Terminal by Kim Võ

Terminal

Prologue City Epilogue Appendix 1: Capriccio + Folly Appendix 2: Diary Bibliography

Prologue

"The stazione in all its rectangular splendour of neon and urbanity, seen block letters saying VENEZIA. " Joseph Brodsky

Santa Lucia Station is one of the major arrival points in Venice that accounts for 31 percent entrances alone. The train station is the result of foreign occupation, it marks the permanent connection of Venice to the mainland and the disregard to Venice own government, culture and economy. Since then, the island and the mainland has been economically and politically intertwined. As one of the most popular tourist destinations, Venice is a city filled with cruise ships, cameras and selfie sticks. This terminal station has never been a transit point but ultimate destination. The advent of mass tourism has transformed the dignified entrance hall into a shopping mall, free people from anxiety and invite the audience to come and mingle with the play being staged. 2

Collage

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North Elevation

View from railway platform

City

Venice’s tourism industry is driven by its celebrity status. It is a city imprinted within the global imagination and an iconic example of global heritage. Venice has always been read through a series of images, from Canaletto’s paintings to modern social media feeds. These images permeate through the collective consciousness, absorbed through postcards, fridge magnets, and even artificial reproductions of the city, in Las Vegas and Macao. Our perception of Venice has already shaped by these simulacra, even before any physical encounter has occurred. The project explores the idea of the train station as the terminal point of Venice where visitors can see Venice but never enter Venice. The center of the new city is a simulacrum of existing Venice with articulated scenography. However the physical reality undergoes distortion, images remains yet functions change. The enclosed city is in response to Venice’s insular nature and only accessible by taking the train. The wall itself stands out from the rest of the city and gives privilege of people watching the rest of the city. Visitors to the city becomes part of the image to the inhabitants in the hotel. Functions of hotel space are separated out by the wall. Inhabitation requires constant movement through the wall, viewing two Venice and transferring between inside and outside, ritual and mundane.

Figure 1

View of arrival hall

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Section

Figure 2

View of San Marco Night Club

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Figure 3

View from the dock

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Figure 4

View from the room

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Epilogue

Appendix 1: Capriccio + Folly

Capriccio 1: Composite Whole

Architect: Aldo Rossi Site: Turin Projects: Locomotiva 2, San Cataldo Cemetery, Centro Torri Locomotiva 2 is an extrusion of Turin’s city grid, an analogical use of the norm as a form of exception. Its simple and concrete form defines itself as a locus of the city. In San Cataldo Cemetery, the perimeter walkway frames a courtyard of the city of the dead, with three unique monumental structures in the middle. The perimeter walkway is introduced here as a flip of the city grid to confront the totalizing planning of the existing city. It is a quest of composite image, to frame and highlight the monuments of the city. The cone and ossuary from San Cataldo Cemetery and towers from Centro Torri Shopping Mall are discrete locus that contrast with the rest of the city. The whole city are constructed through composition of different parts that are themselves strongly individual. Selected Capriccio

Axonometric

Capriccio

Capriccio 2: Venice Masque

Architect: John Hejduk Site: Venice Projects: Thirteen Watchtower, Wall House 2, Pewter Wings Goldern Horns Stone Veils In Hejduk’s project, wall is an element that separate two spaces with different characterises. The importance of the wall is emphasised at the point when people pass through it. Plagued by mass-tourism and shrouded in allegory, Venice is caught between objective and imagined reality. The myth of Venice is captured in its highly ornamented façade along canal, this is what tourists see when they walk along the corridor in Wall House 2. Façade is not only spectacles expected by the tourist, but also mask that hides the true identity behind. Only when people pass through the façade, they get to see the true Venice. That is what venetian people see when standing on the Altana. Now everyone is the participant as well as the audience of the masque, the degradation of the city. Selected Capriccio

Axonometric

Capriccio

Folly 1: Contradiction

"I thought I was the only one who knew" Wang Kar Wai - In The Mood For Love

The quote is itself contradictory. One thought he was the only one who knew the truth, until a certain point he realized the secrete is already upon the table. The folly is an underground tunnel pass through the Thirteen Watchtower and reveals the piles under it. Imagine one travel around the façade and pilgrimage its beauty and eternity. He lands at the back of the site, accidentally discovers a staircase hidden behind the façade. Curiosity drives him in, wishing to see more of the beauty. But what he sees is the cracking piles, corroded bricks and muddy ground that contrast sharply with what’s above ground. The unbearable heaviness to keep the myth in the façade. He passes through the tunnel and think he is the only one who know the truth, until he reaches the platform and sees the sunken ground and standing piles everywhere. He turns back and sees the windows of Thirteen Watchtower, people in the Watchtower already know the truth. The contradiction is also applied to people living in the Watchtower since they are isolated and only facing the front, without aware of people approaching from the back. 50

