The New, New City by Mariam AlZayani

The New, New City Nicolai Ouroussoff

“Don’t tell anyone,” Rem Koolhaas said to me several

speeds, these generic or instant cities, as they

years ago as we headed down the F.D.R. Drive in New

have been called, have no recognizable

York, “but the 20th-century city is over. It has nothing new

center, no single identity. It is sometimes

to teach us anymore. Our job is simply to maintain it.”

hard to think of them as cities at all. Dubai,

Koolhaas’s viewpoint is widely shared by close observers

which lays claim to some of the world’s most expensive

of the evolution of cities. But not even Koolhaas, it seems,

private islands, the tallest building and soon the largest

was completely prepared for what would come next.

theme park, has been derided as an urban tomb where

the rich live walled off from the poor migrant workers

In both China and the Persian Gulf, cities

comparable in size to New York have sprouted up almost

who serve them. Shenzhen is often criticized as a

overnight. Only 30 years ago, Shenzhen was a small

product of unregulated development, better suited to

fishing village of a few thousand people, and Dubai had

the speculators that first spurred its growth than to

merely a quarter million people. Today Shenzhen has a

the workers housed in huge complexes of factory-run

population of eight million, and Dubai’s glittering towers,

barracks. Yet for architects these cities have also become

rising out of the desert in disorderly rows, have become

vast fields of urban experimentation, on a scale that not

playgrounds for wealthy expatriates from Riyadh and

even the early Modernists, who first envisioned the city

Moscow. Long-established cities like Beijing and

as a field of gleaming towers, could have dreamed of.

Guangzhou have more than doubled in size in a

few decades, their original outlines swallowed by

anymore,” Jesse Reiser, an American architect working

rings of new development. Built at phenomenal

in Dubai, told me recently. “What context are we talking

“The old contextual model is not very relevant

about in a city that’s a few decades old? The problem is that we are only beginning to figure out where to go from here.”

The New, New City

“The 20th century city is over.”

The sheer number of projects under construction and the

to make everything look new. This is their moment in time.

corresponding investment in civic infrastructure — entire

They want to make the 21st century their century. For some

networks of new subway systems, freeways and canals;

reason, our society wants to make everything old. I think we

gargantuan new airports and public parks — can give the

somehow lost our nerve.”

impression that anything is possible in this new world. The

scale of these undertakings recalls the early part of the

project, “Linked Hybrid,” is one of the most innovative housing

last century in America, when the country was confidently

complexes anywhere in the world: eight asymmetrical

pointed toward the future. But it would be unimaginable

towers joined by a network of enclosed bridges that create

in an American city today, where, in the face of shrinking

a pedestrian zone in the sky. Yet this exhilaration also comes

state and city budgets, expanding a single subway line can

at a price: only the wealthiest of Beijing’s residents can afford

seem like a heroic act.

to live here. Climbing to the top of one of Holl’s towers, I

Holl has reason to be exhilarated. His Beijing

“In America, I could never do work like I do here,”

looked out through a haze of smog at the acres of luxury-

Steven Holl, a New York architect with several

housing towers that surround his own, the kind of alienating

large projects in China, recently told me,

subdivisions that are so often cited as a symptom of the city’s

referring to his latest complex in Beijing. “We’ve

become

too

backward-

looking. In China, they want

unbridled, dehumanizing development.

Protected by armed guards, these residential

high-rises stood on what was until quite recently a workingclass neighborhood, even though the poor quality of their construction makes them seem decades old. Nearby, a new freeway cut through the neighborhood, further disfiguring an area that, however modest, was once bursting with life.

The New, New City

“We’ve become too backward looking.”

“If you take Venturi’s ideas about the city,” Holl said,

such seismic shifts, even the most talented architects can

referring to Robert Venturi’s groundbreaking work,

seem to flounder for new models. No one wants to return to

“Learning From Las Vegas,” which called on architects to

the deadly homogeneity associated with Modernism’s tabula

reconsider the importance of the everyday (strip malls,

rasa planning strategies.

billboards, storefronts), “and put them in Beijing or Tokyo,

they don’t hold any water at all. When you get into this

Paris ready to wipe aside entire districts and replace them

scale, the rules have to be rewritten. The density is so

with glass towers remains an emblem of Modernism’s

incredible.” Because of this density, cities like Beijing

attack on the city’s historical fabric. Yet the notion of finding

have few of the features we associate with a traditional

“authenticity” in a sprawling metropolitan area that is barely

metropolis. They do not radiate from a historic center as

30 years old also seems absurd. How do you breathe life

Paris and New York do.

into a project at such a scale? How do you instill the fine-

Instead, their vast size means that they function

primarily as a series of decentralized neighborhoods, something

closer

spirit

Los

Angeles.

The

The image of Le Corbusier hovering godlike above

grained texture of a healthy community into one that rose overnight?

