ALL SYSTEMS GO! by Marcello Tavone

ALL SYSTEMS GO!

TERRITORY IN TRANSIT ALONG THE WALLOON DORSAL

Marcello Tavone mentors

Paola Viganò IUAV Filip Geerts T.U. Delft

«ALL SYSTEMS GO! Territory in transit along the walloon dorsal» Marcello Antonio Tavone_267951 Mentors: Professoressa Paola Viganò_Istituto Universitario di Venezia Professore Filip Geerts_ Technische Universiteit Delft Laurea Magistrale in Architettura per la Città a.a. 2009-2010 Venice, March 2011

ALL SYSTEMS GO! TERRITORY IN TRANSIT ALONG THE WALLOON DORSAL

Acknowledgements I am at most grateful to my mentors Paola ViganĂ˛ and Filip Geerts for their helpfulness and for their inspiring comments and critics. I would like to thank Christian Nolf [KU Leuven] who shared his interest and his knowledge about Wallony. I am thankfull to Diederik de Koning and his sharp criticism about the role of architecture. I would like to warmly thank Marco Cimenti e Marcello Fantuz for the fundamental discussions and support. My gratitude goes also to my friends Bruna Vendemmia and Michalis Xstyllis. A special thanks to Matteo Serena and Tommaso Dalla Vecchia. 4

INDEX

1.INTRODUCTION Problem field Thesis objects Fundamental question –scenarioWhat is dross? Dross through attrition

2.PROJECT LOCATION: the Walloon Dorsal NWMA Belgium and Wallony A coal layer Coal, infrastructures, urban process Wallony as a logistic hub General territorial plan

3.MONS- LA LOUVIERE- CHARLEROI * *urban dispersion and dross Urban dispersion (urban grain 2008, urban grain 1930) Carte Ferraris 1770-1778 IGN 1865-1930 Coal exploitation and mining concessions Coal exploitation and water Coal exploitation and iron (railways and tramways) Heavy industries waterways and “iron”ways Post fordist industries. Open space Dross

4.STRATEGIES A foreword Green Metropolis Emscher Park The Potteries think-belt New Louvre-Lens Downsview Park

5.TAKING MEASURES ACROSS THE TERRITORY Images: a natural and man-made landscape Survey: mapping dross System: mobility map Thing: Bois du Luc

113

6.THEORETICAL BASEMENT What we talk about when we talk about architecture?

125

7.PROJECT General strategy Archipelago North terminal Central terminal South terminal Parts

141

1.INTRODUCTION

INTRODUCTION:

PROBLEM FIELD In the last fifty years Europe has been the protagonist of a huge and violent process of de-industrialization. More precisely, the European economies have turned from Fordist to Post Fordist process of production. They shift from an industrial model based on large accumulation of products for an homogeneous market demands, to a system based on the motto “just in case”, hence on smaller and flexible productions that easily follows the ever changing consumers requests. The fordist model of production demanded vast dimension plants where all the production and the management phases where concentrated into a single site, which, in most cases, stand in close proximity to compact urban centers. Post-fordist models, instead, requires a series of smaller plants, with no spatial specificity, as generic and as neutral as possible. Usually they have no relations with urban centers, but with the big national or international infrastructures. These create fundamental links between the different factories and futhermore between factories and business, commercial, scientific parks, expo areas, and especially with the huge and diffused logistic hubs. Said that it is easy to understand that the efficiency of our economy is strongly based on logistic, meant as the possibility to coordinate and enact the shipping of products in a worldwide scale. The thesis focuses on a specific European region represented by the Walloon dorsal, in the southern part of Belgium. This area is considered particularly interesting because it pained, more than other Countries, this economical shift. First the richness of coal turned Wallony in one of the most industrialized area of Europe. Then, in the last thirty years, after the business failure of most of the plants, Wallony has been exploiting its geographical location in order to become one of the most important european logistic platform. Therefore, if we consider the territory as a palimpsest (Corboz, 1983), we can claim that the critical passage from one era to the other one did not have simply economical or social consequences but it left meaningful traces that drastically changed the physical structure of the region. As in real palimpsest, each industrial era left different signs on the territory without erasing the existing ones. Because of this process of overlapping of signs Wallony now is a kind of ipertext compound by castles, old coal mines, huge abandoned and contaminate sites, futuristic infrastructures that cross the abandoned ones, turning nowadays into parts of Unesco heritage. All this elements are composed or simply juxtaposed within a territory extremely urbanized, following reticular model of diffusion, that second the soft topography of the region. Moreover we can note that in the last few decades the process of urban sprawling is accompanied by process of aggregation spread in a regional scale. By consequence, the model which better synthesizes this tendency is the one of a “metropolitan archipelago” (Indovina,

2009) where the different islands, the different points of concentration are represented by industrial clusters, scientific parks, shopping malls, new loisir sites, airports and intermodal centers. The construction and the diffusion of all this new islands do not take in count any territorial vision but the logistic importance of single infrastructures within a complex metropolitan system run over by global and local programs. THESIS OBJECTIVES Considering these general reflections the thesis questions the territory in order to propose different strategies able to re-use its drosscape and to support and develope the present economocial tendency. Although the thesis starts from specific problems fit in a particular geographical context, it goes in deep in general architectural issues. In fact, the concepts of frame, of formal specificity and programmatic indeterminacy, and of “terminal architecture”(Pawley, 1998) form the theoretical basement of the design phase. The thesis is a design-oriented research that aims to reveal the role of architecture in a territorial scale.

1: Alan Berger, Drosscape: Wasting Land in Urban America , Princeton Architectural Press, New York, 2006

2: Lars Lerup, After the city , MIT Press, Cambridge, 2000

3: ibidem

WHAT IS DROSS? Dross is a world that could be used in a specific way to indicate the scum that forms on the surface of molten metal as result of oxidation, or in a general one, indicating something trivial or inferior. Moreover, as suggested by Alan Berger 1, if we look for the etymologic definition of this term, we will found that dross means impurity, it refers to a waste material or product. Waste and vast have the same Latin origin. The term vast, that come from vastus, is furthermore link to terms as “Vain”, “Devastation”, “Wane”, “Wast” that means “widerness”. Therefore, we can claim that waste concerns something related with a natural dimension and with a man made production. Said that we can also adfirm that drosscapes are those areas left over of the process of urbanization. More precisely we can indicate as a dross those areas that are considered a “waste product” of the urban system that produced them. Following Lars Lerup’s interpretations2, we can look at the city as a “holey plane” where “holes” consist in the product, in what remains after the ongoing struggle between economics and nature. The city is not just a civic compact center but a massive dynamic system, a huge ecological envelope of productive and wasteful landscape. Going along with Lerup the city can be seen as a fluid magma of stim and dross. Stim are the active and propulsive parts of the territory, “the places, buildings, programs and events that most people would identify as being developed for human use”3. Dross, by contrary, are those sites unprofitable for any kind of activities, thus un-programmed, void of program.

Introduction

MAIN RESEARCH QUESTION: How can we reframe the territory along the Walloon dorsal dealing with its drosscapes?

4: Alan Berger, Ibidem

5: Roger Trancik, Finding Lost Space: Theories of Urban Design, Jon Wiley&Sons, USA, 1986

6-7: Alan Berger, Ibidem

Dross are brownfields, buffer zones inside or outside housing developments, interstitial spaces near the infrastructures, landfills, abandoned military sites or vacant retail centers. Going in deep in the concept of dross we can start distinguishing two sub-categories: dross through attrition and dross through accumulation. In fact we can consider that “dross emerges out of two primary process: first as consequence of current rapid horizontal urbanization, and second as the leftovers of previous economic and production regimes, which are both catalyzed by drastic decrease in transportation costs [for good and for people] over the past century”4. Why we should speak about dross, and how we can deal with it? The problem of dross is interesting because imply the possibility to restore and re-activate them. As Roger Trancik claims in Finding Lost Spaces “(dross) offer a tremendous opportunities to the designer for urban development and creative infill and rediscovering the many hidden resources in our cities”5. Berger suggests as well a new role of the architect and of its relation with the client pointing out that “Drosscapes require the designer to shift thinking from tacit and explicit knowledge (designer as sole expert and authority) to complex interactive and responsive processing (designer as collaborator and negotiator)” and that “in many cases a client not even exist but will need to be searched out and custom-fit in order to match the designer’s research discoveries. In this way the designer is the consummate spokesperson for the productive integration of waste landscape in the urban word”6. DROSS THROUGH ATTRITION “Deindustrialization creates waste landscape through attrition of industrial landscapes and buildings in the older part of the traditional central city. Adaptively reusing this waste landscape figure to be one of the twenty-first great infrastructural design challenges as these sites are potentially transformable into new productive uses such as permanent open landscapes or infill development”7 The thesis deals with a specific category of waste-scapes represented by dross through attrition. They consist mostly in abandoned industrial sites, in contaminated areas (brownfields), in disused infrastructures. Berger admits that each dross have specific characteristic, and, by consequence, they will have different future: some of them are immediately fill in with other productive or socio-cultural activities, others will be unused for decades due to pollution or market reasons. On the other hand they have also general and common features. The first one is that they are vacant, available, ready to host new programs. The second one is that they are often located in proximity with populated urban areas. The third one is that, in most cases, they are convenient from an economic point of view. Brownfield are tremendously cheap because of their level of contamination. Usually private developers get these areas, they spend a ridiculous amount of money for reclaiming the land, and than they are ready to built again. In some cases governments promote this process by allotting economical subsidies. In the first part of the thesis the research focuses on the mapping of dross and the relation they have with urbanized areas and the infrastructural system. Then five case studies that deal with the same issue

All systems go! Apollo 11 launch, Huston, 1969 8: R.E. Somol, “All systems go!: The terminal nature of contemporary urbanism”, in Julia Czerniak , Downsview Park Toronto, Prestel, Munich, 2001

ALL SYSTEMS GO! “All systems go!” is an expression of the English slang to indicate that “everything is functional and in a state of readiness”, it indicates that everything work and that is ready to start. Somebody suggested also that “the late 1960s origins of the expression are in the US space exploration program and referred to the state of readiness on the launchpad prior to the countdown for a rocket’s takeoff”. In 2001 R.E. Somol wrote a sharp essay about the entries for the international competition for the Downsview Park in Toronto. The essay is titled “All systems go!: The terminal nature of contemporary urbanism”8. The author’s thesis is that the project presented by the Office for Metropolitan Architecture did not propose a mere masterplan, but a framework of infrastructures along which the most disparate activities and investments are allowed. The project is a system whose activation coincides with the re-activation of latent urban dynamics. Urbanism, hence, tends to not coincide with an act of prevision anymore, but with the irrigation of territory with pure potential. Architecture is less and less a structure able to defines a locus, more and more an infrastructure open to the most unpredictable programs. The grade of openness, of isotropy and flexibility of contemporary architecture is not a mere aesthetic attitude, but is the necessary answer to capitalism requests. Since the project proposed in this thesis deals with the problem of dross not in terms of restoration but in terms of re-activation, it investigates the concept of system, of programmatic instability and of isotropy. Nevertheless it still gives architecture the responsibility to shape the territory by means of closed forms, by the definition of parts, of defined places. The real ambition of the project is to not deny the week and diffused nature of contemporary urban phenomenon, but to challenge it.

Introduction

will be presented in order to propose different design strategies. Finally will the project will suggest the possibility to use the drosscapes as the medium for a new territorial structure.

2.PROJECT LOCATION

BLUE BANANA-NWMA-EUROCORE The project deals with the walloon territory, the southern Frenchspeaking region of Belgium. The disastrous economic conditions that afflict the region from more than forty years have caused political and social imbalances that lead to say that Wallony is the real periphery of Europe. Paradoxically, instead, the region lies in the center area of a large European metropiltanan area that Roger Brunet called the “blue banana”: a densely populated and industrialized corridor stretched from Liverpool to central area of Veneto, with a population of approximately 110 million inhabitants. Wallony can be seen also as a fundamental element of what somebody named the “North Western Metropolitan Area” or according to Rem Koolhaas the “Eurocore”, the urban region that includes London, Paris, Lille, the Flemish diamond the Ruhr and the Randstadt.

sansan

14 The “Eurocore” source O.M.A.

chipitts

boswash

saorio

EUR

ROCORE

POPULATION (milion)

Tokaido Boswash

60 39

Saorio Ganges Delta Sansan BBT PRD Chipitts YRD

30 28 26 23 21 20 19

Sansan Chipitts Boswash Saorio Ganges Delta YRD Tokaido BTT

Eurocore Nile Delta

DENSITY (inh/km2)

Tokaido PRD MQC SJB LagoDan

130.260 113.160 87.420 70.740 62.700 46.980 45.240 45.060 42.720 24.240

Eurocore

Nile Delta BTT Sansan Ganges Delta

1.320 1.190 1.010 940 800

750 580 510 450 440

Walloon dorsal

Eurocore

AREA (km2)

nile delta

ganges delta

prd bbt yrd

tokaido

European context The Netherlands Zuidholland Zeeland Utrecht Overijssel Noord-Holland Noord-Brabant Limburg Groningen Gelderland Friesland Flevoland Drenthe Great Britain Wiltshire Surrey Suffolk Nottinghamshire Northamptonshire Norfolk Lincolnshire Leicestershire KentIsle of WightHertfordshire HampshireGreater London Essex East Sussex Cambrigde Buckimghamshire Borders Berkshire Luxemburg France PicardieHauteNormandieBasseNormandieNord-Pas-de-Calais LorrainePays de Loire Île-de-FranceFrancheComté Corse Champagne Ardenne Centre Bourgogne Alsace Allemagne Vlaanderen Bruxelles/Brussel Wallonie BELGIQUET hüringenNordrheinWestfalen Niedersachsen Hessen Hamburg Bremen Berlin Bayern Baden-Württemberg

As suggested by Bernardo Secchi the NWMA is not just simply a administrative fusion of different cities, it is itself another form of city, precisely a megacity completely different in relation to other urban entities like Paris or Berlin. It’s main features are the high density of infrastructures that continuously increases the level of isotropy of its territory, hence a lack of strong hierarchies in favor of week and diffused ones. There is not anymore a clear difference between an eventual center and a periphery but rather we can imagine a structure similar to a inhabited park, compound by area more dense surrounded by large green areas and a strong phenomenon of sprawl.

500 km

Urbanized areas

0 10 20 30 40 50 km

Industries

Walloon dorsal

The 33% of the population of Belgium live in Wallony that represents the the 55% of the national territory. The most densely populated area is the Sillon Industrial the historical corridor of the Belgian coalmining and steelmaking industry. It also called the Walloon industrial backbone or dorsal.

