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“One thing we have lost, that we had in the past, is a sense of progress, that things are getting better. There is a sense of volatility, but not of progress.” Daniel Khaneman
“Throughout the history of architecture, the role of the Architect has been to determine lines that ordered the world. In the past two centuries, however, as cities have rapidly expanded into vast urban territories that are organised through politics, economics, ecosystems and cultural values, the ability to determine such lines has become progressively more suspect.” Neeraj Bhatia
“The earthquake, however, must be to every one a most impressive event: the earth, considered from our earliest childhood as the type of solidity, has oscillated like a thin crust beneath our feet; and in seeing the laboured works of man in a moment overthrown, we feel the insignificance of his boasted power.” Charles Darwin
“Find optimism in the inevitable” Rem Koolhaas
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BOOK 00: INTRO BOOK 01: VOLATILITY AND ISTANBUL BOOK 02: LOGISTICS BOOK 03: ARCHITECTURE AND THE CITY BOOK 04: POSITIONING THE EVENT
DISCLAIMER: THIS PROGRAM HAS BEEN CONCIEVED AS AN ASSEMBLAGE OF FIVE BOOKS OF THEMATIC RELEVANCE. THEY ARE LISTED ABOVE AND DESCRIBED IN THE NEXT FEW PAGES. FOR YOUR CONVENIENCE, THEY HAVE BEEN ARRANGED IN A SPECIFIC ORDER TO GUIDE YOU THROUGH THE PROGAM, WITH THE FIRST TWO BOOKS BEING OF THE MOST IMMEDIATE IMPORTANCE TO THE POSITIONING OF THE THESIS PROJECT. HOWEVER, THE PROGRAM MAY BE READ IN ANY ORDER. IT IS ENCOURAGED THAT YOU TAKE IT APART AND DISCOVER YOUR OWN PATH THROUGH IT!
THE BEGINNING!
Intro ABSTRACT The project asks the question of how architecture, within the boundaries of its own disciplinary autonomy, might have a renewed agency in the kind of volatility that defines many contemporary urban environments. In order to explore many of the tensions that define architecture’s relationship with the contemporary megacity, the project presents a fictional scenario based on a real-world premise, in which a major earthquake is set to strike Istanbul at some point within the next 200 years. The project asks what sort of radical architectural possibilities and potentials might be unlocked if a major domestic policy reform in Turkey embraced anticipatory earthquake measures through the development of architectural and urban form. The project will operate within the constraints of a single site in the heart of Istanbul, begin by developing three thematic areas most affected by earthquakes, and continue to pursue design iteratively through a series of overarching ontological principles. The scenario presented and the subsequent urban strategies and institutional frameworks to be proposed hope to address many of the challenges that Istanbul faces in responding to an anticipated major earthquake, and to speculate on the subsequent shifts to many of the vulnerable institutions that currently govern the city. In this context architecture will attempt to give representation to the kind of tension and volatility that defines the developing megacity, re-framing architecture’s relationship with the city with a renewed agency fit for contemporary conditions.
Right: Swiss woodcut print depicting the Constantinople Earthquake of 1754. Author Unknown.
This program document exists as a collage of writing, research, direction and ideas that will attempt to construct a context and framework for the forthcoming project. The program is divided into four books which are described briefly below. VOLATILITY AND ISTANBUL will construct the context of the project – a liminal site that hangs between the volatile megacity, tensions defining contemporary Istanbul, and an impending earthquake. LOGISTICS will immediately outline specific strategies and methodologies for developing the project through to completion. ARCHITECTURE AND THE CITY is a survey of the wider discourse surrounding the project. Firstly, a literature review and subsequent criticism of recent dialogue surrounding architecture and the city, with an attempt to construct a new theoretical framework in which to position the project. Secondly, a brief documentation of fieldwork as a specific reading of Istanbul. POSITIONING THE EVENT acts as an assemblage of ontological design principles and conceptual frameworks that might give representation to many of the issues that surround the project.
INTRODUCTION
GUIDE
Volatility & Istanbul
This section will construct the context of the project – a liminal site that hangs between the volatile megacity, tensions defining contemporary Istanbul, and an impending earthquake.
