HONG KONG INSTRUMENTAL NETWORKS/ BEIJING MONUMENTAL OBJECTS/ CHONGQING TEXTURAL FUTURES/
DANIEL LUIS MARTINEZ
INSTRUMENT NETWORKS
What if every tower was, “merely the witness, the gaze which discreetly fixes, with its slender signal, the whole structure- geographical, historical, and social”1 of a city’s fabric?
TAL
This conjecture is necessarily a spatial one; transforming the idea of static object into a dense network of forces whose, “immediate consumption of humanity [is] made natural by that glance which transforms it into space.�2
As for Hong Kong, not one but several towers fix their gaze simultaneously because the network there runs deep, and as it turns out, their interconnection is instrumental in solidifying that the image of the city is far from static.
Network as social, economic, cultural, technological and most recently, architectural theory has been emerging rapidly as a distinct paradigm of our times. Even architectural education is beginning to take network theories seriously as evidenced by the implementation of a network lab at Columbia’s GSAPP led by Kazys Varnelis. As he writes in a recent publication with Anne Friedberg, “The transition toward network culture is not merely technological, it is deeply tied into societal changes” and “this condition is by no means placeless.”3 They go on to argue for global cities and regions participating as important hubs in the ongoing resurfacing of a fully interconnected world culture. In Hong Kong, global exchange is experienced as a distinct armature in the form of an intensely urban microcosm. They continue, “The social infrastructure emerging in the global city is augmented by a concentration in network topology.”4 Modern cities begin to be defined by the way in which their constituent parts are interrelated. Though, Hong Kong as a kit of parts [The Star Ferry and terminal, MTR, lines of red taxis, multiple skyscraper typologies and their connective tissue- i.e, the podium- the mid-level pubic escalators, markets, alleyways, urban parks, etc.], would be far too complicated to reassemble. The city has been intricately woven over time and its model is rich in sophisticated diversity. So it would seem that systematic networking has its downfalls too. Moments of respite are difficult to achieve along avenues defined by continuous movement. Also, the tireless overlap of consumer culture with the everyday seems to be most at home in the global city. Yet despite this and the formal gestures of her skyline, Hong Kong remains the world’s model for non-objectivity in architecture. Forced to confront gravity, lofty towers must come down to earth, enacting a powerful connection to the ground that is the city’s true form of life. To further heighten the paradox: ground, as the historical ideal of firmness and stability becomes a flowing network of inhabitable connections, affirming John Hejduk’s idea that architecture is “a static thing that moves.”5
1. Roland Barthes, “Eiffel Tower,” The Eiffel Tower and Other Mythologies, trans. Richard Howard (Berkeley, CA: Univeristy of California Press, 1979), 13. 2. Ibid., 8. 3. Kazys Varnelis & Anne Friedberg, “Place: The Networking of Pubic Space,” Networked Publics (Cambridge: The MIT Press, 2008), 25. 4. Ibid. 5. Original source unknown but the quote is used in Stan Allen, “The Guggenheim Refigured,” Practice: Architecture Technique + Representation (New York: Routledge, 2009), 129.
MONUMENTA
AL OBJECTS
There is no other place on earth where cultural and social autonomy have collided with the world’s rapidly globalizing network more profoundly than in Mainland China.