In the 19th century, the area began to be invested by huge industrial investement that formed a reef of industries along the Haine and Meuse Valley. The profitability of the heavy industries to which Wallonia owed its prosperity started declining in the first half of the 20th century, and the center of industrial activity shifted north to Flanders. Wallonia would be surpassed in economic development by Flanders only in the 1960s, when industrial production in the northern part of Belgium would catch up with Wallonia 0 10 20 30 40 50 km

Permanent coltures

0 10 20 30 40 50 km

Forests

Due to the strong relation between the industrial development and geological resource, the factories concentrated along a precise coal layer that defines a sort of north boundaries between the brussels and flemish region and the remaining part of wallony that is mainly green, agricoltural oriented. A landscape almost untouched where the strong elements are not the huge inustrial plants anymore, on the contrary the vastity of the forests 0 10 20 30 40 50 km

Main roads

Ostende Bruges

0 10 20 30 40 50 km

Main waterways

Arlon

Walloon dorsal

The main infratsrutcture that cross the region is the highway E42 that not only links the dorsal with the Flemish Diamond but also with France, Germany and the Netherlands. It binds togeter the main urban center of the axis: Mons, La Louviere, Charleroi, Namur and Liegi and represents the actual vector along which the new post-fordist industrial clusters concentrate their investements

As already noted the main waterways of the region are the Hainaut and the Meuse river. They have always been the bearing infrastructures of the urban and the industrial growth. Along their valley were built the first villages that could use the water to produce energy. Since the industrial regime began they were used especially to move huge quantity of row materials: coal or ore to produce metal. 0 10 20 30 40 50 km

Main railway

TGV international train National trains 0 10 20 30 40 50 km

Administrative boundaries

2 4

1- Hainaut 2- Brabant walloon 3-Namur 4-Liege 5-Luxemburg 0 10 20 30 40 50 km

50 km

Geological survey

Walloon dorsal

Topography

Devonian and carboniferous limeston 0

50 km

Coal seam and railway system

Mons

Arlon

0 10 20 30 40 50 km

Coal seam and main road LiĂ¨ge

0 10 20 30 40 50 km

Industrial revolution Number of inhabitants < 15 000 from 15 to 50 000 from 50 to 100 000 > 100 000 Main new industries1846 Extractive and metallurgic industries

Bruges

Anvers

Ostende Gand

Hasselt Louvain

Courtrai

Bruxelles

u ca

Zone affected by rural exodus Zones affected by industrial growth Zones affected by high industrial growth

Wavre

use Me Liège

Tournai

Vesdre

you

Namur

Charleroi

Mons

ebr Sam

Arlon

Main urbanized areas

Plains and low plateaus loam 1 Flandre 2 Hennuyère region 3 Brabançonne region 4 Hesbaye Plateaus and depressions 5 Ardenne condrusienne 6 Condroz 7 Fagne-Famenne 8 Pays de Herve 9 Lorraine belge

Mouscron Tournai

Mons

Airport

Namur Charleroi

Walloon dorsal

7 7

10 10

Arlon Virton

tgv

tgv TGV stop

Highway

Herve

Verviers

Haine

Hauts plateaux 10 Central Ardenne 11 North-east Ardenne 12 Hautes Fagnes Agro-géographic limits within the region Main urbanized areas

International connections

Liège

Ath

tgv tgv tgv

Railway

Industrial activities and main roads Industrial parc (total surface in ha) < 20 from 20 to 50 from 50 to100 from 100 to 300 > of 300 Scientific parc Craft parc Main road

Industrial activities and waterways Industrial parc (total surface in ha) < 20 from 20 to 50 from 50 to100 from 100 to 300 > of 300 Scientific parc Craft parc Waterways

intermodal platform

Intermodal hubs 1 dry port mouschron lille 2 garocentre mons 3 dry port charleroi 4 dry port Liege 5 centre Ardenne

1 4

5 6

Neurons

Bruxelles 4

industrial revolution Universities 1 Université de Mons-Hainaut 2 Faculté Universitaire Catholique de Mons 3 Faculté Polytechnique de Mons 4 Université Libre de Bruxelles 5 Université Catholique de Louvain-la-Neuve 6 FacultédesSciences Agronomiquesde l'Étatà Gemblou 7 Faculté Notre-Dame de la Paix à Namur 8 Université de Liège 9 Fondation Universitaire Luxembourgeoise

Louvain-la-Neuve 5 15 Gembloux 6 17

Nivelles 14 Mons 1 2 3 13

Liège 8 16

Namur 7

Charleroi 10 11 12 18

Centres of research 10 CUNIC 11 ULB Parentville 12 UCL centre Lemaître 13 Centre de Recherche de Mons 14 Centre de Recherche Industriel de Nivelles 15 Zoning Industriel d'Ottignies-Louvain-la-Neuve 16 Parc scientifique du SartTilman 17 Parc scientifique de Gembloux-les-Isnes 18 Aéropole de Charleroi

Arlon 9

Tilman

Turism 33

Annevoie-Rouillon 1 jardins et château Antoing 2 château des princes de Ligne Attre 5 château Bastogne 7 mémorial américain du Mardasson Belœil 8 jardins et château Bouillon 11 château Celles 12 château de Vèves Chimay 14 château des comtes de Chimay Corroy-le-Château 16 château Denée-Maredsous 17 abbaye de Maredsous Dinant 18 cidatelle Ecaussines-Lalaing 20 château Enghien 21 parc et château Floreffe 23 abbaye Gozée 26 ruines de l'abbaye d'Aulne Hastières 28 jardins et château de Freyr Huy31 collégiale Jodoigne 33 région des fermes du Brabant wallon Lavaux-Sainte-Anne 34 château Le Rœulx 35 parc et château de Rœulx Liège 37 palais des Princes-Evêques, cathédrale Saint-Paul, église Saint-Jacques, fonds baptismaux Saint-Barthélemy Mons 41 collégiale Sainte- Waudru Namur 44 cidatelle Nivelles 45 collégiale Sainte-Gertrude Rixensart 48 château Saint-Hubert 51 basilique Saint-Séverin-en-Condroz 52 église Saints-Pierre-et-Paul Sene ffe 53 parc et château Soignies 55 collégiale Saint- Vincent Stavelot 57 abbaye Theux 59 château de Franchimont Tournai 61 cathédrale Notre-Dame Villers-devant-Orval 63 abbaye SITES INDUSTRIELS Hornu 29 site archéologique industriel du Grand-Hornu Houdeng-Aimeries 30 écomusée régional du Centre et complexe charbonnier du Bois-du-Luc Jalhay 32 barrage de la Gileppe Lessive 36 centre des Télécommunications

48 65

4 2

55 20

8 35 29

38 39

13 1

22 62

30 9

10 37 46 54

Walloon dorsal

BUILDINGS

17 28

43 36 34

27 51

49 11

3 63

Ronquières 50 plan incliné pour bateaux Seraing 54 cristallerie du Val-Saint-Lambert Strépy-Bracquegnies 58 ascenseurs à bateaux et ascenseur funiculaire de Strépy-Thieu LOISIRS Limal 38 Walibi MANIFESTATION Ath 4 procession des Géants Binche 9 carnaval Eupen 22 carnaval Francorchamps 25, courses : 24 h, F1 Liège 37, Fête du 15 août en Outremeuse Malmédy 40 carnaval Mons 41, Le Doudou MUSEUMS Arlon 3 musée luxembourgeois Aubechies 6 archéosite Blégny- Trembleur 10 musée de la mine Charleroi 13 musée du verre Liège 37 musée Curtius, musée d'art moderne, musée de la Vie wallone Morlanwez 42 musée royal de Mariemont Namur 44 musée Félicien-Rops, trésor de Hugo d'Oignies Ramioul 46 archéosite Saint-Hubert

Tournai 61 musée des beaux-arts Verviers 62 musée de la laine Waterloo 65 champs de bataille et centre du Visiteur URBAN SITES Durbuy 19 halle aux blés et vieilles rues Louvain-la-Neuve 39 cité universitaire et ville nouvelle Spa 56 cité thermale Torgny 60 village Tournai 61 rives de l'Escaut

NATURAL SITES Coo 15 cascade Folx-les-Caves 24 grottes-champignonnière Han-sur-Lesse 27 grottes Nadrin 43 panorama des "Six Ourthes" et site du Hérou Remouchamps 47 grottes Rochehaut 49 panorama de la Semois et du village de Frahan Virelles 64 lac

Wallony as logistic hub

*www.logisticsinwallonia.be

â&#x20AC;&#x153;Wallonia is the first logistic region in Europe. This is the conclusion of a survey lead by Cushman & Wakefield and published by Logistics in Wallonia en AWEX. As in previous reports, published in 2004 and 2006 by the Flanders Institute for Logistics (VIL), several Belgian provinces come in the top of this ranking. LiĂ¨ge comes out as the number 1 location, closely followed by Limburg (B), Hainaut, and Nord-Pas-de-Calais. The main reasons for this top-ranking are : 1-excellent access to the main European markets ( the core West-German markets like the Ruhrgebiet, the core Benelux markets like Randstad and the Antwerp/Brussels area , Paris/Ile-de-France and the greater London area); 2-a central geographic location that is optimal to cover a wide range of European markets; 3-top transport infrastructure and volume, close to main ports or with good multimodal links to these ports; 4-low costs for land, warehouses and labour; 5-labour force that is available, highly productive, skilled for supply chain jobs and with a good language knowledgeâ&#x20AC;?*

26 The new european boundaries due to accessibility source O.M.A.

Roman routes

Anvers

Route romaine

Gand

Route romaine where the path are uncertain

Courtrai

Asse

Tirlemont

Cologne

au sc

Boulogne

Tongres

Visé

Braives

Tournai

Tourinnes Baudecet

Blicquy

Howardries

Haine

Boulogne

Givry Arras

eu Namur M

Liberchies

Huy Vervoz

Waudrez Fontaine-Valmont

Bavay

Morville Dinant

Vodecée

Cologne

Amay

Morlanwez

Vesdre

Liège

Taviers

Wyompont

Amiens

Bastogne Warnach

Macquenoise

Martelange Amiens

Étalle

Chameleux Reims Reims

Goods transport (ton/day)

LEUVEN

DENDERLEEUW IEPER

BILZEN

ZOTTEGEM

KORTRIJK

OUDENAARDE AACHEN

RUIEN COMINES

GERAARDSBERGEN

MOUSCRON

LANDEN

HALLE LESSINES

TONGEREN VISE

LEMBEEK

ENGHIEN TUBIZE

VOROUX CLABECQ

QUENAST

ATH LILLE

OTTIGNIES

BRAINE-LE-COMTE

MONTZEN

ANGLEUR KINKEMPOIS

GEMBLOUX JURBISE

WELKENRAEDT

LIEGE

FLEMALLE-HAUTE

TOURNAI

PEPINSTER

LUTTRE FLEURUS

TERTRE

JEMEPPE-S/S

LA LOUVIERE HAINE St PIERRE

RIVAGE

NAMUR

SPA

MONS

SAINT-GHISLAIN

BINCHE

less 5 than 5 to 10 than 10 to 20 than 20 to 50 than 50 to 100 100 and more

TROIS-PONTS

CHARLEROI

QUEVY

ERQUELINNES MAUBEUGE

DINANT

WALCOURT

MARLOIE

GOUVY

MARIEMBOURG

COUVIN

LIBRAMONT

less 5 than 5 to 10 than 10 to 20 than 20 to 50 than 50 to 100 100 and more

BERTRIX

ARLON

VIRTON

Rail transport (millions of passengers) less than 2 than 2 à 4,9 than 5 à 9,9 than 10 à 19,9 than 20 à 29,9 than 30 à 39,9 40 and more Stations TGV Station

Trèves Metz

Walloon dorsal

less 5 than 5 to 10 than 10 to 20 than 20 to 50 than 50 to 100 100 and more

Arlon

VieuxVirton

LEUVEN HASSELT

AACHEN COMINES MOUSCRON

LA HULPE

ACREN

HERSEAUX

ENGHIEN

TUBIZE

WAREMME

BRAINE-L'ALLEUD

SILLY

HERSTAL ANS

LOUVAIN-LA-NEUVE

OTTIGNIES

ATH

LEUZE

BRAINE-LE-COMTE TOURNAI

FLEMALLE HAUTE

NIVELLES

SOIGNIES

ANTOING

ECAUSSINNES PERUWELZ MANAGE

BLATON

St-GHISLAIN

QUAREGNON

OBOURG

JEMAPPES

MONS

QUIEVRAIN

JEMEPPE

BRACQUEGNIES

CHARLEROI-SUD BINCHE

MARCHIENNE

WELKENRAEDT

BRESSOUX

EUPEN

ANGLEUR VERVIERS CENTRAL

GEMBLOUX LUTTRE

LA LOUVIERE HAVRE

VISE

GLONS

WATERLOO

LESSINES

AUVELAIS TAMINES

NAMUR

HUY STATTE

GERONSTERE

RIVAGE

ANDENNE

AYWAILLE

JAMBES

CHATELET

TROIS-PONTS GODINNE

QUEVY

YVOIR ERQUELINNES

CINEY

VIELSALM

DINANT

MARLOIE

FRANCE

GOUVY

JEMELLE

COUVIN

LIBRAMONT

BERTRIX

MARBEHAN

ARLON

VIRTON

General territorial plan

Airport Fluvial port Stops and tgv stations Multimodal platform Anchorage point along an eurocorridor Anchorage point along a linking axe Turistic point Pole Support pole in agricultural realm Cross/boarder point Turistic pole Main roads Intense passenger railway Intense goods railways Main waterways Schemes of logistic shipments s1

up1

upr

up1

upr

rw1 rw rw configuration 1: direct shipment S:supplier plants Lp:loading ports Up:unloading ports Rw: regional warehouse

up1

rw1 rw rw configuration 2: direct shipment with

upr

rw1 rw rw configuration 3: one echelon with CH

rw1 rw rw configuration 3: one echelon with CW

company consolidation hub company central warehouse Loading port with consolidation Unloading port with deconsolidation

rw1 rw rw configuration 3: one echelon with CH and CW

containerised non containerised

Walloon dorsal

Terminal architecture: logistic centers

3. URBAN DISPERSION

URBAN DISPERSION:

1 Christian Nolf, The coalscape of le Centre, hinge the walloon (post) industrial axis, thesis, KU Leuven/ EMU, June 2008â&#x20AC;?

The origins of dispersion (I, II, III, IV, V, VI map) Since the project aims to use the drosscapes in order to reactivate and reshape the territory it is necessary to understand the relation that lies between disused areas, infrastructures and the nature of the urban phenomenon that characterizes the regions. In the following pages the analysis will focus on the process of urban dispersion in the area between Mons and Charleroi. It represents a section of the sillon industriel 47 kilometers long and 20 kilometers thick. The oblong dimension itself of this frame is due to the linear character of the urban growth, stretched over the centuries along the subterranean coal layer and nowadays along the east-west highway corridor. In the first map we can note that the territory is strongly characterized by a scattered and inhomogeneous urban diffusion. In fact, we can note on one hand the presence of more compact centers in correspondence of the northern part of the region, on the other a kind of reticular sprawl, where the built up areas lie along the main roads. This linear settlements create long and never-ending urban front that hide the vast green agricultural spaces in the back. The map point also out the dispersion of different kind of objects with the most diverse sizes, suggesting that the process of sprawl involves not just dwelling but also production sites: first the huge heavy industry factories, especially those linked with coal extraction and steel production. Nowadays, instead, the warehouses of a new post-fordist industrial regime. At the same time the new territorial economical structure has involved the construction of objects of notable dimension like logistic centers, scientific parks, shopping malls and so on. Sometimes they stand alone, aligned along the main roads, and juxtaposed to the houses. More often they are clustered in a constellation of dense sites kept together by infrastructures. In this sense we can confirm that the region of Le Centre, as many others within the Blue Banana, is strongly characterized by an overlapping of dispersion and of concentration phenomenon that create a vast and complex metropolitan archipelago. As sharply underlined by Christian Nolf1 we can say that the first phenomenon of urban dispersion have an ancient origin, dating to a preindustrial era. In fact, if we look at the Carte de Ferraris (II map) we can note that at the end of the XVIII century the region was already extremely shaped by infrastructures, presenting a dense road network that bind togheter a large number of small center of equal importance, expect the historical one like Mons, Charleroi and BinchĂ¨. In most of the cases the small nucleus had an agricultural vocation, but some time they specialized in specific manufactures: metal, ceramic, glass. For this reason they usually settled closed to waterways (the Hainaut river and its small effluents) whose steep slope were used to produce energy. This makes clear how close was the relationship between the builtup area and the orography of the territory, creating a landscape dominated by forests and agricultural field with small urban centers

sited in the lower and hidden part of the valleys. The Ign map of the end of the XIX century (III map) helps us to understand how coal, together with the mining and production practices associated with it, had been the fundamental element that generates the urban dynamics of the region. Looking closely at the map we can see, first of all, an incredible dispersion of the extraction sites due to the high number of mining concessions released first by the French and then by the Belgian authorities (IV map). The narrow dimension of each extraction area makes clear how the logic of concessions were still tied to a medieval structure of the land property, much different from those of other regions where they were extended on wider lots and, therefore, less fragmented. The second aspect that we can underline is that the technological developments linked to the industrial revolution involved not only the mining activities, but also other kind of production, especially those which were already present in the area: then again those related to ceramics, glass and the production of iron and steel. The third fundamental feature that is immediately legible is the enormous energy spent in the construction of infrastructure, especially rail and waterways (V-VI map). In fact railways and waterways were definitely the most efficient infrastructures to transfer huge amounts of heavy raw materials or finished goods, which must be moved in a local scale according to the logic of the industrial supply chain, in a national and even in an international system (the products were carried along the east-west axis between Germany and France and towards the northern port of Antwerp and Rotterdam) The waterways were infrastructures which played such an important role in the industrial production system that they can even justify the construction of the first Canal du Centre. The canal was built to link the basin of the Haine river with the Sambre, despite a drop of seventy-six meters between them. To overcome this drop was decided to realize four hydraulic lifts capable of lifting boats to 16 meters. Equally impressive is the number of railway lines and tramlines built in this period that make Belgium the country with the most dense railway network of Europe. If the rail lines allow to link together the different plants of the industrial chain, on the other hand the tramlines represented the main public transport to move workers from their district (the citè industrielle) to the centers of production. The road network, by contrast, remains fundamentally the same of the past century, except of the construction of the first direct connection between Mons and Charleroi. Comparing the carte de Ferraris with the IGN map is clear that the current national road n90 is simply the prolongation of the ancient road that early joined Mons to Binche’. Finally, focusing on the forms of urbanization, we assist to the consolidation and development of three distinct phenomena: the first is the consolidation of compact “modern” centers, where the urban fabric usually consists of closed blocks and low permeability. The second is the one of the construction of the first citè ouvrier,

