CITY OF COMMONS: Six Facilities of Urban Appropriation Robert Alexander Gorny / Sylvia Stoll (2009)
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CITY OF COMMONS: INTRODUCTION
“When she thought it over afterwards, it occurred to her that she ought to have wondered at this, but at the time it all seemed quite natural.“ LEWIS Carroll : Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland
Architecture had ever consisted of articulating in space the dominant forms of established political and economical powers. During industrialisation, capitalist-fordist modes of production exerted these influencing forces. But nowadays we had to witness a shift from the industrial to the ‘biopolitical’ metropolis with new urban forms with “increasingly intense and direct relation between the production process and the common that constitutes the city.”1 As Hardt & Negri argue, we had to realise that “in fact, production of the common is becoming nothing but the life of the city itself.“2 In the dawn of a post-neoliberal world, the disciplines of architecture and urbanism, their methods and practices, were to react to this new diagram of forces. Invention, creativity and innovation — the potential of "other worlds" — shall depend on the ability, to put oneself in touch with others. For this is a large part of what might be preliminary pointed out as contemporary social 'sustainability', the hypothesis addresses the architects' role and the issue of 'appropriability' of common facilities. Appropriability hereby ought to be understood as an environment's potential to augment benefits generated by innovation. 1 Hardt,M./Negri,A.: "Common Wealth" 2009: 154 2 ibid: 251
The theoretical groundwork for this project was laid on this understanding of urban space and relational thinking of its inhabiting agents and material environment. The ultimate core of biopolitical production would necessarily involve technologies to enable new forms of 'subjectification'3 different from forms of capitalist identification, but instead would be resulting in common bodies. From this perspective, a new contemporary role of the architect would consist in facilitating space for free collective appropriation to convey socially sustained action and interaction to support the forming of collective bodies and liveable cities.
3 The term subjectivation (or also subjec tification) (French: 'subjectivation') is a philosophical concept coined by Foucault and was elaborated by Deleuze and Guattari. It refers to the construction of the individual subject, but has since been used with different connotations throughout different disciplines. As 'technologies of the self' are societal, cultural and ethnical means and values in which a subject is constantly creating 'itself', subjectification can be considered as the process of reevaluation. In power and discourse analysis, it mainly refers to the self-destruction of structures that always open up margins for action and active creation. But in the same time, there is no form of subjectivation, which has not self been an outcome of a historical form of subjectification together with external conditions.
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CITY OF COMMONS: A MACHINE AND WHAT it PRODUCED
“A machinic urbanism would focus on the productive connection of life, all those ways of life that elude control and clog the arteries of everyday life, transforming these in the process. According to this view, life is a machine, but a machine without identity. It comes to life by virtue of the connections it produces. The challenge for sustainable urbanism […] is how to engage the creative lines of flight defining the social field as a whole; working to connect the micro with the macro, the public and the private, and the physical conditions of the city with the flows of economic markets and political materialities (policy, ideology, history), all in an effort to effect new social, economic, political, cultural and ecological condition.“ Adrian Parr: Hijacking Sustainability, p.141
N or d h avnen Copenh agen will be Europe’s biggest urban development project for the near future. In 2009 the urban ideas competition ‘Europan 10‘ had asked for a design strategy to transform the site “from harbour to living space”. The post-industrial harbourscape will be reintegrated into the Copenhagen’s urban fabric as a new quarter for 40.000 people, supporting the city’s aim to become the first carbon neutral capital in the world in 2025. Recently before, a masterplan competition winning proposal by team cobe, Sleth & Rambøll had been announced. 'Nordholmene : An urban delta’ had been the title of this entry. As the name suggested, the entrant proposed to divide the Nordhavnen area into a number of small areas, divided by canals. However, 4 on one point of critique the Jury report
concluded that “Schools, sports facilities and cultural facilities are key elements in the structure and serve as locomotives for urban life", but there were "no networks or connections between the urban neighbourhoods, and this could result in a range of Nordhavn identities rather than a single identity”1 ON M ACHINIC PRODUCTION OF SUSTAIN A BILIT Y
