mega hearths
the landscapes of power, and the hearth in your hand Research plan for the 2015 Branner Traveling Fellowship
the hearth in your hand We burn more coal now than at any point in
Banishing fire from our homes in the rush
human history – far more than in the 1700s,
toward an experience economy has not
when daily life in London took place amidst
decreased our dependency on combus-
an all-encompassing cloud of toxic coal
tion. As everything from news to banking
dust (Freese 166).
to socializing moves from the seemingly inefficient physical realm into the clean,
The electrical grids that power our world
paperless, and worry-free cloud, electrical
today remain stubbornly dependent on the
use – fueled mainly by the burning of coal –
17th-century technology of burning coal;
continually increases. Every minute of every
and the combustion that fuels modern life
day, Google searches alone send a ton of
has disappeared from view, making our built
CO2 into the atmosphere due to the electri-
environment illegible with respect to energy.
cal production needed to make them pos-
Massive centrally controlled power plants
sible: 500,000 tons of CO2 per year – just
transmit fire to us in the form of electricity.
for Google searches. With every ton of CO2 come several tons of toxic ash, carried out of
The hearth – the heart of homes for most
power plants by the trainload, and vast land-
of human history – has all but disappeared.
scapes stripped to source the coal. Every
Apartment leases often prohibit even the
swipe of an iPhone, combined with millions
burning of candles and incense, much less
of others, literally moves mountains.
a cook fire; many municipalities prohibit fireplaces in new construction. With internet
In order to understand the massive energy
news, email, and applications like Face-
sources that power the glowing screens
book, activities that were once highly place-
we hold in our hand and the comforts we
specific – often centered around the hearth
enjoy within our architecture, in order to
– now take place in the palm of your hand.
re-connect and incorporate our ephemeral
technological cloud with the by-products of electrical production, I will visit landscapes of energy production around the world – particularly those megahearths with a direct relationship with architectural program and materials. But this research goes far beyond observing the giant power plants. Since billions of people around the world live without connections to the megahearth grid, there is much to be learned from a review of the dynamics that lead to centralized versus de-centralized power. Indeed, the future of alternative power sources my lie in much less centralized collective hearths. I will
the material flows and aesthetics of their daily lives. I will explore some historical examples of this while I survey the architecture and landscapes associated with contemporary coal production and its by-products. I will identify architectural design responses that reconnect us with the fires that fuel our digital world on the cusp of this epochal turning point in human history – peak coal. Finally, I will design responses that hold promise for the future of architecture as it continues to evolve in concert with the virtual, and as it adapts to a less centralized world of distributed energy alternatives.
also study material flows and by-product streams, from the use of fly ash for cement production to gypsum, that comes from coal effluent scrubbing procedures, for drywall production; and will collaborate with researchers studying these flows in order to find new ways to close the material loop. Indigenous cultures lived with their smoke and ash. These were not waste products at all, but were resources incorporated into Drax Power Station – a coal fired plant near Leeds, U.K. Like other megahearths, Drax provides the cheapest and most reliable electricity in its region.
research methodology My research is organized according to the
3. Much of the world still relies on the trad-
following logic:
itional 3-stone hearth and other wood burning methods for cooking and heat-
1. I am first researching the largest
ing. This research would be incomplete
meghearths, with a focus on coal as an
without a first-hand understanding of
extension of the domestic hearth. As the
these methods, as well as a serious
preferred method or generating cheap
effort to learn from these traditions.
electricity, coal fuels more architectural
I will study areas where hearths still exist
program than any other kind of combust-
(mostly in non-industrialized countries)
ion. Humanity also stands at the cusp of
and seek learning beyond the official
the peak production of coal, for the
Development rhetoric that condemns
first time in history, making this an impor-
such methods as backward.
tant historic moment for research. The landscapes and energy flows involved
4. If coal is on it’s way out, then what is
in this research will start with coal, and
next? Large scale plans are underway for
branch out from there.
