PP_portfolio by panos prousalis

this is what this is

this is what this is and (whatever this is) is part of me

this is what this is and (whatever this is) is apart of me

Columbia University / Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation / New York

(WW- 2 some) ESSAYS THOUGHTS

DRAWINGS

IMAGES

SKETCHES

0 1 summer

fall

spring

semester long post graduate program

HYBRID RESIDENTIAL INFRASTRUCTURES IN THE CENTRAL CITY. CHAP.V.:

THE PROJECTS

#studiowork conducted under the supervising of Huan Herreros# *pages[103-121]

URBAN FUTURES/FUTURE ARCHITECTURES AFRICA 6.0:

IMAGING/ IMAGINING THE AFROFUTURE CITY

#studiowork conducted under the supervising of Mabel O. Wilson# *pages[66-103]

A(dvanced) A(rchitecture) D(esign)

ARCHITECTURE AND THE MICRO-URBAN:

RIO DE JANEIRO

#studiowork conducted under the supervising of Hilary Sample# *pages[14-57]

pp2520

@columbia.edu

panagiotis prousalis

portfolio

/////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// //////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////AGAINST///////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// /////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// (From post-critical blobs to the return to the autonomy discourse:) What comes after - acting critically - is the voluntarily release to desire; not a desire for the Object per se but one that is imposed and superimposed (from Blobs to Blogs); the image is attached to its value; the surrender to the Iconic comes in place of the Visionary; ours, yours, mine - sort lived Utopia. /////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// (Ideological and Ecological Envelopes:) If High Tech promotes a culture then that is one of ‘simulation and fascination, no longer a culture of production and meaning’, as Jean Baudrillard elaborates. Hyper-technological appearance represents the anti-culture; it goes beyond the spirit of modernity only to place itself in a meta-mechanical era. Obsession for engineering or a path for technological alienation. /////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// (Minimalism and the Art of Construction:) Minimalism or Eclectic Brutalism? Whichever the given name is, this tendency in Architecture is related to craftsmanship and feeling. Craftsmanship as an autonomous area of interest and investigation of the material; a use of the know-how aiming to produce feeling. The object in place affects having embedded the causality of the after-the experiencedeffect. /////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// (Heterogeneity, Disjunctions, Fragmentation:) Deconstructivism is conditioned by the same condition that gives birth to its existence; the defiance of the conventional thinking regarding form. The perception of an unconventional form goes along with a timeframe; by the time the unconventional is widely accepted as possible form, it becomes a commonplace, i.e. a conventional form. Thus, the use of the concept of Deconstructivism comes (by definition) with a life span. Nowadays, no further discussion is needed to clarify the distinction between pure/impure form; it is just form. The peculiarity is not an issue but the icon-resemblance-ability of form. the under examination argument against stability can perhaps be more rigorously articulated with a discussion between form and gesture. /////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// (Phenomenological Affects:) Critical regionalism is defined by relation to - a personal meaning of and an ethical responsibility to the place. The singularity and stability of the place may be lost in the dynamic urban-scape of the city. Concepts that are related to the regional, as the spirit of the place and the peacefulness of the environment are substituted by the spirit of production and of spectacle in the city. /////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// (Concepts in Autonomy vs. Signs:) Based on the supremacy of sight, ‘Sign Architecture’ continues to affect to the present. The urban landscape of such an architecture can be perceived as continuous, despite the obvious tendency for autonomy of its incongruent parts - in terms of program and scale. In a means for maximum persuasion of the passerby, can this ‘cry’ for singular identity expressed through form, be applicable to an non-motorist, non-populist, non-consumerist society? /////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// (Typological Concepts;) Although Rossi advances the argument of an elementary component such as type, the Architecture and the City is not consistent with that concept; it is based in a sort of academic maneuver and repetition of ideas - perhaps necessary for the time and purpose it was written - instead of being ‘closest to its essence’. In order for the typology to be ‘read’ with the text, could the book be more ‘ascetic’, or is another type of text needed to overcome its temporality? /////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// (Concepts In Non-Plan and Visionary Utopias:) The architectural production is limited figuratively and literally on paper; realization (the vitality of the project cannot be reaffirmed) along with reality is out of the equation. Historical and ethical values are destabilized, allowing potential misinterpretations of the venture; a state of mind/Architecture where ‘everything goes’ and the objective criteria are limited(the critical operation is self-undermined). /////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// 8

Spring 2015

/////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// /////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// /////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// //////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////FOR///////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// /////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// /////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// /////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// (From post-critical blobs to the return to the autonomy discourse or how to design without any constrains:) The Post-critical approach signifies a retreat to rationality; Branding is the ‘new’ reality and the affirmation of such support towards an ideology liberated from ethical constrains and paranoia comes without negative aspects - such ideology is not dialectical, but positive/affirmative only. The design goes hand-by-hand with the system that ‘gave birth’ to it. /////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// (Ideological and Ecological Envelopes:) High tech is a language.The skin/exterior of the building is highly expressive of that language, the interior is reductive of any expression or culture. The produced object responds to the call for mechanical appearance; for its ephemeral state of flux finds no rest in the parts which constitutes the whole; they state their intention to move or to be subsidized. /////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// (Minimalism and the Art of Construction:) Minimalism can signify the will for reduction to the most essential (not simple). Phenomenological/experiential intentions are associated to the practice of minimalism: in art specifically the space is seen as inclusive and the role of the object/artifact becomes to blur the limits of space. It activates the surrounding space as well, since the ‘look’ is driven from the object back to the viewer. /////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// (Phenomenological Affects:) Critical regionalism or critical globalism? Against the indigent pathology, deriving from the adoption of visions of absolute and self-referential ‘purity’ (abstract things of the mind) and of homogeneous treatment of the world (universalization), the concept of critical regionalism reinstates the importance of the local to the global and of the body to the mind. With analytical qualitative self-imposed method of investigation, the critical attributes the ‘raison d’être’ of the place. /////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// (Concepts in Autonomy vs. Signs:), Sign(s) or ‘the commercial persuasion of roadside eclecticism’ is the answer to the question of an architecture of communication. Vast city landscapes seek the effectiveness and immediacy of those spacial notations, which in tern define the - image, continuity and essence of such - place. /////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// (Typological Concepts:) For Rossi, in order to perceive the City as a whole it is important to have a continuous reading of the city and to establish a logical geography. Typology is the scientific method for analyzing its quantitative qualities; for the man-made, the logical artifact, type - instead of function- give its form(s). ////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// (Concepts In Non-Plan and Visionary Utopias:) The City and by extension Architecture is on a state of crisis.The ideas are discussed around the vitality(current state)/viability(future state) of the modern polis, as the attraction center not only of massive amount of people(quantitative characteristic), but of applied strategies of culture/capital/architecture(qualitative characteristic) as well; i.e. the urban phenomenon of the Metropolis. Invisible parts of the City are now visible - related to the experience(effects) of the city and the absorption of technology. The problem is addressed by operating criticism as the architectural product(written and designed); that means to destabilize the already established (in morality, ideology, economic dependability and formal expression of Architecture) or-else, adopt a playful behavior towards Architecture with all the severity of the venture. The significance of the present gains over the historical dependability and allows for numerous futures/ interpretations to exist simultaneously. /////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// ///////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////

