Post-No Man's Land | The Story

+ + +

Post‐No Man’s Land Project {with a focus on digital fabrication}

/////////////////////////// the story

_Stud. Arch Irina Bogdan

The Post‐No Man’s Land Project _______[with a focus on digital fabrication]

How it all began: The Post‐No Man’s Land project is a personal study that followed up after the No Man’s Land workshop that took place in the spring of 2010. In order to place the readers in the proper scenery I’ll write the plot of the story.

Everything started as a challenge during the 3 week long workshop that took place in Nicosia, Cyprus.

The theme was to come up with ideas for rehabilitating the fenced city of Famagusta, found on the Green line between the Greek and the Turkish side of Cyprus.

The workshop was organized by Pavlos Fereos, Alkis Dikaios and Kostas Grigoriadis and it gathered together students from the Architectural Association in London, the Dessau Institute of Architecture, the Why Factor: TU Delft and the National Technical Institute of Athens. || WORKSHOP SCOPE

How can one practice parametrics when no parameters are to be found, when no variables can be set?

How can one deal with absence or predict the upcoming presence? Which rehabilitation plans can be implemented for an abandoned city whose residents want to return to their original households and built environment?

Existing Situation Every four or five years since 1974 the issue of opening the abandoned and fenced city, that lies inside the Green line in Cyprus, is brought forward. This sparks on the island a recurring, yet fruitless, discussion with government and state institutions on one side and the refugees, individually or collectively, on the other.

The discussion is based on the argument whether the city should be returned right away in its current condition to its inhabitants or it should be kept fenced for some years more in order to be restored and rebuild, since after 35 years of abandonment virtually all its infrastructure, if not the whole built environment, is not reusable and beyond repair.

Engineers consider it an ideal chance to re‐build a whole city with “proper” urban planning and infrastructure that any other thriving city wouldn’t allow. Unlike the case of Brasilia, the fact of an empty city that its inhabitants are relocated merely a few kilometers away creates an unprecedented opportunity to create an innovative urban space for an already existing and longing to return population.

The rightful inhabitants on the other side, who have been waiting for decades to return, bring forth the argument that they want to return to the same city they left (in an instant moment) and not to a new, maybe “improved”, but non‐familiar city. Their right to return is safeguarded by their right to property.

This workshop is based on the hypothetical event of the return of the abandoned and fenced for 35 years city of Famagusta to its former inhabitants.

Workshop ends, personal study follows: After the workshop had ended, I used the No Man’s Land as my own playground. I came up with the idea of creating a series of public spaces that would connect the existing harbor in the north with the former orange tree orchards that can be found towards the south of Famagusta. The reason for doing that is to develop the economy in that area through commercial routs and the environmental friendly industry of orange tree products.

_Digital Design In order to show how the spaces inside the fenced area relate with the harbor and with the northern part of the town, I used a diagrammatic method of mapping the importance of the land by taking in account: 1. Empty, unbuilt areas of the orchards; 2. Derelict, unusable constructions that are built on private properties ; 3. Important buildings that are meant to be kept even after the fence disappears; I used a map that shows the importance of the land by using levels of brightness: the most important buildings are black, the private properties with constructions that are currently in a poor state are gray and the orchards and empty areas are white. The algorithm used reads the levels of brightness on the map, translates the map into a predetermined grid in Rhino and on each point of the grid it places a square that has the area of the brightness formerly read.

Wanting to have a more fluid space, without interacting with any of the private properties, I connected all the orchards and unbuilt areas and pointed out the main roads in the city. This revealed a pretty nice inspirational peri‐central‐urban network. _Q: The next question raised was: how to organize all this empty space? _A: The answer to this question came from reconfiguring the logics of the town. The priority was to find the closest paths from the most important buildings to the peri‐central‐urban orchard. What would be the advantage of this anyway? Well, that would be: the visual pleasure, acoustic relaxation, fresh air and an effective commercial transportation route.

