The city in the age of Hyperobjects II

The city in the Age of Hyperobjects II

Peter Trummer Design Research Project @SCI-Arc 2017

CREDITS: Peter Trummer with Sven Winkler AND Zhifei Chen Dila Erten Lamice Halabi Chihyi Kuo David Lee Pariya Mohammaditabar Ivan Orquera Noel Ortega Ji Qi Song Qiu Sara Segura Jakob Sieder-Semlitsch Dongwoo Suk Yifan Zhang

Introduction

The Architecture of the City in the Age of Hyper-objects

Research Brief

Methodology

UN Studio

Daniel Libeskind

SHOP Architecture

Eric Owen Moss Architecture SOM Gensler

BIG

9

22

26

7 25 52 76 104 124 150 168

Introduction

As architects but also as humans that live in the greatest artifact of our culture, that is cities, we have to pose the question: What happened to urbanism? Every this question was raised within the discipline of architecture was in the late 90’s, when OMA’s Rem Koolhaas and Sanford Kwinter investigated how neo-liberal 1 to entities that defy our traditional understanding of things due to their spatial and temporal scale for example contemporary forms of capitalism, investment cultural debate of how to approach the contemporary city according to the

The Architecture of the City in the Age of Hyper-objects

Peter Trummer

1

in a space that consists of inter-relationships between aesthetic properties of 2

A weird window

structure with a large, longitudinal, pedestrian strip onto which each of the of the university and its representative buildings are placed in the middle of this when architects attempted to make Modernism social, or better, tried through their designs to support the idea of a new democratic and academic collective of knowledge post WW2 in a country that for the most part denied its national democratic collective: the design doesn’t propose a central entrance, typical for representative institutional buildings in the age of the nation states, instead the architects decided to give the building two entrances on the front façade - like a time you enter the building you have to make a choice4

in the campus design: All structural piloti of the campus buildings are lined up running through all buildings and their public areas, inside and outside, similar

As it happened to many public modernist buildings from the post-war era, the eyes: window handle there was a motor inside the frame with a contraption similar to open, you couldn’t see outside, nor could air hardly enter the building, since the part of some minimalist music piece to which the window started dancing like One day a group of inspectors visited the building and when they entered my It was there to regulate the climatic conditions of the building in order to use opens the window during the night to get cold air into the building to cool it regulations put forward by sustainable architecture guidelines in order to prevent

Suddenly I understood: Architecture has reached a new paradigm in the age and the beginning of a new post-human architecture: Buildings are not designed

In this essay, I would like to present a new realist approach to the production broader theoretical framework, I will provide an overview of how the discipline of architecture has always established theories by looking at the city as a model of 7 and apply them to the city which leads to a new architectural pedagogy, that I 8

Hyper-objects and its emerging new Architecture

idea of designing a window, so that the building doesn’t use a lot of energy instead of for the wellbeing of its human inhabitants, indicates that we have reached a new paradigm - a disciplinary shift away from the architecture of the anthropocene humans design buildings according to phenomena they themselves have created, but seem to have lost control over, so that these phenomena have according to the regimes and norms of sustainability aiming to prevent furthering 9 refers to entities that defy our traditional understanding of things 10 have triggered a whole series of new building types, as well as new architectural

12 is thus new architecture is not produced by an architectural avant-garde believing in has always analyzed the reality of the city to learn more about architectural

The empiricist, the rationalist and the surrealist architecture in the age of anthropocentrism: the empiricist position represented anything the city would allow him to perceive with his senses, from illnesses, people’s income, rents, household expenses to geographical and infrastructural

In short, the empiricists aimed to invent a new form of city through a new

14 Rossi argues, that the content of the city might transform and that buildings might radically change in their function, topological organization of the built mass of the theater, stays visible throughout its historical mutations: the form of a place for theatrical events was turned into Industrielle tried to experiment with new forms of building typologies by means of prefabricated modes of production, Rossi discovered that the superblocks superblocks didn’t change throughout history, even though its contents varied quite a lot, from being used as a form for the roman insula, to a medieval cloister, It maintained the same form - an outdoor space enclosed by a boundary zone

