Living the Edge

L

IVING THE EDGE SARAH POOT

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UMMARY

INTRODUCTION 5 A QUICK LOOK AT SUBURBIA

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SUBURBIA IN GENERAL

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URBAN SPRAWL IN FLANDERS

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WENDUINE AS SUBURBIA?

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A COMPLEX DESIGN PROCESS

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MAPPING SUBURBIA

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MICRO-EXPERIMENTS 18 MICRO-STRATEGIES 20 RULES OF THE GAME

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ARCHITECTURAL PROPOSAL

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DESIGN STRATEGY

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SOCIOLOGICAL DIMENSION

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ARCHITECTURAL MATERIALITY

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CONCLUSION 33 REFERENCES 35

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Compact city Cluster Paris-Saclay Masterplan - XDG Architecten/Michel Desvignes Paysagistes The new districts invest a landscape already encroached by a shattered campus, focusing on mutualisation, mixed uses, density and preservation of the farmland.

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NTRODUCTION

232.000.

This is the number of inhabitants who are swelling the world’s population everyday.

The most recent statistics (released from the figures of the Population Division of the United Nations, 2012) confirmed the prediction that the world population will stabilize in the second half of this century up to 9.3 billion people. How and where will we lodge those extra two billion people? How can we meet individual needs and raise an adequate level of quality of living when it comes to such figures?

Despite the fact that architects, designers and urban planners tend to apply sustainable principles towards a new efficient and responsible compact city (Dantzig and Saaty, 1973), the need to rethink urban sprawl arises when one considers suburbs as a possible future to our living environment.

In Death and Life of American Cities, Jane Jacobs cristallizes four necessary conditions to enable urban renewal : need for mixed primary uses, small walkable blocks, aged buildings and concentration of people (Jacobs, 1961). I believe that the suburbanites could benefit from those conditions in order to initiate new typologies of residential communities with a certain degree of autonomy within commuting distance of a city.

Taking for granted that those new typologies will emerge from multiple levels (civil society, academics/experts, institutional framework...) and participatory process, my research will mainly focus on the correlation between language of space and social behaviors. In a first part, this essay will attempt to identify and define the notion and challenges of suburbia. In the second part, it will clarify the design approach and research process leading to the architectural proposal presented in the third part trough the case study of Wenduine, a small costal town of 4000 inhabitants in Belgium.

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Markham, Ontario LIVING THE EDGE

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A QUICK LOOK AT

SUBURBIA ‘

Little boxes on the hillside, little boxes made of ticky tacky, Little boxes on the hillside, little boxes all the same.

There’s a green one and a pink one and a blue one and a yellow one, And they’re all made out of ticky tacky and they all look just the same.

And the people in the houses all went to the university, Where they were put in boxes and they came out all the same, And there’s doctors and lawyers, and business executives, And they’re all made out of ticky tacky and they all look just the same.

And they all play on the golf course and drink their martinis dry, And they all have pretty children and the children go to school, And the children go to summer camp and then to the university, Where they are put in boxes and they come out all the same.

And the boys go into business and marry and raise a family In boxes made of ticky tacky and they all look just the same.

There’s a green one and a pink one and a blue one and a yellow one, And they’re all made out of ticky tacky and they all look just the same.

’

Malvina REYNOLDS, Little boxes, 1963

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UBURBIA IN GENERAL

The media, particularly North American television, has depicted suburbia as an idyllic place where happy 2-parents family raise children and dogs surrounded by tidy gardens and white picket fences. Our group has re-assessed this notion with our own, individual geographic/cultural backgrounds as filters with the intention of contrasting/comparing them; hence, widening the scope of our research to look at the notion of suburbia across myriad contexts.

Going beyond these mental representations, suburbia in general can be understood as a complex social and urban process initiated in the early twentieth century and experiencing a push-pull phenomenon accross time. Suburbia can be found in many places with different degrees of urbanization and the word being overused should be redefined in more specific terms as peripherical development, connurbation or outer city.

dependency (for work, social contact, facilities and ressources), suburbia is also caracteried by the prevailance of the single family house surrounded by a comfortable garden consuming the land.

