Time, Space, Baku

Time, Space, Baku Francisco Colom franciscocolom.eu

In Baku the planned city stands face to face with the unplanned city, which emerged spontaneously and cumulatively through the gradual incorporation of basic infrastructures acting as visible layers of information. The concealment of these layers of urban reality results in the standardization of the image of the city and the loss of urban consciousness among citizens. Meanwhile, the ‘masking’ process directed

by Azerbaijan’s political leaders is aimed at creating a new identity based on the direct import of a Western urban image.

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“Whether we recognize it or not, cities are formed in terms of ontologies of time, space and embodiment, from the lines on our roads to the website presentations of urban centers. Material processes of globalization have been changing all of these three layers – at times, even at revolutionary speed. Rapid processes of urbanization have intensified this change. However, the deeper the processes of change, the slower the tendency for a new pattern to take hold as dominant and encompassing.” 1 James Paul

Like every morning, the slaughterer takes the lamb out of the trunk of his red Soviet Lada, its legs tied together. After setting everything up and sitting on a log, he slits its neck and holds the lamb still, until the animal’s agony is finally over.

Then the slaughterer, without giving much thought to it, proceeds to skinning…

In and on itself, the ritual we are watching now is nothing special. It is common practice in any slaughterhouse on the outskirts of a modern European city or in smaller towns where the influence of rural life is still evident. It is indeed surprising that the scene occurs just one kilometer away from the center of a capital city with an estimated population of four million people — but then again, this is not unusual in many large cities of developing countries. What is really extraordinary here, however, is that the image of the lamb, already butchered in the middle of the street, is as much a part of the urban landscape as the skyscrapers erected with cutting-edge technology or the hyper-beautified streets which take our senses right to Paris. Faced with this contrast, the newcomer to Baku experiences a new sense of Time and Space.

Urban consciousness The previous scene is also an example of something that has to do with the ability of cities to highlight the processes that allow them to operate more or less smoothly. The slaughter described is held in public, for all to see. The ritual of the slaughterer is just one of many events that define public space, by which it is naturally absorbed.

The place reserved for the task is next to a butcher’s shop. Once his job is completed, the slaughterer will sell the carcass to the butcher, who will prepare it and put it up for sale to the neighbors. Therefore, a person who goes to the butcher’s may be present at the process by which the lamb or calf are transformed into portions of food ready to be taken home, cooked and consumed. Moreover, without even leaving the neighborhood that person will witness the daily lives of the animals until they are transported to the slaughterhouse. Cows, sheep and chickens wander around the streets and get lost in the crowd, among students going to school, ladies with their shopping bags, elders playing ‘nard’… The 30

separation between city life and country life disappears in this neighborhood of the Azerbaijani capital. Again, our notions of Time and Space are turned upside down. We were familiar with the rigid distinction between countryside and city born from progress and from a more effective territorial management in functional and economic terms. Planned urban growth dismisses the manifestation of the countryside in the city because this is neither profitable nor easy to manage. However, in this low-density Baku neighborhood, which emerged in a non-directive way and expanded without a plan, we find a hybrid situation with certain cultural benefits that would be worth recovering for the planned city.

Soon the bulldozers sent by the elites of the so-called “growth machine” (concept introduced by Molotch2 and reinterpreted by Valiyev3 for the particular case of Baku) will come to the neighborhood to reduce it to rubble and rebuild it from scratch according to a plan that will relocate grazing activities somewhere outside the city. Then the city will be city and the countryside will be countryside.

The product from the slaughterer’s work, many kilometers away, will arrive to the butcher’s shop ready to be sold, and the previous process will remain hidden from the consumer, who will inevitably become a less conscious and less informed citizen.

The case above exemplifies the loss of urban consciousness brought about by the renewal of areas which sprang up more or less spontaneously and were developed without a plan. In this line, we can refer to the plans for placing the pipeline network underground, as nowadays the pipes run overground through the streets of the neighborhoods to be renovated. This decision is adopted following (dubious) aesthetic and functional criteria, and the distribution infrastructure is concealed from the eyes of citizens. Something similar happens with the rainwater drainage system, still visible in some parts of the city. Or with isolated elements such as the water deposits located at a certain height, which gradually disappear as the city is modernized. Sometimes the information potential of these outdoor urban infrastructures is really revealing. In Sheki, a town three hundred kilometers away from Baku in northwest Azerbaijan, the presence of water in the canals on both sides of the street informs the citizens that snowmelt has begun in the mountains and spring approaches. Of course, now the urban renewal proposal includes burying these canals. Is there no alternative?

In each of these examples, the concealment of an information layer results in citizens who are less aware and informed about the processes occurring around them and influencing their daily lives. This reflection does not seek to recover for urban renewal that “precise and carefully observed experiment in nonplanning”4 proposed by Reyner Banham and his colleagues in 1969. What does 31

seem necessary is to address both urban planning and renewal from a more receptive perception of the environment and to adopt that “nonjudgmental” and “nondirective” attitude that Denise Scott Brown referred to in her advocacy of pop art in the 60s5. In this way, it is possible to find virtues in apparently undesirable situations and reap greater benefits from preexisting conditions.

