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The Illusion of Autonomous Ritual
CONTENTS PROLOGUE
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THE ILLUSION OF AUTONOMOUS RITUAL THE BACKGROUND PROJECT THE CHOSEN SITE
CITY
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EPILOGUE
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THE BACKGROUND PROJECT THE LAYERS
APPENDIX 1: CAPPRICCIO + FOLLY APPENDIX 2: DIARY
BIBLIOGRAPHY
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PROLOGUE
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“Secularisation has not suppressed the sacred, but rather has replaced it with forms of governance - such as state or capital - that have inherited a similar function to religion, becoming ‘religious’ without ‘religion’. Ritual and Walls, Pier Vittorio Aureli
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The Illusion of Autonomous Ritual
The secularisation of the Church, The secularisation of the Factory
The industrial revolution of Turin has brought about an identity of Turin as being a one company city, a city whose main economic driver was closely tied to that of the Fiat automotive company. However before this, Turin, much like many European cities, had religion in its very core. The industrial revolution has brought about a transformation in the urban planning of Turin that has introduced a series of dualities. The parts of Turin that lie outside of the original religious core start to stray from the original religious axis. However, while the city grid and ideologies start to stray away from religion due to capitalism, the forms of architecture remain that of Aldo Rossi’s beliefs of Collective Memory.
“The City itself is the collective memory of its people, and like memory it is associated with objects and places. The city is the locus of the collective memory.” -Aldo Rossi
Just as the church starts to resemble the house, the factory starts to resemble the church. Just as people start to believe that they are moving towards a state of autonomy by letting go of the past , they realise that the inescapable fact of reality is how closely reality is tied to memory. Just as capitalism has introduced an illusion of secularisation, the departure of Fiat from Turin has the same effect. Stuck in the illusion of Autonomous Ritual.
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THE BACKGROUND PROJECT
The OMA Parc De La Villette was a project that rigorously tackles relationships between conditions rather than typology which was very relevant to Aldo Rossi’s ideas of collective memory. The idea of collective memory insists that the idea of typology is analogous to one’s personal experiences to forms, architectural or non architectural. In a sense, the relationship between objects and people are more important than their predefined program and form. The project is a park outlined by 5 distinct layers with the first layer bring the site boundaries. The second layer is a series of strips, each strip having drastically different experiences to the next. These different conditions across strips are explored further with the ciruclation and confetti layer. In a way, the circulation layer exposes and confronts the different strips by cutting perpendicularly through it. The confetti are a series of architectural objects littered across the site to derive a sense of homogenity across the different strips. The last layer, the figures would be the destinations of which lead people through these interesting relations.
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THE CHOSEN SITE: LINGOTTO The project site was chosen to be Lingotto as it is the site of one of the most prominent monuments of Turin, the Fiat Lingotto Factory. In addition, this site has the exaggerated condition of the seperation between programmatic spaces much like the strips in the OMA Parc De La Villette. The Lingotto factory was one of the main car manufacturing buildings within the city of Turin. After the departure of Fiat from Turin, this building was renovated by Renzo Piano and transformed into a multi program building. Much like the secularisation of the church during the industrial revolution, this is an example of the secularisation of the factory. The original programmatic organisation of the factory exists in this layering of heirarchies as well, with the production line of the cars progressing linerly upwards. The proposal attempts to extend this transformation done to the factory outwards, integrating the drastically different zones into one homogenous plane of relationships. Only then can architectural form acheive a sense of autonomy.
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THE CITY
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STRIPS
CIRCULATION
The strips were layed out as an observed exisiting condition in the Turin Lingotto. These strips exists as predefined zones seperating the site into horizontal layers of program. These strips also exist vertically, defined by the functional hierarchy existing in the manufacturing process of the Lingotto Factory.
The promenande was seen as the exisitng condition starting from the Olympic bridge, leading to an undefined journey through the city. On the other hand, the Boulevard was seen as an Analogous City in its own right, drawing analogies from the Turin Boulevard, and the Church, outlining the ritual of the people in Turin.
CONFETTI
FIGURES
The site is littered with a grid of architectural figures, what Rem Koolhaas refers to as architectural confetti. These figures are most accurately defined as follies as they draw analogies from the Lingotto factory. However, while they replicate the formal language of the factory, their programs are left undefined and evolve depending on their interaction with the strips.