entirely different kinds of centralized en ergy production such as tidal. To under
2. Considering that alternative energy
stand the implications for architecture and
sources will increasingly replace the
design, I look at the future both central-
electrical production that coal has prev-
ized and decentralized alternatives.
iously provided, it will be important to look at how a hearthless (hearth-free) architecture emerged with the centralization of coal powered energy in the industrial era. This will involve study of examples modern architecture that were made possible by large scale electrical production
deliverables This research serves goals that will bring
enriches my own future inquiries, writing and
important clarity to my thesis work in 2016
design and that it can be effectively shared
by developing relationships with collabora-
with others, I propose the following deliver-
tors in key places around the world such as
ables. This list, however, is open to adjust-
the University of Cambridge and yet-to-be
ment based upon my planned consultations
identified locations in Asia. It brings together
with faculty before and during the fellowship
a number my design interests, including
period, and based upon new discoveries
grids (as geometric constructions, as systems
and information that emerge through the
of control, and as facilitators of conveyance
research.
and convenience), electrical technology,
• material
samples and analysis to spark new
industrial infrastructure as design inspiration,
and different ways of connecting materially
and the juxtaposing of handcrafted methods
with energy production and use
with high tech digital tools. Having minored in sustainable design as an undergraduate, I also have a keen interest in interrogating
• professional
quality, photo essays for
physical exhibition or publication • a
resource book that features design (art
issues of sustainability. This research aims to
and architecture) related to, or emerging
contribute to advancing the work of col-
from, the four areas of research
leagues and others with a stake in under-
• interviews
with experts in materials flows,
standing the design implications and social
material science, culture and architectural
production that accompany shifts in energy
and design history
production from locally/individually distributed to centralized, or from centralized to distributed. To ensure that this research
• commitments
collaboration
from contacts to ongoing
research itinerary
Research locations follow the path of the contemporary and historic centralization of energy production into the megahearths. This corresponds to the historic flow of coal exploitation – with veins of inquiry located in the coal belts of the United Kingdom, United States and China; and travel will branch out into the contemporary landscapes of energy production within each region. The focus is on energy production that serves the programs of architecture, not necessarily energy for transportation. Additionally, these locations will serve as bases for travel to locations of the hearthless architecture of modernity, and areas where new energy projects provide insight into the future of both centralized and decentralized alternative power production and its implications for architecture. Estimated Cost: $35,000 USD
DEC
Arizona Iowa Ohio Pennsylvania West Virginia the Deep South
JAN
FEB
Amazon Basin Congo Burkina Faso Mali
MAR
Cameroon Nigeria Mumbai Dubai
n
APR
MAY
Silicon Valley San Francisco LA Berkeley
JUN
Cambridge, UK London Edinburgh Leeds
JUL
AUG
Northern France Belgium The Netherlands Italy Germany Poland Czech Republic
SEPT
OCT
NOV
Shanxi Province South Korea Sichuan Province Japan Guizhou Province Yunnan Province Taiwan Berkeley
megahearths Centralized Power and the Infrastructure of the Grid
Navajo Power Station Arizona, USA. Largest coal fired plant in the U.S. Google Server Farm Iowa, USA Eastern Ohio Coal Fields Ohio, USA Hard Anthracite Coal Fields Eastern Pennsylvania Hard Anthracite Coal Fields Eastern Pennsylvania Pittsburgh Birthplace of US coal revolution, the Pittsburgh Seam West Virginia Mountain top removal Plant Scherer Most polluting power plant in the U.S. Silicon Valley Drivers of data-driven power use University of Cambridge Collaborate with material scientist Rob Wallach, Cambridge University Senior Lecturer in Materials Science and Metallurgy and Fellow of King’s College Cambridge, to explore use of energy byproducts in building materials. Conduct research in the main Cambridge library. Cambridge Museum of Technology Historical museum in coal fired pumping station typical of 19th century. Seek information on growth of coal industry in England. London Birthplace of the industrial revolution. Large historic coal power plants Newcastle The original coal fields the powered the British Empire, starting in the 1500s. Visit Northumberlandia, reclaimed strip mine park. Thorpe Marsh Power Station Visit new power station that replaced decommissioned and demolished power plant similar to Drax. Could represent the future of Drax.