Rossi therefore argues that the city constantly reproduces the same topological forms throughout history regardless of the forces, politics or regimes that have

In short, the rationalists proclaimed the autonomy of forms independent of Surrealists, like Rem Koolhaas, saw the reality of the city as a stage for new

rise buildings like the downtown athletic club are the announcement of the split of mankind in two specimen: the metropolitan, who uses the full potential of modernity to achieve the perfection or completeness of the nonexistent and to collect real stories, narratives and other seemingly unrelated content and to , until the

In short, the surrealists declared the autonomy of content independent of its generator of architecture, he still believed in abstractions and imagination to architectural methodologies and pedagogies introduced in this essay have led to irrational, in the center of their approach and therefore in the center of their

the architecture produced within the contemporary city literally? What if it is the for the city? What if we thought of the city from the perspective of a non-human what kind of pedagogy might this viewpoint lead us to?

Zero Architecture or Towards a Theory of Replacement

What is unique about all this architectural entities, like the pencil towers in new architectural methodology or even pedagogy from their appearances? new architectural types are simply new forms of collages:

through particular properties of the cotton, namely the electrons of the carbons

For my argument I distinguish between two kinds of collages that have entered collages, the de-constructivist fragments to the seamless collages of blobs, unfamiliar context in order to create a new meaning based on the technique of 20

When I thought about how to describe buildings, cities, infrastructures 21 unfamiliar by replacing a human storyteller by a non-human one - in this case a

using a new form or a new content to tell a new story, but rather lets the story be other words his technique of de-familiarization replaces the human narrator by a possess all the features of what we know as windows, buildings or cities, and yet

I would like to expand my hypothesis into a larger theory of replacement - a replaced by a non-human author and that the construction of these new windows, present themselves not only in a new form but also with a new content becoming by a motor, the window pane is replaced by a metal sheet, the framed view

In this essay he demonstrates how within the 24 anthropocentric form and content: the form of the window served to frame the of the window changes how the window performs: before its purpose was to ensure ventilation of the building and letting the sun in order to allow humans its form and function so that it can become part one of a new whole while traces

In my interpretation this means that humanist paradigm we started to use abstract forms, from geometric solids to the for the discipline of architecture and to elaborate on the concept of what I call 27 doesn’t start with operations of abstraction in order to produce real things but

bauingenieurfakultaeten-innsbruck which he demonstrated how architectural elements like entrances or I refer here to the idea of typological thinking presented by Aldo Rossi

its operational mode as the basis for my argument for a theory of

I refer here to the example of the cylinder head of an automobile engine

Research Brief

How to design a Masterplan in the Age of Hyperobjects

masterplan developed within our global contemporary city follows the same lose their inherent Content independently of location, money, developers, buildings, landscapes and infrastructure remain intact, while the Forms loose

Studio Brief

Analyzing each of these elements more closely, we will realize that these to have happened in the era of late capitalism is that urban Forms have become propagandas of their original Content exhibition, but also that his content was based on the idea of habitat - housing emerged in the beginning of the 20th century, due to the enormous demand for

these Forms to sell their evaporated Content

Studio Process Research Phase

Form and Content

In this context Content refers to the socio-economical and political regimes did he build for?

Form relationships, we will focus on the understanding of forms through their topological characteristics - the relationship between the space of circulation he want to achieve between the space of corridors and the mass-produced units? of the masterplan in terms of content and form, as well as historical precedents

Design Phase

synthesize the conducted formal analyses into a new whole, whereby their

Methodology

Methodology of Replacement

On the Mode of existents of technical Object On Vicarious Causation

In terms of form we will have to use the topological analysis of one building to make a tower, or how can we transform the diagram of a tower into a park? What if we take the circulation of the tower and fuse it with the space of the

Masterplan Eunma Housing Development

Zhifei Chen & Dongwoo Suk

Architects UN Studio, Heerim Architects

Location Daechi-dong, Gangnam-gu, Seoul, South Korea Client Program

32 towers, ranging from 25-50 stories (5,940 units) masterplan

Building Site 0.5 square kilometers

Area 1.149.000 m²

Project Description

The project will transform an area of over a million square meters, adding over 1,500 new apartments to the 4,424 currently on site. This will be achieved by replacing existing 35 story towers with 50 story towers and pushing parking facilities below ground, freeing up space for a new shared eco landscape surrounding the towers.