Beijing , in particular, exudes this unique character of autonomous urban expansion through its enormous monuments and encapsulating rings of circulation, which are actually traces of the city’s former defense walls [there is no better metaphor for a network seeping in that simultaneously acts as a definitive edge: these connections are still a barrier]. The scale of the city is immense and its effect, astonishingly, is achieved mostly in breadth through the large proportions of the city grid and the chunky, mid-rise character of its buildings [outside of the CBD of course]. Miraculously, despite nearly twenty million inhabitants, there is space in Beijing. Stand in Tiananmen Square and you can feel it, though the thick gray haze of the air always hints that there is more than just volume at work here. Crossing from Tiananmen Square into the Forbidden City marks an enormous cultural threshold; one that allows thousands of people a day to occupy the unquestionable scalar difference between old and new. This difference, however, is not to be interpreted as shear size. Certainly today [and especially in China], density and population in cities are greater than ever before, globalization ushers in broader cultural awareness, and technology has allowed for taller and significantly larger spans within structures. However, the Forbidden City offers a rare sense of vastness in terms of the encapsulation of space by the formal repetition of figures that solicit the effect. All of this is on display in a fit of dusty splendor, with the roughness of the former palace and the trace of everyday people left to reflect the decay and inevitable supplanting of ancient imperialism through radical ideological movements such as the Cultural Revolution. “Bigness,” as Rem Koolhaas puts it, “is where architecture becomes both most and least architectural: most because of the enormity of the object; least through the loss of autonomy- it becomes instrument of other forces, it depends.”1 Koolhaas though, often known for pushing the boundaries of concepts towards the nearly absurd in order to render the architectural point [one can think of his manifesto for New York and the “Culture of Congestion” or the article where this quote comes from which claims blatantly that the subtext of bigness is, “fuck context.”2], quite frankly misses the point completely. The impact an object has on an individual, and this is especially the case within the walls of the Forbidden City, has little to do
with its “bigness” and much to do with its dependence on the contingencies of time [history] and change [movement]. As Jeremy Till writes, “One of the reasons that the design of objects is so privileged... is that it is one aspect of the whole process where the architect retains nominal control.”3 Koolhaas is a dominant figure in the world of contemporary architecture, often exuding an air of total control over the architectural operation, but Till and others4 highlight the intelligence behind “letting go” and allowing architecture to accept the influence of outside forces. Till again, “The architect only starts what time and others continue.”5 Unsurprisingly, there is one major other force whose influence on architecture and the urban condition is uncontestable in China: the government and its political image. Propaganda with the images of architectural icons [from the Great Wall to the Bird’s Nest] are everywhere on the streets of Beijing. They imply that as Beijing moves towards the future it will rely on the portrayal of a specific narrative, one whose heroes are monumental objects [a variation on a theme that is beginning to rival the much duplicated image of Chairman Mao Zedong]. As Beatriz Colomina has argued, “Architecture is not simply something represented, but is a way of representing,” and this means, “that the building is not simply represented in images but is a mechanism for producing images.”6 This framework allows her to spin a unique view of modernity as necessarily tied to an engagement with and articulation of the media. It is here and on the world’s economic stage where one begins to sense the undercurrent of a less tangible but equally viable network elevating Beijing’s global status.
1. Rem Koolhaas, “Bigness or the problem of Large,” S, M, L, XL (New York: Monacelli Press, 1995), 513. 2. Ibid., 502. 3. Jeremy Till, Architecture Depends (Cambridge: The MIT Press, 2009), 169. 4. See Henri Levebre’s writings on the everyday in The Production of Space or Karsten Harries essay on The Terror of Time, also much of Bernard Tschumi and Robin Evan’s theoretical oeuvre to name but a few examples of authors arguing against architectural autonomy in one way or another. 5. Till, 106. 6. Beatriz Colomina, “Mies Not,” in Presence of Mies (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 1994), 214.
TEXTURAL FUTURES
While government agencies continue to deploy the rendered and glossy images of idealized future buildings and forms of society, it is the architect who might productively intervene in the city’s media image. The textural life of the city is at stake on this field. In newly burgeoning territories of the Mainland, urban propaganda often feature flocks of birds taking flight under blue skies, ubiquitous skyscrapers and smiling citizen faces. Their content remains overly idealistic because they aim for a sense of timelessness, when in fact, it is the residue of time’s passing and a city set in motion that animates daily life on the streets of China today. In this light, the potential of a dense municipality like Chongqing can be conceived as
the thoughtful reinterpretation of its everyday scars.
