“Ci ties in the Ci t y” THEODORA LYMPOURA
APR 2014
“CITIES IN THE CITY” History and Theory Essay Master of Architecture and Urban Design Bartlett School of Architecture University College London Supervisor: Sam Jacoby
Contents Abstract Urbanisation - Residential enclave
7 8 - 11
Islands
12 - 15
Archipelago and Islands
16 - 19
“City in the city�
20 - 27
Archipelagic urban models - Enclave
28 - 31
Bibliography
32 - 35
Appendix
36 - 43
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Abstract This research is an attempt to frame and inform the question of the enclave. Residential enclaves seem to create bubbles of ideal worlds that have nothing to do with their surroundings. The last 30 years a proliferation of these entities is mutating the world in a kaleidoscope of multiple realities. Urban design is called to deal with a dispersed, fragmented and complex landscape with many contradictions and conflicts. The emergence of walls and the “fortification” of space seem to promote an enclave urbanism that tends to turn the world in a mere conglomeration of isolated units. In view of this contemporary extreme fragmentation of space a call to reconsider urban organizations based on segregation is suggested. In the mid 70’s an alternative approach was introduced. The metaphor of the archipelago and islands incarnated the theoretical model to describe, think and design a city that is constituted of multiple layers and contrasting parts. Based on geomorphology the archipelago configuration will first be analyzed through the scope of the ocial science and later through the projects of “The City of the Captive Globe” and the “City in the City: Berlin a Green Archipelago”, that are the outcome of the intellectual interaction of Rem Koolhaas and Mathias Ungers. Even if different in the way they interpret and implement the concept of archipelago; the aforementioned projects try to deal with a city that is constituted of opposing parts. Within this context they suggested, in contrast to the totalitarian approach of Modernism, a design strategy that amplifies difference and division while simultaneously maintaining the unity of the whole. In the contemporary world where division and isolation is accelerated how can the metaphor of archipelago be employed to supply unity and entity at the same time? What design potentials does this particular approach to the city promote?
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‘Landscape Absurdism’: Las Vegas Source: http://www.theatlanticcities.com/design/2011/12/landscape-absurdism-las-vegas/711/
Arizona Source: http://fotografiasycreatividad.blogspot.co.uk/2010/09/laexpansion-urbana-en-estados-unidos.html
Mexico City Source: http://www.mustangevolution.com/forum/f168/t26103/
Tuca Vieira, Sao Paolo Source: http://www.phaidon.com/resource/172-3-sao-paulo.jpg
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Urbanisation - Residential enclave Urbanization can be considered as an ongoing phenomenon, a non tangible process of constant forming and reforming, an infinitive process of expansion driven by capital and “development”. The world taken as a resource of prosperity and profit, transforms into a dashboard of private desires while simultaneously shaped by them. Land, sea and air are decreased to become objects over which various conflicts and complex agreements take place between subjects, factors or states of different and multiple interests. The ambience that seems to characterize the contemporary planetary milieu carved out of various oscillations is underpinned by privatization and diverse processes of accumulation, where one can remark a momentous fragmentation of space. It seems that the urban environment is turning into an enclosed and privatized realm. Mark lee signalizes that “the proliferation of privatized, single use programs such as gated com-munities, special economic zones or tax havens has reinvigorated a renewed interest in segregated organizations.”1 It is within this framework that the notion of the enclave is going to be explored. Enclaves emerge in the forefront of the contemporary cityscape where segregation and processes of separation result to the emergence of “fortresses” and islands of different and divergent realities. “Fortified enclaves have become a status symbol and instruments of social separation.”2 Deterritorialization and reteritorialization take place in the urban environment with the materialization of implicit or explicit walls. Limits and borders gain significance and while their demarcation can be characterized as an absolute political gesture, architecture and urban design cannot be considered innocent; having the power to participate in political mechanisms of inclusion and exclusion of bodies and manipulation of their relations. In this process enclaves seem to become tools of control, regulation, calculation, commoditization and privatization. Within the neoliberal politics where land development and construction projects play a significant role in economy, residential enclaves have been produced since 1980. Today more and more housing companies and large scale investments carry out this type of urban residence production,3 mutating the city into a mosaic of specialized interiors and varied independent spatial configurations. This new concept of inhabitation that is based upon ideas of security and isolation where all facilities and services are included, is being promoted and advertised through various means of technology and the media.4 Gated communities are gradually becoming a global commodity and a cultural icon eagerly consumed by urban elite world-wide. Subsequently more and more neighborhoods and impoverished districts turn into ghettos and slums. These spatial, social, political and economical contrasting conditions manifest around the world and where they confront each other they create a peculiar and unique image of a city that Italo Calvino would probably include in Marco Polo’s narratives. 1 Mark Lee, ‘Two Deserted Islands’, San Rocco Magazine, 01 ( Winter 2010) http://www.adip.tu-berlin.de/wpcontent/ uploads/2011/03/SanRoccoTwoDesertedIslands_ML_1.pdf,(p.4) 2 Edward J. Blakely and Mary Gail Snyder, Fortress America : Gated Communities in the United States, (New York: Brookings Institution Press, 1997),p.2. 3 “Developers see gated projects as an important niche marketing strategy in a competitive environment: enclaves can attract consumers searching for a sense of community, identity, and security. By providing beautiful amenities and keeping out undesirables, gating may increase property values.”, Jill Grant, ‘Types of Gated Communities’, Environment and Planning B: Planning and Design, 31 (2004), 913-930, http://architectureandplanning.dal.ca/planning/faculty/ download/b3165.pdf, (p.914) 4 “The advertisements present the images of islands to which one can return every day, in order to escape from the city and its deteriorated environment and to encounter an exclusive world of pleasure among peers. The image of the enclaves, therefore, is opposed to the image of the city as a deteriorated world pervaded by not only pollution and noise but, more importantly, confusion and mixture that is social heterogeneity.”, Setha M. Low, Theorizing the City: The New Urban Anthropology Reader, (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1999), p.8.
