130331 p480 chcmoraitis

Reversing urban centrality: former examples and emerging design possibilities i K. Moraitis Professor, School of Architecture - National Technical University of Athens Address: 8A Hadjikosta Str. 11521 Athens, Greece Email address: mor@arsisarc.gr – tel. No: 00302106434101

Abstract Urban identity seems to be related, conventionally, to the central importance of buildings.

However we may describe city structure in relation to open public spaces, urban parks and even to urban voids left unintentionally amidst building mass. Such a reverse interpretation seems to wear down the notion of urban “centrality”, in favour of the “peripheral” natural reserves. Thus we may even speak nowadays of the invasion of the peripheral urban landscape in the central city areas; of an invasion that has to de-stabilize the conventional margins of urban territories. However this tendency has not only to do with the form of our space structures. Moreover, it transforms the “margins” of our contemporary culture and science, reorienting them towards an environmental and landscape friendly direction. It is because of this cultural and scientific reorientation that we have to speak about a contemporary “epistemic” reversal towards a natural paradigm.

Keywords: Centrality, romantic landscape, green porosity, landscape formations, topology and parametric design.

1.

INTRODUCTION: LANSCAPE NEXT

Following up the last remark of the preceding abstract, we may state that a way of thinking, analogous to our contemporary nature friendly tendencies, was already been detected in western societies during late 18th and early 19th century; at a time that environment and landscape sensitive movements influenced both governmental decisions and reforming urban design thought. Under this socially extended cultural impact western societies not only changed their urban strategies but moreover assimilated in their design, principles such as the reevaluation of nature, introduced by European Romanticism half a century earlier. In this way contemporary urban design tendencies, as landscape urbanism for example, appear to be epigones of previous efforts interrupted by a building oriented urban design period of the late 19th and the 20th century.

Nowadays however, the extended environmental and economic crisis imposes the priority of sustainable principles, focused on the decrease of urban density. Peripheral natural reserves are accepted as the non-central tissue that must be connected with the central civic areas by augmenting the “green porosity” [1] of the urban field. In this way the importance of the urban center is reversed in favour of the surrounding environment.

What is more the natural paradigm seems to be inducted in the majority of cultural domains, concerning theoretical or scientific approaches, constructional techniques, artistic expression and everyday life as well. In particular, in the field of architectural and urban design the landscape paradigm seems to replace conventional structural proposals, insisting on contemporary avantgarde folded or green “landscape formations” [2]. Topological and parametric approaches seem to point out that in the future, architectural and urban design have to familiarize with a landscape language, relative to the constant change of the natural environment. In this way Next Urban Landscape has to do not only with environmental sensitivity in general, but also with the new

landscape features of architectural and urban strategies in particular, as well as with the new landscape features of topological and parametric way of thinking.

2.

DETECTING A CONTEMPORARY “EPISTEMIC” REVERSAL THAT INSISTS ON THE NATURAL PARADIGM

In an attempt to explain in detail our last statement, we may begin with an argument that seems to be central for our dissertation. According to it, we live nowadays in a state of “epistemic” reversal, concerning the relation of the man-made paradigm, on one hand and the natural, environmental friendly paradigm on the other. It seems that we are moving, little by little, from the prevalence of the man control over nature toward the interest for the uncontrolled natural processes that seem to influence, in their turn, our cultural behavior and our cultural constructions.

What does “epistemic” mean? It is a word deriving from the term “Épistemé” as it is used by the French philosopher Michel Foucault [3]. It is a word of Greek origin, having to do with the Greek word “Eπιστήμη”, which in Greek language means science. However “Épistemé”, as used by Foucault, does not only refer to scientific knowledge. It rather refers to a mixture of scientific theories with all sort of quasi scientific and ideological tendencies that contribute to the creation of the cultural atmosphere of a certain historic period. In this way “Épistemé” and the relevant adjective “epistemic” seem to describe rather a general ideological atmosphere than an exact epistemological set of theories. Both terms, “Épistemé” and “epistemic”, seem to be rather oriented towards ideology than towards science.