Axonometric

Capriccio

Plan and Section

Fragment

Folly 2: Duality

"Replicants are like machines, they are either benefits or hazards" Ridley Scott - Blad Runner The quote shows the dual effects that the same object can bring. Similarly, the presence of the bridge can either connects and provides viewing platform for people crossing it, or separate the space like a wall. The folly is made of two bridges sitting next to each other. The first one is a one-way bridge for the tourist that allows them to pass through the façade, fulfills their curiosity of the world behind. The irony is the sudden end in the middle of the bridge, stops their way to the rest of the site. Another bridge is for Venetians from the other plot, wishing to cross the canal. Yet the bridge forces them to travel long distance to reach their destination. Between two bridges sit souvenir shops and galleries for paintings of imagined Venice. It is pointing towards the duality of tourism which brings economy to the city but at the same time turns heritage preservation into spectacle and productive industry. In Venice, contradictions are intermingled. The typology of the bridge is questioned here when the structures block the path on the ground floor and not functioning as a connection device. 54

Axonometric

Capriccio

Plan and Section

Fragment

Folly 2: Collective Memory

"I can’t help being deferential, it’s built in" April Rain - One Is Glad To Be Of Service

The pinwheel structure derives from the street and campo composition of Venice fabric, inhabitants are arranged in a revolving pattern around a central space. Historically, the campo is the social gathering space for independent parish and consists of the most important infrastructural components including church and well. It is the memory of the city, the most visible sign that marks the event. By placing the landmark of Venice in the center of the pinwheel structure, it acts as a way-finding device that evokes events. Approaching the center along the corridor, the silhouette of the city act as a window frame that allows you to see the true Venice outside. On the ground floor, the well is the medium of venetian’s memory transcend from history. The structure separates space on the ground floor into individual parts. Each revolves around its own central space. Through subdivision, the space is constantly pointing towards its own center, its own memory. Multiple locus juxtaposed to one another, forms a composed city of collective memory. 58

Axonometric

Capriccio

Plan and Section

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Appendix 2: Diary

Capriccio 1

Architecture is something "atmospheric," a background not reducible to the restrictive characteristics of function and program. Reality as a projection of social and cultural expectations that are concretized in particular and popular historical events. The possibility of architecture to impose itself as a cultural, built event that evokes shared popular. Architecture as a basic, yet partial unit of the city. Rossi accused urban planning resenting nothing but a discursive and ideological practice without any actual tools or immediate commitment to the real problems of the city. A search for the concreteness of objects as opposed to the vagueness of planning. Showed intense detachment from the formal complexity of design typical of that time, and a predisposition for degree formal language that aspired to be a stage for life rather than its infrastructure or iconic representation. Architecture events interact with the complexity of the city through the extreme simplicity and finitude of its form. Architectural intervention always takes the form of a subjective decision to confront the existing context rather than to overcome it. The city is made up of different facts that emerge at different times; only these precise facts are controllable elements. Rossi constructed the whole of the city through the discrete composition of different parts which may be repeatable but are in themselves strongly individual and therefore finite. Typology as a general event and the urban event as a universal yet individual element overlap in the way Rossi imagines the project of the modern city. 64

Pier Vittorio Aureli, The Difficult Whole

A city made of fragments of Rossi's projects. A city not as rigid and unchangeable but as an entity above all to be challenged, confronted, engaged, modified. Not as a clean state but as found with all memories, real and imagined, intact, overlapping, superimposing. In analogous city everybody can rediscover himself in fixed and rational elements, in his own history, and accentuate the peculiar character of a place, a landscape or moment. The capacity of the imagination born from the concrete. 66

Aldo Rossi, The Analogous City Panel

Diane Ghirardo, Aldo Rossi and the Spirit of Architecture, P16-19

Gallaratese The east façade is actually a screen. Behind it, a corridor provides access to the apartments and the stair cores. The outer fenestration has no glazing, allowing the corridors to be open-air and creating a strip of space that is enclosed yet open and that negotiates the misalignments between the outermost façade and a second, interior layer. Theses openings are out of scale with what is behind, relating much more to the city beyond than to the logic of the interior. Two strips of windows, when in fact, there are three stories behind it. Outer façade is like a mask with openings at an urban scale that do not correspond to individual rooms inside and that obscure the domestic scale behind it. An assemblage of recognizable works of architecture from antiquity to the present, suggesting that the city is formed through an additive procedure in which each urban artifact operates as a finite and legible part, unable to be subsumed into a larger form. Conflating the scale of buildings with domestic objects—teapots intermingle with architectural form, both whole and fractured, floating in a temporally undifferentiated urban context.