2: For a description of the concept of “pipes and sponge” see Paola Viganò, Territori della nuova modernità, Napoli, 2001

literally small workers town built in strong proximity of factories or mines. The citè were designed as real autonomous unit formed by housing complex, churches, recreation centers, schools and hospitals. The citè, therefore, can be seen as the moment in which the forms of the industrial city appears more explicit: the dominant feature of these structures was a clear division between the places of living and places of production although they were merged within the boundaries of a unique architectural artifact standing as an delimited island within the openness of the countryside. This closed condition created a forced sense of community and let the owner of the factory to control all the life style of its workers. The third form that we can note is the diffusion of linear settlements. These represent the most diffused model of urban dispersion because let the developers to respond to the enormous demand for new housing in the fastest and cheapest possible way, that is to say simply aligning the new dwellings along roads already existing. The image of the territory at the end of this period is the one of an already strongly man-made landscape, not only due to the more and more increasing urban sprawl, but also to the construction of massive infrastructures that had to face in a direct and sometimes violent way the geological and topographical features of the region. From the Twenties until the Sixties of the Twentieth century the emergence of the modern concepts of accumulation and optimization brought to the concentration of production, distribution and consumption in specific sites strongly related with the main infrastructures (VII map). The internal dynamics of advanced capitalism just feed and increase the archipelago model that characterized the region since the beginning of the industrial revolution. If in the past the position of each productive unites was guided by the geological aspects of the territory (that is to say by the availability of natural raw materials) now is dictated by the presence of infrastructures and more precisely by the presence of railways and waterways. This is pretty clear if we look at the so called Black Kilometer of Charleroi :a massively industrialized strip of land stretched in between the railways and the canal linking the Sambre to Brussels. But the same situation is repeated all over the sillon industriel that is more and more compound by linear vectors and punctual productive units. Finally the transition from Fordist models to post-Fordist ones has abruptly changed the balance and dynamics of the region (VIII map). First from an infrastructural point of view: the new industrial plants are no longer linked to the rail or waterways network, rather to the E42, the highway built in the late 70’s which holds all the major centers of the dorsal and that creates a direct corridor between France and Germany. Together with the highway also the national roads began to be upgraded, creating a clear hierarchy between the “pipes” and the “sponge”2 that compound the road system. Moreover, the type and the nature of productions, especially those related to new technologies, allowed in some cases, to keep closed

Open space (IX map) Speaking about the open spaces, as already noted, the sillon industriel represent a state of exception in a region that is fundamentally agricultural oriented. Hence, if outside its borders the agricultural fields and forests have a kind of compactness and homogeneity, in the area in between the E42 and the N90 they appear fragmented and disconnected. The only part that still maintains a degree of continuity is the vast green void represented by Haine valley and the new green corridors that run along the two Canal du Centre and the Brussels-Charleroi canal. As noted by Christian Nolf it results more interesting to classify the open space not only in vegetation categories , but rather in degree of confinement. The linear structure of urban sprawl has meant that agricultural green areas are closed by urban walls that can be

Urban dispersion

living and working spaces. Due to this tendency the territory is now constellated not only by large industrial areas but it is also invested by a new phenomenon of dispersion of single warehouses of small and medium enterprises. Then, in a production system that makes of “flexibility” and “fast shipments” its motto, logistics became a key issue. This becomes even more relevant in a country like Belgium, which has always took advantage of its geographical position to become a sort of European hub. Hence, driving along the E42, we can see that the objects that mark the landscape are no longer the smoking chimney of heavy industry, rather the logistics centers, big generic boxes often grouped in so called “parks” . The biggest one are those defined “intermodal” those that manage a direct exchange between motorway, railways and waterways. The gradual and slow development of new industrial clusters is supported by research centers, business hubs and spin-off, fit as well in larger settlement, heterotopias or mere enclaves hardly accessible forming a new non-residential urban sprawl. Finally, the last and quintessential elements of this new economic regime are the shopping malls, the places of consumption. If scientific parks let the new industrial clusters to propose new products and technologies in saturated markets; logistic distributes this products on a local and global scale and, finally, commercial parks are the place where goods reach consumers. These new unpretensious generic building, simply due to their “bigness” and to the frequency of their repetition, became the real thorough bass of the territory. Over the past twenty years shopping malls, science parks, and logistics centers have become the central places of the economical forces that shaped the region and by consequence the urban phenomena. Although they represent the main terminals of the system, these three elements can not be considered -yet- real centralities, due to their incapacity to traduce any civic sense. In most cases they are gated area, more connected to the efficiency of the infrastructure along which they are located, rather than the specific characteristics of the context in which they occur.

more or less porous. Nolf rightly claims that the region of the center is urbanized but empty and this because the open spaces are literally fenced by linear settlements, forming green rooms. Dross (X map) The shift from heavy industrial productions to new post-Fordist regime coincided also with a rapid and massive process of disposal of areas and infrastructures related to industry. The Fordist era left a complex collection of brown fields, of leftovers, of dross, ranging from terril -artificial hills formed due to the accumulation of waste of mining- to old disused factories, abandoned train stations, and consequentially, to the huge disused railway and tramway network. Due to urban dispersion, these abandoned areas and infrastructures now relates not only to compact cities, rather with the old or new suburban neighborhoods. Therefore we can point out the drosscapes deals with the territorial dimension of the urban phenomenon and not with its historical centers. Furthermore it is important to stress that the closure of the old factories together with the construction of the E42 have created a new equilibrium along the Sillon industriel. As a matter of fact the E42 represents now the global corridor, where, in the last forty years, the most important investments have been concentrated . The N90, by contrary, was built as a plug between Mons and Charleroi, as a device for the industries of the last century, and now is a very local axis on which it is hard to think about new activities. At the end of this analysis we can say that any project that has the ambition to reactivate the territory must take into account the enormous potential represented by dross and logically also the role that they can play to solve the tension between the northern front and the southern one. The potential of dross consists primarily in the fact that they are a left-over. In their re-activation, or re-programming, lies something ethical â&#x20AC;&#x201C;concerning the â&#x20AC;&#x153;re-useâ&#x20AC;?- but also something extremely cynical and pragmatic, given that the brown fields are usually less expensive, and developers receive incentives for land reclamation. Furthermore dross, in some cases, are places strongly recognized by the collective memory. Any project, therefore, becomes a project of the delicate relations that bind the territory to the people who inhabit it. Finally, dross, as already marked, are often linked together by a series of rail infrastructure abandoned as well.. This allows us to think of a series of specific interventions, but repeated on a regional scale.

Urban dispersion

Abandoned industrial plant at La Louviere source Diederik de Koning “Sambre Redux: barrage, souterrain, trenchée, aqueduc”

1.URBAN DISPERSION

topography, urban grain 1930, urban grain 2009

Urban dispersion sources: Topography, urban grain 2008, cartography Atelier Gilot/Viganoâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; 2008_urban grain, IGN 1930

2.URBAN DISPERSION carte de Ferraris 1770-1778

Urban dispersion

3.URBAN DISPERSION Carte IGN 18651930

Urban dispersion

4.COAL EXPLOITATIONS

built-up, mining concessions, terrils, mines, other industries

Urban dispersion sources: Topography, urban grain, cartography by Atelier Gilot/Vigano’ 2008_mines, IGN 1930, mines concessions Christian Nolf, “The coalscape of le Centre, hinge the walloon (post) industrial axis” thesis, KU Leuven/EMU, June 2008”_ terril, catalogue des terrils, Portal cartographique de la region Wallonie

5.COAL EXPLOITATIONS and WATER topography, mining concessions, mines, other industries

Urban dispersion sources: Topography, waterways, cartography Atelier Gilot/Vigano’ 2008_mines, IGN 1930, mines concessions Christian Nolf, “The coalscape of le Centre, hinge the walloon (post) industrial axis” thesis, KU Leuven/EMU, June 2008”

6.COAL EXPLOITATIONS and IRON

built up, mines, other industries, railway, abandoned railways, tram lines

Urban dispersion sources: Urban grain, railways and tramlines, cartography Atelier Gilot/Viganoâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; 2008_mines, IGN 1930

7.HEAVY INDUSTRIES, IRON AND WATER built-up, mines, canals, railways, heavy industries platforms

Urban dispersion sources: Urban grain, railways and waterways, cartography Atelier Gilot/Viganoâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; 2008_Industrial areas, carte du occupation du sol, Portal cartographique de la region Wallonie mines, IGN 1930

8.POST FORDIST INDUSTRIES AND ROAD MOBILITY built-up, heavy industries, new idnustrial platforms, highway, main roads

Urban dispersion sources: Urban grain and main road, cartography Atelier Gilot/Viganoâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; 2008_Industrial areas, carte du occupation du sol, Portal cartographique de la region Wallonie

9.OPEN SPACES agricolture, forests

Urban dispersion sources: Main road, cartography Atelier Gilot/Vigano’ 2008_Open spaces, carte du occupation du sol, Portal cartographique de la region Wallonie Christian Nolf, “The coalscape of le Centre, hinge the walloon (post) industrial axis” thesis, KU Leuven/EMU, June 2008”

10.DROSS disused railways, disuesed tramways, dross

Urban dispersion terril abandoned station other site of productions open air mining site mining plants iron industries abandoned railways disused tramlines sources: Topography, urban grain, tram lines cartography Atelier Gilot/Viganoâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; 2008_abandoned railways,IGN 1930_dross, site a remenager, Portal cartographique de la region Wallonie 2007

4. STRATEGIES

STRATEGIES a foreword

The first four reference projects present different answers to a common issue. This consists, again, in the critical shift carried out by European economies from Fordist to Post-Fordist models of industrial production. More precisely, the four works develop strategies for the re-activation of different areas abandoned just after the business failures of hundreds of industrial plants specialized in the extraction of coal and in the production of iron. Hence, what is interesting to note is that the four areas analyzed are geographically distant one from the other ones, but, on the other hand, they are geologically closed, since they are linked by a common subterranean coal seam. We might say that is possible to define a urban historical development, not longer than 150 years, that has not administrative boundaries, and that, by contrary, binds together different Countries in an unique story, even if it is played in a specific way by each character. The common plot of these stories shaped different territories with similar elements. The first of them is a diffused urban continuity, compound by fragmented cores, confusedly distributed on the territory. Their position is not justified by a general plan, but by the mineral resources of the land and, nowadays, by the strategic position of several infrastructures. By consequences, in most cases the small urban centers present in these areas were not centered around a political or religious institution but around the huge industrial plants. From an environmental point of view the “terrils”, hills of spoils mine up to 100 meters, created a kind of new man-made topography. Then, there is the huge collection of post-industrial ruins represented by monumental mine sites or by the old working-class neighborhoods. Moreover, the massive infrastructures built in these area create a common layer and a physical link between the different countries. In fact, the infrastructural network its so wide and capillary that bind together the different industrial sites within a local, a regional, even in international scale at the same time. It is interesting to note that infrastructures represent the bearing structure of all projects: even if in the case of the new Louvre, where the French government decided to construct in Lens just because its links with the national highways and the international TGV rail line. In the other projects, instead, infrastructures, both if they are new or restored, become the real network that brings together in the same system different singular interventions. The other common characteristic of the projects it is their attempt to re-give a new image ( or a new identity) to the territories where they act. Speaking about Lens, the government decided to operate in the most immediate and resolutive way: they use a strong political act capable to de-localize one of the most important cultural institution of the word, and, on the other hand, the iconic potential of architectural objects. Lens can be considered, nowadays, as the classical case of a city literally “branded”. In other cases, instead, as the Ruhr one or in the Potteries thinkbelt by Price, the strategies focused on the possibility to re-construct a new image thanks to a smart architectural or programmatic acu-

Strategies

puncture, a kind of pointillisme focusing on the economical and socio-cultural reactivation of the territory. In The Greenmetropolis project, instead, the matter of the “image” becomes even more complex: Henri Bava and his equipe propose to create four different kind of identity: one physical, one virtual, one operative and one political. The physical identity is guaranteed by a series of structural reconfigurations, the virtual one, by contrary, is completely based on a huge communicative operation that would literally sell a diagrammatic, iconic image of the new territory that turn itself in a brand, in a registered product immediately “usable”. Therefore, even if the scale of the four projects is completely different ( from the 174 square the kilometers of the Green Metropolis, to the 2 square kilometers of the site for the new Louvre) all of them have really similar goals: to create a new image of the territory that would be able to be accepted by its inhabitants and marketable for tourist and new private and publics investors. Moreover we can note that in the first four works the architectural components is overshadowed, even speaking about the New-Louvre or the ThinkBelt. In the first case the architectural image is almost completely overwhelmed by the popularity of such an important institution as the Louvre; in the second case architecture aspires to be almost nothing, a generic surface, a neutral dispositive, a terminal. We might claim that architecture has become just one aspect of a composition whose complexity is synthesized by the diagram-brand of the project. Or we might say that the real architecture is just the synthetic one, the diagram-brand, that suddenly appears as a container opened to any kind of content. This is exactly the theoretical basements of the Tree City, the project by OMA for the Downsview Park in Toronto that, due to this reason, is considered a reference as well as the other works even if it is not sited in a European context. The project was proposed for a dross provoked after the disposal of an old military base. OMA decided to turn this huge wasteland in a vegetal structure of thousands of paths that would link the most unpredictable functions. The proposal, “compressing a vague specificity and future diversity”, is able to create a new immediate image for the city that will fill it with the most disparate economical, social or cultural tendencies. To conclude it is possible to claim that all the project imply a new role of the architect and of architecture. Architecture is ever more the architecture of the diagram, of the logo, of the brand. The brand itself is on one hand specific, on the other is “ascetic, arid, generic, primitive” as well as neutral and post-ideological. Therefore the role of the architect remains ambiguous: is he the responsible of the research on new logos for branding territories, or is he the responsible for eventual programmatic configurations?

