The The New, New, New New City City
“Don’t tell anyone,”
Rem Koolhaas said to me several
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Gulf, cities comparable in size
years ago as we headed down
to New York have sprouted
the F.D.R. Drive in New York, “but
up almost overnight. Only 30
the 20th-century city is over. It has
years ago, Shenzhen was a small
nothing new to teach us anymore.
fishing village of a few thousand
Our job is simply to maintain it.”
people, and Dubai had merely
Koolhaas’s viewpoint is widely
a quarter million people. Today
shared by close observers of
Shenzhen has a population
the evolution of cities. But not
of eight million, and Dubai’s
even Koolhaas, it seems, was
glittering towers, rising out of
completely prepared for what
the desert in disorderly rows, for
would come next.
wealthy expatriates from Riyadh
In both China and the Persian
and Moscow. Long-established
cities like Beijing and Guangzhou
islands, the tallest building and
also become vast fields of urban
beginning to figure out where to
have more than doubled in size
soon the largest theme park, has
experimentation, on a scale that
go from here.”
in a few decades, their original
been derided as an urban tomb
not even the early Modernists,
The sheer number of projects
outlines swallowed by rings
where the rich live walled off
who first envisioned the city as a
under construction and the
of new development. Built at
from the poor migrant workers
field of gleaming towers, could
corresponding investment in civic
phenomenal speeds, these
who serve them. Shenzhen is
have dreamed of.
infrastructure — entire networks
generic or instant cities, as
often criticized as a product
they have been called, have no
of unregulated development,
very relevant anymore,” Jesse
and canals; gargantuan new
recognizable center, no single
better suited to the speculators
Reiser, an American architect
airports and public parks — can
identity. It is sometimes hard to
that first spurred its growth than
working in Dubai, told me recently.
give the impression that anything
think of them as cities at all. Dubai,
to the workers housed in huge
which lays claim to some of the
complexes of factory-run barracks.
in a city that’s a few decades old?
The scale of these undertakings
world’s most expensive private
Yet for architects these cities have
The problem is that we are only
recalls the early part of the last
“The old contextual model is not
“What context are we talking about
of new subway systems, freeways
is possible in this new world.
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century in America, when the
Anyth is pos in thi world
country was confidently pointed toward the future. But it would be unimaginable in an American city today, where, in the face of shrinking state and city budgets, expanding a single subway line can seem like a heroic act. “In America, I could never do work like I do here,” Steven Holl, a New York architect with several large projects in China, recently told me, referring to his latest complex in Beijing. “We’ve become too backward-looking. In China, they want to make everything look new. This is their moment in time. They want to make the 21st century their century. For some reason, our society wants to
Beijing’s residents can afford to
make everything old. I think we
live here. Climbing to the top of
somehow lost our nerve.”
one of Holl’s towers, I looked out
Holl has reason to be exhilarated.
through a haze of smog at the
His Beijing project, “Linked
acres of luxury-housing towers
Hybrid,” is one of the most
that surround his own, the kind of
innovative housing complexes
alienating subdivisions that are so
anywhere in the world: eight
often cited as a symptom of the
asymmetrical towers joined by a
city’s unbridled, dehumanizing
network of enclosed bridges that
development. Protected by
create a pedestrian zone in the sky.
armed guards, these residential
Yet this exhilaration also comes
high-rises stood on what was until
at a price: only the wealthiest of
quite recently a working-class neighborhood, even though the poor quality of their construction makes them seem decades old. Nearby, a new freeway cut through the neighborhood, further disfiguring an area that, however modest, was once bursting with life. “If you take Venturi’s ideas about
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be rewritten. is so incredible.” Because of this density, cities like
the city,” Holl said, referring to
Beijing have few of the features
Robert Venturi’s groundbreaking
we associate with a traditional
work, “Learning From Las Vegas,”
metropolis. They do not radiate
which called on architects to
from a historic center as Paris
reconsider the importance of the
and New York do. Instead,
everyday (strip malls, billboards,
their vast size means that they
storefronts), “and put them in
function primarily as a series of
Beijing or Tokyo, they don’t hold
decentralized neighborhoods,
any water at all. When you get
something closer in spirit to Los
into this scale, the rules have to
Angeles. The breathtaking speed
into one that rose overnight?
hing ssible is new d.