San Cataldo Cemetery Periphery wall as housing. The window size is the same as the one in Gallaratese. The city of the dead. With each successive iteration leading up to the final project, the intention seems to be to destabilize this equation and in doing so to present San Cataldo as a series of unresolved fragments. They come together as no more than what they are as parts, unable to be broken down or subsumed into the logic of a whole. Every part is a finite architecture that cannot be altered. And even though the wholeness of the representation shall still be written, it cannot transform the sense of each part. 68

Peter Eisenman, Lateness, Gallaratese

Peter Eisenman, Lateness, San Cataldo Cemetery

Figure 13

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Addition to Costa and Jewish cemetery. The parallel between the cemetery and a house. Cubic ossuary as an abandoned house without roof. Cone has two parts, above ground for ceromony, underground as cemetery. Triangle shape in the middle refering to streets with logge on sides. A pyramid shape pointing to the cone, which is the highest part on the site. Cone for the poor, cubic for people dead in the war. The open perimeter wall, so that the central figure cannot be read as objects enclosed within a frame 70

Diane Ghirardo, Aldo Rossi and the Spirit of Architecture, P67-68

Material Library

Centro Torri Shopping Mall The tower as the most visible and significant emplem of Parma, evoking not only acient symbol but also future aspiration, if shopping centers indeed were to become the new civic centers, then they ought to beckon all. 72

Diane Ghirardo, Aldo Rossi and the Spirit of Architecture, P167-175

Centro Direzionale Florence A part of the city that is an extension of Florence. The proposal is a quest for a composite image, an attempt toward planning as a unity of preconstructed pieces, which may change form at the end of the process. The planned city remains a fragment. The city cannot be brought into being through a single figurative language. 74

Aldo Rossi, Centro Direzionale, Florence

Locomotiva 2 Competition Entry An entrusion of the grid as an element not reducable to the city grid, a concrete element to against the vague urban planning. The competition itself is an ideological planning/ capitalism planning/ cityterritory/ totality, aiming for expansion and industrialization on countryside The intension of the competition’s organizer is to build a new condition of work Take a working-class typology to against capitalism, build autonomous architecture, a concrete urban artifact to against vague urban planning. Against the capitalism from inside. A plural city made of different parts

Complexity of city VS simplicity of events/architecture Confront the existing condition rather than overcome City = collection of parts = collection of singular events = collective momories Countering capitalism’s integration Singular events with defined forms that can challenge (influence) the surrounding flux Conflicts happen when juxtapose parts / individuals / singulars, because the city is a collection of parts, thus Conflicts & discontinuities (= demolition & reconstruction = events) constitute the city and accelerate city evolution (which will eventually come anyway) Countering totalizing by making architecture itself as an exception (autonomous) 76

K. Michael Hays's commentary on Aldo Rossi's Locomotiva 2 Competition Entry

Pier Vittorio Aureli's commentary on Aldo Rossi's Locomotiva 2 Competition Entry, from AA School Publication

Turin history and city planning Through the new Urban Masterplan the municipality set out a vision for the physical re-configuration of the fragmented industrial city which had developed around the Fiat factories, transforming it into a betterconnected, denser postindustrial metropolis. It proposes redeveloping four major brownfield zones along its length, totalling over 2.1 million square meter of land, to create new mixed-use neighbourhoods with half the land designated for residential use, the other half for parks and commercial activities. The combination of land use specifications and public projects to improve transport connections offered a major incentive to developers, stimulating the transformation of strategic brownfield areas of the city, creating a mix of residential, commercial and green spaces required to give new vitality to old industrial areas and knit them back into the urban fabric. It flattened hierarchies and built relationships between institutions and actors in a city long characterised by an inward-looking, ‘master-servant’ paradigm, reflected in the popular characterisation of Torino as a ‘one-company town’. The "Spina" axis, which extends outwards into the metropolitan area, is part of a unitary project that combines the potential of the 'underground' railway system with urban renewal at ground level, to reveal a new urban landscape. With the burying of the railway, Turin will no longer be divided in two. 78

