gsapp
AYA MACEDA
MS Advanced Architectural Design Portfolio
negotiating spaces in between
individual=communal
vertical street
reinventing the tower plinth
The projects strive to redefine current typologies, regenerate underutilized urban networks and negotiate individual and collective space. Density is the driver in this re-thinking.
The sites for these investigations lie in the [ in-between ] spaces - from the urban to domestic scale.
communal living
urban cemetery
poche’ cinematheque
advanced design research + essays
“Balancing Individual and Collective in Dense Urban Housing”
“Creating a Place for Death & Memorialization” “An Analogical Architecture” “A Grandstand for Urban Life”
“From Type to Program”
“Living Together” aims to rethink multiple dwelling types by creating heterogenous living environments through the substantial appropriation and activation of shared space. The study explores the possibilities created by compressing program within individual dwelling units to free up space for “sharing”, spaces to be redefined and negotiated to create new possibilities for living. Studio Critics: Sam Chermeyeff & Johanna Meyer-Grohbreugge
communal living
a.edu
CASE STUDY + PREMISE
A CASE STUDY of the tradional Balinese Compound: a multi-family communal dwelling arrangement where extremely compact villas with private functions are arranged around a main courtyard, with gardens and other outdoor functions weave in between the villas. This typology instigated an exploration on the possibilities created by compressing living units in multiple dwellings, a new way of arranging units in relation to each other and to communal spaces and re-defining shared space. small sleeping villas shared villas for cooking, dining, living, ritual & storage expansive communal gardens
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1:100
LIVING TOGETHER
85:15 CONVENTIONAL APARTMENT
50:50 INDIVISUAL:COLLECTIVE SPACE
LINEAR CIRCULATION CONVENTIONAL APARTMENT
VERTICAL DISTRIBUTION OF SHARED SPACE
In conventional multiple dwelling types, approx 15% is allotted to shared space - usually designated to circulation and services. Everyone wants more amenities but no one wants to pay more.
By compressing individual units, new opportunities for shared living are produced. With 50% designated to individual units and the other 50% to shared space, what can be done with the grey space? what can be gained by compromising private space??
Non-active shared spaces can be challenged.
A network of communal spaces can weave through the buiding, serving as extensions of each individual unit and a place for sharing and creating new active spaces by virtue of adjacency.
The study deals with the relationship of individual units to collective spaces in shared AYA MACEDA | lm2915@columbia.edu housing.
Units are compressed, and zoned. From very private (bedrooms) to semi-public (living spaces) and public are the shared space.
Openings between living spaces are rethought, enlarged. AdjacenAYA MACEDA | lm2915@columbia.edu cies are studied to allow for an interrelationship between inside living spaces and outside shared space.
Inversely, living units also become part of the exterior space by the same operation.
A gradient for the IN BETWEEN shared space is created by its adjacencies to the living spaces of indivudal units.
COMPRESSION
HOW SMALL IS SMALL?
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What new possibilities can happen with compression?
cooking cook ing
How much remnant space is generated by compressing the space?
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free f lexible
An exploration of a minimun sizes for apartment units to produce SUPER EFFICIENT units. Each unit will have provision for sleeping, bathing, eating, sitting and flexible space for various individuals’ activities.
m+f
LIVING TOGETHER
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sink + wardrobe
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kit + table
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CREATING GREY SPACE
1 SUPER EFFICIENT UNITS 2 SHARED SPACE In between spaces are identified 3 NEGOTIATION OF GREY SPACE Individuals take ownership of shared space but a negotiation based on commonalities will take place to determine the appropriation of shared space. What could people share in small clusters and collectively?
1 bedroom
2 bedroom
2 bedroom
4 CENTRALIZED COMMON SPACE Creates a homogenous shared space difficult to negotiate. 5 RANDOMLY PLACED UNITS Through fragmenting shared different scales of shared space create unexpected opportunities for social interaction.
EXPRESSION OF THE DIAGRAM Bedrooms(private areas) are expressed as solid walls with windows, Living rooms are expressed with a semi-opaque material, and Shared zones are in completely transparent material.
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LIVING TOGETHER
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mbia.edu
NEGOTIATION OF THE IN-BETWEEN
SHARED communal spaces determined collectively, between units
SEMI-PRIVATE
PRIVATE
Individualized shared space determined by units in its close proximity
individual apartment units
LIVING TOGETHER
PRIVATE
individual units are connected and oriented to public spaces
SEMI-PUBLIC
FOR NEGOTIATION - flexible spaces | each cluster of units have a shared space, each cluster of units will decide on the use of each shared space, each unit takes ownership and maintenance of the shared area in their close proximity
SHARED
each cluster’s flexible shared space connects to a bigger public space that all units share public areas such as laundry, gardens, communal kitchen and dining
APPLICATION OF THE STRATEGY
BUSHWICK APARTMENT The concept is applied to a designated site in Bushwick. 12 units using 50% private space 50% shared space.
a mix of various shared spaces - clusters and larger common space activating in between spaces to create unexpected opportunities for social interaction shared space is negotiated between units adjacent to the space each unit takes ownership of shared space within its proximity the size of aperture of each unit promotes connection from private to shared
individuals negotiate the IN-BETWEEN SPACES to create a heterogenous environment
LIVING TOGETHER
HIGHLIGHTING THE IN-BETWEEN
“Architecture should be conceived as a configuration of intermediary places clearly defined ... Instead the transition must be articulated by means of defined in-between places which induce simultaneous awareness of what is significant on either side. All in-between space in this sense provide the common ground where conflicting polarities can again become twin phenomena.� - Aldo Van Eyck
LIVING TOGETHER
Current modes of commemoration focus heavily on the physically permanent, unchanging and individual – characteristics that are misaligned with the transient, chaotic, and communal nature of urban life. By reshaping the way we intertwine death and urban life through the development of repositories and memorials that honor both simultaneously, we can address the needs of the collective as well as the bereft, reform the shapes of our communities as well as give tribute to their histories. “Embedding The Sacred In The Mundane” proposes memorials that honor and improve our city – cleaning our water and soil, providing us spaces of civic communion, and protecting our streets from the ever increasing volatility of our climate.
Studio Critic: Karla Rothstein
urban cemetery
OVERALL STRATEGY
DISPOSITION STRATEGY SACRED EMBEDDED IN THE MUNDANE is a group effort between Aya Maceda, Emily Bult and Allison Conley
Underutilized sites such as parking lots and armories are proposed to be used as memorial nodes to the strategy.
KINGSBRIDGE ARMORY The Kingsbridge Armory is the culminating node of the system. The abandoned armory will be appropriated as a processing site for dead bodies using the new technologies of Promession and Resomation. The Armory will also be used as a nursery for trees - which are repository for remains that will be distributed to the network of treepits and waterfronts in the city.
CONCENTRATED SITE
The project has an overall strategy of inserting spaces of disposition and memorial as a layer over the city fabric. Underutilized networks in the city such as treepits and waterfronts will be used as places for “laying to rest� remains of the dead in a way that is regenerative to the city.
SACRED EMBEDDED IN THE MUNDANE
SIDEWALK NETWORK Sacred Embedded in the Mundane Part I This strategy deals with approriating the underutilized network of tree pits in NYC for the disposition of remains. It also deals with redesigning the city’s network of sidewalks to increase its permeability for innevitable storm overlows and flooding.
BIO-REMEDIATION Sacred Embedded in the Mundane Part II This strategy deals with approriating the underutilized contaminated waterfront sites in NYC for the disposition of remains. The trees that will be inserted into these sites will not only serve as temporary memorials but will serve the greater purpose of bio-remediating the site, cleaning toxic waters and soil.
While the disposition strategy leans towards allowing the physical remains of the body to remediatively bleed into the cracks of the city, SACRED EMBEDDED IN THE MUNDANE Part III recognizes the need for reinserting a new type of Place of Death and Memorial back into the center of the city.
SACRED EMBEDDED IN THE MUNDANE | PART III
PREMISE
in New York City, the places for
Death and Memorial have been pushed to periphery of the City, resulting in a detachment of the current society with the inevitable issue. As cemeteries reach its full capacity in 10-15 years, a new type of place for the dead is imperative.
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ii
PERMANENT
i cemetery belt in the periphery of Manhattan ii New Calvary Cemetery, Queens
SACRED EMBEDDED IN THE MUNDANE | PART III
BURIAL OPTIONS in New York City range from traditional graves and mausoleums that exist in cemeteries in the outer boroughs and columbaria that are hidden in the depths of churches in the city. Despite the columbaria being the most spatially and economically efficient option in the city, it is still the least popular strategy. MARKERS ranging from permanent to impermanent are already scattered in the city fabric. With no remains associated with them, they are symptomatic of thehuman need to mark the absence of their dead in close proximity to their lives, embedding the most sacred memorials in the most quotidian spaces.
IMPERMANENT
STORAGE VS STORAGE
PARALLEL NETWORKS Parking lots are parallel places of storage to cemeteries. While cemeteries are situated in the perimeter of the city, parking lots exist in close proximity to our daily encounters. There is a vast network of parking lots in the Manhattan core, situated in prime real estate in the city. These parking lots are warehoused by developers and are minimal income generators while they await appropriation.
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parking lots concentrated in the Manhattan core parking lot in Times Square parking lot in the Financial District parking lot in SOHO parking lot in Chelsea - view from the High Line parking lot in Midtown
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SACRED EMBEDDED IN THE MUNDANE | PART III
Both parking lots and cemeteries are extremely inefficient types of storage, both programmatically, spatially and economically. Both with impediments that limit their size and stacking capabilities. Both networks unable to supply the future demands of the city.
Only 30-40% of already decreasing number of public parking spaces essential to the operation of the city are available to the actual public.
The focus was on the vertical orientation of the parking lot and the cemetery in looking to improve both networks. The viability of combining both programs in underutilized sites was questioned.
Flipping public parking underground, allowed for an open site above-ground for more efficient stacking of repositories and memorials. As privately owned-parking lots are being being appropriated for new development, new sites for public parking are identified. The NYC municipal owns a network of unappropriated parking & vacant lots in prime locations of the city. The sites will be utilized for the insertion of the double program of Memorial & Public Parking.
THE VERTICAL STREET
SACRED EMBEDDED IN THE MUNDANE | PART III
The project will grow vertically, as the city has been expanding in the same way. In wanting to create a true public place, the concept was to allow the street to continue into the project. The sidewalk continues vertically as it wraps around the building, lined with individual memorial markers on each side (like trees on the street). Cars slip into the basement for parking. The Vertical Street is a slow pace public space that orients itself to the city. The street expands and contracts as it grows upwards, allowing for unique spaces of pause. A secular sacred space below is enveloped by the street.
A PUBLIC PLACE
SACRED EMBEDDED IN THE MUNDANE | PART III
The Collective Memorial will have a significant presence on the street. Through its public program, it allows the urban dwellers to once again engage with death and life their daily encounters. Each funeral held and each memorial added to the system is visible to a passer by. The significance of a life lost or the celebration of life is shared with the community.
