Personal Urbanities
Between public and private: urban space on human scale
Tampere University of Technology The School of Architecture Architectural Design fall semester 2016
ARK-53150 Architectural Design Advanced course B Professors: Jenni Poutanen Sanna Peltoniemi
Student: Serena Milanesi
INDEX
0. Introduction .....................................................................................
p. 03
1.
Contemporary living ...................................................................
p. 04
1.1 Inclusive public space ....................................................
p. 05
1.2 Urban interiors ..................................................................
p. 06
2.
Domesticating the public space ............................................
p. 11
2.1 Recognizability ...................................................................
p. 15
2.2 Domesticity ........................................................................
p. 17
2.3 Human scale .....................................................................
p. 19
2.4
Relation with the context .............................................
p. 21
3.
Conclusions ....................................................................................
p. 23
Bibliography and Webliography Images credits
0 Introduction “If man is capable of dwelling, the world become an inside” 1 Christian Norberg-Schulz, Genius Loci: Towards a Phenomenology of Architecture, 1979
The main essay’s topic concerns the now day relation between public and private spaces and public and private behaviors to define the urban space. The basic idea was born from the article’s reading: Personal Urbanities: Domesticating the Public Domain2 of Jacopo Leveratto3 in which it is explained the “domestication” process of the public space, as consequence of today’s community, and the importance of the public space itself, where people spend most of their existence. This theme is related both to interiors architecture and to urban planning, two branches of architecture that are usually seen as separated and often in contrast but which, in this topic, are closely linked. I’ve immediately found interesting that in this case their boundaries are not defined and that they affect each other both in their theoretical bases and in the design of the space that derives from them. I wanted to start the essay with a quote of Christian Norberg-Schulz in his text Genius Loci: Towards a Phenomenology of Architecture4 who perfectly explains the necessity to pay attention to the quality of individual life and to the importance of the private sphere in the design of public spaces according to the human scale. The design in fact is a personal and collective practice and the essay seeks to investigate and tries to demonstrate that, thanks to the quality of individual elements and to the attention for the private sphere, the public space can become a welcoming place for the common life, in other worlds a space that each city should offer to its inhabitants. 1 C. Norberg-Schulz, Genius Loci: Towards a Phenomenology of Architecture, p. 417, Rizzoli, New York 1980 2 J. Leveratto, Personal Urbanities: Domesticating the Public Domain, in Philosophy Study, Vol. 6, No. 7, pp. 424-43, Milano, 2016 3 J. Leveratto (1982) is an Italian architect and professor at Politecnico di Milano, Faculty of Architecture and Urban Planning and a researcher in Architecture of Interiors 4 C. Norberg-Schulz, Genius Loci: Towards a Phenomenology of Architecture, p. 417, Rizzoli, New York 1980
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1
Contemporary living “The world is the house where the mortals dwell” 5 Martin Heidegger, Poetry, Language, Thought, 1975
In the last thirty years, the increase of individual mobility and the exponential development of global information technologies, have progressively pushed the concept of living beyond the boundaries of the private, towards a new widespread form of living. This new way of living reflects the multicultural stratification of populations who now day habits the metropolises. This idea is the basis of the numerous theoretical studies of Jacopo Leveratto about the new urban spaces on human scale. In his book: Città da abitare. La misura urbana dell’inclusività6 he underlines how man’s daily life today is a continuous shift from one interior to another, whether it’s the home, the car, the station, the workplace, the bus, the supermarket, the museum, the theater, the cinema or the restaurant. Today’s home in fact is almost a place of transition because the new technologies allow to carry outside a real extension of our home and to live anywhere. This trend has led to an investigation and a research for a concrete and physical measure to define an inclusive principle of the urban dimension. In fact, if it is true that hybridization and the multiculturalism are marking the world around us, habitability is becoming the symbol of an identity that is not given, but that must be designed, built and transformed.7 What emerges from this reflection is a changing and dynamic design of living space, but also intimate and private; and again, performative and technologized, but above all more open to contamination of scale and to multi-disciplinary visions. We are attending to an outside that looks more and more towards the inside, not just as a new dimension of contemporary urban life, but as an effective opportunity for those who live the public space to use their creative abilities to make it more personal and livable.8 5 M. Heidegger, Poetry, Language, Thought, p.149, New York, 1975 6 J. Leveratto, Città da abitare. La misura urbana dell’inclusività, Maggioli Editore, Milano 2016
7 J. Leveratto, Città da abitare. La misura urbana dell’inclusività, p. 10, Maggioli Editore, Milano 2016 8 J. Leveratto, Città da abitare. La misura urbana dell’inclusività, p. 11, Maggioli Editore, Milano 2016
This new attitude makes necessary to understand what is the interior in a globalized, complex and layered world and how do private world manifest itself in the public space and vice versa how does the world echo into the interior.