Torre David

And just as Foucault cherished heterotopias(*1) for their capacity to provide society with “reserves of imagination”, we were captivated by Torre David’s spatial implications and potential… With this content in mind, Brillembourg and Clumpier are in search of their contextual dream - a system of urban realities that will allow for their entopic(*2) vision. Due to its strategic size, location and symbolic power(*3), the empty standing shell of ex-C.F.C. (Centro Financiero Confinanzas), before becoming the vertical informal community, which would be formally addressed thereafter as Torre David, it is highly likely that it had already captivated the interest of U-T.T. (Urban Think Tank*4). The bulk of the story begins in 2012, when the U-TT made a documentary film in conjunction with the exhibition at the Venice Biennale, which attracted a lot of attention and the Golden Lion. The book under investigation, it has been released one year later.The need for its presence in the field is due to a general interest of the global community for this kind of ‘peculiar’ inhabitation that is emerging and a specific interest from the Media(*5). Thus, Torre David (the book) has found an already established interest around the discussion about the informal: publications of books such as Planet of Slums, Shadow Cities and Arrival City and distributions of movies such as City of God and Slumdog Millionaire have been creating an imaginary for years, transforming the perceiving orientally ordinary to extraordinary.

Spring 2015

For this book to be assembled, a trip had to be presided first. On the trip main instrument of investigation is the perceived image. But in order to see, you have first to lose the image that has been established. Thus, the image and the means to produce the image must to be questioned, principle that U-TT does’t seem to consider; the book is featuring the photography of David Bann, popular photographer among the star system of architecture - not exactly what you can call a ‘fresh eye’... Torre David is the destination. This immigrant enclave is a gated community, a city within the city, a barrio; its existence as an informal community cannot co-op with the formal concept/ format of the city. Because the exclusion, gives schema to another cityness. Outside the limits of that which constitutes the city, it lies a potential safe zone. Words from Slavoj Zizek are put together in the book, in order to be described exactly this: Utopia is when…out of the pure urge of survival you have to invent a new space. Additionally, we may underline here that invention becomes synonymous to occupation; for the exclusion, occupation retains the antinomy today. As it may be well understood, the trip to Torre David derive from a fascination for the city. The question that must be answered is if the resulting manifesto will be situated in, for or against the city… In any case, the trip and the city are bind together! The reason why the trip

has to be made, it can only be found when one understands the absolute need for constructing an urban theory. This includes a body of ideas and a way of addressing them. That been said, the necessary step that must to be taken towards this direction is laid on the decision that before to embark for the finding of that which must to be found, a provisional status of human existence is sought; that is the defamiliarization - the disattachment from that which constitutes the familiar. The awareness of being in this status of existence is accompanied by the floating feeling of nonbelonging to the place. Having not secured your next step, the mind seeks for new connections to establish, new constants to feel secure, new images to call its own. As we may understand from the analysis that follows and against the reinsuring claims of U-TT that they will try to see behind all the things TD symbolizes(*6), that they will look without any preconceptions, they remain stagnant to already received ideas and their proposing interventions remain sterile of imagination or aesthetics. Thus, they way of looking (at the city) is important for the U-TT: We see Torre David as an arrival city(*7), a laboratory for exploring and testing a utopian potential. However, Brillamburg looks at TD as an literal urban experiment with three thousand participants, proving right the established mentality of the residents who function as a

Image digitally remastered, initialy found in the book of TORRE DAVID: Informal Vertical Communities

closed community and they look the researchers with skepticism, a fact which will not allow for total interaction and integration in the community, even after a year. They sustain as argument (what else?) the cliche of sustainability: installation of wind harvesting system on the facades, accompanied by a further improvement of the aesthetics; fact that renders their proposal both unimaginative and unrealistic. Mainly because they fail to understand the system of operation of the surrounding - of the autonomous(?) system of the tower - context: first, oil and natural gas are inexpensive because of government’s subsidies and secondly, Caracas draws its power supply from hydro-electricity, an alternative and renewable source, addressing a cry for private enterprises with strong research initiatives. In the U-TT ’s aesthetic proposal of the facades we may interpret a false mentality towards the ordinary; the residents of TD make use of the as found as material for inspiration and material for construction. The researchers found in the tower the use of found in place materials like bricks, metallic, wooden elements,etc and other elements which show the appropriation of space: carved walls give shape to arched doorways, pass-throughs and interior windows. The facade results because of functional needs: residents are braking the facade’s windows for ventilation, air and cooling Based on this observation of the architectural

Spring 2015

vernacular the researchers advance their architectural manifesto in the name of resilience, adaptability, transformability and imagine the end-users to sustain the operations and maintenance of any intervention. Because of the exclusion, Brillamburg makes a literal inversion to be all-inclusive; against exclusion he uses the both/and. Among his findings he confuses appropriation and sustainability with appliance of new technologies. The occupation, that took place in 2007, it was not a spontaneous act; an evicted squat searching for shelter turned toward Torre David and for the three days many will follow. For the first 3 weeks they remain alert for possible eviction and each one is stalking the initial determined territory. When the threat of eviction began to subside, they clean the building and organize the communal spaces. Each floor allows for 15 families. Torre David is one of the 50 buildings which during 2012 remains invaded. By the residents, although there is no elevator, the upper floors are considered desirable. They have a basketball team and court and they play against other teams from the surrounding barrios. Other common areas are a gym, a balcony which attracts children and their mother who keep an eye on them and the stairs which are the primary informal meeting place. The state electricity institution has a contract with Torre David for providing electricity.

The residents pay fee of 15$/family for water, electricity, cleaning of the public spaces and security and through a pipe and hose in each floor, fill and story 500 litter water tanks. The book presents one last interesting finding: Torre David’s community operates cooperatively and an overall authority that has been framed and rules and procedures are structured and followed. No family own their space and new residents may come only when there is a vacancy. This self-organization comes a result because of an unusually cohesive and relatively homogeneous population. The question that is raised here is whether this formal way of existing in the informal is truly open to members outside of the established, in the tower and in power community. The tower came to be because of the political and economic status of Venezuela(*9). Physically and socially Torre David is in a constant state of evolution and modification. In Latin American cities, most urban space is already built up, or over built.There is limited room for new buildings, and existing buildings are at times partially occupied or inefficiently used. We believe that the solution lies not in demolishing buildings and building anew, but in making a more efficient, strategic and appropriate use of what already exists to meet ever-changing needs. This can be through reusing and recycling, or providing agency and visibility to inhabitants already engaged in such processes.- http://torredavid.com

#1: Michael Foucault in Des Espaces Autres defines heterotopias as places that have the curious property of being in relation with all the other sites, but in such a way as to suspect, neutralize, and invert the set of relations that they happen to designate, mirror, or reﬂect. #2: from Greek en-topos which means in a place - Collins English Dictionary #3: Forty five floors in the heart of Caracas’ former central business district. Third tallest building in Venezuela. Brillembourg continues more accurately in this interview: The tower as we know it is a hot potato… But we believe that the building no longer can be retrofitted as an office block.