REPOSITORIES OF MEMORIES
INDIVIDUAL MARKERS are in the form of engraved copper tubes. Like leaves that change in season, copper has the capacity to express temporality with age. The copper tubes replace the conventional tombstone, as they are markers for individuals who have passed. The memorial tubes are either repositories for remains (solid tubes) or simply vessels for memories (perforatoed tubes), based on the human scale with a reflective surface upon its commital. The individual markers aggregate to create a field.
SACRED EMBEDDED IN THE MUNDANE | PART III
A continuous ramp that is open to the elements wrap the perimeter of the building. The ramps weave up and stairs slip down for a faster pace to exit the building. The copper memorial tubes line the street and create a skin for the building. The facade materializes wover time.
MOMENTS IN THE STREET
The memorial lined streets will have different densities based on how the system aggregates. Through the aggregation of the field of copper tubes, pockets for remembering, privacy, and being enveloped by the cacophony of memories are created. There are moments of reprieve on one’s exit to forget and look out to the city.
The project activates the process of death through enableing moments for the processes of remembering, with the city as a constant background.
SACRED EMBEDDED IN THE MUNDANE | PART III
MEMORIAL BUILT OVER TIME
The first stage of the project begins with the erection of a scaffold (the scaffold symbolic of growth), the surrounding vertical street, underground parking and the ceremonial space.
The voids in the scaffold fill up with time. And the building changes colour as it ages.
1 year
2 years
The skin builds up organically as the building continues to grow. The voids in the building fill up with the lives lost.
10 years
The building is a continually growing structure, from the emergence of the scaffold. 50,000 lives fill up the first 12 floors of the structure, and in addition, the system has the capacity to aggregate and reinforce itself.
25 years
SACRED EMBEDDED IN THE MUNDANE | PART III
50,000 LLIVES
This project changes the context of the city by activating the process of memorialization.
SACRED EMBEDDED IN THE MUNDANE | PART III
The project is a cinemathequepoche’d under a generic corporate tower, replace the typology of the plinth. A “new ground” is invented and new relationships for the city is uncovered.
Studio Critic: Enrique Walker
poche’ cinematheque
TRANSGRESSING THE CLICHE OF THE LIFT
THE DICTIONARY OF RECEIVED IDEAS This studio is an installment of a decade-long project whose aim is to examine received ideas—that is, ideas which are uncritically accepted, and repeated to the point of depleting their original intensity—in contemporary architecture culture. This ongoing series of design studios proposes to disclose, define, and date—and in the long run archive—received ideas prevalent over the past decade, both in the professional and academic realms, in order to ultimately open up otherwise precluded possibilities for architectural design and architectural theory. To that end, it focuses on design operations and conceptual strategies—those which have outlived the problems they originally addressed—particularly in terms of the means of representation and the lexicon through which they are respectively articulated. This project takes as precedent Gustave Flaubert’s unfinished book, Le dictionnaire des idées reçues. Just as the latter, it sets out to detect and collect received ideas and provide definitions—or a user’s manual— to render them self-evident. Yet as opposed to the latter, arguably an inventory of potential exclusions, this project also seeks to use—or to misuse—that collection of received ideas towards the formulation of other design operations and other conceptual strategies. Erique Walker
CLICHE OF THE LIFT This project is a collaboration with Diana Cristobal, Francisco Garces & Lei Guo. The objective of the project was to know the cliche, play within its rules and transgress it in order to use it as a design device to uncover a new trajectories in architecture.
AYA MACEDA | lm2915@columbia.edu
AYA MACEDA | lm2915@columbia.edu
POCHE’ CINEMATHEQUE
Mis-use 1: Multiple Legs
Mis-use 2: Stems
Mis-use 3: Fenestration transversal to the lift
Mis-use 4: Autonomous Interior Organization
To allow for multiple program & entrances to the building from the ground.
The STEMS are a programmatic device that allows the building to be ORGANIZED DIAGONALLY, veering away from horizontal & vertical relationships. This allows to control degrees of publicness or privacy by locating functions closer to the street level or up while keeping visual connections.
New relationships are created from exterior, top and bottom. Program is revealed from the surface below to the exterior
The interior program does not have a 1:1 relationship with the exterior volume.
It allows us to lift the entire building and free up a large proportion of the ground area.
CINEMATHEQUE ORGANIZATION | UNFOLDED SECTIONAL DIAGRAMS
bar
cafe
cafe bar
EATING EATING
lobby
lobby
exhibitions
exhibitions
restaurant
restaurant
outdoor seating
outdoor seating
cinema
cinema
tickets
tickets
EATING EATING EATING
FILMFILM X X
library
video exchange archive
archive
library
student-faculty social
informal seating
informal seating
FILM XX FILMFILM X
COLLECTION COLLECTION
student-faculty social
EDUCATION EDUCATION social social belt socialbelt belt
COLLECTION COLLECTION COLLECTION video exchange
school
school
cafe
stem stem stem
cafe
EDUCATION EDUCATION EDUCATION
private private program pro
EDUCATION EDUCATION
COLLECTION COLLECTION
FILMFILM X X
EATING EATING
public program public prog cinemacinema stem stem
EDUCATION EDUCATION
COLLECTION COLLECTION
FILMFILM X X
6. cinema
6. cinema
5. cinema
5. cinema
4. cinema
4. cinema
3. cinema
3. cinema
2. cinema
2. cinema
1. auditorium
cinemacinema belt be 1. auditorium
cinema cinema cinema belt belt belt
social belt social belt
EATING EATING
private private program pro
public program public prog cinemacinema stem stem
terrace
terrace
cinema
cinema
cinema
cinema
terrace
terrace
social belt social belt
pockets pockets pockets
cinemacinema belt be
private private program pro
public program public prog cinemacinema stem stem social belt social belt
cinemacinema belt be
POCHE’ CINEMATHEQUE
cafe bar terrace
restaurant 6. cinema
cafe seating outdoor
5. cinema
bar
EATING EATING
terrace
restaurant 6. cinema
exhibitions cinema
outdoor seating
lobby
EATING
tickets
cinema 4.5. cinema
cinema
lobby library
FILM X 3. cinema
archive
exhibitions
FILM FILMX X
cinema
school
COLLECTION COLLECTION video exchange
library
terrace
3. cinema
pocketspockets
1. auditorium
belt cinema cinema belt
4. cinema
COLLECTION
cinema
archive
video exchange
social belt social belt
informal seating
stem
cafe
stem
2. cinema student-faculty social tickets
EDUCATION EDUCATION
Overall Diagram
private NEW URBAN TERRITORIES
public p
cinema
new NEWurban URBAN territories TERRITORIES
Urban Opportunity
stem
social b
private program public program cinema
EDUCATION
COLLECTION
FILM X
stem
EATING
social belt
cinema belt
Unfolded Section
cinema
UNFOLDED SECTION | belts & pockets
EDUCATION
COLLECTION
EDUCATION
COLLECTION
POCHE’ CINEMATHEQUE
FILM X
EATING
FILM X
EATING
ORGANIZATION - STEMS
social belt
pockets
EDUCATION
social belt
pockets
COLLECTION
POCHE’ CINEMATHEQUE
social belt
pockets
FILM X
social belt
pockets
EATING
ORGANIZATION | SYSTEMS
Social Belt connects all programs of the project
Cinema Belt distributes the cinemas to all the stems
POCHE’ CINEMATHEQUE
Superimposition of layers allows for visual connection of private public spaces
Envelope focuses on top and bottom fenestrations. Roof spaces are programmed
ORGANIZATION | SYSTEMS
Top Pockets allows program esternally, between stems
Bottom pockets allows visual connection between interior program and ground space
POCHE’ CINEMATHEQUE
tower + core
transfer structure
roof
facade
cinema belt
social belt
bottom pockets
active ground
TYPOLOGICAL OPPORTUNITY
In looking at new urban territories that would benefit from the lift, we looked at underutilized networks in the city that need REAL Public Space. We attacked POP spaces and in effect the tower plinth.
MIDTOWN concentration of POP spaces MIDTOWN concentration of POP spaces
1. The plinth space under those corporate towers are separated from the urban life. So, we use the lift as a strategy to free those hidden space to the public. 2. The proposal removes the plinth, except for the core and the structure . And then plug in the “lift” under it like a jack. The space under it would be part of the street and the space above it could also be used as additional space to be programmed.
Destination
Destination
Neighbourhood
Haitus Circulation Marginal
Neighbourhood
3. The lift allows a weaving between the corporate tower FINANCIAL DISTRICT ecosystem and the urban life concentration POP spaces under theseof towers.
Public Park + Waterfront Accessible Spaces
FINANCIAL DISTRICT concentration of POP spaces
Haitus Circulation Marginal Public Park + Waterfront Accessible Spaces
PPOP map by Yoonsun Yang, GSAPP
In effect, the proposal really looks at a new way for a tower to arrive to the ground. PPOP map by Yoonsun Yang, GSAPP
The proposal is a “new plinth”. It is a truss -- a transfer structure that will support the tower and allow for a active ground.
corporate towers with POP spaces Park Avenue Plaza
Trump Tower
IBM Building
POCHE’ CINEMATHEQUE
typical tower with plinth
AYA MACEDA | lm2915@columbia.edu
remove plint, leaving only the core
AYA MACEDA | lm2915@columbia.edu
plug in the new plinth
AYA MACEDA | lm2915@columbia.edu
interior program will affect pockets
ACTIVATION OF GROUND
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pockets alow for new relationships from exterior to interior
activation of ground through adjacency of public program & entrances
POCHE’ CINEMATHEQUE
activation of ground through exterior fixtures and extension of program
activation of ground through events and movement
TYPOLOGICAL DISCOVERIES
CINEMA TYPES THE LIFT also allowed for an oportunity to exploit “the oblique” in terms of the program of the cinema.
POCHE’ CINEMATHEQUE
ACTIVE URBAN SPACE
The new plinth for the tower allows for an active public and mixed space back to the city. This new type can challenge how we look at a Manhattan block... where in public can weave through the undercroft spaces of the towers allowing for a new movement in lieu of always walking through the perimeter of a block. We create new relationships from ground to building through active undercroft spaces.