01: VOLATILITY & ISTANBUL
BOOK 1:
BOOK 1:
Volatility & Istanbul ON VOLATILITY Volatility, for better or worse, is the condition that defines the present moment. Bearing the twin marks of globalism and a near-universal market economy, the beginning of the 21st Century has been characterised by ceaseless fluctuations; economic instability, political uprisings, terrorist attacks, financial crisis and climatic calamity – all on the blurry stage-set of a world built on colossal economies of scale - more connected, more homogenous, and less predictable than ever before. In this newly accelerated context, architecture is too slow. Traditional values of form, scale and proportion are being quickly replaced by the vague, the generic, and the immediately replaceable. Sites are fluid and unfixed, representation has become a consumer good and large-scale apartment buildings in the developing world are being designed on macbooks in the space of weeks. Perhaps the best example of volatility most immediately affecting architecture is the explosive growth of the contemporary megacity. Famously described as junkspace by Rem Koolhaas, this apotheosis of modernity is not so much a cause of the volatility that typifies present conditions as it is a symptom resulting from it. Thanks to a volatile market with growth as the overarching manifesto, urban
Right: Photostiched Landing in Istanbul, 27 September 2014. H. Stephens
01: VOLATILITY & ISTANBUL
expansion over the past twenty years has been both rapacious and near-limitless – a process of entropy at the most major of scales.
Defining this condition is Istanbul, a megacity of 15 million caught between an archipelago of immovable historical artifacts and a twenty-year-long wave of unstoppable urban expansion. As a city form, Istanbul is paradoxical in the way that it embraces both the sublime and the everyday simultaneously. The city is defined both by the abrupt silence and weight of a cavernous mosque interior, and the commercial hustle and spatial complexity of an informal gecekondu housing settlement, a place where monument and entropy often coexist in immediate proximity. Centuries have seen Istanbul shift from the capital of the Holy Roman Empire, to the Ottoman centre of power, to a secular modern republic, and now the near-universal expression of the global, generic city. Stretching between the Marmar and Black Seas and with a population that continues to grow exponentially, Istanbul typifies the volatile urban expansion and economic growth that has characterised the last twenty years – junkspace stretched to an extreme. Turkey has made headlines over the past decade as a ‘catch-up’ economy – a supposed ‘miracle’ of growth ‘potential’ linking the eastern and western worlds, with aspirations of EU membership, and Istanbul as its beating heart. How does architecture respond to this situation? Is it possible for architecture to evolve with this context; maintaining its autonomy and actively increasing its agency, or is architecture as a discipline inherently at odds with volatility as a dominant condition?
Right: Junkspace in Istanbul, 2014. Collage. H. Stephens
01: VOLATILITY & ISTANBUL
Demolition: Demolition Required Firm Modification Required
Modification 1: Demolition Required Firm Modification Required Simple Modification Required
Modification 2: Firm Modification Required Simple Modification Required
Resilient No Modification Required
Istanbul is due for a cataclysmic earthquake. Since the early 1920s when seismic data was first gathered from around Turkey, earthquakes have gradually been moving west across the country in a phenomenon seismologists have termed an ‘earthquake storm’. Simply put, the seismic energy released from one earthquake is partially transferred in a single direction via dominant fault lines where it builds and is released. Thus, fault lines and the movements of tectonic plates act as a vector from which seismologists can roughly chart the location of an earthquake that has yet to happen. The last major earthquake in Turkey was in Izmit in 1999, a city just 100 kilometers east of Istanbul. The earthquake was catastrophic - measuring at 7.4 on the richter scale and killing over 17,000 people. Seismologists predict that the next major earthquake to hit Turkey on this trajectory will occur somewhere close to Izmit in the Marmar Sea, and consequently, will encounter present day Istanbul. Years of corruption and get-rich-quick urban development in Istanbul has resulted in lax building standards and poor construction practice. Much of Istanbul’s urban fabric is made of concrete buildings that are poorly reinforced and liable to collapse. Istanbul’s hilly topography and often poor ground conditions has the potential for liquefaction - resulting in massive landslides and long lasting structural instability. Large areas of reclaimed land could sink into the sea. Gas pipelines running under the city would snap under the seismic pressure resulting in a perpetual firestorm on the city’s surface. Millions would die. Much of the city would be destroyed. The aftermath of an earthquake in istanbul would look like something from the pages of Dante’s Inferno – a vision of hell itself.
Preparations for the earthquake function as a bizarre intersection between ‘rational’ capitalism and geological time. Despite its decidedly un-political nature, preparations for the earthquake are highly politicised. Surprisingly, the earthquake serves as a means through which many of the tensions defining modern day Istanbul are revealed.
01: VOLATILITY & ISTANBUL
A CITY IN WAITING
The prospect of a large-scale seismic event has not gone unnoticed, and the business of an impending earthquake in Istanbul is a complex one. Large tracts of traditional neighbourhoods in the central city are too old to properly resist an earthquake, and built on unstable land have been destroyed to make way for new developments. Because all public services in Istanbul are privatised, any new development is geared towards profit and as such new building projects in these areas are often high rise apartments completely out of scale with their surroundings and aiming for maximum lira-per-square-metre ratio. Many of Istanbul’s poorer residents, especially those housed by state-sponsored housing
20??: Istanbul 7.6 richter 100,000+ dead 1999: Izmit 7.6 richter 17,118 dead
1953: Yeniz 7.3 richter 1,070 dead
1970: Gediz 6.9 richter 1,028 dead
In a new turn, earthquake regeneration laws have seen measures leave the Turkish parliament where a developer only needs a 70% majority from residents of a neighbourhood to demolish entire tracts of the inner city and build anew. This legislative change offers a realworld justification for new architectural potentials in Istanbul which this thesis hopes to explore.
