VOLUME TWO: TOPOLOGY OF A PHANTOM CITY
HAMISH BEATTIE
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VOLUME TWO: TOPOLOGY OF A PHANTOM CITY
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CONTENTS VOLUME TWO TOPOLOGY OF A PHANTOM CITY Prologue Epilogue
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CODA Conclusion
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“If he was thinking all the time that he was only dealing with the frame, he would still be looking for the picture.� Alain Robbe-Grillet
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prologue
This separate codex Topology of a Phantom City is conceived as an architectural narrative, paralleling Alain Robbe-Grillet’s literary narrative in his novel Topology of a Phantom City and is designed as the final outcome of this thesis as well as a standalone work to encourage social activism around the contextual issues exhibited within Baruni Landfill. The illustrations apply the thesis design research investigation outcomes to the Baruni Landfill, reflecting an architectural interpretation of fluid time and space. The quotes are taken directly from Robbe-Grillet’s novel and are reinterpreted through design to reflect his literary interpretation of fluid time and space and the narrative of the site, while the figure captions are the design narration from the experiential perspective of a young inhabitant.
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Before I fall asleep, the city, again . . . .
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I am alone. . . .
Fig. 7.01 I make my approach toward the phantom city, the road lined with informal market stalls, the looming towers sillhouetted through the mist.
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I am alone. . . .
Fig. 7.02 I enter off of the back road, meandering through the piles of scrap poised to become the life giving ore of the phantom city where I live.
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I am alone. . . .
Fig. 7.03 I pass ‘homes’ scattered along periphery, works in progress. . . . being made from the dump, they blend into the dump... they are of the environment.
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Before I fall asleep this city once more rears before my closed eyes its charred walls with their
blind windows, g a p i n g recesses that open
onto nothing; gray sky, flatness,
absent rooms emptied even of their phantoms. In the gathering dusk I draw closer, going my way, and place a hand on the cold wall where, cutting into the schist with the point of the broadbladed knife, I write the word CONSTRUCTION, an illusionist painting, a makebelieve construction by which I name the ruins of a future deity. Fig. 7.04 The city is homogenous, selling, making, building, sorting, cooking, eating. . . . living. Processed waste is reused in the construction of dwellings, poured as if cement, formulating new walls, floors, roofs and is sold in the markets to other settlements as our livelihood.
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But there is nothing left,
no cry, no rumbling, no distant murmur; nor is the slightest outline discernible to indicate any distinctions, any three-dimensionality in these succeeding planes that were once houses, palaces, avenues. The advancing mist, thickening hourly, has already absorbed everything in its vitreous mass, immobilizing, extinguishing.
Fig. 7.05 Found artefacts are often taken directly to market. Other waste is taken for refinement. Social gathering of nodal communities occurs at each node. . . the tower providing loose boundaries for ethnic groupings and relationships.
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Outside, through the dusty panes or through the chink between the two casements, over on the other side of the avenue, one ought to be able to see the dense foliage of the motionless chestnut trees and make out here and there between the leaves the vertical wall of the reformatory for juvenile prostitutes.
But there is nothing left in
the dazzling light, no prisons, no
temples,
no
brothels,
nothing but the iridescent mist through which flocks of sheep pass in endless procession.
Fig. 7.06 Once per day the trucks come. . . . Biomass is removed after refinement for use on crops or for disposal. Much of it is repurposed for various uses by the community . . . . nothing is wasted in this city.
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But there is nothing left, no cries, no rustlings, no distant moaning, no words of love. The death weapon, the knife with the broad, coldly glinting blade has dried tears and all in the empty room where I am already sinking into the dreamless sleep of after
I am there. I was there. the destruction.
I Remember.
Fig. 7.07 I enter the node through one of the many hidden entrances integrated seamlessly with the surrounding context. The phantom city is a labyrinth, designed by its inhabitants. . . . . every twist and turn exhibiting life.
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Fig. 7.08 I trace my journey through the phantom city pausing at points of interest, orientated through the twisting and turning of the informal habitat by the positioning of the nodes. . .
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But there is nothing left in
the
prisons,
dazzling no
light,
temples,
no
no
but the iridescent mist through which flocks of sheep pass brothels, nothing
in endless procession.