Furthermore, the visibility of these processes involves characterizing the image of the urban space in which they are located. We now deal with their cultural condition as elements that give an identity to the street, neighborhood or city.

We will come back to this later, after a brief visit to the Azerbaijani carnival…

Architectural carnival Baku is a clear example of how the planned city stands face to face with the unplanned city, which emerged spontaneously and cumulatively. This is not unique to the Azerbaijani capital, since we could describe similar situations in other cities. The case of Baku has been used as a framework to talk about the virtues of a “virgin” urban space which came into existence thanks to the accumulation of physical layers of information that are directly accessible to citizens. A “raw” urban space that somehow takes us to a different (pre-plan?)

Time and Space.

But Baku is also an example of a city in disguise and a masked architecture that denies its identity because it is ashamed of what it really is. Walking through the center of Azerbaijan’s capital one may feel transported to the streets of Paris, the city of glamour par excellence. A marketing trick that once again twists our already confused notions of Time and Space and makes us reconsider any idea of “context”.

The story of why it is difficult to distinguish Baku from Paris is in some ways the story of Azerbaijan as a country reborn after throwing off the Soviet yoke.

In October 1991, the Supreme Council of Azerbaijan adopted a Declaration of Independence from the Soviet Union. As a result, Azerbaijan regained independence after ninety years as a Russian colony and seventy-one years under control of the Soviet Union —with an intervening two-year period in which the Azerbaijan Democratic Republic became the first modern parliamentary republic in the Muslim world (1918-1920). The country’s independence would lead to the development of certain national pride and the quest for its own identity away from any link with the previous Soviet era. The desire of Azerbaijan to obtain international recognition, supported by its wealth derived from the oil and gas industry, would be reflected in the promotion of a marketing campaign mainly aimed at the organization of internationally relevant events. The Eurovision Song

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Contest in 2012, the European Games in 2015, the European Formula One Grand Prix in 2016, the Islamic Solidarity Games in 2017… This strategy implies a rapid physical transformation of the country, very especially reflected in the mutation of its capital Baku. Skyscrapers, artificial islands, new buildings designed by ‘starchitects’, major urban developments, luxury shops and five-star hotels…

These new urban artifacts sprout up in the city like precious gems in order to dazzle the observer and show the strength of the country as the main power of the Caucasus region.

Notwithstanding the many differences between the two contexts, today’s Baku reminds us of Dubai in the 90s. However, the ‘Dubaization’ of Baku is not the only urban transformation process the city is going through, nor is it the most radical. In parallel, the city is undergoing a ‘masking’ process, more complex and accurate than ‘Dubaization’. Due to the Azerbaijani government’s obsession to eliminate all traces of its Soviet past, all buildings erected during this time must be definitely erased from the cityscape. This move is part of a ‘beautification’ strategy that over the last decade has distorted the image of the city. An aesthetic pursuit that never questions the functionality of these structures or their ability to absorb certain programs: the only factor taken into account is the image that these buildings project. Therefore, the solution is far from being the same as the one implemented in shantytowns, where the orders of the ‘tabula rasa’ are to demolish every existing element and build something new from scratch. This solution is too slow to adapt to the frenetic pace of transformation that political leaders want to impose on the capital. Instead, Soviet buildings are hidden behind a new made-to-measure stone façade. A new skin that conceals the original material on which it is placed.

The theme chosen to “dress up” the buildings is as capricious and incoherent as any other. The obsession with Paris leads to the buildings being covered with façades that mimic the academic neoclassical architectural style (BeauxArts) typical of the French capital. The material used once and again, which must necessarily be abundant, is a type of limestone known as “aglay”, of which Azerbaijan has large deposits.

This ‘masking’ maneuver requires some skill to succeed. To maintain the pace of openings in the original façade, architects must precisely design the new coating adapting to the particular case of each building. Singular points, such as balconies or other overhanging elements, put to the test the skills of those who must make such an extravagant costume. The new coating is placed on the original finish by means of mortar reinforced with steel or of wooden and metal substructures. Finally, the old dark joinery is replaced by new white plastic elements. Sometimes the difficulty in connecting old and new façades means

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that these must be completely independent, and two types of door and window frames (old and new) separate the inside of the house from the outside.

This aesthetic alteration is targeted at a very specific agent: the foreign visitor.

