Envisioning possible Kasbahs

What future awaits the Kasbah?

In the initial investigation of the Kasbah, the main focus was on history and the present time zone. Varying from social background to historical background, from Piet Blom himself to structuralism and related theories, from context to floor plans and so on. Learning from history and the present is important to understand the foundations and mindset that were implemented within the Kasbah. But with that in mind, it is also important to use the current obtained knowledge on how the Kasbah might change in the future. The focus of this chapter will be on the possibilities of the Kasbah within the near future, this research process consists of the following four parts:

1. Clarify the purpose of the research; why we should study the Kasbah‘s future and his attributes in temporality

2. The theoretical basis of time and possibility; what form of time exists in the Kasbah and what is possible in the future

3. Determine the research method; what method shows the appearance of time in the Kasbah and what are the boundaries of the research framework

4. Results and conclusions

Analysing the Future

The origin and definition of structuralism includes time.

Structuralism, born in the early 20th century, originated from the Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure’s research on linguistic signs and general linguistics. He creatively proposed that the elements in the system are not isolated and static, but its meanings are in the relationship. The structure is also the principle of this relationship, which has the characteristics of synchronicity and diachronicity. Swiss psychologist Jean Piaget in his book Structuralism also pointed out that structure has three elements: integrity, self-transformation law, and self-regulation. The law of self-transformation is that the structure is not static, but has the ability to be dynamic and transformable and is able to act on new external materials. So, structuralism itself is methodology that includes time, a way of thinking about the world. The study of the Kasbah, which belongs to structuralism, is indispensable as an integral part of time.

First, what the performance of time in architecture?

Time cannot be observed separately from objects and space, it is the reality under the appearance of objects and space. We abstract and freeze series of objects and space sections, and reconstruct regular model based on this. Then this law is the observable manifestation of time; so, the appearance of time changes (unchanging is also special state of change). As Stanford Kwinter said: “All change is change over time; no novelty appears without becoming, and no becoming without novelty.”

Second, what are the features of possibility? As Stanford Kwinter explained the examples of ice cubes and ice crystals used in „time- and difference-generated“ the Kasbah provides logical rule from a dynamic perspective, filling all possibilities with time. All possibilities are similar to reality and cannot exist in isolation; in addition, they also have limitations, and not all possibilities will be realized. Therefore, the resources that we look for must be relevant to reality when studying the possibilities of the future.

Research Process

Based on the theoretical basis of possibilities, we try to study the related resource that can affect the Kasbah’s future from four dimensions and summarize the characteristics of these ideas as basic elements: 1. Piet Blom‘s ideas, 2. Related theories, including Dutch Structuralism, Technological Utopia, Dystopia and Elemental, 3. Users of the Kasbah: Manager and Residents; 4. Other theories and Distant future.

Based on the theoretical basis of time, the appearance of time changes. But changes are endless and the future can’t be predicted precisely, so we need to analyze how and to what extent the Kasbah will change from the current stage and approach the real future in as many forms as possible. So, we try to approach the real future in as many forms as possible, and analyze the pros and cons of each possibility and its reliability.

In fact, studying the future of the Kasbah is not to study its real result, but more to study the rules and relationships. This should be the manifestation of synchronicity and diachronicity in structuralism, and it is also the meaning of temporality in the Kasbah.

Thus, we try to make toolbox, which is “linguistics” dedicatedly designed to studying the possibilities of the Kasbah. We decompose the theories of the research framework into more basic elements. These elements are the vocabularies of the new “linguistics”, and the way these vocabularies are replaced and combined grammar. With this toolbox, everyone can create their countless futures of the Kasbah like organizing sentences.

First, we abstracted the elements based on the characteristics of the theories within the research frame, and organized them into tool box. This tool box contains five aspects: City position (location, surrounding environment, population,etc.), Expectation (social and historical significance,etc.), Personal ideas (concepts of investors, users, managers, and desig - ners,etc.), Architectural layers (organization, plane, structure,etc.) and Site (spatial form and activities).

Result and Conclusion

As mentioned above, studying the future of the Kasbah is not to study its real result, but more to study the rules and relationships. The tool box is the projection of the space of time lines. When we recombine these projections, perhaps the real result is in it. Of course, these individual results, including the real result, are actually not important. Just as structuralism methodology, the toolbox for studying the future of the Kasbah is also dynamic methodology to analyze the temporality. Thus, what the future of the Kasbah, or what is your future of the Kasbah?

For instance, the Kasbah. Its city position is border, expectation social justice which comes from structuralism. The personal idea is the city roof, similar to cube houses, and so on [Fig. 5.2]. Second, with these cards we abstracted from other theories and designs, we can add or replace cards of the same category in the Kasbah with any element. These newly generated results are the possible future of the Kasbah [Fig. 5.3].

For example, if we replace the structure in the Kasbah with the mega-structure of the metabolic theory in the technological utopia, we can get future with multiple floors with houses and public space. Or we can add the expectation: unaided self-help which comes from the SAR system, we can get future that half of which is the main functional room, the other half can be constructed by residents with any shapes and activities. Or through the perspective of residents, removing and combining part of houses can effectively solve the contradiction between high density and suburban area life, and meet the needs of residents to improve the quality of space. Third, in this way, as long as the tool box sufficient, we can generate countless futures. Although these futures have limitations, they are related to reality.