Drax Power Station Near Leeds. One of the largest coal power plants in England. Cockenzie Power Station, Edinburgh, Scotland Beloved by some local residents and celebrated in poetry and artwork, Cockenzie emits millions of tons of fly ash that are used to create new land fill along the Firth of Forth. Paris, France Meet with architectural historian Caroline Maniaque-Benton to collaborate on ideas about the effects of coal and megahearths on architecture and design. Maubeuge, France Southern tip of Europe’s historic coal/rust belt. Travel with Architect Jean-Pierre Gougeau, former planner grappling with the coal-pocked landscape of northeastern France. Charleroi, Belgium Near Maubeuge, continuing northeast on Europe’s historic coal seam. Visit abandoned coal power plant in Charleroi. Visit the “hiercheuses mounds,” mountains of slag deposited by indentured women workers in the 19th century. Delft, Netherlands Meet with Anneke Abhelakh at the Berlage Center for Advanced Studies in Architecture and Urban Design to connect with designers and researches involved with Ghana project and other research which may inform my research. Central and East Germany Multiple strip mining sites, together with land reclamation efforts deemed successful. Eco village with Medieval heritage being moved to make room for strip mining. Rome, Italy A tour of Ancient Roman ruins will provide insight into early efforts to cenralize and distribute architectural comfort in the baths, fountains and other infrastructure. Belchetow Power Station, Poland Largest thermal power station in Europe, and third largest in the world.
Czech Strip Mining and Coal Plants Newly re-opened brown coal extraction. Datong, Shanxi Province, China Massive coal industry and coal fired power plants fuel official high-tech zone. Tuoketuo Power Station, Inner Mongolia, China Second largest coal plant in the world. Yunnan Province, China Region with massive coal industry and many coal extraction related accidents and deaths.
Taichung Power Plant Longjing, Taichung, Taiwan Largest coal fired power plant in the world. South Korea: Boryeong Power Station Hadong Power Station Sihwa Lake Tidal Station South Korea imports 97% of its coal, but still maintains very large coal fired plants. Also the location of the world’s largest tidal power generation station.
Sichuan Province, China Important coal industry and high tech sector.
hearthless modern design’s freedom from fire
Schindler House, West Hollywood, CA Important design moves relating to the hearth. Hearths and rooms split between inside and outside. Los Angeles, CA Tour of iconic modern architecture, including work by Schindler and Neutra, as well as case study houses in Hollywood hills. Char-Broil, Columbus, GA One of the world’s largest manufacturers of gas grills, outdoor accessories and leisure products has been in business since the 19th century, and began with charcoal grills after manufacturing cannon in the Civil War. A significant player in the development of modern notions of carefree
leisure relating to the hearth – outside. They switched from charcoal to propane grills decades ago, and now sell a popular line of electric patio grills. Will meet with my contacts there (former employer) to seek archival images and information about developing outdoor hearths in the mid century, as indoor hearths faced extinction. Tour of Scandinavia To delve deeply into the development of design in the hearth-optional world of modernity. Dubai Contemporary icons of hearth-free living.
off the grid the local hearth
Much of the world still relies on the traditional 3-stone hearth and other wood burning methods for cooking and heating. This research would be incomplete without a first-hand understanding of these methods, as well as a serious effort to learn from these traditions. I will study areas where hearths still exist (mostly in non-industrialized countries) and seek learning beyond the official Development rhetoric that condemns such methods as backward. These portions of the research will include travel to: Amazon Basin Congo Burkina Faso Mali Cameroon Ghana Nigeria Mumbai
alternatives a future without flames
Sihwa Lake Tidal Station South Korea imports 97% of its coal, but still maintains very large coal fired plants. Also the location of the world’s largest tidal power generation station. Alta Wind Farm, Southern California Second largest wind farm in the world. Islay Limpet, Islay Scotland World’s first commercial wave power station.