Astrid Winkler, Torino City Report

The city lies at the heart of the fertile plain known as Piedmont (from the Latin, ‘land at the foot of the moun-

decade to 1881. The city’s well-developed banking sector emerged from the downturn with several new banks,

tains’). It served as a strategic frontier outpost during the Middle Ages, a prized stronghold changing hands be-

including the Bank of Torino (Banca di Torino), consolidating Torino’s position as Italy’s financial centre.

tween some of Europe’s great military leaders. Captured by the powerful dukes of Savoy in 1280, it became the capital of their expanding dominion through to the 19th century, benefiting from the rich political, cultural and

Local government support underpins industrial growth

economic importance this bestowed; the magnificent Baroque architecture of the city’s historic core illustrates

Public sector support proved a crucial factor in this economic turnaround. During the late 1870s and 1880s mu-

the earlier wealth of their dynasty (see Fig. 4). Political stability and prosperity fuelled the demographic growth

nicipal and provincial authorities channelled public funds into research, constructing a state-of-the-art ‘City of

and economic diversification of the city, which by the 18th century was already developing as a centre of artisan

Science’ campus to encourage it, and founding a University Consortium in 1878 to nourish links between the

manufacturing, chiefly textiles.

scientific community and the city’s industrialists. Capitalising on the city’s proximity to the Alps (see Fig. 5), research at the Politecnico di Torino fed into the municipality’s development of a hydroelectric power station

Figure 4: Palazzo Madama, baroque royal palace and Savoy residence

which provided the region with a reliable supply of energy for its industrial development. City authorities also anticipated the necessary human capital requirements for industrial success, investing in trade schools to provide new industrial workers with the specific skills that local employers required. Figure 5: View of Torino with Alpine backdrop, 1882

As the 19th century progressed Torino’s industries began to flourish, helped actively by the State. In the 1830s and 40s, the Piedmontese government embarked on an important programme of policies designed to encourage economic development and stimulate private investment in the region. The results included an extensive railway network co-financed by public and private investment. By 1861, this railway system made up 40% of the entire Italian network. New economic infrastructure, improved communications and new local banks all fostered growth. Piedmont encouraged trade by dismantling protectionist regulation and negotiating commercial treaties with Europe and America, and supported voluntary associations that provided education and welfare. The Piedmontese government’s programme of joint ventures cultivated a small politically-connected oligarchy of businessmen which dominated the local economy. Despite the risks associated with reliance on joint ventures, these initiatives were soon bearing fruit. The value of trade in Piedmont tripled during the 1850s, and local industries thrived. Torino was slowly becoming not just an administrative capital, but a centre of new technologies, activities, enterprises and institutions to sustain them. In spite of these developments, however, the city focused on reforming its position as an important regional centre of trade and finance. Meanwhile the middle classes expanded and class barriers softened, fostering a dynamic civil society and a new, socially diverse and public-spirited elite. Ideas and reform proposals were actively debated, feeding the groundswell toward national liberation.

Crises in the agricultural, banking and commercial sectors in the last decade of the 19th century served as the decisive push for Torino’s manufacturing developments and an upturn in the Italian economy at the turn of the 20th century boosted the city’s fledgling industries. Although city and regional authorities had laid the ground, local entrepreneurs and private banks were to prove critical to the growth of the nascent industries. The presence of wealthy local investors willing to provide the necessary seed capital helped get new ventures off the ground.