In the many features embodied in suburbia, you can find some kind of temperance, a certain alienation created by the built space and dictating relations between people that in my opinion recalls the heteretopia of the prison described by Michel Foulcaut (Of Other spaces, 1986) and a mirror of the way the society is organised, shaped by unequal distribution of power and ressources (Madanipour, 2010).

In any case, the urban sprawl being necessary to provide those residential areas generates consumption of space, time and energy, and deserved to be reconsidered in those times of uncertain futures..

In North America for instance, suburbia is considered as a priviledged residential area which allowed the high middle class to escape the miasma of the city generated by the mass industrialisation of the interwar. Increasing distance between working and living places induced a tremendous car dependency and made those areas accessible only for people who could afford it. Mobility and commuting patterns design the space, inducing a hierarchical streetscape made of collector roads leading to culs-de-sac. Beside this car

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RBAN SPRAWL IN FLANDERS

In an etymological sense, suburbia induce a « sub » related to an « urb » initially meaning a peripherical residential area in commuting distance of an socio-economic center.

The specific sprawl and ribbon development of Belgium has led to a certain suburbia which is no longer a sub connected to a urb : according to Vandervelde comparing the rural areas of Kent with the animated Flemish countryside, the whole of Belgium has become a wide garden city (L’exode rural et le retour aux champs, 1903). In order to explain this particularity, one has to go back into history of land use policies and industrial development in Belgium.

The early belgian industrial revolution generated one of the world’s densest railways network (Rowntree, B. Land and Labour, Lessons from Belgium. 1911) while the law Wet De Taeye (1948) instituted mortgage at attractive rates making possible the postwar construction boom. Those two facts allowed access to ownership to the lower middle class of Belgium : the railways system and the social tariff for workmen introduced in 1869 (De Decker, P. Garden of Eden, 2010) have permitted to thousands of workers to start commuting, while de law De Taye encouraged ownership and self entrepreneurship still valued in the belgian behaviour. In 1962, the Planning Act finally provided an institutional framework for spatial planning but the urban sprawl had

1830 / independance of Belgium

1850 / industrial revolution

1900 / development of railway

1948 / law Wet De Taeye

2030 / 330.000 new houses?

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The Flemish Metropolitan Dream / Team Vlaams Bouwmeester for IABR 2012

already consumed a large amount of the Belgian territory.

Belgian land use at that point might be considered as a wide « sub » related to many different « urbs » as Brussels (capital), Antwerpen (main harbour), Ghent (textile industry) and the industrial belt in Wallonia (coal mines and metallurgical industries).

Given the current trends of growing population, the general predictions for Flanders foresees three hundred thousand new houses to built from now to 2030 in order to lodge its increasing population. The Vlaamsbouwmeester team, led by Peter Swinnen from 51N4E architectural practice, proposed a new vision of the flemish metropolitan dream for the Rotterdam Biennale, IABR 2012.

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Their vision takes into account the existing typologies of urbanisation as the Flemish village agglomeration, the ribbon developpment and the coastal towns lines and propose to reinforce six existing centralities or polarities applying sustainable principles towards a new efficient and responsible compact metropolitan area.

Wenduine questions the inherent meaning of suburbia as the sub of an urb.

Our first impressions of Wenduine were mainly contradictory with the media portrayed idea of suburbia we mentioned earlier; we met blind façades, empty public spaces and gardens and elderly single people. It was an immediate comment on context.

According to a European study (LaCoAst), the Belgian coastline is globally not more urbanized than the rest of Europe. These areas, however, are concentrated in the first 3 km behind the shoreline. In the case of Wenduine, the city is effectively built along two main infrastructures: the historical axis leading to the church, and the main road which carries the coastline tramway, subsequently, sprawling inland.

The area is divided in strips, delineated by physical and/or visual barriers which create enclosed “islands” and prevent connections between neighbourhoods.

A cursory look reveals road infrastructure (highways, dead ends, restricted circulation), tall buildings (eight or more stories), bars on the shoreline, etc.

