fielDS anD narrativeS a linguiStic approach

fields and narratives

A linguistic approach

the question is: how can we trigger change and evolution (dynamic) in a specific local context to create new links with larger economic and social systems (urban) while opening the widest possible range of opportunities (platforms)?

linking different systems in a dynamic and open way requires a clear communication strategy. indeed, it is a question that challenges the linguistic dimension of our discipline with particular urgency. this does not mean that other dimensions are not present: there is a strong physical dimension, since these links are probably infrastructural and imply resources and energy; the platforms need a spatial dimension with very precise parameters; the different intervening scales may entail difficult negotiations in the political dimension – which in turn goes back to the protocols of language as the key to linking the three words together: dynamic urban platforms.

if we look at word choice in the competition briefs for each of the sites in this category, we find that the case studies provided by this edition of europan are polarized between two extremes. each extreme is characterized by a specific group of words:

“attract” “new residents” “leisure” “sports”

“nature”. for some sites the question may be summed up in a more specific objective: how to “attract” people and businesses; in these site briefs, this is explicitly stated as the ultimate goal of the municipal strategy (Wittenberge, see p.98 and bitterfeld-Wolfen, see p.52 in germany, and also kristinehamn in Sweden, see p.76), and the drive is for the sites to become to some degree specialised as hubs for “leisure” or “sports”, as a way to compete with other cities for a presumably scarce target group of affluent “new residents”.

“local” “neighbourhood” “work” “metropolis”

“life”. at the other extreme we find sites that are already experiencing a deluge of “metropolisation”, where the challenge is to maintain or exploit “local” qualities and “neighbourhood life”, and therefore to avoid specialization on the wider scale (St herblain in france, see p.88, Schiedam in the netherlands, see p.94).

“improve” “image” “inhabitants”. in between the two extremes we find sites that make an existing population the core of the brief, but employed expressions like “face-lift” (aalborg in Denmark, see p.46), “new city-facade image” (Don benito in Spain, see p.64), “change the image of the centre” (gjilan in kosovo, see p.72) or “improve neighbourhood image” (Marseille in france, see p.82, budapest in hungary, see p.58). the impetus is for an image transformation that will establish the framework for a competitive approach that will put their sites on the map and will bring better employment conditions and opportunities for the “local inhabitants”.

the competitors’ proposals are also polarized between the same extremes, but the gradient does not coincide. for instance, if we do a word count on the submission texts, putting the words “leisure”, “sports”, “nature”, “attract” into one group, and the words “work”, “local”, “inhabitants”, “improve”, into the other group, we would expect successful proposals in Wittenberge (De) (for instance) to rank high in the first group and low in the second. indeed, the winning proposal in Wittenberge, Re-hub Wittenberge does follow such pattern (the “leisure-attract-new-residents” group beating the “work-improve-local-neighbourhoods” by 5-2), so the project and the brief are well matched, but by contrast the runner-up, take part in wittenberge, which is a higher count on the second group of words (by 10-30), offering an alternative that challenges some of the assumptions of the brief and introduces a different agenda. interestingly, there are more words in the runner-up text than in the winner’s, as if to emphasize the difference in approach.

the abstract mathematics of word numbers reveals a sharp contrast, but it may be misleading. this exercise was conducted using the english version of each text, while the authors would of course have been thinking in their own different national languages. on the other hand, if we look at the nationalities of the successful teams (we took the nationality of the tr – team representative – for this purpose), we find that the word “leisure” appears most frequently in the text by a Dutch team on a Dutch site, while the highest appearance of the word “work” comes from a Spanish team on a german site. this is a relevant observation in the context of a pan-european forum, but interpreting it lies outside the scope of this text.

if we now look at the underlying structure of the proposals, we find a more homogeneous picture. the vast majority of the proposals in this group begin by defining a field, with a catalogue of options and a triggering narrative.

the fields are definitions of a limited fragment of territory with open potentials, which may be measured with a set of lines and punctuations that establish relationships and rhythms, while including the corresponding rules that will govern the actions of the as yet unknown future participants in the game. Many field definitions in this group are based on a standard notion of connectivity – circulation, distance and proportions – with only occasional

3 - Saint-herblain (fr), Winner - Metacentre: the eMergence of a garDen territory > See More p.90

concern for other infrastructural services. both the local scale and the larger cluster of connections are represented in the field drawings, usually with reference to traffic (of different speeds, including pedestrians, public transport and private vehicles) and a perception of the urban landscape or the territory.