Cities like these, built on a colossal scale, seem to absorb any urban model, no matter how unique, virtually unnoticed. A project that could have a significant impact on the character of, say, New York — like the development plans for ground zero — can seem a mere blip in Beijing, which has embarked on dozens of similarly sized endeavors in the last decade
they usually lack the layers — the
alone. “The irony is that we still
mix of architectural styles and
don’t know if postmodernism was
intricately related social strata
the end of Modernism or just an
— that give a city its complexity
interruption,” Koolhaas told me
and from which architects have
recently. “Was it a brief hiatus,
typically drawn inspiration.
and now we are returning to
In Dubai, for instance, what might
once have been the product of
100 years of urban growth has been compressed into a decade
or so. Given such seismic shifts, even the most talented architects can seem to flounder for new In Dubai, for instance, what might
once have been the product of 100 years of urban growth has been compressed into a decade or so. Given such seismic shifts, even the most talented architects can seem to flounder for new models. No one wants to return
something that has been going on
to the deadly homogeneity
for a long time, or is it something
associated with Modernism’s
radically different? We
tabula rasa planning strategies.
are in a condition we don’t
The image of Le Corbusier
understand yet.”
hovering godlike above Paris
For architects faced with building
ready to wipe aside entire districts
these large urban developments,
and replace them with glass
the difficulty is to create
towers remains an emblem of
something where there was
Modernism’s attack on the city’s
nothing. If much of contemporary
historical fabric. Yet the notion
architecture depends on sifting
of finding “authenticity” in a
through the cultural and historical
sprawling metropolitan area that
layers that a site accumulates over
is barely 30 years old also seems
time — whether neo-Classical
absurd. How do you breathe life
monuments or Socialist-era
into a project at such a scale?
housing — what can be done if
How do you instill the fine-grained
there is nothing to sift through but
texture of a healthy community
sand?
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option that I personally find very
terrain. Dubbed the “urban
a-half-square-mile development
interesting,” Koolhaas told
carpet,” it was intended to blend
in Dubai called Waterfront City,
me, “is the modernist vernacular
office and residential towers and
Koolhaas proposed creating
of the 1970s — buildings
highways and public parks into
an urban island inspired by a
that once you put them in
a seamless whole. Against the
section of Midtown Manhattan.
Singapore or Dubai take on
rigid lines of the traditional street
The design linked a dense
totally different meanings. Some
grid, the sinuous curves of the
grid of conventional towers to
of the modern typologies work
freeways suggested a more fluid,
the mainland by a system of
in Asia even though they are
mobile society. The rooftops,
In a recent design for a six-and-
totally dysfunctional in America.
whose heights were subject to
Typologies we’ve rejected turn out
stringent regulations, looked as
hollowed-out Piranesian sphere
to be viable in other contexts.”
if they were cut from a single
at the island’s edge; a spiraling
The challenges of building what
piece of crumpled fabric, giving
tower that winds around an airy
amounts to a small-scale city
the composition a haunting unity.
public atrium — were intended
from scratch are compounded
to give the city a distinct flavor.
by the realities of working in a
Koolhaas said he hoped, in this
global marketplace. An architect
monotony of Modernism or the
way, to infuse this entirely new
of Koolhaas’s stature may
chaos you find in contemporary
development with something of
be grappling simultaneously
cities,” Hadid said.
bridges. A series of stunning “iconic” buildings — a gigantic,
the feeling of an older city. But
with the design of a television
while the outlines are intriguing,
foreign-born, and the arcaded
headquarters complex in Beijing,
he is still coming to terms with
streets could easily suggest a
a stock exchange in Shenzhen and
how to create an organic whole.
theme-park version of a traditional
a 20-block neighborhood in Dubai,
In the early stages of the design,
Arab city. Koolhaas is painfully
as well as a dozen buildings in
Koolhaas experimented with
aware of how hard it is to escape
Europe. The intense competition
somewhat conventional models
the generic.