Looking closer, Wenduine reveals a dichotomy between the urban « ghost » center mostly used in summer contrasting with the living residential area where people claim their territory by showcasing their individuality

This open scope of external behaviours contrasts with the high privacy levels we experienced when walking in the area.

Travelling through different scales, it seems obvious that this boundary pattern is among the main characteristics of Wenduine. Formal car space is omnipresent, leaving little room for soft mobility. People seem to deal with privacy by raising fences all around their properties. The general arrangement encourages high privacy levels as there is an intentional visual disconnection between facing facades.

KOKSIJDE

permanent economic activity summer economic activity anual tourists permanent inhabitatnts

TIME IS MONEY Figure : mapping the economy patterns of Wenduine.

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OCTOBER

W

ENDUINE AS SUBURBIA?

trough questionable easthetic features.

If the residential area is definitely a sub (not providing primary ressources within a walking distance), the city center is far from being a « urb ». The different interviews we conducted in Wenduine cristallised its inhabitants commuting patterns towards many different « urbs » for different purposes : Oostende for grocery shopping, Blanckenberge for leisure and Brugge for work.

JANUARY BER CEM DE

KNOKKE ZEEBRUGGE

FE BR UA RY

BLANKENBERGE

NO VE MB ER

WENDUINE

DE HAAN

BREDENE

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OOSTENDE

800 Inhabitants/KM2 (only summer)

MIDDLEKERKE

WESTENDE 250 Inhabitants/KM2

NIEUWPOORT

100 Inhabitants/KM2

APRIL

BER TEM SEP

10 Inhabitants/KM2

MA Y

AU GU ST E JUN

JULY

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Interview, Wenduine LIVING THE EDGE

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A COMPLEX DESIGN

PROCESS ‘

This is a turn around... Don’t be affraid, it is the safest place in the world.

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Benoît POELVOORDE, Le Grand Soir, 2012

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APPING SUBURBIA

The omnipresent social control in Wenduine, has turned our first visit into amusing/scary situations : as Benoît Poelvoorde playing a homeless guy talking to his dog in Le grand soir (Delépine & Kerven, 2009), I will compare suburbia to a turn around.

The central space of such a feature is definitely the most inaccessible boring and neutral place in the world, nobody goes there without a purpose and if you do, the car drivers get disrupted.

As we were walking through the residential area of Wenduine, people started acting suspicious toward us : - «Who are you ?» ; - «What are you doing here ?» ; - «WE ARE ALL WATCHING you !»

Let say that our single presence in the area turned suburbia into disturbia !

To conduct our analisis and experimentations, we selected a typical cul-de-sac and started mapping the various sequences of spaces acting as buffers between the insiders and the outsiders.

PUBLIC VS PRIVATE Legend - mapping the spatial sequences protecting houses LIVING THE EDGE

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N 0

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PUBLIC RESTRICTED PRIVATE DEAD END LOCAL CIRCULATION ONLY

PUBLIC VS PRIVATE Legend - mapping the territorial patterns induced by streetscape in Wenduine 21 11

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FOCUSED AREA Legend - a typical cul-de-sac situation 17

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ICRO EXPERIMENTS

Continuing our exploration from the previous stage, we have started to define some of the parameters which constitute the notion of suburban space in Wenduine. We then conducted a series of ‘what if ’ experiments and changed/challenged the validity and impact of said parameters.

The experiments are as follow: Foot Prints, Formal Car Space, Boundaries, and Space Programming. In each theme, two or more ‘what if scenarios’ are stipulated; each polarizing the other as antitheses and the results evaluated.

This once again brings forth the themes of boundaries, exclusion, and mobility, among others. Based on this, our thoughts were ‘mapped’ to gauge our overall opinion of the site.

private garage

va pri

public

street

te

ve dri

y wa ate

v pri

wa

lkw

ay

What if... we invest every single parking space with other functions?

50% What if... 50% of each house was provided for public use?

What if... we reconfigure barriers with agricultura land for the collectivity?