Source: www.unstudio.com

Sky-Scraper, Le Corbusier

It is in the form of a cross, thus doing away with an internal court and giving a maximum stability. The facades are deeply serrated and form veritable traps for light.ees, allowing 10 square yards per person: that one 540 feet long would be 40,000.

Source: Le Corbusier, The City Of Tomorrow

Plan Voisin, Le Corbusier

As a proposal for the city center of Paris the plan calls for 18 cruciform glass towers, placed on a rectangular grid in an enormous park-like green space, with triple-tiered pedestrian malls with stepped terraces placed intermittently between them. Extending perpendicularly to the west, there would be an adjacent rectangle of low-rise residential, governmental, and cultural buildings amid more green space.

Dongwoo Suk / Zhifei Chen

Source: Le Corbusier, The City Of Tomorrow

Plan of Voisin / Le Corbusier

backs towards the street and open on the other side to a park of 300x120 meters. having its garden of approval to any height.

Source: Le Corbusier, The City Of Tomorrow

Dongwoo Suk / Zhifei Chen

Celluar Housing building with central courtyard / Le Corbusier

Une Ville Contemporaine, Le Corbusier

The centerpiece of the plan is a transportation hub which houses depots for buses and trains as well as highway intersections and at the top, an airport. It is surrounded by six cruciform skyscrapers. Outside the center smaller multi-story zigzag blocks set in green space and set far back from the street house the proletarian workers.

Source: Le Corbusier, The City Of Tomorrow

La Villa Radieuse / Le Corbusier

La Ville Radieuse, Le Corbusier

La Villa Radieuse / Le Corbusier

Dongwoo Suk / Zhifei Chen

The plan is designed to contain effective means of transportation, as well as an abundance of green space and sunlight. In accordance to modernist ideals of progress The Radiant City was to emerge from a tabula rasa.

Source: Le Corbusier, The Radiant City

Ville Radieuse Manufactures, Le Corbusier

Industrial Factories of the La Villa Radieuse / Le Corbusier

Dongwoo Suk / Zhifei Chen

Light Industry- standard premises considered as an extension of the public services. Railroad on ground level and trucks 8 meter above ground level. Warehouses between railroad and truck lanes are covering the entire surface area.

Source: The Radiant City

Dongwoo Suk

Zhifei Chen

City plan in Belgium / Le Corbusier

Urbanization of the Left Bank of the Scheldt in Antwerp/ Le Corbusier

present demands of city planning, based on the principles of the Ville Radieuse plan. Carried out in several stages Le Corbusier imagined Antwerpes left bank to become the biggest port on the continent and accomoprequisite, the cause and the effect of such a port.

Source: Le Corbusier, The Radiant City

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Dwellings with Set-Backs, Le Corbusier

In this plan the main arteries are shown as 150 feet in width, and forming squareblocks 400 x 600 yards in area. Every 200 yards lesser streets occur. The large islands sites thus formed could be enclosed by railings. Leading right up to the entrances are private roads withwhere. The amount of ground which is built over is 15 percent of the total area, leaving 85 percent of open space. The density of population is 120 persons to the acre as against 145 in Paris at the time.

Source: Le Corbusier, The City Of Tomorrow

Dongwoo Suk / Zhifei Chen

Residential Setbacks of the Urbanization of the Left Bank of the Scheldt / Le Corbusier

Morphology

Plan transformation study from Le Corbusiers Sky-Scraper into Urban Villas.