1943: Ladik 7.6 richter 4,000 dead 1942: Erbaa 7.6 richter 1,100 dead 1983: Erzurum 6.9 richter 1,340 dead
1939: Erzincan 7.8 richter 32,700 dead
1971: Bingol 1966: Varto 6.9 richter 6.8 richter 1,000 dead 2,529 dead 1975: Lice 6.7 richter 2,350 dead
2011: Van 7.6 richter 523 dead 1976: Van Prv 7.3 richter 5,291 dead
MAJOR EARTHQUAKES IN TURKEY, 1939-2011
01: VOLATILITY & ISTANBUL
corporation TOKI are politically marginalised and once evicted, are relocated to faceless developments on the edge of the city.
LOGISTICS
Based on the context described in Book 01, this section will immediately outline specific design strategies, a specific site of proposition, and working methodologies for developing the project through to completion.
02: LOGISTICS
BOOK 2:
BOOK 2:
LOGISTICS CONCEPTUAL AIMS A major earthquake in present-day Istanbul would be apocalyptic, and would clearly manifest the political and economic tension that underlies the city’s explosive growth. The impending event also offers an opportunity for architecture to have a renewed agency and specific purpose within the context of the modern megacity.
How might architecture use the anticipated earthquake as a lever to re-assess its relationship with the city? Rather than positioning itself dialectically against the event, this thesis project aims to use the forthcoming earthquake as a means of investigating tensions present within contemporary Istanbul and the architectural discipline as a whole – to unlock new possibilities rather than to create a dichotomy. The project hopes to achieve this by defining an overarching conceptual position, first operating within the fixed boundaries of a specific site that has the potential to apply to the entirety of Istanbul, and developing three key themes through a series of ontological design principles and architectural techniques. Many of these elements will be defined below.
The first site for the project is the area immediately surrounding both ends of the Galata Bridge, extending west up the Golden Horn and east towards the Bosphorus.
The site was chosen because it contains several elements that distinguish the character of Istanbul as a city. By restricting design developments to a single site that in many ways manifests the character of the city, the thesis project begins to function as a project for the city as a whole.
02: LOGISTICS
SITE 1 - THE GOLDEN HORN
CHARACTER
INFRASTRUCTURE
The site functions as a bridge (both literally and figuratively) between the Fatih and Beyoglu sides of Istanbul. Fatih is Istanbul as an ancient Ottoman capital, with a mosque, a spice market and a large public square funneling up to Sultanahmet and the Grand Bazaar. Today it exists as a kind of touristic simulacra – a projected image of the experience of Istanbul. Beyoglu is Istanbul’s beating modern heart; the recent centre of its industry, commerce, and modern culture. Sharply distinct from Fatih, the Beyoglu end of the bridge houses a fish market, a derelict housing area, and a subterranean bazaar. At this site two of Istanbul’s most distinct sides are made clearly visible. The site is an infrastructural hub, containing busy roads, Eminönü and Karaköy tram terminals, a bus terminal, and a busy commuter port docking passenger ferries up and down the Bosphorus and Golden Horn.
COMMERCE
The presence of a spice market and contact with the water on both sides is reminiscent of Istanbul’s past as a thriving commercial city. The site also engages with Istanbul’s more recent history of commerce, containing subterranean malls, a fish market, tacky tourist shops and more high-end boutiques selling consumer electronics and other luxury goods.
TENSION
The site clearly embraces the tension between monument and entropy that characterises Istanbul. Next to the absolute limits of the new mosque and spice market are subterranean markets full of any imaginable consumer good – packed to fill the entirety of the spaces that hold them. The site acts as a place to house Istanbul’s everyday against a backdrop of the sublime. Tea-drinking, fishing, and traditional markets take place directly in front of the iconic image of Istanbul.
TOPOGRAPHY
Topographically the site embraces Istanbul’s unique character – a hilled city embracing the water.
PUBLIC SPACE
The square in front of the new mosque is one of the last remaining open public spaces in Istanbul – a precious, rapidly shrinking, and highly politicised commodity.
IMAGE
The site also acts as a kind of iconic image of Istanbul – the much photographed view of Fatih across the Golden Horn a post-urban projection of Istanbul beamed out to the rest of the world.
