DEFINING BOUNDARIES
Sarah Poot
Acknowledgments I would like to briefly thank all those that in different ways made my participation to this workshop possible. In the first place I have to express my gratitude to the ADU 2020, the European community, the Alfa Network, the KULeuven and the Universidad Nacional de Colombia, for pushing the boundaries away. I am also thankful to Kris Scheerlinck, for giving me the opportunity to join the workshop; Saddek Rehal, for offering a different perspective; Catalina Cortese, for her special care and bright smile overseas and Fernando Arias Lemos, for his flawless organization and friendly welcome. Last but not least, I would especially thank Albertina, Andres, Lucia, Felipe and Felipe, Lina and Ricardo, for their curious minds and warm welcome. I hope we will have the opportunity to meet and collaborate again very soon, and that I will be able to give back all the great moments we shared in Colombia in my own country. Brussels, the 19th of January 2014 Sarah Poot
Abstract In this paper, I would like to question the teaching/research methodologies as much as the given topic of the workshop “redefining boundaries�: given the multiplicity of cultures and origins of the participants, we experienced discrepancies among teachers and among students on the way to address the development of an architectural proposal. I think it was inspiring to confront (al least) two academic traditions and wanted to research that topic more in depth, using the workshop as an illustrative case study. In a first part, I will synthetize the challenges of the workshop by describing the design process and methodologies applied to the site in order to obtain spatial strategies, relationships and interactions rather than an architectural artifact. In a second part, as a reaction towards an obtuse comment that was made to us on the lack of material consistency in intermediary stages of our proposal, I will research the political dimension of artifacts, and so on try to justify the entire process we have been conducting around the social dimension of the intervention. Finally, I will question the role of the teacher in architecture as either a transmitter of knowledge or rather a facilitator as experienced with Saddek Rehal, our unconventional mentor.
Team Defining boundaries – Magnetic fields / Campos magneticos Colombia – Universidad Nacional de Colombia ADU 2020 Program Team composition: Mentor: Saddek REHAL (SE) Students: Albertina DE PELSMACKER (BE) Andres GARZÒN (CO) Lina Teresa BUITRAGO (CO) Lucia TAPIERO BARRETO (CO) Felipe FRANCO CASTRO (CO) Felipe OCHOA GOMEZ (CO) Ricardo ARIAS CALLEJAS (CO) Sarah POOT (BE) On the workshop The worshop, organized by the ADU 2020, took place in the Universidad Nacional de Colombia, in Bogotà (Colombia) from September 15th to September 24th, 2013. It regroups students and teachers from Argentina, Belgium, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Costa Rica, Cuba, Guatemala, Panamà, Paraguay, Perù, Sweden and Venezuela. As a structural project, the aim of ADU_2020 is to discuss and design structural mechanisms to promote the modernization, reformation and harmonization of the higher education systems, aiming specifically to the expanded field of architecture, design and urbanism. (www.adu2020.org) The aim of this specific assignment was to rethink the border of the University of Bogotà Campus, free-thinking island separated from the city by a continuous fence. The topic of the workshop “boundaries” could have been defined or perceived as many things: frontiers, borders, limits, extremes, transitions... Within the framework of the workshop, we investigated this notion further on that just a fence in order to emphasize the notion of transition between two different spaces/entities. Each team (12 in total) of international students was assigned to a portion
of the border to develop an architectural proposal solving the border problems. Within our team, we questioned this problematic approach and focused on existing potentials when approaching the site as a whole. We ended up proposing a system of interventions that would apply on the integrality of the campus contour rather than specific technical features dedicated to a specific portion of it. Our main assumption, as a starting point, was that the new Metropolitan Park of BogotĂ (collective urban space, in opposition with the gated university), at the crossing of the two main axis (calle 26 and carrera 30), would become a node, a new articulation for the city. The strategy goes beyond the chain of parks, to include the notion of activity as a catalyzer for the people of BogotĂ by improving its visibility. On the design process Given the short amount of time available, we put the emphasis on the process, rather than on the artifact. During the process, we valued every single input, especially from other disciplines. We eventually designed spatial strategies, relations, interactions rather than an architectural object. Access to external sources as Internet or the library being restricted due to the strike, our preliminary researched was focused on physical experience of the site. In order to approach it, we have conducted a series of on-site interviews. The specific situation of the strike allowed us to reach all different kind of users of the university that would have usually be hiding in the offices: teachers, administrative workers, handy men, cleaning staff, students and hawkers were represented in the panel. A series of open-ended question on the experience of the campus by the users, and their relation toward the city was prepared, but not always followed strictly according to the respondent. The interviews were spread all over the campus, in order to conduct observatory fieldwork simultaneously. From this preliminary work, we defined nine recurrent topics, namely: activity vs. safety, central vs. peripheral, transition space, friction, role of the university, attraction, voids, place of expression and security/social control. In early stages of the design process, we followed the methodology
