Theory and Practice: on voids and public space design by filippo abrami

theory

& practice on voids and public space design

I contenuti di questo volume sono frutto di una ricerca svoltasi allâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;interno del corso IC Contemporary Architecture Theory and Practice, tenutosi presso il Politecnico di Milano, Scuola di Architettura, durante lâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;anno accademico 2009/2010. The contents of this booklet are the results of a research made within the IC Contemporary Architecture Theory and Practice class, held in Politecnico di Milano, School of Architecture during the academic year 2009/2010. _ student Filippo Abrami _ professors Ilaria Valente Andrea Rolando

CONTENTS

Premise

related to lectures and readings

On voids and public space design

The architecture of the city

bibliographical report

an abstract

Aldo Rossi

Architecture and disjunction

bibliographical report

Bernard Tschumi

Le architetture dello spazio pubblico. Forme del passato forme del presente. Paolo Caputo (ed.)

bibliographical report

Gli spazi aperti urbani: fenomenologia di un problema progettuale

Vittorio Gregotti

Unâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;urbanistica di spazi aperti

Post-it City: the other european public spaces

bibliographical report

Bernardo Secchi

bibliographical report

Giovanni Lavarra

Manifesto del terzo paesaggio

The Landscape Urbanism Reader

The highline

Summary of the contents & Critical Commentary on the texts

Gilles ClĂŠments

bibliographical report

Charles Waldheim (ed).

bibliographical report a report on a project

of each bibliographical report

Bibliography

the whole list of the texts consulted

PREMISE

The work hereby presented aims to develop a discourse on the topic of urban voids and public space design: on the theory and practice of what can be called landscape urbanism. As Vittorio Gregotti once said about the necessity of a theory (in Casabella 494, 1983) “La frammentazione dei sistemi teorici cui assistiamo non sembra però presentarsi come una provvisoria condizione: anzi, al contrario, questa frammentazione sembra presentarsi come un nuovo modo di essere della riflessione teoretica: in certo modo anche una nuova mescolanza tra teoria e metodo.” Landscape Urbanism is a theory of urbanism arguing that landscape, rather than architecture, is more capable of organizing the city and enhancing the urban experience. Landscape Urbanism has emerged as a theory in the last fifteen years. Landscape Urbanism describes “the ability to produce urban effects traditionally achieved through the construction of buildings simply through the organization of horizontal surfaces.”[1] The term, “Landscape Urbanism” was coined by architect and current Landscape Architecture chair of the GSD at Harvard, Charles Waldheim, as a means of describing the recent emergence of landscape

as a medium of urban order for the contemporary city . “The origins of Landscape Urbanism can be traced to postmodern critiques of modernist architecture and planning.” [2] In the following essays and excerpt from books and reviews emphasys is put on the theory and of the facts that represent the realm of the contemporary European public space. But there is also a counter-part, as Carlos Martì Aris stated in an article entitled “La cimbra y el Arco, una nota sobre la investigation en arcquitectura” (in Circo, n.93, 2001): “Se ho imparato qualcosa dopo tanti anni dedicati a questi temi è che qualsiasi tentativo di costruzione teorica nel nostro ambito deve, fin dall’inizio, assumere un ruolo ausiliario, una condizione secondaria, subordinata alle opere, che sono le autentiche depositarie della conoscenza, tanto in architettura quanto in qualsiasi altra attività artistica. Questo carattere ausiliario che attribuisco alla teoria nel campo dell’arte non diminuisce per niente la sua importanza, nè nega il suo valore decisivo. È come la centina che rende possibile la costruzione dell’arco: una volta compiuta la sua missione, scompare e non rientra nella percezione che abbiamo dell’opera

finita, ma sappiamo che Ă¨ stato un passaggio obbligato e imprescindibile, un elemento necessario a erigere quello che ora vediamo e ammiriamoâ&#x20AC;?. Therefore there is no theory without a practice and that is the reason why at the end of this volume it will be presented a project: the Diller Scofidio + Renfro in collaboration with James Corner Field Operations High Line. As an example of public space design which interacts with the urban fabric of the City of New York and shows a landscape urbanism approach due to the scale of the intervention itself and of the history as well as of the context in which it is set: an old infrastructure that has been dismissed, becoming an abbandoned linear urban void, and now it is a park-promenade for the New Yorkers. Those thoughts on the relevance of a theory in contemporary architecture and the problem of the urban voids have been widely discussed during the semester but on a more architectural point of view, thus I wanted to explore the same topics but within the field of landscape architecture and contemporary urban theories, which had led me to discover the landscape urbanism theory and practice.

[1] _ Waldheim, C. (2006). The Landscape Urbanism Reader. New York, NY: Princeton Architectural Press. p. 37. [2] _ ibidem, p. 38.

in order to re-qualify the open spaces of the dispersed city, one should first of all give them a clear identity. in this sense, the principal difficulty is that of having to design a posteriori, forgetting the purely accidental nature of a space born as a “remnant” or as a “void” between other building volumes. there are two possible ways to generate this new identity. on one hand, one can produce and open space project of foundation; on the other hand, one can operate small and minimal changes in the meaning.

riqualificare gli spazi aperti della città diffusa significa anzitutto tentare di dare loro una chiara identità. la difficoltà principale di questa azione sta nel fatto di dovere intervenire a posteriori per cercare di fare dimenticare la natura puramente accidentale di uno spazio nato come “resto” e “vuoto” tra gli oggetti edilizi. due sono i modi di intervenire per produrre questa nuova identità. da un lato si può agire mediante interventi di vera e propria rifondazione dello spazio aperto, nell'intento di ottenere qualità di forte rappresentatività tali da connotare lo spazio come luogo di riferimento per la vita pubblica. dall'altro lato si può agire con gesti minimi e piccoli spostamenti di senso, secondo una logica di metamorfosi dello spazio aperto, nell'intento di suscitare una sensazione di familiarità e di civiltà a chi lo percorre. _ P.A.C. in Casabella 597-598, January-February 1993 7

On voids and public space design

Public space design as considered in this research deals with the re-thinking of urban voids left by dismissed infrastructures (e.g. the High Line project in New York city by James Corner Field Operations and Diller Scofidio + Renfro ) nay by the temporary use or measuse of uncertain spaces such as the ones of the Post-it City postulated by Giovanni la Varra. However, to get to that point and to fully understand the complexity of the topic, it is necesarry to go through few steps: starting from the very first two books selected (The architecture of the city by Aldo Rossi and Architecture and disjunction by Bernard Tschumi) in which we can understand that the spaces of the city, the form of the city, are shaped by the needs of their inhabitants: Rossi considers the city as an “human creation”, the creation of the environment for the life of the collective. While Tschumi states that there is a disjunction between the concept of space and the experience of space, and little attention has been paid by critics and historians on the latter. “Could the use and measuse of the architectural space lead to a new architecture?” is the question that Tschumi rises in the book. Then, Vittorio Gregotti and Bernardo Secchi remeber us about the presence of urban voids

and the necessity to consider them as public space to be designed: giving them both formal and symbolic identity. Those spaces need to be interwovened with the urban tissue: they need to be meeting points for the people that live near by, giving a meaning to the pause between the urban facts, making them one fluid body with the city. Paolo Caputo underlines the importance of infrastructures in the nowadays city form and public space: “negli attuali processi formativi della città e dello spazio pubblico i sistemi infrastrutturali assumono un ruolo strategico e primario”. Due to the fact that most of the times the space around those infrastructures lacks of identity: there is a need for “leggibilità, coerenza e significato” of such spaces, Oriol Bohigas says. Ilaria Valente does a comparison between the late 19th century city parks and the city parks of today, explaining that: “oggi la loro formazione ha spesso attinenza con una sorta di rinaturalizzazione e riappropriazione dei aree precedentemente occupate da impianti industriali o infrastrutturali ora dismessi”, while they keep their value of counter part towards the build enviroment of the city, a sort of payback for the society that still share with their ancestors, they are now the product of re-appropriation

of dismissed industrial or infrastructural areas. Rosario Pavia, claims that “la città è conosciuta in modo frammentario, per isole, per punti, solo alcuni di questi diventano ‘luoghi’ e assumono identità”. Enhancing the theory of Secchi about the need of public spaces inside the contemporary city: “la disaggregata società contemporanea comincia ad avere nostalgia di un uso ristretto della città e del territorio, di relazioni di prossimità tra simili, di piazze, strade, giardini, spazi ‘tra le cose’ che siano significativi perchè ugualmente utilizzati da chi li abita”. Otherwise the scenario that will prospect in front of us will be the one of the Post-it City, a do it yourself process well known in the informal city settlements, that now is becoming familiar in the European cities as well. Giovanni la Varra tells us the story of those spaces: “they are vacant lots, residual spaces around the communications systems, kinds of dikes around urbanized zones-spaces the planner’s gaze has left untouched. Their residual character, their indifference to the traditional network, their tangential position to the major flows leaves them at the fringes: on the fringes of the complex stratification of images produced by architecture and urbanism, on the fringes of the tradition of these disciplines.”