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‘Metropolis Istanbul’, Robert Huber Source: http://roberthuber.photoshelter.com/gallery-image/Istanbul-Suburbia/G0000cCMTQrcSebM/I0000DPO1Fr0I3s8/ C0000VDQfr23huRY
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While gated communities undermine the concept of organized community life and the political system5 and construct a private world that shares little with its surroundings , the city as a whole transforms into a kaleidoscope of multiple realities. The cityscape seems to turn into an archipelago of enclaves and one can argue that these multiple “independent” compounds function as cities within the city or miniatures of the whole. Is the process of urbanization turning the world into a mere conglomeration of juxtaposed and isolated parts? Do the traditional city configurations tend to become unwoven; and how can the discourse of urban design respond to these mutations? These arising questions led the research into the quest of urban organizations based on segregation. As the totalitarian and standardizing approach of designing the city as a unified whole was not able to address the complexity of the emerging metropolis in the mid 20th century, in the 70’s an alternative approach was introduced. The metaphor of the archipelago and islands incarnated the theoretical model to describe, think and design a city that is constituted of multiple layers and contrasting parts. Today this scheme looks to gain significance in discussions about the city. Based on geomorphology and initially used in the social sciences the archipelago configuration will be further analyzed through the scope of other disciplines in order to outline its basic characteristics and axioms. Firstly though it is important to describe the entity of the island as an independent unit and then within the archipelagic configuration.
5 ‘They create physical barriers to access, and they privatize community space, not merely individual space. Many of these communities also privatize civic responsibilities, such as police protection, and communal services, such as education, recreation and entertainment.’, Edward J. Blakely and Mary Gail Snyder, Architecture of Fear’ (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 1997), p.85.
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‘Surrounded Islands’, Biscayne Bay, Greater Miami, Florida, 1980-83, Artists: Christo and Jeanne-Claude Source: http://michelelaird.blogspot.co.uk/2009/02/christo-and-jeanne-claude-unveil.html
“Emilio’s Folly: Man is an Island”, Architect: Emilio Ambasz Source: http://www.byronlast.com/2012/08/emilio-ambasz-emilios-folly-man-is.html
“L’enfer, c’est les autres - The hell is the others” Photographer: Gilbert Garcin Source: http://www.gilbert-garcin.com/
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“Le cap de bonne esperance - Cape of good hope”
Islands Islands have been widely perceived as isolated entities clearly distinct and independent from their environment. While islands are being surrounded completely by a body of water; it is under the sea’s jurisdiction to delineate their boundaries. These entities have been identified as distinct enclosed worlds with an explicit distinction of interior - exterior. This condition highlights two main ideas of them. One being the integrated character formed in and of themselves while isolated from others and the other their insularity unto themselves. Used as empirical phenomena for examination they have taken different and various interpretations. The notion of boundedness that is linked to this entity has been used not only in literature but also in academic disciplines. “The dominant paradigm in social anthropology still defines all societies as islands unique virtually self sustaining systems to be understood primarily in their own terms, according to their own presumably unique culture.”6 In the Deleuzean corpus the geographical distinction of two types of islands, namely continental and oceanic, became the basis of a philosophical explanation of human’s imagination and elan towards islands. The continental (accidental arrived islands), which used to be part of a larger body of land that eventually eroded, represent the dream of those people who want to pull away from the continent and their desire to become lost and isolated. The oceanic islands on the other hand (originally essential islands) which emerged from the sea represent the impulse of starting anew, recreate and beginning from scratch. These two movements of imagination of people towards islands when eventually occurred they transfer their dynamic image upon the island; and even if they have different goals their consciousness that was carried along seems to become the very consciousness of the island itself. Thus even if islands are populated they are deserted in theory. This elaboration of the entity of the island is only reinforcing and making it explicitly distinct that isolation and separation are the main notions inscribed in its very existence. This idea of isolation and exclusion of oneself to another place away from what is considered to be the opposite it’s also encountered in Thomas Moore “Utopia” where again the island becomes the ideal space of an ideal community. Utopia meaning the “no place land” stresses even more the idea that islands in some cases are imagined to be out or even beyond the normative conception of reality. The geographical condition of the island intrigues the imagination and seems to receive a conceptual approach. Thus as a notion is usually utilized to describe spatial and social conditions and configurations, that are not necessarily taking place on real islands. Similarly geography has given another conceptual tool to intellectuals. The concept of the archipelago and the islands is also based on a specific geographical condition, but is only doing so in order to extract a diagram of a nexus of relations. In rather opposition to the previous perception about islands the second conceptual tool implies a whole different horizon in the understanding of this entity. “Thinking with the archipelago”7 and not just for it; in Social sciences is an alternative way to perceive and describe complex conditions of the contemporary world that cannot 6 Thomas Hylland Eriksen, ‘ In Which Sense do Culture Islands Exist?’, Social Anthropology Journal, 1B (1993), 133-147, http://folk.uio.no/geirthe/Islands.pdf, p.134. 7 Jonathan Pugh, ‘Island Movements: Thinking with the Archipelago”, Island Studies Journal, 8 (2013), 9-24, http:// www.islandstudies.ca/sites/islandstudies.ca/files/ISJ-8-1-2013-Pugh_0.pdf, p.14.