1.1
Inclusive public space
“Feeling inside a place means far more than living within four walls” 9 Gaston Bachelard, The poetic of space, 1958
The research towards an inclusive dimension of urban open spaces of the city is closely related to the thought of Jan Gehl10 and his concept of “liveable cities”. Going against the current of the modernism the Danish architect, has focused on the human side of architecture and he has studied and analyzed different cities, always placing the person and his needs at the center of the research to find a way for improving the quality of urban life. In his book, Cities for People11 he underlines the necessity to bring back, in a pragmatic and effective way, the human scale at the center of urban issues and of social life and the importance of the interaction between humans and built environment. This idea was developed after a trip in Italy with his wife, a psychologist, where together they set out to study the borderland between sociology, psychology, architecture, and planning. During this trip he has investigated and observed the way people interact within the italian historical cities, where the architectural forms, fixed over the centuries, haven’t been infected by the Modernist phenomena and have offered scenarios of spontaneous, simple and on a human-dimension collective life. 9 G. Bachelard, The poetics of space, p. 35, Penguin Classics, London 1964 10 J. Gehl (1936) is a Danish architect and urban design consultant whose career has focused on improving the quality of urban life 11 J. Gehl, Cities for People, Island Press, Washington, D.C 2010
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Having in mind Gehl’s pivotal concepts “First the people” and “Life, spaces, built elements ... in this sequence”12 it is necessary to understand which architectural strategies and solutions can create a participatory sharing process in a public space. This will allow to build a more open and adaptable space where “the spaces of everybody can be also the spaces of everyone”.13 As sustained by Jacopo Leveratto “the architecture of the public space confers to the subject its social position”14 because the open spaces of the city, more than the school or the workplace, are that better represent and materialize the relationship between individuals in an urban society. Open public space in fact is an essential part of the urban heritage and a strong element in the architectural and aesthetic form of a town, it is aslo important for the social interaction in a community. Speaking of these places we should refer about the “urban interiors”, namely the chambre à ciel ouvert15: spaces shaped on the principle of the natural continuity between private and public dimension.
1.2
Urban Interiors
“The outside space is therefore no more than the projection or the natural limit’s definition of the interior space” 16 Giulio Carlo Argan, Interni, 1959
12 J. Gehl, Life between buildings, Island Press, Washington, D.C 2011 13 From a lecture of Aldo van Eyck at Delft University of Technology, Delft 1959 14 J. Leveratto, Personal Urbanities: Domesticating the Public Domain, in Philosophy Study, Vol. 6, No. 7, pp. 430, Milano, 2016 15 Le Courbusier, Paris, 1929 16 G. C. Argan, Interni, in Enciclopedia Universale dell’Arte, Venezia-Roma: Istituto per la Collaborazione Culturale, p. 581, Sansoni, Firenze 1959
“Urban interior” stands on the definitions of ‘‘urban”, referred to the public area, and “interior”, referred to private sphere, and together they focus their attention on spatial and temporal dimensions of the environment.17 The concept of urban interiors has been also used by Christian Norberg-Schulz in his fundamental Genius Loci: Towards a Phenomenology of Architecture18 in which he demonstrates exemplary cases of intimate coherence between landscape, city and architecture to determine the character and the identity of the places. He wrote that “the function of meeting practice by the city determines a complex interior structure, an urban “interior” [...] where in the absence of a ceiling, the sky acts as higher boundary, and where the space, despite lateral limitations, belongs to outside”.19 But practically “What is an urban interior?”: urban interiors are those public open spaces based on the same theoretical and design concepts of an interior architectonical spaces. Historical examples are the cavities generated from squares and streets seen like openair rooms and corridors. They’re spaces designed as a conscious response to the need to live in a space that man has always had and they’re usually places of identity and encounter, related to the human need of a space able to gather and host. All these places, though they’re conceived in different periods and according to different styles and principles, are characterized by a geometrically defined space, with margins or physical constraints, and by fixed or mobile urban furniture.