Plan transformation study from Le Corbusiers

Ville Radieuse Manufactures into Set-Back Dwellings.

#1

Geometrical studies based on the section- and plan transformations of selected Le Corbusier precedents.

#2

Geometrical studies based on the section- and plan transformations of selected Le Corbusier precedents.

Archipelago 21

Noel Ortega & Jakob Sieder-Semlitsch

Architects Studio Libeskind

Location Yongsan International Business District, Seoul, South Korea

Client Yongsan Development Co.,Ltd. Program Building Site 56 acres Area 3.000.000 m²

Project Description

The site is organized like an archipelago, broken into distinct neighborhoods called “islands” connected internally by using a retail valley, inviting natural light into below-grade retail spaces. Outside the islands, a generous natural landscape will be developed, to act as the connecting “sea.” With its own unique program, character, community, and atmosphere, each island becomes a distinct neighborhood to encourage diverse and vibrant city living and to break down the overall density and mass of the large urban development.

Source: www.libeskind.com

No-Stop City Plan, Andrea Branzi

No-Stop City is based on the idea that advanced technology could eliminate the need for a centralized modern city. It illustrates a fragment of a elements adapted to a variety of uses.

Residential units and free-form organic shapes representing parks are placed haphazardly over a grid structure, allowing for a large degree of freedom within a regulated system. The proposal questions the normative character of the existing city and defends new conceptions of life as expressed in revolutionary urban form.

Source: Archizoom Associati, No-Stop City

A City Under a Single Roof, Raymond Hood

The proposal is founded on the principle that concentration in a metropolitan area is a desireable condition. The Unit Building, covering three blocks of ground space, would house a whole industry and its auxiliary businesses. Only elevator shafts and stairways reach the street level. The

Source: Rem Koolhaas, Delirious New York

Unter den Eichen, Peter Riemann

During a summer school under the supervision of Oswald Mathias Ungers, Peter Rieman made a large number of drawings, sketches and maps. As part of the morphological sequences exhibition, Unter Den Eichen followed the example of Ivan Leonidovs Magnitogorsk in order to come up with a linear city concept.

Source: O.M. Ungers & Rem Koolhaas, The City In The City

Cities within the city, Peter Riemann

In a “green archipelago” a strategy to design the cities decay was devised based on raw, naked value judgements- esthetic, political and social. In a city facing serious depopulation the proposal tries to anticipate which complexes to maintain, which underserving parts to erase, turning the city as a whole into an Arcadian landscape of built remnants surrounded by a sea of green, in which the infrastructures of contemporary life were hidden. Berlin as a colossal enlargement of Schinkel’s Schloss Glienicke.

Source: O.M. Ungers & Rem Koolhaas, The City In The City

Morphology

Plan transformation study from an extraction of O.M. Ungers Green Archipelago into Raymond Hoods idea of a City Under a Single Roof.

Section transformation study from a section of Raymond Hoods City Under A Single Roof into Archizooms No-Stop City.

Geometrical studies based on the section- and plan transformations of selected precedents.

Domino Sugar Refinery Master Plan

Dila Erten & Sara Segura

Architects SHoP Architects, James Corner Field Operations

Location Williamsburg, Brooklyn, New York, United States

Client Two Trees Management Co, LLC Program Building Site 310.000 m²

Area Project Description

The plan envisions a new skyline for Brooklyn—one that relates to the height of the Williamsburg bridge to the south and scales down to meet the neighboring building across from a new public space, Domino Square. The new surrounding buildings are porous, featuring large openings that allow light and air to penetrate through the site and into the neighborhood beyond.

Source: www.shoparc.com

Max Reinhardt House, Peter Eisenman

Peter Eisenman conceived this project shortly after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1991. The site has previously been occupied by the expressionist playhouse of Max Reinhardt. In order to capture Reinhardt’s legendary energy and vision, he devised and multifaceted character of the city.