The architectural figures on the site are composed on a combination of existing figures as well as a new Cemetery at the end of the Boulevard. This Cemetery reinforces the idea of the Boulevard as a figure of ritual eventually ending in one’s death. It draws analogies from the Chuch, exisiting on the other side of the river, symbolising the altar, only accesible upon one’s death.
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REFLECTION The Illusion of Autonomous Ritual The project is my attempt to understand and to explore the effects of designing architecture with the ideas of collective memory. To get a deeper understanding of the direct and indirect relationships between architecture and objects within the built environment. To approach form finding in a way that obeys the strict rules outlined by Aldo Rossi and OMA, and to learn from it. This project has also allowed me to get a deeper understanding of site conditions that extend beyond the physical into the rhelm of Aldo Rossi’s metaphysical ideologies transcending space and time. Overall, the project is approached based on the 3 layers of circulation, figure and confetti much like what is done in the Parc De La Villette. However, each of these layers are approached analogously with Rossi’s ideas of collective memory. Drawing analogies from various sources that are relevant to the subject. The Boulevard The boulevard draws analogies from the church, the Turin boulevard as well as the idea of inhabitable walls from Dogma’s field of walls. The idea is that this boulevard would serve as a main connection across all the strips, both in plan as well as in section. The architecture in Turin is one that would start to symbolise that of pastoral capitalism, with people living within inhabitable walls of the layout of the courtyard houses as well as the form of the Lingotto Factory. The boulevard transforms the idea of inhabitable walls from one that restricts movement into one that enables it. The boulevard draws the analogy from the Turin boulevard with forms that resemble a train station. This draws a connection between the underground train station of the Turin boulevard. It exists in 2 rows are there is an interior space as well as a periphery space that is present in churches. This has the expression that this boulevard exists as a form of ritual connecting the 3 main programs outlining the lives of people in Turin, Work, Live, and Death. In addition, the boulevard transforms it’s program to assist functions at each figures, reinforcing the ideas of collective memory. The Cemetery The Cemetery at the end of the boulevard draws analogies from the Turin Trash Bin, Turin church, houses as well as the turin train station. Deriving forms from ideas of disposal, ascention, settlement as well as access and exit. Confetti The Urban Confetti draws analogies from the Lingotto factory, forming a grid relating to architectural forms from the facotry, bleeding into the city. Triggering the collective memory of the people, the typology of the factory dissolves.
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APPENDIX 1
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The “Silent Witness” of Venice John Hejduk
Capriccio: Teatro del Mondo, Aldo Rossi, 1979
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The “Mirror” of Collective Memory Aldo Rossi
Capriccio: The Ideal City, Fra Carnevale, 1484
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Masks “Peace frightens me, I’m afraid of peace more than anything else. To me it seems like that it’s only an outer shell and that hell is hiding behind it.” La Dolce Vita - Fellini
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Scars “We’re undergoing a journey and you’ve interrupted it Sorentino - La Brande Gellezza
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Dilemma “Beauty is like a rotten tooth. It rubs against your tongue, hurting, insisting on its own importance. Finally, you go to a dentist and have it pulled off, then you look at the small bloody tooth in your hand and say is that all it was? That’s all it was.” Paul Schrader : Mishima : A Life in Four Chapters - Kinkakuji
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APPENDIX 2
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Bibliography Silvia Saccomani, Reflecting critically on Turin’s Strategic Planning Experience, Politecnico di Torino, 2015 Pier Vittorio Aureli & Maria Sheherazade Giudici, Rituals and Walls, Architecture Association London El Croquis, Dogma familiar / unfamiliar Rem Koolhaas and Bruce Mau, S, M, L, XL, The Monacelli Press Pier Vittorio Aureli, The Project of Autonomy: Politics and Architecture within and against Capitalsim. Peter Trummer, The City as an Object: Thoughts on the Form of the City, Anyone Corporation, 2013. Pier Vittorio Aureli, The Possibility of An Absolute Architecture, Massachusetts Institute of Technology 2011 Luciano Re, The work of Alessandro Antonelli and Crescentino Caselli between the Architecture of the Raison and the architecture raisonnee. Michael Faciejew, The Car Factory, Post-Industrialism, and Utopia, Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture, 1984.
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