Location: Ruhr,Germany Area: 320 sq km Architect: Agencie Ter Year: 1989-1999

IMAGE: The main image of the project is the “Green-Metropolis”. The image come out from an extremely strong concept that suggest two different routes: a “Metropolitan” and a “Green” one. The first one creates a link between the different urban centers and the numerous abandoned industrial sites present in the territory. The second one, by contrary, bind different natural elements in a unique structure. The result is a DNA structure where the doublehelix, constituted by the two routes, keeps together different core elements of the Code, represented by the natural and urban elements of the project. KEY ISSUE AND GOAL: 1-To shape a new tri-national structure able to keep together both urban and environmental interventions; 2-To give a new image to the region not simply through physical structure but also by using a strong communication system; 3-to suggest new strategies of governance that could bind together first local and regional interest, then local and global scenarios; 4-to create a real regional charter that could concretely define the project site and the different

SCENARIO: roles of its interventions. What if the core of Europe was structured on an integrated metropolitan and environmental system? GUIDELINES-PROJECT: In 2008 the European council awarded the first prize the Green-Metropolis project by Henri Lava ( TER agency) and his equipe for the best urban project of the year. The jury presented the winner project claiming that: “The Greenmetropolis is a pioneering European project for an extensive trinational collaboration between the Dutch and Belgian Limburg regions and Germany’s Aachen metropolitan region. Its starting point is a challenging economic, political and spatial redevelopment of a post-industrial urban agglomeration with more than 37 communities and 1.7 million inhabitants. In the context of the EuRegionale2008, the Greenmetropolis becomes a testbed for a new approach to shaping the future of this region by seeking to fuse communal and national obstinacy with regional thinking and action”. The project started in spring 2003 when the EuRegionale2008 agency was commissioned to mobilize the individual stakeholders in order to develop a tri-national program of development. More precisely the site for The Greenmetropolis project is situated at the crossroads of the most important European development corridors: it stands between the large natural spaces of the Eifel/Ardennen and Kempten/Zeeland and is a region emerging from the process of modern industrialization. What keep together these three region is a common

geological layer, the subterranean coal seam. Therefore the first step of the project was a survey of the coal presence in the territory, considering it as a shared element of the historical and economical development of the three regions in the last 150 years. Starting from this geological layer the project developed four different strategies in order to give a new identity to the region. More precisely the Greenmetropolis aims to develop a new physical, virtual, operative and political identity, using different tools. The first one would be literally constructed by designing a precise spatial system. It consists in two distinct routes: on one hand there is the metropolitan one, represented by the internal main street that connects the Core Elements; on the other hand there is the green route, the “main ecological structure along the river courses”. The core elements that compound the code of this DNA structure consist in: city centers, parks and opens spaces, mining dumps, mining worker housing, open pit mining areas. The virtual identity, instead, would be achieved through a communication system. In fact, the project propose first a regional branding by using corporate design, products, events and rituals, spatial system, different marketing communication. Then it proposes the creation of a sort of virtual region compound by programmatic components (citizens’ services, forums, ip voices) and technical components (network, mobile internet). Finally it predicts also the construction of “Info meet-

ing points” consisting in “gates, social connectors and exchange points”. The operative identity is structured on regional management based on realization oriented project, on cooperation, on communication and on financing. Lastly, the political identity is created by the elaboration of a region charta that defined the

general, programmatic, the qualitative and the organizational aims. As Alex Wall claims in his article about the Green Metropolis, the project by Ter agencies could be related to the Emscher Park. Both of them suggest new strategies to restore a post industrial landscape. By the way, Wall claims, the real reference point could be the Schema Directeur

proposed for the Paris Region by Patrice Delouvrier in 1965. In fact, as the plan directeur, the Green Metropolis is not simply a masterplan but an open system. It represents a real and virtual infrastructure that, on one hand gives an order to its tri-national territory, but, on the other hand, still keep an high grade of flexibility.

s by ts

Strategies

Metropolitan route + urban cores

Research_The Greenmetropolis

’

d a Green route + waterways + parks

Metropolitan and green networks

The green metropolis: general plan

20 km

dross mine site urban centers green spaces terrils metropolitan connections

Strategies

Research_The Greenmetropolis

crossing points

cicling paths main road green route metropolitan route water

industrial area in Europe.

GUIDELINES-PROJECT: The deep industrial decline, that In 1965 the the area Ruhrin region, affected the last with thirty its years, left thousands and thousand 5,4 million of inhabitants and its of square of abandoned 125 ton ofmeters iron produced eachsites and structures spread along the year, was the biggest and the entire territory, furthermore hills mine most spoils productive up to 100 mindustrial high, one area of the in Europe.highest level of unemployEuropean mentdeep and aindustrial huge infrastructural The decline, Location: Ruhr,Germany network that, inthe thearea past,inlinked Location: Ruhr,Germany that affected the last Area: 320 sq km different industrial plants. Area: 320 sq km Architect: /// thirty years, left thousands and Architect: /// The Emscher area, about 70 Year: thousand of Year: 1989-1999 1989-1999 kilometers of longsquare and 15meters kilometers abandoned sites and structures wide in each side of the river, IMAGE: IMAGE represented the most critical spread alongone theofentire territory, Themain mainimage image of the project The of the project is “The ones. The most serious aspect was furthermore hills mine spoils up is “The Emscher as a Emscher region as aregion metropolitan the level of pollution of the territory: to 100 m high, one of the Europark”. The park park”. is not considered metropolitan The park the river Emscher itself and its simply as a collection of open pean highest levela kind of unemployis not considered simply as a effluents became of open-airspaces and ecological paths but ment a huge infrastructural tip for and all the industries. collection of open spaces and more as a green infrastructures that Moreoverthat, the region network in theexperienced past, linkeda paths but more isecological able to host different kind ofas a huge urban decline: tens of small different industrial plants. green infrastructures that is able interventions, from the residential to urban centers, once completely The Emscher area, about 70 ki-are the environmental ones; from the to host different kind of intercentered around industrial plants, revaluation of the the industrial heritage long and 15 kilometers ventions, from residential to lometers now completely without economic to the reconstruction of the water energies enough them wide in each sidetoofreinvent the river, the environmental ones; from cycle. self and to play a different role in a represented one of the most the revaluation of the industrial wider scale. ones. The most serious heritage to AND the reconstruction of critical KEY ISSUES GOALS: This appeared even more critical aspect was the the level of pollu1rebuildcycle. ecological qualities by thetowater taking in count fragmented designing fundamental elements of tion ofofthe the river nature theterritory: urban dispersion of the KEY ISSUE AND GOAL: the Emscher landscape park; region. itself and its effluents Emscher 1- toregenerate rebuild ecological 2-to a system ofqualinatural In 1989tha Land, theopen-air-tip regional became kind of waters; ties by designing fundamental government of Nordrhein-Westfalen for all the industries. 3-to restoreofabandoned industrial area, decided to afford the issue of elements the Emscher landMoreover the region experisites by creating new trade points, the industrial depression of the Ruhr scape park; new industries and new technologienced a hugeaurban decline: by proposing strategy able to 2-to regenerate a system of cal park. reconstruct theurban territorycenters, from a tens of small natural waters; 4-to suggest new way of living in the cultural, ecologicalcentered and social point once completely through new dwellings. 3-to restore abandoned indusof view. The first step toward the around industrial plants, are now 5-to to propose project was the foundation of a trialpreserve sites by and creating new trade completely without economic adaptive uses of industrial structures. special agency that would develop points, new industries and new 6- New artistic intervention in order to energies enough to reinvent and guide the fundamental technological park. give a new role to the industrial guidelines thetoentire until them self of and playproject a different 4-to suggest way oftoliving heritage and a new new image the the 1999th . Thescale. agency were role in a wider region. in the through new dwellings. named Bauausstellung Emscher This appeared even more critical Park or IBA Emscher Park. The most 5-to preserve and to propose taking in count fragmented SCENARIO: interesting aspectthe of IBA is that it can adaptive uses of industrial What if the biggest industrial area of nature of the urban dispersion not be considered an planning structures. Europe became one of the biggest agency, but more as an advisory of the region. 6- New artistic metropolitan park intervention of Europe? in body, which, in thethe lastregional decades, In 1989th Land, have been able to suggest guidelines order to give a new role to the government of Nordrheinextremely clear, but, at the same GUIDELINES: industrial heritage and a new Westfalen decided to 120 time, flexiblearea, enough to absorb Inimage 1965 to thethe Ruhr region, with its 5,4 region. afford issue of different the indusprojectsthe completely one million of inhabitants and its 125 ton from depression the other one. of iron produced each year, was the SCENARIO: trial of the Ruhr In order to achieve its goals, thetoIBA biggest most productive What ifand thethe biggest industrial by proposing a strategy able area of Europe became one of reconstruct the territory from the biggest metropolitan park of a cultural, ecological and social Europe? point of view. The first step A

structured the project on three

toward project was the foundifferentthe levels. dation ofone a special that The first definesagency the characteristic of the park that fromthe East to would develop andgoes guide West along the 70 kilometers of the fundamental guidelines of the Emscher river. During this phase the entire project until the 1999th project focused on the natural . The agency were named characteristics of the countryside Bauausstellung Emscher Park with or and of the existing green areas particular environmental IBA Emscher Park. Thevalue. most Furthermore, IBA started proposing interesting aspect of IBA is different financial strategies on a that it can not be considered an regional scale. planning agency, On a second levelbut themore projectas an advisory body, which, in corridors, the last individuated seven green that goeshave formbeen northable to south, in decades, to sugparallel to the urban stripesclear, more gest guidelines extremely industrialized. The seven corridors, but, at the same time, flexible each linking from 3 to 5 small town, enough to real absorb 120 projects works like green infrastructures completely different one from that frame the park and keep together the other the one.different guidelines and consequence theits different Inbyorder to achieve goals, the projects, that represent the third level IBA structured the project on of the plan. three different levels. The 120 projects proposed within The first one Park defines the charthe Emscher are divided in seven macro-projects or guidelines. acteristic of the park that goes The first in crating from Eastone to consist West along the the 70 structuring elements of the park. kilometers of the Emscher river. The second one consists in the During thisre-asset phase the project ecological of the Emscher river andon its the affluents. focused natural characThe thirdofone, “to work in the teristics thetitled countryside and the design and on ofpark” the focused existingon green areas with the construction of commercial, particular environmental value. industrial and scientific parks. It can Furthermore, started be consideredIBA the most risky investmentdifferent of all the program, proposing financialbut, at the same on time, the one that could strategies a regional scale. actively raise again the territory from On a second level the project an economic, social and cultural individuated point of view.seven green corridors, thatconsists goes form The fourth is innorth the to restoration and revaluation of certain south, in parallel to the urban urban neighborhoods. stripes more industrialized. The The fifth proposed the construction seven corridors, each linking of 2000 residential units and the from 3 to 5ofsmall works restoration 3000town, existing. like infrastructures Thereal sixthgreen is another residential program yourself that frametitled the “construct park and by keep in a simple together theway”. different guidelines The seventh proposed the creation and by consequence the differof new social and cultural center all ent projects, that representathe along the park, furthermore series third levelinterventions. of the plan. of artistic The 120 projects proposed within the Emscher Park are divided in seven macro-projects or guidelines. The first one consist in crating

Green corridor E Green corridor F Green corridor D Green corridor C

creation of new social and cultural center all along the park, furthermore a series of artistic interventions.

Green corridor G

park extension 2008 main urban centers

Strategies

tific parks. It can be considered the most risky investment of all the program, but, at the same time, the one that could actively raise again the territory from an economic, social and cultural point of view. The fourth consists is in the restoration and revaluation of certain urban neighborhoods. The fifth proposed the construction of 2000 residential units and the restoration of 3000 existing. The sixth is another residential program titled “construct by yourself in a simple way”. The seventh proposed the

Green corridor B Green corridor A Research_Emscher park

the structuring elements of the park. The project propose: a)To preserve the existing area with particular ecological value; b) To link together, in a integrated system, the isolated areas; c) To turn some isolated areas in parks; d) To find a point of junction between local and regional long term strategies. The second one consists in the ecological re-asset of the Emscher river and its affluents. The third one, titled “to work in the park” focused on the design and on the construction of commercial, industrial and scien-

Duisburg: the old gasometre_restored: museum

68 Essen: a new bicycle path

Essen: the old steel factory_restored: cultural center

Strategies

Essen: the old steel factory_restored: cultural center

SCENARIO: What if an industrial chain turned into an educational belt?

Location: North Strafforhide Area: 174 sq km Architect: Cedric Price Year: 1965

IMAGE: The most meaningful image of the project is doubtless the “Think-belt”. The project proposes to re-use the postindustrial areas of the North Shafford, distributing different educational buildings, suggesting the idea of a kind of a new university campus spread on a territorial scale. The different educational building would have been connected together thanks to the infrastructures abandoned after the shutdown of the industrial plants. On one hand the new educational build would have appeared as autonomous objects completely detached by the existing urban fabrics, on the other hand they would have been linked together in a unique integrated system. KEY ISSUE AND GOAL: 1-To re-activate the territory from both a cultural and economic point of view. 2-To establish a new relation between the territory and the university institution. 3- To renovate the territory starting from the restoration of abandoned industrial site. 4-To link a regional system with a national one through a smart use of the infrastructure. 70

PROJECT: Just after the second world war the United Kingdom was experiencing a deep crisis in the industrial sector due to two main aspects: on one hand the industrial production was still completely dependent on the unsustainable consumption of coal; on the other hand the university system was not able to train new technicians able to bring real innovation in the sector, more and more weaken by the competition with other European countries and with the United States. The English educational system was still highly elitist and still based on rigid teaching methods and on an extremely conservative humanistic culture. Cedric, by contrary, proposed a university system full voted to technical education. New students were precisely those workers who lost their jobs after the closure of industrial plants. The system, therefore, would form a new class of workers and technicians that would be used in new-style post-Fordist economy, materially reactivating those areas affected by the crisis. The project area, chosen by Cedric, is the North Staffordshire, a triangular area of 174 square kilometers. The first element of the project is a series of patches and a series of paths, accurately identified in the territory . The patches are represented by the dross. The paths, instead, are represented by the disused railway network and the main road still present in the area. Logically

the two infrastructural network linked together the different sites of the projects, but, at the same time, keep connected the new educational system with a national system, due to the presence of the M9 highway and of the airport. Some of the identified brown field are chosen to accommodate residential areas for the 20.000 students who would use the campus, some for other university buildings, some for common areas where would be possible to find university laboratory and new industrial plants. The second radical and experimental aspect of the project of Cedric is the role that architectural objects played in the plan. Cedric, coherently with the researches carried out during his career, claimed that architecture should not create just new monument in order to give a new image of the city. A new icon, he suggested, it is not enough to give a new identity. Architecture itself is considered as an infrastructure, more precisely as a neutral and flexible terminal that could host the most unpredictable programmatic variations. Then the project proposed some moving and some fixed objects: Cedric thought about different kinds of moving residential units and university laboratory, that could move through the “thinkbelt” according to the necessity of the students or of the university. The main permanent object were the battery houses and the transfer areas. . The second ones where real terminal where the different parts of the project could be made, modified or repaired rather than be transferred from the railway to the national highways.

Tunstall

B =

Burslem

H =

Hanley

Fenton

Longton

B H

N =

Newcastle

S =

Stoke

KEY Urban fabric Sites of de-industrialisation Faculty areas Shared faculty & Industry site Transfer huds New housing sites PTB road network PTB rail network Existing rail network Major roads

Delayering

Dross_brownfields

Proposed housing, faculty and transfer sites.

Rail network (Passenger & Freight)

Thinkbelt rail network.

Major road network

Thinkbelt road network.