The thirty-four-story building vertically folds on its core to create a structure that separates, transforms, and rejoins itself horizontally at the roof level. The form was generated by three operations performed on a Möbius strip, a three-dimensional geometric form with a single continuous surface. The building, whose height and creased form create an imposing

Source: MoMA, artists

Mirador, MVRDV

Mirador is a collection of mini neighbourhoods stacked vertically around a semi-public sky-plaza. The building acts as a counterpoint against the massive uniformity of the surrounding housing blocks. It frames the distant landscape of the Guadarrama Mountains through a large “look out” located 40 meters above the ground. This also provides outdoor space and community garden for the occupants of building, monumentalising public life and space.

Source: MVRDV

High Rise City, Ludwig Hilberseimer

along the grid created by routes of transportation. The starkness of the plan and dehumanization of the environment later caused Hilberseimer to remark that it was

The High Rise City was a model completely based on practical aspects. It strongly differentiated from the cities of the past that for Hilberseimer were designed based upon religious and cultural arguments. It was an answer for a man not any more subjective and individual but objective and collective. The communal block replaced the single house. The importance of the collectivity in the block overcomes the individual. His model was conceived for a system with strong central power. Any individual expression is erased by order and rationality.

Source: Ludwig Hilberseimer, Grossstadt Architektur

Morphology

Plan transformation study from MVRDVs Mirador project into Peter Eisenmans Max Reinhardt House.

Section transformation study from Peter Eisenmans Max Reinhardt House into Paris’ Arc de Triomphe.

#1

Geometrical studies based on the section- and plan transformations of selected precedents.

Bridge City

Ji Qi & Yifan Zhang

Architects Eric Owen Moss Architects Location Nanjing, China Client

Two Trees Management Co, LLC Program City master plan Building Site 12.700.000 m² Date 2013-2014

Project Description

The Bridge City is one component of a multi-city master plan located outside of Nanjing, Roadways on the edge of the existing lake are connected across the water (north-south and east-west) via an elevated Bridge. All new development is located along this Bridge over the water, thus preserving the surrounding landscape.

Source: www.ericowenmoss.com

A Plan for Tokyo, Kenzo Tange

With a unique insight into the emerging characteristics of the contemporary city and an optimistic faith in the power of design, Tange attempted to impose a new physical order on Tokyo, which would accomodate the city’s continued expansion and internal regeneration. The plan was proposed at a time when many cities in the industrial world were experiencing the height of urban sprawl. It propses a series of satelite cities and general decentralization as the solution to Tokyo’s rapid population boom.

The ideals of the Metabolist Movement were perhaps best exhibited and advocated by Kenzo Tange in his 1960 Plan for Tokyo. Tange argued that the movement that the automobile introduced into urban life had changed peoples perception of space, and that this required a new spatial order for the city in the form of the megastructure, not simply a continuation of the radial zoning status quo. The plan proposes a linear megastructuregram would acrete as the needs of the population dictated.

Source: Kenzo Tange, A plan for Tokyo 1960, ArchEyes

Master Plan for Magnitogorsk, Ivan Leonidov

The master plan proposed by the OSA group with Ivan Leonidov as a team leader, is a linear city concentrated on a stretch of 15 miles around a communication route which led from the industrial hub to the state farms and laid out in a square grid pattern. Landscape and urbanisation are reconciled, with all the built functions distributed in a natural setting with a low density in a way which directly refers to disurbanist theories.

In the central strip of the city are the residential buildings, glass towers alternated to lowrise structures located in a green belt, all detached one another in order to provide the maximum access to air and light. Public buildings and spaces for leisure take different forms and are distributed freely in a lateral strip, each one located in a square of the grid. On the other side, beyond the residential strip are the educational buildings, areas for kids, parks and farmlands.

