SUPERIMPOSITION OF IMAGES AS A TIME DRIVEN URBANISM The case of Eindhoven and the project for Stripe S Manuel Aliaga Martinez.
SUPERIMPOSITION OF IMAGES AS A TIME DRIVEN URBANISM: Eindhoven and the project for Stripe S by Andrea Branzi. Introduction Before Phillips established its production in 1891 in The Netherlands, the village of Eindhoven was settled in the middle of a compound of other 5 villages that grew linearly upon the most important roads. These villages; Eindhoven (today defined as the city centre), Woensel Noord, Woensel Zuid, Tongelre, Stratum, Gestel and Strijp are nowadays neighborhoods that form part of the city of Eindhoven. The city has been facing, in the last three decades, the challenge to overcome the progressive departure of the company and reinventing its image for the coming years. Although some part of it, along with other industries, still operate within the city and other kind of services and urban activities take place in the contemporary city, a new vision of Eindhoven is needed. Proposals for this new vision rely, nevertheless, heavily on rebranding the image of the city. The last attempt for reinventing the city was rebranding it: “Brainport Eindhoven” and it has found its way among policymakers and corporations (1) Eindhoven 1800 Source: Giulia Amoresano
In this way, like many other cities in search of a path, the current image of the city of Eindhoven remains diffuse, especially when the former one, so strongly tied to the industrial image of the company, was so well defined, bold and hermetic. In this scenario the stereotype of getting rid of such iconic image, is by replacing it with another one that is equally strong. Several new slogans and images came in to fashion in order to characterize the city. The rise of the creative industry in relation to innovative business environments lead to images like “The city as a laboratory” or “Eindhoven the city of design”. It is questionable whether these are distinguishing characterizations of the city of Eindhoven “Eindhoven city of sports”, “Eindhoven leading in technology”, “Eindhoven the city of knowledge”, “The city as a laboratory”, “Eindhoven the city of design”, “Eindhoven creative city”, “Eindhoven the city of sports “ “Eindhoven Brainport of the Netherlands”. (2)
Eindhoven 2100 Source: Giulia Amoresano
De Lichttoren Eindhoven as The city of lights Source: (“Rebranding the cityThe case of Eindhoven”)
Within this diffuse context of envisioning the next Eindhoven, Andrea Branzi, one of the most exploratory minds of contemporary urbanism, had traced a couple of guides lines reflected on his proposal for Strijp S along the set of ideas behind the concept of weak urbanism, that differs from the attempts and perils of rebranding. With the challenge to think and act upon Eindhoven, he managed to provide some clarity without adding more dizziness to the saturation of superimposing images on top of each other. This work discusses how strong images and archetypes frequently influence the practice of urbanism, and how these images are often not driven by interpretation of current conditions, but are driven mainly by collective imaginaries of periods of time. The text focuses on having the proposal for Strip S of Andrea Branzi and part of his work as a noticeable sample of moving away from a (collective, time driven) superimposition of images.
The illusion of coming back to the images of the past
Source: Victor Manuel Aliaga
When Jane Jacobs wrote The Death and life of great American cities in 1961, her position gradually shifted towards an interpretation of a city based in an image of a New York not so distant from its the past; “I shall mainly be writing about common, ordinary things: for instance, what kinds of city streets are safe and what kinds are not; why some city parks are marvellous and others are vice traps and death traps; why some slums stay slums and other slums regenerate themselves even against financial and official opposition; what makes downtowns shift their centers; what, if anything, is a city neighbourhood, what jobs, if any, neighbourhoods in great cities do.” (3) in which this set of values were threatened. This position was conceived as a reaction to the drastic modernist urban transformation that took place in the mid-20th century in New York, that favoured large transit infrastructures, leaded by public official Robert Moses. Although the book has become the best manual for small scale urbanism, it can also be read as an attempt to recreate the archetype of an outdated American city, under the idea that images or metaphors express symbolically the life of the past. The book, in this sense, contributes little for a critical formulation to deal with current challenges of the modern city. Traditional images could become, for good or bad, a powerful instrument to influence urbanism.