02: LOGISTICS
SITE 2 - CENTRAL ISTANBUL: FATIH & BEYOGLU After testing propositions on the Golden Horn as an initial site to provide some immediate context and friction, if successful, the project hopes to shift outwards to central Istanbul and, repeat testing elsewhere. The intent is to create an ecology of propositional elements - a new institutional framework to mediate between Istanbul and the anticipated earthquake. However, the project may not require this shift outwards.
Right: Satellite Photograph, Istanbul in 2014. Google Earth.
02: LOGISTICS
THEMES
The project needs a starting point, and to begin with the project will engage with three main themes defining contemporary Istanbul, to which the prospect of an earthquake has suddenly applied considerable pressure. 01: DWELLING Dwelling is perhaps the most highly politicised territory relating to earthquakes in Istanbul immediately attributable to architecture. The majority of buildings in the city are simple dwellings, many of them informal and/or poorly maintained developments, and simply will be unable to properly resist a major earthquake. Most have been built by people without the means to accommodate the earthquake, or by those too corrupt to acknowledge it. Moreover, urban renewal plans attempting to anticipate the earthquake are contributing to the destruction of neighbourhoods hundreds of years old, and the subsequent eviction of long-time residents, some of which are families living there for generations. The issue of dwelling and the earthquake is intrinsically connected. Rather than viewing it as a dichotomous either/or scenario, what sort of possibilities might the impending earthquake develop for dwelling in contemporary Istanbul, and how might architecture have agency here?
Right: Rooftops of Hans in Sultanahmet H. Stephens
02: THE SACRED Istanbul is defined by its monuments and sacred spaces as much as the built entropy constituting much of its urban fabric. Here the issue of the sacred and the earthquake is crucial - many of the older buildings will be unable to resist a major earthquake, but at what point do preventative measures irreversibly distort the iconic, and can new meaning be drawn from that? The issue of sacred space is also a highly politicised one – with mosques, churches, and the monumental all having a symbolically public function for their respective communities. In the event of catastophe, it is Istanbul’s institutions and monuments that will function as the lynchpins and landmarks within the smoking remains of the city. How might architecture leverage this existing hierarchy to develop new potentials?
Right: Entrance to Tokapi Palace. H. Stephens
02: LOGISTICS
03: THE EVERYDAY Istanbul is defined by a series of rituals and a sense of the everyday as much as it is a series of buildings, and these rituals largely occur in the spaces and non-spaces between buildings. Tea-drinking, fishing, purchasing a simit (turkish pretzel) to eat with friends, the ubiquitous hustle of commerce, the screech of the ezan (call to prayer) and many other rituals define the everyday life of the city. Arguably, these rituals and their associated architectures – no matter how generic or diminutive – are what sets Istanbul apart from any other place, and arguably will be especially resilient in the event of a catastrophe. How might architecture leverage the impending earthquake to preserve or even develop this sense of the everyday?
A New City on the Banks of the Golden Horn H. Stephens
Rather than developing a single building as a means of approaching such large-scale urban issues, the project will attempt to develop an ecology of propositional elements at a range of different scales and degrees of resolution. The intent is thus to form a new project for the city - an architecture that critically relates to context, whilst reflecting it. The rationale behind this is simple – the earthquake engages with all scales of life in Istanbul, and architecture can give representation to all manner of issues that arise within and between these scales. Moreover, the situation may not require a completely new building, but rather an ecology of proposals working together simultaneously. By taking on the logic of the assemblage, the project frees itself from disciplinary limits that advocate completion and allows itself to perform as a much more complex system.
02: LOGISTICS
METHODOLOGY AND INTENT
TECHNIQUE Specific importance is accorded to drawing as a mode of relational thinking to connect observational, speculative, and analytical understandings with more concrete architectural proposals. An overarching structure guiding the project will be the use of drawing to propel a generative loop of observation, speculation and proposition. More specific architectural techniques are urban-scale drawings, specifically plans and axonometry, as tools to understand the relationship between specific analysis, a proposal, and the wider urban environment. The use of composite drawings combining more traditional orthogonal representation with material or narrative elements will give representation to a variety of architectural issues simultaneously. Models will function as a means of testing tectonic experiments and material relationships at a variety of scales. Building a part-model of a singular architectural moment rather than a complete building is a succinct means of representing various spatial conditions with great precision. Large-scale models will also function as a means of understanding the project’s relationship to its greater urban context, and (much like the urban-scale plan) a tool to try and understand the project as a whole. The importance of writing and reflection as a mode of developing the project cannot be understated. For this thesis, writing is seen as a method of design and architectural production equally important to drawing or model-making. The project will record its development through the use of a public blog including images, and text, which can be accessed here: http://architectureandvolatility.tumblr.com/ SUBMISSION The project will develop an ecology of models and drawings in a variety of media and at a range of scales. More important than the total resolution of any one element is how these propositional elements relate to eachother in the development of a cohesive project as a whole.