Source: Ivan Leonidov, The complete works, Socks

Projet Obus, Le Corbusier

About 100 meters away from the coast a 90-60 meter high concrete structure would connect the two extreme baulieus of Algier, St.Eugene and Hussein-Dey. The structure would provide housing for 180,000 people with optimal hygiene conditions in a beautiful environment. The project provides the two essential solutions for any city: The development of rapid circulation and the creation of necessary housing capacities.

Source: Le Corbusier, Ouvre Complete

Roadtown, Edgar Chambless

Roadtown outlined the idea for a linear city built on top of a railway line. The idea to lay down a modern skyscraper on its side and run the elevators and the pipes and wires horizontally instead of vertically. It could be built not only a hundred stories, but a thousand stories or a thousand miles. It would take the apartment house and all its conveniences and comforts out among the farms by the aid of wires, pipes and of rapid and noisless transportation.

Source: Edgar Chambless, Roadtown

The skyscrapers stood on great elevated piers above intersections of radial and ring-rods in Moscow. These piers with their open-faced lift-shafts, support the horizontally cantilevered building. Beneath them are metro stations and bus-stops. The building is supposed to be made of steel and glass, all the parts being standardized so that no scaffolding is needed for its erection.

Horizontal Skyscraper, El Lissitzky

Moscow is a centralized city, characterized by a number of concentric ring boulevards connected by radial main streets emanating from the Kremlin. The proposal (sky-hook) intends to place these structures at the intersections of the radials and the boulevards, rise system the innovation concits in the fact that the horizontal is clearly separated from structures and is usually predicated by the structural system.

Source: El Lissitzky, Wolkenbügel (1924), The charnel house

Morphology

Plan transformation study from Ivan Leonidovs low-rise structures into Kenzo Tanges Tokyo Plan residential building.

Section transformation study of Kenzo Tanges Tokyo Plan residential building into El Lissitzkys Horizontal Skyscraper.

#1

Geometrical studies based on the section- and plan transformations of selected precedents.

Tianjin Binhai CBD Master Plan

Chihyi Kuo & Song Qiu

Architects SOM Location Tianjin, China Client Tianjin Municipal People’s Government Program City master plan Building Site 2,500 hectares Area 9.000.000 m²

Project Description

The Tianjin New Binhai Master Plan calls for the redevelopment of a coastal industrial zone and former port into a new center of commerce. The mixed-use district will feature high-rise buildings, historic neighborhoods, and open spaces, along with a comprehensive road and rail system. Source: www.som.com

Die Groszstadt, Otto Wagner

The study of 1911 was Wagner’s response to a competition for the general regulation of Vienna. It reveals a concept of urban growth that would place no limits on the size of cities but would provide an orderly method of expansion through successive additions of districts of 100,000 to 150,000 persons. These were to be located within a great spiderweb system of ring and radial boulevards extending outward from the urban core.

CHIHYI_KUO & QIU_SONG

DIE GROSZSTADT PLAN VIENNA_OTTO WAGNER

DIE GROSZSTADT PLAN VIENNA_OTTO WAGNER

CHIHYI_KUO & QIU_SONG

Wagner, embraced the new modern city, and believed it should represent movement or attached in picturesque ways, but inserted into the urban fabric. In this way, buildings, but the street itself, which can be seen as vast cuts through the urban fabric.

Source: Otto Wagner, The Development Of A Great City

Tribune Tower, Howells & Hood

Built in 1925, the neo-Gothic Tribune Tower was designed by New York architects Raymond Hood and John Mead Howells, who won a contest held by Tribune co-publishers Robert R. McCormick and Joseph Patterson to create the newspaper’s new HQ.

CHIHYI_KUO & QIU_SONG

More than 260 architects from 23 countries responded with designs in a dizzying range of the pre-war period, but several other entries resonated with later generations. Eliel Saari1990s. More radical proposals were submitted by architects such as Walter Gropius, Adolf Loos, Bruno Taut and Max Taut.