These topographic characteristics plus their temporality, “in almost every case, it is a narrow interval of space and time that slips in between a series of hypercodified environments” reminds me of the Third Landscape by Gilles Cléments: “Tra questi frammenti di paesaggio, nessuna somiglianza di forma. Un solo punto in comune: tutti costituiscono un territorio di rifugio per la diversità. Ovunque, altrove, questa è scacciata.” It is interesting the parallelism that comes out: somehow those terrain-vagues host both biodiversity and subcultural events. Post-It City is also an implicit critique of the strategies and instruments that preside over the practices of architectural and urban design and landscape urbanism can be an answer to the problems of public space design within the urban void of the contemporary city. As Koolhaas put it in 1998: “Architecture is no longer the primary element of urban order, increasingly urban order is given by a thin horizontal vegetal plane, increasingly landscape is the primary element of urban order”.

_ Filippo Abrami

The architecture of the city

Aldo Rossi

The city, which is the subject of this book, is to be understood here as architecture. By architecture i mean not only the visible image of the city and the sum of its different architectures, but architecture as construction, the construction of the city over time. I belive that this is the point of view, objectively speaking, constitutes the most comprehensive way of analysing the city; it adresses the ultimate and definitive fact in the life of the collective, the creation of the enviroment in which it lives... Architecture came into being along with the first traces of the city; it is deeply rooted in the formation of civilization and is a permanent, universal, and necessary artifact.

_ Extracts. Source: Rossi, A. (1982/1966) ‘The Architecture of the City’, translated by Diane Ghirardo and Joan Okman, Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press Originally published as L’architettura della Città, Marsilio Editori, Padova, 1966. pp.21.

Aesthetic intention and the creation of better surroundings for life are the two permanent characteristics of architecture. These aspects emerge from any significant attempt to explaine the city as a human creation. But because architecture gives concrete form to society and is intimately connected with it and with nature, it differs fundamentaly from every other art and science. This is the basis for an empirical study of the city as it has evolved from the earliest settlements. With time, the city grows upon itself; it aquires a consciousness and memory. In the course of its contruction, its original themes persist, but at the same time it modifies and renders these themes of its own development more specific...

_ Aldo Rossi, Eraldo Consolascio, Bruno Reichlin, Fabio Reinhart, La CittĂ Analoga, 1976.

_ aldo rossi (1931-1997). entered the polytechnic of milan in 1949, graduating from the faculty of architecture in 1959. while still a student he began contributing to casabella continuitĂ and served as editor of the magazine from 1960 to 1964. from this position rossi participated in an ongoing italian critique on modern movement. in 1966 rossi's research culminated in an influential first book, the architecture of the city, which proposed a fundamental continuity between the principles of architecture and urban design. in contrast to a functionalist emphasis on political and economic forces, rossi suggested a renewed focus on the description of the city as a constructed tangible artifact, an "urban science" founded on an important analytical tool, the concept of type. a typological system of classification was based on the identification, by formal and programmatic similarities, of archetypal urban institutions such as the courtyard, the street, and the house. in stressing traditional urban configurations, rossi re-established the study of architecture as a relatively autonomous discipline with a specific body of knowledge.

dis•junc•tion |disˈjə ng k sh ən| the act of disjoining or condition of being disjoined; separation, disunion. The relation of the terms of a disjunctive proposition. fr dissociation. -webster’s dictionary

Architecture and disjunction

Bernard Tschumi

'Architecture and its spaces do not change society, but through architecture and the understanding of its effect, we can accellerate processes of change under way'. [p.15] I was starting to realize that the old revolutionary concept of ‘taking advantage of the internal contradictions of society’ was applicable to architecture and, in turn, could one day influence society. The internal contradictions of architecture had been there all along; they were part of its very nature: architecture was about two mutually exclusive terms - space and its use or, in a more theorical sense, the concept of space and the experience of space. The interplay between space and activities appeared to me as a possible route to bypass some of the obstacle that accompanied many anxieties about the social and political role of architecture. Indeed, any political discussion by critics and historians about the making of architecture had generally focused on the formal or physical aspects of buildings and cities, rarely rasing the question of the events that took place in them. Just as the détournment, or rebellious use, of the urban physical framework had led to various types of urban upheaval, could the use and measuse of the architectural space lead to a new architecture? Over the next decade I kept exploring the implications of what had first been intuitions:(a) that there is no cause-and-effect relationship between the concept of space and the experience of space, or between buildings and their uses, or space and the movement of bodies within it, and (b) that the meeting of these mutually exclusive terms could be intensely pleasureable or, indeed, so violent that it could dislocate the most conservative elements of society. [pp.15-16]

_ Extracts. Source: Tschumi, B. (1994), ‘Architecture and Disjunction’, Cambridge, Massachusetts / London, England: The MIT Press.

So, architecture seems to survive only when it saves its nature by negating the form that society expects of it. [p.46] It is hardly surprising, therefore, that the non-necessity of architecture, its necessary loneliness, throws it back on itself. If its role it is not defined by society, architecture have to define it alone. Until 1750, architectural space could rely on the paradigm of the ancient precedent. After that time, until well into the twentieth century, this classical source of unity progressively became the socially determined program. In view of the present-day polarization of ontological discourse and sensual experience, I am well aware that any suggestion that they now form the inseparable but mutually exclusive terms of architecture requires some elucidation. This must begin with a description of the apparent impossibility of escaping from the paradox of the Pyramid of concepts and the Labyrinth of experience, of immaterial architecture as a concept and of material architecture as a presence. To restate my point, the paradox is not about the impossibility of perceiving both architectural concept (the six faces of the cube) and real space at the same time but about the impossibility of questioning the nature of space and at the same time making or experiencing a real space. Unless we search for an escape from architecture into the general organization of building processes, the paradox persists: architecture is made of two terms that are interdependent but mutually exclusive. Indeed, architecture contitutes the reality of experience while this reality gets in the way of the overall vision. Architecture constitutes the abstraction of absolute truth, while this very truth gets in the way of feelings. We cannot both experience and think that we experience. _ * B. Spinoza (1622-1677), quoted by Henry LefĂ¨bvre in conversation with the author, Paris, 1972.

â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;The concept of dog does not barkâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;*; the concept of space is not in space. [pp.47-48] In the same way, the achievement of architectural reality (build-

ings) defeats architectural theory while at the same time being product of it. So theory and praxis may be dialectic to one another, but in space, the translation of the concept, the overcoming of the abstraction in reality, involves the dissolution of the dialectic and an incomplete statement. This means, in effect, that, perhaps for the first time in history, architecture can never be. The effect of the great battles of social progress is obliterated, and so is the security of archetypes. Defined by its questioning, architecture is always the expression of a lack, a shortcoming, a noncompletion. It always misses something, either reality or concept. Architecture is both being and not being. The only alternative to the paradox is silence, a final nihilistic statement that might provide modern architectural history with its ultimate punchline, its self-annihilation. [p.48]

_ bernard tschumi (1944). avant-garde theorist and architecthe he is equally well known for his writing and his practice. architecture and disjunction, which brings together tschumi’s essays from 1975 to 1991, is a lucid and provocative analysis of many of the key issues that have engaged architectural discourse over the past two decades – from deconstructive theory to recent concerns with the notions of event and program. tschumi’s discourse has always been considered radical and disturbing. he opposes modernist ideology and postmodern nostalgia since both impose restrictive criteria on what may be deemed “legitimate” cultural conditions. he argues for focusing on our immediate cultural situation, which is distinguished by a new postindustrial ‘unhomeliness’ reflected in the ad hoc erection of buildings with multipurpose programs. the condition of new york and the chaos of tokyo are thus perceived as legittimate urban forms. bernard tschumi is dean of the graduate school of architecture, planning, and preservation at columbia university.

contemporary design culture is increasingly interested in the heterogeneous and discontinuous context of the periphery and of the dispersed city, where much open space lacks a clear formal and symbolic identity. this apparent absence of identity produces terrains for an authentic and radical experimentation.

non è un caso che la cultura progettuale contemporanea si stia interessando sempre di più ai contesti eterogenei e discontinui della periferia e della città diffusa, nei quali abbondano enormi distese di spazi aperti privi di una chiara identità formale e simbolica. ciò che si dimostra l’aspetto più stimolante per l’azione progettuale è proprio il fatto che questa apparente assenza di identità fa percepire questi contesti come i possibili terreni di una autentica, radicale sperimentazione.