The aim of the architectural ‘lifting’ is to project an image that is able to seduce and please those who visit Baku for the first time. As a consequence, each façade receives a different treatment depending on the influence it has on the visitor’s experience during their short stay in the city. In downtown, where visitors go for pleasant walks while allowing some time for leisure and sightseeing, the action includes all façades that are visible from any point of the street. The inner façades, only visible from the courtyards, remain intact and keep its original state. Neighbors are the only ones who enter the courtyards to access their homes from the street, so these façades are kept away from the eyes of the foreigner. There is no reason to act on them. Thus, the difference between the outer image and the inner reality of the blocks is so ridiculously radical that it is difficult to assimilate them as a single entity. The same logic applies when working on the arteries that connect the city center with other attractions for tourists or businesspeople. The sole architectural intervention on the buildings along these roads consists of changing their main façades, those which can be seen from the taxi that takes the visitor from one point to another. Furthermore, the ‘beautification’ strategy plays a special role in these car journeys. The “Belt of Happiness”, as it is popularly called, is a wall on both sides of the road connecting the airport with the city. Designed in the classical style, this wall obscures the degradation of peripheral areas, filled with informal self-built homes associated with deplorable living conditions.

Anomalous landscape Azerbaijan’s will to create a new identity based on the direct import of a Western urban image involves a loss of opportunities. Likewise, concealment of certain layers of urban reality results in the standardization of the image of the city.

Going back to the previous example, the color code used to differentiate the pipes depending on their content (yellow for gas, green for water…) acts not only as a layer of quantitative information, but also as a qualitative mark of the public space in which it is implemented. Thus, the pipeline infrastructure is part of citizens’ collective imagination, which makes it highly valuable from a cultural standpoint. In the same vein, the landscape along Baku’s coastline is characterized by the accumulation of completely genuine situations that have been involved in the evolution of this territory over time. The oil rigs dotting the Caspian Sea, visible from the coast, some of which are in operation and some obsolete; the ship graveyard to the north of Zira Island, seven kilometers offshore;

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the Sabayil Castle, submerged under water and less than three hundred meters from the waterfront; the network of gas pipelines scattered over the landscape; the ancient bath houses, which allowed swimming in Baku bay until the water became too polluted in Soviet times; the vast oil fields, where films like James Bond’s “The World Is Not Enough” were shot; the Oil Rocks, an oil infrastructure in the Caspian Sea where more than two thousand people live today; wood and concrete skeletons abandoned after the water level of the Caspian rose, memory of what once were restaurants and beach bars…

These singularities have certain connotations and physical characteristics that make them unique. They all define an anomalous, bizarre and strange landscape, exclusive to Baku. The opportunity lies in enhancing and recognizing them as authentic protagonists of the Azerbaijani landscape. It is appropriate to extrapolate here the views of M. Kaijima, J. Kuroda and Y. Tsukamoto when they claim, referring to certain ordinary situations found in Tokyo and rejected by architectural culture and urban planners, “[that we should] start thinking about how to take advantage of them, rather than try to run away.” The fact is that definitely, also in the case of Baku, “shamelessness can become useful.”6 It is all about working with already existing elements from an unprejudiced approach, assuming reality as it is and readjusting it so that it brings greater benefits to the city, and not exclusively in economic terms. Unleashing the potential of each situation and projecting it into the future7.

The cultural development process is not substitutive, but additive and accumulative8, which involves increasing complexity. Baku invites us not only to incorporate the cultural dimension as a pillar of sustainable development, but also to give it a leading role as a mediator between the social, environmental and economic pressures. However, both in the city center and along the coastline, today Baku hides or ignores the elements that define it and replaces them with images imported from distant contexts. A mask that obscures the potential of the already existing to structure a growth model based on the singularities of the territory — a model which would turn Baku into a truly unique city in the world.

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1 James, Paul; Urban Sustainability in Theory and Practice, Routledge, New York, 2015, page 92.

Molotch, H; “The city as a growth machine: Toward a political economy of Place”, American Journal of Sociology, 82, 1976, pages 309–332.

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3 Valiyev, Anar; “The post-Communist growth machine: The case of Baku, Azerbaijan”, Cities, 2014.

Banham, Reyner; Barker, Paul; Hall, Peter and Price, Cedric, “Non-plan: An experiment in freedom”, New Society, 338, March 20, 1969, page 436.

4

Scott Brown, Denise, “On pop art, permissiveness and planning”, Journal of the American Institute of Planners, 35, May 1969, page 184.

5

Kaijima, Momoyo; Kuroda, Junzo and Tsukamoto, Yoshiharu; Made in Tokyo, Kajima Institute Publishing Co., Tokyo, 2001, page 8.

6

Kaijima, Momoyo; Kuroda, Junzo and Tsukamoto, Yoshiharu; Made in Tokyo, Kajima Institute Publishing Co., Tokyo, 2001, page 13.

7

Kroeber, Alfred Louis; Anthropology: race, language, culture, psychology, prehistory, Harcourt, Brace & World, New York, 1948, page 297.

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Image 1: View from Mehdi Huseyn street. Photo by the author.

Image 2: Slaughterhouse next to a butcher’s shop. Photo by the author.

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