on the other hand, a number of teams try to imagine less conventional definitions of the field, looking for words that will evoke interesting nuances that are rarely found in the jargon of urban planning. the forest, a space with a short perspective, blurred by the proliferation of branches and trunks, becomes an urban field for the winning team in Wittenberge (De), Re-hub Wittenberge (fig.1); the drawings are evocative of oriental watercolours depicting landscapes of activity with rain-washed paths. activities are housed in pavilions that do not seem firmly attached to the ground they stand on, in the same way as the people moving through the landscape do not seem to follow any specific grooves in the field. on the other hand, the site is reinterpreted through powerful imagery, with photographic renders that seem to freeze the flow of time, the motion of cyclists, runners, skiers and boats, captured in a moment of their journey across an infinitely calm expanse.

2 - kriStinehaMn (Se), runner-up - the centre. the path. the fielD of action > See More p.80

the runner-up in kristinehamn (Se), The centre. The path. The field of action (fig.2), also uses a graphic tool that conveys the idea of a field. in this case the renders reproduce the perspective effects of a photo-stitched panorama, of the kind that certain smartphones can produce, while the texture is reminiscent of paintings by figurative but post-photographic artists like edward hopper. this choice conveys the idea of openness, with an undefined expanse in the centre of the picture. activities are concentrated to the left and to the right at the edges of the panorama; at the same time, the distortion of perspective aligns both extremities of the image with our own position as observers, bringing us forward to the middle of the field. the winning team in Saint-herblain (fr), Metacentre: the emergence of a garden territory (fig.3), announces the “emergence of a garden territory.” the expression has a little application in their project, which encompasses the whole spectrum of gardens: for production (vegetable garden), sharing (family or community gardens), spatial devices (suspended garden), recreation (children’s garden) or comfort (winter garden, acclimatizing garden); but beyond the literal, the expression defines a blurred, non-homogeneous territory, where expanses of land may be appropriated picnic style, with more or less temporary uses that may become denser and overflow into other patches in the field. Similarly, the runner-up team proposes an “urbanism of the eclectic and the temporary”, while the third selected proposal delineates a “punctuated territory”, an abstract white paper where rhythm is provided by punctuation signs: commas, colons and full stops.

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4 - Wittenberge (De), runner-up - take part in Wittenberge > See More p.102

the rules governing the field often adopt the format of a catalogue, a list or matrix of generic options that may take a position on the field, if they are selected by the players during the course of the project, which is understood as a process. the runner-up in Wittenberge (De), Take part in wITtenberge (fig.4), follows exactly this pattern. the first step is to draw the lines on a field, creating the opportunity spaces that will eventually connect the site and the larger scale. the way to deal with the opportunities that open up in this field is by proposing a catalogue of specific actions, as well as a management system involving public authorities, citizens and private owners, for all of them to work together to define the programme and stages of implementation. Similarly, Manual towards a clumsy city (fig.5), one of the runners-up projects for the budapest site (hu), provides a catalogue of rules and tools which the team calls a “Manual” or handbook “towards a clumsy city”. each of the items in the catalogue is small within the context, with a conscious drive towards the atomized, the fragmented – the fragmentation may be literal, with spatial units being divided up, or it may be a fragmentation in the temporal dimension, with some items in the catalogue proposing alternative uses over time for the same spatial unit. fields and catalogues are intended as the board and rules of a game which may or may not take place. this is where communication becomes essential – many of these projects require the engagement of multiple actors, which can only be persuaded through the exercise of powerful seduction. this is in fact the first part of the question enunciated at the beginning of this text. how do we trigger change and evolution?

Most of the proposals seek to achieve this by means of a strong narrative, a description of the actions and a possible plot development, deliberately avoiding the construction of any characters. the story needs to be engaging, but the characters must be left vague so that the different viewers can see themselves in the field.

6 - bitterfelD-Wolfen (De), Winner - vaniSheD villageS - collective city > See More p.54