17 V. Saitto, Interni Urbani. Esperienze di Interni, p. 7, Maggioli Editore, Milano 2013 18 C. Norberg-Schulz, Genius Loci: Towards a Phenomenology of Architecture, Rizzoli, New York 1980 19 C. Norberg-Schulz, Genius Loci: Towards a Phenomenology of Architecture, p. 417, Rizzoli, New York 1980, pp. 58-59
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Squares, courtyyards, streets and alleys
As stated by Gianni Ottolini20 in his book Interni Urbani21 these spaces are characterized by three key principles: 1) the space as matter, in other words the natural or conditional atmosphere that surrounds man, which is usually called void in contradiction with masonry masses; 2) the fundamental role of solid margins in circumscribing and identifying the space and its volumetric articulation; 3) the furnishing as a neuralgic relationship between space and man who lives it. Therefore, an urban interior supposes a problem of composition concerning the transformation of urban spaces into domestic spaces.
20 G. Ottolini (1955) is an architect and a professor of Interior Design and the director of the Department of Architectural Design at the faculty of Architecture at Politecnico di Milano 21 G. Ottolini, Interni Urbani, Maggioli Editore, Milano 1996
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Peter Fink, Open-air living room, Piazza Vecchia Bergamo, 2015
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Domesticating the public space “The room is the beginning of architecture. It is the place of the mind” 22 Luis I. Kahn, Lecture at ETH Zurich, February 1969
Luis Khan’s23 vision of “room” and to the idea of minimal space unit, single but aggregable to others is related to the new concept of domestic public spaces. Khan’s method of organizing buildings with “served” (main) and “servant” (subsidiary) spaces in fact is well known, but the rich story of his interior spaces, which should be connective, contemplative, and at the human scale, has never been fully told. “Architecture comes from making a room” 24 is a draw made by Khan for an exhibition25 that looks at Kahn’s works from the inside out, engaging the room, which was at the heart of his creative process. The drawing became the manifesto of his architectural design because it perfectly explains the concept of architecture born from the idea of staying in a place.26 From this concept of single and personal unity it has later developed that of the public room as a place of meeting between people and a lot of projects of public spaces, characterized by a new capacity to host the individual and to consider the man as the protagonist of the space itself, have started to arise thanks to this new vision.