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“To that question so dear to the old explorers: “which creatures live on deserted islands?” one could only answer: human beings live there already, but uncommon humans, they are absolutely separate, absolute creators, in short, an idea of humanity, a prototype, a man who would almost be a god.” Deleuze Gilles, ‘Desert Islands and other Texts 19531974’, Leonardo, Vol.38, No.3 (2005), pp.258-259, The MIT Press, http://www.jstor.org.libproxy.ucl.ac.uk/ stable/1577767,p.11.
Edouard Glissant seems to have a different opinion on what is an Utopia: “Utopia is a reality where one can meet the other without losing himself [..] This is the only way to fight globalization. Not by withdrawing into one self, into one’s own condition, but by establishing relations with the other. And this is a real dimension of Utopia.” Edouard Glissant & Hans Ulrich Obrist, ‘100 Notes-100 Thoughts/100 Notizen-100 Gedanken’, Documenta(13) No.038, pp.5-6
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be divided into discrete societies. The blurry boundaries seem to provoke the traditional perceptions about societies and many scientists call for re-consideration on the way they are being analyzed and described. “Archipelagic� thought emerged as a solution in the request of a different approach to this phenomenon. Arose from a rupture to the traditional perception on islands and their relations to the environment; that was reduced merely to the binary topologically based land-sea and island-continent/mainland condition, a third typological category that is the island-island configuration was introduced. This new topographical condition established a new frame to describe and elaborate multiplicate relational systems.
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The Aegean Archipelago is a set of independent islands with distinct qualities yet belonging to a common Aegean culture. The sea that surrounds the islands is as important as the islands themselves. Map of “Graeciae pars meridionalis�, author: Lisle, Guillaume, 1707 Source: http://www.davidrumsey.com/maps4544.html
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Archipelago and Islands The Latin word archipelago, derives from the Greek word: «Αρχιπέλαγος: αρχή + πέλαγος» which can be translated as the ‘principle sea’. Even if initially it was used only for the Aegean Sea eventually it was linked with the general image of a network of islands that is connected by the sea. While the personification of the sea in Greek mythology was called “Pontos” and “Ponte” in Italian means bridge, Massimo Cacciari argues that for “Greeks and generally for the people around the Mediterranean, the sea was not just a desert, but instead a bridge that connected fragments of land, the islands.”8 Edouard Glissant was one of the most dominant advocates of archipelagic thought. Born in Martinique and thus clearly affected from Antilles’s geography, his though opposed the homogenization of the cultures and introduced means of global exchange that maintain difference in a way that can produce new characteristics. He supported a creative exchange that allows the preservation of identity of each part taking place. National identity in the Caribbean islands is an amalgam of French remnants of colonization and African elements. This process was characterized by Glissant with the term creolization. Creolization is the blend of cultures, a hybridization of different cultural stands and it is designated as an ongoing process, as a dialectical movement that tries to overcome the exclusionary tendencies of ethnic and national identity while at the same time promoting any cultural difference and localized identity.“Thinking spatially with the archipelago in this way challenges basic assumptions about territorially bounded political space and connects with something many are struggling with today, namely the dominance of territorially based democracy in a relational world.”9 The relational identity of the components of the archipelago is rooted to the interconnection and the movement between and amidst them. A constellation of networks, multiplicities and assemblages erodes the explicit singularity of the island and its static territorial form. The island as interrelated and co-constructed is not merely diminished to a state of mimicry but it turns into a state of metamorphosis, a state of creative transfiguration of inheritances. Islands can maintain their independence while being a part of a larger system. An island’s ontological value is not static in this condition of coexistence; it seems to range “between closure and openness, interiority and exteriority, singular fixating and diasporic multiplicity.”10 The network of interconnections, interactions and collaborations is the key element to characterize and underpin the theoretical concept of the archipelago with the islands. Islands can become “spaces of metamorphosis, of material practices, culture and politics”11 and this perception can enlighten new aspects of how islands can occur in space. An example that is based in another discipline and more precisely that of politics is going to be investigated here in order to explore how the metaphor of the archipelago was used to describe conditions that shaped dynamic islands of metamorphosis in space.
8 Socrates Stratis and Christiana Ioannou and Christos Papastergiou, ‘From Fragment to Eco-Island: An Archipelago a la Carte’, Edinburgh Architectural Research Journal, 33 (2012), http://sites.ace.ed.ac.uk/ear/home/, p.78. 9 Jonathan Pugh, ‘Island Movements: Thinking with the Archipelago”, Island Studies Journal, 8 (2013), 9-24, http:// www.islandstudies.ca/sites/islandstudies.ca/files/ISJ-8-1-2013-Pugh_0.pdf, p.14. 10 Elaine Stratford and Godfrey Baldacchino and Elizabeth Mc Mahon and Carol Farbotko and Andrew Harwood, ‘Envisioning the Archipelago’, Island Studies Journal, 6 (2011), 113-130, http://www.islandstudies.ca/sites/islandstudies. ca/files/ISJ-6-2-2011-Stratford-et-al.pdf, p.124. 11 Jonathan Pugh, ‘Island Movements: Thinking with the Archipelago”, Island Studies Journal, 8 (2013), 9-24, http:// www.islandstudies.ca/sites/islandstudies.ca/files/ISJ-8-1-2013-Pugh_0.pdf, p.17.