_ P.A.C. in Casabella 597-598, January-February 1993 17

Gli spazi aperti urbani: fenomenologia di un problema progettuale

Vittorio Gregotti

_ Extracts. Source: Gregotti, V. (1993), Gli spazi aperti urbani: fenomenoligia di un problema progettuale, in Casabella 597-598, p.2

La nozione di disegno degli spazi aperti ha guadagnato importanza nella pratica progettuale contemporanea. Nella forma del progetto del suolo, di disegno ed embellissement dello spazio pubblico, di trattamento del verde, di assegnazione di significato al vuoto non edificato tra gli edifici, di definizione dei contenuti, di speciali recinti funzionali dentro alla città, lo spazio aperto ha posto questioni in modo nuovo e generale agli stessi metodi e strumenti del progetto di architettura... Invece la problematica nuova consiste a nostro avviso, da un lato e per ciò che concerne lo spazio aperto urbano, nella difficoltà di identificazione tra spazio aperto e spazio pubblico, dall’altro nella risignificazione e rifunzionalizzazione degli spazi residui che i processi della vita contemporanea producono come scarto; infine del dominio da parte del disegno architettonico delle impronte prodotte dalle nuove tematiche funzionali, o dalla nuova combinazione tra diverse funzioni concentrate. Inoltre aeroporti, banchine portuali, spazi residui dentro ai grandi impianti industriali, autoporti, stazioni di servizio, le nuove forme degli spazi stradali nelle strade-mercato della periferia, i parchi ferroviari, le aree circostanti ai grandi nodi infrastrutturali e di interscambio, le aree intercluse nella campagna urbanizzata, i grandi parcheggi, i parchi di divertimento organizzato sono altrettanti temi di regolazione degli spazi aperti urbani che attendono ancora risposte convincenti, tipologie insediative significative, capaci di rimodellare le connessioni contestuali, di fornire tramiti anzichè cesure con l’identità del circostante, sedimentata da un bel più lungo processo storico.

_ Giambattista Nolli and Giovanni Battista Piranesi, Plan de Rome, 1748

_ vittorio gregotti (1927). graduated in architecture in 1952 from the polytechnic of milan. from 1953 to 1968 he collaborated with l. meneghetti and g. stoppino. in 1974 he founded gregotti associati, of which he is president. he was professor of architectural composition at the iuav (architectural institute - university of venice) and taught at the faculty of architecture in milan and palermo. he has also acted as visiting professor at the universities of tokyo, buenos aires, sao paulo, lausanne, harvard, philadelphia, princeton, cambridge (uk) and at mit in cambridge (usa). he was responsible for the introductory section of the xiii triennale (milan, 1964) which won the international grand prix, and from 1974 to 1976 he was director of the visual arts and architectural section of the biennale di venezia. he has been a member of the accademia di san luca since 1976 and the accademia di brera since 1995. he was conferred the gold medal for science and culture from the president of italian republic in 2000, the degree honoris causa from the polytechnic of prague in 1996, from the polytechnic of bucharest in 1999, and from the university of porto in 2003; the manfredo tafuri prize of the venice biennial of architecture in the 2006, and the millennium award of the international triennial of architecture of lisbon in 2007. since 1997 he has been a member of the bda (bund der deutschen architekten) and from 1999 an honorary member of the american institute of architects. from 1953 until 1955 he was an editor of casabella; from 1955 to 1963 editor-in-chief of casabella-continuitĂ ; from 1963 to 1965 director of edilizia moderna and was responsible for the architectural section of the magazine il verri. then, from 1979 to 1998 he was director of rassegna and from 1982 to 1996 director of casabella. from 1984 to 1992 he edited the architectural column for the weekly magazine panorama. from 1992 to 1997 he collaborated with the daily newspaper corriere della sera, and since 1997 he has collaborated with the daily newspaper la repubblica.

Un’urbanistica di spazi aperti

Bernardo Secchi

_ Extracts. Source: Secchi, B. (1993) Un’urbanistica di spazi aperti, in Casabella 597598, p.5

La nozione di disegno degli spazi aperti ha guadagnato importanza nella pratica progettuale contemporanea. Forse ogni generazione, ogni epoca, torna ad occuparsi del tema con occhi e idee nuove. “Durante l’ultima generazione – scriveva Lewis Mumford nel 1960 – la nostra concezione dello spazio aperto delle sue relazioni con il contesto urbano e regionale è cambiata... Abbiamo imparato che gli spazi urbani aperti svolgono una importante funzione sociale e che ciò è dovuto a tre principali ragioni: alla modifica dei caratteri dell’insediamento conseguente ai più veloci sistemi di trasporto, alla riduzione delle ore di lavoro e ad una ancor più profonda modifica nei caratteri dello spazio urbano; perchè nei suburbi che sono cresciuti così tanto rapidamente attorno ai centri urbani, gli edifici stanno idealmente, come strutture liberamente disposte nel contesto di un parco.” Vorrei cercare di dire, da un punto di vista assai particolare, quello dell’urbanista, le ragioni, i modi, le possibilità dell’odierna nuova strategia dell’attenzione, dell’odierna importanza del disegno degli spazi aperti. Le sue origini stanno forse in regioni parzialmente diverse da quelle segnalate da Mumford trent’anni or sono, forse anche assai diverse tra loro. Al loro interno sono cresciute, nell’ultimo decennio soprattutto, riflessioni sempre più articolate: il loro convergere attorno al tema del disegno dello spazio aperto non è certo frutto del caso, ma neppure può essere spiegato in termini semplici. [...] La città, il territorio sono divenuti immense collezioni di oggetti paratatticamente accostati e muti. Ciò che è simile non è prossimo. Tra gli oggetti e i luoghi ognuno si muove secondo i propri itinerari; essi lo conducono da specifiche origini ad altrettanto specifiche e personali destinazioni: qui la mia casa, là la mia scuola, altrove il posto di lavoro mio e, molto distante, quello di mia moglie; il ci-

nema, il tennis o il campo di bocce che frequento stanno, ciascuno, in altre e diverse parti della città, in altri comuni; alla fine della settimana ciascuno si disperde du territori ancora più vasti, durante le vacanze i territori esplorati si dilatano sino ad identificarsi con il continente, ecc. Questa rete di relazioni tra i luoghi è totalmente differente per il mio vicino, per il mio collega, ma anche per mio figlio. Lo spazio che sta “tra le cose”, tra oggetti e soggetti, tra loro prossimi, tra la mia casa e quella del mio vicino, tra la mia e la loro casa, tra loro e la mia scuola, tra il loro e il mio ufficio è attraversato da estranei, non è luogo di incontro; è divenuto “vuoto” perchè privo di un ruolo riconoscibile; a quello spazio si chiede solo di essere permeabile, di lasciarsi percorrere frapponendo il minimo di resistenza. La disaggregata società contemporanea comincia ad avere nostalgia di un uso ristretto della città e del territorio, di relazioni di prossimità tra simili, di piazze, strade, giardini, spazi “tra le cose” che siano significativi perchè ugualmente utilizzati da chi li abita, che siano luogo ed occasione di incontro, di frequentazione e di “aggregazione”.