Right: Iterative Drawing Loop between Analysis, Speculation and Proposition. H. Stephens
ARCHITECTURE & THE CITY
This section functions as a compendium of theory and fieldwork that have motivated the project so far, but are perhaps less urgent in defining a program. The literature review and associated criticism constitutes a specific understanding of architecture and the city, and as a result, a specific reading of Istanbul as a city whilst on fieldwork. The intent here is to construct an understanding of Istanbul as a city from which to launch the project.
03: ARCHITECTURE & THE CITY
BOOK 3:
BOOK 3:
ARCHITECTURE & THE CITY LITERATURE REVIEW: VOLATILITY AND THE PROBLEM OF ARCHITECTURE AND THE CITY Outside of largely superficial or temporary gestures, architecture is almost completely unable to exert any influence over contemporary urban environments within the boundaries of its own disciplinary autonomy. As a result, much of architectural discourse today is marked by a return to issues surrounding architecture and the city - specifically, a series of attempts to resist the terrifyingly rapid growth of contemporary cities, large scale urbanisation, and the built surplus of contemporary capitalist development that define places like Istanbul. The discourse surrounding this Hegelian ‘bad infinity’ describing many cities has largely been met with three different strategies. Building off ideas developed by Manfredo Tafuri and Aldo Rossi, Pier Vittorio Aureli posits a similarly dialectical critique of architecture and the city. Aureli sees the way for architecture to maintain its autonomy and resist the generic totality of urbanisation is in the move towards an ‘absolute’ architecture and understanding the city as an archipelago. Instead of being a totalising field with order imposed from above, Aureli posits an understanding of the city as a series of constituent architectural parts, or limits, and the relationships that exist between these limits. Discrete expressions of architectural form thus become a means of ordering the chaos of the city, simultaneously constructing the context while being constructed by it. This functions as a complete negation of the idea of the city as a functional machine - disrupting the generic field of urbanisation, re-establishing architectural autonomy, and in turn, re-establishing the idea of the city as a political form.
Right: A Simple Heart DOGMA Studio.
03: ARCHITECTURE & THE CITY
Left: Torre David, Venezuela, a Minor Architecture.
Left: CCTV, OMA Beijing. Shape.
Conversely, Robert Somol advocates a complete reversal of traditional notions of architectural disciplinarity – forfeiting autonomy in favour of surfing the unpredictable waves of global capital. Somol advocates that architects look to the global megacity as a source of new potentials rather than a disciplinary problem, forwarding a notion of ‘shape’ as a direct counter to the more traditionally autonomous ‘form’. Specifically, Somol argues that architecture can turn its back on the self-justification of an historically congruent formal statement to instead operate with the graphic immediacy of a logo. Shape is blurry, vague, indeterminate, – a condition where architectural form is near-illegible and the enormity and sameness of surface area seems to dwarf any sense of interior space. In many ways, shape is architecture without any sense of history or disciplinary responsibility – a cartoon of architecture that embraces the immediate, generic, and frictionless nature of a globalised world. One strategy is top-down, one is bottom-up, and the other both putsits-foot-down and gives-up simultaneously. But the varying approaches rarely meet in the middle. The absolute often rests on gestures of overwhelming physical mass to assert its own autonomy and seems powerless without the use of this dramatic vocabulary. In addition, the absolute positions itself in dialectical opposition to contemporary circumstances and largely resists engaging positively with the almost inevitable challenges that face architecture as a discipline. The minor often negates the creation of architectural form as a means through which to advance its own agenda - ‘minor’ gestures are often so subtle as to be impotent. Shape is often formally insubstantial and purposefully ironic – rejecting the traditional terms of engagement that define architectural disciplinarity.
03: ARCHITECTURE & THE CITY
Similarly, Jill Stoner develops a critique of urbanisation’s generic totality, and creates a new framework for architecture and the city - not from without, but from within. Based on the idea of a ‘minor literature’ developed by Giles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, Stoner forwards the notion of a ‘minor architecture’. Specifically, Stoner provides a framework to resuscitate architectural theory and practice by advocating for a ‘minor’ architecture to work within the ‘major’, which can be broadly described as the built surplus of capitalist development. In this sense, Stoner’s ideas aren’t a negation or a dialectical approach to the urban environments left behind by modernity, but an attempt to productively deal with the byproducts created by it – in turn establishing a new relationship between architecture and the city.
FIELDWORK The intent of the fieldwork period was to construct a highly specific understanding of Istanbul as a city through a combination of observation, representation and experience. Here Istanbul is seen as a colossal megalopolis caught between various states of monument and entropy.