22 L. I. Kahn, Silence and Light. The lecture at ETH Zurich, p. 9, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1973 23 L. I. Kahn (1901-1974) was an American architect based in Philadelphia renowned for his studies on light and for his monumental and geometric buildings 24 L. I. Kahn, Architecture Comes from the Making of a Room, Drawing for City/2 exhibition, 1971, Charcoal on tracing paper, Philadelphia Museum of Art 25 Exhibition Louis I. Kahn: The Making of a Room, Arthur Ross Gallery, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia February/March 2009 26 A.A.V.V., Dramatis Personae, A cast of characters from the architectural drawings of Louis Kahn, Brochure of the exhibition “L. I. Kahn: The Making of a Room”, Arthur Ross Gallery, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia 2009
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Luis Kahn, Architecture Comes from the Making of a Room, Drawing for City/2 exhibition, 1971
As sustained by Jan Gehl in his text Life between buildings27 today’s contemporary conceiving and using of the public spaces reflects the great influence dictated by private and personal behaviors due to the importance given to individual values. Public space is the space where we most spend our lives and this makes central the problem of its quality; for this it’s important to observe and to understand how the methodological approach between public and private has changed in the last years. Looking the architecture from inside, we’re attending to a progressive process of “domestication” of the spaces, due to the focus on the human dimension of architecture. This dimension is characterized both by physical and cultural aspects and by the experience of space, its sensory aspects and the phenomena that arise from living in places.28 The private in fact is not the contradiction of the public and its values, but it’s its projection and vice versa. But how does private world manifest itself in the public space? To answer to this question, we should consider some examples of collective spaces and public buildings.
Following the example of Viviana Saitto29 in her article Domesticità e spazi pubblici30 I’ve tried to identify different typologies that represent the several ways in which the private world manifest itself in the public space. The typologies are: recognizability, domesticity, attention to human scale and importance of the relation with the context. These typologies can be found both in open space’s projects, like urban interiors, and within interiors public spaces; all of them in fact are characterized by the importance recognized to the role of the individual in the design of the space. 27 J. Gehl, Life between buildings, pp. 37-39, Island Press, Washington, D.C 2011 28 J. Leveratto, Personal Urbanities: Domesticating the Public Domain, in Philosophy Study, Vol. 6, No. 7, p. 440, Milano, 2016 29 V. Saitto (1973) is an architect and a professor in Interior Architecture and Exhibition at Università degli Studi di Napoli, Department of Architecture 30 V. Saitto, Domesticità e spazi pubblici, in BDC, volume 16, numero 1, Napoli 2016
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The case studies chose are all projects that I’ve studied and appreciated and many of whom I’ve visited, perceiveing in first person the idea of a human scale approach and the attention to the private sphere in the design of a public space. The possibility of ascribing a case study to a typology that represent it does not exclude that the example has also features typical of other typologies; this is a proof of the fact that these aspects, typical of the approach to the small scale’s design, connote the most current declensions of the public space’s design.
2.1
Recognizability
Recognizability: to identify from knowledge of appearance or characteristics31 The typology of recognizability is perfectly represented by Superkilen in Copenhagen, an urban project born by the creative collaboration of three big design studios: Big, Topotek1 and Superflex, that represents a perfect fusion between architecture, landscape architecture and art. The intervention is an articulated complex of urban interiors characterized by specific functions for the collective life. The neighborhood is composed by sixty different ethnic groups and the urban project has been thought as a great container of different experiences, cultures and uses, like a “show” of various urban practices. The area is divided into three different colors: green, black and red. The different surfaces and colors, accompanied by thick vegetation and everyday objects, give to the place dynamism and recognizability. This is the strong point of the project: Superkilen is a great “home” where decorative elements, furnishings and symbols from different parts of the world, have transformed the space into a sort of surreal collection of the urban landscape’s diversity. The green area is entirely dedicated to sport and represents a “natural” meeting place, the black area is like a hinge between nature and physical construction and the red square is the space of sociality. The square has been designed as an urban extension of inner life and it is a patchwork red carpet that defines the space. In this way, the space is recognizable and the boundary between urban and interior architectural seems to dissolve.32
31 Oxford dictionaries, 2017 32 V. Saitto, Domesticità e spazi pubblici, in BDC, volume 16, numero 1, pp. 117-118, Napoli 2016
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B.I.G., Topotek1 and Superflex, Superkilen, Copenaghen, 2011-12
2.2
Domesticity