_ bernardo secchi (1934). graduated in civil engineering in milan in 1959. professor of urbanism at the university institute of architecture of venice (iuav). he has taught at the faculty of economics of ancona and the faculty of architecture of milan, where he served as dean from 1976 to 1982. more recently he has given seminars and lectures at many foreign faculty (ecole d’architecture in geneva, eth zurich, university of louvain, institut d’urbanisme of paris). it is part of the group founder and editor of the journal archives of urban and regional studies. since 1982 collaborates continuously with casabella. from 1984 to 1991 was editor of city planning. he has organized numerous design competitions including “bicocca project” in milan, and has served on numerous juries for architectural and urban competitions.

Le architetture dello spazio pubblico. Forme del passato forme del presente.

Paolo Caputo (ed.) _ Paolo Caputo, Le architetture dello spazio pubblico tra cura del luogo e figure del tradimento, in Le architetture dello spazio pubblico. Forme del passato forme del presente. pp.11-14

_ Oriol Bohigas, La città come spazio progettato, in Le architetture dello spazio pubblico. Forme del passato forme del presente. pp.20

Riflettere sullo spazio pubblico significa riflettere sulla città, sui modi di abitarla e sulle forme attraverso cui si costruisce e rappresenta. Interrogarsi sul significato dello spazio pubblico nella contemporaneità vuol dire pensare alle forme ed ai luoghi urbani, di relazione e di incontro sociale, che attualmente si propongono, con maggiore o minore emergenza, alla nostra attenzione... Le risposte dell'architettura alle istanze di spazio pubblico sono quindi articolate in funzione di vecchie e nuove abitudini, vocazioni, domande e aspettative sociali, e variamente modulate in rapporto alle specifiche condizioni di contesto entro cui vengono formulate. Esse indicano una corretta e pertinente vasta gamma di approcci che oscilla tra la cura del luogo e la pietas per l'esistente e le sperimentazione di antologie del nuovo... Negli attuali processi formativi della città e dello spazio pubblico i sistemi infrastrutturali assumono un ruolo strategico e primario.

Lo spazio urbano è il contenitore fisico di tutto ciò che accade nella città ed è la sua essenziale definizione formale... Allo spazio pubblico – cioè, alla forma della città – bisogna chiedere, perciò, leggibilità, coerenza e significato. Deve essere facilmente e immediatamente compreso per poter essere adeguatamente utilizzato. Il fattore più importante per capire uno spazio è, precisamente, la definizione fisica di questo spazio. In altre parole, la definizione coerente, esplicita, comprensibile della forma urbana.

_ Ilaria Valente, Percorsi del progetto e architetture dello spazio pubblico.Natura e artificio. Spazi pubblici e paesaggio, in Le architetture dello spazio pubblico. Forme del passato forme del presente. p.213

_ Rosaio Pavia, Spazi pubblici, spazi infrastrutturali, in Le architetture dello spazio pubblico. Forme del passato forme del presente. p.246

Il parco pubblico della città ottocentesca si poneva già come estremo artificio proprio nel suo rappresentarsi naturalisticamente come contrappunto alla città di pietra. I parchi pubblici odierni sono accomunati dalla tradizione ottocentesca nel loro riferirsi allo svago e al tempo libero e nel loro porsi, in qualche modo, come “risarcimento” della parte costruita della città. Oggi la loro formazione ha spesso attinenza con una sorta di rinaturalizzazione e riappropriazione dei aree precedentemente occupate da impianti industriali o infrastrutturali ora dismessi.

Nella città contemporanea gli spazi pubblici esterni stanno scomparendo, le comunità urbane non vi si rappresentano più; le strade, i viali, i boulevards hanno perso la loro funzione di connessione e narrazione. Anche lo spazio naturale si è contratto: prevalgono i vuoti neutri senza qualità e denominazione. Si attraversa una città senza luoghi, spostandosi da un recinto all’altro. La città è conosciuta in modo frammentario, per isole, per punti, solo alcuni di questo diventano “luoghi” e assumono identità.

_ paolo caputo (1950) graduated at the school of architecture of the polytechnic of milan in 1974. is full professor of urban architectural design at the “ architecture and society” faculty of the polytechnic of milan. since 1978 he has exercised, along with didactic and research activities, his private career as designer within caputo partnership. he has been in charge of urban and architectonic scale projects. among his early works are listed: the transformational project of the ip area in la spezia, the santa giulia project, the parco adriano and cascina merlata in milan, the bassetti and falck areas respectively in vimercate and arcore and finally the necchi area in pavia. he has entered many national and international competitions and has been awarded. he has taken care of exhibitions in museums and foundations such as the triennale of milan and of the interior design of some civic museums in milan. he has been visiting professor at madrid, rio de janeiro, buenos aires, santiago, porto, seville, paris la seine and marseille’s university. he was appointed national secretary of the “istituto nazionale di architettura” ( national institute of architecture) as well as president of its lombardy division. from 2002 to 2008 he was member of the board of directors of the “fondazione triennale” (foundation triennale) of milan and since 2009 he has been member of the eire scientific committee (expo italia real estate).

empty space, but not empty time. things have not always existed, nor, once they appear, will they last forever; they only become visible between two infinitely close positions in the hypnotic, interminable movement of the pendulum defining time that neither repeats itself nor goes backwords. then the figure will once again disintegrate. stenosis, once again, follows dilation.

_ Enrique Granell, in Quaderns 203 / 1993, p.74 25

POST-IT CITY: the other european public space

Giovanni la Varra

_ Extracts. Source: Boeri, S. (2003). Use: uncertain states of Europe. Milano: Skira.

The landscape of public life in the European city is changing. The public space of contemporary Europe has its own icons: it is ample, sharply defined, with raw, precious, sparkling materials, fashioned in diverse ways, with a sophisticated composition of green spaces and trees, “hard” and “soft” spaces. The successful articulation of this genre is found in the great, hyper-defined open spaces of the new European plazas, where distinctive first-class businesses move in. Alongside such spaces are other “public space” that punctuate the urban territory. In the city center or on the edges, at the heart of the nineteenth-century tissue or in the great external zones, they compose an infinite catalogue of informal spaces, with innumerable articulations: street vendors, veritable bars on wheels that bring together young people and prostitutes, policemen and bums, at night in Milan, specially equipped vans serving as discotheques in the streets of London suburbs, the vacant lots of Berlin described by Wenders, improvised raves bringing together thousands of party-goers together in the industrial wastelands of small and midsized cities in the heart of Europe, scattered, spontaneous shops on the streets and squares of Belgrade during the embargo, literally occupying the urban public space whose meaning and value they transfigure. These dynamics carry out a temporary rewriting of the urban space they fill - traditional but also provisional spaces, which are mobilized as a function of events, of the evolution of the city, of the specific individual or group initiatives, constituting a fragile and fragmentary network which filters into the tightly woven structures of urban public space. Post-It City is a functional apparatus of the contemporary city. It is particularly involved with the dynamics of

public life, with the behavior of individuals, their modes of encounter, of gathering, of bonding, of recognition, and of distinction, which all leave the traditional paths behind. Equally and more radically, Post-It City is a form of resistance against virtual modes of encounter and the normalization of “public behavior” in the contemporary city - where as Ed Soja reminds us, “even if you don’t want to, you have to respect the role assigned to you.” The Post-It metaphor actually concerns a rather narrow spectrum of urban phenomena. But traditional public space, as its representational use value changes, is obliged to take the complexity and heterogeneity of the cultural and social mutations conveyed by these phenomena into account. New collective spaces are joining the network of public places that connote the historical city, and the network of public places that punctuate the density of the contemporary city, which is characterized by a planned diffusion, an extension of relations, an attachment to communication networks. This new reality shifts the traditional dynamics of public life into new conditions. What emerges from these temporary spaces is above all non-codification. Unlike the simulated public spaces whose mechanisms of “controlled reaction” offer inhabitants, tourists and suburbanites very specific chances to meet and exchange, the Post-It spaces have no predominant codification: they are vacant lots, residual spaces around the communications systems, kinds of dikes around urbanized zones-spaces the planner’s gaze has left untouched. Their residual character, their indifference to the traditional network, their tangential position to the major flows leaves them at the fringes: on the fringes of the complex stratification of images produced by architecture and urbanism, on the fringes of the tradition of these disciplines, whose projects are closed, limited in time, precisely shaped according to contingent needs. The second characteristic of the Post-It phenomena is that they are temporary. They unfold in a particular time-span with the presence of temporary participants. During the day, for example, it is quite impossible

_ Informal restaurant in front of the Brasilia cathedral, Brazil, ©Domènec, 2007.

