation is still surviving, water management and control is becoming more and more important in economical terms in the annual balance sheet. Maintenance of dykes, bigger and bigger in their physical size, is forcing public administration to find new strategies and new meanings in order to rethink the cost-benefit relationship. A lot of people are moving away from the Randstadt because the increased land insecurity is leading to a stall situation in the economic growth of the most productive region of the Netherlands. The double-edged link between ports and their surrounding regions is also menacing the future development of ports as government corporations. In the meanwhile of this global shipwreck, the Olympics are less and less interesting and heroic. The IOC is collapsing because of the lack of engagement of the last consumerist and branded pax olimpica. Is a new pact with the sea and the natural elements required to save the Olympic Games from their fatal consumption?
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The Berlage Institute Portfolio : Alessandro Martinelli 2007/2009
2008, Mumbai - india urban floods and mass migrations
2.
an olympic dyke localization
If Netherlands will have to make more frequent concessions and will have to relinquish space to water, and not win space from it *, the Olympic Bid process will be a road map to understand what to preserve in the new “post� Netherlands organization. If new heroes are required, will the dykes be opened during the Olympics opening ceremony or will the fear for the sea to come be enough? * J.M. de Vries (Vice Minister of Dutch Transport, Public Works and Water Management), A different approach to Water, 2007
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2028, rotterdam - netherlands an olympic dyke deployed around rotterdam preserves it from the sea re-conquest of the dutch territories
3.
an olympic dyke plan
Is it possible to provide the necessary sport field to the Olympic event just moving soil? It would be needed just to sink the ground in correspondence with the venues’ void, like in an ancient Olympic Panathinaiko Stadium replica... Is it possible to morph a dutch engineeristic masterpiece like the dyke into a sportive boulevard that is able to evoke a new dutch “flatness”?
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The Berlage Institute Portfolio : Alessandro Martinelli 2007/2009
2028, rotterdam - netherlands an olympic dyke plan is a performative juxtaposition of sport venues according their regulamentary height
4.
an olympic dyke atmosphere
The innovative and intellectually questioning landscape of the Polders had a profound and lasting impact on land reclamation projects in Europe and beyond. If the creation of historical Polders have marked a major step forward in the inter-relationship between humankind and water at a crucial period of social and economic expansion, building an Olympic dyke will stand as a typical but new Dutch anti-flood proposal. This unique, heroic challenge could catalyze the Olympic budget and give back a stunning show for the entire world.
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2028, rotterdam - netherlands an olympic dyke edge is a perfect marathon catwalk
5.
an olympic dyke geopolitics
Between 1975 and 2000, over 170 thousand people were killed by floods. Flooding kills people in every region of the world. The count of flood deaths is highest in South America, Southern Asia and Eastern Asia. Central Africa, Japan and Western Europe each account for less that 0.6% of flood deaths. Venezuela is the territory with the most flood deaths per million people per year, when calculated over a 26 year period. However, 99% of these deaths in Venezuela occurred in 1999. This was also the year when the most flood deaths worldwide occurred. * Kevin Kostner’s Waterworld will not be our future but, looking to the amount of people killed by floods and natural disaster outside Europe, we cannot deny the need of a serious reflection on the way we urbanize the border among water and land, a place where some of the most urbanized areas in the world sit. The Netherlands, despite their absence from the top-10 ranks of nations with flood accidents, are one of the few countries in the world with a secular history of water paranoia instrumentalization: in the light of this, if the dutch design and production of their territorial system cannot be detached from the biopoliticization of the water-land border ecology, the World has really something to learn from an Olympics based on the real dutch expertise.
* UN reports + Worldmapper, 2008
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Top 10 people killed by floods Top 10 people killed by floods Top 10 people killed by floods Top 10 people killed by floods Top 10 people killed by floods UN report, 5th place UN report, 10th place UN report, 9th place UN report, 7th place UN report, 2nd place 3.38 people x million killed by flood (1975-2000)
el salvador
3.76 people x million killed by flood (1975-2000)
Honduras
5.11 people x million killed by flood (1975-2000)
Puerto Rico
15.10 people x million killed by flood (1975-2000)
8.90 people x million killed by flood (1975-2000)
tajikistan
Afghanistan
venezuela -
Djibouti -
somalia -
nepal -
Bhutan -
46.14 people x million killed by flood (1975-2000)
9.89 people x million killed by flood (1975-2000)
10.02 people x million killed by flood (1975-2000)
6.75 people x million killed by flood (1975-2000)
3.88 people x million killed by flood (1975-2000)
Top 10 people killed by floods Top 10 people killed by floods Top 10 people killed by floods Top 10 people killed by floods Top 10 people killed by floods UN report, 1st place UN report, 4th place UN report, 3rd place UN report, 6th place UN report, 8th place
2008, World according the amount of people killed by flood the urgency of a flood olympics broadcasts another world geography
1.2 research
ReTHinking THe ALL-incLusive new tourism resort developments
spring term 2008 tutor olaf gipser, saffet Berkiroglou
25
0.
the all-inclusive destination projective framework
In the mid 19th century a new world was created by the British Empire with the “closure” of the Globe perimeter within one nationality, a condition suddenly exploited by Thomas Cook with the organization of the first tour around the world and, this way, with the invention of modern tourism. Rephrasing it, the erasure of the unknown world, the not urbanized one, and the possibility to exit into it led to the synthetic construction of the experience of escape and the concept of destination. One century later the idea of tourism destination was re-invented again extracting it form the market experience: the ClubMed and the All-Inclusive were born with the motto “you pay once and all meals and drinks you can consume are included”. Within ClubMed genealogy two experiences that can be defined as the first appearances of contemporary tourism resorts are noticeable. The explicit intention of this two, Prora Nazi’s Resort and Butlin’s Holiday Camp, was to construct and instrumentalize a localized narrative based on the pure idea of destination, with its paradoxical but necessary double connotation of distance and centrality. If the Prora Project intended to stage the labour bureaucracy needed to construct a monumental destination for an entire society (in order to construct the same society), on the other hand Butlin’s Project intended to build a stage around a tourism-society, transforming the tourism destination into an essential social scaena for otherwise labour-er without qualities. ClubMed finally took to the last stage these experiences. Its founder, the olympic athlete Gerard Blitz, with his Olympic Village experience, finalized the concept of an absolute destination: a society of Gentle Operators, not labour-er and not tourist, was included within the resort boundaries, explicitly clarifying to the tourist their impossibility to actually reach the condition of eternal tourists. Otherwise they’ll be Gentle Operators... Today, if glocalization has reduced absolute destination to a relative concepts with specific politics, the project of the all-inclusive destination is a vector that organizes by the political dualism inclusivity/exclusivity the generic-ness of the human-urban condition...