Cities like these, built on a colossal scale, seem to

breathtaking speed of their construction means that

absorb any urban model, no matter how unique, virtually

they usually lack the layers — the mix of architectural

unnoticed. A project that could have a significant impact

styles and intricately related social strata — that give

on the character of, say, New York — like the development

a city its complexity and from which architects have

plans for ground zero — can seem a mere blip in Beijing,

typically drawn inspiration.

which has embarked on dozens of similarly sized endeavors

in the last decade alone. “The irony is that we still don’t

In Dubai, for instance, what might once

have been the product of 100 years of urban growth

know if postmodernism was the end of Modernism or just

has been compressed into a decade or so. Given

an interruption,” Koolhaas told me recently. “Was it a brief hiatus, and now we are returning to something that has been going on for a long time, or is it something radically different? We are in a condition we don’t understand yet.”

The New, New City

“We are in a condition we don’t understand yet.”

For architects faced with building these large urban

of public space: a boardwalk along the island’s perimeter,

developments, the difficulty is to create something where

a narrow park cutting through its center, classical arcades

there was nothing. If much of contemporary architecture

lining the downtown streets. But the majority of Dubai’s

depends on sifting through the cultural and historical

inhabitants are foreign-born, and the arcaded streets could

layers that a site accumulates over time — whether neo-

easily suggest a theme-park version of a traditional Arab

Classical monuments or Socialist-era housing — what

city. Koolhaas is painfully aware of how hard it is to escape

can be done if there is nothing to sift through but sand?

the generic.

In a recent design for a six-and-a-half-square-

“A city like Dubai is literally built on a desert,”

mile development in Dubai called Waterfront City,

Koolhaas conceded when I asked him about the project.

Koolhaas proposed creating an urban island inspired

“There is a weird alternation between density and

by a section of Midtown Manhattan. The design linked a

emptiness. You rarely feel that you are designing for people

dense grid of conventional towers to the mainland by a

who are actually there but for communities that have yet to

system of bridges. A series of stunning “iconic” buildings

be assembled. The vernacular is too faint, too precarious to

— a gigantic, hollowed-out Piranesian sphere at the

become something on which you can base an architecture.”

island’s edge; a spiraling tower that winds around an airy

public atrium —were intended to give the city a distinct

complexity as the buildings’ functions are worked out; he

flavor. Koolhaas said he hoped, in this way, to infuse

says he was thrilled to learn that the government wanted

this entirely new development with something of the

both a courthouse and a mosque on the island. “Another

feeling of an older city.

option that I personally find very interesting,” Koolhaas told

me, “is the modernist vernacular of the 1970s — buildings

But while the outlines are intriguing, he is

Koolhaas says he hopes that the plan will gain in

still coming to terms with how to create an organic

that once you put them in Singapore or Dubai take on

whole. In the early stages of the design, Koolhaas

totally different meanings. Some of the modern typologies

experimented with somewhat conventional models

work in Asia even though they are totally dysfunctional in America. Typologies we’ve rejected turn out to be viable in other contexts.”

The New, New City

â&#x20AC;&#x153;A city like Dubai is literally built on a desert,â&#x20AC;?

Several years ago, the London-based, Iraqi-born architect

As the towers rose in clusters scattered across the site, it

Zaha Hadid received a phone call from a Chinese

was difficult to read the formal intent. With more than 20

developer asking if she might be interested in designing

blocks now complete, parts of the city look surprisingly

a 500-acre urban development on the outskirts of

conventional.

Singapore. Hadid had never met the developer before.

She was soon working on the master plan for “One North,”

later, when she won a competition to create a 1,360-

a mixed-use development with a projected population of

acre business district in a former industrial zone on the

about 140,000. Located on what was once a military site,

outskirts of Istanbul. This time, the context was more

Hadid’s design conjured a high-tech mountainous terrain.

promising: a hilly landscape at the edge of the sea flanked

Dubbed the “urban carpet,” it was intended to blend office

by older working-class neighborhoods on either side. To

and residential towers and highways and public parks into

allow the development to grow in a more natural way than

a seamless whole.

at One North, it would be built in phases that would begin

at the waterfront and spread inland, eventually connecting

Against the rigid lines of the traditional street

Hadid

revived

the

concept

several

years

grid, the sinuous curves of the freeways suggested a

to the street grid of the older neighborhoods.

more fluid, mobile society. The rooftops, whose heights

were subject to stringent regulations, looked as if they

original concept, Hadid developed a series of building

were cut from a single piece of crumpled fabric, giving

prototypes, including a star-shaped tower and a housing

the composition a haunting unity. “We wanted to create

block organized around a central court, and staggered the

a complex order rather than either the monotony of

heights of the buildings to reflect the existing terrain. If

Modernism or the chaos you find in contemporary cities,”

Hadid’s plan is formally inventive, it is still unclear whether

Hadid said. Yet once construction began, the design of the

it has escaped the homogeneity that was a hallmark of

buildings was left to local architects hired by the developer.