bibliography 1. Amato, Joseph Anthony. Dust: a History of the Small and the Invisible. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000. 2. Freese, Barbara. Coal: a Human History. Cambridge, MA: Perseus Pub, 2003. 3. Gissen, David. Subnature: Architecture’s Other Environments: Atmospheres, Matter, Life. 1st ed. New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2009. 4. Pariser, Eli. The Filter Bubble: What the Internet Is Hiding from You. New York: Penguin Press, 2011. 5. “Revealed: the environmental impact of Google searches”, n.d. http://evanmills.lbl.gov/commentary/docs/times.pdf. 6. “WHO | Household Air Pollution and Health”, n.d. http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs292/en/. Note: For the purpose of demonstrating that electronic information flow has significant material effects, and in the interest of illustrating this with a credible conservative estimate of CO2 emissions, I have used the figure of 500,000 metric tons of CO2 emitted per year for web searches – a figure less than halfway between Google’s estimate (about 163,223 metric tons of CO2 per year) and the lowest amount that researchers put forth (bibliography item #5). Those research models place the minimum at about 1,000,000 metric tons, and sometimes arrive at figures many times higher.
portfolio application for John K. Branner Traveling Fellowship 2015
arch 202 Spring 2014 | Instructor: Ron Rael
Drax ideogram: study models, photo collage and digital rendering (modo) – 18”x 24”
DRAX It is 2036 in East Central England. A band of survivors finally occupies the massive Drax Power Station, one of the world’s largest coal fired power plants. Repurposing the twelve massive cooling towers to house their community, they build a network of scaffolding to support clusters of gypsum cocoons within the thin concrete skin of the towers. The gypsum material is mined from the site, where mountains of the white powder piled up as part of the effluent scrubbing operation. As coal burning gradually powers down at the plant, this community occupies the gypsum cocoons and peels away the concrete skin of the towers to allow light and air into their dwellings, where they raise sheep, make sheep cheese and architectural wool felt, and produce hand-crafted panels of digitally designed 3-dimensional gypsum board to fit the complex curvature of their cocoon dwellings.
Drax occupiers in struggles with police prior to successful occupation. Study models, in photo collage with re-touched media imagery.
Farmers herd sheep into the ground floor of the cooling towers in the evenings. The towers offer protection from predators and shelter from the elements.
Drax site perspective visualization. Models in photo composite. 22� x 11.5�
Gypsum slurry sprayed into steam column solidifies on structural beams and columns to form rough caves for occupation and sheep cheese production. Cooling tower height 350 ft. Models at 1:300 scale.
Drax partial site plan (not to scale). Towers section cut at 150 ft. from ground.
Drax partial site plan (not to scale). Towers section cut at 150 ft. from ground.
Gypsum slurry injection machine provides the means to created faceted complex-curved drywall and reinforced gypsum panels from instructions derived from 3D digital models.
Sectional model of cocoon dwellings at 1/8 inch scale. Section cut from core of cooling tower after concrete skin has peeled away along slope at left of lower-right photo.