Source: Victor Manuel Aliaga
Jacobs seems to be wrong in considering the various suggestions of city planners undermining the diversity and emptying the streets in order to become “well-intentioned” mistakes. Implicitly she thinks urban planning as a field with too much power, denying the already on going complex mechanisms in which cities are inscribed since modernity. The answer to the problems of big modern cities for Jacobs is to take a step back, coming back to the pre-existing image. Although Jacobs´ critique and position to the modern alienating consequences of losing the human scale has proven to be correct and accurate, such associations can also result into a rather romantic interpretation of the past. Especially if the past imaginary is used to avoid dealing with current problems. When urbanism is practiced upon an image, it runs the risk to eliminate other new possibilities by default, possibilities and opportunities that might be found in the specificity of a given place. On the other hand, a hermetic vision of the future and a set of categorical actions of achieving a desired image, just like the modern movement project, can lead to the same result: an arbitrary practice. In other words it results quite frequent having radical critiques falling into an unreal idealization of the past, while at the same time a hermetic utopian paradigms imposing an ideology; both cases easily susceptible to be fed by archetypes.
Source: taken from the 1962 UK edition. It makes the author’s stance clear from the outset. The atmosphere captured on the entrance, projects the image of the classic American urban community.
Practice of urbanism driven by images of the past The case of Detroit is another extreme example of a city in which the fordism model had significant power over the city. Inevitabely the establishment of such a trascending industry, attached within a strong image. The image results very difficult to get rid of. “… because the force of this developments, rather than emerging from the architectural discipline itself must be found in the socio-economic level.”(4) Interestingly enough the force of the archetype keeps feeding the past image. Images from the past result quite persuasive and can be used for different purposes; marketing, identity and also urbanism. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lR1j4tqRJPM (5) The city of Detroit, which currently is facing decay, held for a long time the image of modernization, The historical closure of Fordism as a model of socio-economic progress spelled the demise of Detroit, once the proud origin of modern industrial A street of Brussels before reconstruction, Source: Theory and Practice of development. Detroitism had become a globally emulated Urbanism since 1945 Reader 2014 recipe for economic properity. Now Detroit stands devastated, overburdened by the infraestructural, architechtural and human sediment of its Fordist past.(6)
A street of Brussels after reconstruction Source: Theory and Practice of Urbanism since 1945 Reader 2014
Not few cities have returned to their past images as a reaction to the uncertainty of the new mechanisms that change the way of living in the post-modern era. In the mid of the 20th century, the city of Brussels not only reacts to the modern movement interventions but it becomes a place to put into practice an urbanism driven by the image of the past. This practice of urbanism acts as a camouflage for the new urban interventions that try to imitate the historical layout in the urban and architectural scale. In an attempt to close itself to the drastic changes that modern interventions and new life style brought in the beginning of the century, the model of engaged communities became the resistance paradigm also known as Bruxellization [Kenny Cupers, 2013]. “This reconstruction of the scar left behind by the Manhattan Plan was part of a larger project called “Different Projects for the reconstruction and embellishment of the part of Brussels ripped by the junction of the North and South railway station”, an ambition undertaking by Sefik Birkiye, Gilbert Buseau, and Patrick Neirinck, in 1978, as students of Culot at La Cambre.”(7) It became clear that there was an obstinate obsession of going back to the past. During this period reconstruction of streets were refilled with low rise buildings that enable to reduce the space between fronts in order to cover the effects of becoming a modern city. This practice in the 70´s led not only to the intervention of several places but also, it aimed to touch the memory of the inhabitants by using images that fed the archetype of the quartier, the street, the square.