Figure-Ground Maps exploring the relationship between Monument and Entropy in Istanbul
03: ARCHITECTURE & THE CITY
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MONUMENT
Left: The Blue Mosque, Plan and Photograph, Sultanahmet, Istanbul H. Stephens
ENTROPY
Right: Tunnel Market Stall, Plan and Photograph Eminonu, Istanbul H. Stephens
01: Toys, Clocks
01: Toys, Clocks
Left: Mosquetplace, Wall Plan, Istanbul H. Stephens
03: ARCHITECTURE & THE CITY Right: Mosquetplace, Prayer Space Plan, H. Stephens
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POSITIONING THE EVENT
This section will act as a series of overarching design principles to position the project within the context that has just been described. These include the material, tectonic, ontological, temporal, spatial means through which the project might arrive at architectural representation.
04: POSITIONING THE EVENT
BOOK 4:
LEVERAGING GEOLOGICAL TIME By necessity, architecture is largely driven towards the edification of an elusive present moment. Prior to its completion a building exists as an aspirational construct of a future to be, following its construction, a building will always represent a point in the past. This becomes even more difficult in a volatile context. While everything else is accelerated, the speed of architecture remains a difficult constant – with the increasing elasticity of time providing a difficult context in which architecture is largely unable to take hold. However, shifting the terms of engagement towards a notion of geological time may introduce architecture to a new theatre of operation. In the present moment architecture largely operates within a time as it is perceived by humans. Shifting that measure outwards so it falls in sync with the planet may work as a means of repositioning autonomous relevance – the creation of an architecture that gives form to an anticipated event outside of its own existence. By positioning the forecasted earthquake as an abstract temporal limit through which to engage with Istanbul, architecture sidesteps the need to be relevant in the present and instead hedges its importance at being necessary at some point in the future. The event thus becomes a sublime point in the future that charges a slippery present with meaning and re-engages Istanbul with its active geological context.
Right: Razing the City, a proposal for a controlled earthquake. H. Stephens
04: POSITIONING THE EVENT
PARANOIA AND THE SUBLIME The prospect of a major earthquake in Istanbul embodies both the heady anxiety and paranoia that underlies man’s confrontation with the terrible unpredictability of nature, and the subsequent inability to rationalise such unexplainable devastation. Earthquakes have always been synonymous with ill omen and apocalypse. Nordic mythology states that Ragnarok (the end of the world) will be shaped by an earthquake powerful enough to bring mountains crashing to the ground. The Book of Revelations in the New Testament describes massive earthquakes killing thousands as a marker of the final confrontation between with Satan. Istanbul has seen major earthquakes before. The 557 Constantinople Earthquake caused great damage to the city - contributing to the collapse of the Hagia Sofia a year later, and damaging the city walls to the extent that Hun invaders were easily able to penetrate the following season.
Right: 1566 Constantinople Earthquake. Woodcut. Author Unknown.
According to German writer Hermann Gall, the 1566 Constantinople earthquake was preceded by comets and new stars in the sky, the presence of unexplained celestial bodies traditional omens of terrible events to come – wars, famine, plague – the embodiment of paranoia. In Turkish, the 1566 earthquake was called Küçük Kıyamet (The Lesser Judgment Day) and was seen quite literally as the end of the world. The earthquake marks a confrontation with what philosopher Immanuel Kant might describe as the ‘terrifying sublime’ – an experience of the natural sublime accompanied by a feeling of incomparable melancholy or dread. Kant describes the sublime as being something so vast that the human mind is unable to properly conceptualise its immensity, because it simply cannot compare the sublime to anything else. Because of this comparison, the sublime is also therefore a construct of human rationality. It is this curious inability to rationalise or process the immensity of the earthquake that transmits it from geological process to the realm of the sublime. Though Istanbul is an ancient city, its lifespan is small on geological terms, and the agglomeration of buildings that define its iconic image and everyday life exist as a thin crust upon a mantle of terrifying power. How might architecture give form to this notion of the terrifying sublime, and how might it materialise this tension between the sublime and the everyday, between an image of stability and a reality of fragility?
Right: Monument Corridor, a proposal for a Condensed Istanbul, H. Stephens
04: POSITIONING THE EVENT
Monumental Corridor, Proposal for a Condensed Istanbul. H. Stephens
A1
04: POSITIONING THE EVENT
DÖRRKARM
x8
x4
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x4
x2
The formal language of the earthquake is predominantly a vocabulary used by engineers. Base isolators, post-tensioned joints, lateral reinforcement and over-engineered retaining walls all characterise the structure that must resist ground movement, but rarely do traditional architectural understandings of form, mass, and space enter the equation. Given that these components are necessary pieces of any earthquake-proof puzzle, the project hopes to leverage positively on this existing formal vocabulary, and to imagine new architectural possibilities for what might lie within. Could the lateral brace become inhabitable? Might the retaining wall become sublime?