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Club Med nc l-i al
1955 Club Med 2 month travel package
s lu e iv
1952 Vladimir Raitz charter flight to Mallorca
1950 Gerard Blitz Club Med in Mallorca
1949 Gerard Blitz @ Olympic Camp Corsica
hi y fa
n
ed at
ai tr 1934 Robert Ley Strenght from Joy
1933 Adolf Hitler Reichskanzler
1936 Gerard Blitz @ Berlin Olympics
1934 Albert Speer The Theory of Ruins
OLYMPICS
1948 British Olympic team @ Butlin’s Skegness
ui cr se
1955 Butlins LTD Metropole Hotel in Blackpool
1’ RESORTS
1936 Billy Butlin Skegness summer camp
1936 Billy Butlin LTD public shares
1879 Blackpool, UK electric public lighting
ec ity
ic tr
Skegness
el
1972 Butlins LTD one million bookings
1875 Earl of Scarborough Skegness as Resort 1867 Scarborough, UK Grand Hotel
1808 Thomas Cook born in Melbourne, UK
1911 Billy Butlin @ children camp, Canada
1881 South Orleans, Canada children summer camp
1841 Thomas Cook package tour
n tr ai
ir
fa
1905 Billy Butlin travelling to fairs
1841 Scarborough, UK Train
1851 Thomas Cook World Fair trip
1819 Blackpool, UK holidays cottages
us
em
en t
n
1845 Scarborough, UK fisrt hotel concept
ld or w
1902 Coney Island, US Luna park
tr ai
1846 Thomas Cook @ Blackpool by train
su
m
l te
m
ho
1904 Coney Island, US Dreamland
fo o
1860’s Blackpool, UK organized holidays 1978 Grand Hotel, Scarborough purchased by Butlin
d
er ca
m
p
1927 Billy Butlin amusement park
an gr
1921 Billy Butlin hoopla stalls
co nt ro l
ir
fa
1936 Strenght from Joy Prora Resort
1896 Blackpool, UK Pleasure Beach amusement park
n
ld or w
Prora
1938 Billy Butlin Clacton resort (2.000 pp)
d
1912 Gerard Bliz born in Antwerp, BL
1934 Strenght from Joy cruise ship
1937 Strenght from Joy @ Paris World Exhibition
Vladimir Raitz 1922 Vladimir Raitz born in Soviet Union
tr ai
l ro nt co
ic br
d 1836 Charles Fourier Phalanstere
1949 Vladimir Raitz charter flight to Corsica
or st
o fo
1925 Adolf Hitler Mein Kampf
Scarborough
1927 Thomas Cook LTD tour by air
Coney island n ai tr
1865 Coney Island, US Train
e
1873 Jules Verne Around the world in 80 days
sp ac e
1250 Scarborough, UK Trade Fair
tim =
ir
1872 Thomas Cook tour around the world
fa
ct ric ity
ity ric
el e
Blackpool 1626 Scarborough, UK Spa Tourism
t ec
1890 Coney Island, US Electric Bathing
1882 Kimberley, South Africa electric light system
w or ld
am
Billy Butlin 1899 Billy Butlin born in South Africa
el
1897 Coney Island, US Steeplechase park
1950, ClubMed genealogy all-inclusive is the ultimate product of modernity
Thomas Cook
1780 Blackpool, UK health resort city
1.
the ultimate wellness resort scenario
Damage, also known as Fatale, is a film directed by Louis Malle in 1992. It is based on the homonym novel written by Josephine Hart and published in 1991. The narrator of the novel is an unnamed medical doctor turned politician whose promotion from member of the Parliament to Cabinet member is imminent. Just then the member of the parliament is casually introduced to his grown-up son’s Martyn enigmatic girlfriend Anna and helplessly falls in love for her. The member of the Parliament enjoys a brief period of sexual bliss meeting with Anna in various European cities, having sex with her in unlikely places. Unfortunately the relationship is tragically uncovered by the son that accidentally dies. In the final scene the member of the parliament, stripped of his political office and retired abroad as a recluse, stares at two oversized photographs of Anna and Martyn on the wall of a solitary room. Accepting this plot as possible - in the moment when two biological generations both belong to the working class and both declare themselves owner of biological youth, competing for the same partners - our society is clearly growing old. From this perspective new related health priorities will shape the general market in the future: rheumatoid arthritis, cardiovascular disease, etc... will become important and leading factor of our expenditures. In this context, as younghood experience will become less and less relevant if compared to the amount of years we will experience aged, a continuous attention to retirement and wellness will become more and more important as a social parameter.
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1991, damage an aging society with its un-usual relationships uncovers a new understanding of the body
2.
the ultimate wellness resort techniques
Vacationing can be understood in essence as the experience of acclimatization, an act of training or, better, a ritual of wellness: actually we lose any interest in our vacations as soon as we are acclimatized to the new situation... Acclimatization mainly is the adaptation of our circadian rhythm, the rhythm that allows the organism to anticipate and to prepare for precise and regular environmental changes. In a strict sense, circadian rhythms are endogenously generated, although they are modulated by external cues, called Zeitgerbers, like daylight, temperature, social interactions and eating-drinking patterns. The main regulation operated by our receptors finally acts upon sleeping activity through the release of “stress hormones� and, as by-product of these hormones, by the release of endorphins which produce the actual sensation of wellness. Paradoxically stress can be a voluntary self-induced condition, aiming to the release of wellness experience according to the alteration, voluntary or not, of the Zeitgerbers. The main Zeitgerber is the electromagnetic radiation in the way our receptors interpret it through environmental light and heat reading. Temperature we perceive is not directly linked to actual temperature of the environment but is mediated through the possibility of sweating. Such thermoregulation is slowed by humidity and accelerated by wind exposition. The All-Inclusive format by itself can be understood, with its food un-controlled control and strict regime of organized communal events, as an attempt to speed up the consumption of acclimatization, at least in its social aspects. Therefore an Ultimate Wellness Resort model should be based onto a continuous climatic experience that permits the rise of new behaviors related to the emerging wellness market.
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12.00
6.00
12.00 1.00 pm
6.00
1.00 am
from light emission to pineal gland
1.
20 unit cortisol level
16
from pineal gland to endorphin release 12
8
4
2.
Daily adenocortycotropic curve
2008, Human Acclimatization human rhythm is a daily interaction among electromagnetic radiation and endorphins release
12.00
800 nm wavelenght
6.00
550 nm
6.00
1.00 am
300 nm
12.00 1.00 pm
Daily electromagnetic wavelenght spectrum
3.
the ultimate wellness resort diagram
Everyday we travel more and more, passing from an airconditioned airport to another one. But because of this experience of sameness, we lost finally the idea, or at least the awareness, of what migration is. Essentially, migration is a movement towards a different ecosystem as reaction to some environmental changes. But if we reflect deeply upon it, we should admit that the Resort is the ultimate space where we can experience migration: for instance, the mass movements that sunset forces holiday makers from the beach to the aperitif along the seaside. Everyone changes clothes. Then everyone moves to their accommodation and later to night-clubbing. And then, the next morning after getting dressed in swimming suit again, back to the beach. Just awaiting the next sunset... Simply driven by environmental changes, is this movement not the possibly most wonderful spectacle achieved in modern beach holidays? Especially today, a new spectacle of migration between humid zone and arid ones, between dehydration and hydration, and ultimately between life and death must arise questioning the sustainability of the contemporary human condition. An Ultimate Wellness Resort must be a wellness territory in which a circular fence of highly inhospitable spaces stands out and isolates a portion of hospitable territory for the Resort rooms to settle. The holidays will be a continuos transgression of this wellness fence, a continuos go and forth through inhospitable zones; an act that stresses our body, continuously and silently trains it permitting the release of endorphins (that fuel our social ability), the ultimate state of relaxation throughout the coexistence of our mind-desire and our body-production.