Cover of a publication of the counter Brussels movement Source: Theory and Practice of Urbanism since 1945 Reader 2014
For example, in one of the seminal works of the movement the Déclaration de Bruxelles based on 1978 colloquium La Reconstruction de la Ville Européenne, counter projects are accompanied by expressive, critical chapter titles such as “Modernity and Inhibition” and “The Myth of Creativity”. (8)
Although the case of Eindhoven may, to a certain extend, share some similarities with Detroit; there some oversizes and unsed infraestructures, some buildings and neighborhoods near the center face decay and there are many vague terrains and backside spaces. Eindhoven was able to overcome, not with a few difficulties, the transition of industrial to post industrial city, however there is still a strong image attached to Eindhoven that is responsible for the desperate search of a new brand for the city. Practice of urbanism driven by images of the future
Brasilia, Source: The Guardian UK
The modern movement is probably the most known recent example of the practice of urbanism driven by an image of the future. However the builders of Brasilia would have looked back before moving ahead on their clean slate plan. Just over a century earlier, French emperor Napoleon III was thinking ways to remake Paris. In 1848, Napoleon called upon the city prefect, Baron Georges-Eugène Haussmann, to undertake a grand remodeling project whose initial phase alone would last almost 20 years. The purpose of the plan was to ease access by the military, and that involved widening the main streets. In the beginning of 1852, the urban practice of Haussmann inexorably turned Paris from a dense warren of narrow, twisting medieval alleys into the city we know today. In both cases the Paris of Haussman and Brasilia a fixed image of a city, led to the superimposition of a rigid model with eyes in the future, that would eventually result as arbitrary as superimposing an image of the past. Any review of practices of urbanism driven by an image of the future must make mention of EPCOT, Walt Disney’s “Experimental Prototype City of Tomorrow” at Orlando, Florida’s Disney World. Take it away, Walt said: “EPCOT will take its cue from the new ideas and new technologies that are now emerging from the creative centers of American industry. It will be a community of tomorrow that will never be completed, but will always be introducing and testing and demonstrating new materials and systems. And EPCOT will always be a showcase to the world for the ingenuity and imagination of American free enterprise.” (9) [Disney Walt]
Paris,Charles de Gaulle, Source: Gothereguide
Orlando Epcot 1982; Source: Plan a magical vacation
The great risk for the future practice of urbanism in the city of Eindhoven does not rely in attaching to an image of the past, like the case of Brussels, it relies in the imposition of a future image. The exaustive task of rebranding the city of Eindhoven since the progresive departure of Phillips, puts Eindhoven in a vulnerable position for the imposition of an image that results as arbitrary as any other imposed image, as discussed in the illusion of image. The challenges for Eindhoven are not in the field of marketing, or finding a catchty slogan or in the rebranding options, Eindhoven should be read from its site specific oportunities and its socio-economic mechanisms.
Against utopias as images of the future Throughout history, there have been many attempts to create the ideal environment for the ideal society; in other words utopia. Utopian urbanism is based on a concept defined by Thomas More’s ‘Utopia’ (1518). In this book, Utopia is the name of a fictional island in the Atlantic that is home to an ideal community with a perfect social, political and legal system. There is the general assumption that utopias are linked to restrictive and authoritarian images of the future, they are on the contrary, visions, ideas that can ultimately generate possibilities rather than restricting it to only one. They could work also as images that reflect on the (sometimes more restricted) present (dystopia); however it is not my intention to reflect deeply into the meaning(s) or derived concepts of the word. This generalized sense of scepticism towards utopias has its roots in the ambitious aim of the modern movement that tried to change society through a new conception of space. A utopian model also runs through much early modernist architecture and urbanism that also helped to shape mainstream thinking within planning, evident ideas associated with Le Corbusier and the CIAM.(10) The modern movement has triggered however several ideas of what the future could look like beyond the known examples that best represent the practice of urbanism of the modern movement. In this sense when urbanism stops believing to be the key of change of society is when actually utopias become more valuable and hence the glasses to read the mechanisms that control the present. “Utopia” Abraham Ortelius, Source: Architizer
Is according to this new setting that utopias are no longer authoritarian attempts to remould urban behaviour, utopias are no longer the imposition of future images, but they work as hypothesis and possibilities based on current observation. As I mentioned above I stick with the basic idea that utopias are ideas that generate new possibilities, hence they are related to the practice of urbanism. Thus it is important to make a clear distinction between the images that are a product of urbanism in which a deep understanding of the current complex mechanisms in which life in a specific site is inscribed (that may or not work is another story), and utopias that are random images that respond mostly to a romanticised unique vision, thus do not open up possibilities but they restrict all to one only. So the point of discussion relies when a restricted image of the future is imposed onto a city or a place sometimes by default.