Right: Haya Sofya Reinforcements and Postcard. H. Stephens.
Left: Dorrkam, an IKEA product for strengthening doorframes. H. Stephens.
04: POSITIONING THE EVENT
EARTHQUAKE TECTONICS
Left: Archetypes for a New Mobile Mahalle: A New Community Centre for Istanbul. H. Stephens.
THE ANTIFRAGILE Antifragile is a term developed by Lebanese epistemologist, economist and self-described ‘unpredictability theorist’ Nassim Nicolas Taleb. Broadly, antifragile refers to a body that is able to actively benefit from exposure to volatilty, in direct opposition to the fragile, which is harmed by volatility. In the most basic terms, Taleb asks us to imagine an object which grows stronger when placed under stress, instead of breaking. Take the Hydra for example – a multi-headed creature from Greek mythology with the ability to re-grow two heads when one was cut off. Taleb describes the antifragile as a necessary quality for businesses, governments, and even individuals seeking to leverage positively from a volatile world. Typically, the antifragile is defined by a body with built-in redundancies, an inherent ability to be small enough to maneuver and respond to change effectively, and built-in responses to variability and stress. Moreover, Taleb notes that many elements of nature and human tradition typically tend to have an underlying antifragile bias. The project will thus endeavour to become antifragile in itself – not only being able to resist the earthquake, but to grow stronger following its passing.
04: POSITIONING THE EVENT Right: Proposal for a Mobile Mahalle, a New Community Centre for Istanbul. H. Stephens.
04: POSITIONING THE EVENT Right: Architectural Kit of Parts: Urban Modifiers H. Stephens.
THE ASSEMBLAGE Assemblage theory is a tool developed by social theorist Manuel DeLanda to describe a new ontology. Specifically, assemblage theory challenges the existing paradigm of meaningful analysis only being possible on the ‘individual’ (micro) or ‘societal’ (macro) level.
Left: Istanbul as an assemblage of topography, monument, and commerce. H. Stephens
DeLanda suggests that such analysis is inherently predisposed to what he terms relations of interiority - a tendency towards macro and micro reductionism that willfully obscures many of the complex scalar relationships defining reality. Instead of returning to micro and macro totalities, DeLanda posits the idea of Deleuze’s theory of assemblages as an alternative. An assemblage is a combination of social bodies (termed components) that relate at a variety of different scales. These components may be part of numerous different assemblages simultaneously, as well as being assemblages within themselves. The project will thus aim to be an assemblage in itself – an assemblage of different scales, components and methods of representation.
THE ARCHIPELAGO An idea pioneered by German architect O.M. Ungers, the archipelago has been brought into contemporary vogue by Italian theorist and architect Pier Vittorio Aureli. Aureli calls for the archipelago as a means of reaffirming architecture’s relationship with the city, through a renewed emphasis on the placement of discrete architectural forms within the fabric of the city. Such emphasis on form inherently creates autonomous limits, whilst still relating directly to its immediate surroundings, an architecture that is simultaneously constructing and being constructed by its context. Aureli suggests that this emphasis on discrete architectural form is a preferable means of understanding and shaping the city and is critical of an emphasis on urban masterplans or infrastructure. This project will attempt to engage with an ‘earthquake archipelago’ of sorts – various interventions around Istanbul that engage with architectural form as the primary means of understanding place.
Left: monument archipelago for Istanbul H. Stephens
04: POSITIONING THE EVENT
Right: Model for a House with One Wall. C. Kerez.
ARCHITECTURE’S CORE Symbolically, architecture as ontology appears to be in dialectical opposition to the earthquake. Surely, if architecture is reduced to a disciplinary essence, the earthquake becomes its ultimate antagonist. While this project will attempt to sidestep the creation of a dichotomy, how might it positively mobilise this otherwise unavoidable confrontation? Preston Scott Cohen suggests that Architecture’s Core provides potential for positively re-engaging architecture with notions of disciplinary agency. Differentiating between ideas of core (staircases, walls, floorplates, structuret) and surface (just about everything else) Cohen suggests that a purpose of architecture is to facilitate or produce new spatial relationships, and that manipulation of the spatial properties of the core is the primary means of doing this. Cohen suggests a model where “structure is rhetorically integrated with interior and exterior form”. Drawing from a language of Earthquake Tectonics, how might the project specifically mobilise the core of architecture as a way of positively re-engaging with the idea of architecture as ontology?