There are 3,000 families living there, you know, a little town is 3,000 people. So it is a city within a city. - http://offcite. org/2012/10/19/interview-with-alfredobrillembourg-about-torre-david-and-thefuture-of-the-global-south%E2%80%A8 #4: In 1993, Brillembourg founded the U-TT in Caracas, VZ, and in 1998, Klumpner joined as co-director. Since 2007, they have taught at Columbia University, where they founded the Sustainable Living Urban Model Laboratory (S.L.U.M. Lab), and since July 2010, they hold the chair for Architecture and Urban Design at the Swiss Institute of Technology, ETH in Zürich. #5: The BBC and The New York Times

wrote about it and Domus magazine later did too. So there have been people picking it up… But what we did, no one did! We went floor by floor, apartment by apartment. We have more than 500 photos documenting all that… and the book will have I believe 300 photos. - http://offcite. org/2012/10/19/interview-with-alfredobrillembourg-about-torre-david-and-thefuture-of-the-global-south%E2%80%A8

concept advanced by Doug Saunders, according to which Sauders replaces the informal with the notion/typology of arrival city. Saunders expresses the need of nurturing for : to provide them with infrastructure and education. criteria for this third space between village and city: 1. network, ii. new arrivals, iii. affordable housing, iv. employment leading to social mobility(class status change).

#6: Torre David is the improvised, continually revised home for more than 750 families living as a self-organized community in what some have called a vertical slum.

#8: the external bracing system that holds the turbines might also be used to support a type of curtain wall structure with panels of color and texture solutions

#7: Against barrio, favela, slum, shantytown, U-TT chooses to follow the

#9: Scenes of centralization and nationalization: The wealth and growth of Venezuela is based on its exportations

Image digitally remastered, initialy found in the book of TORRE DAVID: Informal Vertical Communities

#9: (continues)...in petrol, since 1914 and since 1925 as the chief export. In 1960 joins OPEC. From 1974 to 1979 Carlos Andres Perez grand plan to make Caracas a global city. 1975 the government nationalists Iron and Aluminum Industries. 1978 construction of Guri Dam world’s largest hydroelectric dam. Ciudad Guayana new industrial center in the 60s. 1976 nationalized all foreign oil companies, thus, by 1980 the petroleum industry accounts for 70% of the nation’s revenues. Black Friday: High foreign debt, enormous internal and external pressure to pay off that debt, and policies that effectively drove revenue overseas: 1983 Bolivar currency is devalueted and the middle class devastated loosing 50% of their sav-

ings. Not only a material but also an ideological crisis from which the country never recovered. A economic “package” comes as a IMF-backed structural adjustment program and a mayhem of devaluations of currency, increases of prices, protests and marshal law follows. Between 1989-1991 Venezuela’s accumulated inflation reached 150% leading a tough economic and political reality: forget tomorrow - spend your money while it is still worth something. Caracas is rated as one the most violent cities in the world and houses a multi-billion-dollar industry of private security and gated enclaves. One of the most fragmented cities in its politics, economy, culture and urban fabric. The tower rises: In 1990 the developer J. D. Brillembourg Ortega, along

with the architect E. Gomez construct the building that “would become the financial nerve of the city” in downtown Caracas. Structurally sound, financially crippled/ FOGADE: After 3 years and before 1 year to its completion Brillemburg dies and in 1994 a series of bank closures leaving Edificio A 90% complete. FOCADE seizes the assets of Brillembourg, in the hands of which Torre David will remain vacant for over 12 years. A new constitution: Hugo Chaves comes to power in 1998 after serving for 2 years in prison because of a failed military coop in 1992. A new Venezuelan constitution takes effect in 1999 and the provision for the right for housing will stipulate the

eventual occupation of the Torre David. Chaves encourages “idle or under-used” properties be seized by the poor and takes quasi-legal measures , as the “Ley de Tierra” which paved the way for government redistribution of public land to peasants. One year after in 2002 He issues another degree turning over housing titles to those already occupying government -owned land for more than 10 years and other similar laws until 2009 were the new Urban Land Law provided that unused urban land is at the service of the public. As of april 2011, an estimated 155 office, apartment and government buildings in Caracas were occupied by squatters, Torre David is among them.

Lina Bo/UNDERSTANDING Bobardi

Spring 2015

separatedfromlivedexperience .

1. Valeria P. Cirell House, SaoPaolo,1958,pages18,19

Her projects represent the aesthetic search, as expressed in her desire to distance herself from strict rationalism and to pursue references to anonymous buildings and the relation between architecture and nature.

2.“la torraccia”,Valeria P.Cirell Guesthouse (adjacent to Valeria P. Cirell House), Sao P a o l o , 1 9 6 4 , p a g e 2 0 3.Misericórdia Hill Restaurant,Salvador De B a h i a , 1 9 8 7 - 8 9 , p a g e 2 1 Architectural theory at the servise of everyday l i f e / t h e c o n c e p t u a l i z a tionofarchitectureisnot

Valeria P. Cirell House was designed solid, with textured masonry walls with vertical gardens enveloping a surprisingly bright and texture-free interior. The framework is concrete. To the adjacent lot, there is a cylindrical guesthouse nicknamed “la torraccia” (the little tower), which would be

build 8 years later than V.P. Cirell house. Both individual existences are treated with the same designtools; in both cases she experimented with solid volumes covered with plants and organized around a fire place. The outside is organized around a tree in the first case, whereas in the third case, it is left infiltrate to the inside, whereas the tree takes the role of the single (most important) element. The particular representation comes as a result of the understanding of the oneelement significance/demonstration principle.

Spring 2015

rio das pedras/THE PROJECT

Spring 2015

MARKS ON THE AIR

URBAN ENVIROMENT + GESTURE RIO DAS PEDRAS(UP)/RIO DE JANEIRO(DOWN)

Spring 2015

Homelessness is the problem. The favela takes schema under these economic conditions. The act to provoke the favelaness of an environment takes place in the margins of the political and economic, of the urban and the rural, of the formal and informal, of what defines architecture and that which is called the slum - the margins are occupied: the favela comes alive. The favela then is, because of that which is not politically, economically and socially defined: The favela is the inclusion of the ones that are excluded. People are driven here; its inhabitants, workers in the majority, come with the knowledge to build. Not the dexterity of the one who has mastered the art of building, the ones who makes theory to action, but the un-calculated act of stacking one thing over the other. The favela is built like that. The favela looks like that. Every house is the result of their precedent.The favela is the result of a precedent. Consciously you may say, the favela is built by the unconscious act of building. Everyone wants to come to the city - eventually. The favela is not a city. It is the claim for a city. We don’t need to build for the favela. The favela is already overbuilt: the additive process is part of the favela system. The ‘growing house’ of the favela comes as an answer to the ‘mortgage’ and the ‘expenses’; in the favela, you build the house, you choose the materials, you stop when you have no materials to continue.

Spring 2015

You build the house, you live the house. In the favela you are in charge and the individual economic growth is materialized through the adding of stacks; a room at a time, a floor at a time. The favela rise comes not as the expansion of an urbanization field, but as a necessity-expandedfield that is expressed through the act of occupying. Such an act, occupation is the word, has massiveness similar to urbanization but radical different from it. Occupation comes with violence. Occupation is violent. But how could it be manifested otherwise? It was violence that gave birth to it. Capital’s violence to dictate your life: (Let’s occupy the streets!) Occupation is the antinomy of this kind of oppression. Collective identity and a spirituality of the every-day arise from the organic informal inhabitation. In a way the favela claims a reconnection of the man and the city; to understand the place of living not as a product provided by others but as an extension of yourself: placing yourself in the place and placing the object in the place. The author-constructor of intentionality. Power(economic, political)-driven intentionality. The result is more than close-relations, it is intimate. Can intimacy to be recuperated? An act of occupation takes place in the margins of power, economic or political.The act of occupying differs from the one of owing in a most temporal way: You only position yourself for a limited time; a place ‘wrapped up’ with a date of expiration.