Domesticity: the state of being domestic33 There are many examples of interior personal spaces in public buildings that testify the contemporary situation where there is no more a defined and clear separation between public and private spaces. The Cultural Art Center project, called Home and made by Mecanoo in Manchester between 2012 and 2015, is one of that because it is a community building that summarizes some of the attitudes typical of an interior space. The same choice of the name indicates the will to build a space conceived as an urban living, where users can feel at home. The informal character of the aggregation spaces, the flexibility of uses and the features of the distribution and connection spaces are in fact typical of the home space and they go far beyond their logistical and distributive function, to create social spaces. The building is very big, it’s composed by two theaters, five cinemas, plus all the related commercial services. Nevertheless, the different spaces are in relation to each other and the paths and the distribution areas always allow the outside view and the exposition on the other levels, favoring in this way the users’ orientation. The large triangular volume from one side characterizes the outside public square, thanks to its strong identity, and, to the other side, thanks to its transparency, it presents the pulsating and intimate character of its interior. The stair that connects the different levels and the different functions, it is also visible from the outside and it is a tool for exploration, orientation and appropriation of spaces, beyond that an element that defines the design the interiors spaces and of the areas around it.34
33 Oxford dictionaries, 2017 34 F. Houben, People, Place, Purpose: The World According to Mecanoo Architects, Actar Birkhäuser, Barcelona 2015
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Mecanoo, Home Cultural and Art Centre, Manchester, 2012-15
2.3
Human scale
Human scale: a scale appropriate, specific, or comprehensible to people35 The city is a meeting space and its formal structure should be able to generate a “collective interiors� that people can perceive. The interiority and the intimacy of a place is based on the capacity of a space to relate itself to the man who live inside; for this the public space should consider the man as the protagonist of its interior space. The project for the facade of the Storefront for Art and Architecture in New York, built by Steven Holl and Vito Acconci in 1992, links the project to the human scale and to the gestures that a man make unconsciously when its body meets the architecture. The project has the aim to create a penetration between the public road and the inside space. This small intervention is characterized by a weak materiality, thanks to the use of plasterboard panels, and it clearly expresses the will to transform the character of the space that it encloses. This has been possible thanks to the creation of a variety of possible spaces in which to experience different degrees of penetration between the interior and the external space. The project in this way is not only an exhibition design but it has become a strong landmark in the urban space.36
35 Oxford dictionaries, 2017 36 V. Saitto, DomesticitĂ e spazi pubblici, in BDC, volume 16, numero 1, p. 118, Napoli 2016
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Steven Holl and Vito Acconci, Storefront for Art and Architecture, New York, 1992
2.4
Relation with the context
Context: the circumstances that form the setting for an event, statement, or idea, and in terms of which it can be fully understood and assessed37 The last typology is about the relation that a project should have with the context in which it has born, a relation that, if is carefully studied, could improve the design of the public space. The intervention on a pre-existence construction is linked to the interpretation of the atmosphere of the place in which it is and to the perceptive and phenomenological character of its redesign. Public space projects that start from the use of pre-existing buildings offer the opportunity to interpret and rework the traces provided by the historical architectural structures and by the lived spaces, always full of suggestions. The recent realization of the Prada Foundation’s headquarters in Milan, by the OMA studio, integrates the recovery of the buildings and spaces of a former Italian distillery built between 1910 and 1920, with the addition of three new volumes. These spaces have been join to create a single and continuous space but diversified in its parts. This project perfectly respond to the need to reinterpret and broaden the typologies and the shape typical of space for exhibition and art. The passage from the public street to the exhibition space in fact is fluid and gradual, as well as the passages between the different types of exhibition spaces. The importance of connection and aggregation in the cultural enjoyment spaces testify, on the one hand, the current impossibility of considering exposition art places as decanted spaces and isolated from the everyday life and, on the other, the progressive transformation of a place for exhibitions in a cultural incubator, which shares different typology of sites for cultural exchange.38 37 Oxford dictionaries, 2017 38 Francesco Dal Co, Fondazione Prada. Un’opera coraggiosa, intelligente, ben fatta, in Casabella, n. 850, pp. 30-31, Mondadori, Segrate 2015
21
OMA, Prada Foundation, Milano, 2016-17
3 Conclusions Cities and personalities have never been easily associated terms; historically in fact, urban space has always been considered as the reflection of a collective identity that represented the natural inclination of the human being to live in the community. The analysis of personal space’s conformation in public places can therefore suggest a different and partial view on the strategies and tools needed to build a more inclusive public space. Both from an analytical and a project point of view, now day it is necessary to do a scale leap to link the shape of urban spaces with the quality of the personal space and to start thinking about a more inclusive public space able, besides welcoming large numbers, of giving also value to the human scale of individuality.39 It is necessary a more conscious attention to the personal dimension of urban open spaces that would give more emphasis to the condition of the individual inhabitant, often neglected in the analysis and in urban projects. The individual and daily practices in fact could contribute to shape the public city and they should have the same importance of those collective rituals typical of the associated life.