It was time to stop and relief the city from the neo-liberal view of branding 'identities'. This new development, aroused suspicion, for it ought to be possible to depict potentials for permeability and openness within such a big scale project, a remotest chance for non-capitalist driven modes of urban development, for potentials which aim for facilitating and enables commoning and were thus imagining architectures for a socially empowered democratic city. Since 'social sustainability' would for us be defined to rather enable different forms of subjectivation than merely branding 'identities', it would be more important to sustain innovative behaviour patterns, than principally attributing that building be ecologically neutral by green-washing urbanism. The basic idea was to take this masterplan as a potential vantage point for the design. The project was to experiment with Nordhavnen as a cutting-edge development of critical ‘sustainable urbanism’. Functioning as a network, the project intended to be facilitating and to create new forms of life, practice or possibilities in everyday urban life. 1 http://www.nordhavnen.dk/ nordhavnen_jury_low.pdf
The ‘Nordholmene’ masterplan proposal by team COBE/Sleth/Rambøll: Extension of the harbour area
5 Social, cultural, economic and environmental sustainability
Sources www.cobe.dk & www.nordhavnen.dk Courtesy by the architect, copyright © COBE
CIT Y OF CO M M ONS: A M ACHINE AND W H AT it PRODUCED
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[ The competition had put the question on the definition of the edge. After a synopsis it occurred to us, to rather follow that branching path, whose trajectory was, if anything, unpredictable. Quite adventurous for a final thesis, we were to just let arrive at what would happen. In this pondering silence, it seemed more important to even have a glimpse of what edges were and how they operated in their surrounding environment and their potentials. Here was a new trajectory to cast. The analytical result had later been comprised and printed in a 180 page encompassing research leaflet, which was filled with diagrams and abstract results of the investigation. Delving into topics of edges, site, the city of Copenhagen, current developments as well as the COBE proposal, its problems and potentials, it proved
] right to develop a new perspective on the task in mid-course. By conceiving of the masterplan design as such an above mentioned abstract machine it had been rendered possible to simulate, how it worked. What will it produce? It further seemed possible to elaborate, which social elements it would associate and put into relation with one another. Looking at the different social relevance of greater or lesser extend the plan aroused, it was about time to call into question the role of social sustainability concerning public buildings. Based on this premise, a meta-discussion had automatically initialised itself, that ‘problematised’ the plan itself as the masterplan machine, which virtually became manifest in the monstrously demonstrating ‘M-Machine’.
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CIT Y OF CO M M ONS: A M ACHINE AND W H AT it PRODUCED
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+ Distribution of space, mass and singularities + Definition of character + Arrangement of programmatic fields and functions + €™©§@%®
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Masterplan 2009 CIT Y OF CO M M ONS: A Analyse M ACHINE AND W H AT COBE it PRODUCED Entwicklungsmöglichkeiten 1/2
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1
Monozentrische Expansion mit einmaliger Schwerpunktverlagerung während Expansion
Dipolare Entwicklung, Expansion von Kernen mit Etablierung von dazwischenliegenden Schwerpunkten
Analyse Masterplan 2009 COBE Entwicklungsmöglichkeiten 3/4
2025
2020
2016 2013
2011 2010
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Zellenstruktur unterschiedlicher Steilteile mit identifikatorischen Images, Entwicklung entlang Infrastruktur-“Gabel“
Analyse Masterplan 2009 COBE Sukzessive Bebauung des Areals Entwicklungsmöglichkeiten nach Wohn- und Büroflächenedarf5/6
Definition des Areals über nahezu simultane Definition der Ränder
ausgehend vom Sandkaj-Areal
Teilabschnitt der Metro mit Anfangs-, Zwischen und Endpunkt als Ausgangspunkt der Besiedlung
KRITIK >> Für die ersten Abschnitte sinnvoll, danach zu dogmatisch, fehlender Bezug zum „Rest“ disqualifiziert das bereits realisierte
KRITIK >> Prinzipiell sinnvoll, jedoch bleibt das soziele Zentrum nach Osten relativ lange unabgeschlossen
Wachstum von charkteristischen Nachbarschaften, urbaner und ebenso positivistischer Naturräume
Iteration: zeitnahe Realsierung aller typischer Situationen und Räume. Sukzessive Wiederholung und Variation mit zunehemder Besiedlung
Kerne wachsen aus sich und wachsen zusammen Expansion in die Landschaft
Aufbau formal klarer Blöcke, die folgend nach innen entwickelt oder linear erweitert werden
KRITIK >> Definition des Zwischeraums, Gefahr der Segregation und fehlender Zusammenhang der Einzelbereiche
CITY OF COMMONS: THE METHOD OF DR AMATISATION