The temporality characterizes the place. It consumes it. The temporality of the produced object in the place has no counteraction. One can trace it in the core of the settlement; it comes under brick form, which has replaced the wooden one and it will be replaced again by another unknown form, in a short period of time. If there is an unstated fear in the favela, it is the one of undoing. Undoing the place, undoing the people. The ruins of the favela leave no trace behind. Walk the favela and you will know; the street is the most interesting place. It comes as a residue of the occupied space. It is the only open space between the build. It is the common space, the living room of the favela. You will know as well that there is no need to build for the favela. The act of building is found by its own terms. But the temporality of the favela counteracts with the the vital, the absolute significance of the street. Can we intensify this equation? Can a street occupy, define, remain? The street can be the solution to the problem? The urban conditions the street; can the street condition the urban? The street is the connection, the inbetween, the object that redefines the objective of the favela. The one which alleviates temporality from the place and by which is defined. The street is narrow; alley-like - the street is defined by the polluted ground. What all this suggests is a re-appropriation of the street. Intimacy recuperated.

Spring 2015

MARKS ON THE RON

Spring 2015

framing / frame(s)

We can be all inclusive as discipline, you may think, but it is questionable if a project can ‘digest’ all of this inclusion(*1); all of this and all of that, all the small pieces, information to be gathered, the pieces of a grand narrative. We cannot have it all; architecture which does everything, that talks about anything. If you seek the excess of information, in the end of the day, the excess of information is what you have. This limitless expansion and blurriness of the frame is reflected upon society, which in turn reflects and conditions the city. It expands from the core of the being to the outskirts of the self, until it reaches the total. I wonder if the mechanisms of such universality are still functioning... I perceive that the modern era is well established and the moving away from culture has taken place to the point that an anti-cultural sensibility is stated globally. My interest lies on the city. What was, what is and what is to become. There cannot be a holistic approach towards the concept of the city; try to specify it and it will elude you. The concept of the city it is found in a constant state of crisis – what is that which defines not a city? What if universality is subverted and we need to re-define the specific, the most personal? I encourage you to think highly humanistic and reduce the ecology to the part: understand the city you are in by placing yourself in the street and in the room, following

Spring 2015

the reverse structure of Espèces d’espaces(*2). In the essay The Beaubourg-effect: ImplosIon and Deterrence, Jean Baudrillard questions the concept of a sustainable expansion: something must have taken place for the effect of subversion to move in some sense in the inverse direction, toward the interior, in defiance of the universal. Perhaps, then, the era of advancing towards bigness through capital is passed, only to give its place to what that comes after: a time for reduction and shrinkage. To move away from the will for duration, in order to find a more temporal mode of being, a word of economy and recycling. A dynamically shrinking area, a point within which is contained all the energy existed when it was in expansion state. A redefinition of the core is necessary then! The interior, this unitary element(*3) seeks for our attention, in order for a new module of living to be recalibrated by re-framing the limits(*4). The urban problematic posed here is that from the room to the city or better from the city to the room we lost the clarity, the ability of understanding space.The abstract nature of space needs its limits stated in order to be defined. We cannot really measure the quality of produced space; we can only relate it with systems of measurements. The understanding that comes after is related to comparative relations of those systems. The argument

which is based on the qualitative aspect of space - the ironically eco-friendly - is based on quantitative premises which are related with a system of measurement and not the space per se. It is paradoxical the call for attention in numbers or other systems of measurement of space that you cannot project yourself into, since the numbers – which are presented as a self-relied argument for “good architecture” - don’t “discuss about” space. F.U. Berlin as a frame The Free University was built in 1973 by Candillis-Josic-Woods, design of which was based in the - much more diverse in terms of program and urban context - Frankfurt –Romerberg competition entry of 1963 by Woods(*5) and Manfred Schiedhelm. Both efforts constitute the designed application of the Web(*6) concept, which was developed based on understanding of the urban realm as a continuous place of different spatial practices and cross-programming. The façades where developed in collaboration with Jean Prouve. Their nickname Rostlaube (‘rust-bucket’ or ‘rusty shack’) comes because of the nature of the steel which was deliberately prone to decay. However, unlike the structural Corten steel, the Corten paneling did not stop rusting. Growing thinner and thinner, it reached a point where

Up, the module of the façades of the Free University developed in collaboration with Jean Prouve. Down, attention to language, form and meaning as part of the book Espèces d’espaces by Georges Perec , 1974

Rostlaube faรงades of the Free University developed in collaboration with Jean Prouve.

Spring 2015

a solution was required, rendering the future intervention of N. Foster necessary. One might add here that the overall project was conceived as a system, hence the appliance of another rough system of prefabricated elements on the total system, such as reinforced concrete floor slabs, steel beams and composite steel columns, which allows for an easy replacement, rendering dynamic the possibility for transformation over time. The existence of Free University of Berlin comes with a double meaning: first, it marks the reinstatement of liberal education in post-World War II and secondly, as Kenneth Frampton underlines, it is a response to Van Eyck’s appeal for ‘labyrinthine clarity’ by conceiving and reinterpreting the complexity of the city under an orthogonal counterform in opposition to the medieval form of the city (*7) The mentality of a dynamically transformable plan according to the user(s) is best reflected on the framing of the windows’ system on which in turn, it is reflected the appropriation of the interior. The window frame is proposed as an architectonic element that is benefited by its external environment – it remains exposed to the weather conditions, where time “writes” on the surface - functions as the woven fabric of Semper in his essay. For him, the fabrics are the production of space it-

self, launching the very idea of occupation. Thus, their presence comes with the space and it encourages the space to be appropriated. The plan and the window constitute a system of expansion which must be framed and become definite and precise, in order for the overall composition of the parts to take place. On this premises will N. Foster’s design for the new library be based and as the extension of these rough technologies, the more civilized high-tech building will find the edge to grasp on. Framing anew! The library which was designed and built between 1997 and 2005, it develops ideas Foster first explored in the Climatroffice project in the 1970s, envisaged as a lightweight ‘buble’ with its own microclimate. It features a state-of –the-art energy-saving heating system, with budget 18 million Euros. Against a possible proposal limited and punctual, following the concept of urban acupuncture(*8), the Foster’s gesture is precise but in different terms: a pure spherical form which arises from the ground, the library stands like a “feast” inside the “belly” of Free University. At first glance, the architectural gesture - because of the purity of geometrical form and the abstractness of the sur-