to recognize any sign of the night-time uses of a shopping-center parking lot. The Post-It spaces occupy a short slice of time in the sequence of a city-dweller’s day. In almost every case, it is a narrow interval of space and time that slips in between a series of hypercodified environments. Inserted between the family framework of the home and the mega-interior of the discotheque or multiplex, the teenager’s night-time meeting-place is a typical example. It is an individual reappropriation of the modes and times of collective exchange, freeing them from the particular rules of the family framework and from the invasive, normalizing rules of the “architecture of entertainment,” to rediscover individualized and intimate interpersonal relations. Intensification is the third characteristic of Post-It City - the intensification of anonymous, unsuspected spaces and places, “no-man’s lands” which are astonishingly available for collective practices. But it is also an intensification of the signifiers fixed in the materiality of the space. Intimate, emotional places for sharing the practices of encounter, which allow themselves neither to be modeled or ob-

structed. Or personal and collective activities, desires, projections, which occupy spaces without any ambition to lay foundations, to root their presence, and without promoting any antagonism over the use of the space. The “unpolitical” nature of such collective practices cannot be measured by absolute demands or perspectives of radical transformation. In this respect what predominates is above all the disarming effect of Post-It City. Architectural reflection has a hard time translating the nature of these phenomena into its own terms, in order to incorporate them into a project. But Post-It City, if we broaden the meaning of the expression, definitely is the bearer of a distinct and singular project. With Post-It City we want to make an un-predetermined, temporary use of a space which is open like a public space, and subject to perpetual resignification. Post-It City is like a thread or an invisible watermark that runs through the contemporary city. Invisible at first, the phenomena of Post-It City are not ostensible, even if their nature greatly depends on the dimensions of the territory. It is often a matter of “exposed” places where it is possible to see the city, the landscape, and the territory crossed by the flows of mobility. These places are characterized by what Stefano Boeri has called a “territorial intimacy,” which continually brings their residual nature, their marginality into a state of tension. Post-It City is also an implicit critique of the strategies and instruments that preside over the practices of architectural and urban design. The critique is “implicit” because it does not give rise to specific demands. Occupying a space which belongs to no one, doing so temporarily but repeatedly, giving it another meaning inside a small group without modifying its spatial and material nature, is not an attitude which prefigures any particular demand: for example the demand for “inhabitable space”, or any other environmental condition, or nay new services. Post-It City rediscovers the dimension of “do it yourself,” as Colin Ward says, a dimension which is above all creative and abounds in its own proposals and reflection.

This “do it yourself” denounces the hidden, spasmodic will to impose a practice of collective space, it is foreign to the preordained and preconstituted models of habitat. But Post-It City is obviously not an anarchic phenomenon. On the contrary, it is progressive and exploratory in its adaptation to a new framework. It is an innovative form of sociality that takes place in specific places and develops partial, temporary, fleeting emotions. There is only the slightest of links between its places of aggregation and their appearances. And these links cannot be interpreted in a single way. Sometimes a tie is made between totally marginal places, constructed by superimposition, intermittence, and gradual accumulations of objects without reciprocal relations, these places can be used for encounters and exchanges of a particular “population.” A vacant lot, a strip along the edges of transportation infrastructures, a void that opens up temporarily in a zone of dense construction: chance will define it, by the sum total of stratifications (or subtractions) which, in the course of time, have produced an uncertain, undefinable result, at least in the technical terminology that habitually characterizes the city. But at the other extreme, Post-It City also extends to places whose formal definition is completely univocal and strongly determined: this is the case of the shopping center-parking lots evoked above, which at night or on holidays become gathering points. The proximity of the major road infrastructures makes them a possible interval, a stopover on a car trip. You suddenly leave the flow, but remain in direct visual communication with it. The automobile becomes a complementary element of this temporary occupation: it marks off a space and signals a momentary presence. Post-It City seems to stress the extremes of what formally characterizes the city today. It is above all under the conditions of maximum uncertainty and ultimate reduction that it is easiest to reveal the depth of the phenomenon. In this constellation of spaces, which continually “light up” and “go dark,” the public life of the European city seems to find the energy of regeneration.

_ Tobias Zielony, Gas Station, 2005. On the outskirts of European cities the shortage of meeting places has forced young people to adopt “nonplaces” – anonymous, standardised spaces – and to make them into spaces for socialisation. Urban architectures without defined users become colonised, and their planned usage becomes the framework for new relationships.

_ giovanni la varra (1967), architect with a doctorate in land use planning & management. he teaches urban planning and composition at the faculty of architecture of milan polytechnic and urban planning in the humanities department of milan state university. he began his career in 1994, and in 1999 founded boeri studio with gianandrea barreca and stefano boeri, developing important projects in italy and abroad. his activities at milan polytechnic include coordination of the research for the metrobosco project (sponsored by the province of milan), the publication milano. cronache dell’abitare (bruno mondadori, 2007) and the feasibility study for the rehabilitation of the sant’elia quarter of cagliari (currently underway with area, cagliari). he was curator of the exhibition “post-it city”, an investigation of the temporary and self-organized use of public space, sponsored by the barcelona center of contemporary culture (catalogue cccb 2008). working with the research agency multiplicity, he conducted research and designed installations on the theme of contemporary urban conditions, as well as use uncertain states of europe (a reconnaissance of the future of european land use, exhibited in bordeaux 2000, brussels 2001, tokyo 2002, milan 2002) and solid sea (a research project on the mediterranean presented at documenta xi in kassel, 2002 and later exhibited in vienna, berlin and rotterdam). he has published articles, essays and reviews in casabella, domus, abitare, territorio, urbanistica, il sole 24 ore, urbanistica quaderni, paesaggio urbano and arch’it

Manifesto del Terzo Paesaggio

Gilles Clément

Il residuo deriva dall'abbandono di un terreno precedentemente sfuttato. La sua origine è molteplice: agricola, industriale, urbana, turistica ecc. Residuo (dèlaissè) e incolto (friche) sono sinonimi. [p.7] Se si smette di guardare il paesaggio come l'oggetto di un'attività umana subito si scopre (sarà una dimenticanza del cartografo, una negligenza del politico?) una quantità di spazi indecisi, privi di funzioni sui quali è difficile posare un nome. Quest'insieme non appartiene nè al territorio dell'ombra nè a quello della luce. Si situa ai margini. ... Tra questi frammenti di paesaggio, nessuna somiglianza di forma. Un solo punto in comune: tutti costituiscono un territorio di rifugio per la diversità. Ovunque, altrove, questa è scacciata. Questo rende giustificabile raccoglierli sotto un unico termine. Propongo Terzo paesaggio, terzo termine di una analisi che ha raggruppato i principali dati ossevabili sotto l'ombra da un lato, la luce dall'altro. Terzo paesaggio rinvia a Terzo stato (e non Terzo Mondo). Uno spazio che non esprime nè il potere nè la sottomissione al potere. _ Extracts. Source: Clément, G. (2005). Manifesto del terzo paesaggio. Macerata: Quodlibet.

Fa riferimento al pamphlet di Seyès del 1789: “Cos'è il Terzo stato? - Tutto. Cosa ha fatto finora? - Niente. Cosa aspira a diventare? Qualcosa”. [pp.10-11]

_ Anna Positano, Growth, 2009.

_ gilles clĂŠment (1943) is a gardener, landscape designer, botanist, educator and writer who trained in horticultural engineering and landscape design at the versailles national school of landscape architecture. clement discusses the â&#x20AC;&#x153;third landscape,â&#x20AC;? a terrain classification describing abandoned spaces such as former industrial areas or nature reserves which are prime areas for accumulating bio-diversity.

landscape urbanism describes a disciplinary realignment currently underway in which lanscape replaces architecture as the basic building block of contemporary urbanism. for many, across a range of disciplines, landscape has become both the lens through which the contemporary city is represented and the medium through which it is constructed.