Source: Leo Shaw, How the Chicago Tribune Tower Competition changed architecture forever

CHICAGO TRIBUNE

TOWER_JOHN MEAD HOWELLS & RAYMOND HOOD

Lever House, SOM

Midtown Manhattan’s Lever House marked a watershed in U.S. architecture when completed in 1952. Located on the west side of Park Avenue between 53rd and 54th Streets, the coroporate headquarters, with its facade made of blue-green

LEVER HOUSE_SOM

CHIHYI_KUO & QIU_SONG

The structure consists of two intersecting masses, balanced in their proportions but contrasting in shape. A two-story horizontal block containing an open court occupies the court create a large open plaza allowing entrances to the lobby to be located away from

Source: SOM, Lever House

Morphology

Plan transformation study from the Lever House by SOM into a block of Otto Wagners Grosztadt Plan.

Section transformation study from the Lever House by SOM into the Chicago Tribune Tower.

#1

Geometrical studies based on the section- and plan transformations of selected precedents.

Abu Dhabi Financial Centre

David Lee & Noel Ortega

Architects Gensler Location Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates Client Mubadala Development Company Program Business district master plan Building Site 122 hectares Area 300.000 m²

Project Description

Gensler created a master pan and comprehensive design guidelines for this healthcare center, Abu Dhabi sought new standards in the project’s planning and architectural design. The master plan aimed to create a human-scale environment that would maximize connectivity for workers and visitors, while enhancing the opportunity to enjoy a work-life balance.

Source: www.gensler.com

GENSLER ABHUDABI MASTERPLAN

BRASILIA MASTER PLAN BY COSTA

Pilot Plan of Brasilia, Lucio Costa

The plan uses a cross-axial design indicating the possession and conquest of this new place with a cross . The two principal components are the Monumental Axis (east to west) and the Residential Axis (north to south). The Monumental Axis was designated for political and administrative activities. It includes ministries, the national congress, and the television and radio tower. The Residential Axis was intended to contain areas with intimate character and is considered the most important achievment of the plan. It was designed for housing and associated functions such as local commerce, schooling, recreations and churches, constituted of 96 Superblocks (Superquadras) limited to six stories buildings and 12 additional superblocks limited to three stories buildings.

Source: David Epstein, Brasilia - Plan and Reality

Superquadras, Lucio Costa

The Superquadra (Superblock) received its name by the larger size of the city block. Usually city blocks are 100 x 100 metres; in Brasilia, they are approximately 300 x 300 meters. The spaces between them were intended for collective use and commercial buildings, with strip malls located at the entrances of neighborhood units and movie theaters, community centers, churches, and secondary schools sited in what came to be known as “interquadras”.

Source: Fares El-Dahdah, Lucio Costa - Brasilia’s Superquadra

Eixample Barcelona, Ildefons Cerda

The plan is characterized by long straight streets, a strict grid pattern crossed by wide avenues, and square blocks with chamfered corners. The streets broaden at every intersection making for greater visibilty, better ventilation and short-stay parking space. The important needs for inhabitants were incorporated into his plan, which called for markets, schools, hospitals every so many blocks.

in homes, the need for greenery in people’s surroundings, the need for effective waste disposal including good sewerage, and the need for seamless movement of people, goods, energy, and information. Even though the plan faced strong criticism from other architects and conservative parties, those later on participated in the construction process.

Source: Aibar & Bijker, Constructing a City: The Cerda Plan for the Extension Barcelona

Alphabetical City by Steven

“X” Type - Alphabetical City, Steven Holl

Alphabetical City by Steven Holl

Steven Holl studies the twentieth-century urban fabric, particularly the evolution and recurrence of letter-like building forms that sprang from the gridiron plans of American cities at the turn of the century. The collection of buildings catalogued by Holl is ordered according to a three-staged evolution: early contigous walk-up types, plan extrusions and tower types. These letter-like extrusions increased in height to such an extent that sections and elevations predominated over plans.

Source: Steven Holl, Pamphlet Architecture 5, Alphabetical City

Morphology

Plan transformation study from the Edgewater Beach Apartments into Lucio Costas Superquadra.