face - seams passive; however, a closer look reveals the “monstrosity” of the gesture as a point/area/containment of implosion. Regarding to its materiality, it mediates a very accurate and masterly assembled whole(*9), fact which enforces even more the contrast between the new intervention and the existing context. The program is fixed but the open plan formation of the “buble” allows for future alterations of the interior and even flexibility of program. However, the execution of the design in terms of materiality and specificity of the function of the detail, it is hardly likely to provoke any further appropriation in the future. Where Foster finds solid ground for inspiration and correlation is in the surface of the window.The window framing comes as a result of a system; in order to accommodate different programmatic needs, modules are applied on the window screen based on the proportions of Le Corbusier’s Modulor(*10) system. What is found here is a constantly changing surface that reflects the program of each inside space, of each room.The program frames the window. Technology is central with Foster. The building reflects this appraisal; it embeds it in its structure to the core of its existence to the point that one might wonder if the presence of everything else is simply decorative. Foster finds himself in search of virtual environments and controlled

atmospheres – one might wonder if self-contained artificial environments are eco-friendly or do they come in expense of the natural? What is implied with this project is a shift of attention towards the creation of buildings that are “in charge” of the continuous manipulation of the outer and inner to themselves environment. They stand not as objects temporal and dull, but as dynamic entities taking steps towards autonomy, free from constrains. A person is no longer needed to open the window or to look outside of it – as well, we may keep in mind the under formation city of Masdar City, the world’s first zero-carbon city. Foster by executing the design of this city is simulating the experimental attitude of Josec, Candillis and Woods who indeed did treat the city as laboratory. Foster perhaps by taking the as found too literal he will place a laboratory, under the form of a university, in the core of Masdar City. But in terms of language he will uses opening which frame no view, which perhaps they are based in no concept of architecture, but they are rather left exposed to the disastrous effects of the buildingness that is produced because of the eco-sustainable effort of the whole. As you approach the building the fascination for domes gives its place for the situation of spaces which are deployed through ‘curly’ slabs

Spring 2015

on the inside, form of which one could parallel with slices taken from the cerebra. The outer surface surrounds the inner space. It becomes both the façade and the roof. It stands as an envelope, a separate piece of Architecture, which may stand independent as existence - forgetting perhaps the reason why it came into existence or to whom is addressed. In order to construct the shell Foster uses an already tested recipe: metal and glass define the aesthetic of the object. But the way by he composes the part, it results to an abstract surface. Having that characteristic, the eye reads the details of the surface, as one reads the material of a blank canvas. There is no detail, nothing to be applied on the homogeneous surface by the hand of the painter; try to lay down an empty canvas and make him the center of attention.You may notice then its texture and the way light changes regarding the change of position to the center of the canvas. Thus, the surface by remaining abstract enables to read its materiality. What this means is that the light-weight and transparent surface signifies the temporal nature of the construction, whereas the way that this material has been assembled, from paper to reality, i.e. the technical and technological advancement which reveals the sophistication of the design. What this surface does is to feed our brains with information and information takes time too process.

I understand the fever of Information now. The lust for considering more, more than just.. a handful of things at a time. It is a noble demand, you might think, but regarding the amount of information in use, it can obscure rather than revile(*11). You see Information is just, well, information. A critical pause must to be taken, in order to consider what qualitatively means the quantitative. The critical point(*12) that qualifies information to be something that becomes in formation.The critical is the dogmatically claimed, the discard or exclusion, which comes against the excess of information. In that sense, the architectural effort of reduction can be assimilated by the process followed in journalism or poetry in order to have closure time or else deduction from the premises that were established. You know.. Information is not only numbers, it is words as well.. F. de Saussure makes a connection between an object and its linguistic representation according to its signified value. The library’s numbers which are related to the description of an optimal combination and function of materials create an architectural language of universal eco-sustainability. But this language is against culture, by the simple reason of not promoting any; the same glass surface can be traced in every city. What adds more is the fact that the building in question uses the same medium of materiality

Left, detailed section through the building’s double skin. Four froors are contained within the naturaly ventilated, bubble like enclosure, which is clad in aluminium and glazed panels supported on steel frames with a radial geometry. Computercontrolled opening panels at the top of the building vent the library space “naturaly” during warm weather; opening vents at low level admit “fresh” air. Philological library of the Free University, Berlin.

in order to promote the feeling of transparency and lightness, whereas in the same time it moves away from the plain honesty and transparency of the modern, in order to obscure and by the act of obscuring adds a certain weight to the lightness of the object.

Framing the window view seems important for the projects under discussion and it allows us to read their narrative from those openings; rationality can be found in those three correlated projects by simply framing the question of the window.

Again, a certain inversion seems that it took place, since the primacy of looking through the inside frame towards the outer scape is substituted by the division and total isolation to the blurry optimal tempered inside of the frame-unit of the outer surface - that we can still appeal to it as a window and which may still allude to the passer-by for a pick-look towards the inside.

The library can easily be categorized and justify its existence under the popular label of High-Tech! The skin/exterior of the building is highly expressive of that language; the interior is reductive of any expression or even culture. The produced object responds to the call for mechanical appearance; for its ephemeral state of flux finds no rest in the parts which constitutes the whole; they state their intention to move or to be subsidized.

However, the most striking observation lays on the openings which look and frame aspects of the structural device of the shell and not to the outside. Appropriation which could lead us to the conclusion that Foster’s fascination for the structure challenges the limits of the fetishism. And if so, then what are you looking at is the “guts” of the envelope. Against foster’s sketches to convince us otherwise, what the building suggests as diagram is the moment of looking at the window, because of what you see, because of what is framed(*13). Bacon paintings make use pf this diagrammatic relationship between the action of framing and the figurative action of the figure itself.

Spring 2015

If High Tech promotes a culture then that is one of simulation and fascination, no longer a culture of production and meaning, as Jean Baudrillard elaborates. Hyper-technological appearance represents the anti-culture; it goes beyond the spirit of modernity only to place itself in a meta-mechanical era; obsession for engineering or a path for technological alienation? In any case, the limits of control are evident. From the structural drawings of the envelope to the hand-made sketches that surpassingly drove the initial idea to its completion, the property and the informative nature of the drawing, whether is technical or artis-

tic, it is manipulated in order to be used as a brand-mark. So, its language clearly refers to a meta-modern era, the envelope radiates its position in the university/city/planet(*14). What is an Icon if not the materialization of our need to create our own myths for each era. As Barthes could have anticipated the Masdar City is a myth which feeds back the myth of high-/ eco- tech design which gave birth to it… Masdar City is predetermined and obsessively in search of its inhabitants! Are you interested?

#1: Regarding the formulation of the cliché question: Does architecture speak about the world, relate to the world? (Is it inclusive, intertextual, popular?), as delivered in the essay ‘Some notes on Architectural Theory 2014’ by Bernard Tschumi. #2: d’espaces

Georges

E s p è c e s Perec, 1974.