_ Charles Waldheim

The Landscape Urbanism Reader

Charles Waldheim Over the past decade landscape has emerged as a model for contemporary urbanism, one uniquely capable of describing the conditions for radically decentralized urbanizations, expecially in the context of complex natural enviroments. Over the same decade the landscape discipline has enjoyed a period of intellectual and cultural renewal. While much of the landscape disciplines’s renewed relevance to discussions of the city may be attributed to this renewal or to increased enviromental awareness more generally, landscape has improbably emerged as the most relevant disciplinary locus for discussions historically housed in architecture, urban design, or planning... Landscape urbanism offers an implicit critique of architecture and urban design’s inability to offer coherent, competent, and convincing eplanations of contemporary urban conditions. In this context, the discourse surrounding landscape urbanism can be read as a disciplinary reallignment in which landscape supplants architecture’s historical role as the basic building block of urban design. Across a range of disciplines, many authors have articulated this newfound relevance of landscape in describing the temporal mutability and horizontalextensivity of the contemporary city. Among the authors making claims for the potential of landscape in this regard is architect and educator Stan Allen, Dean of the School of Architecture at Princeton University: “Increasingly, landscape is emerging as a model for urbanism. Landscape has traditionally been defined as the art of organizing horizontal surfaces...By paying close attention to these surfaces contitions – not only configuration, but also materiality and performance – designers can activate space and produce urban effects without the weighty apparatus of traditional space making”. [p.37]

_ Extracts. Source: Waldheim, C. (2006). The Landscape Urbanism Reader. New York, NY: Princeton Architectural Press.

Landscape as a medium, it has been recalled by Corner, Allen, and others, uniquely capable of responding to temporal change, transformation, adaptation, and succession. These qualities reccomend landscape as an analogto contemporary processes of urbanization and as a medium uniquely suited to the open-endedness, indeterminacy, and change demanded by contemporary urban conditions. As Allen puts it, “landscape is not only a formal model for urbanism today, but perhaps more importantly, a model for process”. [p.39] As Koolhaas put it in 1998: “Architecture is no longer the primary element of urban order, increasingly urban order is given by a thin horizontal vegetal plane, increasingly landscape is the primary element of urban order”. [p.42] Rowe’s position is summarized by Frampton, who identifies two salient points: “first, that priority should now be accorded to landscape, rather than to freestanding built form and second, that there is a pressing need to transform certain megalopolitan types such as shopping malls, parking lots, and office parks into landscaped built forms.” If landscape urbanism offers strategies for design, it also provides a cultural categoty – a lens through which to see and describe the contemporary city, many of which, absent intervention by designers and without the benefit of planning, have been found to emulate natural systems. Again, the work of Koolhaas is notable, but not exceptional. The clearest example of this tendency can be found in Koolhaas,’s essay on Atlanta: “Atlanta does not have the classical symptoms of the city: it is not dense; it is a sparse, this carpet of habitation, a kind of suprematist composition of little fields. Its strongest contextual givens are vegetal and infrastructures: forests and roads. Atlanta is not a city: it is a landscape.”

The tendency to view the contemporary city through the lens of landscape is most evident in projects and texts which appropriate the terms, conceptual categories, and operating methodologies of field ecology: that is, the study of species as they relate to their natural enviroments. This reveals one of the implicit advantages of landscape urbanism: the conflation, integration, and fluid exchange between (natural) enviromental and (enineered) infrastructural systems. [p.43]

_ charles waldheim is the john e. irving professor of landscape architecture and chair of the department of landscape architecture at harvard university’s graduate school of design. his teaching and research examine the relationships between landscape and contemporary urbanism. waldheim coined the term “landscape urbanism” to describe the recent emergence of landscape as a medium of urban order for the contemporary city. waldheim has authored numerous articles and chapters on the topic, and edited the landscape urbanism reader. waldheim’s writing on landscape and contemporary urbanism has appeared in landscape journal, topos, log, praxis, 306090, canadian architect, and landscape architecture magazine. citing detroit as the most legible example of urban industrial economy, waldheim is editor of case: lafayette park detroit and co-editor, with georgia daskalakis and jason young, of stalking detroit. he is currently writing the first book-length history of chicago’s o’hare airport, chicago o’hare: a natural and cultural history. waldheim has taught and lectured on contemporary urbanism across north america, europe, australia, and asia. waldheim is recipient of the rome prize fellowship from the american academy in rome; the visiting scholar research fellowship at the study centre of the canadian centre for architecture; the cullinan chair at rice university, and the sanders fellowship at the university of michigan. waldheim is a licensed architect and principal of urban agency, a multi-disciplinary consultancy in design and contemporary urbanism. waldheim received the master of architecture from the university of pennsylvania where he was awarded the paul cret medal for master’s thesis prize and the wil melhorn prize for work in architectural theory.

Report on a project

_ Aerial View of the High Line looking south from West 30th Street. The elevated public park now stretches through West Chelsea from Gansevoort Street to West 30th Street. ÂŠ Iwan Baan, 2011.

The High Line Park in New York

Design Team (2004-2009)

James Corner Field Operations, Diller Scofidio + Renfro, and Piet Oudolf. _ James Corner Field Operations (Project Lead) Principal-in-Charge: James Corner Lead Project Designers: Lisa Tziona Switkin, Nahyun Hwang Project Team: Sierra Bainbridge, Tom Jost, Danilo Martic, Tatiana von Preussen, Maura Rockcastle, Tom Ryan, Lara Shihab-Eldin, Heeyeun Yoon, Hong Zhou Technical Specifications: Paul DiBona Specifications LLC _ Diller Scofidio + Renfro Partners: Elizabeth Diller, Ricardo Scofidio, Charles Renfro Lead Project Designer: Matthew Johnson Project Team: Robert Condon, Tobias Hegemann, Gaspar Libedinsky, Jeremy Linzee, Miles Nelligan, Dan Sakai _ Buro Happold: Structural / MEP Engineering Principal: Craig Schwitter; Team: Herbert Browne, Dennis Burton, Andrew Coats, Anthony Curiale, Mark Dawson, Beth Macri, Sean O’Neill, Stan Wojnowski, Zac Braun, David Bentley, Elizabeth Devendorf, Alan Jackson, Christian Forero, Joseph Vassilatos _ Robert Silman Associates: Structural Engineering/Historic Preservation Joseph Tortorella, Andre Georges _ Piet Oudolf: Planting Designer _ L’Observatoire International: Lighting Hervé Descottes, Annette Goderbauer, Jeff Beck _ Pentagram Design, Inc.: Signage Paula Scher, Drew Freeman, Rion Byrd, Jennifer Rittner _ Northern Designs: Irrigation Michael Astram

_ GRB Services, Inc.: Environmental Engineering/Site Remediation Richard Barbour, Steven Panter, Rose Russo _ Philip Habib & Associates: Civil & Traffic Engineering/Zoning & Landuse Philip Habib, Sandy Pae, Colleen Sheridan _ Pine & Swallow Associates, Inc.: Soil Science John Swallow, Robert Pine, Mike Agonis _ ETM Associates: Public Space Management Tim Marshall _ CMS Collaborative: Water Feature Engineering Edison Becker Bonjardim, Roy Kaplan, Tanya Larson _ VJ Associates: Cost Estimating Vijay Desai, Sushma Tammareddi, Chongba Sherpa _ Code Consultants Professional Engineers: Code Consultants John McCormick, Laurence J. Dallaire, Kevin Morin _ Control Point Associates, Inc.: Site Surveyor Paul Jurkowski _ Municipal Expediting Inc. Expediting Elizabeth Kapp _ Construction Team LiRo/Daniel Frankfurt: Resident Engineer SiteWorks Landscape: Construction Management KiSKA Construction: General Contractor Bovis Lend Lease: Construction Management