The central argument of our presentation concerns, as it has already been stated, the belief that the central epistemic tendency of our contemporary western societies is moving towards a natural, environmental friendly paradigm, standing off, little by little from the conventional paradigm of human centered control; that is to say, standing off from the paradigm of the conventional selfassertive man-made constructions.

The above remark seems extremely clear if projected in the territory of those cultural practices that work both on theoretical and on constructional level, as for example happens in the practice of architecture or in urban design. In those practices we have detected, during the last decade, the invasion – we haven’t used the term “introduction”, instead we have used the term “invasion” – of forms and constructional ideas of natural origin. We refer to the environmental friendly or to landscape friendly forms. We refer to many contemporary constructional ideas, as for example to the idea of green roofs and of green walls in our buildings, to the idea of green corridors in our cities, to the ideas of green urban networks and green infrastructure in general. We also refer to the formal or structural idea of “folding”, in architecture and in urban design as well – that is to say to an idea that correlates at the same time with landscape feeling, environmentalism, topological mathematics, CAD design, animated electronic presentation, and philosophy as well [4].

When describing concepts as “folding” architecture or “parametric design”, we have the possibility to clearly exemplify our notion of the “epistemic reversal” in the broader domain of the contemporary cultural and scientific reality. Folding seems to refer to the continuity of the earth bas-relief; it presents buildings as immediate continuation of the surrounding soil. Buildings are no more isolated objects; they are no more object-oriented but appear to be highly assimilated to their surrounding terrain. Even the term “building” is sometimes abandoned, being replaced by the generalized description of the “landscape formation” as we have already mentioned.

At the same time parametric thinking has transformed the feeling of a stabilized substratum of the terrain where human structures are constructed on. Buildings are visualized as constructions that are not finalized; on the contrary they are described as results evolving from a constant transformation similar to the transformations of natural beings. Recently experimental constructional structures have been described through the term of “Morpho-Ecologies” [5]. They are not any more formations deriving from the Euclidean finite geometry; they rather try to imitate

biomorphic structures in constant evolution, similar to the organic natural structures transformed through relation to their ecosystemic environment. They try to imitate organic natural structures under constant transformation, similar to those described by the pioneer Scottish mathematical biologist Sir D'Arcy Wentworth Thompson, in his famous book On Growth and Form, as early as in 1917 [6].

Figure 1: The Network of the Environmentally Useful Urban Elements in the metropolitan area of Athens. Research program “Changing Characters and Policies in the Center of Athens and Piraeus” - Minister of Environment, Energy and Climate Change in collaboration with N.T.U.A. Drawn by architect S. Mouzakitis - 2011.

3.

THINKING ABOUT GREEN METROPOLITAN AREA

NETWORKS

IN

THE

ATHENIAN

For the author of this dissertation, the big decisive “leap” towards the environmental and landscape friendly direction already presented, grew out of a research program, concerning the central territory of Athens. It was because of the condition of the recent economic and urban crisis that the Greek Ministry of Environment assigned to the School of Architecture of the National Technical University of Athens, a research program concerning the possibility of rehabilitation of the central territories of Athens and Piraeus [7]. During this research program we have deeply understood that as far as environmental and landscape rehabilitation of the central territory of Athens are concerned, the matter has not to do with the reinforcement of the built centrality but on the contrary with the reversal of the notion of the centrality, in favour of the peri-urban nature.

What appeared as extremely important, during this research program, was to let the peri-urban landscape and the peri-urban environmental conditions to invade the central territory of the Athenian metropolitan area (Figure 1). In this way, our project concerning the re-constitution of the Athenian centrality gradually developed an exactly opposing tendency – that of the creation of a decentralized urban network, looking towards the periphery or the metropolitan area, or probably

towards an urban “constellation” of green spaces and zones of connection. It was in line with this direction that we developed the results of our research program, at least as far as landscape and environmental rehabilitation of Athens are concerned. It was also towards this direction that we developed the teaching efforts of two successive international university workshops, the first in collaboration with the Parisian School of Architecture, École Nationale d’ Architecture ParisMalaquais and the German Universities of Dortmund and Essen, in November 2011 and the second in February 2012, in collaboration with the Parisian School of Architecture, École Nationale d’ Architecture Paris- Malaquais [8].