#3: The concept of the Archipelago as it is first discussed in R.Koolhas book Delirious New York. The attention is driven to the entity; the enforcement of the latter comes with the design. #4: As with the contemporary city, there are no more boundaries delineating a coherent and homogeneous whole. – Ber-

nard Tschumi affirms in the De-, Dis-, Ex-. #5: Leading member of the competition for the F.U. Berlin was Shadrach Woods, who went to study under Le Corbusier in Paris in 1948. Inside the office he will be met with Georges Candillis and together they will work on the building of Unite d’ Habitation in Marseilles 1948-51. #6: Candilis-Josic-Woods’ concept of the Web was an investigation into the possibility of designing a system that allows for relating different practices and programs into a continuous patch of urban tissue: The proposals we have developed are characterized by the fact that the site is occupied in such a way that the various activities of the public and private domains are housed

in what amounts to a continuous building. The linear organization of the Stem was left here in favor of a continuous basis on which the urban can develop: Point = concentric (static, fixed) Line = linear centric (a measure of liberty) Web = non-centric initially, poly-centric through use (a fuller measure) The Web was thought to be a more homogeneous system than the Stem, permitting limitless development of an area and organizing it by a network of circulation and support systems that would unify diverse activities.The Web was intended to provide ﬂexibility in planning for a range of functions over time, thus assuring its own longevity; its very realization is spread out and subject to revision over time. -p.266, http://www.team10online.org/ research/papers/delft2/avermaete.pdf

#7: The new departure made by Woods in his Frankfurt-Romerberg competition entry of 1963 was a direct response to Van Eyck’s appeal for ‘labyrinth clarity’: for what was being proffered in the Frankfurt proposal was a ‘city in miniature’… If Frankfurt was an urban ‘event’, it was certainly conceived in different terms from those of the Smithsons or Bakema, for while presenting an orthogonal counterform in opposition to the medieval form of the city…That this Frankfurt scheme as built out in the Free University of Berlin in 1973 lost much of its conviction stems largely from the absence of an urban context… However much a university may function like a city in microcosm, it cannot generate the mated diversity of the city proper. - p.277, Kenneth Frampton, Modern architecture

Shadows, structure and the inner traslusent membrane which filters “natural” light. Philological library of the Free University, Berlin.

#8: urban acupuncture: a strategically limited urban intervention, programmed and conceived in such a way as to augment an existing urban condition in a defined but openended manner. This concept was developed by Manuel de Sola-Morales and was implemented in the project Avenida Diagonal, build in 1992. - source: p. 350, 4th edition Modern Architecture, Kenneth Frampton. #9: New materials and techniques play a role in contemporary design that is aesthetic as well as functional. Like the International Style, the global styles of Rogers, Foster, Piano, and others often feature heroic engineering, and once again technology is seen as a virtue, a power, in its own right, as though it were a fetish to ward away the unsavory aspects of the very modernity of

which it is part. (This new Prometheanism was bucked up, not knocked back, by the attacks of September 11: tall buildings in iconic shapes were thought to inspire moral uplift, not to mention financial interest and political support…) – preface IX, The Art-Architecture Complex, Hal Foster #10: The cladding of the Berlin Free University uses program to create a modular affect, through an array of weathered Cor-ten steel and glass modular panels that accommodate different programmatic need along the exterior and permit the continual reconfiguration of the skin in response to changes over the life of the institution. Composite pane types in two widths and varying heights are combined according to the proportional increments of Le Corbusier’s Modulor system, pro-

ducing a highly varied surface when arrayed along the length of the building. –source: Function of Ornament by Moussavi.

reduction to the most essential is necessary: economy in design means the minimal effort with maximal effect.

#11: The hope of supporting through as much parameters as possible is founded in straw aspirations, because, I will add here, you are only potentially being in a position of knowing them, which means in position of power. Today over-powering one’s design is believed that results from information; and you need a lot of it.

#13: I think they (painters) always just hope they will be able to unlock the valves of sensation which just open out the whole appearance. – Francis Bacon, p.22, interviewed in artpress 215 Juillet/Aout 98

#12: Critical is the amount of information that is revealed by the author/architect; the lines are measured; the weight of each line has its significance. After the pluralistic opening to include everyone and everything, the

#14: Yet what is most characteristic of global style is its “banal cosmopolitanism”: even as its signal buildings respond to local conditions and global demands at once, they often do so in a manner that produces an image of the local for circulation to the global. - preface X, The Art-Architecture Complex, Hal Foster

joburg/UNDERSDANDING the patern(s)

Fall 2014-2015

_Johannesburg_2015-2115

Democracy is forever, Santu Mofokeng Change happens on the ground Our team investigated the cellular infrastructure and the constitution imagery of South Africa. By the process of investigating these topics, we developed a belief that nothing is as it appears at first glance; there is an underlying culture away from the ideals promoted by the progressive constitution of this place. There is an everyday reality which antagonizes the vision of Nelson Madela for what Africa can be - a gap between the existence of constitutional rights and implementing them in a daily basis.

The use of the word culture derives from the tracking down of behavioral patterns and significant facts as they are presented in the selection of events between 1994-2014. Highlight of these are the following: statistics show that someone is raped every 4 minutes, a woman is killed every 8 hours, the number xenophobic and homophobic violence (the former has augmented after apartheid), apparent leftovers of racial discrimination and women discrimination, reports of South Africa losing battle against tax corruption, crimes committed by police or people impersonating police officials, use of public funds by government officials and illegal activities, such as: killing hundreds of rhinos each year(poverty, low wages and abysmal working and living conditions). Earlier in 2009 a leading South African research group concluded that one in four male it surveyed admitted to committing rape - culture of sexual violins that victim groups say is deeply embedded in society.

Fall 2014-2015

Policies have not been implemented to actually deliberately try and break that apartheid thinking. And so, I think that is one of the reasons at least for the constitution not fulfilling its complete promise because it requires political will also. And you can't only require or rely on the judges to do this… change happens not in the courts, but it happens on the ground. Some organisations like the TAC uses both and have used it both, and then it works very well. - Prof. Pierre de Vos, University of Cape being interviewed by Fazila Farouk, source: http:// sacsis.org.za/site/article/2117

Many traditional constitutions across the world often see the biggest threat to individual citizens as being the state. Our constitution says that power is held not only by the state. It’s also held by big corporations, other institutions that can also easily affect your rights, (whether it’s now a big cellphone company or whether it’s a mining company, as we know from Marikana or anybody else. These are all huge role players with a lot of power and the constitution binds all of them, not only the state). The constitution contains a whole set of rights that are not traditionally included in the Bill of Rights, a set of social economic rights like a right of access to housing, a right of access to healthcare, a right to education, you would be surprised to hear, a right to environment, a healthy environment -- and also an equality clause that says equality is not really about just treating people exactly the same, because that would freeze the status quo in the inequality, but that equality is about the end result. Equality is about substance, whether in the end, people are capable of actually fulfilling their true potential and it requires therefore some positive steps to be taken and even for people to be treated differently so that everybody has a fair chance. (That’s very different from the old school liberal constitution, which says you must be treated the same whether you are the poorest or the richest person because it doesn’t matter whether you have an equal chance in life. It is just whether the law is going to treat you equally.) - Prof. Pierre de Vos, University of Cape being interviewed by Fazila Farouk, source: http://sacsis.org.za/site/article/2117

1913 1930 1949 1950 1951 1951 1953 1955 1960 1961 1971 1976

TRANSVAAL SOWETO DURBAN JOHANNESBURG SOPHIATOWN SOWETO SOWETO SOWETO SHARPEVILLE HOWICK ORANGE FREE STATE SOWETO

-25.0000, 30.0000 -26.2661, 27.8658 -29.8833, 31.0500 -26.2044, 28.0456 -26.1767, 27.9816 -26.2661, 27.8658 -26.1767, 27.9816 -26.1767, 27.9816 -26.6886, 27.8714 -29.4667, 30.2333 -28.0000, 27.0000 -26.1767, 27.9816