"[...] every diagram is intersocial and constantly evolving. It never functions in order to represent a persisting world, but produces a new reality, a new model of truth." Gilles Deleuze: Foucault, p.35
THE ME TH OD OF DRA M ATISATION: Having star-
ted from a question on designing edges, the discussion first went in a direction of focussing on the more contenting discussion in defining edges as a zone between contiguous urban fields with varying greater or lesser extents of significance, which are arranged by the MasterplanMachine. The proposal will change the existing situation in a specific manner. The M-Machine created islands. So did it literally in the new northern extension, but moreover would it sociologically enact “islands of identity”. These neighbourhoods will on their own be seen as an identity-logical problematic segregation, but however, they might also finally enable a positive potential for subjectificating “adjacencies”. This would strongly rely on one theoretical concept by Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari which they called ‘agencements’. Translated into ‘arrangements’ in english, we will have to bear in mind the lost dynamic active aspect of being a compound of ‘agencies’ and ‘agents’. Basically the concept problematises how things are arranged, explored and compared, hence it can be applied in creative ways and for constructive and propositional purposes. but the analytic capacity of this relational thought is mostly overlooked,
because we will ignore the reciprocity of forces too often. Gilles Deleuze once said, that every arrangement is destined to produce a new reality by making new connections. Later, Manuel DeLanda added to this, that this new reality would be based on a new “space of possibilities associated with the arrangement.”1 In terms of architecture, this would mean to introduce new functions and new uses. Something that would happen in the negotiation in between the arranged. DRA M ATISATION: This will require a formally different approach. It would mean to start seeing the single areas in their relation, under a correlative point of view. We would need to relate a tertiarity, a third element, an intercalating arrangement, which will correlates the two. In the design process, these situations occurred at locations with a noticeable public function, in between the “islands”. Emphasising existing confrontations and working them into new arrangements, creating a new situation which will show new relations of people, things and events, starting to create a new expressible ‘given’, these were the essential architectonic tasks.
As a design experiment, we started exaggerating analysed potentials of the masterplan. The proposal creates islands, ena1 DeLanda 2006: 30, transl. mod.
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CIT Y OF CO M M ONS: THE ME TH OD OF DRA M ATISATION
bling a positive effect of subjectivating adjacencies. Adjacencies imply a communicative potential in exchange. If we extended, as shown in the diagram above, the single fields of subjectivation to entangled neighbourhoods, their mutual intersections arrange contrasting and antagonistic urban functions. After we made this map of this spatial dramatisation, we detected congruencies between public spaces and buildings, that ignored the potential, to “discover the common that allows them to communicate and act together”2. As John Rajchmann writes in an introduction to Deleuze’s philosophy, dramatisation will have the ability to make visible “problems for which there exists no program, no plan, 2 Hardt/Negri: “Multitude”, New York 2004: xv
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no ‘collective agency’, problems that therefore call for new groups, not yet defined, who must invent themselves in the process”3 subsequently, we located six zones of utmost urban tension. The task now was experimenting with them to design these arrangements. Rearranging programs, defining functional confrontations and developing spatially open structures allowed for the creation of new urban liberties. Subsequently six project have been developed for which we envisioned distinct and exemplary urban strategies and architectonic designs for the facilities of social sustainability and urban appropriation aiming towards a City of Commons: 3 Rajchmann, J.: “The Deleuze Connections”, Cambridge 2000: 8
islands of identity created
Derivation of
by MACHINES OF Masterplanning
inner superimpositions
1) The “Stage-Allotments Waterfront” art district, a strategy to offer solutions to intermix private and common space; 2) A “Pile-Dwelling City” neighbourhood strategy, where ecological land use is combined with dense inter-generational and diverse housing and public programs; 3) the “Embassy of Innovation” tourist information, fostering ideas exchange at the planned cruise terminal in Nordhavnen; 4) An “Urban Fitness Patch” outdoor design, enhancing outdoor leisure and movement animation for all; 5) The “Black Board Market” communal building which offers no-maintenance-cost space for self-organised collective services; 6) The “Eco-Caching Free School” design invigorating trans-generational skill enhancement and ecological awareness and knowledge share.