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beach
1. Fresh
- comfort - long stay (communal)
2. Chilly
- discomfort - short stay (formal)
3. Hot
- discomfort - short stay (reserved)
rooms
CLO
4. Warm
- comfort - long stay (communal)
2008, Bafra - turkish republic of northern Cyprus the ultimate wellness resort is a border defined by discomfort conditions
4.
the ultimate wellness resort environmental plan
Like in every human settlement, the first element to take care of is the deployment of a water infrastructure; in this case the artificial production of humidity in the form of clouds of sea water mist, able both to soften or intensify the heat perception according to the other environmental parameters...
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The Berlage Institute Portfolio : Alessandro Martinelli 2007/2009
100% relative humidity
30%
2008, Bafra - turkish republic of northern Cyprus the ultimate wellness resort is an humidity-mist release pattern
5.
the ultimate wellness resort environmental plan
The architectural creation of wind funnels, as artificial gorges, accelerate locally the breezes and create protected zones: in the gorges the interaction with super-humidity will provide unwelcomed chill sensations (suggesting a more formal but potentially crowded space) while in the protected courtyards this interaction will provide unwelcomed sauna experience (suggesting a more informal but potentially empty space)...
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The Berlage Institute Portfolio : Alessandro Martinelli 2007/2009
30 km / h wind speed
0 km/h
2008, Bafra - turkish republic of northern Cyprus the ultimate wellness resort is a wind speed pattern
6.
the ultimate wellness resort plan
While addressing wellness with the Latin word otium, advertisement often refers to Roman Age and its Thermae. Such pop reference forces us to consider this premodern ancestor of contemporary leisure in order to reframe a possible future for the Resort. First of all, like a contemporary Resort, a Roman Thermae was defined by an enclosure: this was permitting to many of them to be considered as “free zones”, outside the jurisdiction of authorities but accepted by them (perhaps this explains why, at times, the Thermae were teeming with prostitutes in spite of municipal ordinances prohibiting them). Then their spaces were not defined by function but simply identified through the different climatic environment they were producing: calidarium was a hot zone, tepidarium a warm one, frigidarium a cool one. Being connected with otium, they were pure spaces, pure climatic environments freed from any defined program where it was possible to simply project desires, new behaviors, new functions. Architecture was both presupposition and background of these social laboratories. An Ultimate Wellness Resort re-enacts this function of architecture, this ancient plot of leisure time, offering itself as a social stage in which the displacement of furniture, mainly to sit and lay down (like bed, chairs, benches, bathtubs, etc...), leaves an “archeological” trace of the circadian gathering of crowds.
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2008, Bafra - turkish republic of northern Cyprus the ultimate wellness resort is a daily canvas for human migrations and gatherings
7.
the ultimate wellness resort model
If Aqaba, the famous city on the edge of the Red Sea, was really a strategic sea-port fortress, we have to consider that its architectural enclosure has gone beyond its mound walls; it included the large desert belt that was surrounding the city. In order to reach it, it was needed to pass through the extreme and weakening climatic condition of the desert, a considerable fight against water deprivation and solar exposition. Aqaba urban condition, expanding its scale and prefiguring a biopolitical realm, was ultimately embedded into the territory. An Ultimate Wellness Resort tries to compress this territorial experience at architectural scale, constructing biopowers at the level of our bedroom. If we think that the complicated social structure of termites may be a product of their construction of mounds, an extremely refined product which complexifies and becomes re-active to temperature and humidity levels while reaching a certain scale, the bigger the mound the more complex the society, it arises the doubt that human beings can be not so different from termites and that an Ultimate Wellness Resort is finally an human mound...
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2008, Bafra - turkish republic of northern Cyprus the ultimate wellness resort is an archeological evidence of the biopolitical present
8.
the ultimate wellness resort atmosphere
Back in 1876, in his Elements of Physiology, Diderot already aspired to linking the faculties of the soul with a corporal quality. But even up to Freud, subject to a determinist context, these relations between matter and what stems from the mind depended on the unitary order of representation. At a much later date, the writings of Deleuze scanned these mechanistic upsurges of thoughts, arguing in favour of dynamic processes, intensive topologies, catatonic fluctuations of territories, and the immanence of multiple bodies. While in the 18th century seeing consist in lending experience its greatest corporal opaqueness, and while in the 19th century gradually led the body’s organs to transparency with electric radiations, adding on the visible, the 20th century forever worked tectonic osmosis between visible and invisible.* Tourism today must lay down the basis for a new sustainable concept of territory: overlaying the experience of this tectonic osmosis between environmental and social conditions onto a specific coastal tourism ecology is a possible road-map for a new pattern of trans-human symbiosis. This way, finally, while experiencing new territories as tourists we are forced to question the understanding of the human being itself. * Marie-Ange Brayer, Climatic Distortions, 2005
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2008, Bafra - turkish republic of northern Cyprus the ultimate wellness resort merges body rituals into the landscape
9.
the ultimate wellness resort geopolitics
Cannot the Ultimate Wellness Resort and its aging society perfectly fit in the last hidden and quiet region of the Mediterranean Sea? The Turkish republic of Northern Cyprus, sitting along what can be defined the Retirement Climatic Parallel, can perfectly be one omphalos of wellness: like and sometime even more than other nations placed along this Parallel, Cyprus can offer an hyper dry climate that helps rheumatoid arthritis - cardiovascular diseases, low real estate cost / low cost of living, high safety and the potential to be a cultural epicenter with its five universities... Along the Retirement Climatic Parallel, several nations have developed Retirement Visas in order to profit from their particular socio-environmental condition. Considering the fact that the Turkish Republic of North Cyprus has obtained political recognition just from Turkey and can hardly invest in transnational cooperation, why not to profit from this flows of retired people to charter potential transnational cooperation beyond the acknowledgement that today is missing? A Resort development, with tourism’s broadcasting power of fire, can be the best way to spread a geopolitical rumor...
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Top 20 retirement visa Google research 1st best retirement place 2007 - IL score
Mexico
Top 20 retirement visa Google research
Top 10 retirement visa Google research
north Cyprus ?
spain
Top 10 retirement visa Google research
Philippines
thailand
30째 C
Panama -
ecuador -
Malaysia -
Indonesia -
Australia -
Top 10 retirement visa Google research
2nd best retirement place 2007 - IL score
1st most favored Japanese retirement place for 2007
Top 10 retirement visa Google research
Top 10 retirement visa Google research 2nd most favored Japanese retirement place for 2007
2008, retirement Parallel the tourism broadcasted urgency of an aging society un-veils a new world geography
1.3 research
nL PLATiTuDes
spring term 2008 tutor thomas A.P. leeuwen, roemer van toorn
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0.