The High Line in New York For almost three decades, the High Line languished like Sleeping Beauty, with even many New Yorkers unaware of the structure in their midst. This summer (2009), an 800-metre section of it reawakened as a public park. The elevated rail line, opened for freight trains in 1934 to relieve the dangerous street-level rail traffic along Manhattanâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s West Side, ran south from 34th Street to the St. Johnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Park terminal, mostly straight through city blocks. It connected factories and warehouses directly; in some cases the trains could roll right into the buildings. In the 1950s, when traffic volume shifted increasingly from rail to roads, and industry and businesses moved out of Manhattan, the High Line saw a marked decrease in business. The southernmost section was torn out in the 1960s, and in 1980 the last train, with three freight cars full of frozen turkeys, hobbled over the rusty tracks. Property owners along the line wanted it torn down, but no one could agree on who was to bear the cost. A few residents, however, recognized the old, now riotously weed-grown routeâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s potential as a peaceful idyll. In 1999 they founded Friends of the High Line with the goal of preserving the line and rededicating it as a public space. In 2002 they gained the support of the city thanks in part to a study projecting that the additional tax revenue generated

by the project would more than offset its construction costs. To compensate the owners of properties below the line, a policy of air development rights was conceived, which allow increases in the standard height limits of nearby sites and which can be resold to investors. Long concrete planks form a path over the entire length of the park. The uneven ends of the slabs merge into gravel beds or dovetail into reinstalled rails. The path meanders gently back and forth on the 10- to 20-metre-wide trace. Slight upstands on the slab edges mark the boundaries of the grass- and woodlands, making the selectively placed mini-railings seem redundant. Other beds are framed by Corten steel, which is also used in some of the accesses. In various places, prefabricated parts in the slabs interlock with wooden benches. The long, narrow band of the park is punctuated by pre-existing features as well as newly designed elements. At one point the park is straddled by the recently built Standard Hotel by Polshek Partnership Architects, at another it splits into two levels, or dips down through the Chelsea Market. There, in a half-open tunnel, public art installations are planned. Visitors also can relax on movable wooden loungers with a view of the Hudson. A bit farther on, the trace widens on to 10th Avenue Square, where wooden risers overlook the urban hustle and bustle through large windows. These are just

some of the amazing views and perspectives of the city, the river and the ever-changing district that are to be had all along the route. In recent years the former underbelly and backstreets of Manhattan have experienced a massive push towards gentrification. Where butcher shops and businesses once held sway, hip restaurants and boutiques are taking over, such as Yohji Yamamoto’s Gansevoort Street store by Japanese architect Junya Ishigami. The park has enhanced area property values and attracted luxury real-estate investors, who like the association with famous architectural names. On 23rd Street, Neil Denari’s HL23 is just going up, four streets away from Shigeru Ban’s Metal Shutter Houses, which in turn is near Frank Gehry’s ICA Building. Between the southerly access and the Hudson, Renzo Piano’s downtown offshoot of the Whitney Museum will open in 2012. Ultimately, the private initiative that once drew ire from property owners has contributed to the area’s tremendous boom. The whole process has born a wonderful place that seems to bring joy to stressed big-city inhabitants. Whether they be mothers out with their toddlers, senior citizens taking a stroll, tourists snapping pictures or businessmen dropping by from nearby offices, everyone here is smiling.

_ The High Line Park, Plan.

_ Joel Sternfeld, High Line Park in New York, 2000.

_ Unknown photographer, High Line, 1934.

Looking, Moving, Gathering: Functions of the High Line

Gideon Fink Shapiro New Yorkâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s beloved High Line is a machine for generating three types of urban social activity: looking, moving, and gathering. The June 7 inauguration of the second section of the elevated park, designed by James Corner Field Operations and Diller Scofidio + Renfro, has doubled the length of the park to one full mile (1.6 km). Cutting an elevated, verdant path through West Chelsea, the High Line now offers doubly abundant opportunities for looking (at the city, at each other, at oneself), moving (aimlessly or purposefully), and gathering (with friends, with strangers, with oneâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s thoughts). Separated by a chicken-wire fence until this week, the first and second sections of the elevated park now blur seamlessly. Completed two years apart, they were designed as a whole. Hence the newly opened run between West 20th Street and West 30th Street is not a sequel, but the realization of the original vision. The now-familiar material palette and building components include concrete decking planks interlaced with greenery, wood benches sprouting out of the ground, cut-out stairwells with clear glass and Corten steel trim, wild and shaggy plantings, preserved iron tracks, and of course the hulking black steel structure built in 1934. Throughout the project, hard and soft elements are spliced artfully together.

_ Looking south from near the northern terminus, a long wooden bench curves with the pathway for an entire city block. © Iwan Baan, 2011.

What differentiates each part of the High Line from the others is the series of micro-landscapes and outdoor rooms implanted along the park’s varying width. Each setting facilitates different tempos and densities of activity, from quiet strolling and placid sunbathing to promiscuous picture-taking and voyeuristic viewing. And just as every part is designed, so every part is named. The newly unveiled environments include the Thicket, the Lawn, the Seating Steps, the Flyover, the Viewing Spur, the Wildflower Field, the Radial Bench, and the Cut-Out. The park also soaks up visual and kinetic energy from the heterogeneous urban fabric in which it is immersed—a fabric that changes from block to block, season to season, and year to year. Temporary, site-specific art installations further animate the park. James Corner says that the High Line showcases “the theatricality of social settings” as well as the emergence of a “postindustrial nature.” This assessment gets to the core of the project’s hybridization of park, street, and plaza. It also evokes a body of radical planning theory. For example, based on studies conducted in New York City’s public spaces in the 1960s–70s, the theorist and planner William H. Whyte concluded that urban life was defined by the urge to be among

other people, including strangers. While New Yorkers may pine for secluded respites, they also gravitate toward social hot spots. And while the High Line is most quiet during the workday, when it is apt to evoke the secret garden that it was prior to renovation, it is most attractive in the early evening, when the people come pouring along for a New York-style Passeggiata. The park thus extends the city’s multi-layered density that Rem Koolhaas called, “the culture of congestion.” The High Line is no antidote to city life; on the contrary, it fuels city life. The tree- and shrub-lined Chelsea Thicket between West 20th and West 22nd Street is the only part of the High Line planted so tall and densely as to block out the surrounding city, evoking the insular quality of the Promenade Plantée in Paris. But this segment was already enclosed by a canyon of continuous building walls. The High Line then widens between West 22nd and West 23rd Street, allowing room for a tiered seating structure made from stacked lumber and a 5,000 ft2 (465 m2) grass lawn that peels up from the ground plane, not unlike the ubiquitous benches. The peeling grass plane also echoes the cantilevering wall of the adjacent HL23 building by Neil Denari, which wraps up and over the High Line. A curious but

significant new segment is the Falcone Flyover, a sequence of elevated, stainless-steel walkways running from West 24th to West 27th Street. Here the seemingly overgrown-in-the-wild railbed is treated like an archaeological relic. The pedestrian path decouples from the ground and ramps up as if in deference to the garden, which is allowed to grow luxuriantly across the High Line’s full width. Although the branching overlooks make appealing resting spots, something is lost in the segregation of architecture from landscape. Midway along the Flyover, however, lies an inventive social attractor called the 26th Street Viewing Spur. Tiered seating overlooks a stream of moving traffic below, similar to the larger amphitheater spanning 10th Avenue at 17th Street. A large glowing frame at the edge of the platform transmits views in the manner of a picture window or camera viewfinder to those on the platform, and simultaneously attracts stares from the street in the manner of a billboard or proscenium arch. It playfully subverts the authority of the gaze so that no one is sure who is watching and who is being watched. It also creates a peculiar sense of interiority without enclosure. This scenario appears to draw upon DS+R’s decades-long fascination with the social dynamics of performance and spectacle in public space, as also exhibited in Diller and Scofidio’s 1989 Para-Site installation at MoMA, and more recently in the strategic transparencies of Alice Tully Hall. Around 29th Street, a gently curving line of wood benches accentuates the High Line’s westward turn toward the Hudson River. The 30th Street terminus is punctuated with a dramatic cutout and overlook exposing the Herculean steel structure beneath the deck. Although the abandoned railway extends for another 0.45 mi. (0.72 km) to 34th Street, the reclamation of this third section for public space has yet to be secured. The magic of the High Line owes much to the specific height of its deck. At roughly 10m (33 ft.), it is high enough to transform one’s perception of the city, yet low enough to feel connected with the street. The dynamic interplay between the park and the city depends not only on the preservation of the historic rail structure, but also on the preservation of at least some of its low-rise surroundings. To this

end the City created a special zoning district for the vicinity of the High Line in 2005 that seeks to encourage new development while limiting its density and ground coverage. New buildings that get touchy-feely with the elevated park, such as the Standard Hotel and HL23, must receive special easements. Only time will tell if these rules protect the park’s vistas. Meanwhile, city planning commissioner Amanda Burden touts the High Line’s public value. “If we invest in great public open space, the return on the investment is enormous,” said Burden at the opening. She credits the High Line for attracting two billion dollars of development capital, the new Whitney Museum building, and a rejuvenated gallery district. For the design team, creating the High Line required collaboration with a complex cocktail of agencies rather than one single client. In addition to the parks department and the private sponsor Friends of the High Line, decision-makers included the city planning department, the mayor’s office, and the city’s economic development corporation. “Compared to the Lincoln Center project, it was a piece of cake,” quips Scofidio, whose office recently renovated the public areas of New York’s modernist performing arts mecca. The High Line embodies an emergent species of public space that binds landscape architecture and architecture with planning and preservation. It may not be typical or replicable, but it nevertheless ups the ante on what public space can be in the 21st century. Tim Richardson noted six years ago in Domus, “Landscape architecture suddenly has a strong presence in New York.” Beyond the High Line, the city is working on transforming numerous waterfront lots and piers, Governor’s Island, the former Fresh Kills landfill, and many existing rooftops into accessible “green” landscapes. How many of these reclaimed spaces will help renew urban culture as well as urban ecology?