Strategies

Urbanized areas of Potteries

Sites

72 Parts: the residential units

Strategies

The difficult whole: teh transfer area

Location: Lens,France

Location: Area: 2 sq Lens,France km Area: 2 sqSanaa km Architect: Architect: Sanaa Year: 2004-2012 Year: 2004-2012

GENERAL GENERAL:

In 2004 the French Prime Minister In 2004 theRaffarin French Prime MinisJean-Pierre started a policy terfavor Jean-Pierre Raffarinof started a in of the restoration the depressed northern of France. policy in favor of region the restoraOne that northern the tion of ofthe thestrategies depressed government proposed in order to region of the France. of theafter raise again areas,One collapsed strategies that thecrisis, government the huge industrial it was to delocalize cultural, political, proposeddifferent in order to raise again economical centre from the capital to the areas, collapsed after the the most citric site present in the huge industrial wasthe to territory. During thecrisis, sameityear, delocalize different cultural, Ministry of Culture presented a shortlist cities that could host a political,of economical centre new outpost of the Louvre. The first from the capital to the most one was Amiens, the richest citric site due present the Heritageterricandidate to its in World tory. cathedral; During the year, listed thesame second wasthe Boulougne, a favorpresented position bya Ministry ofwith Culture the seaside; then Calais, destroyed shortlist of cities that could host during the war but still alive due to its a new outpost ofa the Louvre. favorable role from logistic point of view; finallyone Arras, Valenciennes, and The first was Amiens, the Lens, the richest to to theits poorest richestfrom candidate due one, all shattered by the war and by World Heritage-listed cathedral; the recent industrial crisis. the second was Boulougne, with Finally the government chose Lens, just because it was by hard to seaside; find new a favor position the strategies to improve it. during then Calais, destroyed

the war but still alive due to its

THE CHOISE OF THE SITE

favorable role from logistic The site chosen for the aMusée du point of view; Arras, Louvre-Lens is a finally twenty-hectare brownfield that was in part Valenciennes, andconverted Lens, from into a business park in the 1980s the richest to the poorest one, and which was also the mine yard for all shattered by the warcompany and by mineshaft 9, mined by the Mines de Lens. the recent industrial crisis. The pit closed in 1960, andchose the site Finally the government became an industrial wasteland. It Lens, just because it was hard to remains so until now. findchoice new strategies to improve it. The of a mine site is a THE CHOISE OF A SITE: The site chosen for the Musée du Louvre-Lens is a twenty74

common that Lens hectare strategy brownfield that adopted was inconverted order to give newaimage in itself part ainto business without ignoring or forgetting its critic park in the 1980s and which was industrial decline. also the mine Lens, by the way,yard wasfor alsomineshaft a convenient sitethe fromcompany a geographic 9, mined by Mines point of view. It stands between Lille de Lens. and Arras, the two regional capitals. Thecity pitisclosed in 1960, the The at the junction of and the A26 site became an industrial freeway from Calais to Rheimswasteand the A1 It freeway fromso Paris to now. Lille. land. remains until Lens just two by car The ischoice ofhours a mine sitefrom is Paris, 1.5 hours from Brussels, 45 a common strategy that Lens minutes from Calais, and 30 minutes adopted from Lille. in order to give itself Almost million people live within a new 13 image without ignoring two hours' drive its from Lens. or forgetting critic industrial The city is sited also along a TGV decline. line, 1 hour 10 minutes far from Paris. Lens,TGV by the way,network was also Then, railway take a travelers on tosite Lille,from and from there to convenient a geoBrussels and London. graphic point of view. It stands The decision to build the new betweeninLille and Arras, theistwo museum the former mine yard regional capitals. Theeconomic city is at highly symbolic. Today, and conditions difficult the social junction of theremain A26 freeway in the region, with a higher-thanfrom Calais to Rheims and the average unemployment rate of 15%. A1 freeway from Paris to Lille. Following the example of the Tate in Liverpool and the Lens is just twoGuggenheim hours by car Museum in Bilbao, the Louvre-Lens from Paris, 1.5 hours from Brusaims to play a part in local regenerasels, 45 minutes from Calais, and tion, helping to modernize the 30 minutes region's image.from Lille. The main 13 goalmillion of the national Almost peopleand live local authorities is to turn Lens in a within two hours’ drive from kind of economic incubator where to Lens. concentrate different investments Thewould city is sitedthe also along a that restore urban center of the city and1 that, TGV line, hourfurthermore, 10 minutes far would the entire territory. from develop Paris. Then, TGV railway Therefore, Mission Bassin Minier, a network take travelers oninto planning agency specializing Lille, and from therebecame to Brussels former mining regions, the responsible for proposing new plans and London. inThe order to fit in the waythe thenew decision to bet build project in the infrastructural system of museum in the former mine the region. Moreover the municipality yard highly symbolic. Today, of Lensisdecided to concentrate its economic in theconditions reconstruceconomicenergies and social tion of the train station and in the remain difficult in the region, corridor that form the city center will withthe a higher-than-average bring visitors to the new unemployment rate of 15%. museum.

Following the example of the

THE PROJECT: Tate in Liverpool and the GugThe new satellite museum will have genheim Museum 28,000 square metersinofBilbao, usable the

Louvre-Lens aims to play a part in local regeneration, helping to modernize the region’s image. The main goal of the national and local authorities is to turn

space twoof levels, with Lens built in a on kind economic semi-permanent exhibition space incubator where to concentrate covering at least 6000 m². It is different investments that would composed of a series of low-rise restoredistributed the urbanoncenter of volumes the longest side theand site.that, furthermore, the ofcity Inwould the presentation of the project the develop the entire terriarchitects write: “ breaking up the tory. volume into smaller pieces. We avoid Therefore, Mission Bassin blocking the site and reduce theMiniscale this very agency large program. The er, a ofplanning specialsize andinthe curvingmining arrangement of izing former regions, these volume adopt the dimension became the responsible for and arrangement of the surrounding proposing newflow plans in order to cavaliers, as they down the calm slope thebet site.way Further fit inofthe the opening project the in site, and physically, a central the visually infrastructural system of the volume of glass introduces a void region. Moreover the municipalbetween the building volumes. This ity of Lens decided toentrance concendelicate box serves as an foyer large publicenergies space inin the trateand its aeconomic city. It is visually transparent, opens the reconstruction of the train up to multiple direction of the site, station and in the corridor that and it is possible to cross without forma the city center will bring being visitor. We volumes too theconsider visitorsrectilinear to the new museum. stark to comply with the idea of extreme affinity of the site. However, THE PROJECT: unleashed free form can be oppressive museumbyinteriors. At From thetorelation the archithe scale of the longup stretched tects: “breaking the volume curvature of the site, very calm into smaller pieces. We avoid curves twist the volume along the blocking thedistort site and reduce the nature, gently the interior experience, andvery carefully scale of this largeinteract pro- with the art. The size and the curving gram. To actually fuse nature and building, arrangement of these volume a highly reflective polished and adopt the dimension and ar-the anodized aluminum façade clad volumes, rendering blurred reflection rangement of the surrounding ofcavaliers, the surroundings, changing withthe as they flow down the scenery, the weather, the position calm slope of the site. Further of the visitor. The circulation system the site, visually and isopening at parts falling out of the building volumes, andavisitors finding of physically, centralarevolume themselves in glass atunnels snaking glass introduces void between through the field, wandering in a the building volumes. This place between nature and its delicate boximagery, servesinasbetween an entrance reflected real and unreal.” foyer and a large public space in

the city. It is visually transparent, opens up to multiple direction of the site, and it is possible to cross without being a visitor. We consider rectilinear volumes too stark to comply with the idea of extreme affinity of the site. To actually fuse nature and building, a highly reflective polished and anodized alumi-

Len

Strategies

num faĂ§ade clad the volumes, rendering blurred reflection of the surroundings, changing with the scenery, the weather, the position of the visitor. The circulation system is at parts falling out of the building volumes, and visitors are finding themselves in glass tunnels snaking through the field, wandering in a place between nature and its reflected imagery, in between real and unreal.â&#x20AC;?

The choise of a site

Strategies

Location:Toronto, Canada Area: 13 sq km Architect: OMA Year: 1999

IMAGE: The iconic and smart image of the project is the Tree City. OMA proposed a masterlpan based on a huge pervasive vegetal infrastructure that guarantees a strong iconic image to the abandoned site and a high level of flexibility of the entire system. KEY ISSUE AND GOAL: 1- to propose a strong environmental project that could recreate the antique quality of the site and that can offer a new attraction for the city; 2-to activate a park able to support different ecologies and new public uses and events; 3-to give an immediate formal and programmatic answer opened to the continuously changing programmatic request of the city. SCENARIO: What if an abandoned military site became the vegetal blueprint for a low density metropolitan life? PROJECT: In 1999 the Toronto municipal government decide to organize a big international competion supposed to bring new proposals for the future of the Downsview area. This was a military 78

wasteland used by the Canadian aeronautics and that turn into a huge green space in between the urban and the metropolitan boundaries of Toronto. The area in sixties stand at the edge of the periphery, now, instead, represent a huge undefined space in the middles of the low density suburbs of the city. The brief of the competition ask to the participants not simply a new park, but a model of development that would take in count of present and future investments. The winner project is the one proposed by OMA. Rem Koolhaas and his equipe started claiming the Toronto is the city that spend the least of major north American city on park operations. The problem that the project wants to solve is to find the way to give a strong ecological image to the city with the least possible means. The second problematic concerning the site it represented by its potential on a metropolitan point of view. The site is in relation both with the regional and the urban scale of Toronto, is well connected to both thank to the good infrastructural system, lastly has the possibility to growth during the following decades. These elements make the site favorable for future economical efforts. The second problem that the project have to solve is to guarantee a system that can always growth and, moreover, to host the most unpredictable private and public investments. The proposal is exactly the diagrammatic answer to this two request. On one hand the masterplan by OMA is designed more as a LOGO than as a diagram. The green city is first

of all a two-dimensional icon, a kind of land art masterwork that offer to the city a new image, a new “green-ecological” unmistakable soul. Moreover its vegetal-like structure can potentially infinitely growth, keeping its own specific formal rules. The pervasiveness and the isotropic character of paths guarantees a wide flexibility, hence the possibility to keep together the most disparate programs. The project is well analyzed by R.E. Solomol in an essay titled All system GO! The terminal Nature of Contemporary Urbanism. In the essay Solomol claims that the Tree City by OMA is a “sprawling park without organs, promising identity without borders” obtained by using “a single gesture, arid, generic, primitive”. At the masterplan creates a “vague specificity, permitting future diversity…eschewing a wait and see contingency it provides an instant graphic identity, a logo to attract diverse constituencies today, an image that can impel and absorb its various future product lines and services”. Therefore landscape for OMA is an infrastructure that creates an immediate new identity and where all that system goes. A kind of iper-liberalistic framework where each character “just say yeah”. Physically the project is incredible simply, almost arid. It is composed of two layers: a complex network of one thousands paths and a series of circular elements. Then the paths are divided in different groups according to their ecological features. On the other hand the circular elements could represent the most variegated programs.

Strategies

De-layering: phasing and programmatic distribution

80 The Tree City

Strategies

Nature as infrastructure

4. TAKING MEASURE

84 Ronquières source Diederik de Koning “Sambre Redux: barrage, souterrain, trenchée, aqueduc”

Taking measures

86 Ronquières

Taking measures

88 Namur source Diederik de Koning “Sambre Redux: barrage, souterrain, trenchée, aqueduc”

Taking measures

90 Namur source Diederik de Koning “Sambre Redux: barrage, souterrain, trenchée, aqueduc”

Taking measures

92 Namur source Diederik de Koning “Sambre Redux: barrage, souterrain, trenchée, aqueduc”

Taking measures

94 Haudeng

Taking measures

96 Thieu source Diederik de Koning “Sambre Redux: barrage, souterrain, trenchée, aqueduc”

Taking measures

98 Thieu source Diederik de Koning “Sambre Redux: barrage, souterrain, trenchée, aqueduc”

Taking measures

100 Haudeng source Diederik de Koning “Sambre Redux: barrage, souterrain, trenchée, aqueduc”

101

Taking measures

102 La Louviere source Diederik de Koning “Sambre Redux: barrage, souterrain, trenchée, aqueduc”

103

Taking measures

104 La Louviere source Diederik de Koning “Sambre Redux: barrage, souterrain, trenchée, aqueduc”

Taking measures

La Louviere source Diederik de Koning “Sambre Redux: barrage, souterrain, trenchée, aqueduc”

105

106 Namur source Diederik de Koning “Sambre Redux: barrage, souterrain, trenchée, aqueduc”

107

Taking measures

108 La Louviere

109

Taking measures

110 Charleroi source Diederik de Koning “Sambre Redux: barrage, souterrain, trenchée, aqueduc”

111

Taking measures

112

5. SURVEY, SYSTEMS, THINGS

113

SURVEY SYSTEMS THINGS

114

Survey The first analysis made on the territory is the survey. The result of this investigation is not simply a map but a composition of different elements and information that first give a measure to the territory, secondly focus on precise features that, together, suggest the idea of territory as a palimpsest. The panel is consider on one hand as a document of synthesis of the material collected with the previous process of mapping, on the other, as a tool to make clear the aspects wich the design phase will deal with. The first measure is made through a series of cross sections twenty kilometers long traced at regular intervals of one kilometers. The sections reveals peculiar characteristics of the topography and let emerge the double quality of a landscape equally compound by natural and manmade features. More precisely is possible to follow the depression of the Hainaut valley and the soft reliefs of the hills, but it results clear also the importance of the new artificial chain of the terrils and of the digs made for the construction of the new infrastructures. The new and the old canal du centre are exemplary in this sense. As already underlined in the previous analysis, infrastructures let define two physical boundaries, a northern and a southern front, that gives the region not just an administrative dimension but also a kind of physical recognition. The north side is defined by the threeways of the Walloon axis: the highway, the railway and the natural and artificial waterways. The southern part, instead, is marked by the national road n90. The urban dispersion of the region is spread within these two boundaries, that seam to literally redraw the edge of the underground coal seam, giving the region a completely different agro-economic qualities compared to the one of the rest of Wallony. The survey tries to suggest this specific condition, marking the dense presence of new industrial-logistic platforms along the highway, and, on the contrary, the basically agricultural character of the southern front. Finally the research focus on the urban material “available” within the two fronts. The radical shift from fordist to post-fordist models of production left on the territory an impressive constellation of abandoned areas and unused infrastructures. As already marked, the research considers extremely useful the analysis done by Lars Lerup (2001) and Alan Berger (2006) about the concept of dross, but, at this point, it tries also to give an its own interpretation. More precisely it starts from an Berger’s observation which suggests that we can consider dross an “un-programmed” area. This definition gives a new horizon to the discussion considering these areas not merely as a left over of a mythical industrial era completely concluded, but more as those part of the territory to whom the new industrial era has not give a role, a program yet. Moreover, this let us conceive them not as something that has to be

System The second moment of this analysis is the study and the representation of a system. The goal of the analysis is to interrogate and make clear several regimes and dynamics triggered in the territory. Then, the results obtained were drawn in a diagram as “reductive” and as coherent as possible. The research started from the fundamental role played by infrastructures in the region. The complex system of railway, tramway, canals and rivers is here reduced into a matter of mobility. Each line in the map correspond to a different kind of mobility. Hence the lines are compound and drawn together as subway lines, where the production and extraction sites represent the different terminals of each route. The analysis, therefore, makes evident the relation of proximity between the different lines, but also the dynamics that keep together the different productive sites. Moreover it suggests a new and real territorial dimension linking the local dimension of the compact urban centers, with the regional, the national and the international one, since the railway and waterway were linked with Brussels but also with the port of Antwerp and Rotterdam. This result extremely interesting for two reason: first it let us understand that the territory is already irrigate by a huge potential, represented by a iper-dense (public) infrastructural system. Second that this system is, till a certain limit, isotropic: it excludes the idea of a real center and suggest a polycentric one. Therefore, the analysis makes even more clear how the productive archipelago of mines and industries could work in the past. It underlines the route that linked the different islands one to the other. The new map of mobility underlines also the different relation that bind the different lines, for instance tramways and waterways. Both served the old and the modern heavy industry, being used to transport huge quantity of raw materials and finished products. The tramways, by contrary, had a direct relation with the urban center and with the citè ouvrier spread all over the region. They didn’t move materials but workforce. The highway, instead, represents a kind of autonomous element that keeps a relation with the other lines only in precise point –the intermodal platform- follow precise hierarchies. More precisely the E42 works as the main pipe that support the new post-fordist regime of production. The new terminal of this line are shopping malls, logistic platforms, scientific or business parks, airports, rather than mines or steel factory. The highway is the place of just-in-case production, of flexibility and indeterminacy, of ability and time of reaction.

Analisys: survey, systems, things

preserve a priori in order to maintain untouched an eventual industrial heritage, but more as something to be reactivate.