arch 202 Fall 2013 | a collaboration with Jun Li and Alex Scoefiled | Instructor: Mark Anderson (with Nicholas de Monchaux)
RICHMOND, CA Data-Driven Urban Scheme A site centered at UC Berkeley’s Richmond Field Station forms the context for this plan. Our team evaluated the site and used data (population growth projections, sea level rise, and estimated areas for wildlife migrations and movements) combined with a Grasshopper folding script to generate possibilities for remapping the site to accommodate large increases in population while preserving and expanding wildlife areas. The concept is that “big data” is treated as a force of nature. We treat its imperatives as a given while balancing these with equal weight given to data about the natural ecosystems. My role: The entire team collaborated extensively on concepts at every stage, and I participated and contributed actively to this process. I generated the massing script (with Professor De Monchaux) drew the base map layer, assembled the map layers, applied color and line weights and refined the rendering. I also produced the photo visualizations on the following page. I worked on the metal work for models and helped the other team members in conceptualizing the best fabrication and assembly methods for the models and the final presentation display. This was a highly collaborative project where each team member provided strong input on each element.
Site map. Actual size 72” x 60” at 1:2000 scale. Map shows projected 50-year sea level rise along with daylighted streams and wildlife corridors connecting the bay to the hills. Data clouds are represented by the hair-like structures that swirl on the plan view and rise above the massings on the elevation. Diagrams at right explain each layer of data that is combined on the main map.
Cast resin data clouds (above) map the scripted requirements for density on the site. Team mates provided the cast resin concept, while I provided presentation and material/fabrication work. A field of data represented by steel pins (below) magnetizes density data, folding a duplicate of the existing urban fabric into potential massings for the new city (one of six models, each made of layered acrylic, steel pins, laser cut wood, and CNC milled poplar on saw-cut layered plywood base).
data and the sublime
Digital visualization, overhead view facing north. Line work represents that interweaving of conflicting data priorities – data on ecosystem needs requests more space for habitat, while population growth demands greater density and commercial development. Both sets of priorities must negotiate with a massive site of unremediable contamination in the center of the area, which we chose to highlight as an ecosystem memorial park. Potential building masses grow within the gaps in the data, and along the de-commissioned and tidal flooded 580 freeway.
The photo visualization is my Photoshop and rendering work. I used data lines and conceptual input provided by my team members.
memorializing nature and toxicity
The central park connects the bay to the hills with wildlife corridors that traverse the toxic site. Raised landscapes allow passage over the concrete and gravel-capped site which sustains a minimal chaparral ecosystem.
The photo visualization is my Photoshop and rendering work. I used data lines and conceptual input provided by my team members.
arch 200b Spring 2013 | Instructors: Danelle Guthrie, Melanie Kaba, Rudabeh Pakravan
PORT CITY HOSTEL The 5-story hostel uses recycled and repurposed materials to maintain compatibility with the industrial neighborhood. Stacked volumes shift orientation to maintain views of historic Union Machine works, to differentiate the new construction from the former work yard site, and to accommodate a sense of the former spirit of the place.
Conceptual site diagram and photo collage map conditions: abandoned lots in the vicinity together with relationship to nearby container port.
arch 200a Fall 2012 | Instructors: Mark Anderson and Kyle Steinfeld
STRAWBERRY CANYON VELODROME and DANCE STUDIO A welded steel mesh suspends the velodrome track above the creek and surrounding canyon in order to minimize the building footprint touching the ground. The track passes through, and opens into, the dance studio building, where it is also suspended above the road.
Study model 1/64� scale. Laser-cut e-flute and scraps.
Research Paper
This paper benefits from mentoring in writing and research
provided by Professor Greg Castillo, who I have worked with for two semesters, and during the summer of 2014, to develop my writing and research skills and methods.
In this paper I expand and develop ideas that I previously
engaged with in Architecture As Persuasive Rhetoric in Ancient Rome,
my final term paper for Architecture 170A during my undergraduate work at UC Berkeley, with Professor Andrew Shanken as instructor and Eliana Abu Hamdi, PhD Candidate as GSI and writing coach.