Drawing from Alpine Architecture, Bruno Taut, Source: Architizer
My aim is to defend the value of utopian perspectives in developing critical approaches to the cities and process of urbanisation. These perspectives are understood as involving the expression of desire for a better way of being and living through the imagining of a different city and a different urban life. (11)
About The No-stop City and Weak and diffuse Modernity The No-stop City The project and its development the No-Stop City, created by the group Archizoom in which Andrea Branzi was part of between 1970 and 71, is, along with the Continuous Monument by Superstudio, the best-known and more studied and interpreted project of the Italian Radical Architecture or Modernist Utopias. No-stop City is an unbuilt well documented project in drawings, photographs and a monograph. The drawings show an infinity grid, subdivided by partial lines symbolizing walls, and interrupted only by natural features such as mountains. The No-Stop City is represented as a series of continuous urban fields programmed for efficiency while not compromising itself with any defined architecture, and articulated in the code of typewritten keystrokes registered within an orthogonal grid. As a project, its purpose is somewhat enigmatic, nonetheless to my eyes it seems to fit in configurations where urban sprawl has limited the possibilities to reimagine the territory.
The No stop City, a continuous field repeated infinitely trough mirrors Source: Architizer
“The only architectural form that we would have liked to propose was [...] a wandering fog bank over the plain between Florence and Pistoia. Not so much as an inspiration or poetic invention, but in the sense that we refuse to design an object, and prefer to design its use instead. [...] In this sense, there is no formal difference between a productive structure, a supermarket, a residence, a university, or an industrialized agriculture sector.” (12) [Archizoom] Under a literal reading of the proposed never ending field the project, impossible to build and without a defined linkage to any particular context, could be seen as utopia, however under the point of view discussed above (utopias opening up possibilities for urbanism), it helped to get out of the theoretical and practical stagnation that architecture and urbanism were facing at the time, and was inspiring in a large extend to rethink about urban sprawl, a setting already extended in America and Europe. Archizoom´s project should not be read as a critique nor as a utopia, should it be read as an interpretation of current mechanisms and as a potential concept for a contemporary practice of urbanism.
The No stop City, the nonfigurative elements for life are placed onto a continuous surface organized by a grid Source: Architizer
Weak and diffuse modernity, the worlds of projects at the beginning of the 21st century. The starting point of Branzi relies on the idea of reimagining cities trough a weak and diffuse urbanism, is that the 20th century was a strong century in which cities have suffered of drastic transformation not only driven by monumental buildings but also by strong ideas and ideologies. In this sense a shift from a strong model to a weak model leaves room for a much more flexible, adaptive and even reverse urbanism that grows along with the processes in which cities are immersed. Further describing a model of weakness, such urbanism does not imply…any negative value of inefficiency or inability; this indicates rather a particular process of modification and cognition that follows natural logic, not geometrical logic — diffuse, diluted processes, reversible and self-stabilizing strategies (13)
Cover of Andrea Branzi´s book: Weak and Diffuse Modernity The world of Projects at the beginning of the 21st century
While up till now the No-stop City project is seen as utopia of radical architecture or even more sceptic as an ironic critique of the ideology of architectural modernism taking onto its absurd limits, or in other words a joke, it was obviously more than that and it should be taken seriously as it result to be the base for the project in Eindhoven Strijp S. It can be argued that the idea of weak and diffuse modernity, was a much more consistent proposal that derived from the Nostop city; in a way the No-stop city could be read as Archizoom and Branzi´s interpretation of the modern movement legacy and Weak and Diffuse modernity was already an urbanism concept. For some reason Jane Jacobs´s The death and life of great American cities is considered as an eye opening path for urbanism while Archizoom´s No stop city is considered to be a critique, when to my eyes is the other way around.