platitude is an aesthetics manifesto
Dear NL Platitude researchers, I think that the particularity of dutch platitude can be read in every aspect of the material organization of dutch life. This condition slightly changes the local understanding of several globalization product and sometime offers space to re-read them with new hope. For example, even the worldwide spreading model of the “gated community” in the Netherlands has a different meaning and a particular history that traces back to what has been called hofje. The hofjes is an architectural device mostly composed by a collection of small houses that defines a common inner courtyard. In ancient times common facilities, such as toilets and laundries, were placed in this courtyard. The courtyard is usually walled and only accessible by 1 or 2 access points which usually are closed at 10 o’clock in the night. An usher manages these gates normally, he is employed by the foundation that rules the hofjes. Along with the hofje’s settlement, the hofje’s foundation is normally established by the means of Christian charity by rich ladies and gentlemen demanding the hofje’s resident virtuous behavior. This way the houses that define the courtyard are conceived sometime as almshouses, sometimes as part of social services for members of a particular parish (normally elderly), sometimes as hostels... If we want to trace the hofjes’ genealogy we have to look back to the origins of the begijnhofjes, an architectural types identical to the hofjes but held by group of women that in the 12th century gathered into a religious community without taking vows but demonstrating their voluntary, although temporary, seclusion from the time of the world. Someone has argued that it is not a case that begijnhofjes are women’s product, actually women are the only one able to corporally and legally experience the suppression of time: the renunciation to the food as a spiritual exercise in the female body manifests itself with the disappearance of the menstruations and obviously with the disappearance of the legal status of woman as fertile. Maria D’Oignies, the ascetic considered model by the begijnen (the inhabitants of the begijnhofjes) com-
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1250, termonde Beguinage - Belgium begijnhofje is a “gated community� by architectural means
munities, was always represented emaciated: she was famous for her fasting... In a way, begijnhofjes are an attempt to reproduce the possibility of the suppression of time through the built form. The emergence of religious currents of only pious women took place between the 12th century and the beginning of the 13th century during the passage from the feudal system to the modern state one organized around the idea of territorial national unity. During the 13th century, the size of these groups increased and the firsts begijnhofjes were settled. Surrounded by moats and walls, organized around a chapel normally placed in the center of the courtyard, in their inner organization they were mimicking small cities. During the age of the iconoclasm, the Spanish repression and the various wars between Protestants and Roman Catholics begijnen had difficult times. Despite the fact that they were sometime declared heretics, begijnen gained a territorially localized permission from the Pope and a Bulla was issued for the Netherlands, for some parts of northern France and Germany. Actually begijnen were able to survive these hard times because they didn’t really develop a religious rule (it is important to remember they do not take vows) but entrusted their faith to an architectural device, hardly classifiable from the religious point of view but surely time resistant. Original begijnhofjes representations shows this contradictory understanding that preserved the begijnen faith: although begijnhofjes should have just one door to the external world that connect it with the central courtyard, miniatures often deny begijnen seclusion while depicting the begijnhofjes as rows of houses with direct access from the exterior world and the begijnhofjes’ main door as the begijnhofjes’ chapel door. Actually, in the time of the European territorial system revolution, it is the begijnen’s very condition of seclusion that created a free zone from society and permitted from that stand-point to freely act and exchange with the “outside” world, offering help to the needy and trading goods like textiles produced under the privacy of the begijnhofjes architectural device.
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1485, Begijnen (from Good Deeds, linz) begijnen seclusion is a safe possibility to act in the world
The still operating Fuggerei is a unique example of this concept because of its size and architectural structure, which, on the one hand, allowed the inhabitants a maximum of privacy and, on the other, had a strong disciplinary function. There were no uncontrolled common rooms or public places in the complex. Vices such as profanity, drinking, gambling, or unchastity could not be pursued. Since the Fuggerei was a foundation, inhabitants were supposed to maintain the memoria of Jakob through certain well-regulated actions.* The founder of what someone considered the first social housing, Jakob Fugger the banker, in fact put his memory in the hand of an architectural device identical to the begijnhofjes. The power of begijnen was in fact to put their ritual consistency as a religious community rather in the hands of architecture than in a normal sets of religious vows. Actually architecture was giving solidity and persistence through time to a social convention that was giving back to architecture a specific name, a local identity. In a way, hofjes and the Fuggerei can be understood as the same device of the begijnhofjes but produced within different legal apparatuses. Starting from this point, the act that led the founder to establish an hofje in reality is a complex idea that was strictly linking his name, the pious act of charity, that can be legally defined, and the material reality of architecture: the founder, the hofje and the institution that rules it, have got the same name and exchange quality among their three specific realms. What is even more astonishing is that the hofje’s “deal�, both material and legal, was able to ensure memory both to the founders and to the inhabitants of the hofjes: today is really easy to find in the hofjes web sites (they also have got one!) the complete set of names of the various persons that inhabited the hofjes since their foundation.
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1516, Augsburg fuggerei - germany the gated fuggerei is the first social housing
A typical Dutch private initiative was the establishment of the hofjes. Private persons - inspired by religious motivations, founded these small groups of small houses as early as the Middle Ages. Accommodation was free as long as the inhabitants behaved as they were expected to. The purpose of these houses was to accommodate poor, older women, but family members of the founder(s) often had first choice and in some courts men were allowed too. After the Reformation all these courts came under supervision of the Reformed church or the city. In practice, even when the church (or beguinage, etc...) was in control, the city always had final supervising authorities. ** After the Reformation, as this quote remind us, the hofjes central piece, the courtyard, became part of the normal “national� public space of the cities. What is amazing is that still today the consistency of the architectural device, where it retains its complete layout and the presence of a main door system, is offering a problem of interpretation to the national legislation: is the courtyard half public or half private? It remains that entering in the Amsterdam begijnhofjes a series of prohibitions are issued on the walls... Hofjes, in their ability to strictly link architectural and legislative condition, challenge the state control and it is only possible to imagine them to survive the after-Napoleon adventure of the modern state, which was prohibiting walls, doors and segregation as enemies to the territorial control, in a part of Europe in which the territory has always had an unstable status being constantly produced, extracted and mediated with the sea water. In my opinion, if the hofjes are a living archeology of the dutch platitude, today their value should be seriously evaluated. Best Regards, Alessandro Martinelli
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2008, Amsterdam Begijnhofje - netherlands begijnhofje prohibitions uncover their ambivalent legal status
Post Scriptum. Most of the hofjes were privately built between the 13th and 19th centuries, but still today they are produced (Johannes Enschedè Hof designed by Einrich Doll and built in Haarlem in 2007 is one of the last ones). Notwithstanding their restless production today’s new hofjes are product of state social policies, a condition that, while legislatively denying the seclusion implicit in the architectural device, completely breaks their ideological status reducing it to the social-contract sphere... * Benjamin Scheller, Memoria an der Zeitenwende, 2003 ** Claartje Rasterhoff, Public service in the dutch republic, 2008
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2007, Haarlem latest Hofje - netherlands unfortunately hofjes have become a state-granted social policy
1.4 research
THe PoLiTics of THe enveLoPe
1-5 dec. 2008 tutor Alejandro Zaera-Polo
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1.