Designing Duality Into Nature By 200 AD, the architects and planners of the Roman Empire had successfully transformed architecture and urban form into tools of persuasive rhetoric to advance the ideological agendas of the empire. This constituted a critical change in design thinking that had incubated for several hundred years beginning during the time of Socrates in 450 BC. In this formative period for Western culture, philosophers, leaders, and the designers who deployed their ideals had adopted a radical new ideological approach to their physical environment that led to this transformation and remains embedded in Western culture today. The transformations of architecture and urban form alone differentiated this culture technologically from what came to be known as “pagan” or “barbarian.” But the new ideological approach that drove these transformations, more than the particular design techniques themselves, ensured that this culture would continue the oppositional, extraction-‐based relationship with nature that we now find embedded in the ethos of modern culture. In the origins of Western culture, the philosophical conception of the human relationship to nature – and movement through it – changed from a spontaneous and personal dialogue in Ancient Greece to an increasingly prescribed and linear progression in Ancient Rome. This began to divide the natural world conceptually into a duality of desirable and undesirable natures. From Rome into modern times, this duality drove ever-‐increasing aspirations toward the creation of controlled, desirable environments – uniform, clean, predictable; which ironically and tragically
fueled an ever-‐increasing proliferation of undesirable environments outside the reach of this control – the nonconforming, dirty, unpredictable elements that mark our current crises. Design, especially architectural and urban design, deployed its power to affect this change. Indeed, without design’s ability to shape perception and drive desire, the rich and powerful from Ancient Rome to Silicon Valley would surely have lacked the power to sway thought and action toward this splintering of nature into good and bad, featured and hidden, that has served the Western wealth agenda so well.
The pre-‐Aristotelian Greeks had accepted their place and participation in
nature as a given – something to respond to and exist within. But by 450 BC, even as they revered and engaged with nature, they had already begun to see it as a tool. “Where do you come from…my friend, and where are you going?” There is an implicit presumption of mobility in Socrates’ opening question to Phaedrus in Plato’s Phaedrus: A Dialogue (Plato 1), and an acknowledgement that place matters. The dialogue goes on to discuss rhetoric. The Greek philosophers were greatly concerned with how spoken (rhetorical) and written (discursive) communication could be scientifically analyzed and understood as a means to gain control over another person’s perceptions and beliefs – to understand, as Socrates says “through what means [the soul] can be acted upon…what kind of speech can be relied on to create belief in one soul and disbelief in another, and why” (Plato 110). The Romans appropriated both of these ideas – the idea of mobility as a means of gaining knowledge, and the idea of rhetoric as a powerful mode of control. Embedded in their approach to rhetoric, and also appropriated from the Greeks, came the idea of
place as a mnemonic device. But the Romans not only used places and movement through them as mnemonic devices, they actively shaped their environments to express an information agenda that advanced the power of the empire. In so doing, they demonstrated their ideological disposition for shaping space (including nature) to fit their agenda. The Greeks’ reverence for nature had given rise to a sense that natural environments, however revered, were separate and distinct from human-‐ made environments. The Romans took this further, introducing the idea of environmental control as an extension of political and economic power.
Imperial Rome adopted the well-‐established Greek theories of Rhetoric –
architecture as a mnemonic tool, movement (the peripatetic walk) as a means of learning and gathering information, and rhetoric as a tool for mental and emotional control – and inscribed those ideas into the design of their built environments. They refined their architecture and urban plans into a medium for communication by employing a high degree of order, careful sequencing of symbols, and precise delineation of pathways and enclosures. These intentions – which correlate to specific aspects of Greek rhetorical training – overlay the pragmatic features of their civil engineering and architecture.