POCHE’ CINEMATHEQUE
NEW GROUND
essays focus on redefining type, regenerating the urban, and negotiating individual-collective space
“Balancing Individual and Collective in Dense Urban Housing”
“Creating a Place for Death & Memorialization” “An Analogical Architecture” “A Grandstand for Urban Life”
“From Type to Program”
FROM TYPE TO PROGRAM SAN CATALDO CEMETERY, MODENA BY ALDO ROSSI Program Enrique Walker
Program in Aldo Rossi’s work is a complex topic because despite the many theories he has advanced in architecture, the subject was never an actual focus of his conceptual work. Nonetheless, the way in which program can be analyzed through Rossi’s work is precisely through the theories he formulated -- on type and on the operation of analogous architecture as a process of design. Rossi uses these theories in the case of the San Cataldo Cemetery of Modena, the winning competition entry for the extension of Casare Costa’s 19th century neo-classical cemetery. In Rossi’s proposal, each specific program of the cemetery (the columbaria, ossuaries, sanctuary and the common grave) is represented by a specific type. The formal representation of each program is determined through analogy between the elements of the “city of the living” to that of the dead. Other than the direct correlation in plan and size to the adjacent cemetery by Costa, the organization of program is determined by a hierarchy of spaces defined by a narrative of going through a cemetery that Rossi has set out. For Rossi, “This project for a cemetery complies with the image of a cemetery that everyone has”.1 -- a subjective statement stemming from his theories, that would be the main point of scrutiny of this essay. To understand Rossi’s work, it is imperative to understand his theories. TYPOLOGY Architect, academic and theorist, Aldo Rossi, born 1931 in Milan, wrote critical books and essays on architecture that drew attention back to typology. The most influential of his works is 1 Aldo Rossi, “The Blue of the Sky.” Oppositions 5 (Summer 1976), p31.
his dissertation “The Architecture of the City” (1966) which had a huge impact on the discourse on typology. Typology, the language of his theory is derived through an understanding of a city’s morphology -- of existing building forms and vernacular artefacts evident and repeated in the city over time. For Rossi, “typological form” constitutes a building and “types” are the repetitive fragmented architectural elements or “urban facts” that compose a city. According to Rossi, “No type can be identified with a particular form, but all architectural forms can be referred to types”.2 Types are functionally indifferent, according to Rossi, in that type preserves and defines the internal logic of forms, not by techniques or program. For Rossi, the corridor is a primary type which is indifferently available to the program, for example, of a house, a student residence, or a school.3 The same goes for porticos, smokestacks, lighthouses, monuments and other architectural elements. This freedom of typology has always been a fascination of Rossi. The Architecture of the City, argues the relation of form to function as “form persists and comes to preside over a built work in a world where functions continually become modified”.4 Specific types are not reliant on the individualised function of a building, but rather specific types may emanate from different buildings. Buildings, according to Rossi can change use or program but retain meaning in the memory of the collective. Rossi recognizes that every object has a function to which it must respond. However, the object does not cease to be effective because functions vary over time.5
ANALOGICAL ARCHITECTURE Analogical Architecture is Rossi’s method of design. Here, whe relies on the “logical-formal” operation of analogy. Through the conceptual framework of analogical understanding, the transposition of historical, collective types and monuments onto new architecture, even in a new setting would still carry with it meaning by virtue of people’s familiarity with repetitive types. 2 Rafael Moneo, “The Idea of Architecture and the Modena Cemetery”, Oppositions Reader (New York : Princeton Architectural Press) p.110 3 Rafael Moneo, “On Typology,” Oppositions 13 (New York : Princeton Architectural Press, 1978) p 23-4. 37. 4 Peter Eisenman, “Introduction” A Scientific Autobiography (Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 1981), p. 1 5 Aldo Rossi, “Introduction” A Scientific Autobiography (Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 1981), p. 74
ESSAYS
This asserts Rossi’s recourse to types, and to forms of utmost clarity that trigger collective memory. To explain Rossi’s method of analogy, he refers to another analogy expressed in Canaletto’s paintings of “Venice” at the National Gallery in Parma. Canaletto paints the projects of the architect Palladio which are actually situated in Vicenza. Because they are set against the backdrop of a real cityscape, one would think that the paintings are about Venice. The subject of another painting is an unbuilt bridge, removed from space and transposed to a setting with a real cityscape. In effect, Canaletto’s artificial Venice although imagined, are accepted as real and “of good order” because the elements in the composition are of familiar types. THE CEMETERY The scheme of the San Cataldo cemetery is a composition of centrally organized types bound by a perimeter wall. This walled “city of the dead” is analogous to a city of the living exemplified through each type. The following are the specific programs of the cemetery, each marked by a type and given “meaning” and order through analogy: 1. Perimeter Columbaria The perimeter columbaria carries with it the typological form of the cemetery, first through the mirroring of the plan and order of the neo-classical precedent of the adjacent cemetery; and second through the identifiable rectilinear paths punctuated by porticos and the funerary niches lining both sides of the corridor. The columbaria, which serves as the repository of remains, wraps the site as well as weaves underground in a reticulated pattern.6 2. The Sanctuary
space where funerals, civil or religious ceremonies take place with towering walls in which are embedded the remains of the war dead and of partisans -- people who committed their lives to civic duty. Because of the nature of its program, it is situated at the most public and visible area of the cemetery. 3. Ossuaries From the sanctuary are the centrally organized ossuaries. Inscribed in a triangle, the regular succession of vaults connected by a central spine is arranged in an order where the longest vault which is the lowest in height graduates to the narrowest and tallest vault at the end of the spine towards another monument in the project. This arrangement of ascending rectangular vaults is analogous to an osteological vertebra not only in form but in the way it connects two main types -- the cube and the cone. 4. Communal Grave The conical type with an opening to the sky resembles a chimney and is analogous to a deserted factory. It contains the program of the communal grave for the abandoned dead and is given significance because of its placement at the very end of the procession of types along the central axis arranged in the proposal. The communal grave is a monument, signified by its towering form but also its external and internal formal reference to Etinee-Louis Boullee’s cenotaphs. By designing the common grave as a monument, the tallest of all types in the cemetery, Rossi had hoped to express the civic importance of architecture -- in this case of the city building a monument higher than no other for the “desperate and forgotten” lives. 7 The organization of program and the embedding of meaning into the typological form of the cemetery illustrates Rossi’s “logical-formal operation” which is not only of types but, as mentioned, also of its being in conformity with the precedent of the adjacent neoclassical cemetery. The architecture of nineteenth century neoclassical Italian cemeteries are expressions of civic architecture, where the intimate relationship of an individual to death takes place in a public institution.8
The sanctuary is represented by a cubic volume with a regular rhythm of windows. It has the appearance of an unfinished house with no floors, no roof, and with openings directly puncturing the walls. It is designed as house that is unfinished and is analogous to death. The sanctuary marks the entry to the cemetery and is public in terms of its program. It is a collective
7 Aldo Rossi, “The Blue of the Sky.” Oppositions 5 (New York : Princeton Architectural Press, 1976), p32.
6 Aldo Rossi, “The Blue of the Sky.” Oppositions 5 (New York : Princeton Architectural Press, 1976), p 31.
8 Rafael Moneo, “The Idea of Architecture and the Modena Cemetery”, Oppositions Reader (New York : Princeton Architectural Press, 1998) p11.
PROGRAM From Type to Program
Rossi arranges types in a hierarchical order that gives value to collective spaces, particularly the Sanctuary and the Communal Grave. In designing the main program, the repositories for the remains of the dead are embedded in the walls of each type. This creates emptiness within each type. It expresses the importance of the communal value of death over the individual. Rossi also gives monumentality to these types that contain civic programs and ceremonial spaces. In purposefully designing the cube and cone as types that could be read from outside the perimeters of the cemetery, he allows these types to signify the cemetery and for the cemetery to have a dialectic with the living city.
legibility of program through formalism and analogy when form is not directly related to program and analogy by its very nature is subjective, is the issue itself. With his formal devices not fully transmittable, ultimately, Rossi relies on the self referential nature of architecture, writing and drawing in order to really allow for the building to be read -- an exercise of his autonomy.
Bibliography: Time plays a critical role in relation to program in the case of the San Cataldo cemetery. The cemetery’s use is activated by death that would fill the repositories, rather than life challenging its use over time. As program is permanent but slowly being built over time, the cemetery can be constructed in stages as the need for repositories is required. With the symmetrical planning of the project and fragmentation of types, it is logical to build the project in stages. Today, only half of the actual project has been realized. Lastly, Rossi used the method of collage to organize the arrangement and procession of types. In many of his drawings, the porticos, the cube, the rectilinear assemblies of ossuaries and the smokestacks are juxtaposed, and represented very similarly to that of the works of surrealist painter, Giorgio De Chirico. The drawing, with its colour, shadows and re-representation of form that expresses the sublime and nostalgia for the idea of the cemetery is in itself analogic because these ideas are untransmittable through architecture. To Rossi, it is important that architecture can convey meaning. The reading of program is reliant on analogies between life and buildings in the modern city -- “unfinished house” and the “deserted factory”. The cemetery is read as a city of the dead, and together with its references to established architectural precedents for cemeteries, Rossi asserts that “this project for a cemetery complies with the image of the cemetery that each one of us possesses”.9 This notion is problematic because “the image of the cemetery that each one of us possesses” may vary significantly. The 9 Rafael Moneo, “The Idea of Architecture and the Modena Cemetery”, Oppositions Reader (New York : Princeton Architectural Press, 1998), p 34
Aldo Rossi, “An Analogical Architecture.” A+U 65 (Japan: 1976), p 74-77. Aldo Rossi, “The Blue of the Sky.” Oppositions 5 (New York : Princeton Architectural Press, 1976), p 31-34. Aldo Rossi, The Architecture of the City (Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 1982). Aldo Rossi, A Scientific Autobiography (Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 1981) Rafael Moneo, “On Typology,” Oppositions 13 (New York : Princeton Architectural Press, 1978) p 23-45. Rafael Moneo, “The Idea of Architecture and the Modena Cemetery”, Oppositions Reader (New York : Princeton Architectural Press, 1998) p 105-134.