for these commissions means
of public space: a boardwalk
“A city like Dubai is literally
that architects are often forced
along the island’s perimeter, a
built on a desert,” Koolhaas
to churn out seductive designs in
narrow park cutting through its
conceded when I asked him about
weeks or months, tweaking their
center, classical arcades lining
the project. “There is a weird
models to fit local conditions.
the downtown streets. But the
alternation between density and
Several years ago, the London-
majority of Dubai’s inhabitants are
emptiness. You rarely feel that
based, Iraqi-born architect Zaha
you are designing for people who are actually there but for communities that have yet to be assembled. The vernacular is too faint, too precarious to become something on which you can base an architecture.” Koolhaas says he hopes that the plan will gain in complexity as the buildings’ functions are worked out; he says he was thrilled to learn that the government wanted both a courthouse and a mosque on the island. “Another
Hadid received a phone call from a Chinese developer asking if she might be interested in designing a 500-acre urban development on the outskirts of Singapore. Hadid had never met the developer before. She was soon working on the master plan for “One North,” a mixed-use development with a projected population of about 140,000. Located on what was once a military site, Hadid’s design conjured a high-tech mountainous
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“We wanted to create a complex order rather than either the
Smallscale city from scratch
Yet once construction began, the design of the buildings was left to local architects hired by the developer. As the towers rose in clusters scattered across the site, it was difficult to read the formal intent. With more than 20 blocks now complete, parts of the city look surprisingly conventional. Hadid revived the concept several years later, when she won a competition to create a 1,360acre business district in a former industrial zone on the outskirts of Istanbul. This time, the context was more promising: a hilly landscape at the edge of the sea flanked by older working-class
neighborhoods on either side. To
allow the development to grow in a more natural way than at One
North, it would be built in phases
that would begin at the waterfront and spread inland, eventually
connecting to the street grid of
the older neighborhoods. In an effort to preserve the texture of her original concept, Hadid developed a series of building prototypes, including a starshaped tower and a housing block organized around a central court, and staggered the heights of the buildings to reflect the existing terrain.
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If Hadid’s plan is formally inventive, it is still unclear whether it has escaped the homogeneity that was a hallmark of Modernist urban-renewal projects. Its sheer size coupled with the fact that the shapes of the buildings were conceived by a single architect means the result may well be more uniform, and ultimately more rigid, than Hadid intended. Indeed, contemporary architects’ urban plans may be less tied to
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location than they would like to
view of how to knit together
admit. When a Chinese developer
the various elements of urban life,
approached the New York-
but it also seems as if it could
based Jesse Reiser and Nanako
exist anywhere.
Umemoto to design a 1,235-acre
The walkable, mixed-use
development in Foshan, on the
neighborhoods celebrated by
Pearl River Delta, they (with a
Jane Jacobs may seem impossibly
Chinese partner) came up with
remote, but encouraging signs
a system of urban “mats”: a
of a more textured urban reality
multilayered network of roads
can still be found. Take Holl’s
and low-rise commercial spaces,
Linked Hybrid in Beijing, for
topped by a park surrounded
example, which has a surprisingly
by residential and commercial
open, communal spirit. A series
buildings. The park followed the
of massive portals lead from the
contours of the roadways below;
street to an elaborate internal
sunken courtyards allowed light to
courtyard garden, a restaurant,
spill down into the underground
a theater and a kindergarten,
spaces. Last year, the Chinese
integrating the complex into
project fell through, and Reiser
the surrounding neighborhood.
and Umemoto reworked the idea
Bridges connect the towers 12
for a developer in Dubai. The
to 19 stories above ground and
layout was reconfigured to fit the
are conceived as a continuous
new waterfront site; souks were
string of public zones, with bars
added as a nod to local traditions.
and nightclubs overlooking a
The result is a remarkably nuanced
glittering view of the city and a
Glittering view of the city
suspended swimming pool. “The developer’s openness to ideas was amazing,” Holl says. “When they first asked me to do the project, it was just housing. I suggested adding the cinematheque, the kindergarten. I added an 80-room hotel and the swimming pool as well. Anywhere else, they’d build it in phases over several years. It’s too big. After our meeting, they said we’re building the whole thing all at once. I couldn’t believe
said we’re building the whole thing all at once. I couldn’t believe it. We haven’t had to compromise anything. “But what makes it possible is the density. The Modernist idea of the street in the air that became a place of social interaction never worked in Europe. Beijing is so dense that I can keep all of the shops functioning on the street, and there’s still enough energy to activate the bridges as well.”
street; two young children sat at a
Holl is continuing to explore these
small desk doing their homework
ideas in another megaproject,
in a tiny storefront that doubled as
this time on the outskirts of
their bedroom.
