ALL SYSTEMS GO!
TERRITORY IN TRANSIT ALONG THE WALLOON DORSAL -illustrations-
Marcello Tavone
mentors Filip Geerts T.U. Delft Paola Viganò I.U.A.V. Venice
The following is the final project I presented for my master degree in urban architecture at University of Architecture in Venice. I developed this thesis as exchange student at the University of Technology of Delft in the Netherlands from February 2010 to February 2011.
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 is ready to start. Somebody suggested 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 international competition for the Downsview Park in Toronto. The essay is titled “All systems go!: The terminal nature of contemporary urbanism”. The author claims that the project presented by the Office for Metropolitan Architecture is not a mere masterplan, but a framework of infrastructures able to support the most disparate public activities and private investments. The project is a system whose activation coincides with the re-activation of latent urban dynamics. Urbanism can not coincide with an act of prevision anymore, but with the irrigation of territory with pure potential. Architecture , on the other hand, is less and less a structure able to define a locus, more and more an infrastructure open to the most unpredictable programs. Since the following project deals with the concept of drosscapes (2007) 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 challenge the week and diffused (Branzi 2006) nature of the contemporary urban phenomenon revealing the role that architecture can have in a territorial scale.
SURVEY In the last fifty years Europe has been the protagonist of a huge and violent process of de-industrialization. More precisely, European economies have turned from Fordist to post-Fordist models of pro¬duction. West has shifted from industrial modes based on the large accumu¬lation of material products to a system based on the motto “just in case”, hence on smaller and flexible pro¬ductions capable to follow the ever changing consumers’ request. We can even claim that in post-Fordism the fundamental production is the immaterial one (logistic, language, social interaction), that one able to create and lead market trends. 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. 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 firstly measure the territory, secondly focus on different elements suggesting the idea of territory as a palimpsest (Corboz). The survey draws a map of the “dross” present in the territory and their relation with the topography and the dense system of infrastructures.
SYSTEM The second moment of the analysis focused on the representation of a system. The goal of the analysis is to interrogate and make clear several regimes and dynamics acting on the territory. The research started considering the fundamental role played by infrastructures in the region. The complex system of railways, tramways, canals and rivers is reduced into a matter of mobility. Each line in the map correspond to a different kind of mobility. The analysis tries to make 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 territorial dimension of the urban phenomenon linking the local dimension of the compact urban centres, with the regional, the national and the international one.
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 same time, becomes a specific artefact 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. 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. 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 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 owner of the mine have a pervasive control on the life of his workers.
STRATEGY 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. 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 enables, on one hand, to increase the level of isotropy of the region and, on the other, it introduces new infrastructural relations that collide with the strong hierarchies imposed by the highway.
TERRITORY On a territorial scale the project deals with one of the eight corridors individuated in the previous phase. The design strategy proposed for this section is based on three main elements. First the reactivation of three abandoned rail lines. 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 du people, common spaces. The third phase, instead, involves the construction of three terminals: the northern, the southern 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 the ancient citè ouvriers . 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 elements. In fact, the idea of three terminal as three islands presupposes that territory can still be structured as a metropolitan archipelago. 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.
Loisir
Green route
Railway Working in the park
atelier, laboratories, temporary houses.
South Terminal :
Parcour park
New sport facilities
Working in the park
Working in the park
New green park
Installations and panoramic folie
New facilities for the surrounding neighbourhoods
polifunctional commercial platform, flexibile covered space
Central Terminal :
Temporary spectacles
Green Areas
Green Areas
New facilities for the cite’ 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
Tram Line Welfare
Tram Train line Welfare
national road n90
River Haine
Railway Mons-Charleroi
canal du Centre
highway E42
NORTH TERMINAL The North terminal is a squared frame of 300 per 300 meters, 20 meters thick. The ground floor is divided in two parts: the first hosts a big carpark, the other one contains several activities concerning welfare and loisir (canteen, gym, kindergarten, supermarket, auditoriums). The central void is divided in three areas that host logistic warehouses, expo pavilions and a green park for sport activities. The first floor contains mainly offices for logistic ad telematic companies. This programmatic choice is justified by the fact that the mechanical dimension of logistic is still supported by a physical brain, by companies that manage data, develop new softwares, treat the finances of this kind of production. Furthermore, at the first f oor, 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 feature of the terminal is transiency, the living units are temporary living units.
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 of the station of La Louviere Sud, an infrastructures that was used more to move raw materials than passengers. The terminal is connected with the railway but also with the green corridor, arriving 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 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 one. Creative production 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 foresee customers’ desires.
SOUTH TERMINAL In the south terminal the frame is a cornice of about 750 meters per 150 meters with a thickness of just 7.2 meters. The frame is considered as an abstract, geometrical, orthogonal datum that clashes against the soft topography of the site. 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 is a green park. Simplifying we can imagine this terminal as a scientific park, or a spin-off hub, sustained by private and public energies, therefore both by the five industrial clusters of Wallony, both by state universities. The terminal proposes 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.
PROGRAM 1 - North Terminal, ground floor 2 - North Terminal, first floor 3 - North Terminal, second floor 4 - Central Terminal, ground floor 5 - Central Terminal, first floor 7 - South Terminal, ground floor
SECTIONS 1 - North Terminal 2 - Central Terminal 3 - South Terminal
DELFT-VENICE
February 2010-February 2011