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“The map is a document I produced to express the new form of territorial manifesto that the Occupy Wall Street movement has been implementing by its very existence. It is an archipelago composed of various islands that all have one thing in common, yet develop their own identity within the territory they occupy.” The Funambulist Pamphlets: “Occupy Wall Street”, p.46
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Leopold Lambert in one of the Funambulist editions, entitled “Occupy Wall Street”, has made an interesting note for the term “occupy” which later permitted the interpretation of the metaphor of the archipelago and allowed him to implement it in the field of politics. Initially this term was perceived to be an action that only oriented its dynamism towards the main central space of power of a state (in the case examined the financial world of lower Manhattan in Wall Street). What was to be overcome though is that the action of occupation does not necessarily “involve a colonial attitude towards the space”12 that it’s occurred. Its basic principle is rooted in the conglomeration of bodies that have the political power to choose where to exist each moment. This automatically means that an effective occupation can also be persuaded when many active assemblages of bodies are synchronously in different locations within space. In this framework the notion of the archipelago is presented as a political one and is argued that it is able to establish a new paradigm of territorial sovereignty. Leopold contends that occupation as a practice of direct democracy forms “liberated islands that are functioning in a precarious yet effective autonomy”13 within a fragmented territorial configuration. What is essential for the metaphor of the political archipelago is that even if the islands share a common history they preserve their own identities that are constantly constructed with its inhabitants and their actions. The fundamental condition that constitutes the islands is the implicit or explicit acceptance of the individuals for a corporal and spatial engagement in order to create a political community. The limits of the islands are continually redefined and the dialogues taking place amidst them is the elemental characteristic of the scheme of the political archipelago. This term needs to be understood as Leopold stresses: “as the space of a constructive intensive movement that lasts as long as the islands exists, as long as bodies form a political community on this territory.”14 The concept of the archipelago and the islands either political or social has been utilized as an alternative way to describe complicated relations between parts that are constituents of a larger system. It describes a form of individuality that is not exclusive and promotes a state of simultaneous unity and separateness. But how is this metaphor used in architecture and urban design? Why is it so relevant today in view of the emerging enclave urbanism and the proliferation of self-sufficient compounds?
12 Leopold Lambert, ‘Occupy Wall Street’, The Funambulist Pamplets, 5 (2013), http://thefunambulist.net/2013/09/08/ the-funambulist-pamphlets-, p.7.volume-05-occupy-wall-street-now-published/, p.7. 13 Ibid., p.46. 14 Ibid.,p.85.
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‘Indifference: Omu Oma’, Source: San Rocco (Summer 2013), pp.106-107 21
‘The City of the Captive Globe’, Rem Koolhaas Source: http://www.rappresentazione.it/wpcontent/uploads/2012/02/CityOfCaptiveGlobe.jpg
‘Exodus’, Rem Koolhaas, Elia Zenghelis Source: http://www.rappresentazione.it/wpcontent/uploads/2012/02/CityOfCaptiveGlobe.jpg
‘Cities within the City, Berlin: A Green Archipelago’ , Mathias Ungers, Rem Koolhaas, Peter Riemann, Hans Kollhoff, Arthur Ovaska Source: Florian Hertweck and Sebastien Marot, The City in the City: Belrin A Green Archipelago, ( Germany: Lars Muller edition, 2013), p.50
“Urban Villa”, 2nd Summer workshop organized by Mathias Ungers Source: Florian Hertweck and Sebastien Marot, The City in the City: Belrin A Green Archipelago, ( Germany: Lars Muller edition, 2013), p.117
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“City in the city” In the 70s the theoretical concept of the archipelago and the islands was introduced as an alternative way to theorize, think and design the cityscape. This different perception for the city stood in opposition with the existing modernist ideas which suggested a city as a complete and self-contained urban system that should be approached through totalitarian and standardized design methods. For the cases to be described below the city, in Mathias Ungers’s quote, is “no longer uniform. It is a heterogeneous amalgam of different elements, systems and functions. The big city [..] can no longer be integrated within a coherent system because of the varied, self-contradictory requirements imposed on it”.15 This perception for the city describes the framework of the two projects that will be further analyzed. The first project“The City of the Captive Globe” was the blueprint of the book “Delirious New York” and it is an interpretational representation of Manhattan. What is interesting is that its concept didn’t derive initially from the context of New York City but from Rem Koolhaas’s thesis project while he was still a student in AA school. At his project “Exodus”, which was explicitly influenced by his visit and experience of the Wall in Berlin as well as the unexpected discovery of Ungers’s oeuvre, Koolhaas amplified the forces of the metropolis of London and created a linear enclosed composition of radically contrasting parts of the city. After “while he was in Ithaca he envisaged “The City of the Captive Globe” “as a “square” within Exodus”16 and it was only later that the project was included in his theoretical project for Manhattan. The second project: “The City in the City: Berlin as a Green Archipelago” was written in 1977 and is a proposal for the destroyed postwar West Berlin. It was produced in collaboration with a team of students and other architects (Rem Koolhaas being amidst them) in the context of the 2nd summer school that Uswald Mathias Ungers was organizing. The summer school had as its main theme and orientation the “Urban Villa”. As a hybrid of the countryside and the city the urban villa was designed as a minicity that could become the ideal model and instrument to establish a new dialectic relation among the two conditions. A constellation of this type of residential units was then inserted in the landscape of the city within green urban gardens. This design strategy was later implemented in the scale of the city and developed to become the project of the Green Archipelago. In addition the definitive involvement of Rem Koolhaas and the distinct influence of Schinkel’s project for Glienicke were significant factors to evolve the proposal for Berlin. As an outcome of a creative and intellectual interaction of the two significant figures the regarded projects even if produced within a specific context they addressed issues of wider urban conditions, discussions and queries that are also pertinent today. What is interesting in the comparison of these two conceptual projects is the contradictory perception of the term archipelago and islands. This divergence subsequently seems to outline not just different ideas about the city but also urban design potentials and practices.