ESSAYS
ON AN ANALOGICAL ARCHITECTURE The History of Architectural Theory Dean Mark Wigley
In the essay, An Analogical Architecture, Milanese architect, Aldo Rossi (born 1931) theorizes that analogy in architecture can be used as a logical and formal operation that can be translated as a design method.1 The essay was first published in May, 1976 in the 65th issue of Architecture and Urbanism (A+U), within a 65-page special on the Conception and Reality of Aldo Rossi, which catalogues and critiques the intellectual, built work and drawings of Rossi ten years after the publication of his influential dissertation, The Architecture of the City (1966). The article, both presented in Japanese and English, was originally written in Italian by Rossi and translated by David Stewart (Professor, Tokyo Tech) who in the same issue wrote an article on Rossi’s work, The Expression of Ideological Function in the Architecture of Aldo Rossi. An Analogical Architecture is an account of how the concept of the ‘analogical city’ has been developed into an actual design method and is behind Rossi’s influential body of built work and drawings. Rossi derives the concept of analogy from the correspondence between philosophers, Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung, where the latter defines the concept of Analogy in the following statement: “I have explained that ‘logical’ though is what is expressed in words directed to the outside world in the form of discourse. ‘Analogical’ thought is sensed yet unreal, imagined yet silent; it is not a discourse but rather a meditation on themes of the past, an interior monologue. Logical thought is ‘thinking in words’. Analogical thought is archaic, unexpressed, and practically inexpressible in words.”2
1 Rossi, Aldo, “An Analogical Architecture”, Architecture and Urbanism, May 1975, p. 74
2 Rossi, Aldo, “An Analogical Architecture”, Architecture and Urbanism, May 1975, p. 74
As such, Rossi resorts to explaining the method of using analogy through another analogy – as echoed in Canaletto’s works of paintings of Venice, where Palladio’s projects for the Rialto Bridge, the Basilica and Palazzo Chiericati, two of which are actually in Vicenza were transposed in a setting as if painted from a real cityscape of Venice. The three monuments constitute an analogue of the real Venice in that the transposition of Palladio’s architecture (removed in space) and re-inserted in an artificial Venice recreates a realistic, familiar Venice that is actually a metaphysical representation he has conceived through an understanding of what exists in the real city -- the paintings being analogical representations that could not be expressed in words. Rossi would later design the Teatro Del Mondo for the Venice Biennale (1979), which had the same idea to Canaletto’s painting in which a familiar 18th century derived floating theatre would be superimposed in different parts of Venice. Rossi expresses his work stemming from the analogue, in that his architecture has an autobiographical nature – a catalogue between memory and inventory. He transitioned his research of reading the city to using the typology of public and residential buildings to the reduction of architectural elements, repetition of types through drawing and redrawing with layering of information, and using contrast to develop a new architecture as seen in his recent work. Rossi begins his article by showing photographs of long porticos and corridors of Salvatierra, a monastery and porticos found in an anonymous single dwelling in Lombardy as well as a long rectilinear with equal repetitive fenestrations in a residential block in Italy. These references, that would recur in his built works and competition entries, of which show an evolution of the idea of the portico, corridor and the rectilinear building from the Rossi’s work from 1965-1975. To understand this evolution, it is imperative to understand the Architecture of the City, where it all begins. The context is the city and its analysis is where Aldo Rossi’s theory of Analogical Architecture begins. Rossi’s dissertation, The Architecture of the City (1966) focuses on the complex verifiable “reading” of data presented by the city and suggests that the European city is a repository of collective history and memory. Typology, the language of his theory, can be derived from context and an understanding of existing building forms and vernacular artifacts evident and are repeated in a city’s architectural history.
THE HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURAL THEORY ON An Analogical Architecture
Through a conceptual framework derived from an analogical understanding, the transposition of historical, collective types and monuments into new architecture in another setting within the city creates an architecture that would carry meaning and familiarity to the collective memory. Rossi’s goal in his dissertation is to establish an analytical method susceptible to quantitative evaluation capable of collecting the material to be studied under unified criteria. This method, presented as a theory of urban artifacts, stems from the identification of the city itself an artifact and from its division into individual buildings and dwelling areas.3 Rossi, from a “distant” position of an “observer” evaluated the city as a composite of building types and monuments with formal and spatial data that can be extracted through an intense study of typology and morphology. He defines Typology as the study of type that cannot be further reduced based on his own criteria; the Skeleton as the urban plan or structure of the city; and the City as an archeological artifact, the object of analysis, the ultimate data -- a man-made object that retains traces of time. It carries the idea of permanence and spatial continuity of history and it is slowly built to reflect their ideals and collective vision of the dwellers of its time. He also qualifies the Locus or site as a singular place in the city and that there is a relationship between a specific location and the buildings that are in it. The common misconception of type as a completely reductive and autonomous element does not exist in Rossi’s theory. Type is in fact associated with a particular form that responds to a context, a locus and relationships with other monuments it is surrounded by, and carries with it history. Rossi believes that when a building is extracted from its context it still reveals that it is derived from a local area and also manifests the relationship of distant kinships.4 An understanding of typology through sketches and study drawings allowed Rossi to develop a syntax and strategy for composition and contrast. He uses his dissertation to catalogue buildings, artifacts, compositional elements of buildings, streetscapes in order to establish typology. In the Architecture of the City, Rossi collected drawings, photographs, and simpli3 Rossi, Aldo. Architecture of the City (Joan. USA: The Institute for Architecture and Urban Studies and The MIT, 1982), p. 21 4 Rossi, Aldo. Architecture of the City (Joan. USA: The Institute for Architecture and Urban Studies and The MIT, 1982), p128
fied the representation of foundations, columns, corridors, porticos, fenestrations in buildings and typical plans of public buildings, residential blocks, chapels and markets as different elements that form the city. He would later use type as a tool to create new architecture that people could read. What the theory attempts to do, according to Peter Eisenmann is to offer “an other architecture, an other architect and an other process of their understanding”.5 Rossi clarifies the question of history and memory in how architecture is transformed into autobiographical experiences; places and things change with the superimposition of meanings. Since buildings are subject to change in the course of history, these buildings and monuments adapt different functions, as part of the inevitable transformation of the city. What is significantly noted is that although buildings adapt, they still carry within them memory – the role in which they played in society during their conception. Objects have a greater significance than performing a function, because their life goes beyond their intended purpose. Thus they become repositories of events, stories, order and other embodiments of our history. Even with the demolition of some significant buildings or monuments, their role may still be felt from the order of the buildings that still exist in the area. Through analogical understanding, Rossi asserts that the city should be studied and valued as per the notion that it evolves over time, through the meaning of urban artifacts that are embedded in them -- that the city’s physical transformation takes shape in the memory of the collective allowing people to instinctively read architecture. The Analogical City is a city that offers such good measure that is embedded in people’s memories. This good measure creates order and affects people subconsciously because this order is familiar. Rossi cites that cities have an inherent structure of relationships between public buildings and dwellings. Amorphous areas such as American suburbs, according to Rossi can therefore be read as in a state of chaos or in a moment of transformation. Rossi taps into analogical sense to qualify “archaic, unexpressed and practical inexpressible” thought in Memory by the operative analysis of the building form and the city. He sug5 Eisenmann, Peter. Architecture of the City (Joan. USA: The Institute for Architecture and Urban Studies and The MIT, 1982), Preface.
ESSAYS
gests that the city has a language that is imprinted in collective memory, that in assembling these familiar forms into new buildings, there would be a continuity of history, which is a part of a greater discourse of the Post-Modern movement where Rossi would be associated with. Rossi through his recent work presented in his essay demonstrates how the distillation of type and imagery play an important role in the design process to create new architecture as well as show the convergence of past and future. In a way, the presentation of his recent body of work is a catalogue of architecture using the analogous method as progression of between memory and inventory. As previously mentioned, Rossi presented the typology of centrally planned public buildings and rectilinear residential blocks with long porticos and repetitive exterior façade elements. Rossi’s recourse to types and relationships abstracted from the vernacular is evident in his design in the Residential Block in Gallaratese (1965-1970). The analogical relationship of structural elements mixed freely with the corridor type, derived from the traditional Milanese tenements, where Rossi recreates the corridor as being the place that triggers a lifestyle bathed in the everyday occurrences, domestic intimacy and personal relationships. The Modena Cemetery (1971), that evolved from the plan of the Labyrinth (an object associated with the process of death), Rossi also used a central plan. The project consisted of a perimeter portico that housed columbaria. Inside the perimeter is another layer of corridors where ossuaries are located, and within is a cube as a sanctuary for the war dead and of partisans and finally a conical shaped structure, with a hollow core that represents the common grave. The walled city for the dead has familiarity in its circulation, zoning of public-private relationships. It appears from the outside as public buildings, and the centrally illuminated plan enforces this type to be read. The main building is like an abandoned house (a small cube with fenestrations but with a hole in the roof). The architecture is poetic and analogous also to the relationship between life and buildings in the modern city. The silence, expanse, Ledoux type space, use of light and void that are evident in the design of the buildings in the complex are familiar images that would allow a collective to
identify the building as a place for the dead. Cemetery of San Cataldo, Modena. The drawing of this project was a critical moment for Rossi in that he was able to progress his designs based on a process of redrawing and layering information over his own drawings. The project evolved and gained autonomy from his original design through the use of contrasts explored in color and materials. He started with a black and white base drawing of the initial scheme, and rendered various iterations using colour to highlight a particular portion of the building, and with the application of colour developed using contrast. The design developed from this point and the original drawing (based on an analogical architecture) also became an analogue of the final scheme of the cemetery proposal. Up to this point, Rossi’s built work composed of buildings that had a clear dialogue between with the vernacular, in terms of form and materiality. Rossi’s architecture has been a progressive expression of repetitive characteristics, with the use of his Analogical Architecture method. However, it is clear that at this point Rossi felt the need to break from the expected purism of his work. In stating how he has been recently searching for alternatives, Rossi turned to a further rarefaction of parts in favor of more complex compositional methods. This deformation affected the materiality of the buildings and veered away from a static image, stressing instead the elementality and superimposed quality. Familiar archetypal objects, such as sheds and stable whose forms are fixed and recognizable but whose meanings may change through a new use for the type, still carry an emotional appeal -- this, still enforcing the evolution of the analogous architecture. “No work, other than by its own technical means, can entirely solve or liberate the motives that inspired it; for this reason, a more or less conscious repetition is produced in the work of anyone who labours continuously as an artist. In the best of cases, this can lead to a process of perfection but it can also produce total silence. That is the repetition of objects themselves”,6 says Rossi who at this moment shifts focus in his work. For Rossi’s subsequent works, he continues the exploration of superimposing structural elements (“engineering works) ex6 Rossi, Aldo, “An Analogical Architecture”, Architecture and Urbanism, May 1975, p. 74
THE HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURAL THEORY ON An Analogical Architecture