Concepto, introduced to us by Saddek Rehal, our mentor for the duration of the workshop. Concepto uses associative images as a communicative tool to improve the dialogue between designers and end-users (Rehal & Birgersson, 2006). This method considers the design process as a shared process involving many different practices and expertise for a given situation. It emphasizes the expertise of neophytes as much as the competences of dedicated experts. Often in participatory processes, the main difficulty is to understand each other’s point, the dialogue being hampered with specific/specialized languages that each ones has developed according to his own experience or fieldwork, leading to an asymmetric discussion. Moreover in architecture and urban planning, the architects tend to translate the users needs or request into sketches in early stages in the design process, which prevent the users to develop their own representations of what they really expect (Rehal & Birgersson, 2006). So on, the dialogue focuses on fixing details on the proposed solution with leaving no room to question it entirely. Concept offers to bypass this issue by avoiding oral language. It consists in an image database (over 500 hundred pictures) illustrating common scenes, objects or phenomenon. Two phases, animated by someone familiar with the method are implemented. In the first phase, the participant individually chooses images to which he associates the concepts related to the given situation (dialogue with the self) and present it to the group while justifying his choices. In the second phase, the group collectively elaborates a common understanding of those concepts (dialogue with the others). Images then are the support for oral explaination. They illustrate the discourse toward the audience but they also help to interpret a given word by expanding its meaning. In order to apply the Concepto methodology, we reduced the topics to three main umbrellas that would allow us to threat the previously named topics in a global manner : attraction, friction and boundaries. The members of the design team and external participants (from the interviews) have put each of those words into perspective: teachers, sociologist, students from other disciplines‌ The method helped us to define the mental implications of each of the themes as following. Boundaries can be physical or mental. On the physical level, one may consider space (textures, heights, volumes) but also movement (flows of car, people, bikes). On a mental
level, boundaries are generated by a social background: social, cultural, political dimensions have to be taken into account as well as age, gender and location. We believe that the boundaries of the university are not only physical, but also mental: the lack of clarity in the role of the university on the city scale, the lack of activities other than academic... More than a fence, a boundary can be a threshold, a buffer, a space of transition. In the case of the university, we believe that opening the park to the city constitutes a first step towards a better integration. «The way the space is designed makes me feel watched All the time : the square you cross to enter, The large pathways, The building on each sides…» (One of the hawkers, also student) Attraction is of course related to a personal context/background: culture, religion, age, gender and many other criteria can influence it. Though, as human beings, we can be attracted in two opposite directions: towards something exotic (new, singular, different, exclusive) or familiar (comfortable, known..) In space, attraction can be related to focus, which can be central or peripheral (attractive/attracted). As an example, considering a group of men sharing a meal, the meal is the focal point of the scene. However, if a photographer happens to take a picture of the scene, he displaces momentarily the focal point towards himself. The boundary of the university doesn’t only come with a fence and the few openings in it, but also with the flows of the 26 and 30 that drastically separate the university from the city. How can this situation be turned into a benefit for the adjacent neighborhoods? «When I cross the gate of the University, I feel safe, It is calm and quiet, it is a different world. On the other hand, I like to be in the city, It proposes so much cultural activities!» (One of the administrative lady workers) Friction comes with interaction: the encounter of two forces, including at least one mobile. On a mental dimension, it can relate with the «freedom of the individual» in relation with the «control of the collective» and vice versa. Individual and collective perceptions of the space are interrelated. On the other hand, we believe that friction can also be turned
into collaboration: for example those boats in the Mediterranean sea during summer: there is not enough space for them on the banks, so they have to lay next to each other and give a «right of passage» to the next one. Regarding the university, the project takes advantage of the multiple existing situations and programs to activate the border while ensuring social control. « If I want to cross the campus, It takes more than twenty minutes. If it’s raining, it’s a big mess. If it’s sunny, it’s a torture! »
(Sociology teacher)