15 O.M.Ungers, S.Vieths, The Dialectic City, (Milan: Skira Editore, 1997), p.19. 16 Florian Hertweck and Sebastien Marot, The City in the City: Belrin A Green Archipelago, ( Germany: Lars Muller edition, 2013), p.40.
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“ The Metropolis strives to reach a point where the world is completely fabricated by man, so that it absolutely coincides with his desires [...] the Metropolis needs/deserves its own specialized architecture, one that can vindicate the original promise of the Metropolitan condition and develop the fresh traditions of the Culture of Congestion further.” Source: Koolhaas Rem, Delirious New York: A Retroactive Manifesto for Manhattan , ( New York: The Monacelli Press, 1978), p.293
Manhattan
Source: http://www.pinterest.com/pin/30258628718860054/
R.Koolhaas, Sketch for Ungers’s competition project for the Landwehrkanal-Tiergarten in Berlin, 1973 Source: Florian Hertweck and Sebastien Marot, The City in the City: Belrin A Green Archipelago, ( Germany: Lars Muller edition, 2013), p.135
Hotel Sphinx facing onto Times Square, Rem Koolhaas Source : Koolhaas Rem, Delirious New York: A Retroactive Manifesto for Manhattan , ( New York: The Monacelli Press, 1978), p.298
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Axonometric section through new Waldorf-Astoria Hotel` Source: Koolhaas Rem, Delirious New York: A Retroactive Manifesto for Manhattan , ( New York: The Monacelli Press, 1978), p.149
What are these fraternally projects mean exactly when they utilize the metaphor of the archipelago and what do they convey with the term “city in the city”17 when they address the entity of the island? In the first case density and congestion are being celebrated, exacerbated and manifested based on the organizational element of the grid that underpins the isotropic cityscape. As a dry archipelago the grid demarcates the blocks-islands. These elements represented by a generic unit of a monolith are being lobotomized from the exterior environment and are kept in a relative isolation through the fast moving traffic of the grid. The entity of the raised granite base looks like a compact impenetrable extrusion of each plot and it affirms the desirable severance of the islands with the whole. The only factor that seems to keep the islands together is their undeniable interdependence with the network of infrastructure and transportation of the grid. The entity of the island-block is defined as a city in the city to describe the New York’s skyscrapers and larger compounds like the Rockefeller Centre and the Waldorf Astoria Hotel. These ensembles try to comprise in one site several different programs. The axiom that permits this particular characteristic as Koolhaas denotes is the “vertical schism, which creates the freedom to stack disparate activities directly on top of each other without any concern for their symbolic compatibility.”18 The metropolitan islands are ideal self-sufficient vertical districts described by a highly differentiated and exclusive interiority. Each of the component islands of the archipelago celebrates a radically divergent value. The individuality of each plot is manifested by the representation of diverse artifacts on top of their surface. Contrasting architectural styles and theories are placed one next to the other in order to reinforce the argument that metropolitan islands are platforms of independent mini-cosmos with an explicit delineation of an interior and exterior reality. The city transforms into a composition of segregated autonomous parts that use architecture as a symbol to only enhance their uniqueness and eventually turn the city into an iconographic representation of cohabited singularities. The fragments of the islands have no type of affiliation with each other and the space of the archipelago-grid only maintains their status of isolation and separateness. The archipelago in this example is only the foundation where a federation of islands can later be constructed upon. The term of the “city in the city” addresses the scale of a building unit or a complex of blocks and it represents a self contained universe, an independent miniature of the whole which is constructed ex novo. While in the case of Koolhaas the archipelago is based on a mere cohabitation of isolated block-islands that lead to an explicit separation, in the Ungers’s example the formed islands are based on a dialectic relation of complementary district-islands which coexist. In the second case the metaphor of the archipelago is based upon one of the basic theoretical tools of Ungers thought, teaching and practice; the notion of the “Coincidentia Oppositorium” that is the composition of complementary spaces. This concept was implemented in different scales within his oeuvre and probably found its culmination in the “City in the City: Berlin a green Archipelago”. In this project Berlin became a kind of laboratory, a testing platform of a new type of urbanism that would operate as a prototype for other cities. Based on a negative urban growth this proposal used the crisis of depopulation that Berlin was facing at the time as the engine of the design strategy. While shrinkage composed one of the elemental principles of the project, the second significant axiom was generated by Berlin’s historical development. As a city that was 17 This term was also used in fundamentally different way by Leon Krier in 1976. He used this expression to depict his project for La Villette quarter in Paris. Two years later, he employed the same concept in Luxemburg proposing a division of the city into smaller identical, mixed districts with a population of 10 000 to 15 000 people. 18 Koolhaas Rem, Delirious New York: A Retroactive Manifesto for Manhattan , ( New York: The Monacelli Press, 1978), p.173.