Modernist urban-renewal projects. Its sheer size coupled

In an effort to preserve the texture of her

with the fact that the shapes of the buildings were conceived by a single architect means the result may well be more uniform, and ultimately more rigid, than Hadid intended.

The New, New City

“We wanted to create a complex order,”

Indeed, contemporary architects’ urban

The walkable, mixed-use neighborhoods celebrated by

plans may be less tied to location

Jane Jacobs may seem impossibly remote, but encouraging

than they would like to admit. When

signs of a more textured urban reality can still be found.

a Chinese developer approached the

Take Holl’s Linked Hybrid in Beijing, for example, which

New York-based Jesse Reiser and

has a surprisingly open, communal spirit. A series of

Nanako Umemoto to design a 1,235-

massive portals lead from the street to an elaborate

acre development in Foshan, on the

internal courtyard garden, a restaurant, a theater and a

Pearl River Delta, they (with a Chinese partner) came up

kindergarten, integrating the complex into the surrounding

with a system of urban “mats”: a multilayered network of

neighborhood. Bridges connect the towers 12 to 19 stories

roads and low-rise commercial spaces, topped by a park

above ground and are conceived as a continuous string

surrounded by residential and commercial buildings.

of public zones, with bars and nightclubs overlooking a

The park followed the contours of the roadways below;

glittering view of the city and a suspended swimming pool.

sunken courtyards allowed light to spill down into the

“The developer’s openness to ideas was amazing,” Holl

underground spaces. Last year, the Chinese project fell

says. “When they first asked me to do the project, it was

through, and Reiser and Umemoto reworked the idea for a

just housing. I suggested adding the cinematheque, the

developer in Dubai. The layout was reconfigured to fit the

kindergarten. I added an 80-room hotel and the swimming

new waterfront site; souks were added as a nod to local

pool as well. Anywhere else, they’d build it in phases over

traditions. The result is a remarkably nuanced view of how

several years. It’s too big. After our meeting, they said

to knit together the various elements of urban life, but it

we’re building the whole thing all at once. I couldn’t believe

also seems as if it could exist anywhere.

it. We haven’t had to compromise anything.

“But what makes it possible is the density. The

Modernist idea of the street in the air that became a place of social interaction never worked in Europe. Beijing is so dense that I can keep all of the shops functioning on the street, and there’s still enough energy to activate the bridges as well.”

The New, New City

â&#x20AC;&#x153;But what makes it possible is the density.â&#x20AC;?

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The New, New City

“The density in much of Shenzhen can make Beijing look spacious.”

Wenyi Wu, a young architect working for a Chinese firm called Urbanus, led me around the area. The firm has been studying how people carve a living space out of seemingly inhospitable environments, hoping to develop an urbanist model more deeply rooted in the spontaneity of everyday life. He took me to a small museum Urbanus designed on the outskirts of the city. A series of stepped galleries stand at the base of a hill between an urban village and some banal housing complexes above. A series of long ramps pierce the building, joining the two worlds. More ramps encircle the exterior, so that you have the impression of moving through a system of loosely connected alleyways. The idea was to transform the unregulated character of the urban village into something more formal and humane — to extract the essence of its character without romanticizing the squalor. The circuitous paths of the ramps echo the surrounding alleyways; the layout of the galleries suggests the footprint of the migrant workers’ housing but on a more intimate scale. Other architects, hoping to build in ways that reflect an emerging vernacular, are taking a similar approach, looking at more modest and more informally constructed urban neighborhoods for inspiration. Shumon Basar, a London-based critic and independent curator, recently described a number of small, unplanned settlements in and around Dubai. The dense and gritty

The New, New City

neighborhood of Deira, for instance, has little in common with Sheikh Zayed Road and its fortified glass towers. Built mainly in the 1970s, Deira’s low concrete structures and labyrinthine alleyways are home to a lively population of Southeast Asian workers. Similarly, the thriving, traditionally Muslim middle-class neighborhoods of Sharjah, the third-largest city in the United Arab Emirates, were built without the flashiness of more recent developments. Basar wonders if, despite their modesty, these areas could form the basis for a fresh urban strategy based neither on imported Western models nor on clichés about local souks. As Holl told me recently in his New York office, working on a large scale doesn’t mean that the particulars of place no longer matter. “I don’t think of any of my buildings as a model for something, the way the Modernists did,” Holl said. “If it works, it works in its specific context. You can’t just move it somewhere else.” But is site specificity enough? “The amount of building becomes obscene with out a blueprint,” Koolhaas said. “Each time you ask yourself, Do you have the right to do this much work on this scale if you don’t have an opinion about what the world should be like? We really feel that. But is there time for a manifesto? I don’t know.”

“But is there time for a manifesto? I don’t know.”

Mariam AlZayani