What if... we start to play with boundaries?

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S S

BACK

BACK

BACK

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VISUAL & PHYSICAL CONNEXION

VISUAL & PHYSICAL CONNEXION

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BACK

VISUAL & PHYSICAL CONNEXION

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VISUAL & PHYSICAL VISUAL CONNEXION CONNEXION

B

WHAT IF... WE PUSH THE BOUNDARIES? Legend - mapping structural modification of a home regarding its fences position 19

VISUAL & PHYSICAL VISUAL CONNEXION CONNEXION

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BACK

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VISUAL & PHYSICAL CONNEXION

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VISUAL CONNEXION

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VISUAL & PHYSICAL VISUAL CONNEXION CONNEXION

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VISUAL & PHYSICAL CONNEXION

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VISUAL CONNEXION

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VISUAL CONNEXION

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VISUAL CONNEXION

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VISUAL CONNEXION

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VISUAL CONNEXION

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VISUAL & PHYSICAL CONNEXION

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ICRO STRATEGIES

Continuing our exploration we started mapping the following parameters : accessibility and inhabitants, (more precisely, the emergent patterns in the configuration of space, e.g., building buffers between public and private space), confronting conventional spaces, uses and materiality.

Of interest is the need for residents in the Community to “mark their own territory”. Moreover, they suggest that physical territorial boundaries are there not only to avoid any physical and visual contact, but also to maintain ‘distance’ from the space abutting their neighbours’. As a result, defensive space is formed, privacy levels get higher, and social relationships (if any) are weak if at all.

From these readings of the abovementioned patterns emerged several micro-strategies that we believe deserved to be tested.

These strategies were submitted to local inhabitants opinion during our last trip in Wenduine. Although some of them were perfectly understood and accepted, we realised that we emphasized the concept of privacy vs exposure at the expense of the notion of security which should also be part of the equation.

We defined four concepts to focus on in order to develop our architectural proposal : privacy, exposure, solitude and security.

1. existing situation

2. exploding indoor space

3. fortifying surburban homes

4. reconfiguring barriers

5. we love boundarie

6. sarving a niche

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existing situation

experimental situation

EXPLODING INDOOR SPACE 21

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ULES OF THE GAME

In order to come up with a personal interpretation of the experiments that we conducted so far, we defined a brief, some rules of the game to cristallise a guideline leading our architectural proposals.

Those rules allow us to keep in mind the general and specific notions that we approached during the research process.

Given the current trends of growing and ageing population, the architectural proposal should fall within an approach of sustainable development in order to fight against wasteful use of space and ressources. Act local, think global.

It should act as an agent of social change at the collective level for the given neigbourhood but still has to respect the inherent needs of the individuals.

G

LOBAL LEVEL

Sustainability in a general sense is the capacity to support, maintain or endure and is related to environmental, economic and social dimensions towards a world to generations to come. Let’s keep that in mind.

DENSIFY in order to reduce urban sprawl and make mobility less necessary (environmental) ; INTENSIFY programmation, in order to attract diversity of inhabitants and uses (social) ; REDUCE building costs in order to improve accessibility (economic).

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C

OLLECTIVE LEVEL

Living in community implies certain rules and boundaries in order to guarantee every inhabitant an satisfying level of comfort. However the architectural proposal should seek a better porosity and permeability of the neighborhood (in build environment and social dimention), it has to provide people’s need for control of space.

Allow social surveillance in order to satisfy people’s need for security.

Provide sequential gaps in order to maintain a necessary distance for privacy.

Multiply collective sequences of space in order to modify the territorial patterns.

Induce overlapping scenarios in order to support social interaction.

Maintain readability of property in order to claim ownership of the space.

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NDIVIDUAL LEVEL

Individuality is the state or quality of being an individual ; a person separate from other persons and possessing his or her own needs or goals. The architectural proposal must take account of these particular needs in order to reshape the build environment.