Conclusion

The main question within this research was the following: How did the acceptance of Blom’s envisioned society at the Kasbah develop over time and did Piet Blom’s participatory concept succeed or is it yet to be revealed in a possible future? To conclude such a broad but well rounded question, we’ve tried to split it into certain distinct elements which are the foundations of Blom’s design within the Kasbah. These distinct elements served as a basis in which, the acceptance of Blom’s envisioned society at the Kasbah and the fact if Piet Blom’s participatory concept succeeded, played a central role. By looking at this subject from different angles and scales, a wide view can be created in the way Blom envisioned this neighborhood. It proved to be successful in some aspects but also quite unsuccessful in other parts, these points will be elaborated further.

To answer the first part of the main research it was necessary to investigate Bloms views on society and take a look back into his past. Coming from his childhood neighborhood, the collective character of the society that Blom envisioned seems like a nostalgic notion in his work and logical influence. Yet through the conducted research it became obvious that the community of residents at Kasbah seemingly is more of a distorted version of what Blom imagined it to be. Although the Kasbah isn’t often regarded as a successful example of a good functioning public space nowadays, Bloms architectural concept still opens up space for his image of a collective society within the Kasbah.

When looking at the urban context of the Kasbah, a direct comparison could be made with a later design of Piet Blom where the same design vision was implemented; The Cube Houses in Rotterdam. Although both designs show a lot of similarities in scale and concept, a big difference in its use of the public space can be noticed. While the public space within the Cube Houses is well- functioning and used, the public space within the Kasbah lost its original power due to its urban location. Located near a city edge instead of a city centre plays a huge role in how well the public space is used and received. If we are going to envision the future of the Kasbah, then the location of the building in the urban context should play a part in the consideration of the vision. As this was originally designed to be placed in the city centre of Hengelo, it shows that Blom’s vision can work but is dependent on its urban context.

This also shows within the public space of the Kasbah itself, where Blom enables users to experience the characteristics of different space types through a variety of specific architectural space processing techniques to make the space atmosphere more prominent. The residential bottom overhead layer is relatively low, and this kind of space gives a person a strong sense of oppression. Due to the limitation of the height of the overhead layer at the bottom, people will be reluctant to stay here because of the dim environment. Which will cause a decrease in space utilization rate and can only be used as a place for parking and an aisle. Therefore, considering the temporality, the designer should combine the overhead with the facilities to promote communication between residents. Also because of the uprising car use and the need for parking spaces, where a big part of the public space is nowadays used for parking. The urban context had a direct impact in the way this public space was used, and thus the ‘city roof’ became an obstacle rather than a solution. People lost their connection with the public space and this made it lose its original power, the original shops disappeared because of the lack of patronage and this impacted the livelihood of the public space in a negative way.

Within the dwellings, Blom thought of multiple ways to make them unique and very user-adaptable. The first floor was mainly an open floor plan which ensured its residents could adjust it to the way they liked it most, Blom wanted them to feel at home within this mainly repetitive floor plan design. This adaptability also ensures that these dwellings have a longer lifespan by their ability to match the current life standards with just some small adjustments. Another intriguing aspect is the fact that some of these dwelling types can be combined to create even bigger dwellings by strategic breakthroughs in house-dividing walls. Blom tried to predict a future situation in which these bigger dwellings might be needed and already took precautions within the design for an easy transition. Blom tried to enhance the social aspect idea into the floor plans by creating direct connections between dwellings themself and the public space. He designed direct ways for social interactions between neighbours which originally worked when the neighbourhood was completed. The main reason why this worked is the fact that future residents were interviewed beforehand to make sure they would fit with the current residents and the general way of living together. Nowadays this way of connecting residents together with direct design choices isn’t working anymore, was it a dream idea or rather only working under strict preset circumstances?

When we talk about the possible future and temporality of architecture, the relationship between time and space takes a central role. Time, as an abstract and dynamic concept, cannot be simply described by a static single architectural space. In fact, time does not exist in the past, present, and future nodes. Time is only understood in relation to a process or a phenomenon. The duration of architecture exists in one time and place is a relational notion. The time of one‘s being is provisional; it is a circumstance with an adopted aim for the time being.1 So we did not try to statically analyze the state of the Kasbah in one time and place, we use a dynamic – exceeds the provisional – interpretation of the temporality of architecture – the methodology of linguistics.

We demonstrate the Kasbah‘s temporality dynamically and linguistically. Linguistics (the origin of structuralism) is also an abstract and dynamic concept. Generation, organization, communication, inheritance, and transformation cannot be performed in one time and place. Its meaning also exists in a relational notion. So we metaphysically extracted the basic elements of the Kasbah in social background, history, surrounding environment, architectural elements, related theories, users, etc., to show its synchronicity. Meanwhile, we showed its diachronic aspects, comparing its changes in the form of video, and reorganizing the elements in the form of a toolbox to perform its future. As a result, we performed the concept of time contained in its design theory, the performance of time on the levels of culture, history, social meaning, space, users, and activities, as well as the relationship between various elements in the time dimension, and so on. These are projections of the time dimension in other dimensions; the complete set of these projections is the Kasbah‘s temporality.

But it also has limitations due to this methodology of projecting presentation time. The more elements in the collection, the more accurate time can be obtained, but the collection can never be collected completely. It‘s like doing a physical experiment by enumerating. We can know the conclusion under a certain static situation, but we can‘t conclude a general law. Although we can calculate specific points and feel the law through numerous data. In addition, this research method is too limited to linguistics or structuralism. Although structuralism includes temporality, temporality is not the only element; conversely, temporality does not only exist in structuralism and linguistics. This research method can only see a certain level of time. Therefore, the research in this article only provides an idea for performing temporality.

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