a flat vertical envelope scenario
1. In a modern state there are places called territories: they are outside infrastructure and administration. 2. Territories were always interesting for escape. And obviously for tourism. 3. Punta Cana territory in Dominican Republic is an evidence of these processes of escape (someone would refer to it as the “safe possibility to recycle money�). 4. Tourism has been forced to develop its own private infrastructure: airport, highways, small harbours, beach provision... 5. Then new public-private partnerships have arrived and with them new resorts challenging the established supremacy of tourism private infrastructure. 6. The Private Hotel Association should start to perfect its weapon: the workers amount grows day by day, therefore outside resorts boundaries informal urbanization expands and expands, while being developed by tourism developers without any public administration... 7. Why not to develop privately a territorial planning to explicit the public value of this urbanization? Actually, for so many workers, a big amount of public space should be needed with a Mayor to organize, manage and maintain it. Actually it is needed some political acknowledgement from the Dominican Republic for a Mayor that will be elected by the workers of the private Hotel Association... 8. Will the state take responsibility for this public space that appears in the territorial planners drawing? 9. Unfortunately it is clear that public space today is simply too difficult to maintain. For the State this has been a good reason to say no. 10. The failure of modern Slabs, the common name for flat vertical envelopes, because their disconnection
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2008, Punta Cana - dominican republic Caribbean beach front exploitation has been maximized by worldwide hotel chains even before them to be infrastructurally accessible
with ground property, that in the modern ideology was completely public (a.k.a. state managed), has shown the problems of maintaining such huge public spaces. 11. On the other hand Slabs have such ability to accommodate a large amount of individuals in a semi-coherent whole, that often we cannot establish if this envelope should be simply judged as a collective infrastructure with no respect of each individual inhabitant. 12. What could we sacrifice? If in a modern state individuals can be sacrificed (did not Napoleon re-invented the war?) to the representative or functional need of an unique overarching power, in Punta Cana, where two powers should coexist, is this still valuable? 13. In a private development, property becomes also a matter of facade topology because while by law certain portions of facade do not “exist” still there is the need of a huge economic effort to build them. 14. In a flat vertical envelope is the decoration of a facade, that is usually this portion outside law recognition, belonging to the entire building or to the single apartment? Are all the apartments dividing among themselves the cost of the entire facade decoration or is it the local owner paying and owning its local portion of facade? And, if it belongs to the entire building, who else is insuring the relationship among the individual owners and the common administration of the building if not the original developer, original “owner” of the entire building? 15. In the flat vertical envelope, the high facade ratio (so high that the envelope is almost facade) and its questions of ownership forces to consider again what is the limit along which an operation on the facade is affecting the definition of the entire envelope or not... 16. Flat vertical envelopes have the highest degree of environmental exteriority, exposition to climatic agents and particularly to wind pressure. It is famous the fact that certain social Slabs have affected the environmental
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beach -
resort -
envel. -
forest -
c. reef -
sea - land air circulation
2008, Punta Cana - dominican republic a tourism workers’ flat vertical envelope, can exploit its production of environmental externalities as potential energy resource
ecosystem of vast portion of urban systems. In a way flat vertical envelopes produce the highest degree of externalities (effect on surrounding properties) just because their form: they can be facade of a portion of territory! 17. Holes, the possibility of passage through an envelope that, in the case of the Slabs, mainly posses the spatial meaning of a wall, are the main drivers of the flat vertical envelope power. To what extent the dimension of an hole in a Slab is modifying or not the definition of the envelope in its integrality? And again to which extent this definition permits a flat vertical envelope to be considered a collective infrastructure or a collection of individual properties? 18. In Punta Cana an ultra-local condition is the contingency of wind exposition: interfering with the high level of humidity, wind passage through building is continuously researched to moderate the heat feeling; cyclonic happenings have forced the import of a roofing technique, specifically palm leaves interweaving, able to permit an air passage independent from rain protection; on the other hand sailing, windsurfing and kytesurfing are sport extremely popular among tourist. 19. Today wind is also a matter of energy: NL is an obvious evidence... If according to Jeremy Rifkin all the quantum leap of human civilization are connected with the possibility to differently store and produce energy, that is the purest expression of power (to extent that for someone, today, the most important potential for human development is the imminent individual feasibility of energy production), how can we instrumentalize this new definition of individuality in a flat vertical envelope? 20. The possibility to drive air through a flat vertical envelope, to merge the building envelope with the possibility of energy production with wind generator forces to re-consider and instrumentalize the meaning of giving to the single individual the possibility to produce energy, or giving it to the entire building which property finally refers to its developer...
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state Concession state administration control on facade energy production -
Private Development developer responsibility on facade design integrity -
Individual ownership tourism workers property on housing units -
rasterization housing typologies
2008, Punta Cana - dominican republic a tourism workers’ flat vertical envelope facade is a biopolitical construct
rasterization wind generator cladding as brise-soleil
21. What happen if the developer then, because of its interest in passing to the state a “public-ness to maintain” in order to obtain some political acknowledgement back, passes an envelope-energy producer still “managing” the individuals living into it (they are his workers!) and their interaction with energy production? 22. Will Dominican Republic accept to take the responsibility of that collective envelope, that is able to produce energy but also affect the citizens living in it? 23. Will Dominican Republic establish a Mayor to regulate and organize the envelope? 24. Should we consider the envelope by itself a public space? 25. And then, because of its possibility of segmentation, a flat vertical envelope is potentially an ever growing project where developing institutions, public or private, can learn to work together simultaneously building different segments but aiming to a coherent whole. If we do not take moral implications, Prora still witnesses this power...
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2008, Punta Cana - dominican republic a tourism workers’ flat vertical envelope is part of the territory
1.5 research
AssociATive Design urbanism in the age of biopolitics
Winter + spring term 2008/2009 tutor Peter trummer
69
0.
urbanism in the age of biopolitics projective framework
In this 80s’ crisis context, the Mexican National Institute of Statistics and Geography was created by direct presidential decree. From the perspective of the ‘80s, Mexico didn’t have a sufficiently precise informative infrastructure to organize the growth of the national economy. The minister, under which control the newborn INEGI was assigned, was Carlos Salinas that would have become president in few years. During its PRI party supported regency, the process of privatization accelerated and even the system of Mexican land property, with its unique reservoir of communal properties inherited by the passed years of prosperity, was touched. Amidst this territorial system rethinking, a declaration of war arrived unexpectedly from within the country. Sub Comandante Marcos with the Ejercito Zapatista de Liberacion Nacional issued the First Declaration of War to the Mexican government, which they considered so out of touch with the will of the people as to make it completely illegitimate. It has been a war among different esthetics and their implicit different understanding of the territory: the old esthetics of a war of positions and territorial forms has been opposed to the statistical model of territorial mapping that Mexico government has developed while statistical polls with their “halftone” percentage mapping extensively invaded the 1994 electoral campaign. In the middle of this, in order to unify the mapping of the entire national territory beyond every kind of political, administrative or conceptual division, INEGI developed the concept of a geographical unit statistically defined by similar socio-economic characteristics, that more than the population reduced even urbanization, the city in production, to a statistical entity.