Fig. 7.09 I deliver waste to the refinement drop off point. I see others searching through the heap for usable scraps, while the base of the pile is ground, decontaminated, sorted and reused as energy, building materials and fertiliser.
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Main Tower Module
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Vertical Circulation
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Waste Collection Platform
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Waste Sorting Mechanism
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Waste Grinding Mechanism
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Waste Printer Dock
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Tower Leg
Fig. 7.10 Waste sorting/ processing level
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Fig. 7.11 Plan, 003 Waste Collection Platform
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Right. I am alone.
It is late. I am keeping watch. The last
watchman after the rain, after the war, I listen still through the
endless thickness of white ice for the imperceptible, absent sounds: the last crackings of burnt walls, a thin stream of ash or dust pouring from a split, water dripping in a cellar with a fractured vault, a stone coming loose from the gutted facade of a large and important-looking building,
tumbling
down,
bouncing from projection to cornice to roll on the ground among the other stones.
Fig. 7.12 As I move upward, I see the integration of various components, exposed in all their glory, the construction seems to build and deconstruct itself at will.
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Fig. 7.13 Vertical Module Plan
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Main Staircase
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Main Tower Structure
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Floor Module
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Interior Track Module
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Sliding Mechanism Module
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Interior Floor Module
Fig. 7.14 Vertical Module Assembly
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Before I fall asleep, still stubbornly persistent, the dead city. ...
Fig. 7.15 I wind upwards, I am passed by the arms of the tower, suspending the lifts, manoeuvred by the builders down below and within. Waste is processed in the interior, sandwiching me between zones of flux.
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Complete Typical Processing Assembly
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Plastics Sorting Mechanism
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Vertical Circulation
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Plastics Processing
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Main Structure
Fig. 7.16 Typical processing module exploded axonometric.
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Fig. 717 Processing module plan.
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But she confines herself to shifting her gaze from the cloudy surface of the lookingglass and directing it
behind her again, her eyes a reflected blue, at the unmade bed with the body lying on it, offered up, split open, the pool of blood already coagulating on the white sheet as well as,
lower down, on the marble floor with its ancient black and white checkerboard pattern.
Fig. 7.18 Construction continues on the upper levels. Processed waste is poured as new floors, roofs and walls. These are then craned into place via the pouring arms.
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Extrusion Nozzle
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Extrusion Arm
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Arm Slide Mechanism
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Arm Rational Mechanism
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Extrusion Reservoir
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Main Structure
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Elevator Module
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Fig. 7.19 Extrusion arm exploded axonometric
Fig. 7.20 Plan - Extrusion arm/ integrated lift system
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I am alone. Walking at random. Wandering, as if at random, among
the unrecognizable fragments of what were palatial homes, public
buildings,
private
residences, gaming houses and houses of prostitution, theatres, temples and fountains.
Fig. 7.21 As I move upwards I pause for a drink. Water collected from the roof or purified from the collected waste is made accessible in tanks on the upper levels.
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I am looking for something. It is beginning to get dark. I cannot quite remember what it
was. Can it really have been a prison? It seems unlikely.
Fig. 7.22 I pass sanitation facilities, overlooking the city, as a secure place. . . . a place of reflection.
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Fig. 7.23 Plan - Sanitation module
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Shower Facilities
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Toilet Facilities
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Modular Structure
Fig. 7.24 Sanitation module exploded axonometric
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Before I fall asleep the city once more rears before my pallid face, my
features marked by age and fatigue, rears high before me,
far behind me, all around as far as the eye can see, blackened walls, mutilated statues, twisted ironwork, ruined colonnades whose giant shafts lie smashed amidst the debris.
Fig. 7.25 I arrive at the final meeting space, performance space, collaboration space. A place for personal and collective reflection. . . .while we contemplate the city.
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Fig. 7.26 Plan - Public meeting space on top level
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Additional Module
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Extrusion Arm Hoist
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Head Elevation Mechanism
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Top Platform
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Head Structure
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Assembled Tower Head Fig. 7.27 Head exploded axonometric
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Before I fall asleep, the city, again . . ..
Fig. 7.28 From here I view the city and its intricacies. . . . How can a place so full of life once have felt so full of despair?
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Fig. 7.29 A section of my mind. . . . .
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CODA
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I am alone. . . .
Fig. 7.30 I remember the old phantom city, forging for scraps with my brothers, my sisters, my mother and father....