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PROPOSAL

‘

I propose a primordial place to live before a notional ‘house’ became a ‘house;’ when it was uncongealed to be all at once a house, a city, a garden, a forest, a prairie, the natural and the artificial. It is analogous to the ruins of ancient cities, to the natural landscapes, to the network of neural activities in a stimulated mind, and to the structure of the Universe...

’

Sou FUJIMOTO, Not an object, but a field of relationships, 2009

‘

The study of empty spaces forces us to look at the actual sequencing of events and activities rather than placing static labels on architecturally defined spaces as being always and only for a particular kind of activity.

’

Monica L. SMITH, Urban Empty spaces, 2008

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D

ESIGN STRATEGY

Given the current trends of growing and ageing population, the design assumes that the current inhabitants of Wenduine will need specific arrangement in terms of daily accessibility. The proposal takes advantage of the tremendous amount of space availlable (15% only of the garden area is actually used) to redistribute the existing functions on the groundfloor and hence to, increase elderly’s autonomy. The proposal invests the existing upper floors to relodge new family patterns (single parent family, over educated young couples seeking a first job in their late twenties, ...) with lower income.

The design takes into account the fact that suburbanites use1 to turn their outdoor space into sequential gaps, tend to use extra-space as a buffer between their individual sphere and the outsiders. However the strategy proposes to assert this behaviour and consider sequential gaps as possible benefit, it will reconfigure the sequences of spaces in order to provoke overlapping situations.

The existing living spaces are relocated in such a way that they amplify a deconstructed space thanks to bufferings alternatively playing the part of sequential gap or overlap scenario given the seasonal behaviours. During the grandchildren’s holidays, the sixguests dining room can turn into a banquet, whereas during the winter eves Robert can finally read a book

while Tine is watching her favorite cooking show on television without loosing sense of their mutal presence.

The night spaces or the spaces practised only for a short amount of time, storage for instance, replace the servant spaces, in order to reduce wasteful use of space and ressources and allow circulations trought the dwelling unit. The intimate spaces openings are connected to the inner courtyards of the dwellings while the servant spaces open themselves to the collective areas.

The upper level is re-invested by lower income inhabitants who cannot afford to buy or rent such a superficy of land.

The small amount of accessible outdoor space on their terrace is counterbalanced by the proximity of greenery installed on the vegetalised roofs of their lower neighbours. Still, their only roof garden benefits from a priviledged exposure and the filtering structure of the roof 2 3 guarantee their privacy.

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1. Existing Situation 2. Deconstruction of the existing space 3. Abstraction of the upper level 4. Redistribution of the day spaces 5. Redistribution of the night spaces 6. New potential for low cost housing

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7. Small unit for young couples 8. Addition 9. Reinvestment of the roof 10. Living the edge DESIGN STRATEGY DIAGRAM LIVING THE EDGE

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OCIOLOGICAL DIMENSION

With an eye to use architecture and design as agents for social change, the proposal will try to encourage new social relationship, practices and uses of the residential space trough the materiality of reconfigured boundaries.

Today’s urban fabric in the residential area of Wenduine is roughly composed of an average detached house turning back to each other and endlessly repeated. Our various interviews revealed that the inhabitants of the residendential area of wenduine claim for privacy, solitude, exposure and security.

Reinvestment of the parcels generates a tangle of alternating full and empty, of accessible zones as well as unacessible.

At the crossing of three parcels or more, the courtyards offer a potential for increased use that will allow the community to interact over the course of daily activities. The shelves integrated in the walls structure may host among other things storage for gardeners, bicycles racks, vertical gardens, informal seating, rabbit breeding or other little pleasures of spare time able to generate attractiveness for meeting and exchange.

On the contrary, the conflict zones between two houses are avoided by sliding the openings that never face each other.

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The distance between the dynamic collective passage and the static individual space can be invested by an ornemental garden acting as a sequential gap. Those gardens permit to maintain both a necessary security distance and space control for the comfort of the inhabitants and their need of social surveillance.

1. Existing Situation

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The visual angles between two houses on top of each other are distributed on perpendicular angles but are never contiguous to avoid direct visual contact. In some cases, horizontal sunscreens are featured in order to protect existing openings too close to each other. Their entrances of overlaid units are separated but share a common thresholds that may provide overlapping situations.