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1994, Chiapas - Mexico the eZln’s army mapping of the territory according its spatial advantages
The term urbanization was coined by Ildefonso Cerdà for his extension plan for Barcelona. In the attempt to establish a general theory of urbanization, Cerdà used for the first time in history the entire population as a statistical entity. This was, according to the Swedish philosopher Sven-Olov Wallenstein, the beginning of biopolitics in relation to city planning. In his lecture series of 1977–78 Michel Foucault defined the term “bio-politics”: by this I mean a number of phenomena that seem to me to be quite significant, namely, the set of mechanisms through which the basic biological features of the human species became the object of a political strategy...* Foucault, in his lectures, expands on this definition by giving a series of examples of how bio-politics and population are both used to create an object of political strategy relevant for urban planning, an object that he calls the construction of an urban milieu. [A milieu] is the set of natural givens and artificial givens that is needed to account for action at a distance of one body on another. It is therefore the medium of an action and the element in which it circulates. It is therefore the problem of circulation and causality that is at stake in this notion of milieu.* Within this idea, today the architecture of the city is not a problem of representation of the powers that govern the human society. Instead, it is a problem of facilitating the unfolding of emergent milieus and their populations, a problem of defining responsibilities and therefore of “situating freedoms”, as coined by Sven-Olov Wallenstein. An urban project today must not be a matter of politics in the way we know it, it must be the need of a new esthetics, beyond statistic and beyond forms, an esthetics of emergent differences able to summarize the previous territorial visions, a new approach in which public concerns are finally the manifestation of ecologies in production. * Michel Foucault, Security, Territory and Population, 1977-1978
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1994, Chiapas - Mexico the Pri’s party mapping of the territory according its electoral advantages
1.
an earthquake safe milieu scenario
October 1985, Mexico City. This way, a painful and outraged population was asking for the identification and punishment of the responsible of the defective buildings that caused the death of thousand people, and was soliciting the consequent compensation to the damaged and relatives.* 1985 events have radically changed the way an earthquake is understood by Mexican institutions: from a matter of security, freedom from danger, it has become mainly a matter of safety, freedom from risk, and definition of individual responsibilities. This way we understand the actual city as a conflicting field where conditions and intentions differ and where along this conflict responsibilities are defined. Sometime, when it is too difficult to discern responsibilities, even condition and institution, by which intentions are normally measured, can be addressed. After several trials and an enormous effort, both political and economical, to define 1985 earthquake damages responsibilities, the Mexican Government too was placed under investigations and finally forced to de-institutionalize its potential responsibilities, creating the figure of the “Corresponsable de la Seguridad Estructural� in order to revise, beyond their structural integrity, even the architecture of building of public interest.
* Fondo Cultura Economica, Sobretiraje La Razones y la Obras, 1986
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1985, Mexico City - Mexico earthquake!
2.
an earthquake safe milieu technique
Mexico City can be potentially read as a sea of earthquake waves, which localized uncertainties imply higher degree of public institution responsibilities, public-ness, in the process of urbanization. Accepting this diffused institutional risk, in order to incorporate the responsibilities of the city in production within a specific population, defined by its earthquake urgency, we propose to substitute the city planning and its representative-ness with a stochastic simulation that embodies the confrontation among the intention of development and the emergent condition of earthquake propagation in the soil. “Scripting� is the absolute space in which, through a process of iterations and evaluation, it is possible to test this confrontation and let its product to evolve towards the maximum growth...
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size (mass)
tendency
30
20
10
iteration (time)
0
0
20
40
60
iteration - evaluation Process an evolutionary process defines an optimized intention - condition confrontation
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3.
an earthquake safe milieu diagram
Intentionally bypassing the individualization fostered by safety, the seismic joint can be intended not as an impassable threshold but as a void-space defined by the potential buttressing of neighbor buildings. Therefore the stochastic simulation needed to define a “safe� milieu should be understood as a matter of neighbor buildings relationality and void finally defined. This relationality can be evaluated through the conic trace of the possible neighbor building positions in space.
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01.
02.
03.
03.
2009, Mexico City - Mexico an earthquake “safe� milieu redefines the seismic joint gap as a space of interactions
(int. geometry)
4.
an earthquake safe milieu differentiation
Earthquake intensity manifests itself in relationship with the period of vibration: the release of energy has a peak with waves’ period among 0.2 and 0.7 seconds. Being the potential instability of buildings influencing their actual critical length, it can be traced a relationship between earthquake intensities and theoretical maximum height of a building. In the same way the possibility of building resonance according to different waves periods frames the range of building sizes allowed. The intersections of these “conic frames” set the possible collaboration among neighbors, varying them different organizations are produced: from an hyperbolic one, with the average height of intersections lower, to a parabolic one, with the average height of intersections higher. With the variation of densities of vertical cores in the plots, different organizations of a manzana are produced: from the impossibility of junctions, to organized structures, to complex ones. Localized grouping patterns appear and define the specific formations of in-between “safe” spaces which soil is free from the introduction of horizontal forces by the built mass.
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21.50 m
20.25 m
19.50 m
17.00 m
15.75 m int. geometry range
18.25 m
14 m cores distance
17 m
19 m
21 m
23 m
25 m
27 m
2009, Mexico City - Mexico an earthquake “safe� milieu appears in difference
5.
an earthquake safe milieu process of actualization
Hydrological basins dynamics imply specific geological processes that define localized formations of sedimentary clays in which earthquake waves reverberates with dominant periods and localized intensities. Taking as a reference a mapping that overlaps several earthquakes effects and registered intensity, it can be produced a statistical mapping of earthquake periods and intensity risk which evaluation offers the ground to actualize a “safe� milieu. Addressing institutional risk, it can be proposed to act where the variation of intensity is read-able in relation with the manzana scale, a zone where the evaluation of risk is objectionable. In order not to interfere with sewage infrastructures, the degree of intervention then can be discretized mediating with the potential land subsidence. According to local building regimes and market dynamics it can finally be proposed the renovation of specific lots that generically host buildings smaller than 4 storeys, therefore individual properties and produced under a simplified seismic evaluation.
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0,15 Ns2g earthquake intensity k value
0,05 Ns2g
2009, Mexico City - Mexico an earthquake “safe� milieu ground is offered by soil conditions as defined by seismic propagation
6.
an earthquake safe milieu actualization
Applying the projected regime onto its ground, a loose grammar for the city in production can be developed, with specific location unbreakable link with their specific kind of “safe� spaces in the ground level and with a specific building phenotype. This set of constructed givens are, rephrasing Michel Foucault, a specific milieu that account for actions and its externalities in the urban realm according to the perpetual earthquake paranoia. It is therefore the medium of earthquake risk and the element in which its materiality circulates.
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2009, Mexico City - Mexico an earthquake “safe� milieu opens the space for a new densification of the urban tissue
7.
an earthquake safe milieu taxonomy
Actualizing an isolated site with low degree of earthquake intensity normal towers are generated: they are almost the repetition of the same floor plan and have a no-space around the base. Actualizing a site with mid degree of earthquake intensity and enough density of vertical cores, two towers join highlighting the appearance of collective spaces for circulation interchange and permitting the definition of a small “safe” space at ground level. Actualizing a site with mid degree of earthquake intensity and a higher density of possible cores, more towers join increasing the complexity of the neighbourhood and promoting a further liberation of the ground and a more consistent collective “safe” space. In more complex actualizations, bundles of towers that overcomes the manzana structure appear, even jumping across street while the ground space defined acquires even more specificity and public-ness.
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2009, Mexico City - Mexico an earthquake “safe” milieu defines a peculiar urban taxonomy
8.
an earthquake safe milieu atmosphere
Mexico is finally a place of contrast, with tragedy deeply rooted within a society that celebrate death as part of everyday life. How can be possible otherwise to have a capital city in a place surrounded by volcanoes, with a constant risk of earthquake and sudden floods? Even the genius of Luis Barragan was referring to this bare and risky life aiming, with his abstract but at the same time material architectural compositions, to the possibility of spirituality to coexist with the material condition of life... Can we imagine something more Mexican than an earthquake “safe� milieu?