Left: Urban Connector Plan, level 1. Fatih, Istanbul H. Stephens
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REFERENCES Angelil, Marc, and Reiner Hehl (eds.), Informalize! Essays on the Political Economy of Urban Form, Berlin: Ruby Press, 2012. Aureli, Pier Vittorio, The Possibility of an Absolute Architecture, Cambridge (Mass.): MIT Press, 2011. Aureli, Pier Vittorio, The Project of Autonomy: Politics and Architecture Within and Against Capitalism, Princeton: Princeton Architectural Press, 2008. Berman, Marshall, All That is Solid Melts into Air: The Experience of Modernity, New York: Penguin Books, 1982. Bristol, Katharine G., ‘The Pruitt-Igoe Myth’, Journal of Architectural Education, Vol. 44, No. 3 (May, 1991), pp. 163 – 171. Cook, Peter, Drawing: The Motive Force of Architecture, Chichester: Wiley, 2008. t Curtis, William J. R., Modern Architecture since 1900, New York: Phaidon Press, 2007. DeLanda, Manuel, A New Philosophy of Society: Assemblage Theory and Social Complexity, London: Bloomsbury, 2006. DOGMA, 11 Projects, London: AA Publishing, 2013. Glazer, Nathan, From A Cause to A Style: Modernist Architecture’s Encounter with the American City, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007. Hays, Michael K (ed.), Architecture Theory since 1968, Cambridge, (Mass.): MIT Press, 2000. Hutson, Malo, Urban Communities in the 21st Century: From Industrialisation to Sustainability, Berkeley: Cognella Press, 2010.
Jencks, Charles, The Language of Post-Modern Architecture, New York: Rizzoli, 1984. Mateo, Josep Luis (ed.), Architectural Papers IV: Iconoclastia, News from a Post-Iconic World, New York: Actar, 2011. Rossi, Aldo, The Architecture of the City, Cambridge (Mass.): MIT Press, 1982. Scott Cohen, Preson, ‘The Hidden Core of Architecture’, Harvard Design Magazine 35: Architecture’s Core?’, Cambridge, Mass.:GSD Press, 2012, pp. 6-15. Somol, Robert, ‘Shape and the City’, Architectural Design, Vol. 82, Issue 5, London: Wiley, pp. 103-113. Stoner, Jill, Towards a Minor Architecture, Cambridge (Mass.): MIT Press, 2012. Tafuri, Manfredo, Architecture and Utopia: Design and Capitalist Development, Cambridge (Mass.): MIT Press, 1976. Taleb, Nassim Nicolas, Antifragile: Things that Gain from Disorder, New York: Penguin Books, 2012. WORK AC, 49 Cities, New York: Storefront for Art and Architecture Publishing, 2010.
CV Henry Michael Stephens Age: 26. DOB: 01/10/1987, Singapore EDUCATION 2012-2014 2009-2011 2011 2006 - 2008
Kunstakademiets Arkitektskole, Afd. 2, Cand.Arch / MA Architecture Victoria University of Wellington BAS, Architecture University of California, Berkeley Study Exchange, Architecture Victoria University of Wellington BA, History & International Relations SELECTED COMPETITIONS
2013 2013 2013 2012 2012
House of Fairytales H.C. Anderson House of Fairytales Ideas Competion FIRST PLACE: The Lodge on the Lake Lodge on the Lake Design Ideas Competition Tykningen Ă…ben projektkonkurrence Pavillon MAA 1:1 FIRST PLACE: Awaroa Lighthouse AAA Cavalier Bremworth Unbuilt Architecture Awards. FIRST PLACE: Woolopolis D3 Housing Tomorrow Competition 2012 SELECTED PUBLICATION / EXHIBITION
2014 2013 2013 2012
Awaroa Lighthouse to be published in BRACKET: [at extremes], 2014, New York. The Lodge on the Lake exhibited at the Canberra Gallery of Design. Stage House published in SOILED #4: Windowscrapers, 2013, Chicago Familial Clouds exhibited at Palazzo Bembo for Venice Architecture Biennale
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2010 - 2014
other work featured in: MARK Magazine, CONCEPT Magazine, FUTURE Arquitecturas, ArchitectureNZ Magazine, Australian Design Review, Architect ArchDaily, Archinect, Bustler, DeZeen, Designboom and many more. For a full list of publication and exhibition please visit http://henrystephens.co.nz WORK EXPERIENCE
9/2011 - 08/2012
9/2011 - 06/2012
9/2011 - 02/2012
3/2012 - 06/2012
Simon Twose Architect Architecture Graduate Victoria University of Wellington Research Assistant New Zealand Institute of Architects Research Assistant StoryBox Designer SELECTED AWARDS
2013 2011 2005
EBCT Scholarship recipient VUW Summer Research Scholarship recipient NZQA Top scholar award.