“A careful design concerning the livability of a space allows to transform a discontinuous and fragmented space into a recognized one to take care of it, and in other word into an inhabited place” 40 Martin Heidegger, 1954
39 C. Colombo, La città come una sequenza di interni: un approccio ecologico alla progettazione dello spazio pubblico, in BDC, volume 15, numero 2, Napoli 2015 40 M. Heidegger, Poetry, Language, Thought, p.56, Harper Perennial, New York 1975
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Bibliography and Webliography Books Gaston Bachelard, The poetic of space, Penguin Classics, London 1964 Jan Gehl, Cities for People, Island Press, Washington, D.C 2010 Jan Gehl, Life between buildings, Island Press, Washington, D.C 2011 Martin Heidegger, Poetry, Language, Thought, Harper Perennial, New York 1975 Francine Houben, People, Place, Purpose: The World According to Mecanoo Architects, Actar Birkhäuser, Barcelona 2015 Luis I. Kahn, Silence and Light. The lecture at ETH Zurich, University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1973 Jacopo Leveratto, Città da abitare. La misura urbana dell’inclusività, Maggioli Editore, Milano 2016 Kevin Lynch, The Image of the City, The MIT Press, Cambridge 1960 Christian Norberg-Schulz, Genius Loci: Towards a Phenomenology of Architecture, Rizzoli, New York 1980 Gianni Ottolini, Interni Urbani, Maggioli Editore, Milano 1996 Viviana Saitto, Interni Urbani. Esperienze di Interni, Maggioli Editore, Milano 2013 Articles and publications Giulio Carlo Argan, A proposito di spazio interno, in Metron, n.28, pp. 20-21, Milano 1948 Giulio Carlo Argan, Interni, in Enciclopedia Universale dell’Arte, Venezia-Roma: Istituto per la Collaborazione Culturale, pp. 580-610, Sansoni, Firenze 1959
Cristina Colombo, La città come una sequenza di interni: un approccio ecologico alla progettazione dello spazio pubblico, in BDC, volume 15, numero 2, Napoli 2015 Francesco Dal Co, Fondazione Prada. Un’opera coraggiosa, intelligente, ben fatta, in Casabella, n. 850, pp. 30-31, Mondadori, Segrate 2015 Jacopo Leveratto, Personal Urbanities: Domesticating the Public Domain, in Philosophy Study, Vol. 6, No. 7, pp. 424-43, Milano, 2016 Viviana Saitto, Domesticità e spazi pubblici, in BDC, volume 16, numero 1, Napoli 2016 Web-site www.archdaily.com (December 2017) www.big.dk (October 2017) www.mecanoo.nl (October 2017) www.oma.eu (October 2017) www.stevenhool.com (October 2017) Image credits Cover: autoproduction Page 8: Gianni Ottolini, Interni Urbani, p. 34, Maggioli Editore, Milano 1996 Page 10: www.archdaily.com Page 12: www.canadianarchitect.com Page 16: www.big.dk Page 18: www.mecanoo.nl Page 20: www.stevenhool.com Page 22: www.oma.eu
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