Gianni Vattimo was the first to talk about a weak thought, that is, a type of hermeneutics that develops without looking to the great syntheses of the twentieth century, or to the unifying systems of politics and projects that were typical of classic modernism. Instead this hermeneutics proceeds following more incomplete, imperfect, disarticulated types of cognizance and transformation, which are more ductile and therefore able to absorb the new and confront the surprises and complexities that this produces.(14) Saint Etienne photomontage 1930, Source: Branzi Andrea, Weak and Diffuse Modernity. 2006
Eindhoven Strijp S project In Strijp S the never ending field becomes the landscape, the bridges and large infrastructure are weakened, the bridges are light and thin. Along the landscape there are different patterns defined by a regular grid. On this continuous field objects are placed, these objects are not buildings sometimes are windmills, sometimes trees or colourful shelters with different purposes. In this great open space you can find sometimes crops or cows, there is enough room for everything even a subtle roller coaster and different textures on the landscape suggesting patches of agriculture. It is a project that does not impose big structures, yet achieves monumentality. It works in different layers. It can absorb new programs easily at low Branzi Strijp S Bridge, Source: Branzi Andrea, Weak and Diffuse Modernity. investment It has become the example of spontaneous creative 2006 entrepreneurship that works according to the logic of selfbranding, requiring close to nothing in initial investments (15) and is at the same time reversible but visionary for the future of post-carbon energy. “The meta-project for the future areas of Phillips that are no longer in use in the city of Eindhoven foresees a weak model of urbanisation, made up of a productive and traversable agricultural territory (where research laboratories, residences, and leisure time structures are connected and intertwined, able to follow seasonal turnover in function) and of new dimensions. This sort of high tech favela represents the hypothesis for a European district of research and innovation, an enzymatic territory with no stable image- rather one that seasonally changes its order like the agriculture with which is unified” (16) Andrea Branzi´s project for Strijp “S”, as he argues, is a hypothesis for a new kind of urbanism that inscribes itself in the complex mechanism of today, but above all the project is a statement that opens up to more possibilities, thus it is not a utopia nor a critique, or to say it in another way, it is an image that shows an unexpected point of view. This is how the project does not fall in the tramp of the illusion of Eindhoven´s past (the image of the villages or the image of the industry) or in the images of the future (the image of hyperBranzi Strijp S plan, Source: Branzi Andrea, Weak and Diffuse Modernity. 2006 technology or the image or the image of the Brain port). When practice of urbanism is driven by strong images of the past or strong images of the future, the weight of these (contrasting) images have a tendency to become strengthen their position and impose one in detraction of the other, overclouding other possibilities. The conflict and friction of images of the past and the future and the superimposition of one over the other as a practice is what I call time driven urbanism, beyond of the intersection and the noise of one shouting louder than the other, there is a pool of unexpected possibilities that relies under the filter that overclouds the real understanding of the present conditions and the site opportunities. Branzi Strijp S, Source: Branzi Andrea, Weak and Diffuse Modernity. 2006
References (1) Havermans Dave, Appel-Meulenbroeck Rianne, Smeets Jos, “Rebranding the city- The case of Eindhoven” Corporations and cities: Envisioning Corporate Real Estatein the urban Future. Delft Netherlands, Delft University of Technology, 2006. (2) Ibid. (3) Jacobs Jane, The Death and Life of Great American Cities. New York US: Random House, 1961. (4) Shumacher Patrik, Rogner Christian, “After Ford”, Stalking Detroit. Barcelona Spain: Actar 2001, p. 48-56. (5) Dylan Bob, Chrysler Commercial for Super Bowl, 2014. (6) Shumacher Patrik, Rogner Christian, “After Ford”, Stalking Detroit. Barcelona Spain: Actar 2001, p. 48-56. (7) Doucet Isabelle, “Counter-projects and the postmodern user” Use Matters: An Alternative History of Architecture. Illinois US: Routledge 2013, p.243-248. (8) Ibid. (9) Disney Walt, as cited by Heckman Davin, A small world smart houses and the dream of a perfect day. US: Duke University Press, 2008. (10) Pinder David, “In defence of utopian urbanism: Imagining citiesafter the end of utopia” Visions of the city: Utopianism, Power and Politics in Twentieth century. Edinburgh Scotland: Edinburgh University Press, 2005. (11) Ibid. (12) Archizoom, as cited by Martinez Capdevila Pablo, “The interior city: infinity and concavity in the No-stop city” Cuadernos de Proyectos Arquitectónicos No.4. Madrid Spain: Madrid Polythechnic University,2013. (13) Spencer Douglas, “No Room for the Weak: Form, Process and the Existential Territory of Landscape Urbanism” Critical Grounds, Douglas Spencer Blog, 2010. (14) Branzi Andrea. Weak and Diffuse Modernity: The World of Projects at the beginning of the 21st Century. Milan Italy: Skira, 2006. (15) Ibid. (16) Ibid.