Surprisingly, it was in this very early phase that we eventually defined the concepts we wanted to work with. It helped us to embody our conceptual thoughts with words, and to go further with clarifying collectively the topics we had been discussing blurrily in the previous phases. On the design proposal The ambition was to reinforce the existing academic heart of the University, to provide an urban framework in which encounter and interactions are the key of a better education. In order to achieve this, we proposed two types of minimal interventions: promote soft mobility and a better connection and promote porosity of the buildings by opening the ground floors to public activities. This public heart being mostly pedestrian would turn the outer ring designed by Rother as a service road. This new ring could benefit from a student association providing a shuttle system around the university. This may be an alternative income for students that would preserve the campus from external speculation. Most of the ground floors of the academic buildings are not classrooms. We proposed to re-qualify those spaces with a public program. Ground floors should have a double orientation in order to allow students crossing. So far, the organization of the campus is embodied with pathways. However, we have witnessed informal paths being created by the desire to go from one point to the other by the shortest way. We proposed to reconsider the heart of the campus as a single mineral platform, in which
green areas are cropped. These leisure zones will take into account the existing informal pathways. In order to activate the border, and improving both social control and porosity, the strategy proposes to recreate a green belt on the periphery of the campus. By programing the border, the strategy tries to enhance micro local cooperation and economies: we believe that space can empower people by giving them responsibilities. The programs takes into account the existing specifications of the site: an institution of the university, a river on the outside, a particular activity... Those spaces have strong identities that allow people to appropriate the space. This green belt is divided in 2 parts in order to enhance two scales : the local and the metropolitan. To characterize the inner space of the university as a special place in the city, the strategy tries to generate different experiences on the borders. In order to do this, we reconfigured the idea of ¨bridges¨ from crossing elements to social interaction artifacts that include different programs and activities that serve the nearby neighborhoods and the metropolitan area. In conclusion, we wish to create spaces for encounter and so on for discussion. On artifacts and politics During the workshop, we strongly emphasized the social dimension of the intervention, arguing that the project should be minimal in its constructed features, but that those features should induce and rely on local cooperation, micro economies and sense of belonging (appropriation of the space) in order to ensure social control and security while reducing the frictions between the university and the adjacent neighborhoods. We have be told we were wrong. We have been told that security is not a matter of architecture. That security is a matter of police. That we have been fooled, tricked, stolen of our time and energy by the teachers who have put those insane ideas in our fragile, juvenile and innocent heads. All of it was said by a known teacher in architecture that would not take no for an answer, especially from students.
We pushed back. As a matter of fact, there is an eagerness in social studies to relate technical artifacts to political qualities. One has to understand “political” here as arrangements of power and authority in human associations. In Do artifacts have politics? (1986), Winner listed a series of technical progress that can be interpreted as guarantees of democracy, freedom and social justice : the factory system, automobile, telephone, radio, television, (…) have all at one time or another been described as democratizing, liberating forces (Winner, 1986). He insists on the fact that the technology itself, or the technical artifact is less of importance that the system (social or economic) in which it is implemented. As an illustrative case study, Winner tells us the compelling story of Robert Moses’ New-York bridges on Long Island parkways. “ Anyone who has traveled the highways of America and has gotten used to the normal height of overpasses may well find something a little odd about some of the bridges over the park ways on Long Island, New York. Many of the overpasses are extraordinarily low, having as little as nine feet of clearance at the curb. Even those who happened to notice this structural peculiarity would not be inclined to attach any special meaning to it. (…) They were deliberately designed and built that way by someone who wanted to achieve a particular social effect. Robert Moses, the master builder of roads, parks, bridges, and other public works of the 1920s to the 1970s in New-York, built his overpasses according to specifications that would discourage the presence of buses on his parkways. (…) Poor people and blacks, who normally used public transit, were kept off the roads because the twelve-foot tall buses could not handle the overpasses. “ (Winner, 1986, p. 2-3) Here, the artifact (the bridge’s overpass) is understood as a political mean to generate social inequalities, a way of engineering relationships among people with no affirmation of the political agenda. An other way to look at Robert Moses’ low bridges would be to say that this socio-racial discrimination was not intended. As Bernward Joerges demonstrates in his so-called essay “Do artifacts have politics” (Joerges, 1999), Winners appropriated himself Moses’ relatives statements reported by Moses' biographer Caro (1974) in order to serve is discourse.