The Roman training course on rhetoric, written in the Ad Herennium and
derived from earlier Greek texts, instructs the speaker to use architecture as a mnemonic device for remembering the points of a speech. As described by Yates: The artificial memory is established from places and images…The locus is a place easily grasped by the memory, such as a house, an intercolumnar space, a corner, an arch, or the like. Images are forms, marks or simulacra of what we wish to remember…Those who have learned mnemonics can set in places what they have heard and deliver it from memory. ‘For the places are very much like wax tablets or papyrus, the images like the letters, the arrangement
and disposition of the images like the script, and the delivery is like the reading.’ (Yates 6) In the peripatetic walk, mobility is about positioning oneself in the correct place in which to understand information. While the Romans emulated the Greeks in many ways, their unique adaptation of the Greek relationship to place is revealed in the way in which they reviled what they saw as the Greek preoccupation with the intangible: an inattentiveness to their immediate physical surroundings. Indeed, leading Roman statesmen of the late second and early first centuries BC, such as Crassus and Catulus, discussed at length their concern about whether the Greek philosophers understood the importance of conducting their ideological conversations in the correct physical setting, the “appropriate place” (O’Sullivan 133). Both admiring and critical of the Greek belief in place as integral to thought, the Romans introduced a more regimented, controlled notion of how a person relates to place. The Greeks’ acceptance of randomness and serendipity gave way to the Romans’ calculated control and careful manipulation. Mobility was still a means of gaining knowledge, but the Romans took an interest in controlling that process in much the same way that the Greeks sought to use rhetoric to manipulate thought. Rhetoric and place began to merge. In this way the Romans went one step further. Instead of memory and knowledge being prompted from the locus of place as the Ad Herennium advises, Roman designers inscribed into space the particular cues, for others to follow, that served the Roman agenda.
Places eventually became, for the Romans, components of a system of mass
communication – rhetoric writ in stone, architecture as mass media – in their effort to maintain hegemonic control over an empire. The presumption of superior
knowledge about “right” and “wrong” places, evidenced in their criticisms of Greek philosophers, now translated into efforts to consciously craft “right” places and to separate those from “wrong” places. Six hundred years earlier, human oneness with nature had seemed self-‐evident; and this nature, with all of its benevolence and fury, demanded eloquent deference of the serious philosopher. Now a split had occurred – both between human and nature, and between the natures that humans would favor and foster, and those that they would shun.
Ideas, for the Romans, were inextricably tied to physical things – to places and
objects. The shaping of ideas would therefore also be tied to movement through space, especially space configured for the specific purpose of inculcating ideas. Movement of the body – walking – was, for the Greeks, a context for philosophical conversation and the disbursement of ideas. But the Romans, in their effort to interpret and emulate the Greek ideals, added a much higher level of significance to the specific physical setting and manipulated it to influence the beliefs and memories of the populace.
In The Mind in Motion: Walking and Metaphorical Travel in the Roman Villa,
Timothy O’Sullivan notes that “the philosophical model of theoria, or traveling to acquire knowledge, lies behind the appeal [for the Romans] of the ambulatio [the contemplative walk]” practiced by the Roman elite (O’Sullivan 134). But the ambulation took place in carefully crafted environments purged of subnatural interference. O’Sullivan gives examples of how the décor of the Roman villa and the design of the gardens were planned specifically to accommodate the ambulation. O’Sullivan hints that the design of the Roman city may have been similarly
influenced:
Romans walking through an urban landscape dominated by the monuments, inscriptions, statues, and buildings of their past were similarly encouraged to think beyond the here-‐and-‐now…far from being incidental or ancillary to the intellectual process, walking played an essential role in the Roman imagination, putting both body and mind in motion. (O’Sullivan 150) This Roman attention to the communicative properties of physical space and movement through space as tools for communication, indoctrination and enculturation – tools that the Romans self-‐consciously and successfully refined and standardized, proliferated on an unprecedented scale.