The different facilities incorporate different aspects of social, ecological and economical sustainability and urban commonality, to critically bring about an urban design strategy, that inhabitants appropriate for diverse everyday uses. This ‘facilitation’ (this means: planning easing, promoting spatio-programatic arrangements for common wealth) seems still to be an architectural edge phenomenon. By enabling interconnection and interaction, the facilities in our thesis address contemporary biopolitical questions. Concerning this new social role, we are ought to consider that public space is kept open, to be appropriable. They work as one network, tackling different aspects, how people can engage themselves in a sustainable city, by being facilitated by new urban structures. In our opinion, they should not be missing in an sustainable city.
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CREATING SURPLUS by CONDENSING
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PROGRAMMATIC FIELD INTO USAGE
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CIT Y OF CO M M ONS: THE ME TH OD OF DRA M ATISATION
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+ Differenciation of urban adjacencies + Expression of uniqueness + Making problems visible + Condensing programmatic fields into usage + ð ∆X ‼∫dx ñ
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CITY OF COMMONS: SIX FACILITIES OF URBAN APPROPRIATION
The facility-network is composed of six hybrid programs. The particular singularities are based on an irritating programmatic exaggeration made up in a first step. “stage-allotment waterfront” represents
a design for a converted old dock at Sandkaj. It crosses private water-related housing with an informally supported art district, in order to break up the publicprivate-dichotomy. The admixture of private elements in this public promenade results in an emphasis on programmatic ambiguity. Commonly allotment structures were distributed along the public waterfront. Citizen can use the allottable structures that come up as balconies and hover above the promenade. Roof terraces, scaffolds or smaller allotment gardening boxes offer a stage for private cultivation and presentation. Space is thus filled with life through individual spontaneous action and expression. The admixture of allottable structures spread over the promenade, creates a new interesting spot in Nordhavnen. “pile - d welling city” is a neighbourhood-
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strategy, located at Orientbassinet within the area with the masterplans highest projected density. We exaggerated the simple confrontation of a downtown like city district with a harbour-basin by extending the sea surface beneath the buildings. This spatial interference prevents an establishment of a banal commercial business centre. Instead we proposed to make this new water surface into an “urban swimming pond”. The water creates a particular landscape composed of swimming-, sedimentation- and cleaning-ponds and wooden walkways. Densely aligned at the lake, the pile-dwelling buildings are planned to work structurally like Nicolaas J. Habraken’s “supports”. Diverse
extendable infill-units enable residential and commercial intermix. They can adapt to alterations for nuclear families, cross-generation cohabitation. Due to this flexibility, they will form a dense and diversely mixed neighbourhood. “embassy of invention” is located next
to the planned Skudeløbet Cruise Terminal, which tourist pass on their way into the city. The potential to expose the new quarter’s innovativeness with an interest sparking forest settlement next to the cruise landing, was a crucial argument to replace theme park and tourist information proposed by the masterplan. Instead, subsidised studios offer accommodation for inventors, fellowship holders, bloggers, and other “ambassadors”, allow curious visitors to get into contact with the inhabitants. They will develop distributable objects like city furniture or new take-away objects, for visitors from all over the world. The facility makes visible the site’s particular potential potential of communication and exchange. “ur ban fitness patch”, an alternative
outdoor facility, alternates a stadium design at Skudehavn. It will offer another kind of event space, more types of sports and activities for a variety of different people. The open accessible mixed fruit orchard meadows also allow more casual activities like children’s games, lying around, doing tai-chi or having a bbq. Embedded in this, the single sport fields are neither singular courts nor an all-inone multifield. We like to propose shiftable ‘pop-up courts’ that occur on demand that can be booked online or spontaneously. This technology could be realised by e.g. electroluminescent conducting tape on specific material surfaces.