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2009, Mexico City - Mexico an earthquake “safe� milieu is a place where safety and risk cannot be detached
9.
an earthquake safe milieu geopolitics
Being this “safe” milieus part of a public realm, because of their ability to de-institutionalize risk evaluation, it is possible to imagine the mass of the surrounding population exercising an enormous social pressure onto them, with its after-earthquake need for spaces where to temporary settle. The spaces that emerge can be understood, as defined by Richard Sennet, as borders. In opposition to boundaries, like the Greek theatres, borders are edges where things meet and intersect within a zone of interaction. A border is not just an edge but a frontier, where something ends. In biological terms a border is the zone of ecological intersections, where different populations meet. It forms a concentration of biological activities. In analogy to the research projects, this zone is the intersection between the ecology of urbanization and its affected population. It is a space where people meet governance. It defines the condition of a milieu, the politics of differences. * The collection of these spaces can be understood as a “safe” border, that can be orchestrated at the metropolitan scale. Tracing variations in the geological condition, a developmental scenario for a public spaces corona can be unfolded. A corona that passes crosswise and connects the island of social difference into which the urban territory of today is fragmented. * Peter Trummer, Urbanism in the Age of Biopolitics @ Berlage, 2009
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2009, Mexico City (delegacion Cuauhtemoc) - Mexico an earthquake “safe� milieu is the confrontation among a statistical population and its environment condition
2.1 epilogue
noTes for an after-thought
6-11 Jul. 2009 -
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0.
urban metabolism manifesto
By the year 2000 there may well be as many as 500 cities with more than a million inhabitants while the largest of them, Tokyo, Sao Paulo, Mumbai and possibly Shangai (though the list is perpetually being revised both upwards and downwards), will perhaps boast populations of more than 20 million trailed by a score of cities, mostly in the so-called developing countries, with upwards of ten million. Sometime early next century, if present trends continue, more than half of the world’s population will be classified as urban rather than rural. The twentieth century has been, then, the century of urbanization. * In the light of the worldwide demographic expansion, the centuries among 17th and 20th have been a period in which the collective life, first urgency then right and finally duty, has been variously exploited questioning often the idea of the city and its production. The 21st century has started facing a world in which urbanization seems to be the only trend globally shared beyond social and spatial division. This emergence of urbanization in the public realm, to the extent in which it can entrust the hope of entire nations (for example United Emirates...), forces to question the issue of its sustainability within the systemic crisis that today is hitting our planet economically and ecologically. Sadly the sustainability concept, as many other concept connected with the production of the human environment, in recent times has taken the connotation of an ideal situation which reasons have passed from the problem of its material contingencies to the issue of representation. In the light of this “mistake� and according to the generic-ness of an overwhelming urban experience that is shaping our life, is any longer possible not to consider the issue of urbanization per se. Some terms must be clarified: first of all sustainability that means the possibility of a process balance and not of a product. If even contemporary epistemology refers to the generation of knowledge as the systemic confrontation of a subject and its context, finally it is impossible to independently face the problem of populations and the way these colonize their territories. Freely paraphrasing Manuel de Landa,
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6
world population (billions unit)
5
4
3
2
1
10.000 BC
8.000
6.000
4.000
2.000
2008, World Population trend the last centuries have been the time of collective life
A.D.
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the same concept of evolution must not be understood anymore as the history of species but as the history of the ecosystemic relations among species and context. An ecosystem is constructed by the dynamic balancing relation among a community and an environment; it is an open system, therefore with structures and functions defined by a complex set of matter and energy fluxes. Within this idea, the word metabolism means the dynamic that defines the balance among subject and context with tropic means, therefore the complex set of artificial and natural givens that supply to both development and a transient form. Sustainability finally becomes a matter of the needed association among the concept of form and metabolism, the very idea of an ecosystem, that are structured among a real-time regulation with sudden synchronism and a-synchronism, sometime expanding, sometime collapsing... The city is man’s most successful attempt to remake the world he lives in more after his heart’s desire. But, if the city is the world which man created, it is the world in which he is henceforth condemned to live. Thus indirectly, and without any clear sense of nature of his task, in making the city the man has remade himself. ** In the light of this, if we want to escape the systemic crisis in which the Globe is falling without escape, why we don’t want to finally acknowledge how urbs and civitas are not independent terms but the balancing agencies of an unique ecosystem that connect human society and its territories? Unfortunately it seems that urbanization is not an economical or political representation but the necessary form needed by the human metabolism to take place... * David Harvey, Megacity lectures, 2000 ** Robert Park, On social control and collective behavior, 1967
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The Berlage Institute Portfolio : Alessandro Martinelli 2007/2009
2008, earth lights the satellite image of the earth at night shows how its understanding would be impossible without the light of human settlements
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The Berlage Institute Portfolio : Alessandro Martinelli 2007/2009
addenda
AlessAndro MArtinelli
2007 - 2009 BerlAge institute relevAnt ACtivities
tHeoRy PRogRAM
MAsteRCLAsses
_Projective Theory Program, Winter+Spring Term 2007/2008 Contesting neoliberal Urbanization, the Architect as a Public Intellectual tutor Roemer van Toorn
_Masterclass, 10-14 dec. 2007 Living High, the Future of the skyscraper tutor Inaki Abalos
_Projective Theory Program, Winter Term 2007/2008 spaces of exception in the Capsular Civilization tutor Lieven de Cauter _Projective Theory Program, Spring Term 2008 / 2009 nL Platitudes tutor Thomas A.P. Leeuwen _Projective Theory Program, Winter+Spring Term 2008/2009 Reality demands a theory, new Forms of Welfare tutor Roemer van Toorn
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_Masterclass, 2-6 june 2008 Leverage tutor Keller Easterlings _Masterclass, 1-5 dec. 2008 the Politics of the envelope tutor Alejandro Zaera-Polo
ReseARCH PRogRAM
eDItIng ACtIvItIes
ADDItIonAL ACtIvItIes
_Studio Research, Winter Term 2007/2008 the Bid, the olympic City tutor Winy Maas
_The Bid, Winter Term 2007/2008 Research editor (with Maria S. Giudici)
_Rethinking the All-Inclusive, Spring Term 2008 Rhino Modeling course tutor Ahmed el-Shafei
_Studio Research, Spring Term 2008 Rethinking the All-Inclusive, new tourism Resort Developments tutor Olaf Gipser
_Rethinking the All-Inclusive, Spring Term 2008 Research editor
_Associative Design, Winter Term 2008/2009 Mexico City workshop Universidad Iberoamericana, Mexico City (MXC) tutor Jose Castillo
_Studio Research, Winter+Spring Term 2008/2009 Associative Design, Urbanism in the Age of Biopolitics tutor Peter Trummer
_Associative Design, Spring Term 2009 Rhinoscript course tutor Nuno Almeida, UNstudio _Associative Design, Spring Term 2009 CnC milling course tutor Harrie Stamps, Wisent
addenda
AlessAndro MArtinelli
- 2009 CurriCuluM vitAe
1981 _Born in Bergamo (ITA)
_“Provincia di Bergamo” high school scholarship exp.
1996 acknowledgements
_“Mons. Oggioni” high school scholarship experiences
_European study travel, Istituto Nazionale di BioArchitettura, Italia 1997
_Radio commentator for RadioAlta, Bergamo (ITA) _Participation in several national congress for Italian high school reforms actitivites
_Establishment of “MSC”, Movimento Studenti Cattolici is an Italian private schools’ political movement
ackn.