Of course, this act of reinterpretation is underscored by the viewpoint of architecture as a mode of research and discovery. The architect acts and defines through a particular lens that enables possibilities at multiple scales. And though the documentation of cityscapes through photography, video, text, and personal experience remain of particular interest when understanding a given context, it is drawing that often initiates an act of potential intervention. “An architectural drawing is as much a prospective unfolding of future possibilities as it is a recovery of a particular history to whose intentions it testifies and whose limits it always challenges.”1 Here, Daniel Libeskind brings to light the oscillation within architectural drawing between future projections and historical perspectives. This potential space is opened up through the manipulation of time. In particular, Libeskind’s “recovery of history” can be seen as the textural context for the architectural drawing itself; a kind of residue that lends new marks and gestures a sense of place. Beyond acting as a spatial generator and link to site within the architectural drawing, texture can be further articulated at the scale of the building. “In the time after construction, buildings take on the qualities of the place wherein they are sited, their colors and surface textures being modified by and in turn modifying those of the surrounding landscape.”2 This exchange as described by Moshen Mostafavi and David Leatherbarrow is an integral part of their thesis, which recognizes “the continuous metamorphosis of the building itself as part of its beginning[s] and its ever-changing ‘finish’.”3 I would add, in addition to the weathering effects of time and the environment, the cultural patina of people’s customs and practices. In this way, areas like the slums of Chongqing’s Shi Ba Ti, or “18-Step District,” can serve as a catalog of textures accumulated over time, whose imprints reveal the trace of cultural activity. These are complex phenomena to map out in that they constantly change and are often investigated from the outside. However, architecture gains a foothold in this uncertainty. A new building always both disrupts and constitutes a stitch within the patterns of daily life for a community. What is needed is a method that utilizes local textures both visually and haptically throughout a building’s design and construction, acknowledging their role as the background to vital cultural spaces and as elements within a larger city matrix.
At the urban scale textural considerations play a vital role in the unfolding of life for any city. This idea first came into dialogue in the late modern era through Collin Rowe and Fred Koetter’s influential Collage City, which primarily used figure ground analysis to offer a critique of early Modernist urban planning. Acknowledging that certain textural patterns from the birds-eye perspective had correlations with the feel of cities on the ground, they praised traditional Italian cities for, “the solid and continuous matrix or texture giving energy to its reciprocal condition, the specific space; the ensuing square and street acting as some kind of public relief valve and providing some condition of legible structure; and, just as important, the very great versatility of the supporting texture [my italics] or ground.”4 They criticized early modernist city plans, such as Corbusier’s Ville Radieuse, for privileging the architectural object, whose focus on space from the inside out imagined the city as a residual field condition, less figural and defined than the older Italian models. And while Rowe and Koetter thought it plausible to be, “delighted by a field of objects that are legible in terms of proximity, identity, common structure, density, etc.,”5 they continued to raise questions on the outcome of object agglomeration and the monotony of their exact multiplication throughout the entire city fabric. Collage City marks the beginning of an investigation into the texture of great spaces that continues today, transcending the 2-D plane of the figure ground and going further into the city’s dense section. Peter and Alison Smithson, as contemporaries of Rowe and Koetter, developed their concept of mat-building in response to the problem of the city and, more recently, Stan Allen has added digital technology, information systems and his notion of the ‘thick 2-D’ to the dialogue. For Allen, the significance of the Smithsons’ mat-configurations lies in the “articulated section,” which is ”not the product of stacking [discrete layers, as in a conventional building section] but of weaving, warping, folding, oozing, interlacing, or knotting together.”6 The focus deals directly with connections and interstices between buildings, their components and the surrounding context, acknowledging that these flow in 3-D and are the constituents of a broad network. Mapping and translating these city textures helps to disclose their architectural characteristics and influences the structure of future cities. For instance, that they are highly networked, emergent and dynamic phenomena points to a means of representation that embodies constant movement and intense connectivity. One can begin to sense why
principles of objectivity, monumentality or permanence will likely fade from the architectural limelight, even if they don’t disappear completely. Their fate seems more likely to become a vestige of history within an intensely texturalized world.
In the long run these projections are a call for the recognition of textural depth at three scales: the drawing, the building and the city. Texture becomes a tool for the unearthing of possibilities in the drawing [an entire zone of registration with one’s context explored even at the level of the media image], as well as the exploitation of the decay of time and cultural activity on building surfaces and spaces. It also carries into the plan and section of the city, characterized by moments of woven intensity within a highly diverse and changing fabric. The hope is that a stronger connection to the passing of time and the movement of people through the spaces of our constructed environments will emerge, augmenting the textural arsenal for future generations.
1. Daniel Libeskind, “Micromegas,� in The Space of Encounter (New York: Universe Publishing, 2000), 84. 2. Moshen Mostafavi and David Leatherbarrow, On Weathering: the life of buildings in time (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1993), 6972. 3. Ibid., 16. 4. Collin Rowe & Fred Koetter, Collage City (Cambridge, MA & London: The MIT Press, 1978), 62. 5. Ibid., 64-65. 6. Stan Allen, Architecture Technique + Representation (New York: Routledge, 2009) 210-211.