_ Designed as a continuous, single-surface ribbon that weaves in and out of the new park’s “natural preserves”, the design by Diller Scofidio + Renfro in collaboration with Field Operations is based on a system of individual pre-cast units that interface the High Line’s thick structural section. Thanks to a modular plank system the proportion of pedestrian space to plant space can be altered at will over the length of the park, allowing “diverse natural habitats” to be engineered. This strategy is referred to by the architects as “agri-tecture”.

SUMMARY OF THE CONTENTS & CRITICAL COMMENTARY ON THE TEXTS

_ The architecture of the city Aldo Rossi

keywords: city; architecture; artifact; society; time; memory; palimpsest; form; archetypes;

Rossi in this book and more specifically in the selected passages talks about the form of the city: the architecture of the city. Architecture is a medium able to order and define the spaces, the environment in which the collective life can happen. “With time, the city grows upon itself; it aquires a consciousness and memory”. Thus, architecture as the construction of the city over time.

_ Architecture and disjunction Bernard Tschumi

keywords: architecture; spaces; society; change; contradiction; space; use; concept of space; experience of space; events; form; paradox; disjunction; theory; praxis;

“The concept of space is not space” and by this Tschumi means that we should investigate the disjuncion be

tween the two terms: “space and its use or, in a more theoretical sense, the concept of space and the experience of space”. Because if there is any chance to change society, is there, in its internal contradiction. The same happens with architecture: so “could the use and measuse of the architectural space lead to a new architecture?”.

_ Gli spazi aperti urbani: fenomenologia di un problema progettuale Vittorio Gregotti

keywords: public space; urban voids; left-over; infrastructure; connection; identity;

In this article Gregotti speaks about the importance of public space design and about how this discipline has gained importance in those days. Then he focuses the attention on the problems of identity and requalification of the new urban voids left over by

dismissed infrastructures which need now to be connected to the urban fabric around them.

_ Un’urbanistica di spazi aperti Bernardo Secchi

keywords: open spaces; social role; city; territory; net of relations; void; lack of identiy; inbetween spaces; meeting places;

Secchi underlines the necessity of meeting places within the in-between spaces that compose the contemporary city, because they are now just “voids” without identity and the contemporary society feels the need of such open spaces: “la diseggregata società contemporanea comincia ad avere nostalgia di un uso ristretto della città e del territorio, di relazioni di prossimità tra simili, di piazze, strade, giardini, spazi “tra le cose” che siano significativi perchè ugualmente utilizzati da chi li abita”.

Le architetture dello spazio pubblico. Forme del passato forme del presente. Paolo Caputo (ed.)

keywords: public space; city; social-meeting; habits; infrastructure; urban space; identity; urban form; public park; payback; dismissed infrastructures; voids; lack of identity;

The ensemble of articles choosen from the book edited by Caputo presents different points of view on the topic of the public space design: from the space for “social meeting” that are related in the contemporary city with the infrastructural systems; to the theme of the identity and the urban form; the topic of the public park as payback for the built environment and re-appropriation of areas previously occupied by industry or infrastructures; and the problem of the lack of identity.

_ Post-it City: the other european public spaces Giovanni la Varra

keywords: landscape; public life; public space; urban territory; urban space; events; network; post-it; public life; collective spaces; non-codification; vacant; residual; temporary; resignification; critique; do it yourself; marginal; gathering points; automobile; uncertainty;

La Varra postulates the existance of the other public space, the informal public space, the one which doesn’t need architecture, the one which is made by the users for the users and its life is as short as the event that has to host: “with Post-It City we want to make an un-predetermined, temporary use of a space which is open like a public space, and subject to perpetual resignification”. Post-It City designate new “collective spaces” that “are joining the network of public spaces that connotate the historical city”. “They are vacant lots, residual spaces around the communication systems”. Such a phenomenom is an “implicit” critique to architecture and urban design.

_ Manifesto del terzo paesaggio Gilles Cléments

keywords: residual; uncultivated; undecided spaces; borders; fragments; shelter for diversity; third landscape;

The gardener Cléments tells us about the potentials of the borders, of the residual spaces, of the undecided spaces, the ones that lack from identity are the ones that can offer shelter for

(bio)diversity but this fact can be also read as metaphor of the urban spaces and events of the contemporary city.

_ The Landscape Urbanism Reader Charles Waldheim (ed).

keywords: landscape; urbanism; landscape discipline; critique; model for urbanism; horizontal surfaces; activate spaces; urban effects; formal model; model for process; strategies; cultural cathegory; contemporary city; field ecology; natural enviroment; engineered infrastructures;

Waldheim conied the name “Lanscape urbanism” which is a discipline that branches out of landscape design and tries to solve the problem of the urban scale using the instrument and the assets of the landscape design: “landscape is not only a formal model for urbanism today, but perhaps more importantly, a model for process”. Therefore “landscape urbanism offers and implicit critique of architecture and urban design’s inability to offer coherent, competent, and convincing explanation of contemporary urban conditions”.

BIBLIOGRAPHY _ Books Augè, M. (2009/1992). Nonluoghi. Milano: Elèuthera.

Secchi, B. (2000). Prima lezione di urbanistica. Roma: Laterza.

Aymonino, A., Mosco, V.P. (2006). Spazi pubblici contemporanei. Architettura a volume zero. Milano: Skira.

Secchi, B. (2005). La città nel ventesimo secolo. Roma: Laterza.

Boeri, S. (2003). Use: uncertain states of Europe. Milano: Skira. Clément, G. (2005). Manifesto del terzo paesaggio. Macerata: Quodlibet. Corner, J. (ed.). (1999). Recovering landscape. New York: Princeton Architectural Press. Dorfles, G. (1980). L’intervallo Perduto. Torino: Einaudi. Espuelas, F., (2004). Il Vuoto. Riflessioni sullo spazio in architettura. Milano: Christian Marinotti. Pierini, S. (ed.). (2002). Carlos Martì Aris. Silenzi Eloquenti. Borges, Mies van der Rohe, Ozu, Rothko, Oteiza. Milano: Christian Marinotti.

Shannon, K., Smets, M. (2010). The Landscape of Contemporary Infrastructure. Rotterdam: Nai Publishers. Infrastructure Research Initiative of SWA (ed). (2011). Landscape Infrastructure: Case Studies by SWA. Basel: Birkhäuser/Actar. Tschumi, B. (1994). Architecture and Disjunction. Cambridge, Massachusetts / London, England: The MIT Press. Viganò, P. (ed.). (1998) Andrè Corboz. Ordine Sparso. Saggi sull’arte, il metodo, la città e il territorio. Milano: Urbanistica Franco Angeli. Waldheim, C. (2006). The Landscape Urbanism Reader. New York, NY: Princeton Architectural Press.

_ Reviews

_ Web

Gregotti, V. (1993, Jannuary-February). Gli spazi aperti urbani: fenomenoligia di un problema progettuale, in Casabella 597-598, p.2

Richardson, T., Grima, J., Marta, K. (2005, September 12). NY Elevated Landscapes. Look but don’t touch. DOMUS WEB.

Gregotti V. (1983, September). Necessità della teoria, in Casabella 494, p.12 Secchi, B. (1993, Jannuary-February). Un’urbanistica di spazi aperti, in Casabella 597-598, p.5 Smets, M. (2001, December). Infrastrutture / Infrastructures. LOTUS 110, p.117

Shapiro, G.F. (2011, June 10) Looking, Moving, Gathering: Functions of the High Line. DOMUS WEB.