Acording to Joerges, they are no other –or earlier- clues that Moses intentions were to prevent access to the Long Island beaches to either black or poor people. So, why would Moses have built over 200 overpasses so low? Joerges, proposes a new interpretation of those facts, according to engineers he has been corresponding with: parkways were in any case, forbidden to commercial traffic and the budget of the construction did not allow the cost that would have been necessary to raise the bridges. But Joerges continues is development of the story, explaining that Winners and Caro’s versions of Moses bridges would imply a non-respect of the standardized norms applicable back then. He points out that the only parkway in the United States that was accessible for buses then was the Memorial Parkway, leading from Washington DC to the monument of Mount Vernon, and that this peculiar situation was obtained by the bus-lobby after heated debates on the need for tourist-pilgrims to arrive at the goal of their journey. So if Moses had wanted to let the buses pass the bridge, he would probably not have been able to. If Joerges claims that Moses may not have built the small bridges with discriminatory intent, and the bridges may be innocent of the missing black element on Jones Beach (‌),he also says that it could well have been so, and proof abounds that he has done worse (1999, p. 418). So on, if the object of the critique might be misdirected, the politics can be found elsewhere in Moses long lists of artifacts. The National University of Colombia itself, in its settings, was clearly inducing a specific relationship towards the city (or inwards the overprotected island of the university), which was enhanced by the situation we experienced on site, due to the current strike. Indeed: the campus being circled by a fence, open in only two main entrances designed as funnels from one hundred (the size of the gate plaza) to one meter wide (the size of the only open door, controlled by ten gatekeepers), were particularly obvious ways to enhance the security matter between the campus and the city. However, the fences closing the gates were not part of the initial design of Rother, but were added subsequently to riots involving the students (as free thinkers) and the national police: the fences were built to protect the students from the authority, making the university a safe place in the city. This resulted in social inequality and increased frictions on the edges of the campus.
So… Artifacts come with politics. What now? If it is obvious that technical artifacts can be used in a way to enhance the power, authority and privilege of some over others, can they also be used in a way to foster collective behave and democratic system? Langdon Winner, citing Engels (On authority, 1872) and Plato (Republic, 380 BC), claims that certain forms of technology need a certain amount of subordination (Winner, 1986). Both are illustrating this statement with the case of a ship, and for being a sailor myself I understand their point. On a ship they are two rules : 1. The captain is always right; 2. If the captain is wrong, refer to rule number 1. As a matter of fact, large sailing vessels by their very nature need to be steered with a firm hand, sailors must yield to their captain’s commands; no reasonable person believes that ships can be run democratically (Winner, 1986). How is that statement applicable to the intervention we designed for the University campus? If designers and urban planners exercise a certain kind of leadership over an intervention in the build environment, I believe that they can run this leadership in a democratic way, as illustrated by new methodologies of participatory processes involving other disciplines (Rehal & Birgersson, 2006. Granath, Lindahl, & Rehal, 1996). Then, as discussed with Petra Pferdmenges (architect, DE), Leeke Reinders (anthropologist, NL) and Niels Coppens (social designer, BE) during a debate named Expectations, organized by Curiosita on the 17th of December 2013 (www.curiosita.be), the architect becomes a facilitator, an orchestrator, a catalyzer rather than a top-down visionnaire. On the role of the teacher Based on my own experience of this workshop, other academic teaching and professional career, we, students, are confronted to a multitude of different attitudes toward architecture. If we want to achieve the democratic architectural leadership mentioned in the previous chapter, what level of trust can we put into the teaching we receive? Teaching comes with a positioning, a certain ideology that is transmitted to the student (Dorra, 2012. Mulrooney, 2009). I have witnessed it the hard way (see previously: “Security is not a matter of Architecture. Security is a matter of police.”). The teacher’s goal is to lead his students to a certain