pressed in a light materiality for more private functions within a project and a centrally planned and grounded building (“body”) for collective services. He continues with his inquiry towards long rectilinear buildings and long corridors, but in a new aesthetical expression, that evokes lightness and creates contrast with the centralized “body” in his schemes. He also treated the ground in a new way, in which he had a tendency to suspend his architectural elements to create an independent topology in his work. He also explored deeper into expressing contrast in material and form in dealing with new sites pertaining to historic towns and nature. In the House in Borgo Ticino, Novara (1974), houses suspended over nature, the “body” grounded on the top plane of a steep site, where common services such as the kitchen, living and dining rooms are concentrated horizontally across the site, while the 4 bedroom wings in lightweight construction are arranged perpendicularly to the main “body”, suspended, forming an independent horizontal line. The buildings resemble the typological building form of the fisherman’s shack. The positioning of the building over its natural environment, as in not imitating the slope but rather adding to the landscape of nature is a new approach into expressing contrast. Rossi, pleased with the outcome of the design, wherein he was able to go to a different realm in his work. Through aerial suspension of structure, he was able to achieve a unique space, in relation to the building’s relationship with the surrounding trees and sky – a solution opposed to the concepts of the Architecture of the City, in that Rossi at this moment veers towards creating unfamiliar new spaces. To Rossi, the building operates in an unusual fashion because the building is inserted in a natural environment, carrying with it no precedent – as opposed to the city. Subsequently, the following two projects evolved from the typology of the Borgo Ticino house, despite them not being “positioned in nature”. They follow the programmatic logic of the house as well as the suspension of the four “bodies” in relation to a central zone. The first is Rossi’s entry for the Trieste Regional Offices (1974). The basement is the only connection between old and new. Three open atriums with a stone base and large glazed coverings, referenced from old Austrian warehouses are dedicated to the public zones of the building, above which long corridors connect the spaces and lead to four elevated office wings on both sides of the central space. Finally, in the Competition for the Student’s Residence
in Trieste, a central building for collective services are located at the edge of the site, with a white stone base. Similar to the house in Borgo Ticino, the four “bodies” containing student’s rooms, rise from a sloping site suspended like bridges from a steel structure. The evolution of form of the portico, corridor, central plan and treating structure as artifact, develops in Rossi’s work over the past ten years. His use of drawing and redrawing based on specificities of the type as a tool to trigger a new way of evolving the analogue and creating contrast is clearly mapped by Rossi in his essay. In Rossi’s recent work from 1973, the corridor that used to be external to private spaces, but are already active spaces engage with the central plan and becomes part of central space. In a way, Rossi has written this essay to show how his theory has lead to this unforeseen outcome – an unexpected architectural typology, which he expresses great pleasure for. Rossi has equally been widely praised and criticized at the same time for The Architecture of the City. The paradox in his theory is that Rossi bases an aesthetic analogy for a scientific claim. Rossi, a self proclaimed rationalist, had a pseudo scientific method of gathering data about the city that carries with it many contradictions – contradictions in which Rossi would admit to and at the same time defend. The task of qualifying a city through typology already starts off as doubtful, in which he attempts to qualify aesthetic objects – of which have subjective qualities and designed people who may not carry with them the sense of “good order”. Can an architect, be an observer and can he be truly objective as well? Rossi uses words such as “the spirit of Analogy”, “soul of the city” and “mystery” in his writings which also do qualify as scientific. Rossi showed great interest in the architecture of Enlightenment and pure forms of Etienne-Louis Boullée (for whom he wrote an book introduction in 1960). Although his previous writings on type upheld a very rational position, he was also interested in the irrational – perhaps the metaphysical and the surreal. Rossi states that in order to study the irrational, it is necessary to take up a rational position as an observer. In other words, observation - and eventually participation give way to disorder. Rossi’s effective use of drawings and collages has been considered vivid Post Modern interpretations and compared to the works of surrealist painter Giorgio Di Chirico.7 7 Rossi, Aldo, Theorizing A New Agenda for Architecture, An Anthology of Architectural History 19651995. (Princeton Archtiectural Press ,1996), p. 347
ESSAYS
Despite these observations, Rossi seemed to have been aware of his own contradictions – in terms of his rationalism vs his poetics. At the end of his dissertation, he admits the difficulty that the study of the city may lead to the irrational. “The City is as irrational as any work of art, and its mystery is perhaps above all to be found in the secret and ceaseless will of its collective manifestations” says Rossi. 8 Aldo Rossi maintained the prerogative of being a theorist since the release of his dissertation. He was active in the discussions and dialectics regarding the development of architecture in Italy as well as land use and planning on a national level. Rossi had an influential platform to express his theories, serving as editor of Casabella – Contnuita and teaching at the Politecnico in Milan (a platform he used to complete his research), the ETH in Zurich, and the Instituto Universitario de Architettura in Venice. His participation with the Tenzenza group, the neo-rationalist movement that sought to establish continuity in history of Italian architecture, also propelled in status among his contemporaries. In 1980, he further gained recognition when he was invited to participate in La Strada Novissima exhibition of the Venice Biennale which focused on the future of architecture, being post-modernism. Rossi’s influence towards a returning to a complex rationalism of typology to affect the development in architecture not only enforced the Post-modern notion of continuous history, but also rejected dogma of modern eclecticism, individual expressionism and a reductive form of typology. His dissertation created a great ripple in the discourse in architecture in this light. So in a way, ten years after writing his dissertation it was imperative for Rossi with his stature and influence to write the essay, An Analogical Architecture to not only rationalize contradictions, but more importantly to sum up the relevance of his theory and how it has led him to develop a new architectural typology. He pushes the reader to go back to the definition of the analogical thought in that it is sensed yet unreal, a meditation of themes of the past, archaic, unexpressed and practically inexpressible in words. By his methods and usage of the understanding of the city, Rossi produced work that is in dialogue with the collective memory of the city as it has been shaped by the past and the interventions of the present. He attempts to justify that perhaps the importance of his theory lies in the combined strength of the rational examination from 8 Rossi, Aldo. Architecture of the City (Joan. USA: The Institute for Architecture and Urban Studies and The MIT, 1982), p. 163
which is drawn a morphological structure and of the analogical method’s ability to transcend the “rational” and in some ways, transform it to the poetic. With this Rossi ends with an impactful catalogue of his built works, drawings and collages to demonstrate the value of his method of distilling the city, although not as scientific as he had hoped to be, had a critical impact on his early works which became analogues to his new typology (as a series of events – from memory to inventory. Rossi’s architecture is an actual continuation of the narrative of invention caused by the analogical thought, using his earlier work as the analogue to the emergence of an other architecture.
Bibliorgraphy: Boddy, Trevor. http://www.atributosurbanos.es/en/terms/analoguecity/ Frampton, Kenneth. Modern Architecture, A Critical History. (London: Thames and Hudson Ltd., 1980), p.294-295. Hays, Michael K. (Editor), Architecture Theory Since 1968. (USA: Cambridge, Mass: The MIT Press, 1998). McEwan, Cameron. http://cameronmcewan.wordpress.com/ Nesbit, Kate (Editor). Theorizing A New Agenda for Architecture, An Anthology of Architectural History 1965-1995. (USA: Princeton Architectural Press, 1996), p. 345-355. Rossi, Aldo, “An Analogical Architecture”, Architecture and Urbanism, May 1975, p. 55-120. Rossi, Aldo. Architecture of the City (Joan. USA: The Institute for Architecture and Urban Studies and The MIT, 1982). Sharp, Dennis. The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Architects and Architecture. (New York: Quatro Publishing, 1991) p.130. Tait, Gregory. http://quixotic-rationalism.blogspot.com/2011/02/cityof-memory.html
TKTS | A GRANDSTAND FOR URBAN LIFE Metropolis Professor Enrique Walker
“The daily migrations of people transform New York into a living theater for visitors and residents alike – the most mundane activities … all take on the quality of high drama, or at times screwball comedy. “ (Robert A.M. Stern, 1995) New York City as a living theater is a metaphor. But in Times Square, the exploitation of density and visual chaos is a calculated show. In as much as it has been crafted into an urban stage, there has been, ironically, no real place to sit and watch the free theatrical event. This provocation became the main driver for architects Choi Rohipa’s redesign of the TKTS ticket booth in the infamous site. The project, won through competition was initially briefed as a small architectural structure to replace the existing booth -- a cluster of container structures decorated with cheap signage reflecting the same-day discount theater tickets sold in them, originally built in Times Square to revitalize the area. By reframing the question as one requiring a broader urban response to the brief for its relevant location, the architects resolved a significant contextual issue despite the small size of the project. The site, Duffy Square in the northern triangle of Times Square between 45th and 47th Street where Broadway and Seventh Avenue meet is one of the busiest pedestrian intersections in Manhattan. Referred to as the “Crossroads of the World”, Times Square is where commerce, art, diverse people and the vibrancy of its artificial environment collide. A prominent opportunity to create a unique urban expression in contrast to the rhythmic planning of the city presents itself when Broadway strikes the grid, as it does in Duffy Square. Wedged between high-rise buildings dressed with a multitude of electric signage, moving billboards and interactive screens advertising cur-
rent Broadway shows and commercialism, the empty triangle became an opportune site to tackle. The recognition of the city as an urban stage was pivotal in the transformation of Times Square to how we know it today. The post World War II corporate boom in Midtown once threatened to engulf this public place and what saved it was the city’s decision to redefine the theater district as a destination where people could experience theater on the street – through the choreography of congestion and overload as the epitome of New York life. In 1981, the city revitalized the district by imposing new design guidelines that would visually crowd the street with signage, layering, reflective materials, colors and lighting, covering entire 5-storey facades of each building, all of which intended to establish a backdrop mimicking the dazzle of theatre lights. The facades on steroids, matched with contradiction and surprise and the interesting pedestrian experience make Times Square an over-stimulating public arena. Two major yearly events are celebrated in Times Square -- the New Year’s Eve countdown seen by millions and “Broadway on Broadway”, a showcase of Broadway numbers performed on the street. Both events’ relevance to the public access to theater have consequently attracted large investments in outdoor theatrical lighting to this public space, emphasizing Times Square as a world stage, further over-stimulating “The Great White Way”. The intensity of the street is orchestrated on purpose. Like being sucked into a vortex, one could venture into Times Square and be overwhelmed by the intensity of flashing lights, thousands of people crossing paths, performers, artists, hustlers, roaming “cartoon characters”, tough-faced New Yorkers emerging from the subway rushing to work and even the sanitation crew dressed in cherry red jumpsuits cleaning the streets in a choreographed manner -- everyone taking part in “the high drama of life”. Spectators are trapped in the parade as there is no place of respite to create an aesthetic distance from the circus. Providing a place for an audience to sit redefined the architect’s inquiry into the significance of a small project within the larger urban realm. With the privatization of entertainment, access to ‘the free show” as a vital part of the city’s history had to be maintained (despite negative preconceptions of Times Square). Choi Rohipa’s response therefore was a bright red
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grandstand where people could watch the spectacle of Times Square. The grandstand faces south, towards the One Times Square building where the “ball drops” with the public arena and a few remaining historical memorials maintained in the foreground. The red translucent steps lit from below allow the structure to glow at night, marking its presence and paying homage to the electric signs enveloping the theatre precinct, transforming the steps into signage itself. The tiered structure allows people to ascend from the street to an observation platform while the briefed ticket booths facing 47th street are non-descript, but still achieving its purpose. The lines of people scurrying for cheap tickets wrap around the grandstand while others wait, comfortably amused on the steps. The main function of the building becomes secondary as the byproduct, that is the seating, created a significant space that Times Square demanded. In its full daily use, the resulting structure almost disappears and the steps become a continuity of the public space. The architect’s decision not to insert a decorated building for self-promotion, but rather, to design the building as an urban space maximized the opportunities dictated by its significant location. Prioritizing public as an agent for design demonstrated in this project has contributed to the greater debate for the revitalization of public spaces in the city. Four years since its completion, The TKTS finally serves the Theatre Development Fund’s initial purpose established in the 70’s to revitalize Times Square, now through more than just selling cheap tickets. The building has become an iconic venue and a popular respite, arguably coined as “the meeting point of this generation” by New York Time’s Bill Cunningham. It is a place to sit and watch the literal and metaphorical urban theater of Times Square. The realization of the simple concept of a grandstand allowed a return of theater to the people and its communal roots that allow the audience to become participants in the social drama of life.