2. Opening the Edge

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Even if the explicit delineation between individual and collective space are preserved and clearly claimed, the overall strategy tends to provoke simultaneous use of outdoor collective spaces and spontaneous coincidence patterns that might implement new social behaviours. Providing a field for people to behave.

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3. Living the Edge

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A

RCHITECTURAL

MATERIALITY

The wooden light-frame building is based on a tri-dimensional grid of 65 centimeters, which integrates all the technical and structural elements. The modularity of the grid considers the eventuality of future additions and guarantees both low cost and rapidity of construction trough prefabricated

elements. The unusual thickness of these walls can also integrate a system of storage, visible or invisible, and can be accessed from one side or the other, sometimes from both.

Short spans between those walls allow a effective provision of portal system, occasionally freeing some walls of structural frame. The design features large glass openings, bluring boundaries between indoor and outdoor space while maintaining a visual contact that amplifies

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the perceived space. Horizontal filters combined to vertical openings generates overlapping sequences of space and light, and protect the inhabitants of different levels from unwanted visual contact.

Flat roofs that overhang thoses portals are vegetalised to provide to the upper level residents non accessible extensive ornemental gardens while ensuring an excellent thermic and accoustic comfort to the inhabitants of the lower levell.

Pitched roofs are uncovered to offer

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accessible courtyards to the upper level unit. The remaining existing structure of the roof allow the passage of light while providing privacy to its users.

In general, the doors are replaced by screens and windows with frames that go beyond the mere utility range. A large rotating doorshelf for instance, plays with perspective to increase the readability of reunited spaces, while a window facing its alter ego blur the boundaries from one space to another.

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C

ONCLUSION

Over provoking social interaction and a solution toward sustainable development in those times of growing population, the main effect of the project would be to expand in space one’s sence of belonging while reinforcing his « privacy zone ».

People tend to appropriate themselves the space they are evolving in. For instance, the path one is used to walk trough to go his work place, the shop where he does his weekly grocery shopping, the bakery he goes to in order to bring back croissants to his wife on sunday mornings are refered as « my street », « my neighbourhood », « my living environment ».

At first, colloquial use of the multiplicity of paths and potential destination spaces proposed by the design strategy will complexify and extend the scope of their belonging sense to the next street, the next neighbourhood.

On the other hand, the materiality of the architectural design will guarantee high intimacy in proximity (trough the multiplication of human-scaled rooms, enclaved courtyards, and alcoves in the walls among others) and high privacy levels (ensured by a specific configuration of space and a set of screens controlling the visual relations).

To conclude, I would say that we only scratched the myriad of challenges that suburbia offers.

As a matter of fact, the contemporary living patterns are about to evolve and new urban forms of housing will emmerge in order to respond to the growth of population. My concern is that architects can do nothing if civil socity and institutional frameworks are not heading in the same direction. Whatever spacial or architectural strategy architects imagine, how can they garantee social development to all trough federating projects and a reflexion on societal beahaviours if investers and institutional framework tend to priviledge a mercantile logic?

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EFERENCES

PUBLICATIONS Buckingham, J. Model City. 1854 Dantzig, G. And Saaty, T. Compact City. 1973 De Decker, P. A Garden of Eden? 2011 Foucault, M. Of Other Spaces. 1986 Jacobs, J. The Death and Life of Great American Cities. 1961 Jones, P. Building the Empire of the Gaze. 1999 Lawson, B. The language of space. 2001 Pallasmaa, J. Logic of the image. 1998 Rajchman, J. Foucault’s Art of Seeing. 1988

MOVIES Delépine, B. And Kerven, G. Le Grand Soir. 2012 Ross, G. Pleasantville. 1998 Tati, J. Playtime. 1967 Weir, P. The Truman Show. 1998

WEBSITES The ambition of territory, Venice Biennal. http://www.except.nl/en/projects/199-flemish-metropolitan-dreams

SONGS Reynolds, M. Little Boxes. 1963

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