In both workshops the tendency was towards a “green porosity” of the city, a tendency towards a “Fertile City”, “une Ville Fertile”, if we use the title of the relevant exposition that was presented two years ago in Paris [9]. It is the same subject that has to do with a number of student projects in the School of Architecture of the National Technical University of Athens, working on a number of Greek and Cypriot cities (Figure 2).

Figure 2: Transforming Urban Streams into Active Urban Biotopes. Diploma project in the School of Architecture, NTUA. Students: Α. Androulakakis and Τ.Τzanavara. Responsible Professors: Μ.

Markou, Κ. Moraitis – November 2011.

4.

ROMANTICISM AND 19TH CENTURY AS PREDECENTANTS CONTEMPORARY ENVIRONMENTAL AND LANDSCAPE SENSITIVITY

OF

However, the author of this dissertation, being responsible for the teaching of the lesson of “History and Theory of Landscape” of the postgraduate, master degree program at the School of Architecture of the National Technical University of Athens, has to mention that the “epistemic” reversal, concerning the relation of the natural, environmental friendly paradigm, on one hand and the man-made paradigm on the other, which has been introduced at the beginning of this presentation, is not without precedent. On the contrary it seems to be the re-apparition of a huge cultural stream that first appeared during the end of the 18th century, under the well-known name of Romanticism.

Romantic era has to do with many different cultural and political reversals, but it has also to do with the first decisive re-evaluation of Nature, offering an answer to the famous proposition of Rene Descartes’. According to this proposition, presented in the constitutional for the modern

Western societies text of the “Discours de la Méthode”, we have to become “masters and possessors of Nature”, “maîtres et possesseurs de la Nature” [10]. Romanticism, on the contrary, developed the idea that cultural domination over Nature can never be entirely possible. There will always be a part of Nature existing out of our possibility of command, out of our cultural reach, deserving the characterization of the “sublime”, of that which exists beyond the limits of our possible, practical or mental, influence [11].

It was during this period, which coincides with the first expanded environmental destruction, caused by the newly developed industry that a general stream of environmental and landscape sensible cultural expression appeared. Artistic expression in a variety of figurative arts or literature, philosophy, scientific investigation and design practices as well, seemed to be decisively turned towards nature. In urban design the creation of the first important public parks made its historic appearance [12]. Moreover environmental and landscape amelioration appeared to be a central prerequisite for the big western metropolises. Victorian England seems to be the leading country of that green urban redesign of the 19th century. In many cities, as Liverpool or Birkenhead, and finally in London, a number of urban parks appear in order to create new urban physiognomies, new “city brandings” for the British urban culture. Napoleon the III had to rival London with the rehabilitation of Paris, carried out by Baron Haussmann, not only at a general urban design level, but also through the creation of a number of big parks, still in use in the metropolitan area of the French capital. It was because of this antagonism between big cities that New Yorkers created Central Park, imitating the natural splendor of the European landscape formations that were rather well known to the American Frederick Law Olmsted [13].

It is not strange that the rivalry between cities, in relation to the effort for green branding that appeared in 19th century, seems much similar to landscape design efforts in many contemporary big cities. Barcelona keeps a leading position in this urban antagonism, after the redesign of the city for the Olympic Games, and offered a presentation stage to many Catalan urban and landscape designers, while ETSAB, the Barcelona School of Architecture, succeeded to establish itself as an important academic pole for postgraduate landscape design studies. Paris, being related to such well-known contemporary parks as those of La Villette and André Citroën, cannot even dare nowadays to design an important museum without an equally important landscape and environmental proposition, as it happens for example in Quai Branly Museum of Anthropology.

As far as Italian professionals are concerned, a number of whom are represented at the conference of Changing Cities, they naturally seem eager to establish their cities in the leading landscape position that they deserve as antecedents of their cultural past.

We strongly believe that Mediterranean countries could have several important reasons to discuss together the future of their green cities; not only because of climate and environmental similarities, but also because of analogies concerning the cultural and historic validity of their landscape.

