Intervention target: urban voids

“Where there is nothing, everything is possible. Where there is architecture, nothing (else) is possible” (Koolhaas, et al., 1995).

There is nothing more difficult to define than an empty space. Even though it has been a part of the economic, philosophical, social and urban discourse for some time, the urban void or urban empty space evades solid definition. As Paolo Desideri states, “the void is not a very definite term” (Desideri, 1997). The notion of a spatial void is parallel to the ancient Japanese concept Ma, denoting a gap, a pause, a negative space, or an interval between two objects. Ma can also be described as “an emptiness full of possibilities, like a promise yet to be fulfilled”, and as “the silence between the notes which make the music”46 (Kisaki, 2011). The interpretation of spatial voids in the Ma sense therefore evokes multiple opportunities and promises.

The essence of this urban phenomenon, however, is not easily captured by a comprehensive term. Recurrent subjects in urban transformation projects and theoretical discourse, urban voids are described by several synonyms or corresponding terms such as: Derelict Land, Brownfield, Freiräume, Leere, Terrain Vague, Terrenos Baldios, Urban Wastelands, Vacant Land and Vazios Urbanos. The French term Terrain Vague, coined by de Sola Morales in the 1990s, evokes a wider meaning by uniting the physical manifestation of a phenomenon with its potential use (de Sola Morales, 2003). As de Sola Morales explains, the word vague, has a double origin – Latin and Germanic. The German term Woge means instability, movement or oscillation. In Latin, however, the word vague may have one of two different roots: vacuus, which means available, empty, free or unoccupied, or vagus, which means confused, inaccurate, indeterminate,

or out-of-focus. According to de Solá Morales, the semiotic relationship between an absence of content and a sense of freedom and hope is a fundamental aspect to the understanding of urban voids’ potential to be elements of wider transformation and development in their “emptiness, absence but also promise, possibility, expectation” (de Sola Morales, 2003).

In simple terms, urban voids occur in unbuilt urban spaces. This suggests that they also fit the category of open public spaces. From this perspective, Fernando Espuelas expounds two ways in which open public spaces are produced, which also applies to urban voids: “Public space is generated, basically in two ways: one follows a temporal process of accumulation and modification without any clear prefiguration and the other one finds its origin in previous and unitary order, fruit of a planning will” (Espuelas, 2004). Depending on their genesis, urban voids can be categorised as defined and/or residual voids. A defined (programmed, planned) void is a vacant space created for a specific purpose, and is an equivalent to an open public space. A residual void is created accidentally, as a result of urban development and transformation (Šamić, 2012). At times these types overlap, or are transformative cycles of the same space.

The difficulty in defining urban voids relates to their changing role over the course of a city’s development: the transformations of a city are followed by the shifting status and consequent transition of urban voids. In both traditional and modern concepts of the city, emptiness is the visual background for a building, the latter of which is regarded as a figure or solid. The ratio between solid and void changed drastically between ideas of urbanism in the pre-modern and modern eras. The compactness of historical cities did not allow undetermined spaces. In modernist urbanism, this vision was replaced by the paradigm of a “continuous void” (Koetter & Rowe, 1978). The point where the vision of the modern city diverged from that of traditional city planning also

changed the notion of the void: “The first one is an accumulation of solids in largely unmanipulated void, whilst the other one is an accumulation of voids in largely unmanipulated solid.” (Koetter & Rowe, 1978). Over the last 50 years, the vast open spaces of modernist urbanism have been gradually fragmented by architectural developments and transport infrastructure to produce in-between, under-used urban spaces dominated by car parks, scraps of green areas, and wastelands. Urban voids are often ambiguous in terms of ownership and accessibility, and it can be hard to tell whether they belong to the public or private realm. This discontinuous, fragmented void is the field of the modernist city’s dissolution.

Rather than conforming to a fixed definition, urban voids are better described by their tangible and intangible characteristics. As explained previously, comprehension of this phenomenon is broadened through the elaboration of the linguistic etymology and semiotic values of terrain vague. This type of space emerges in urban areas as defined/planned or residual. It originates from two types of solid-void compositional arrangements: pre-modern and modern. Understanding the theoretical basis of the genesis and meaning and of urban voids leads logically to a critical inquiry into their contemporary condition. Urban voids in the contemporary city are characterised by multi-dimensionality, multivalence, juxtaposition and simultaneity. This can lead to a progressive loss of meaning, and the absence of the basic urban conditions of continuity, function, programme, and connection with context. As Desideri points out, urban voids are not only spaces without structure, they also lack meaning. Or, as Saskia Sassen argues in her essay “Hybrid Space”, these spaces are characterised more by memory than contemporary meaning. Similarly, for Ignasi de Sola Morales, voids in a contemporary metropolis are a metaphor for urban estrangement: “They are the interior islands, inactive, uninhabited, insecure and unproductive. They are the strangest places in the urban structure.” (de Sola Morales, 2003).

Regardless of their scale or type, all urban interventions imply taking and adding value from and to their relative context. In this respect, the importance of design has a wider meaning. In the broadest sense, a context is understood by its spatial/physical aspect (the built environment), its social aspect (the expectations, needs, rites and traditions of its users), its cultural aspect (aesthetic and ethical values, design paradigms, and past legacies) and its temporal aspect. The topic of emptiness, or urban voids, (understood as the absence of a project), therefore becomes a contextual inquiry. The selected case studies will be regarded within the temporal process of urban transformation, which means they are products of their relatable past and present context, but still susceptible and modifiable according to the future context. In this way, they are potential key factors in the influence of their future micro and macro milieu.

This give-and-take liaison, established by interventions (in particular urban voids and their context) becomes part of the dynamics of the larger urban process, as Rossi observes: “the dynamic process of the city tends more to evolution than to conservation”. Similarly, Koolhaas claims that “[t]he great originality of the Generic city is simply to abandon what doesn’t work – what has outlived its use […] the Generic city is held together, not by over-demanding public realm […] but by the residual” (Koolhaas, 2007). The fundamental aspect to consider in order to understand the urban void is therefore its temporary or transitory character, which reflects urban mutation processes. An urban void is a manifestation of transformational processes in progress, in which the present state is one of many episodes of continuous transformation. Its current form seeks balance between enhancement of the past and design for the future, and responds to new spatial demands. This ambiguous status of the urban voids we mapped in the city of Sarajevo provides an opportunity to respond to the public identity crisis that caused them. A careful assessment of their context is critical, as is the proposal of

fresh new public content. The problem could be approached by tackling the confusion between private and public identities instigated by the city’s past and present, and by addressing the contemporary notion of collectivity in a new way, regarding it as an interactive union of individual identities. Bernardo Secchi explains why having a suitable vision is important to future interventions: “The space in which we will live the next few decades is foremost already built. The theme now is how to give a meaning and a future to the city, to the territory and to the existing materials. This implies a modification of our design methods that allows us to recover the ability to see, foresee and control. It is indeed from the vision that we must begin” (Secchi, 1984). The fundamental challenge of urban interventions is therefore to reinvent flexible urban design principles. This can be achieved by taking into account the present and future elasticity of urban voids in the context of the city, and allowing a multiplicity of expressive possibilities in future interventions.