The spatial concept of shifting was derived from the site’s kinetic character. Included sports halls for winter usage are equipped with opening exterior walls, which serve as shading for the fitness and spa centres integrated on top of the gyms. “bl ack boar d m ar k et” design is aiming
to improve responsible consumerism. It is a hybrid structure of a market hall, an algae reactor greenhouse, a parking deck and a river park. Starting from a self-organised divisible demand and supply market, we tested different architectures, and determined to offer a hollow void. A low cost structure frames content that is left to be defined and changed. The facility provides a grid pattern of coordinates which enables the users to rent space. Furniture is also offered to use for individually organised services (i.E. 20 sqm space and chairs for offering a sewing lesson on friday evening, or just a flea market stand). The weekly market is also held here, as well as local assemblies, dance classes and other events. Computersystems manage the allocation and distribution. Containers reposit booth equipment items such as folding tables and chairs. The greenhouse warms the space and minimises heating requirements in winter, the biomass produced balances the ecological footprint and financial investments of the building. “eco-caching free school” is an educational
facility located at the current northern limits and will be positioned in an interstice when the future land reclaims will be completed. As an urban figure, the design marks this interstice and has the possibility of connecting the old and new Nordholmene. The natural character of the adjacent protected salt marsh prompted
us to thematise the aspect of ecological heritage. It triggered the creation of a new type of “base” for trans-generational education and knowledge circulation and exchange. The programmatic proposal for the “Eco-Caching Free School” invokes and reuses the vernacular insular danish Friskole-system, where classrooms are sourced out to the teachers. The school building itself contains the specialist rooms for science and technology, which are bundled with educational facilities for grown-ups and the elderly, as well as libraries, seminar rooms and an auditorium which can function as a small town hall. Gathering knowledge, for example by pupil-led tours across the nature reserves, pathfinding, geo-caching, seminaries pp. would facilitate an ecology based education of growing-up children in the same time retraining grown-up people moved to Nordhavnen. Summarizing, the facilities can be seen as socio-urban architectural research experiments. We are far from claiming they would be fully developed, nor even fully expressed. They just represent an intermediate result of a ongoing exploration. Facilitating collaboration in everyday urban life, architectures has a big potential to feedback consciousness and to effectuate new behaviour patterns within new environments. Aiming towards facilitation, we have to focus on the appropriation of the built environment. As it would “no longer be forming imaginary and utopian realities, but to start actually being different ways of living and models of action within the existing real.”1 Our professional challenge is to assert more facilities of urban appropriation, for each act of appropriation is a promise of transformation. 1 Bourriaud 2002: l.c. 113
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18 Edge Phenomenon: A presentation with a site plan carpet
“Six Facilities of Urban Appropriation”
DIPLO M A THESIS Final presentation
STUT TG ART ACADEM Y OF ARTS
Panels in the ‘Glashaus’ exhibition space where the thesis was presented
CITY OF COMMONS: STAGE ALLOTMENT WATERFRONT
Existing Site
Masterplan Proposal
Facility of social Sustainability
Current situation / Masterplan proposal / el of informal Crossing Design alteration towards urban appropriation Situation of Particularity
Formal Strategy
Spatial Operation
Urban Aim
Stage Allotment Waterfront
First strech of promenade to be developed in nordhavn
Cross-breed of public and private
Informal Crossing
Interrelation of Publicity and Privacy
- Promenade
Postindustrial waterfront
Waterfront housing enforced with informal art
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- Allotments
Allotted structures (gardens, balconies, galleries, stages, boarding houses),
Offering an first activated point of attraction and informally cultivating values of sustainability
Admixture of private elements in typically mere public spaces
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Enabling urban appropriation
Using silos and open water as unique theater stage design