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I am alone. . . .
Fig. 7.31 I remember my life in the old city, weaving between fires, camouflaged by smoke....
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I am alone. . . .
Fig. 7.32 I remember the old phantom city.
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Before I fall asleep, the city, again . . ..
Fig. 7.33 I finish my drawing as I slide back into the shade.
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I am alone. . . .
Fig. 6.33 . . . . A mirror of my reality.
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#YouAreNotAlone
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Epilogue
What you have just experienced is the walk of a child, a potential young inhabitant of Baruni Dump - a person who has always lived there, whose place and time has always been fluid, a person who knows nothing else. This child formulates alternate realities very different from you or me, realities that are a symptom of a fluid context.
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CONCLUSION This thesis, its processes and outcomes draw attention not only
literary narrative to speculative drawn environment and into
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How can architecture enable the landfill sites to become
to the notion of fluidity of context within sites such as Baruni
plausible architectures to develop and test solutions to the
Landfill, but also to architecture’s responsibility to find a way
dynamic conditions within the site, providing sanitation, water,
in which to respond to the issues of these sites. Architectural
waste processing, livelihood generation and public gathering/
design, placed into the public domain as visionary work, can
community formation. This enables the speculative, politically
(water, sanitation, electricity, etc.) even though these
help ensure that these issues are not swept under the ‘too hard
aware components of the architecture to fuse with an air of
fluctuating communities are not sited within typical urban
blanket’, are talked about and the inhabitants’ voices heard by
realism, permitting the work to ask more questions than a work
contexts capable of providing underground systems of
the wider international community.
of fantasy alone. This was conducted through the research as
sewerage, etc.
sustainable and to provide employment to the inhabitants? •
Can architecture ensure the provision of basic services
a search for a new approach to politically active architectural This thesis uses Alain Robbe-Grillet’s novel Topology of
design utilising Robbe-Grillet’s literary mechanisms for dealing
Given more time and scope this thesis would next explore the
a Phantom City as a provocateur for design experiments
with fluid time and space as translated in Part D, developed in
applications of the design output in terms of its appropriateness
responding to the notion of memory, interpretation and
Parts E and F and presented in Volume Two.
for the uptake by mainstream and social media, and how this
recollection of environment as ‘drawn’ by an inhabitant of the landfill. This process utilises the topological literary
may actively enter and participate in the current global media The principal research questions this thesis has explored are:
transformations of Robbe-Grillet in order to generate a speculative environment responding to the fluid site and
environment, enhancing its opportunities to effect political and social change via Twitter, Facebook etc. in the manner of
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How can architecture help improve political understanding
#Kony2012, #JeSuisCharlie. An expanded scope would also
population. Like the artefacts found within Robbe-Grillet
of the value of the inhabitants of landfill based slum
permit more exploration into other media, namely how an
works, each person within the site has a story to tell of their
sites and encourage political discourse to improve their
architectural work such as this may be explored within a real
day to day struggle; each of their stories adds to the overall
situations?
time 3d game (newsgames) engine or through an augmented
composition of the narrative. This thesis seeks to exemplify the internalisation of these struggles through design. The Topology of a Phantom City in this thesis is this internalisation. The thesis has tested experimental methods of translation from 074
reality medium. It would also permit exploration as to how it •
speculative
might be applied to other dynamic environmental situations
architecture and reality so that such visionary architecture
besides landfills such as other types of slums around the world,
may invite new and innovative solutions as future
and disaster zones in developing countries such as the aftermath
technologies are developed?
of the 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami or the Haiti earthquake.
Can
architecture
synthesize
between
There are also inherent limitations to this approach to design research. The architecture and its processes will always be open to personal interpretation, where one’s personal background and experiences will play a role in the effectiveness of a politically motivated work such as this, and the ability for its message to reach a global audience. We must keep our eyes open and recognise the directions our world and our urban environments may be headed. We must be proactive. “Before I fall asleep, the city, again...�
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Fig. 6.34 2014 Graphisoft NZIA Student Design Awards finals
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Fig. 6.35 2014 Graphisoft NZIA Student Design Awards finals
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Fig. 6.36 2014 Graphisoft NZIA Student Design Awards finals
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TOPOLOGY OF A PHANTOM CITY
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