However, before analyzing this last important issue in detail, we have to refer for a second time to Frederick Law Olmsted, who in a certain way preconceived a number of our contemporary radical ideas [14]. Describing the possibility of a green network of parks and connecting environmental corridors in the territory of Athens, we often refer to it in terms of a “green constellation”, or in terms of an “emerald necklace” that metaphorically presents the continuity of valuable green urban particles. However it is exactly in these terms that Olmsted described a similar proposition for Boston area, in United States in 1870’s.

5.

HISTORICAL PAST AND LANDSCAPE NEXT

The only idea that an American like Olmsted could not easily develop, is probably the relation of such landscape continuity with places of important historical heritage. In Athens as in Rome, the possible “emerald necklaces” seem to connect places that are not valuable as environmental reserves only, but also as areas of historical reference. They frequently possess a constitutional importance not limited to the Greek or to the Italian civilization, but extended to the entire

European and Western civilization. In Rome as well as in Athens we have to deal with cultural landscape beyond comparison; with “political landscape” beyond comparison, and this particular landscape physiognomy has to be kept in mind even if we refer to issues of environmental importance.

Figure 3: In Odysseas Elytis’ collage works the vision of the Greek landscape is described as a contemplation of tradition and folk culture, related to Greek antiquity.

This strange mixture of historical past and natural growth, of plants embracing monuments, does not seem to be a cultural innovation introduced by contemporary societies. European Romanticism is full of analogous figurative or constructed propositions, concerning not just an aesthetic tendency, but the general concept that societies, them too, are characterized by a constitutional energy, analogous to the vitality of natural species. In this way societies grow up, subsist transformations, and they finally decline and die, coming down to the natural womb that gave them birth at the beginning of time.

However such a concept for social evolution and history, as expressed for example by John Ruskin in his famous book The Stones of Venice [15], possess an intrinsic natural feeling. It is not the society that will control natural forces in the Cartesian way stated previously, bringing them under human possession, but on the contrary humanity is finally “possessed” by Nature. It has to succumb to the natural forces, to the natural transformations imposed by time passing and aging.

Thus in the last part of the 18th century and during the beginning of the 19th, we detect a tendency for cultural reversal in western societies, similar as we already mentioned in our dissertation, to what we have called an “epistemic reversal”. This radical tendency for conceptual and practical change did not succeed, nevertheless, to fully accomplish its dreams for naturalness. Landscape Next was not fully accomplished by that time, not only because of the economic and politic controversies, which carried forward sightless growth, instead of sensitive development. The epistemic reversal was not accomplished by that time, because of the technological and the scientific immaturity of the Romantic era, which retarded and largely postponed for later, for the

historic period that we are travelling through nowadays, a subversive, internationally accepted urban landscape proposal.

We strongly believe that contemporary computer aided design, contemporary topological and parametric design, possess a natural and landscape-like character. It is not only because René Thom, in order to present topological geometry to non-mathematicians, uses the metaphor of the landscape topography, which results from constant transformation. What is more, topological and parametric thinking may present, through computer aided design the quality of “animated forms” which imitate natural growth or natural decline, which acquire a transformation possibility similar to that perceived in the natural world.

In his famous second book of his work Physics, Aristotle introduces the term “Nature”, “Φύσις” in the Greek language. He defines in addition that “nature is a source or cause of being moved and of being at rest in that to which it belongs primarily” [16], and explains that natural entities are capable of starting to move; of growing, acquiring qualities, displacing themselves, and finally of being born and dying. Aristotle contrasts natural things with artificial things that can move also, but only according to an exterior cause. Thus natural entities are related to a constant evolution and transformation; while on the contrary human constructions tend to present a stabilized identity.

However now, for the first time after the premature effort of the 19th century, human culture seems to challenge the age-long Aristotle’s statement. For the first time doctor Frankenstein’s dream seems possible. Natural energy will finally invigorate the stone dead bodies of human constructions.

Thus the Landscape Next of Changing Cities, the green infrastructure, the green networks, all those proposals, appear as parts of an extended cultural reversal, ongoing by now, which tends to change our whole way of behaving and thinking. Not only the built urban constructions are not the central aim of our design, not only they cannot survive by themselves solely, but what is more our whole way of designing our landscape –the built landscape and the non-built landscape as well, has been “naturalized” in a radical, common way of thinking. Landscape urbanism is not interested in natural landscape conditions because of its demand for green urban zones only. What is more its design strategies seem to imitate natural growth and transformation, detected in natural environments and in natural landscape (Figure 4), thus eroding the margins between urbanity and non-urbanity, built and planted, cultural and natural.