Bibliography: Robert AM Stern and Thomas Mellins, The World’s premier Public Theatre: Creating and Managing Public Space in the post-industrial Metropolis, New York: Columbia University GSAPP, 1995 Rem Koolhaas, Delirious New York, New York: The Monacelli Press, 1994 Mira Felner, The World of Theatre: Tradition and Innovation, New York: Hunter College of The City, University of New York, 2006 New York City Department of City Planning, 42nd Street Development, Project Design Guidelines, (NY, NY: 1981) Bill Cunningham, B Cunningham ‘On the Street’, New YorTimes, 2008 http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2008/11/08/fashion/20081108street-feature/index.html J Choi & A Fitzerald, Competition Confidential, Monument, 2001 http://www.timessquarenyc.org/visitor-tips/history/index.aspx http://www.nycgovparks.org/parks/M093/ http://chrofi.com/TKTS-Times-Square
CREATING A PLACE FOR DEATH AND MEMORIALIZATION (in the context of New York City) 12 Dialogical and Poetic Strategies Professor Yehuda Safran
In New York City, cemeteries lie in the periphery, pushed away from the center where the living thrive. Where once integrated with the urban, in that they were situated in church yards and in close proximity to the ones “left behind,” they have, in a way, been rendered irrelevant, requiring distance to be traveled and effort from the still living to will to visit. Conceived of in the past as “the final resting place for the beloved departed,” the now peripheralized cemeteries serve more than just markers for the dead. Do they perhaps signify contemporary society’s avoidance of having to confront the inevitability of death? Or do they indicate shifts in thinking that death is not a finality but a transience, that what matters more is not the marking of where the corpus lies but in the traces left behind by the once living in objects and in the memories that will continue to be with the still living. Apart from their peripherialization, cemeteries are also threatened by spatial limitations. In the next ten to fifteen years, cemeteries in New York will have reached their full capacities. This spatial imperative creates an opportunity to deconstruct the very concept of the cemetery as a site and a “final resting place” for the dead, memorialization as a way of the still living of putting death “under erasure,” and thus create possibilities for a new positioning. This essay aims to demonstrate the importance of re-inserting places of death and memorial back in close proximity to our daily encounters in the city, and rethink the concept of permanence in relation to repositories and memorials. Since the first half of the 19th Century, New York City, like many European cities, has been migrating cemeteries to the rural lands outside the city. Before this trend, burials grounds were limited to family plots, churchyards and mass graves in the form of potters’ fields located in the center of the cities.
Death rituals were social spectacles that allowed communities to publicly and sometimes noisily mourn their dead. Death was a cultural practice that reminded people of their own mortality and how they should live in order to prepare for the afterlife. New York City was not spared the ravages of Yellow Fever and Cholera epidemics. The rise in death toll in the late 1700’s to early 1800’s triggered the prohibition of “earthen” burials in Manhattan below 86th Street. In 1847, the Rural Cemetery Act was passed. The law authorized commercial burials of up to 250 acres in rural lands outside Manhattan. It was a form of control that effectively segregated and “quarantined”1 the living from the dead. Sentiment for the loved one who died had to give way to the more practical concerns of sanitation and health. As a result, a dense network of cemeteries emerged, marking the segregation of the living from the dead. Referred to as the Cemetery belt along the boroughs of Queens and Brooklyn, each grave, held in perpetuity to mark the death of a person or members of a family, soon filled the vast expanse of cemeteries in a gridded structure. “As Cemeteries grew, their architecture changed: The quasiconcentric structure of the church and churchyard began to give way to a gridded necropolis mirroring the spreading metropolis”.2 (Taylor, Mark. “Grave Matters”, 2002) As cemeteries were removed from the center of the living, grieving for the departed beloved slowly transitioned to the private sphere. Still, cemeteries during the mid-19th Century when Romanticism was at its height, were viewed as public social places. They were popular sites to find respite from the chaos of Manhattan, vast parklands where the individual could retreat to commune with the sublime, idyllic places imbued with a sense of a Kantian negative pleasure.3 However, during the shifting pace of the 20th century, the 1 Note: Quarantine as form of control – Foucault, Michel. Panopticism. Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. Translated by Alan Sheridan, (NY: Vintage Books, 1995). Pages 198 2 Taylor, Mark “Grave Matters” (London: Reaction, 2002) p.15 3 Taylor, Mark “Grave Matters” (London: Reaction, 2002) p.18
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cemetery as a site for promenading and immersing oneself in the sublimity of nature lost its popular appeal. Visitation by the bereft in cemeteries became increasingly infrequent. Ironically, just as cemeteries along the belt were running the risk of being becoming forgotten by the people who buried their dead there, these were also turning into tourist attractions. The carnivalesque had seeped into what should have been quiet, respectful sites. Or had it always been there somehow when traditional rituals for the dead were still at the center of human activity?
rethink what cemeteries are for – for our generation and for our society. The current model of cemeteries is no longer relevant, having been designed over a century and a half ago, mirroring a society that no longer exists. In conceptualizing how we design new places for the dead, it is imperative to identify the social effect the distance of cemeteries to city centers has created. It is also an opportunity to revisit the concepts of death, of resting place and of memorialization in the context of a growing secular and multicultural society.
“… The cemetery was the “noisiest, busiest, most animated, most commercial place in the rural or urban center.” The church was the “common house”; the cemetery the open, also common space, at a time where there were no other public places except the street, no other meeting place, since the houses were generally so small and over-crowded” Philippe Aries, L’Homme devant la Mort4
We are all aware that our material life on earth is finite. For Heidegger, confronting and being aware of one’s mortality is important in shaping one’s life, and understanding the essence of being human. This consciousness of being and of death is not regressive, but activates our life and is a liberating act. It opens to us an opportunity to “philosophize”. With the displacement of cemeteries away from our encounters, we avoid the issue of death and have less opportunity to reflect on our lives and our responsibility to society.
In the meantime, the network of cemeteries in New York City is now reaching its full capacity. What this means for our generation is that we will no longer have the option to be buried in the traditional way in the peripheries of our city. If we want our dead bodies to be buried, we would have to be interred in more distant plots in other states, farther and farther away from the living we leave behind, in estranging places where the marks of our names would hold no significance, where we may be destined for oblivion.
Today, the world we live in celebrates overt individualism, values over customization and generates mass consumption. This contemporary lifestyle has led to critical economical, environmental and social issues. It is driven by an obsession to arrest age, pamper the self, and artificially hold death in abeyance. The denial of mortality is regressive and enables the degradation of our values as a society. Of course many factors have contributed to our current societal situation, but the detachment to mortality certainly plays its part.
But the fact is that an earthen burial is not the only option that exists in the city. Columbaria, repositories for cremated remains, exist in the depths of many Christian churches within Manhattan. While at present, the columbarium represents the most economical among burial options available, it has not reached even half of its capacity. This may be because of the concept of concealment -- funeral urns stored in niches away from public eye. This may also be because of the irresponsiveness of a growing secular population of the city which can, once the body is cindered, dispose of the ashes to air, water and land. Where then is the trace of the dead? And does remembering go away with the ashes too?
Because current cemeteries inhabit spaces distant from most New Yorkers’ daily lives, it is hard for the bereft to conveniently pay their respects, and denies the rest of us the poignancy of an encounter with mortality, and a tangible connection with past members of our communities. The reminder of death through the re-insertion of a place of death and memorial back into the city is not a morbid one. By moving those spaces of memorial and corporeal committal closer and integrating these into our daily routines, we may in fact activate the process of memorializing and change the context of the city.