Shi Ba Ti [18 Steps] District
Joint Studio with the University of Chongqing, Department of Architecture UF Design Team: Daun Jung, Lulu Loquidis, Daniel Luis Martinez and Jason Worrell CQ Design Team [Phase 1 only]: Ge Guicheng, Liu Jing, Huang Shiyuan, Yang Rongbing and Zhou Yunfei
Chongqing is one of four Direct Controlled Municipalities in China [along with Beijing, Shanghai, and Tianjin]. Its population is nearly 32,000,000 and its rich and varied regions offer a glimpse of one of China’s fastest growing mega-cities [it currently sprawls 82,300 sq km]. Recently, the local government has taken on a series of major initiatives to accommodate the speed of its rapid growth, including a recent project to plant, “one hundred years worth of trees in ten years,” along all of the city’s major corridors and highways. Despite these efforts, the city’s architecture and urban identity remain largely untouched. The Shi Ba Ti district, in the heart of Chongqing [just south of the main Central Business District and north of the vital Yangtze River] is a slum of traditional, stilted structures [mostly in a state of decay and headed for demolition] that nonetheless house important, historic landmarks and fertile social connections. The areas name, Shi- Ba-Ti or ‘18 steps’, refers to the sites steep terrain and labyrinth of stepped alleyways leading down to the river. All along the edge of the site, opportunistic development schemes threaten to seep in and wipe out a poverty-stricken neighborhood with few plans for displacement or conservation. Students from the University of Florida School of Architecture, along with students from the University of Chongqing School of Architecture and Urban Planning, were asked to analyze and re-imagine the future of the Shi Ba Ti through the lens of architectural speculation. As is the case with all great sites, intense contingencies interplay with new predictions and hopeful visions.
Phase 1: Analysis and Master Planning
THIS IS THE MOST INTENSELY LAYERED BORDER FROM NORTH TO SOUTH: A MAJOR ROAD, A ROW OF OUTMODED, HI-RISE TOWERS [WHICH SIT ALONG THE STEEPEST TOPOGRAPHICAL SHIFT IN THE AREA], AN ELEVATED HIGHWAY, A WATERFRONT PARK WITH PEDESTRIAN WALKWAYS AND FINALLY, THE RIVERS EDGE. THE JOURNEY TO THE WATERFRONT IS NEARLY IMPOSSIBLE ON FOOT, LEAVING THE PARK AS AN ISOLATED URBAN NODE.
THERE IS EVIDENCE OF EFFECTIVE URBANIZATION AND CONNECTIVITY HERE. A MAJOR SERIES OF HISTORIC STEPS FLANKED BY A FAMOUS PUBLIC ELEVATOR. ALSO,
FLANKED BY A FAMOUS PUBLIC ELEVATOR. ALSO, PUBLIC SQUARES ARE SHAPED BY CIVIC BUILDINGS, SUCH AS THE LOCAL NEWSPAPER HEADQUARTERS. TO THE WEST OF THE SITE, POORLY PLANNED HI-RISE DEVELOPMENT THREATENS AN INTERESTING ZONE TOPOGRAPHICALLY.
Given the inevitable onset of future development and the existence of a strong, cultural fabric in the Shi Ba Ti, we chose to explore the spatial possibilities of interlocking fingers.
Master Plan Area of Focus
Podium Infrastructure: A multiprogrammatic podium is added to the fabric along the North and East edges where various towers can take root.
Existing Shi Ba Ti Fabric: The strategy for connection is within the in-between spaces of the proposed ‘fingers’. Historic, cultural fabric is allowed to flow between the new.
1
Podium Level +40’ Programmatic
A
variation through one podium ‘finger’ of proposal shows retail, performing arts and a residential tower lobby with adjacent landscapes flowing through in multiple directions.
2
Bridge Level +100’ Sky bridge connecting northern podium to residential tower: programmatic connection: swimming pool, spa and recreation center
3
Bridge Rooftop Level +150’ The rooftop of the bridge connection becomes an openly programmed landscape promoting local participation through Tai Chi and market culture.
Section A
Thanks to: Associate Professor Hui Zou Visiting Professor Albertus Wang University of Florida G|SoA Graduate School of Architecture East Asia Summer Program 2011