1985 1989 1992 1992 1993 1995 1996 2000 2004 2005 2006 2007

LANGA SOWETO CISKEI TRANSKEI JOHANESSBURG SOUTH DURBAN TROMPSBURG JOHANESSBURG HARRISMITH PRETORIA KHUTSONG DURBAN

-33.9453, 18.5300 -26.1767, 27.9816 -31.0000, 29.0000 -26.2044, 28.0456 -29.8833, 31.0500 -30.0167, 25.7667 -26.2044, 28.0456 -28.2833, 29.1333 -25.7461, 28.1881 -26.3336, 27.3275 -29.8833, 31.0500

2007 2008 2008 2008 2009 2009 2010 2010 2011 2011 2011 2011

WESTERN CAPE JOHANNESBURG DELFT BALFOUR JOHANNESBURG STANDERTON JOHANNESBURG JOHANNESBURG ERMELO FICKSBURG CAPETOWN KUSILE

-34.0000, 20.0000 -26.2044, 28.0456 -33.9656, 18.6444 -26.6500, 28.5833 -26.2044, 28.0456 -26.9500, 29.2500 -26.2044, 28.0456 -26.2044, 28.0456 -26.5333, 29.9833 -28.8737, 27.8781 -33.9253, 18.4239 -25.9164, 28.9172

2011 2012 2012 2012 2012 2012 2012 2012 2012 2012 2012 2012

JOHANNESBURG NATIONWIDE JOHANNESBURG CAPE TOWN JOHANNESBURG MARIKANA CAPETOWN JOHANNESBURG JOHANNESBURG RUSTENBURG LENASIA WESTERN CAPE

-26.2044, 28.0456 -33.9253, 18.4239 -26.2044, 28.0456 -33.9253, 18.4239 -26.2044, 28.0456 -25.6980, 27.4720 -33.9253, 18.4239 -26.2044, 28.0456 -26.2044, 28.0456 -25.6667, 27.2500 -26.3169, 27.8278 -34.0000, 20.0000

2012 2013 2013 2013 2013 2013 2013 2013 2014 2014 2014 2014

CARLETONVILLE WESTERN CAPE SASOLBURG JOHANNESBURG DURBAN DIEPSLOOT CAPE TOWN CAPETOWN MADIBENG PRETORIA ROODEPOORT TZANEEN

-26.3581, 27.3981 -34.0000, 20.0000 -26.8142, 27.8286 -26.2044, 28.0456 -29.8833, 31.0500 -25.9347, 28.0125 -33.9253, 18.4239 -33.9253, 18.4239 -25.4167, 27.7500 -25.7461, 28.1881 -26.1625, 27.8725 -23.8333, 30.1667

finding A: finding B:

constitution hill Site of research:

Field of test, adjucent to the site:

constitution hill

The Grid.

Fall 2014-2015

The grid: s areas to walk and experience the city

Fall 2014-2015

perciving the city ground

-how do I design the city ground? -how do I walk the city ground? -do i leave a trace behind?

Fall 2014-2015

traces of people, traces of memory

Fall 2014-2015

Arriving there is what you are destined for. But do not hurry the journey at all. Better if it lasts for years, ... Ithaka gave you the marvelous journey. Without her you would not have set out. She has nothing left to give you now. ... (- part of Ithaka, C.P. Cavafy, Princeton University Press, 1992)

The trip is and you are because of it. It is a continuous decision: it is yours; you have to do it; the ship is there to be driven..

Our thoughts inhabit the mind: incoherent thoughts, thoughts out of logic, thoughts of the mind. The mind has this ability; the ability to stretch out of the convenient, of the already established. It drives off for the out-reaching of that what is there to be reached; the now and the then, the here and the there. The word is, because the mind is, and therefore, the trip will be as well. As you set out for Ithaka hope the voyage is a long one, full of adventure, full of discovery. ... Keep Ithaka always in your mind.

Fall 2014-2015

Odyssey, that is Odysseus trip, it comes as a result of ethics - he has a responsibility towards the common. The trip will be because of his decision to participate in the war against the Trojans. A war out of the reach of his homeground, away from what the mind makes its own, adressed to a foreign one; to the place-away. The necessary igniting device must be found in order for the trip to commence. The devise is used as an event in its most extreme form in order for the tripper to put forward (*Odysseus in that way is a character who enjoys the perks of irony; he denies Ithake in order to have it. That element of irony appears continuously in his trip. From the beginning until the point where the trip finds its

closure against the suitors. We have to denied our destination as the final product; the beingness of Architecture can be unbearable to its creator; for the fulfillment of it - meaning integrate essence into substance - will signified the complete, the determine, the terminal; the moment the destination becomes the point of departure. This relationship has to remain open, as in a continuous form) the asignificance of the own in favor of the common place. Ithake(s) is the end and the beginning. The departure and destination are the same, they are one.What differentiates the place are the different moments in time. Through the moments of time one can identify the place, whereas through the notion of time one can understand a kind of established continuity or else a place on continuity. If goddess Athina is the element which guides Odysseus thought, then continuity is the one that drives him. Each stop along the way becomes a destination, a point of its own, a point of departure. A trip inside the trip, a story inside the story. When time becomes relative in the case of the stop on the island of the Kirki, the initial destination will become relative too; when time is relative, the place of belonging becomes relative. However, the continuity remains as a constant, because is related to

the feeling which gave birth to it, the feeling of belonging to the place. Indeed, we are in need of Ithakes to call our own. Places to belong, places of departure.The trip is unbearable without having an Ithake in mind; the moment of return is the response to a feeling. Place signifies for Odysseus the existence of a continuous feeling; the felling of belonging to a place. What Odysseus is for the place is of the same nature: he is perceived as part of the place, even when he is not there. How can this continuity, the consistency of the feeling, be expressed through architecture? Continuity is related to perception as is time and space. We perceive space with our senses; through them architecture becomes tangible, understandable, and therefore, visible to us. The multiple ways of translating the exterior to ourselves visible world -that is to experience- and incorporating them as a part of our own existence, belongs to the invisible world and is related to both mind flexibility and past experiences availability. If for Heidegger and Foucalt, temporality is our inescapable way of being , then addressinging the perception of space and time on continuity can be of our choice?

johannesburg/ON CONTINUITY

Fall 2014-2015

Chapter O (zero): PRESENT The past and the present are disjoined in the city. There are monuments to the past, but everyone either lives in the now or for tomorrow. Society remains segregated, although an image of unity and prosperity is projected - there is a discrepancy between what this city is and what this city claims to be.Thus, this imaging of the city is not corresponding to the present. If a possibility for a future lies in the reconciliation of the past with the present, then in which strata-layer this can be found? Is it on the air, lucent amongst the sky-scrapers, where the outlines of the buildings meet and the eye follows or is it hidden on the ground’s surfaces, where people clash and cross paths? Chapter ONE: POST-PRESENT Phase A: The present becomes apparent. Forces related to Capital push for a land devaluation of the city centre and an increase in value of the land of the periphery.An example of this strategy is the recent flood of in- vestments into the urban area of Soweto. The image of rural areas of the periphery is trans- formed as well with the construction of pic- turesque settlements (Cosmo City, etc.), adjacent to or in the place of the ‘informal’ ones; this reality places the two kinds of settlements in an antagonistic position to each other. Moreover, the State also supports towards fur-