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“These projects are all manifestations of “possible models of a pluralist city” and are the theatres of a coincidentia oppositorum in which the variety of forms and spaces assembled provide a palette for a whole panoply of uses and lifestyles. In a sense, they are also all imaginary museums, forums of contradictions, Noah’s Arks in which the genetic heritage of architecture would have taken shelter to survive the deluge of functionalism and the amnesia it triggers.” Source: Florian Hertweck and Sebastien Marot, The City in the City: Belrin A Green Archipelago, p.27
Peter Riemann, drawings for the “City in the City”, during the Summer School, 1977 Source: Florian Hertweck and Sebastien Marot, The City in the City: Belrin A Green Archipelago, p.164
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Comparison of urban structures: the street Unter den Eichen - Leonidov’s project for Magnitogorsk Source: Florian Hertweck and Sebastien Marot, The City in the City: Belrin A Green Archipelago, p.105
developed in different historical moments, Berlin’s multiple zones and quarters have divergent and unique urban design features. This heterogeneity and multiplicity was reinforced by carving out of the city landscape the different archipelagic terrestrial islands. Through a process of identification and preservation the urban forces and tensions were accentuated with the selection of those districts that were explicit examples of the city’s history and character. Opposing those areas that weren’t equally significant were proposed to be left in decay and gradually turn into nature. The urban islands in this example weren’t created anew on a given grid base but they were shaped from the existing asfound conditions. Architecture in this case was not a matter of novelty and superiority. The architectural intervention was used to only underline the existing physiognomy of the island. By reinforcing its character it didn’t play the role of a landmark but that of a reference or analogy. Already existing architectural and urban design projects from different contexts were selected and applied within each island to enhance their already inscribed typology. The islands though can only be completed as a system through their surrounding environment. The archipelago in this example was perceived as an antithesis to the “cityness” of the islands. The green archipelago that was suggested was supposed to include an array of various types of green and “natural” space. It would be a designed manmade environment of suburbs, urban gardens, farmland, agricultural land and forests. It would also contain infrastructure and highways to connect the islands and facilities that would be based on mobility (supermarkets, banks, entertainment complexes, etc). In this second example archipelago was not merely the base to establish the location of the islands and supply the basic network for their existence. Moreover it was not just the generic exterior space that kept the interior in isolation. This type of archipelago was more of an active multifunctional complementary space to that of the islands’. It was the counter space of the city; a type of a constructed countryside that supported and gave life to the islands as well as functioned only because of their existence.
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Archipelagic urban models - Enclave The metaphor of the archipelago and the islands elaborated by the aforementioned projects received divergent interpretations and thus it was implemented in a contrasting way. This is because these two projects even if they were developed within a frame of collaboration and interaction they conveyed two totally different ideas of the city. What type of potential urban design models and strategies they promote? The first project addresses a city that is isotropic and homogenized in its exterior-public space while in its interior private realm the constituent entities are self-sufficient and selfcontained micro cosmos, free to establish their own reality. The urban model implicitly promoted in this example suggests that the islands have concrete and impermeable boundaries in order to protect their exemplarity. These entities of varied scale are interrelated only because they find themselves within the same antagonistic board game. Like chessmen they try to stand out and use architecture only to reinforce and outline their significance. Architecture and urban design in this case becomes an art of invention. Design turns into a race of excellence and aims to create islands anew that have nothing or little to do with the context they are applied. In an extreme projection this strategy can lead to an isotropic world that locus would play no significant role and where everything could be anywhere. The idea that underlines this first example of archipelago is that within the grid of urbanization everything can be accepted as long as they are isolated and self-referential. The fragmented whole that is produced with this strategy is characterized coherent and organized only because it diminishes any conflict and contradiction between its parts. On the contrary the second model promotes an archipelago that is a kind of federation composed of distinct entities. The city in this case is perceived to be a heterogeneous amalgam that should not be destroyed and standardized but rather preserved and accentuated. The aim here is to demarcate the contrasts and disputes in an unambiguous manner. The city as a space of complementary places is open to interpretation and innovation when simultaneously is rooted to its past. The islands shaped in this model, as valuable cornerstones of the city, should convey its ideas and concepts and preserve its substance. Like punctuations within the city’s topography this micro scale self sufficient entities should have porous boundaries and be underlined with a dialectical relation. Architecture in this case becomes an art of discovery and then composition. Its task is to penetrate the multilayered and complex tissue of the city and integrate itself to amplify the existing features and incorporated typologies. Design is consisted in the “recognition of the genius loci out of which it grows.�19 The dynamism in this design strategy lies on establishing a dipole of thesis and antithesis, as only through juxtaposition the parts can claim their autonomy. The fragmentation of the city in this urban model is consistent as long as the conflicts and differences are clearly distinguished, preserved and accelerated. Seemingly the above urban models correspond to different dilemmas that are encountered in a design project. In the contemporary cities where one comes across with a dispersed, polycentric and fragmented landscape the concept of the archipelago looks to be able to provide a model to form, organize and structure the chaotic whole. It promotes an alternative theoretical system to describe and design complex structures. It is a suggestive model that supplies the possibility to keep extremely different entities connected and related. This particular attribute is the promise that this metaphor promotes. Today many 19 Florian Hertweck and Sebastien Marot, The City in the City: Belrin A Green Archipelago, ( Germany: Lars Muller edition, 2013), p.26.