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in some cases, the narrative is already within the brief. this is the case of bitterfeld-Wolfen (De) where a former quarry has been filled with water, turning what used to be a grim industrial-mining landscape into an artificial lake. the idea of nature acquires an interesting twist, as the new lakeside is proposed as an artificial-natural setting for a new-traditional community. the winning project, Vanished villages – Collective city (fig.6) proposes to articulate new communities through reinterpreted villages, small clusters amidst the green landscape, where the traditional mix of labour and living is replaced by leisure and recreation. the text does speak of “work, life and leisure”, but the project studies the traditional housing typologies and meticulously replaces traditional work spaces (stables, barns) with leisure spaces (storage for watersports equipment and boats, gyms, hobby rooms). the clusters reproduce the atmosphere of small villages in the landscape, while the network of connections guarantees the urban qualities of the region. connectivity between new housing areas, leisure and reinvented nature are also a leitmotif for the runner-up project, Urbanochory. the case of the aalborg site (Dk) is not comparable, since there is not the same progressive process of transformation of the very nature of the landscape as in bitterfeld-Wolfen, nor is there a clear opportunity for an equivalent physical upheaval, but the site does demand a redescription of life in a neighbourhood that has undergone major economic change. not surprisingly, the winning proposal for aalborg is most explicit in its subtitle: Das Andere, alternative narratives for new memories (fig.7).

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5 - buDapeSt (hu), runner-up - Manual toWarDS a cluMSy city > See More p.60

the pages in the booklet employ a very powerful communication device. they are divided in two: a picture on the left and a text on the right; the text describes a feature of the aalborg site, while the picture corresponds to some other place. picture and text are both under the same header, which forces the viewer to consider both items simultaneously. the pictures may be located in the uSa, france or berlin – this is irrelevant and remains unsaid. the juxtaposition triggers our imagination, and we read the text that describes aalborg with a new imaginative vision in our heads.

the runner-up for the same site also includes the idea of narrative in its title: A Collective Storyline (fig.8), and the proposal consists of a field and a catalogue of narratives to guide the transformation of the city. it is interesting to note the graphic strategy: the field is defined as a very abstract set of lines stitching together a number of formally independent clusters, while the strategies are described with axonometric views encapsulated within a circle, as if the boundaries of each element were indefinable and we had to be content with a relevant portion of reality as seen through a porthole or magnifying glass. this graphic strategy is employed in many other proposals. a different kind of narrative heads the description of the proposal for Marseille (fr), Plan d’Aou – a new urban village (fig.9). Several people, presumed to be inhabitants of the new neighbourhoods, describe the project, explaining why they decided to live there, what advantages they see, how they followed the decision-making process and the evolution of the master plan, and describe their daily lives in the context of the purportedly completed project. the project is further defined with a series of photo-collage panoramas, simulating mosaic compositions of simple pictures taken on site; the collages do not focus on the buildings, which are left at the margins, but on the vibrancy of public space, with a riot of flowers, greenery and children playing, in an informal looking settlement. both human and non-human actors “speak” through comic strip style captions. in contrast, this is one of the few proposals in the group that provides a standard ground plan, showing the morphology of the urban design and quantifying the number and size of the actual buildings.

the effort of construction is also quantified in the winning proposal for Don benito (eS), Don Benito’s patio (fig.10), an effort defined very precisely as zero. the first drawing is a black/ white figure/background plan of the city, where the non-built spaces are white (streets, squares and patios), and the site constitutes one more white patch in the network of public spaces. Most of the effort is in dismantling physical barriers, providing smooth pavements and reusing existing constructions. narrative is essential in this example, which tries to alter the perception of what is valuable and desirable, shifting from the material to the spatial, from physical construction to social construction.

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no objects. it may be obvious but it is important to note that there are hardly any defined objects in all 28 proposals in this group. the few examples one can find are generic or abstract. there are one or two points where a proposal gets formal, mostly at an urban level or as an echo of existing architectural forms. the runner-up in gjilan (ko), Good old times, working on the very centre of the city, does formalize the iconic buildings that the program requires, quite prominently so, but even in that case the main contribution is the blurry intersection between the urban strip (formerly a hard traffic artery) and the existing watercourse (formerly overrun by hard urban design), both pixelating into a hybrid green/pedestrian public space that cannot be defined as a square or as a park or any other recognizable type of public space. the two runners-up in Schiedam (nl), A new start with old genes and Complete Schiedam, are also formally defined proposals with clearcut buildings in the centre of the picture – but then, isn’t it interesting that the exceptions to the no-object rule are on sites with no winner?

10 - Don benito (eS), Winner - Don benito’S patio > See More p.66

john cage is mentioned as an influence by one of the teams, which makes me think of his piece “thirteen harmonies (from apartment house 1776)” composed in 1986, where the musicians do not seem to be interested in completing an orchestrated symphony – there are no motifs to remember, no defined melodies to repeat, no twists and turns to look forward to – each instrument provides enough notes to construct a harmony. there are some points where a violin seems to begin what may be an aria, but it stops just on time, leaving the hypothetical melody undefined. We might call this set of proposals “28 narratives in a field.”