The bottom line here is that we are in a situation of needing to 4 Tarlow, Sarah. “Bereavement and Commemoration: An Archeology of Mortality (Oxford,UK: Malden, Mass: Blacwell Publishers, 1999) p. 137
Markers ranging from permanent to impermanent are already scattered in the city. They come in the form of monuments, plaques, signs on benches, ghost bikes, sidewalk memorials and even ribbons, posters and shirts. With no remains associated with them, they are symptomatic of the human need to
12 DIOLOGICAL AND POETIC STRATEGIES Creating A Place for Death and Memorialization
still mark the absence of their dead, but in close proximity to their lives – placing the most sacred memorials in the most convenient and quotidian of spaces. Human beings, no matter how secular in thinking, need a place to grieve. Creating a space for memorialization and remembrance addresses this need and allows the city to once more engage with death in a way that would impact on, and affect, life. Life is a series of comings and goings, of births and deaths, of growing and fading, of rising and setting, of utterance and silence, of ebbs and flows, of writing and erasing. Yet everything bears a trace of what has occurred or not occurred. Nothing is ever erased. Nothing is ever absent. The waves flow, ebb, then surge back again. It is a pattern of life. Yet in the interstices of this pattern are nuanced changes of movement, sound, texture. The word death denotes an end, a termination, an obliteration. One may say that “A person lived and died. That is a fact and there is nothing more to it.” Yet a person having lived cannot have lived without having left marks of their existence. People having lived have been marked by a name, the place they lived, moved around in, the culture they were born into, the people they have spent time with no matter how briefly. Death is marked by objects left behind in which have been inscribed a person’s identity or way of living, by memories embedded in the person who was left behind. One does not really cease to exist while the objects of remembrance and the memories continue to exist. One cannot erase even those who have been erased by their societies. There may be no corporeal bodies to show evidence that these persons really ever lived, but there will always be some memories which may or may not be voiced that bear the trace of the ones who died. They are borne by those who try to make some sense of a disappearance or a death, the ones who have been marked, even in some small way, by the persons who died. Even as the person is erased by death from life, there is almost always some manifestation of the erasure that has occurred. The death is almost always put under erasure. Be it through a grand edifice for a once-upon-a-time ruler, a simple urn containing ashes, a yearly family gathering for the death anniversary of a beloved, a solitary visit to niche or tomb, a name inscribed in a memorial wall for those who died in a catastrophe, a memorial for unknown soldiers, a marker for a mass grave. Death gives expression to stories sometimes real, sometimes invented, sometimes reimagined. It gives expression to architecture to
help the living memorialize their loved ones. The death of a person is not really an end, or a termination, or an obliteration of life. To make sense of a death or deaths is a human and often communal need. Deaths can be events that draw communities together, or create fissures within a society. Sometimes they appear as mere cracks unnoticed by others except by those who can do nothing but remember. Societies need therefore to find spaces and material means of respecting the living who wish to honor the memories of those who died. In rethinking these new spaces of death and memorialization, the permanence of repositories and markers must be taken into consideration. We must question the value of keeping remains in perpetuity and what should be memorialized in the context of today. New York City can take a cue from equally dense cities like Rio de Janeiro which offers a quite sensible way of the disposition of the dead. Two days after a death, a non-embalmed body is laid to rest in a tomb. After three years when the remains would have decomposed and been reduced to bones, what is left of the body is exhumed, compacted and handed back to families to either take home or to store in compact niches or family tombs that have the capacity to stack a multitude of remains. This solution is an active cemetery that addressed the spatial issue of having a functioning cemetery in the heart of a city and has found acceptance among the people no matter their religious orientation. The three-year time period allows families to reclaim their departed after they have undergone the intense grieving process. The time frame becomes a marker of a more celebratory occasion for family reunions and sharing of memories. In the Unites States, the number of people accepting cremation as a preferred method for the disposition of the corpus has been increasing. This already represents a culture shift from the traditional belief of needing to keep the body intact, though cremation or setting to flames the body of the dead that has long been a practice in some cultures. The cremation rate in the United States has been increasing steadily with the national average rate rising from 3.56% in 1960 to 40.62% in 2010 and projections from the Cremation Association of North America forecasting a rate of 44.42% in 2015. 5 5 Sack, Kevin, “In Tough Times, a Boom in Cremations as a Way to save Money,” New York Times,
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There are environmental concerns, however, about the cremation. The process reduces the entire chemical potential of the deceased body to carbonates while requiring a large amount of nonrenewable natural gas. There is the added danger of the potential of releasing mercury and toxic chemicals to the atmosphere that may result from the burning of medical implants. Other than spatial imperatives, traditional burial in dense cities should no longer be an option, in that burial, both materially and chemically, impacts even more negatively on the environment. It is an additive process requiring the chemical reconstruction of the body through embalming and the energy required in making caskets and transportation. With environmental imperatives in mind, the alternative may be in the new methods of Promession and Resomation (alkaline hydrolysis) which reduce the body to remains that can naturally decompose in burial (in the non-traditional sense) or mineral ash (similar to cremated remains) and biodegradable liquid for the latter without negative impacts on the environment. With these new methods, physical remains can be looked at in a new light – as a regenerative contribution of returning the remains back to earth (an old concept through a new method) or the city. We can find green cracks in the city such as parks, vacant lots, community gardens, shared open spaces, even tree pits as temporal repositories for remains. In a way, we give the body back to the earth in an expedited fashion. We, the still living, enable the remains to disappear into the crevices and interstices of the city. We can set free the physical material of the body to disappear into the city as they have physically left our lives. In this way, the dead do not really die. They contribute to the regeneration of life and of our lives. The cemeteries that lie in the peripheries of New York City will remain as a physical manifestation of the traditional belief of interment, or of marking a catastrophe in the city’s history. But dealing with the physical remains of the dead need not be a matter of center and periphery: the center as the site of the still living (present) and the periphery as the terrain for the already gone (absent). We need to reclaim the site of the dead from the periphery and make it a living testament to the December 8,2011. http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/09/us/in-economic-downturn-survivorsturning-to-cremations-over-burials.html.
memory of even the most ordinary man, woman, child who was once part of our street, our community. With the contemporary notion of detaching ourselves from the need for physical remains, we can focus more on sites, technologies, structures as part of our urban scape where we can have an encounter with the memories of the once living: memories of individuals who intersected our lives and without our knowing, may have created a ripple in our own life, memories that can help us reimagine the once living within the space of the still living and that can help us fathom our own individual and collective memories. Current modes of commemoration focus heavily on the physically permanent, unchanging and individual characteristics that are misaligned with the transient, chaotic, and communal nature of urban life. By reshaping the way we intertwine death and urban life through the development of a gradient of temporal repositories and permanent memorials that honor both simultaneously, we can address the needs of the collective as well as the bereft, reform the shapes of our communities as well as give tribute to their histories. We build memorials for the bereft. We create them for the modern onlooker to have an emphatic experience on their community’s loss.6 In a more nuanced way, we remind them of their mortality. The new sites for the once living would mark each life lost in a community. The marker could be an object that could trigger memories in an archive of memories that will contain more than names, dates and lists of people left behind and which can be accessed with the physical ritual of returning to a place for remembrance. The will to remember can be expressed in memorials that are not only dedicated to a few prominent people or to those stricken by tragedy, but to the collective memories of our society. A marker for each life lost becomes a crucial part of a network or a system. This then becomes a repository for memories, whether actual or figuratively. A memorial that holds these markers can be built on the street, perhaps, claiming a piece of the network of underutilized or abandoned sites in the city to allow for regeneration. These memorials can grow vertically, mirroring, as the necropolis has done, the same metropolis expansion of our current time. In 6 Tarlow, Sarah, Bereavement and Commemoration: An Archeology of Mortality (Oxford,UK: Malden, Mass: Blacwelll Publishers, 1999) p. 137.
12 DIOLOGICAL AND POETIC STRATEGIES Creating A Place for Death and Memorialization
a way, a memorial begins with a void that slowly gets filled by lives lost and by memories. The addition of each marker to a system can be experienced and felt by the public, so that onlookers do not remain bystanders, but participate in making death a way of reflecting on their lives. In placing memorials back in quotidian spaces, we are not only addressing the need for creating spaces for our bereft to temporarily grieve within the context of the city, but more importantly, a need for creating a public place for allowing the experience death as a community loss, and, in a very significant way, contribute to the collective memory through collective memorializing. Bibliorgraphy: Derrida, Jacques, The Gift of Death (Paris: Metailie-Transition, 1992) Foucault, Michel. Panopticism. Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. Translated by Alan Sheridan, (NY: Vintage Books, 1995). Pages 195-228. Heidegger, Martin, Being and Time (NY: Harper & Row, 1962) Sack, Kevin, “In Tough Times, a Boom in Cremations as a Way to save Money,� New York Times, December 8,2011. http://www.nytimes. com/ 2011/12/09/us/in-economic-downturn-survivors-turning-to-cremations-over-burials.html. Tarlow, Sarah, Bereavement and Commemoration: An Archeology of Mortality (Oxford,UK: Malden, Mass: Blacwell Publishers, 1999) p. 137. Taylor, Mark C., Grave Matters (London: Reaction, 2002) p.13-19.
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BALANCING THE INDIVIDUAL AND COLLECTIVE IN HOUSING (in the context of South East Asia) Dwelling, Housing, Living Gwendolyn Wright
Urban realities in the developing countries in South East Asia are undergoing extreme transformations. The rapid economic growth of the region due to new manufacturing and business process outsourcing economies have contributed to the densification and development of urban centers in these countries. Streams of permanent immigrants from poor rural regions pour into the city centers for job opportunities and low income service work offered by the construction boom. Without the commitment of government to plan and implement a public housing strategy in parallel with economic development, issues of overcrowding and dire informal housing conditions afflict urban centers. The Philippines alone has 20 million slum dwellers, a fifth of whom live in Metro Manila. Only less than 1% of them are in the public housing system.1 Public housing in developing countries is a consequence of a political decision that neglects providing people their basic social needs. Neighbouring countries like Singapore and Hong Kong, went on a different trajectory. Their governments prioritized mass housing programs to eradicate slums, provide shelter to majority of their people, with the view that these very people would be needed to support their growing economies. Both countries housed a large percentage of their population through integrating goals of economic development and social stability and securing political hegemony through the public housing program. “The solution to homelessness, substandard living, and their related social and economic problems in any nation involves more comprehensive planning and coordination by a strong welfare state. It requires an intervention by the state to provide public resources to integrate and implement sound housing 1 Manuel Castells, et.al., The Shek Kip Mei Syndrome: Economic Development and Public Housing in Hong Kong and Singapore (New York, 1990) p. 329-331.
programs with social and community development programs. Public housing must be more than a social welfare program aimed at providing shelter” (Manual Castells, 1990) This essay aims to critically assess Singapore and Hong Kong’s public housing models, in terms of policy, density, homogeneity and provision of social spaces and services. The discussion of housing is not seen as only limited to the provision of efficient self-contained units but of a large negotiation between providing for the individual and collective needs. Singapore and Hong Kong, two market economies with the highest rates of economic growth in the past 25 years have the largest housing programs in the capitalist world, in terms of the proportion of the population directly housed by the government. Their experiences illustrate the ideological prejudice that relates public housing in opposition to economic development, therefore their interaction is a way to discover new relationships between urbanization and the development between economy, space and society.2 The two countries share a similar history in terms of the implementation of government initiated housing reform that started with the resettlement of informal housing dwellers to emergency housing in the 1950’s and 60’s. The targeted slum communities reacted to the modern life proposed in vertical subsidized housing with resistance. The new housing towers that compartmentalized dwelling units into self-contained units did not offer the “life” and network or organization of informal settlements. Nevertheless, both countries imposed radical mass housing programs, integral to their overall economic development plans. Both coincidentally triggered the outbreak of fires, forcing a great number of the slum population into emergency public housing blocks. Since then, both countries have been aggressive with their housing programs with the aim to provide shelter for majority of their populations. In the case of Singapore, 82% of its people are housed in HDB’s -- housing units provided by the sole government agency, the Housing Development Board, which was tasked to supply and maintain the housing stock for the country. Before Singapore’s independence in 1965, the colonial government’s approach to housing was laissez-faire, only providing for less than a tenth of its population with the majority forced to live in 2 Manuel Castells, et.al., The Shek Kip Mei Syndrome: Economic Development and Public Housing in Hong Kong and Singapore (New York, 1990) p. 1
DWELLING, LIVING, HOUSING Blalancing the Individual and Collective in Housing
crowded, unhygienic squatter settlements with poor sanitation, lighting and ventilation, their houses built from attap leaves, old boxes and scrap metals. By 1947, two out of five people were living in houses each sheltering more than 21 people. By 1960, the HDB was established to begin housing the population of the soon-to-be independent Singapore. Resettlement efforts proved to be difficult because people refused to relocate to newly built satellite estates. Queenstown, the new vertical (14 storey) housing type with self contained units, for example, was met with resistance despite having amenities, social services and outdoor space for children. The Bukit Ho Swee Fire was the turning point for the shift to public housing. A fire displacing 16,000 people triggered the relocation of people turned homeless to the Queenstown and St. Michael estates, and the rapid construction of emergency housing to address the other colonies. “This fire should be a lesson to them. The government offer of flats to them is still open and they should seize this opportunity before a fire breaks out in their squatter colony and causes them more hardship” (Straits Times, 25 Nov 1968). The controversial event of fire that triggered the emergence of fully fledged public housing program is not foreign to Hong Kong’s public housing history. On the Christmas Eve of 1953, a fire destroyed the Shek Kip Mei squatter colony destroying 50,000 informal dwellings, allowing the government to quickly re-home the displaced people in less than a year. This became the entry point for government to implement a policy of providing public housing to address the issue of slum dwelling in the country. It is critical to note the stages of the public housing program strategized and implemented by Singapore and Hong Kong: For Singapore: SG Stage 1: 1960 Resettlement through emergency housing with subsidized rent -- compact 23sqm. 1 bedroom, 42sqm 2 bedroom and 53 sqm 3 bedroom self-contained flats built as fast as possible to rehome majority of slum population near the central business district. SG Stage 2: 1967 Long Term Concept Plan towards home ownership. The Ring Concept Plan was developed to set
out infrastructure for the entire country distributing the massive public housing program, in tandem with a parallel rapid transportation network and industry. After the British withdrawal, the Singapore government planned a counter recession strategy to invest in infrastructure that would support its national economic goals. The very utilitarian 10-20 storey housing blocks were planned, built and maintained by the HDB themselves. Each housing estate was provided with social amenities typically at ground level, shops, markets and public eateries and paired with industry. The HDB’s provided not only housing to the people but jobs in construction, maintenance and through their own businesses practiced in the rentable shops in the complexes and in the eateries. The “hawker” culture in Singapore was recognized as an important part of Singaporean culture. These regulation of these public eateries have become essential to the social structure of the public housing estates. SG Stage 3: Ownership and Commercialization of Public Housing -- Once majority of the population were in the housing system, HDB started to improve its housing stock by building larger 4-5 bedroom (100-160 sqm) units and up to 40 storeys, improving finishes, adding variety to the designs of the HDB’s exterior. Units were also delivered as bare shells to allow homeowners to individualize their own flats. Facilities in a typical new town since 1985 ensured the provision of commercial facilities such as shops, eating houses, restaurants, emporium, supermarket, HDB area office and market; proportional industrial sites for jobs; institutional facilities such as schools, vocational institutes, community centers, religious sites; and finally extensive sports and recreational facilities; all of which ensured the active life within the estates. Fifty years into Singapore’s housing reform and with no slums left in the country, 82% of the population now live in HDBs. The success of the program is due largely to the fact that the estates are supported by a network of amenities and communal facilities , especially the public eateries and social places, the connectedness of the housing estates to the city center and the regimented maintenance of the buildings. The issue, however, is the monotony of HDBs flecking the skyline of the city. Only recently, is the Singaporean government retroactively addressing the homogeneity of its housing stock through architectural competitions to establish new directions in HDB designs and narrowing the gap between public and private housing stock.