_“Mons. Oggioni” high school scholarship exp.
_European study travel, Istituto Nazionale di BioArchitettura, Italia _Archaeological excavations stage in Velia/Elea (ITA), Sovrintendenza ai beni archeologici, Italia
2000 ackn.
_general certificate of education (100/100), Liceo Scientifico Collegio Vescovile Sant’Alessandro, Bergamo (ITA) exp.
_Participation in several national congress for Italian high school reforms act.
1998 ackn.
_“Mons. Oggioni” high school scholarship _“Provincia di Bergamo” high school scholarship exp.
_Participation in several national congress for Italian high school reforms
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_Matriculation in Accademia di Architettura, Mendrisio (CH) 2001 exp.
_Architectural working period in BoeriStudio, Milano (ITA) 2002 exp.
1999
_Architectural working period in BoeriStudio, Milano (ITA)
ackn.
exhibition
_“Mons. Oggioni” high school scholarship
_Participation to the architecture exhibition “Tre luoghi pubblici per
Abbiategrasso”, Abbiategrasso (ITA) 2003 exp.
_Architectural occasional joint working with emmestudio, Bergamo (ITA) _Assistant to the “Cultura del Territorio” chair, prof. Enrico Sassi, for Accademia di Architettura, Mendrisio (CH) 2004 exp.
_Architectural occasional joint working with emmestudio, Bergamo (ITA) act.
_Establishment of “Universo” Universo is an indipendent students publishing enterprise and monthly inset in “Corriere del Ticino”, the Italian Switzerland main daily newspaper _Establishment of AsMA, AssociazioneMendrisioArchitettura is an independent students association for research in architecture _Establishment of “Simply Architects – MeEtArch” “Simply Architects – MeEtArch” is a biennial research project about the profession of architecture in Europe 2005 exp.
_Architectural occasional joint
working with emmestudio, Bergamo (ITA) _Participation in the workshop “Multifunctional Sesto” Villa Vigoni Institute, Sesto San Giovanni (ITA) _Participation in the workshop LIPAU, Politecnico di Milano act.
_Establishment “Simply Architects – Processing MeEtArch” “Simply Architects – Processing MeEtArch” is a communication project for Simply Architects – MeEtArch exhibit.
_Participation to the architecture exhibition “4 atelier”, Mendrisio (CH) (1-15 jul. 2005) 2006 ackn.
_Master of Arts in Architecture (10/10), Accademia di Architettura, Mendrisio (CH), tutor Mario Botta _“Boni” honours and scholarship for the graduation project in Accademia di Architettura, Mendrisio (CH) exp.
_Architectural occasional joint working with emmestudio, Bergamo (ITA) _Editor for TALE&A architecture magazine, Como (ITA) lecturing
_“Risorse di rete” lecturing at Facoltà di Architettura Roma3
about “Simply Architects” research project (26 may 2006) 2007 ackn.
_Qualification for Architecture profession, Politecnico di Milano (ITA) _OTIA (order of tessiner architects) Award 2006 for “Simply Architects” research project exp.
_Architectural occasional joint working with emmestudio, Bergamo (ITA) _Participation in the workshop “Al Ain, Oasis city, Sustainable city” International Design Seminar Emirates American University + IUSS Pavia, Al Ain (UAE) (18 jan. -15 feb. 2007) _Editor for i.CUP (research institute for contemporary urban project, Accademia di architettura di Mendrisio), research project “La nuova Lugano”, project chief Josep Acebillo act.
_Publishing of “Simply Architects, 10+1 domande sulla professione dell’architetto”, MendrisioAcademyPress _Establishment of “Urban Physiologies” Urban Physiologies” is a workshop resarch about new urbanism (Urban Physiologies Como, 3 mar. 2007 - Eden Anatomies Milano, 4 may 2007)
_Establishment of “Risorse di rete”“Risorse di rete” is an indipendent forum of young italian architects _Membership of Italian Order of Architects, class A, Bergamo province section _Matriculation in Berlage Institute, Rotterdam (NL) exhibit.
_Personal exhibition for “Simply Architects”, la Tessitura Mantero, Como (ITA) (18 feb. - 3 mar. 2007) _Personal exhibition for “Simply Architects, AsMA for sale”, Actar - RAAS gallery, Milan (ITA) (4 apr. - 4 may 2007) _Participation to the collective architecture exhibition “Venezia Sintesi Contemporanea”, Venezia, Archivio di Stato (ITA) (1-20 july 2007) lect.
_“Risorse di rete” lecturing at Facoltà di Architettura di Genova about “Simply Architects” research project (10 mar. 2007) _”Physiological Architecture” lecturing at Laboratorio interdisciplinare di ricerca, Confcommercio Bergamo (19 may 2007) _Visiting Critic at “La ricostruzione dei nuclei urbani sparsi” workshop, Università di Cesena + Fachhochschule Koln, Sogliano (ITA) (16 sep. 2007)
2008 exp.
_Architectural occasional joint working with emmestudio, Bergamo (ITA) _Researcher for Berlage Institute, research project “the BID”, tutor Winy Maas _Researcher for Berlage Institute, research project “Rethinking the All-Inclusive”, tutor Olaf Gipser _Researcher for Berlage Institute, research project “Associative Design - Urbanism in the Age of Biopolitics”, tutor Peter Trummer _Participation to the Berlage Masterclass “Living High, the future of the Skyscraper”, tutor Inaki Abalos (10-14 dec. 2007) _Participation to the Berlage Masterclass “Leverage”, tutor Keller Easterling (2-6 jun. 2008) _Participation to the Berlage Masterclass “The Politics of the Envelope”, tutor Alejandro Zaera Polo (1-5 dec. 2008) act.
_Publishing of “La Nuova Lugano. Visions, Challenges and Territory of the City”, Accademia di Architettura, Università della Svizzera Italiana, Mendrisio exhibit.
_Participation to the exhibition “NL28, Olympic Fire”, Netherland
Architecture institute, Rotterdam (NL) (31 may - 21 sep. 2008) lect.
_Lecturing at “Architettura in Calabria Under 40”, Università degli Studi Mediterranei, Reggio Calabria (ITA) (16 jan. 2008) 2009 ackn.
_Completion Postgraduate Master Program, Berlage Institute, Rotterdam (NL) exp.
_Architectural occasional joint working with emmestudio, Bergamo (ITA) _Researcher for Berlage Institute, research project “Associative Design - Urbanism in the Age of Biopolitics”, tutor Peter Trummer exhibit.
_Curating “why not to settle, why not to migrate” exhibition, APPPART gallery, Locarno (CH) (27 jun. 2009)
Portfolio Credits
the Berlage institute Portfolio was created after 2 years of activities by individual participants with the support of tutors and staff. it was printed and bound at the Berlage institute. Š 2009, Berlage institute, rotterdam nl
The Berlage Institute is an international postgraduate laboratory for education, research and development in the fields of architecture, urban planning and landscape design
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Visiting address : Boterslot 25 3011 HE Rotterdam The Netherlands
t. +31 10 403 03 99 f. +31 10 403 03 90 info@berlage-institute.nl www.berlage-institute.nl
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