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“The Future of Architecture�, Nils-Ole Lund Source: http://designlevelzero.wordpress. com/2012/10/20/collagesnils-ole-lundthe-future-of-architecture/
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projects and design proposals utilize this concept in various scales. As a concept, diagram and analogy or even as an iconographic imitation the metaphor of the archipelago receives dissimilar interpretations and implications.20 How can this model though inform the discussion of the enclave? If enclaves are entities that are based principally on a decisive gesture of inclusion/ exclusion it means that while a condition x forms a specific interior simultaneously a different condition y is designated in the exterior.This presupposition, along with the threshold/boundary that keeps the two “environments” together shapes a duality that its relation seemingly is based in contradistinction. This generic definition of the enclave reveals its affinity with the entity of the island. Upon this observation a parallelism of the enclave to the island is suggested and subsequently the Deleuzian division of islands, into Oceanic and Continental, will be used as a reference to demarcate two types of enclaves. This distinction will then be aligned with the two “city in the city” types which the previously analyzed archipelago projects produced. The Oceanic enclave is the entity to be inserted in a space from above. This means that is a space that is invented, is designed and created anew and it has nothing to do with the context that is placed. It is a self referential unit with no history. On the other hand the Continental enclave is the entity that was shaped from within. This space is discovered and designed with a reference to the as-found condition. It is an independent unit but nevertheless it carries a part of the substance of its “motherland”. These two types of enclaves correspond to the “city in the city” types that were previously analyzed. The first urban model that is based to Koolhaas’s project produces oceanic enclaves while the second, which is an outcome of Ungers’s interpretation of the archipelago metaphor, shapes continental enclaves. In both oceanic and continental enclaves a decisive definition of borders and limits is occurred. Their territory is thus evidently outlined but is seems that their thresholds differentiate. One more concrete and the other more porous they constitute a closed and an open system respectively to penetration and change. Influenced dissimilarly from the surrounding environment, these entities seem to exist simultaneously within the contemporary metropolis. If Gated communities are an explicit paradigm of oceanic islands what continental islands could consider being respectively? What is a more interesting sequence of questions though for the discourse of urban design and the studio work; is how a designer could frame, think and establish a strategy within a context which already contains both of the enclave types? How can it decide if and which type should be reinforced and in what way? What would be the outcome of such a decision? Furthermore if the above enclave types are the result of an implicit or explicit implementation of the archipelago model can the same metaphor be used in a third way to introduce another type of enclave amidst the aforementioned two? What kind of a design strategy would this hypothesis imply and what kind of design potentials could it promote within the as-found fragmented context?
20 Appendix.
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Bibliography
BOOKS: Aureli Pier Vittorio, The Possibility of an Absolute Architecture ( Cambrige: MIT Press, 2011) Blakely Edward J. and Snyder Mary Gail, Fortress America : Gated Communities in the United States, (New York: Brookings Institution Press, 1997) Blakely Edward J. and Snyder Mary Gail, Architecture of Fear, (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 1997) Hertweck Florian and Marot Sebastien, The City in the City: Belrin A Green Archipelago, ( Germany: Lars Muller edition, 2013) Koolhaas Rem, Delirious New York: A Retroactive Manifesto for Manhattan , ( New York: The Monacelli Press, 1978) Koolhaas Rem, Mau Bruce, Werlemann Hans, S M L XL, 2nd edn ( New York: The Monacelli Press, 1998) Koolhaas Rem and Inaba Jeffrey, Great Leap Forward, ( Germany: Taschen 2001) Rowe Colin and Koetter Fred, Collage City, ( Cambrige, Massachusetts, and London, England: MIT Press, 1984) Ungers Oswald Mathias, The Dialectic City, ( Milan:Skira Editore, 1997) ARTICLES: Deleuze Gilles, ‘Desert Islands and other Texts 1953-1974’, Leonardo, Vol.38, No.3 (2005), pp.258-259, The MIT Press, http://www.jstor.org.libproxy.ucl.ac.uk/stable/1577767 Eriksen Thomas Hylland, ‘ In Which Sense do Culture Islands Exist?’, Social Anthropology Journal, 1B (1993), 133-147, http://folk.uio.no/geirthe/Islands.pdf Glissant Edouard, ‘Poetics of Relation’, SubStance, Vol.27, No.1, Issue 85(1998), pp.144147, published by University of Wisconsin Press http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/3 685724?uid=3738032&uid=2&uid=4&sid=21103405020941 Grant Jill, ‘Types of Gated Communities’, Environment and Planning B: Planning and Design, 31 (2004), 913-930, http://architectureandplanning.dal.ca/planning/faculty/ download/b3165.pdf Lee Mark, ‘Two Deserted Islands’, San Rocco Magazine, 01 ( Winter 2010) http://www. adip.tu-berlin.de/wpcontent/uploads/2011/03/SanRoccoTwoDesertedIslands_ML_1.pdf Low Setha M. ‘Theorizing the City: The New Urban Anthropology Reader’, (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1999) Pugh Jonathan, ‘Island Movements: Thinking with the Archipelago’, Island Studies Journal, Vol.8, No.1, 2013, pp.9-24, http://www.islandstudies.ca/sites/islandstudies.ca/ files/ISJ-8-1-2013-Pugh_0.pdf