“final” level of competencies; he is linked to the student by an implicit contract in order to achieve an initiation to a professional practice of architecture. The trust from the student towards his professor is the most important link of the learning contract (Lebahar, 2001). “Un étudiant est, lui, un projet pour moi” (A student is, himself, a project for me) (Ciriani, 1995, p.47. Own translation). “Never trust a teacher” (Oral advice by Saddek Rehal, teacher. 2013) In his comparative study of two different exercises (2001), one called “la petite maison” (the small house), the second called “le logis” (home), Lebahar reveals the lessons learned by different teaching methods. In the first one, the teacher adopts a professionalizing attitude, expecting the student to fit closely with reality by zooming in the project in successive scalar phases (site, building, rooms, furniture) and to justify his choices on a pragmatic basis or with architectural precedents. In the second case, the student is given a series of explorative tasks designed to provide a general overview of different criteria composing “home” (users, use of time, use of space…) and giving room for experimentation of the action of living, he is invited to justify his choices on an empirical way following his own perception of the space he is designing, after having submitted several options for each criteria. From interviews of both the students and the teachers of the two assignments, Lebahar tries to identify the achievements of each. In the case of the “small house” the student learned to apply functional architectural features to a design, following his teachers comments. He expresses a lack of autonomy in design choices, since he was invited to follow his teacher’s conception of a house (large kitchen was more important than large bedrooms for example) without experiencing it by himself. In the second case, “home”, the student eventually reached a certain autonomy in validating his own design choices by verifying them with architectural terms and visions and the cognitive functioning he developed through the multiplicity of trials. If the first case the teachers gives the operative tools to achieve a professional practice of architecture, the second teaching method gives
the cognitive clues that are necessary to be self-critique in this practice. Those two methods obviously have their own advantages : one student being educated to respond to the market demand, the other being trained to find his own response to the market demand. But if the role of the architect teacher is to transmit knowledge to the student he is in charge of, deviations between what was intented to be transmitted and what has been received are inevitable (Dorra, 2012). So on, wouldn’t be more ethical in general to give each student the ability to reflect by himself? On my opinion, school should teach design competences more than construction techniques. Standards being revised every day in our contemporary society, I am under the impression that the construction process learning should happen on a day-to-day basis, for example during the so called professionalizing internship but also afterwards, in our daily practice of architecture as an architect. On the other hand, design skills (synthesis, conceptual approach, the ability to put things into perspective‌) is something highly personal that should be emphasized in the educational curricula. As a conclusion, I would say that my personal expectations towards a teacher would be that he gives me inspirational tools and mechanisms necessary to use the knowledge or even better, the clues to create my own tools or mechanisms, rather than the hard knowledge itself. I have a lifetime to gather knowledge. This workshop, as mind opening as it has been, also allowed me to sharpen my critical spirit and not to take any assertion for granted. Especially when it comes from an authority figure.
References • Darling-Hammond, L. (1990). The Teaching Internship. Practical Preparation for a Licensed Profession. The Rand Corporation, 1700 Main St., PO Box 2138, Santa Monica, CA 90406-2138.. • Dorra, I. (2012, July). Penser et Enseigner une discipline: un positionnement à transmettre dans l’interaction. In Biennale internationale de l’éducation, de la formation et des pratiques professionnelles.. • Göran. A. L. M. Collective Design Processes as a Facilitator for Collaboration and Learning. • Granath, J. Å., Lindahl, G. A., & Rehal, S. (1996). From Empowerment to Enablement. An evolution of new dimensions in participatory design. Logistik und Arbeit, 8(2), 16-20. • Hennon, L. (1999). Urban Planning and School Architecture: Homologies in Governing the Civic Body and the School Body. • Joerges, B. (1999). Do politics have artefacts?. Social studies of science, 29(3), 411-431. • Lebahar, J. C. (2001). Approche didactique de l’enseignement du projet en architecture: étude comparative de deux cas. • Mulrooney, S. (2009). Bauhaus, Crown Hall, FAU: A Comparative Investigation of the Curriculum Design in Schools of Architecture. National Academy for Integration of Research, Teaching and Learning, 11. • Nair, P. (2002). But Are They Learning? School Buildings--The Important Unasked Questions. • Neumann, R. (1994). Valuing Quality Teaching through Recognition of Context Specific Skills. Australian Universities’ Review, 37(1), 8-13. • Rehal, S. (2002, January). Words and Images for exploration and communication in the early stages of design task. In PDC (pp. 238242). • Rehal, S., & Birgersson, L. (2006). L’image associative comme moyen de communication pour renforcer le dialogue entre concepteurs et usagers. Associative images as a communication tool to improve the dialogue between designers and end-users’ in Hygiène et sécurité du travail, 205. • Winner, L. (1986). Do artifacts have politics? In: The whale and the reactor: a search for limits in an age of high technology. Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 19-39.]
Fieldwork : interviews
Concepto methodology : the dialogue with the self, the dialogue with the others
Associative images : boundaries, attraction, friction
Boundaries
Space of transition
Focal point
Displaced center
Metropolitan scale
Local scale
Design proposal : concepts
Design proposal : academic heart and programmed border
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EDIFICIOPLAZABUILDING Design proposal : the expected artifacts
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