115

116

Things The last chapter of the research focus on the description of a thing, whose character is informed by the peculiar features of the territory and that, at the some time, becomes a specific artifact of the territory itself. The thing analyzed is the citè ouvrier of Bois du Luc, in the proximity of La Louviere, in the really centre of the region. The citè was constructed in 1844 due to the necessity of giving new houses to the workers of the homonymous mine site that, instead, has a centennial tradition, since the first excavations were done in 1695. Bois du Luc represents one of the living and working units which compounded the productive archipelago of the region; this is why we can consider its “thingness” exemplary on an architectural and on territorial level. In fact, in an illustration of the end nineteenth century the citè stands in the foreground, while the horizon is constellated by smoking chimneys dispersed in the untouched agricultural landscape. The railway line were the only link with the outside, since each unit represented a kind of independent and autarchic island, with precise social rules. Every family have a private house, with four rooms, a cellar and a private garden. The garden gives the workers the possibility to have a piece of land to cultivate and made –ideally- softer the shift from the agricultural to the industrial life style. Besides the private condition of each family the citè guaranteed several common facilities: shared gardens, a hall for the parties organized by the mine society, the school for the kids, a church, an hospice, an hospital and a kiosk in the middle of the wood. These facilities were a form of paternalistic welfarism, that let the “padrepadrone” of the mine have a pervasive control on the life of his workers. From Fourier to Goudin, from Owen to Howard, the architectural tradition continuously investigated this topic in order to propose new alternatives to the polluted and congested compact city of the end of the nineteenth century. The common element of these proposals was the strong division between place of living and place of working, even if designed in the same (urban or architectural) artifact. There was always a wall that violently divided the factory from the city, as if they were two antithetic worlds. In 1924 Ludwig Hilberseimer proposes a vertical city for one million inhabitants. One of the most radical aspect of the proposal is that in the new city people work and live in the same building. The limit between the two condition (living and working) is blurred, the only difference is given by a typological variation: the apartments for the workers are fit in slabs overlapped on courtyard blocks, on plinths which host offices and workshop. In 1969 the Italian radical group Archizoom, starting from the work of Hilberseimer, proposed a kind of ultimate urban system for the post-fordist city. In no-stop city architecture evaporates and what remains is just a generic and never-ending typical plan that is able to host any kind of program. There are not wall anymore that divide the city and the factory, since the city itself is the factory.

Analisys: survey, systems, things First investigations on the man-made landscape. The canal du centre and the liftboats.

117

118 Survey: topography, urban dispersion, infrastructural threeway, un-programmed areas

119

Analisys: survey, systems, things

120 System: the infrastractural system, fordist and post-fordis regimes

121

Analisys: survey, systems, things

122 Thing: the citĂ¨ ouvrier of Bois du Luc

123

Analisys: survey, systems, things

124

6. A THEORETICAL BASEMENT

125

What we talk about when we talk about architecture (?)

126 Josef Shulz® serie “centre commercial”

2: Alberto Ferlenga, Tassonomie autostradali in Casabella n°670, 1993

Typical Ikea warehouse and facade detail

Necessity of genericness Martin Pawley, in his book titled “Terminal Architecture”1, claims that at the end of the Nineties could be possible not just to understand which were the main features of the contemporary city at the end of the last century, but even which they will be at the beginning of the new one. In his opinion Western cities were not shaped by modern or postmodern architectural episodes, rather by an other kind of architecture, often hidden, but that paradoxically represents the larger part of urban material built in the last decades. In the book this kind of architecture is defined “terminal”, where the term on the one hand refers to the relationship with infrastructures and on the other to the state of health, to the quality of an architecture that is about to disappear, to die as a terminal patient. Pawley refers to the so called Large-Single-Storey Buildings orLSSBs, better known as Big Sheds, a type of building scattered throughout the NWMA, diffused practically everywhere but in the cities centers. In most cases these buildings host places of production, distribution and consumption and they are located along the main infrastructures especially at strategic and potentially multi-modal interchanges. Pawley refers mainly to logistic clusters, which have increasing invaded Europe since it has turned in a huge logistics hub of continental dimensions moving the heavy industrial production outside its boundaries. With the same label we can indicate other kind of objects that dot and give a measure to the territory of the contemporary city. The terminal architecture, in fact, is the one of the IKEA stores, of the big outlet, of the commercial, business, scientific and amusement parks, it is the one of the formula-one hotel. Terminal architectures are those listed by Alberto Ferlenga2 in its taxonomies along the highway A4 Milan-Venice, but which can be found identical along the highway the runs from Achen to Lille, or the one that goes from Eihndoven to Liège or from Antwerp to Amsterdam. Architecture is considered “terminal” because tends to vanish: its goal is not to organize and to determine spaces any more, on the contrary is to ensure a maximum level of neutrality, of emptiness, of uncertainty. This means that it is usually characterized by large spans and by neutral facades, completely closed or completely open, in both cases they have to be cheap and low-maintenance, preferring prefabricated materials easily assemble, disassemble and –sometimes- recyclable. What distinguishes a building from the others are the color, the texture, or more often the great mysterious logos that intrigue the drivers running along the highway: Argos, Asda, Tesco, Waitrose, Makro. Terminal architecture is, to some extent, scalable, meaning that it keeps the same characteristics both if it is very large or relatively small. It does not lose its properties because it has no properties. This means that it is not necessarily the one of large objects, but

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1: Martin Pawley, Terminal Architecture, Chicago, 1998.

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also that of roadside restaurants, of small industrial storage or even the “casa-capannone” in Veneto. Terminal architectures are the greenhouses but also the JF Kennedy, both grandsons of the Crown Hall by Mies van der Rohe, whose preserve and celebrate genericness.

3: Rem Koolhaas, Bruce Mau, Hans Werlemann SMLXL, New York, 1995

4: ibidem

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Generic city In 1995 Rem Koolhaas publishes in the pages of SMLXL an essay titled Generic City. He begins questioning: “Is the contemporary city like the contemporary airport –“all the same”? Is it possible to theorize this convergence? And if so, to what ultimate configuration is it aspiring? Convergence is possible only at the price of shedding identity. That is usually seen as a loss. But at the scale at which occurs, it must mean something. What are the disadvantages of identity, and conversely, what are the advantages of blankness? What if this seemingly accidental –and usually regretted- homogenization were an intentional process, a conscious movement away from difference toward similarity? What if we are witnessing a global liberation movement: “down with character!” What is left after identity is stripped? The Generic?”3. Koolhaas, in the role of a end-millennium flaneur, records the fundamental tendency of the contemporary city to lose its specificity. This tendency is due not to a general inability to translate an eventual new identity distinct from the one of the past, but rather to a real and effective lack of identity. In other words the only specificity of the contemporary city is not having a specific character. Even if the city would succeed in shaping an identity, this will necessarily be unstable, consumable and marketable. According to a kind of Darwinian logic the city survives the market forces becoming liquid and reversible: once worn or out-of-fashion it can be dismantled, redesigned and replaced. The generic city is Hollywood “which produces a new identity every Monday morning”. This trend, he adds, can not be understood merely as a matter of fact, but must be viewed as the result of a process of liberation. We know that Koolhaas does not even try to oppose this state of things, rather he considers it necessary, hence not eventual. For this reason in “What Ever Happened to Urbanism”, talking about the new role the architect should play in the contemporary city, he states that the only thing that we can do with “nietzchian exhilaration” is merely “to accept what exists. We were making sand castles. Now we swim in the sea that swept them away”4. In 1973, more than twenty years before the conclusions given by Koolhaas, Pier Paolo Pasolini records one of the documentary of the series “The shape of the city”. In the documentary, Pasolini, after nervously walking on the dunes of Sabaudia, stops and looking at the city claims that even if it was built during the Mussolini era, it has nothing fascist. The fascist regime, despite its violence, has failed in denting that “human scale” of the city, it failed in diminishing its character, its specificity, “his being the reality of a provincial, rustic, paleo-industrial Italy “. A urban reality where the citizens are still “human

5: Emanuele Severino, Legge e Caso, Milano, 1979

The Law and the Chaos Koolhaas and Pasolini’s analysis about the city converge on one point: the homologation that confers genericness to the contemporary city does not depend on a strong power, is not the result of a dictatorial regime, on the contrary, it depends on a “ global liberation movement “ claims Koolhaas, or on a “democratic regime, “ says Pasolini. Both of them suggest that is the freedom that capitalism has to establish its social and economic practices that has shaped the character of our cities. Capitalism can enjoy this freedom because there are not strong apparatus or thoughts that opposed to it. In 1979 Emanuele Severino writes “Law and Caos”5 a short essay that summarizes the principles of a reflection which began in 1958 with “The Original Structure”. Severino often repeats in his writings that the history of western culture “is the story and the evocation of the destruction of the Immutable. Such destruction ( from the destruction of God and of the universal concept -which anticipates in itself every determinations as God anticipates in itself each event in the world- to the destruction of tonality in musical language and of any “natural form” in the work of art, from the destruction of capitalist relations to the one of the author and of the written text in Artaud’s “theater of cruelty” is the same destruction of traditional civilization and its values.”

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people, full human beings, whole, full in their humility” Pasolini claims that the situation changed noting that: “Nowadays, in fact, the opposite happens. The regime is a democratic regime, but that acculturation, that homologation that fascism could never achieved, were imposed by the actual form of power – the power of consumerist reality – by removing the different modes of being human that Italy has historically produced so differently. Actually it is this acculturation that is now destroying Italy. Hence I can definitely claim that the real fascism is the power of the consumerist society which is destroying Italy now. This thing happened so quickly that, after all, we were not even aware; all was done in the last five, six, seven, ten years. It was a kind of nightmare in which we saw Italy around us destroys itself and disappears, and now, waking up - perhaps – by this nightmare, and looking around we see that there is nothing that can be done” Pasolini, therefore, using all his sharpness, underlines that the new capitalist regime could done what Fascims could not, meaning a general homologation which reduces the identity of the city and of its inhabitants to an absolute “similarity”, as Koolhaas says. The anonymity of the INA social housing that frequently appear in his movies like in those of Federico Fellini (Koolhass interviews Fellini in 1965) are the symbol of this new city, white and washable, everywhere the same, completely different to that dimension of the pre-industrial village, but even to the one of the historical centers. It’s on this white and still in construction stage that Pasolini depicts the drama pained by many of his characters, the one provoked by the gradual but inevitable loss of identity in the passage from the sub-proletarian to the proletarian condition.

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6: Bernardo Secchi, La città del XX secolo, RomaBari, 2005

Eugène Delacroix, La Liberté guidant le peuple, 1830

7: Emanuele Severino, Il nulla e la poesia. Alla fine dell’età della tecnica: Leopardi, Milano, 1990 8: Emanuele Severino, L’anello del ritorno, Milano, 1999

9: Rem Koolhaas, Delirious New York, New York, 1978

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The Twentieth century, in this sense, appears exemplary in order to understand that the degree of fluidity of modern society is due to the continuous destruction of the structures of the tradition. The Twentieth century is not only the “death of God” in Nietzsche, but also the destruction of form in the visual arts, of the precision of science with the uncertainty principle, is the destruction of the concepts of state, politics, family, identity, but also of the block of the compact city that is becoming more and more spread, weak, isotropic, democratic, composed by fragments difficulty reassemble in a overall vision. It is the destruction of the “right distance” between things6. Just as in the Delacroix painting, it is Freedom that lead the Western culture in this process. Precisely for this reason freedom is the only stable value whose people have faith, and which, finally, emerges from the ashes of destruction. Freedom is the quality the events have in order to happen without being dominated by any pre-vision. It is also the freedom of the subject, which acts autonomously, freed from any doctrine, and reducing to itself the meaning of its actions. But Freedom comes with a secondary consequence: the western culture realizes that at the basement of the autonomy of the subject, of his literal “will to power”, or at the bottom of the changing nature of the world, there is nothing. The events can not be predicted because they come out of nothingness, people are free because there is nothing which addresses or obligates their actions. More our identity is precise and the more our values are strong and solid, less we will be free to act in a predictable and tendecially static reality. On the contrary the more we are freed from truth or rather from values (from the value we give to things and to our actions) the more we are free to act and exercise our power in a fluid and unpredictable reality, literally open to chaos. Severino, hence, analyzing Leopardi7 and Nietzsche8, argues that Western history is the history on one hand of the emergence of the meaning of nothingness (or nihilism) on the other of those structures built to be saved from the anguish nothingness causes (from myth to epistemic knowledge, to religion, art, technè). On the one hand the law, on the other chaos. Where there is nothing eveything is possible In SMLXL we can find another essay written by Koolhaas in 1985. The text is titled “Imagining nothingness” and it begins claiming that “Where there is nothing, everything is possible. Where there is architecture, nothing (else) is possible”. This is a concept that emerges also in Delirious New York9 and that it is furthermore explicated in “Typycal Plan” an essay of 1993. The typical plan is simply the most common layout of the north-american skyscraper. The only quality that it has it is having no qualities at all, it represents the real zero-degree of architecture, but precisely this condition of being nothing allows the greater number of functional programs. The typical plan it is therefore generic, no-ideological, more austere

The form in architecture, the form of the city The last arguments allows us to add further conclusions. The first is a formal issue which concerns the ability of architecture to relate and translate the complexities of modern culture. Architecture has always been accused by critics, but sometimes even by its own protagonist, to be a discipline always lagging behind the events of modernity. According to this interpretation architecture, both as an art or as text, it has never undergone that process of revision and crisis which instead has invested other disciplines (art, philosophy, science) and that has turned them into real witnesses and reporters of the contemporary era. Its technical nature would have been the element which prevented this progress, its constant obligation to deal with gravity and with the obvious constraints of living. Most of the arguments arrayed against this kind of interpretation put forward objections focusing only on the development of the architectural involucre, making it a matter of formal progress: from the lecorbuserian purism, to the elusive spiritualization of technology by Mies van der Rohe, to plasticism, organic forms, metabolism and so on up to deconstructionism, the morphogenesis and cognitive mapping and to parametric architecture. This argument, however, presupposes that the only way that architecture has to relate with modernity is to translate its fluidity and its complexity and contradictions, sic et simpliciter with equal fluidity and formal complexity. Architecture is considered just for its plastic

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Mies Van der Rohe, Seagram Building ground floor plan, 1958

than a Cistercians monastery, an absolute space as the one of a church in which no doctrines are celebrated. Typical plan coincides with the Miesian “almost nothing” but freed by its artistic aura and completely given back to the fluctuant requests of advanced capitalism. It is minimalism for the masses. Typycal plan is pure terminal architecture, that, instead of spreading in horizontal, is vertically extruded. “Its neutrality”, Koolhaas cliams, “performance records, event, flow, change, accumulation, reduction, disappearance, mutation, fluctuation, failure, oscillation, deformation” reaching considerations similar to Severino’s ones, adds “ Typical plan, actually, has hidden affinities with other arts: the position of its cores on the floor has a suprematist tension; it is the equivalent of atonal music, seriality, concrete poetry, art brut, it is architecture as mantra […] all other architecture preempt the futute; typycal Plan – by making no choices- postpone it, keeps it, open forever”. This “openness” of the typical plan is not an esthetic quality, it is not a non-finito, rather it is the mere openness to nothingness, to chaos, to unpredictability, that is to the say to programmatic instability. The Typical plan is the immediate translation of the spatial relationship between freedom and nothingness that emerges during the twentieth century: the more space is free, the more it is generic. The more is specific, less it is literally chaotic, literally open to chaos. This let us to state that the Crown Hall is more chaotic than any project of Zaha Hadid.