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In 2001, the Housing Development Board launched the Duxton Plain Park Competition to set the new bar for the future housing stock. The new high density public housing located in the center of the city is a mega-structure composed of 7-50 storey towers connected by “sky bridges”. This is the first attempt in Singapore to distribute communal facilities and gardens vertically in public housing types, compensate for the small space in units, and respond more humanely to increased density for the new HDB within the city. The HDB has also set out a “Remaking Our Heartland” program to upgrade and transform HDB estates with more community facilities, activated town centers. Its goal is to foster a sense of community, create opportunities for family relationships, and support the elderly and those needing financial assistance. Similarly, Hong Kong went through a parallel history wherein dire slum conditions became necessary for the government to address. Its housing history can also be summarized in three stages: 1. HK Stage 1: In 1954, The government formed the Resettlement Department. After the catastrophic fire, emergency housing were built to relocate squatters to 6-storey H-shaped blocks without elevators. The average size of units were 11sqms. (2.2 sqm per person from 1sqm in slums). Unlike Singapore, no supportive services or amenities were incorporated in the planning of these blocks. There was an absence of garbage disposal systems, decrease in open space, unavailability of commercial facilities which led, in turn, to the expansion of hawker activities. Water taps, toilets with no doors, wash places and kitchens were communal. Up to 7 persons shared a cramped room. These conditions were disastrous as the new vertical housing types became synonymous with the appalling slum conditions they were trying to replace. The notion of communal facilities as fostering a sense of belonging to a larger collective and engagement with life outside the constrictions of narrow dwellings, unfortunately, was never exploited. There could have been a balance struck between interior and exterior spaces, density and expansiveness. Lack of maintenance was problematic for the housing model. 2. HK Stage 2: In 1973, the government increased its commitment to restructuring the housing program by upgrading the public housing model, building new towns and urbanizing new territories. Rather than improving on the maintenance of the communal facilities, flats were redesigned as self-
contained to transfer the responsibility of maintenance per dwelling. Each units were allocated its own kitchen, bath, balcony and water. Elevators were introduced. The new housing blocks were situated near emerging industrial lands in Kowloon. The housing size standard was raised to 3.25 sqm per person. 3. HK Stage 3: Public and commercial facilities were added in the housing blocks and were to be essential components in the new housing estates. The program aimed at building 35,000 flats per year over a 10-year timeframe. The podium which would contain several stories of parking, recreation and social spaces was introduced. To this date, 46% of the population are in the public housing system. Although this may be seen as a success, the reality is that about 80,000 people are living in inadequate housing facilities in Hong Kong, including those living in “cage homes”, cubicle apartments and rooftop houses. The usual 10sqm apartment has been reduced to 1.9 sqm per caged apartment. Residents here are the working poor, the unemployed, new immigrants and marginalized socially excluded groups.3 In Hong Kong, the “monofunctional” relationship of the cramped home to the social space has been the most problematic. There used to be a live-work arrangement that was severed by the public housing model. The monofunctional dwelling where the unit was supposed to be only for sleeping did not support the multi-generational, social culture of the traditional Chinese culture. Housing estates and new towns were built without consideration of activities and physical elements that enrich urban life. No regard was given to the planning of social services, commercial districts or employment. This condition was subverted by the occupants of Mark I relocation structures. Although some small, single bay ground floor slabs were provided, no adequate space was suitable for the various activities that needed to activate social life in the housing blocks. Soon enough, the concept of the Cantonese shophouses was revived. Barbers, vegetable and meat vendors, fortune tellers had set up mobile apparatuses that would redefine social space. Concerned about sanitation issues, the government has since provided regulated stores for market activities. Recent projects have also been proactive in providing enclosed space to allow residents to hold events 3 Alfred Herrhausen. “Hong Kong’s Housing Shame” Urban Age, (UK: London School of Economics, 2011), p 1-2
DWELLING, LIVING, HOUSING Blalancing the Individual and Collective in Housing
and define other communal purposes for which the space could be utilized.4 Monotony, overcrowding and provision of social spaces are issues Hong Kong continues to grapple with. Unlike modern western precedents in housing, Singapore and Hong Kong had to establish utilitarian housing models as quick as possible without recourse to design in order to first alleviate the conditions of its population by moving them out of informal housing. Only at the stage when they had provided emergency housing across the board were they able to rethink the value of individualization to improve the wellbeing of their working class population. Developing countries like the Philippines could benefit from the historical experiences of Singapore and Hong Kong in the planning of housing models and in the implementation of their housing policies. A public housing scheme needs to be built and more importantly maintained by the government body post occupancy. The current low-income housing models of the Philippines where detached houses are pushed to peripheral areas of the city, inconveniently located not only because of the far distance to job sites but also because of the lack of an efficient transit system have proven to be failures -- models undesirable for slum dwellers who have migrated to the informal housing within the city precisely to be closer to where jobs are. A solution is to embrace density and verticality in housing which private developers for the middle income class are already rapidly producing. The lesson to consider is that in the inevitable shrinking of dwelling units in high density housing, there has to be an opportunity given to dwellers to individualize their units. Every human being has the need to manifest the sense of self and creativity. Dwellings need not be fully designed, controlled and controlling. Instead they should give the individual a sense of self because s/he can therefore plan and recreate, despite some limitations, his/her environment as well as connect socially. With the reality of small living units, there should be an important pairing and negotiation of communal spaces that could foster a sense of community, support and leisure. A network of communal amenities could be considered to be spread vertically, like Singapore has already started to imple4 Pheobe Crisman. “Transcultural Hybrid: Emergence of a Hong Kong Housing Typology”. (University of Virginia:
ment. Free space between clusters of units is a valuable asset that has not been tested and exploited in the public housing precedents mentioned. Perhaps creating a structural arrangement that will allow for the creation of intermediate spaces left for people to define and negotiate can bring us back to the notion of the public life within dense vertical environments. To provide emergency dwellings implies efficiency in construction time and cost of production. Perhaps a solution is not to deliver fully designed units under a regimented utilitarian structure but to to give to people bare, open planned units they could individuate and communal spaces for them to share, determine their uses, and enrich, connected by network of amenities, maintenance and supportive services-- a participatory scheme in a dense vertical model. Ideals reaised by Team 10 in also housing ‘the great number’ in the context of post-World War II Europe, although not fully successful, pushed for dealing with the problems of diversity, the complexity of ‘daily life’, integration, growth and change over stasis and the need to respond to the social and cultural realitites of a place. They aspired for vertical streets in dense housing environments. These concepts are potent and in the context of South East Asia, where the ‘street’ is integral to life, developing the idea of activated vertical streets could be revisited. Traditionally, Southeast Asian vernacular houses have always been of small proportions, only enclosing resting spaces and providing wide windows for breeze to flow in and out and to create a spacious, light, pleasant atmosphere. Life is oriented towards communal areas, courtyards or the street. With a growing population in need of housing and given the reality that horizontal space is shrinking, seemingly, the only recourse for housing programs in developing countries is to utilize space vertically. Still, the great challenge is to ensure that while housing units in vertical buildings may be small, these need not be confining spaces and instead should be areas for individuals to express their own sense of self. At the same time, there should be careful planning so that the housing buildings can make full use of the vertical while nurturing the cultural notion of home as a balance between the interior and the exterior, the private and the social, the individual and the collective.
ESSAYS
Bibliography: Adriaan Wessel Reinink, “Structure and Lyricism.” In Adriaan Wessel Reinink, Herman Hertzberger, Architect. Rotterdam: 010 Publishers, 1990. Alfred Herrhausen. “Hong Kong’s Housing Shame” Urban Age, (UK: London School of Economics, 2011) Alfredo Brillembourg and Huber Klumpner, Informal City, (Munich ; New York : Prestel, 2005).p.274-275 Constant Nieuwenhuys, “New Babylon: Outline of a Culture” In Mark Wigley, Constant’s New Babylon: The Hyper-Architecture of Desire (Rotterdam: Witte de With, Center for Contemporary Art, and 010 Publishers, 1998), p. 160-165. Ken Tadashi Oshima, “Balancing The Cramped with the Communal: Recent Japanese Housing”, Harvard Design Magazine 35, (USA: 2012), p. 144-147 Manuel Castells, et.al., The Shek Kip Mei Syndrome: Economic Development and Public Housing in Hong Kong and Singapore (New York, 1990) Pheobe Crisman. “Transcultural Hybrid: Emergence of a Hong Kong Housing Typology”. (University of Virginia: 2009) http://singaporearmchaircritic.wordpress.com/2012/11/19/ hong-kong-vs-singapore-public-housing/