Beyond the architecture of the Roman villa, Roman urban form provides
insight into this proliferation. The specific case of Timgad, a colonial outpost city in a conquered region of North Africa, is an excellent example. The Romans designed the city, as other such cities, on a grid derived from the organization of their military encampments. The Romans saw the conquered lands as acquisitions and as sources of material goods to be brought back into Rome and used for symbolic display. But in order to access the resources and ensure the cooperation (or subjugation) of the local populations, they deployed not only military technology but also the technology of spatial design. Timgad exemplifies the effort to exert power through the medium of built form and through the control of movement within the built form. It embodies the idea of mobility as a highly controlled means of gaining knowledge (for the users of the space), rhetoric (specifically architecture as rhetoric) for social control, and architecture as an imposed collective mnemonic device deployed in service of that control. While Greek colonial cities from previous centuries had also deployed rectilinear street grids, they deployed them with a
degree of sensitivity to the local geography. But the modular nature of Timgad, built according to a basic scheme that was repeated throughout the Empire, with a strict grid layout containing scaled-‐down versions of Rome’s important buildings (Sennett 109) ensured that it served the effort to implant Roman culture in the territory and expand the Empire’s communicative medium.
Timgad, like other colonial outposts, represented the symbolic “birth” of the
empire in the conquered lands (Sennett 108). The ongoing reproduction and replication of these kinds of outposts succeeded in asserting what Sennett calls the “eternal” nature of the Empire – bringing the theatrical experience (Sennett 96) of Roman life to the conquered people. This built environment served as a medium for framing discourse. A new Roman subject in a colonial city like Timgad must have been impressed by the precision and regularity of the structures and the spaces. The city seamlessly choreographed the amenities of Roman life – the baths, sidewalks, fountains, toilets and public gathering places – together with the propaganda of the empire within the inscriptions, statues, and triumphal gateways. The form of the city sent messages to the person moving through it. It spoke of endless, replicable order, stability and unquestionable power – a favored environment within its walls, distinct from the untamed and chaotic otherness of the outside.
The modularization and replication of these outposts and the individual
components of their infrastructure such as highways, aqueducts, baths and other public buildings engenders an abstraction of space that seems to foreshadow techniques employed by mass media and corporate branding efforts of today. The Ad Herennium emphasizes the importance of repetition and order in inscribing
memories in the mind (Yates 12). Timgad, and other outpost cities, served as memory inscription modules in the larger hegemonic communication machine of the Roman Empire, its monuments and facades serving as prompts for the collective memory, reinforcing the Imperial information agenda. The split view of nature begun in Greece and infused into the ideology and built work of the Roman Empire differed from the holistic views held by less technologically oriented societies outside the empire. This surely helped construct notions of “otherness” to signify the inferiority of people outside the favored realm of controlled and augmented nature. As Roman thought shaped Western culture, appearing and re-‐appearing far beyond the fall of the empire, this dualistic view of nature seems well embedded in technological societies. Even in efforts toward nature conservation and sustainability we maintain a distinction between the human realm and the natural realm, and we seek to promote and foster preferred, useful versions of nature – agricultural monoculture, for example – without fully dealing with the reviled versions – the anti-‐biotic resistant pathogens, for example – that form the spurned dark sides of nature, proliferating in direct response to our technologies of control. If architectural and urban design have indeed been complicit in the development of the ideology of a splintered nature, as the history suggests, then this could provide hope for mending the split – deploying design as a tool to drive increasing desire for a balanced approach to nature that could lead to truly sustainable architecture and urban development.
Bibliography 1. Spiro Kostof, A History of Architecture: Settings and Rituals, 2nd ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995).
2. O. F Robinson, Ancient Rome: City Planning and Administration (London [England]: Routledge, 1992). 3. Kevin Lynch, City Sense and City Design: Writings and Projects of Kevin Lynch (Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 1990). 4. David Macaulay, City; a Story of Roman Planning and Construction (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1974). 5. Shelley Walia, Edward Said and the Writing of History (Cambridge: Icon, 2001). 6. Richard Sennett, Flesh and Stone: The Body and the City in Western Civilization, 1st ed. (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1994). 7. Peter Turchi, Maps of the Imagination: The Writer as Cartographer (San Antonio, Tex: Trinity University Press, 2004).
8. Plato, Phaedrus: A Dialogue (San Francisco: Greenwood Press, 1976).
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