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10: Zigmunt Baumann, Modernità liquida, RomaBari, 2002

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performances. Nevertheless, starting from the points highlighted speaking about the typical plan, we can try to propose an interpretation completely different, claiming that it is precisely the fact that architecture is first of all a technè that makes it the exact spatial translation of modernity. As a matter of fact, the free-plan of Le Corbusier’s five-points, before being a formal or constructive elements is nothing more than a generic typical plan, that was already used by the new service sector, rather than by industrial plants, hospitals and terminals. The plan is called “free”, but, as it has been already emphasized, it would be better to define it “freed”. The space of modernity is freed from walls, from fixed and stable spatial configurations, allowing predictable rituals that are now potentially free to be reinvented every day. The fact that this type of architecture tents “in the name of freedom” to be “all the same” reflects the human tendency to be more and more without qualities. In this sense we can confirm, therefore, that the fluidity of space of European modernism is, in effect, an exact translation of that fluidity that -according to Baumann10- has affected all the aspects of the Western society. Such freedom and genericness of the plan, hence, clarify the state of crisis of architecture, the same experienced by other disciplines. I refer to crisis because since architecture open itself to unpredictability it can no longer be considered an instrument to determine order and relations between events, but it can only be meant as the tool to contain this state of things. The second issue is whether modernism was actually aware of the crisis of its own instruments or not. Taking into account what has been said so far, in fact, it is difficult to place dogmas such “form follows function” or “exterior must be the translation of the interior” since the internal functions are free to be rearranged all the time. Even more contradictory is the way in which modern architecture addresses the question of the city, meaning the use of rigid predictive tools such the typological classification or the functional zoning. If a building, due to the genericness of its spaces, can accommodate any function, the question is no longer how to divide functions in space, but to admit and accept the metropolitan chaos and to program its inevitable congestion. Delirious New York, written by Koolhaas in 1978, can be considered as the retroactive legitimacy of this phenomenon of congestion and therefore as the first real attack to modernist pretensions of controlling the metropolitan programmatic instability. The act of planning becomes meaningless because useless, as useless as all the predictive systems. If the act of planning loses its power it is architecture that becomes the only element that can still define the shape of the city. From the master-plan we shift to the master-section: the section of the downtown athletic club is the icon used by Koolhaas to summarize

11: Pier Vittorio Aureli, The possibility of an absolute architecture, Cambridge Massachussetts, 2011

12: Ludwig Hilberseimer, Un-idea di piano, Venezia, 1962

Koolhaas, Hilberseimer, Archizoom Pier Vittorio Aureli, in his book titled “The Possibility of an absolute architecture”11 claims that it is precisely the infinite seriality and lack of boundaries of the process of urbanization which results crucial in Koolhaas and which allows a comparison of his work with the one of Ludwig Hilberseimer and Archizoom . Koolhaas, in fact, often marks the importance of formal specificity in architecture -he will define his entire work as an attempt to combine architectural specificity and programmatic instability, that is to say iconic envelopes and generic spaces. However, the issue of the project of the city or of the architecture of the city remains unsolved. Rather than unsolved the problem does not even exist, the city has no form, because it has no limits. Its infinite process of urbanization is considered the necessary consequence of capitalist production and distribution schemes that tend to expand without limits and pervasively in the territory. The theme of the infinite expansion of the urban phenomenon was addressed by several authors at the beginning of the twentieth century, but within the reflection that bind together programmatic instability and genericness, the work of Ludwig Hilberseimer results exemplary. In the first Italian edition of “Idea of a plan”12, describing the strategies of his plan for a vertical city in 1923, Hilberseimer claims that: “The city has a tendency to expand into ever larger areas. It correspondingly increased the distance between residential areas and those of working. The time necessary to people to go and to come back from one area to another is disproportionate to the working hours and often it represents one fourth or even one third of the working time. The disorder that reigns in a city is not merely the result of its unlimited expansion, but especially of the lack of a real relation between the different areas. The residential areas and the working ones are spread on the entire surface of the city without any relationship between each other “ Hilberseimer states, therefore, that the problem of the city is not its infinite expansion, which is considered a mere fact, rather it is its programming: the physical relationship between functions and the role of infrastructure. This problem is not resolved through a functional zoning, but in architectural, or better in typological terms. He explains that “the functions relating to working and living could be vertically connected, while remaining separate: on the basement the business city and

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André Breton, Jacqueline Lamba, Yves Tanguy Cadavre exquis, 1938 Starrett & Van Vleck e Duncan Hunter Downtown Athletic Club, New York, 1931

the characteristics of a new type of town where all the functions are simply juxtaposed one to another, as in a collage, or rather like an surrealist cadaver-exquis. The role of the architect is no longer the engineering one of dividing the city in functions as if they were the gears of a huge machine ad habiter. The architect is more like a director who accepts and narrates the chaos of the city, assembling its parts in a post-production process. From the architectural point of view, however, he represents the nietzchiean artist, the one who determines the formal specificity of each block, of each islands: if each tower is a city within a city, it can be imagined as the island of an archipelago whose boundaries are potentially extensible ad infinitum.

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13: Pier Vittorio Aureli, The Project of Autonomy: Politics and Architecture Within and Against Capitalism, Princeton, 2008

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on the top the residential one. A vertical city where traffic would be reduced since everyone lives above their working space”. Unlike Le Corbusier, hence, Hilberseimer imagines that the city of the twentieth century does not have any typological diversification. All functions are incorporated into a single building consisting of a basement hosting the production spaces, and slabs with residential units. As in the Koolhass’ New York the city is resolved in the section of a single building type, a minimal unit which hosts the essential functions provided by capitalism. As in the koolhaas vision he also imagines that the units are endlessly repeatable and held together not by public spaces, but by infrastructures, meaning the pipes necessary to support the various parts of the system. Architecture is less and less the tool to give a measure to a composition, more and more a tool to bring order into a system, whose it becomes the infrastructural framework. Architecture is conceived as a non-figurative language. But what is even more radical, though latent, it is that in Hilbersmeier’s plan the modern city no longer includes the classic division between the factory and the urban center, between place of working and living: they are simply overlapped one to each other. A simple reflection on the issue of traffic jam, therefore, brings the modern architectural culture to admit the possibility that the city can no longer be considered a place that is opposed to that of the factory: the city is the factory. Aureli13 says that in 1965, Claudio Greppi, a student of the Faculty of Architecture of Florence and member of the political group Classe Operaia lead by Mario Tronti, present a final thesis concerning the project of a production plant for the territory of Prato in Tuscany. More precisely Greppi imagines an infinite expansion of these units, linked together by an isotropic infrastructural network. Its intent was to demonstrate and clarify the argument advanced by Tronti that society and the contemporary city are simply the product of the conditions imposed by capitalism. In 1968, the Florentine group Archizoom, influenced both by the thesis of Greppi and by the projects of Hilberseimer proposes a more radical project, the No-Stop city. More precisely No-Stop city excludes the formal elements still present in the work of Greppi, it also excludes the concept of Hilberseimer’s repeatable type units, essentially it excludes architecture: it is the celebration of his terminal condition. What remains is nothing but an endless typical plan, a comprehensive generic space. The intent of Archizoom, as written by Branzi in 1971 in the pages of Domus, was to demonstrate that “the city does not represent the system anymore, but becomes the system itself, programmed and isotropic” The radical character of Archizoom does not merely consists in graphic originality or in the edginess of some of their statements. No-stop city is radical because it literally radicalizes the fundamental tendencies of the contemporary city. No-stop city is the extrusion of that process of urbanization that was investing the European territories after the second world war. Hence, it’s interesting to note that part of the architectural culture

Archizoom, No-stop City, 1968-1970

14: Bernardo Secchi, La città del XX secolo, Roma-Bari, 2005

Be still my house in the tumult of the universe After these reflections it may be clear how the architectural culture has seconded the processes of liquefaction which involved modern culture. Said that it is important to keep in mind, as Severino argues, that the western culture coincides not only with the “story of the destruction of the Immutable” but, paradoxically, also with that of its evocation. This means that western culture defends itself from the evidence of the contingent instability of the world by building always more dams, weaker than those just destroyed, but still able to save the subject from the anguish of nothingness. Bernardo Secchi (2005), speaking about the emergence of the autonomy of the subject, points out that “what we pained is the alienation of social life, the loss of a horizon of meaning, a sense of belonging to a class or a community often confused with the place, the disappearance of the ancient statuary society where each professional and social group had its own stable position. What is feared is the dissolution of the city meaning that the physical loss of the order built by modernity can also represent the loss of social order. Urban dispersion, suddenly, appears more dangerous than urban degeneration a long debated throughout the nineteenth century. The village, the city and the medieval finitudo appear as ideal states toward which we must go back”14 In 1901 Peter Behrens wrote on the walls of his own house, “Steh fest, Mein Haus im Weltgebraus” which we can translate as “Be still my house in the tumult of the universe”. Architecture, according to Behrens, is what is stable and unchanging, it is again the primitive hut from which you can look at the world whose instability is feared. In his case it will be the cave from which to observe Europe being destroyed by two world wars. “Life in tumult” is the translation of Uto-Aztec word “Koyaanisqatsi” used by Goffried Regio to entitle the first chapter of a documentary series that the American director ended in 1982. (the filming started in 1976 when Koolhaas began to write Delirious New York). The documentary, in the words of Regio, has to be perceived more as an experience, rather than be read as a linear plot. In fact there is no plot, no dialogue, the center of the work is, simply, the new way of inhabiting our planet, whose mechanical, repetitive, homologous, frenetic, fluid aspects are exalted. The most popular parts of the documentary are those which describe the

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of the twentieth century converges to the same conclusion: the fundamental tendency of our time is to destroy stable structures, those capable of precise predictions and to operate through precise limits. The capitalist system itself, especially in its current post-Fordist regime, is one of the forces that make even stronger and more decisive this tendency. Architecture and the city, as products of the conditions imposed by this regime, tend to oppose less and less friction, making themselves less and less solid, becoming weak, diffuse, isotropic, generic. This tendency toward nothingness and liquidity, manifests itself primarily as the impossibility of architecture of defining limits.

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Peter Behrens, House in Darmstadt, 1901

Goffried Regio, Koyaanisqatsi , 1982 15: Aldo Rossi, Autobiografia Scientifica, Parma, 1990

Arnaldo Pomodoro, La colonna del viaggiatore , 1962

16: Pier Vittorio Aureli, More and More About Less and Less in Log n°16, 2009

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congestion uncontrollable state of excitement of the North American metropolis, which becomes a symbol of this new condition of living. The images, moreover, are accompanied by Philip Glass’ soundtrack, which, no wonder, follows no melody, but is built on repetitive structures, with no beginning or end, emphasizing even more the fluidity of the flows the invest the city. Now what is clear, as well as thrilling, in the sequences of the “life out of balance” described by Regio, is the contrast between the state of instability of the metropolitan life and the absolute stillness of its architecture, its stability, its ability to become a frame, which contains and literally puts on stage the life of its inhabitants. Regio’s documentary helps us to better understand why Aldo Rossi wrote in his Scientific Autobiography “architecture is the fixed scene of human life”.15 The fact that modernity is more and more liquid and that the urban ambitions demand more and more instability does not necessarily mean a dissolution of architecture, on the contrary strengthens its role as a tool to define the place where the instability takes place. We can imagine architecture as a sculpture by Arnaldo Pomodoro, an object whose envelope is stable, defined, simple but once scratched it reveals an uncertain, complex, unsteady dimension, difficult to be understood and predicted because not completely revealed. This lobotomy between inside and outside is one of the fundamental characteristics of Mies’ American skyscrapers, that, as the black monolith in Kubrick’s Space Odyssey, first appear as metaphysical prisms, then as a symbol of a content which remains cryptic and mysterious. Now, as pointed out by Aureli16, the reflection that Mies proposes toward the relation between programmatic instability and architecture of the city does not coincides with a mere problem of form and content, nor of program and formal specificity. Architecture is not only a box to be filled with whatever content. This is clear if we look at Mies’ last works, in which architecture is used to mark limits within the city fabric. Mies, in his most mature works (Seagram Building, Toronto Dominion Center, Neu National Gallery) suggests to give architecture the role of building a precise urban model. What we can note, in fact, is that all these projects have a common element, the plinth. This is precisely the tool which allows Mies to de-limit and define a place within the wider and indefinite space of capitalist city. Mies’s projects are, first of all, acts of founding cities within a city, or finite islands that compound a a largest metropolitan archipelago in the in-finite see of urbanization. Mies, therefore, does not refuse to deal with programmatic uncertainty nor with the necessity to respond to instability by using architectures as generic as possible. Mies architecture, as a matter of fact, is the architecture of the “generic city”. Nevertheless the use of the plinth redefines the role of this architecture in relation to the

Stanley Kubrick, 2001: A Space Odyssey, 1968

Mies Van der Rohe, Seagram Building, 1958 17: Mary Louise Lobsinger, The New Urban Scale in Italy: On Aldo Rossi’s L’architettura della città, in Journal of Architectural Education n°59, 2006 18: Pier Vittorio Aureli, The Project of Autonomy: Politics and Architecture Within and Against Capitalism, Princeton, 2008

Architecture within the “new-dimension” of city region The question of the role of the architect- and of architecture- within the new dimension of the city-region represents the core of the fundamental debate taking place in Italy after the second world war. As pointed out by Mary Louise Lobsinger17 it is a debate that arises especially by noting the failure of the urban models proposed during the reconstruction period, but also the increase of the phenomenon of rural exodus toward the new industrial cities (Milan, Rome, Genoa, Turin, among others). One of the highlights of this debate will be the Conference organized in Arezzo in 1962 by Giancarlo de Carlo, entitled “The new dimension of the city and the city region”. During the conference De Carlo supports the need to consider the new city-territory as an open structure, dynamic, whose boundaries and forms are in a constant state of change because of those changing and dynamic economical forces that sweep it . The transition from traditional forms of city -hierarchical and centralized- to new one -open and informal- required the architects to base their projects on the analysis of those forces, hence to focus especially on social, economic and infrastructural dynamics. Rossi, on the contrary, as he will repeat also at the nineteenth congress of INU in 1965, argues that there is no sense to talk about the city as “open form” and that the project for the city was still a project of formal continuity, thus purely architectural. Aureli marks this passage by saying that: “Against the mystification of the city-territory Rossi insisted on the concreteness of the urban artifact, of the architecture of the city, as the most relevant and precise instrument of urban analysis. Instead of look at the city as an undefined,and neutral ground, shaped only by categories imposed by the accelerating forces of urbanization, Rossi proposed to see the city as a place formed by politics. From this standpoint, only an analysis of architecture could reveal the city’s immanent separateness, that is, its constitution of parts”18 Aldo Rossi, like Mies was doing in the American metropolis, opposes, to the generic vastness of the new urban phenomena, an architecture able to identify finished parts, able for this reason to dialogue with their surrounding. In this sense, the proposed project for the business center in Turin is exemplary. Rossi, together with Luca Meda and Gianugo Polesello, translates all the complexity of the brief in the most simple and pure form: a huge courtyard building obtained by the extrusion up to 140 meters of a generic space thus free to host the most unpredictable kinds of programs. Rossi, like Hilberseimer and Archizoom, does not contrast the idea of architecture as representation of power, he was the first indeed to be aware that architecture is always a representation of the dominant class. He does not even avoid to confront with the new demands of the capitalist city. Contrary to Hilberseimer and Archizoom, however, he believes that

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surrounding and challenges the tendency to an indefinite and fluid process of urbanization, juxtaposing to this an idea of city built by finite parts.