After calculating all the proximity paths, the next step was to juxtapose a Voronoi diagram onto the site in order to model the newly created urban space. As starting points for the diagram I used the important buildings and the centers of the empty areas. After hybridizing the result with the existing urban tissue I focused my attention on the border line between the ex‐fenced city and the harbor. There I pictured how an urban infrastructural knot would look like and how it would properly function. To do that, the solution I chose was to use a “pseudo”‐swarming algorithm that would deliver an organic solution for the local traffic management. The result was an administrative center with a working infrastructure underneath.

_Pro’s and Con’s To be frank, the idea doesn’t seem to be extraordinary easy to follow. That was confirmed by a hand full of teachers that were supposed to pay attention for several minutes at the presentation of this project.

Well, the challenge was quite tough since I myself was more interested in the fabrication of the physical model whereas they were more focused on the concept.

As a confession I have to admit that the whole process was actually somehow dictated by the physical model. Step by step, with each layer of information produced, another layer of questions arouse.

_Fabrication 1st stage: preparing the site The first step was to prepare the digital 3D model, calculate the proper height of each building on site and prepare the files for the laser cutter. In order to suggest the fact that we’re dealing with a ghost city, I chose to use transparent plexiglass for the existing site. The fun part began when I had to glue the 1/1/2 mm plexi “houses” on the site. Thanks to my family we managed to glue most of the pieces in one night. What was even funnier was the fact that some of the buildings were several stories high so we had to stack several layers of plastic one on top of the other and glue them afterward. Luckily the acid’s vapors inspired all of us throughout the whole night.

2nd stage: pointing out the site analysis The next file sent at the laser cutter was the pixilated map showing the (1) empty spaces, (2) the private properties and (3) the main roads. This map was placed on the bottom of the transparent site in order to be read from above as yet another layer of information. It took an incredible amount of time to laser cut a thin, 600/700mm sheet of cardboard but the results were rather exciting. The guys at the laser cutter were wondering whether the machine could handle it or not. After checking the files again, we realized that the problem arose when exporting the 2D files from Rhino to CAD as DWG’s. Even after deleting all the double curves in Rhino, Autocad somehow found thousands of overlapped tiny lines and because there were also some filleted curves in the model, it proved to be even worse. Exporting the DWG’s as simple lines and arcs did the trick eventually.

3rd stage: preparing the site The proposal for the public spaces and orchards was 3D printed. In the model you can actually see the three existing typologies of public spaces: tree plantations, plazas and green energy plants. The plantations are represented as holes, the plazas are dug into the fabric and the eco‐ energy plants are lifted above the ground as pavilions. I organized them in such a way that they generate flows and connections among the important buildings in town. Preparing the model for the 3D printer was an adventure in itself. After spending about 2 days working on developing the digital model I finally sent the files to be checked by Alex, the STL master. Obviously Rhino’s implemented system for checking the normals of the faces isn’t very compatible with the 3D printer’s own software. You can imagine the hours and days of continuous checking, modifying and rechecking that followed. The not so pleasant fact was that I was supposed to split the model in several pieces because otherwise the fragile powder would have most probably broken instantly under its own weight. So I chose to split it according to the level curves of the terrain.

That was meant to make “the placing on the site model” a little easier. After Alex had finally sent me his approval I was more than eager to see the results. I have to admit it was rather exciting to see all those printed pieces of the model lying down on the table at Alex’s workshop.

The excitement lasted all the way back home.

After finally getting home, I stopped myself in front of the site model in a ceremonial way, opened the box with the 3D prints and took them out carefully. I placed the first piece on the model and I realized something went a little wrong. After placing the second piece I figured it out: the models were at different scale. Up to this day I’m not sure what the weak link was but it certainly was surprisingly funny.

Right now I’m looking forward to go on with this project. Fingers crossed, spirit’s up and enthusiasm well fed since on February 2011 I will present FOR SURE the final result in front of a delightful committee so that I’ll finally be able to call myself officially an architect.

I want to thank Atelier 13 and Spot Design for helping me with the technical tools and machines.

Thumbs up!

You can find more information and photos at: W|E|B http://one‐to‐many.blogspot.com http://one‐to‐many.blogspot.com/p/experiment‐lab‐exercises‐scraps‐and.html http://www.flickr.com/photos/39992150@N05/sets/72157624247260895/show/ http://www.flickr.com/photos/39992150@N05/sets/72157624496745968/show/