Shenzhen: a zigzag-shaped office complex propped up on big steel columns that make room for a dreamy public garden. The density in much of Shenzhen can make Beijing look spacious. The imposing skyline of glassand-steel towers, plastered with electronic billboards, was built mostly within the last decade, part of the boom that followed foreign investment in the area, when it was declared a special economic zone in the early ’80s. The Chinese government initially allowed many of the small villages
that lined the delta to hold on to their land. As land values rose around them, the villagers remained in their increasingly populated districts, where they built cheap, and often instantly decrepit, towers that were so close together they were dubbed “handshake buildings”: you could literally reach out your window and shake hands with your neighbor across the street. The villages are poignant testimonies to the hardships that young workers, recently transplanted from the countryside, face in the new China. Many live packed a half dozen or more in one-bedroom apartments. But if Shenzhen is an emblem of what can happen when free-market capitalism is allowed to run amok, it is also an example of the spontaneous creativity that occurs when people are left to fend for themselves. On a recent visit, the alleyways, dark and claustrophobic, were thick with shops. Elderly people played mah-jongg on card tables in the
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Wenyi Wu, a young architect working for a Chinese firm called Urbanus, led me around the area. The firm has been studying how people carve a living space out of seemingly inhospitable environments, hoping to develop
unregulated character of the
an urbanist model more deeply
urban village into something
rooted in the spontaneity of
more formal and humane — to
everyday life. He took me to a
extract the essence of its character
small museum Urbanus designed
without romanticizing the squalor.
on the outskirts of the city. A
The circuitous paths of the ramps
series of stepped galleries stand
echo the surrounding alleyways;
at the base of a hill between an
the layout of the galleries
urban village and some banal
suggests the footprint of the
housing complexes above. A
migrant workers’ housing but on a
series of long ramps pierce the
more intimate scale.
building, joining the two worlds.
Other architects, hoping to build
More ramps encircle the exterior,
in ways that reflect an emerging
so that you have the impression
vernacular, are taking a similar
of moving through a system of
approach, looking at more
loosely connected alleyways.
modest and more informally
The idea was to transform the
constructed urban neighborhoods
unregulated character of the
for inspiration. Shumon Basar,
urban village into something
a London-based critic and
more formal and humane — to
independent curator, recently described a number of small, unplanned settlements in and around Dubai. The dense and gritty neighborhood of
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Deira, for instance, has little in common with Sheikh Zayed Road and its fortified glass towers. Built mainly in the 1970s, Deira’s low concrete structures and labyrinthine alleyways are home to a lively population of Southeast Asian workers. Similarly, the thriving, traditionally Muslim middle-class neighborhoods of Sharjah, the third-largest city in the United Arab Emirates, were built without the flashiness of more recent developments. Basar wonders if, despite their modesty, these areas could form the basis for a fresh urban strategy based neither on imported Western models nor on clichés about local souks. As Holl told me recently in his
no longer matter. “I don’t think of
New York office, working on a
any of my buildings as a model
large scale doesn’t mean that
for something, the way the
the particulars of place no
Modernists did,” Holl said. “If
longer matter. “I don’t think of
it works, it works in its specific
any of my buildings as a model
context. You can’t just move it somewhere else.” But is site specificity enough? “The amount of building becomes obscene without a blueprint,” Koolhaas said. “Each time you ask yourself, Do you have the right to do this much work on this scale if you don’t have an opinion about what the world should be like? We really feel that. But is there time for a manifesto? I don’t know.”
What the world should be like 10
Nicolai Ouroussoff