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Ramoneda Josep, ‘A philosophical Idea of the City’, Conference lectured at Yale University, 2003, organized by the CCCB, site: http://www.publicspace.org/en/text-library/eng/7una-idea-filosofica-de-ciutat Socrates Stratis and Christiana Ioannou and Christos Papastergiou, ‘From Fragment to Eco-Island: An Archipelago a la Carte’, Edinburgh Architectural Research Journal, 33 (2012), http://sites.ace.ed.ac.uk/ear/home/ Stratford Elaine and Baldacchino Godfrey and Mc Mahon Elizabeth and Farbotko Carol and Harwood Andrew, ‘Envisioning the Archipelago’, Island Studies Journal, Vol.6, No.2, 2011, pp.113-130, http://www.islandstudies.ca/sites/islandstudies.ca/files/ISJ-6-2-2011Stratford-et-al.pdf Turner Bryan S., ‘Enclosures,Enclaves, and Entrapment’, Sociological Inquiry, Vol.80, No.2, May 2010, 241-260, http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com.libproxy.ucl.ac.uk/doi/10.1111/j.1475682X.2010.00329.x/pdf MAGAZINES: Edouard Glissant & Hans Ulrich Obrist, ‘100 Notes-100 Thoughts/100 Notizen-100 Gedanken’, Documenta(13) No.038 Leopold Lambert, ‘Occupy Wall Street’, The Funambulist Pamplets, 5 (2013), http:// thefunambulist.net/2013/09/08/the-funambulist-pamphlets-, p.7.volume-05-occupywall-street-now-published
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Appendix
“Designing with the archipelago” 1. Archipelagos: Ungers vs. Rowe Mathias Ungers’s and Colin Rowe’s oeuvre for the city served as the theoretical foundation for an architecture studio at Cornell University, in 2011. Using the campus as a foil the studio focused on the way in which this place could turn into a microcosm of the city itself. “The paradox of the studio’s tabula rasa site condition on Roosevelt Island - an island with a low density, a discrete number of building typologies, and minimal infrastructure became a testing ground for strategies that “reflect the urban forms of the city through architecture.”1 2. Liopetri Fishing Harbor, An Archipelago of Eco Islands The metaphor of the archipelago in this project has been used as a design strategy. Having as a case study the Liopetri fishing harbor and park in Cyprus, the draftworks*architects tried to reconnect the existing natural and artificial fragmented territories. They aimed to achieve sustainability by promoting an “archipelago a la carte”. Thus “fragments are converted into “eco-islands” which obtain discursive characteristics, meaning a singularity, that is however not isolated, but identifies itself through the belonging of a greater whole.”2 3. Archipelago Cities In this case Point Supreme Architects translate Athens into an archipelago where mountains and hills float. Then through the hypothesis that this urban archipelago corresponds to the circular one of Cyclades another urban archipelago is designed to correspond to the linear one of Hawaii. “Kawaii is an imaginary linear city built by the people of Hawaii and located in the ocean. It is autonomous and self contained. Kawaii’s urban fabric connects a linear series of hills of different programs and features that mysteriously resemble Hawaii’s linear collection of islands.”3 4. The DispersedUrbanity of the Aegean Archipelago, The Aegean as a City This example derives from the Greek pavilion at the 10th International Architecture Exhibition La Bienalle di Venezia. Based on the discussion for the metacity this proposal introduces the spatial example of Aegean to “represent the promise of a different urbanism.”4 As an alternative metacity, Aegean depicts a “decentralized” centrality and the actual archipelago not only turns into a paradigm but is suggested to be accentuated and enhanced. 5. Urban Archipelago At the scale of a singular building this structure was perceived by the Future Cities Lab to be sited in a landfill in Hong Kong. It is a massive art and science educational complex. Archipelago has been used in this example as a metaphor for the dynamic urban landscape that this intervention aims to generate. Situated in a significant intersection this “archipelago” seeks to sustain “multiple networks of exchange and promote a promiscuous mixing of diverse ecologies (people, matter, data, energy flows, etc)”.5
1 http://archinect.com/features/article/58887387/archipelagos-ungers-vs-rowe 2 Socrates Stratis and Christiana Ioannou and Christos Papastergiou, ‘From Fragment to Eco-Island: An Archipelago a la Carte’, Edinburgh Architectural Research Journal, 33 (2012), http://sites.ace.ed.ac.uk/ear/home/, p.72. 3 http://www.pointsupreme.com/content/research/archipelago-cities.html 4 http://www.arch.uth.gr/en/activities/291 5 http://www.future-cities-lab.net/urban-archipelago/
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1.Archipelagos: Ungers vs. Rowe Source: http://archinect.com/features/article/58887387/archipelagos-ungers-vs-rowe%60
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2.Liopetri fishing harbor, An archipelago of eco - islands Source: http://draftworks.eu/ch/archives/92#.U1uI1fl5OjJ
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3.Archipelago cities Source: http://www.pointsupreme.com/content/research/archipelago-cities.html
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4.The dispersed urbanity of the Aegean archipelago, The Aegean as a city Source: http://www.fotissagonas.com/projects/La_Biennale_di_Venezia_Greek_Pavillion/ index.html
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5.Urban archipelago Source: http://www.future-cities-lab.net/urban-archipelago/
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