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Rossi, Meda, Polesello, Locomotiva 2, 1962

Aldo Rossi I nuovi problemi, in Casabella Contnuità, 1962

19: Bernardo Secchi, La città del XX secolo, Roma-Bari, 2005

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architecture can still have a role, the responsibility, within the city, to define places. Rossi’s position does not want to be a conservative one, which seeks to preserve traditional forms of city. This results clear in the editorial titled “New problems” that he wrote in the number 264 of “Casabella Continuità” in 1962. In the article he states that “ we had achieved a broader and dynamic vision of the city: it is a vision which tends to overcome the opposition between city and countryside, conceived in old terms, as well as the academic distinction between compact and scattered city, between garden-city and city made of concrete”. He goes on saying that within the new dimension of the city “shopping malls, universities, cultural centers, public buildings will regain their formal significance: they are monuments of a larger metropolitan area crossed by a major public transport able to increase and multiply the movements, contacts, the participation of every man to the spirit of the new city. The traffic jam, which today is symptom of congestion, will be the fervent and regular pulse of a dynamic and ordered society. Finally, in the wider centers of common life, the importance of the topic will again be meaningful. Architecture, nowadays degraded by speculation, will return to deal with the most important civic issues and will be able to describe, with the boldness of ever more advanced technologies, the progress of the city”. The goal of architecture, as Rossi seems to suggest, is not merely denying the dispersion or in general the process of urbanizations driven by capitalism, but it is to redefine it through the project of states of exception. Again the idea suggested is that of an archipelago of islands formally defined surrounded by a wider urban phenomenon. Like a sea that holds them together. The formal and programmatic role of each island does not define only the structure of the archipelago, but it also renames the sea that lies between them. The metropolitam archipelago If in 1960 the metropolitan archipelago was an horizon that was looming, but that did not fully emerge yet, nowadays instead, after fifty years, we can say that it has become the real state of things. The North West Metropolitan Area, as a matter of fact, has been characterized on one hand by pervasive dispersion process, but, on the other, by equally intensive concentration processes. Bernardo Secchi19 describes this condition by claiming that it is “characterized by the absence of a dominant center with its own periphery, rather it is like a large inhabited green park where you can recognize, drowned in the dispersion of the settlements, some denser points : compact middle sized cities, witnesses of the oldest European urban structure and some villages with an equally long history behind them. Important productive and business activities, cultural facilities, sportive, educational and for the health, many places for leisure are scattered in this vast campus, both in the principal center, both in the scattered and low density areas of the città diffusa” In 2005, Francesco Indovina argues that the definition “città diffusa”, which he coined in the early nineties, is no longer sufficient

21: Paola Viganò, Territori della nuova modernità, Napoli, 2001

A theoretical basement

20: Francesco Indovina, L’arcipelago metropolitano in Dalla città diffusa all’arcipelago metropolitano, Milano, 2009

to describe the new structure of the contemporary city. Referring to the central Veneto, he writes that “The landscape which emerges looks like a rich and articulated landscape, full of functions, exaggerated in its mobility, but which offers to its residents a dimension of metropolitan life, even if not concentrated. It is a landscape where you can find: bigger, medium and smaller cities, scattered settlements and villages, industrial areas, but also scattered production activities, market-streets and centers of commercial specialization, complexes for leisure, sports, government and centers of excellence, not concentrated, but scattered throughout the territory, social houses complexes, agricultural areas, abandoned fields, etc.. This new regional structure has been named “metropolitan archipelago.”20 The metropolitan archipelago excludes the idea of a total homogeneity of the urban phenomenon, which, on the contrary, is presented as a mixture of liquid and solid elements. The territory of the European city, in fact, is highly isotropic, but not completely. It has the same level of neutrality and democracy that capitalism has in that moment. For this reason it is weakly hierarchical, but still subordinated to the infrastructural systems that support production and distribution. Infrastructure indeed are the ones that decide the size and character of each islands, their identity. Paola Viganò, referring to the region of Salento stresses that the “stones”, meaning the places of concentration, “are often places densely infrastructured: most of the latest equipment, hospitals and administrative buildings, for example, were arranged close to large transport infrastructures; the industrial plants are the places of production served by the railways and in communication with the main roads; the ancient centers are often the richest places of social and cultural infrastructure”. Furthermore it is interesting to note that these centers of agglomeration are not just episodes of concentration, they, also for programmatic reasons, are the real “new centralities” which criticized the structure and the hierarchy of the traditional models and in doing this the do not even deny the phenomena of dispersion because “they reciprocally build the conditions where the other is possible”. The grade of centrality, meaning the influence they have on their surrounding areas, depend logically on economic forces. The city has never ceased, as a matter of fact, of being a capitalist city, even in the era of the welfare states. The new centralities, in fact, coincide with the places of production, distribution, consumption and leisure. Now what is interesting is that if on one hand it results evident the programmatic value of these areas and the role they have in regard to infrastructure, on the other it is difficult to measure the importance they might have from an architectural point of view. In the most favorable case these centers, responding to market conditions, turn the architectural project in perceptive, highly formalist matter , thus of landmarks, or of brands. In most cases the “new centralities” are nothing more than places of concentration of “terminal architecture”.

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First conclusions As I tried to point out through this text, I do believe that to reflect about architecture still makes sense, even acknowledging that it must deal not only with the current instability of market forces, but also with the most quintessential western tendency to destroy stable and finite forms. This belief should not be misunderstood as a return “to the medieval finitudo” or in general to traditional forms of city, rather as an attempt to restore that responsibilities that architecture has beyond its plastics performance, while admitting that architecture is always a manifestation of power. I believe that architecture will increasingly have to question and challenge the possibilities of “generic” and its relation with infrastructure; it will do it focusing on those which can not be defined yet the new centralities of the metropolitan archipelago. Architecture, more precisely, should be able to define again the place of co-habitation. Just referring to its necessary relation with capitalism, architecture should reflect again on living and working spaces and on how the project of these sites may suggest a renewed sense of civic duty.

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PROJECT

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A FOREWORD

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On a larger scale the project focus on the possibility to use the vacant un-programmed areas and infrastructures in order to reactivate several north-south corridors and to keep together the front constituted by highway, railway, and waterway, with the one represented by the national road n90. Hence, the proposal suggests a new infrastructural network able of structuring the entire thickness of the industrial sillon. In fact, we can consider the territory already irrigated by a huge potential, which is simply not used anymore. Reactivating this potential let , on one hand, to increase the level of isotropy of the region, on the other it let introduce new infrastructural relations that collide with the strong hierarchies introduced by the highway. The project investigates the issues of isotropy, accessibility and welfare, suggesting that the new public and private energies that eventually will invest the region will be diffusely spread on the territory and supported by a “sponge” of public rail transports. The proposal considers plausible this strategies due to two reason: first the northern and the sothern front of the region are relatively closed, therefore new interventions on the southern part can still count on the support of the highway. That is to say that the project does not deny the fundamental role of the highway itself, but it reconsiders the hierarchies introduced by this infrastructure. Secondly the new north-corridors already exists, hence the project does not build new infrastructures, it merely reactivates the existing ones. On a territorial scale the project deals with one of the eight corridors individuated in the previous phase. More precisely it focus on the section which includes La Louviere, Peronnes and Binchè. The choise was motivated by several considerations: the area, placed in the real center of the region, could play an important role in relation to the two majors cities, Mons and Charleroi. Second the city of La Louviere represents an interesting condition: it is one of the poorest city of the dorsal, the one with the highest level of unemployment, but at the same time is well connected with Brussels, with the airport of Charleroi, and in the future will host one of the biggest multimodal logistic platform of Wallony, the Garocentre. Moreover, it is surrounded by industrial monuments widely renowned. The design strategy proposed for this section is based on three main elements. First the reactivation of three rail lines: the tramline that from Binchè goes to La Louviere and that is extended to the Garocentre, crossing the station of La Louvier Sud; the railway line that from the Garocentre reaches the station of La Louviere Sud; lastly the short railway line that from La Louviere Sud goes to the old industrial area of Peronnes lez Binchè. The first and the third line are literally reactivated, the second is converted in a green corridor with a strong relation with the old and the new canal du centre. The second part of the project suggests a series of micro-interventions that provide several facilities to the inhabitants of the urban dispersion. The interventions consist in small green spaces, maisons

Mathias Ungers, Rem Koolhaas, Berlin as a green archipelago

Project

du people, common spaces. The third phase, instead, involves the construction of three terminal: the north, the south and the central one. All of them are placed in un-programmed areas. The three terminals on one hand are buildings that programmatically respond to the presence of the infrastructure, on the other, they have to be considered autonomous island, living and working unit comparable to citè ouvriers as the one of Bois du Luc and of Grand Hornu. The terminals do not have a relation with any compact city, considering it just a fragment –the smaller one- of the “new” dimension of the “città territorio”. Hence, even if they are collocated in a dimension in between urban dispersion and countryside, they deal and react to precise urban dynamics whose they are both product and driver element. In fact, the idea of three terminal as three islands presupposes that territory can still be structured on an metropolitan archipelago model. The model can be used both if we consider that the urban phenomenon will shrink, both if we think that it will expand. In the first case we have a green archipelago (Ungers, Koolhaas, 1977), where the terminals would look as urban islands surrounded by a kind of mythical and untouched natural condition. In the second case, by contrary, we would have a metropolitan archipelago (Indovina, 2005; Viganò 2006) and we could consider them as stones immersed in a fluid and scattered urban plankton. Any reflections about the idea of archipelago imply the idea of identity (Cacciari, 1997). Each island has, on one hand, a common identity that shares with the other components of the archipelago, on the other, a specific identity, a precise role, on which is based its grade of autonomy. The integrity of the archipelago is based on the difficult relation between this two aspects. Said that it results clear that the island of the archipelago could be autonomous but not autarchic, they need what surround them and vice versa. This is even more clear in the case of the metropolitan archipelago where the place of concentration (luoghi della concentrazione) do not contradict the place of dispersion (luoghi della dispersione): one needs the other in order to exist. In the design proposal the common identity shared by each island is that they are all living and working units. Then, within the boundaries of each island, the relation between these two conditions is declined in different ways, according with the kind of production and the kind of people that they will host. Program, site and architectural specificty As already marked in the previous analysis, the project focus not on a vague regeneration of vacant areas, but more on a re-programming operation. Hence, the first moment of the project was the definition of

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Aldo Rossi, Modena Cimitery Architecture as a frame

Kersten Geers and David Van Severen Expo Kortrijk Architecture as a frame

Mies Van der Rohe, Crown Hall, IIT campus Architecture as neutral space

Kersten Geers and David Van Severen Cité de Refuge, Ceuta Architecture as inhabitable wall

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Pier Vittorio Aureli, Martino Tattara Stop city Architecture as inhabitable wall

programmes. I considered particularly interesting to propose mixed programs for living and working spaces which deal with the postfordist regimes of production that have already invested the region. I think that it is important to investigate the relation between places of production and places of living, because it was just this relation that shaped the man-made features of the territory. The high level of mixitè of the programme and its contingent instability mark the lobotomy between architectural forms and functions. Therefore the choice of the program was as “post” or “a”-ideological, as capitalism itself. This does not contradict that architecture is always the architecture of power. Once established the programs, the project proposed a precise formal theme, the one of “frame”. The three terminal are, in fact, three simple squared frames. The architectural specificity of the project has an autonomous value: the frames are literally neutral cornices which host the most unpredictable programmatic variations. This implies two more consequences: the first, as already suggested, is that program is both translated, both trascended by architecture. The second is that programmatic complexity is not traduced sic et simpliciter with equal architectural complexity. By contrary, the project works on the possibility to use the most simple, neutral, flexible, vague and generic quality of spaces. The only variations within this generic regime are introduced by the specific characteristic of the site. Each project can be seen as the collision between the generic quality of spaces and the specific features of each site. North terminal The North terminal is a squared frame of 300 per 300 meters, 20 meters large. The programs is distributed both in the central void, both in the thickness of the cornice, which is considered as an inhabitable wall. The site is the old industrial area where, since thirty years ago, was placed the SAFEA chemical plant. The municipality of La Louviere would turn this area into a part of a larger logistic hub that should connect the canal du centre with the railway and the highway. The specificity of the site it is its accessibility, since it can be reached from the highway, from the canal, from the local road network, and through the new tram line and the green corridor that links this terminal with the central one. Hence, the program is influenced on one hand by logistic, on the other hand by the different infrastructures that cross the building itself. The ground floor is divided in two parts: one hosts a big carpark, the other one contains several activities concerning welfare and loisir (canteen, gym, kindergarten, supermarket, auditoriums). The central void, instead, it is divided in three areas that host the logistic warehouses, the expo pavilions, and a green park for sport activities. The first floor contains mainly offices for logistic ad telematic

Bernardo Secchi, Paola Viganò Kortrijk cemetery Architecture as datum

Burolandschaft Programmatic instability

South terminal In the south terminal the frame is a cornice of about 750 meters per 150 meters with a thickness of only 7.2 meters. Despite the massive extension of the intervention the amount of covered surfaces is 64000 square meters. The site is an abandoned industrial areas, dismissed after the closure of the “Lavoir a triage” of Peronnes lez Binchè. The plant was built thanks to the investments of the Marshall Plan in 1954, and it was closed after two years, when the chemical wash carried in the factory where considered inefficient and too expansive. What remains of the industrial plant is a huge tower 40 meters high, that still conserves a monumental character in the agricultural contest that surrounds it. The frame is considered as an abstract, geometrical, orthogonal, datum that clashes against the soft topography of the site. In correspondence of the tower the frame is just a pavements, then, if the ground slightly descends, the frame, by contrary, keep the same high, emerging from the earth and turning into a building. Within the frame are placed four terraces whose high and position are given by the topography. The first three terraces sustain three different platforms, the last one become a green park. The municipality of Binchè would regenerate the area building a research center and a small industrial district for new manufacturing companies. The project, instead, proposes an other living and working unit, where the production is the production of patents. Simplifying we can imagine this terminal as a scientific park, or a spin-off hub, sustained by private and public energies, therefore both by five industrial clusters of Wallony, both by state universities. Unlike a mere scientific park the terminal proposed an high level of programmatic variety. The first platform contains a car park, the other two the laboratories. The frame hosts the living unit for those who teach, study and work in the island, as well as the train station, commercial activities, common facilities, bars and resturants.

Project

Le corbusier Beistegui apartment, Paris Architecture as frame and as a datum that defines a new horizon

companies. This programmatic choice is justified if we think that the mechanical dimension of logistic is still supported by a physical brain, by companies that manage data, develop new software, treat the finances of this kind of production. Moreover, at the first floor, there is also an outlet, which, together with the canteen, re-sell the surplus of the production. Finally, in the second floor are placed the living spaces. Since the main features of the terminal it is transiency, the living unit are temporary living unit. The project provides an hotel for businessman involved, an hotel for tourist interested in the industrial heritage of the region, for truckers that have to spend one night at La Louviere before living for another trip, for the people that work in the research offices, maybe just for several weeks.

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Pier Vittorio Aureli, Martino Tattara Locomotiva 3 Architecture as the definition of locus

Lab Temporary pavillion in Otterlo

Bernardo Secchi, Paola Viganò Market place, Antwerp

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Central terminal In the central terminal the frame is a roof, a squared canopy of 280 per 280 meters, 7.2 meters thick. The site is located in front the station of La Louviere Sud, an infrastructures that was used more to move raw materials than passengers. Hence, the terminal is connected with the railway but also with the green corridor, which arrives from the north terminal, and the tram line, which comes from the southern one. In the area there was an old mining site, whose demolition left a wide terrain vague in between disordered dwellings and small industrial warehouses. The frame organizes different programmatic elements: along the external perimeters are placed the railway station, storages, administrative offices, a canteen, a covered market and, again, mixed working and living spaces. The inner space, instead, is a huge natural canopy, compound by trees. The only exception in this natural contest are six miesian pavillons. The production contained in the terminal is the creative production. Creativity, as already underlined, it’s not considered something naïve or bourgeois-bohemian. Creativity is the tool used by capitalism to introduce new product in saturated markets, hence to respond or to foreseen customers’ desires. Thus, creativity is what keep the market fluid, instable, changing. Creativity is what make the production be flexible, fast and light. As in the first design proposal by Ludwig Hilberseimer the space of labor and the space of living are just overlapped: the ground floor is a huge neutral space that can host workshops, offices, laboratories. On the second floor, instead, there are the living spaces. They consist in a series of courtyard house completely blind which get light just from the court. Therefore if the ground floor can be seen as a vast common space where workers share knowledge, information and experiences, the second, by contrary, is a compact mass of capsules, of iper-private spaces. Within the frame the built space consists in six simple free span generic boxes. They host a library, a supermarket, two auditoriums, a cantin, a mosque, and a small chapel. Nevertheless their programme could be countinuously be redifined by the needs of the city.

Project Archizoom, No Stop City

Dogma, Locomotiva 3

Carlos Hernandez, thesis project at AA

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148 General strategy

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Project

150 Archipelago

Installations and panoramic folie

New facilities for the surrounding neighbourhoods

polifunctional commercial platform, flexibile covered space

Central Terminal :

Temporary spectacles

Green Areas

New facilities for the citeâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; hospitalier universitarie Tivoli

panoramic folie: chain of terrils and Bois du Luc

pavillion for temporary and permanent exibition concerning the construction of the canal du centre

potential masterplan for the new park of La louviere

cantins, hotels, expo, resturant, info points,bank, post office, offices, meeting rooms tea rooms

North Terminal :

Programamtic strategies

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New green park

Loisir

Green route

Railway Working in the park

atelier, laboratories, temporary houses.

South Terminal :

Parcour park

New sport facilities

Working in the park

highway E42

Tram Line Welfare

Tram Train line Welfare

national road n90

River Haine

Railway Mons-Charleroi

canal du Centre

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152 Terminals

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154 North Terminal

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156 Central Terminal

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158 South Terminal

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160 North Terminal, ground floor

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162 North Terminal, first floor

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164 North Terminal, second floor

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166 Central Terminal, ground floor

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168 Central Terminal, second floor

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170 SouthTerminal, second floor

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172 North Terminal, Section

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174 Central Terminal, Section

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176 South Terminal, Section

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printed in Vicenza, March 2011 180