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Creating an casual bohemian spot
- Theater
Silo remains
e-Allotment Waterfront Diagram of Facilitation
Allotment Differenciation
st to informal art district
Belvedere Differenciation
Strolling
Cultivation
A01
Cultivation
A01 A02
Leisure
A03
Encounter
A05
A04 A07
Performance nce
A06
A08
A08 A08
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A08 A08
A08 A08
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Beach B e h Stage g
Barbeque
Weekend Chill-out
A08
City Beach
A08
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Waterfront rfrontt housing hou ngg ho hous
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Swim Swimming g Po Pool
A08
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Stage Stag taage balconies c ie
On-w O On On-water n water water Stag Stage St ge ge
A08 A08
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Collection
Outdoor related activities
Passerbys
Take a walk A08
Galleries
Street art
Design
Performance
Nordbassinet
Metro Met
Stage Allotments
Gallery Boats
Beach Theatre
T YPE: land use strategy, waterfront and architectural design
STRATeGY: Breeding and crossing private and public
PROGRA M: housing, artist studios/galleries, hostel, outdoors facilities, leisure
FE ATURES: gallery boats, stage-balconies, beach theatre
Section through gallery boats promenade and stage balconies
Gallery boat types
Strolling Cultivation Leisure Encounter Performance
Beach Stage
Waterfront housing Swimming Pool
Stage balconies
Different individual allottable typologies on a public waterfront promenade
On-water Stage
Allotment boxes
Belvedere decks
Galleries
Boarding-house hotel
Nordbassinet
Metro
Nordhavn Beach Theatre
CITY OF COMMONS: PILE DWELLING CITY
Current situation / Masterplan proposal / Design alteration towards urban appropriation
An open usable pondscape, where the dense city center was planned
URBAN SWIMMING POND
Urban layout proposal for the Pile-Dwelling City
T YPE: land use strategy landscape design
STRATeGY: layering water and pedestrian precinct
Forming a unique commercially used boardwalk pedestrian precinct
PROGRA M: FE ATURES: multi- and cross- urban swimming generational pond lake shore urban dwelling, commercial retail, mixed uses
CITY OF COMMONS: EMBASSY OF INVENTION
Current situation / Masterplan proposal / Design alteration towards urban appropriation
An Embassy of Invention through a workshop park
T YPE: institutional proposal and architectural design
STRATeGY: clustering knowledge and waterbased infrastructure
PROGRA M: cruise terminal, workshops, artist studios, outdoors facilities, leisure
FE ATURES: forest settlement, picnic islands, metro station
Water based entertainment for visitors
Landing, canals, the wood and the islands
CITY OF COMMONS: URBAN FITNESS PATCH
Current situation / Masterplan proposal / Design alteration towards urban appropriation
Allocation scheme and usage diagram
A patch for everybody replaces the idea for a representative stadium
T YPE: landscape and architectural design
STRATeGY: time-shifting different programs
PROGRA M: sport facilities, local food, leisure
FE ATURES: fruit orchard, fitness track, electroluminiscent sport fields
Outdoor activities and sport between fruit orchards
Superimposed model of the changeable indoor and outdoor field phases
CITY OF COMMONS: ECO-CACHING FREE SCHOOL
Current situation / Masterplan proposal / Design alteration towards urban appropriation
The schools main building extends into both city- and landscape
T YPE: institutional proposal and architectural design
STRATeGY: clustering knowledge and waterbased infrastructure
PROGRA M: cruise terminal, workshops, artist studios, outdoors facilities, leisure
FE ATURES: forest settlement, picnic islands, metro station
The classes are held in the teachers nearby homes
The school‘s roof is a biotope and metro station
Cluster plan of the public building
CITY OF COMMONS: BLACK BOARD LOCAL MARKET
Current situation / Masterplan proposal / Design alteration towards urban appropriation
The structure offers a grid for self-organised activities around black board offers, services and local markets
T YPE: institutional proposal and architectural design
STRATeGY: coordinated gridding of demand and offers
PROGRA M: algae bioreactor, photovoltaic roof, market stands, lectures, meetings
FE ATURES: greenhouse, internet-based space allocation, booth equipment
The light structure is open to every service offered
Make a online reservation and book time, room or any furniture, you need for a market stand, your sewing course, a garage sale or the neighbour assembly.