Plan transformation study from the Edgewater Beach Apartments into the Eixample block of Ildefons Cerda.

#1

Geometrical studies based on the section- and plan transformations of selected precedents.

King Street West

Lamice Halabi & Pariya Mohammaditabar

Architects BIG Location Toronto, Ontarion, Canada Client Westbank Projects Corp., Allied Properties REIT. Program Business district master plan Area 67.355 m² Date 2016

Project Description

The building is organized as a traditional perimeter block with a public plaza in the center. Each pixel is set at the size of a room; rotated 45 degrees from the new, an open community atmosphere in an intimate setting, calming green scenery within a bustling urban context.

Source: www.big.dk

Amsterdam Orphenage, Aldo Van Eyck

The 1960 design focused on a balance of forces to create both a home and a small city on the outskirts of Amsterdam. As a member of CIAM and a founding partner of Team 10, van Eyck held strong opinions on post-war architecture. The building is constructed out of two sizes of modules, a smaller size for the residences, and a larger size for community spaces.

As a critique on early post-war architecture lacking a human element, the Orphanage design sought to design a modern building with a new urban vision from those of his CIAM house must be like a small city if it’s to be a real house, a city like a larger house if it’s to be a real city”. Van Eyck was interested in a nonhierarchical development of cities and in the Orphanage he created a building with many in-between conditions to break down the hierarchy of spaces.

Cube Houses, Piet Blom

With Kubuswoningen or Cube Houses, architect Piet Blom strived to dissolve the attitude that a building has to be recognizable as a house for it to qualify as housing. As a result of a change in government, urban regeneration and housing becam top priorities for the municipal council of Rotterdam. Kubuswoningen was one of a three part development in the Oude Haven area. The entire development contains 270 dwellings, 1000 square meters of catering and shops, and parking for 300 cars.

Blom believed that urban communities should feel like villages. Metaphorically he considered the experience of living in trees; each elevated cube represented a tree and therefore they collectively represented a forest. He realized that elevating inhabitable masses on narrow trunks would maximize public space below while creating ideal views

pedestrian bridge that connects the nearby market to the harbour.

KNSM-Eiland Apartment Building, Hans Kollhoff

The exitsing rectangular plan form of the block, meassuring 170 x 60 metres and including a circular courtyard gradually underwent a morphological transformation: an existing residential building had to be incorporated into the scheme and asymmetrical chunks were cut out of the block. The aim to provide the side of the building with daylight and a view led to the side wing being made to recede further.

The contradiction between courtyard building and a waterfront site had to be resolved, so the the front of the block facing the water was pushed in as to let sunlight from the south north facade while on the other side two-storey high galleries have been hollowed out of the volume.

Source: Kollhoff Architekten

Morphology

Plan transformation study from Aldon van Eycks Orphanage into Hans Kollhoffs KNSM Apartment Building.

Section transformation study from Aldo van Eycks Orphanage into Piet Bloms Cube Houses.

#1

Geometrical studies based on the section- and plan transformations of selected precedents.

Peter Trummer is University Professor at the University of Innsbruck and holds the Chair of the Institute of Urban Design – ioud.

Innsbruck.

All content was produced by the EDGE “Design of Cities” program at the Southern Californian Institute of Architecture - SCI-Arc, for a design research project directed by Peter Trummer and assisted by Sven Winkler in 2017.

Participants: Zhifei Chen, Dila Erten, Lamice Halabi, ChihYi Kuo, David Lee, Pariya Mohammaditabar, Ivan Orquera, Noel Ortega , Ji Qi, Song Qiu, Sarasvati Segura, Jakob Sieder-Semlitsch, Dongwoo Suk, Yifan Zhang

Editor: Peter Trummer

Production: Peter Trummer, Sven Winkler Layout: Peter Trummer, Sven Winkler, Sophie C. Krause

IMPRESSUM 201

IOUD

Univ.-Prof. Peter Trummer Technikerstraße 21c 6020 Innsbruck AUSTRIA