Figure 4: Masterplan Competition, Appur, India, Zaha Hadid Architects, 2008. Entitled “Parametric Diagrams”. The architects explain that “the possibility of an urban architecture that

exploits the spatial repertoire and morphology of natural landscape formations has been a consistent theme within the creative career of Zaha Hadid Architects for nearly 20 years” [17].

6.

CONCLUDING: LANDSCAPE SENSITIVITY, TECHNOLOGY OR POLITICAL INVOLVEMENT?

At the end of this short dissertation both the author and the reader will normally ask themselves: Has this short exposition to do with a question of landscape sensitivity or with technological improvement? What about the political significance of the above described epistemic reversal?

First of all we should repeat that the word “epistemic” refers not only to an objective scientific knowledge, but what is more to a general ideological “atmosphere”, which sometimes over-defines specific scientific directions. Thus epistemic tendencies have finally to do with ethics in a given society, and in this way with political mode of behaving. It is clear that landscape and environmental sensitivity possesses an immediate political value, having to do with the urban population claims for better conditions of living. However a better “green” urban environment means, in many ways, the political involvement of the urban citizen.

Let us insist on our interrogation. What about the impact of the contemporary technological innovations? Are topological “landscape formations” or parametric diagrams politically neutral?

They appear to participate in huge, gigantesque design experiments, related to extravagant urban constructions, but at the same time they may get involved in the creation of sensitive landscape formations and friendly micro-environments. Moreover they seem able to regulate the urban dispersion of a number of sensitive, interconnected minor-scale interventions.

Radical modernism has taught us that as it is impossible to sidestep technological innovation it is wiser to insist and magnify its positive aspects. Thus we shall insist on the fact that some of our contemporary environment and landscape friendly design strategies have in common, with our contemporary means and methods of design, an intrinsic natural feeling; that they result from the same general epistemic mode that tends to accept, in a positive way, natural procedures as a leading paradigm.

References 1. The term “porosity”, as used by Walter Benjamin indicates the possibility of open urban spaces to penetrate into the voids of the building mass of the city, creating space continuity between open public areas and building structures. However “porosity” in the most general scientific sense refers to “the measure of the void (i.e., ‘empty’) spaces in a material”. Thus “green porosity” is a terminology created by the author, in order to describe the empty urban spaces that are already used or that could be used in the future as planted urban areas.

The use of the word “porosity”, in the German language “Porosität”, by Walter Benjamin first appears in his article, written in collaboration with Asja Lacis, concerning the social quality of urban space in the Italian city of Naples. W. Benjamin, A. Lacis, 1925: «Naples», Frankfurter Zeitung, LXX, August 1925. See also P. Demetz (ed.), 1986: Walter Benjamin, Reflections.

Essays, Aphorisms, Autobiographical Writings. Schocken Books, New York. Also S. Buck Morss, 2009: The dialectics of seeing: Walter Benjamin and the Arcades project. MIT Press, Cambridge, pp. 42-45.

2. It is Zaha Hadid that has used the terms “Landscape Formation One” in order to describe the building of the “Landesgartenschau”, of the garden exhibition for a garden festival in the city of Weil am Rhein, in Germany (1996-1999). In Hadid’s own words the construction of “Landscape Formation One”, “rejects the concept of building as ‘isolated object’ –bleeding out of and dissolving back in the surrounding landscape”. http://www.zaha-hadid.com (accessed March 20, 2013).

3. M. Foucault, 1966: Les Mots et les Choses. Une archéologie des sciences humaines. Éd.

Gallimard, Paris. See also M. Foucault, 1969: L'Archéologie du savoir. Éd. Gallimard, Paris – and- J. G. Merquior, 1985: Foucault. Univ. of California Press, Berkeley.