CITY OF COMMONS: Diploma Presentation
Details of the panels in the ‘Glass House’ exhibition space where the thesis was presented
Detail pond scape — Pile Dwelling City Research booklet
Model — Black Board Market
Model — Eco-Caching Free School
Model — Pile Dwelling City
CIT Y OF CO M M ONS: Diplom a pro ject infor m ation
State Academy of Arts and Design Stuttgart: Diploma team project “Edge Phenomenon Six Facilities of Social Sustainability in 1:1000” final project after 5 year study term by Sylvia Stoll and Robert Gorny, 2009 Architectural urban and landscape design, programm definition and institutional proposals for the Nordhavnen harbour development in the city of Copenhagen, Denmark based on the 2009 approved masterplan competition proposal ‘Nordholmene’ by team COBE/Sleth/Rambøll Schedule: Thesis proposal: 2009/Mar Diploma project duration: 3 months Diploma Presentation: 2009/Jul/08 Professors, diploma jury panel: Prof. Dipl.-Ing. E.Schmutz, Prof. Dr.-Ing. S.Georgiadis, Prof. Dr.-Ing. M.Müller, Prof. Dipl.-Ing. T.Wallisser MSc, Prof. Dipl.-Ing. A.Zinsmeister
We thank all of our professors, teachers and all assistants, inspirers and muses for helping us, to formulate this initially opaque manifold, into a transparent project conception. We express our gratitude to Prof. Dr. Sokratis Georgiadis for his latent but persistent support and critique. We gratefully thank Prof. Michel Müller for his friendly inspirations throughout the years. Albeit being absent at the time, we basically owe much of our urban understandings to Prof. Andreas Quednau, his lessons and his pinpoint advices. Sabine, thank you, as well. Jan Theissen, much obliged to you, your listening and suggesting and not at least for enabling us to partake the Europan Competition. Thanks to Sonja as well. Thanks to our parents and families for their latent support. Or their active one, like by Rita Stoll and her spontaneity. Thank you for all the interest, your patience with children not calling or being grumpy or busy, and for your support all over the years. However, we too, have to thank us each other, because this project grew mutually in constant interaction and discussion. This project would be unthinkable without teamwork! Thence, we have to thank everybody assisting and helping us, as well as criticising and inspiring us constantly: Thanks to you MAZ, for your very being there, your patience, your friendship. Philipp Dittus, respectively your lasercutting overtime. For we are due, however pleased, to mention Annette, and her unbelievable cooperativeness and unremittingly help. You know words can’t tell. Thank Jenny and Huy for the culinary meetings, input and occasionally necessary distraction. Thanks to our hot plate for avoiding us nutrition deficiency. A sincerely thank to our computers for keeping on working. And thank God there’s Music. Thankx Copenhagen for being so great!
Architecture had ever consisted of articulating in space the dominant forms of established political and economical powers. During industrialisation, capitalist-fordist modes of production exerted these influencing forces. But nowadays we had to witness a shift that in fact, production of the common is becoming nothing but the life of the city itself. In the dawn of a post-neoliberal world, the disciplines of architecture and urbanism, their methods and practices, were to react to this new diagram of forces. Invention, creativity and innovation — the potential of other worlds — shall depend on the ability, to put oneself in touch with others. This strategic urban planning hypothesis is an approach to design a 'City of Commons' using the example of the future Nordhavnen development in Copenhagen. It will present a project for ‘Six Facilities of Social Sustainability and Urban Appropriation’. The proposal was the final diploma project of Sylvia Stoll and Robert Gorny at the Stuttgart State Academy of Arts and Design and received the german Herta-Maria-Witzemann-Award 2010 as well as a nomination for the german-polish Walter-Henn Diploma-Award. The presentation is paralleled with an essayistic report, or mémoir, which will reconsider the theoretical backgrounds and will spin a story of the derivation of the design.
ROBERT ALEXANDER GORNY DIPL.—ING. ARCHITECTURE & DESIGN KASTANIENALLEE 76 D — 10 435 BERLIN T: +49.176.6131.8305 MAIL @ RELATIONAL THOUGHT . COM