Fall 2014-2015

ther depreciation/appreciation of land values of the city center by implementing policies that lead to evictions of poor people from their city residences.These policies are austere regulations related to updating the buildings’ health, eco-sustainabity and technology. People have to ‘regulate’ immediately the present state of dis-functionality of their habitats or else they are placed on hold. The evacuated buildings are condemned to decay due to a ‘newly acquired’ temporal - but in reality ‘permanent state’ of transcendence, as a result of the state’s bureaucratic manipulation and maneuverability. The intellectual community helps for the problem to become apparent (‘Beware of the color’ movement, etc). But this ‘fro- zen’ state allows for no ‘real’ action on the site by the individual, the collective or the State itself and this renders these actions as ‘sporadic’ phenomena. People are left with the illusion of change/ changing city (they are not moving forward, everything is static), but the majority of the city space is deteriorating and the buildings are left un- attended and un-attending of people. The real image of the city becomes apparent. This ‘turn’ of the investing strategy is nothing but a variation in the capitalistic state of flux, in order to return more aggressively and dominate (over) the city center. A ‘new’ system of capital’s domination will emerge over the ‘old’ one. The latter will be left to complete its course, since the ‘logistics’ of Capital dictate the following rational approach:

it is preferable to create a new order of relationships than to sustain a dysfunctional one. The expression of this more aggressive strategy of Capital finds solid ground in the architecture of Mega-structures, through a system that can extend itself perpetually; over the city-grid-scape and over the landscape, unconstrained and unconditional.. The domination of the capital is total and literal; it ‘reigns’ over the city and the people. Meanwhile, the land is worked and reworked (as in the mines etc.); to the point that all these transformations of the land have a visual impact; the changing image of the city scape becomes a spectacle for the ‘ones above’ (the elites). They can witness in real time the evolution of the city, the evolution that they have determined as their creation (the result of economic strategies), thus, they can intervene in its evolution. This ‘observatoire’ (observatory) offers view over a rather brutal scenery: drugs, prostitution, killings on the streets of Hillbrow; the every day interactions projected crude as the moment the are provoked as realizations of actions; a real-life, real-time spectacle for the few with an inborn (inside the system of capitalism) taste for this kind of ’delicacies’. The real image of the city becomes apparent and a question is raised: can we pass through the state of unconstrained, unconditional development of the city-scape to the state of conditional development?

Phase A-A’: An action generates an equal re-action . The over-pressed inhabitants of the city centre and the pressed-aside inhabitants of the periphery react violently to the current state of being (order of things).The rupture of society finds expression through CIVIL WAR! and the Megastructure collapses from within.. The monuments are destroyed first and their materials are used for the cause of rebellion: Constitution Hill,the place where the princinples of the South African Constitution are celebrated (both as a memory : monument and as an expression : Court of Justice) exists no longer as an entity but it can be found scattered in the streets, amongst the people. Simultaneously, massive gatherings and protests question the limits of the street, along with any other restrictions dictated on the City by the Capital; the formal aspect of this violent gesture is building facades caved inwardly. The lower elevations of the buildings seem to return to a former state of being-ness, one which resembles to a pilotis structure and in the city-center people witness deteriorating volumes which are floating in the air. Chapter TWO: POST-HISTORY Phase B: Reconcile the present with the past The fragments of the friction that was produced can be found on site; fragments of

Fall 2014-2015

the recent past, which constitutes the basic matter in order to construct the (new) present. A present in which the past is embedded; past and present are one. During that stage the possibility opens for the constitution to be holistically implemented. There is no need for monuments and other reminders in the name of equality and liberty; no ‘souvenirs’ of the past, because the past can be found there, as a part of the present; the Constitution is in the place and the place reflects back the Constitution. The past and present need to become one so that there is no past, present or future, they are all one, they are all now. The now, in that sense, it is framed under a continuous dimension of time and space. The identity of the place is its own continuity. Continuity as a topos(=place) resembles to a common (u-)topio(=scape) of beingness; an utopia shared by its constituents parts as being in harmony with oneself. Phase B-B’: Matter additive to the system The Constitution is and therefore, the space of the City will be as well: both didactic and radient. The space, along with the people who inhabit in it are ‘open’. The City becomes a welcoming place of attraction for passers-by. Travelers come to Johannesburg; they come through or they come to; whichever the case is, they bring along with them their stories; individual histories outside

the limited collective history of the City. Since history is embedded into space, the new matter to build becomes the stories that each one carries with him; critical histories and personal views are embedded also into space, during this second phase of (re)constructing the place. This is an additive process to the system and takes place in a most temporal structure (tempo=time): a scaffolding! The structure runs throughout the city’s latitude and longitude. For a city being re-appropriated the functionality of this structure is double: statically, it holds the parts (deteriorated buildings) of the urban block from falling and socially, provides the frame for new inhabitations. Chapter THREE: POST-PLACE The only factor that generates an alteration of the space is the presence of each individual. There is no identity of the place since it changes along with the density of people being there. After the awareness of the people during phase two, in phase three buildings are becoming aware. This new state of awareness constitutes a solid basis for balanced development towards utopia (conditional development).The built environment comes as a result of development related to the person, not the object (building). That means that it is sensible to the person’s actions; it re-acts back to the act of the person: when people are moving apart or moving towards each other, the buildings respond.

Re-construction with the materials found on site; history will be embeted into urban space. There is no need for a symbolic monument anymore; the Constitution is carried by each one of the people and i sreflected by the Place.

he recent past, which constitutes the basic matter st and present are one. During that stage the posr monuments and other reminders in the name of as a part of the present; the constitution is in the

it is framed under a continuous dimension of time .

Fall 2014-2015

100 Fall 2014-2015

102 Fall 2014-2015

104 Summer 2014

HYBRID RESIDENTIAL INFRASTRUCTURES IN THE CENTRAL CITY, CHAPTER V: THE PROJECTS Professor: Juan Herreros Adjunct Assistants: Diana Cristobal, Maria Esnaola

What are the Projects? “These are the Projects”; New York social Housing developments of a specific urban type, which after a diverse course through history, they are now rendered anachronistic and problematic. The very singular characteristic - except of that of an urban typology - which defines (the fabric of) the Projects is the extend use, on the surface of the facades, of the brick material. Except of its physical properties, this urban fabric has historical ones as well; and nowadays it is tainted with a negative connotation. Therefore, there is an existing correlation between the Projects and their materiality. This existing situation where the brick is reduced to a superficial use as an ornament of the façade has to change. During this research of redefining the typology of the Projects, the brick has to play a leading role as a constructive element, this time, of the urban fabric. Finally, the act of changing the perceptive of the very notion of the current fabric even if the changes are applied to one of the many blocks - will result to a redefinition of the whole and the future way with which the rest of the Projects are conceived.

106 Summer 2014-2015

point

knot

aerial connection

ground connection

108 Summer 2014-2015

110 Summer 2014-2015

112 Summer 2014-2015

114 Summer 2014-2015

116 Summer 2014-2015

118

120 Summer 2014-2015

End.