4. See in comparison the book of the French philosopher G. Deleuze, 1988: Le Pli - Leibniz et le baroque. Éd. Minuit, Paris – and the book of B. Caches, 1995: Earth moves: the furnishing of territories. MIT Press, Cambridge.

5. M. Hensel, A. Menges, 2006: Morpho-Ecologies. AA Publications, London. In the introduction of the book M. Weinstock explains that “architecture’s current fascination with nature is a reflection of the availability of new modes of imagining the interior structure of plants and animals… together with the mathematics of the biological processes”, p. 12.

6. D’A. W. Thompson, 2000: On Growth and Form. Cambridge Univ. Press, Cambridge.

7. Research program “Changing Characters and Policies in the Center of Athens and Piraeus” Minister of Environment, Energy and Climate Change in collaboration with the School of Architecture of the National Technical University of Athens (NTUA) – 2011. Research Scientific Coordinator: Professor P. Tournikiotis. Associate Professor K. Moraitis participated as a member of the research team.

8. Both workshops had as subject important urban voids in the metropolitan territory of Athens that could participate in a future green Athenian network. The first workshop focused on the Antonis Tristis’ Park in the north west of the Athenian basin, while the second one on the linear zone of Larissa’s Railroad Station, which may be transformed to a linear park near the central territory of Athens.

9. See: La Ville Fertile. Vers une nature urbaine. Landscape architecture journal Paysage Actualités, hors-série, March 2011.

10. R. Descartes, 1966: Discours de la Méthode suivi d’extraits de la Dioptrique, et des Météores. Éd. Garnier - Flammarion, Paris, p. 84. «Connaissant la force et les actions du feu, de l’eau, de l’air, des asters, des cieux et des tous autres corps qui nous environnent, aussi distinctement que nous connaissons les divers métiers de nos artisans, nous les pourrions employer en même façon à tous les usages auxquelles ils sont propres, et ainsi nous rendre comme maîtres et possesseurs de la Nature».

11. E. Burke, 2001: Philosophical Inquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful: with an Introductory Discourse concerning Taste. Bartleby Com. ed., New York.

12. G. F. Chadwick, 1966: The Park and the Town: Public Landscape in the 19th and 20th Centuries. The Architectural Press, London.

13. Olmsted visited England and examined urban parks in detail, as it is clearly presented in his voyager’s notebooks. See: F. L. Olmsted, 1859: Walks and Talks of an American Farmer in England. J. H. Riley and Co ed., Columbus-Ohio.

14. As for example the idea of the green urban network, the idea of the green urban infrastructure and the idea of the green wall, as applied in his own house, Fairsted, in Brookline, Massachusetts (c. 1900). Olmsted buried the house under a thick layer of vines and creepers, and by means of this planting achieved the goal that residence should “seem to be a part of nature herself, rather than object foreign to the general character of the place”. He directed that “no sharply defined lines mark the sudden transition from the formality of architecture to the irregularity of nature”. C. V. Beveridge, P. Rocheleau, 1998: Frederick Law Olmsted.

Designing the American Landscape. Universe Publ., New York, p. 119.

We have to compare the above landscape oriented tendency of architecture to the similar attitude of contemporary constructions, as already exemplified in the design of “Landscape Formation One” by Zaha Hadid Architects. See also reference no [2].

15. J. Ruskin, 1867: The Stones of Venice. Smith, Elder and Co ed., London.

16. Aristotle: Physics. Book II. English translation by R.P. Hardie, R.K. Gaye (1930): Physica in The Works of Aristotle v. 2. Clarendon Press, Oxford. (1.192b21). http://classics.mit.edu/Aristotle/physics.2.ii.html (accessed March 28, 2013).

17. Zaha Hadid’s Architects explain in addition that “the idea of an artificial landscape formation occurs not only on the level of the overall urban form. Not only the mega-form, but also some of the micro-environments could benefit from the landscape analogy”.

See: http://www.zaha-hadid.com/masterplan. (accessed March 28, 2013). See also: http://www.patrikschumacher.com/Texts/ParametricDiagrammes.html (accessed March 28, 2013).

i

Paper presented in the International Conference on «Changing Cities.

Spatial, morphological, formal and socio-economic dimensions» Skiathos Island 18th-21st of June 2013.