Figure 12: Central Backbone route (Spina Centrale) and underground railway (passante ferroviario) Urban Masterplan (1995) Torino’s new Urban Masterplan, ratified in 1995, drove physical renewal through land use and infrastructure planning. The Piano Regolatore Generale (Urban Masterplan) is the main urban planning document in Italy, allowing municipalities to designate its land uses for a ten year period. It is the framework which makes physical transformation projects possible, and within which private developers and other agencies must operate. Torino had not had a new Urban Masterplan for over 45 years; the existing Urban Masterplan dated from 1959, and the ratification of a new one had been constantly deferred due to a lack of political consensus. The new administration saw the Masterplan as a way of achieving the physical regeneration of the city ‘by proxy’, by re-zoning industrial land and thus encouraging private developers to revitalize these areas, within the clear guidelines set by the city for land use (such as the proportion of offices, housing, services and so on). To ensure the support and cooperation of the private and public sector bodies needed to deliver the transformation, the development of the plan was accompanied by extensive public relations work and consultation. Through the new Urban Masterplan the municipality set out a vision for the physical re-configuration of the fragmented industrial city which had developed around the Fiat factories, transforming it into a betterconnected, denser post-industrial metropolis. The twin foci of the city’s regeneration would be improving transport access, and recycling centrally-located brownfields for new post-industrial uses. Historically, Torino’s industrial areas and their adjacent working-class residential neighbourhoods bordered the city’s main railway line, the city’s industrial artery, which cleaves through the city from North to South, creating a major spatial division. The decision was taken to build on existing public project, funded by the State-owned railway company, to ‘bury’ this central railway line, thereby enabling a fourfold increase in its capacity, and transforming the surface into a 12km, six-lane arterial road into the city centre. The Masterplan casts this route, which is flanked by the city’s major industrial brownfields, as Torino’s new ‘Central Backbone’ (Spina Centrale) 2

(see Fig. 12). It proposes redeveloping four major brownfield zones along its length, totalling over 2.1 million m

of land, to create new mixed-use neighbourhoods with half the land designated for residential use, the other half for parks and commercial activities. The aim to re-link these derelict areas back into the urban fabric will complemented by another long-deferred public transport project, Torino’s first metro line, a €700m fully automatic 15 km route with 21 stations which will connect the deprived ex-industrial areas in the North and South to the main transport network. Together these projects represent €2.45 billion of public and private investment, aiming to turn the rail corridor into a new strategic growth corridor. 11

Source: Officina Città Torino

This pivotal redevelopment project and others, in the Urban Masterplan will regenerate fully 10% of the municipality’s land. The combination of land use specifications and public projects to improve transport connections offered a major incentive to developers, stimulating the transformation of strategic brownfield areas of the city, creating a mix of residential, commercial and green spaces required to give new vitality to old industrial areas and knit them back into the urban fabric. The Urban Masterplan specifically left a certain flexibility in the designation of specific uses for the four Backbone redevelopment zones, while the city began work on its economic development plan, the Strategic Plan (see below). This second comprehensive plan would develop an overall vision for the city which would then ‘fill in’ the right strategic uses for these areas.

The transport project has been praised in a consultancy report: “The current programme of new transport infrastructure development

Strategic Plan (1998-2000)

in Turin is perhaps the best example in Europe of such investment being implemented as a means to stimulate future economic

Torino’s Strategic Plan (Piano Strategico) is an integrated economic development document, which sets col-

growth, rather than dealing with existing problems such as traffic congestion in the short term” (Steer Davies Gleave, 2005, appendix

laboratively-determined objectives relating to the future of a city’s economy, and aims to make the best possible

B4.26).

In Turin’s history, there were two groups of emperor that determined the city fabric. One was Roman military, who left the Roman grid to the city. The other one was Fiat car factory, who transformed Turin into an industrial city. The site is located at the border of the city. The government held the competition in order to build new district and expand the city center. In 1995, the government announced the new Urban Masterplan, proposed to redevelop the border of the industrial area as a central backbone and extend outwards into the metropolitan area. In oppose to the concept of city-territory, which is an open form created by the complex new network of transportation and other economic flow, Rossi’s idea was to create a recognizable architectural development aiming to establish an alternative to the capitalist city. The method here is an inverted grid, so to take a working-class typology, a concrete urban artifact to against vague urban planning. For Rossi, the city is made of fragments of parts, fragments of individual memories and collective memories. The building here is a frame that holds memories. It holds Rossi’s memories of ascending staircase, the city’s memory of chimney which represent its industrialization, the colonnade of Gallaratese. 80

Axonometric in progress

Capriccio in progress

Capriccio 2

Thirtreen Watchtower Tiles on the ground is not usual in Venice. Each floor has one function and one colour. 13 life long residents, each is isolated. Individual vs collective. Observer vs Being observed A cycle, residents will be replaced by person living in the Wall House behind. The person in the Wall House at a zero point, in suspension. Window only facing one side. Awning,s, sun protectors, balcony, telescope, venting holes. Two bridges, one stone, one timber.

Open Architecture Unfinished nature, waiting for inhabitants to complete it. Collective urban design,or the collaboration of nonhierarchically positioned architects in a given urban setting. Visitors could visit the site, walk around the structure without predefined order, enter one house, climb the towers, cross the bridge. Decod messages and find clues in each step until a story is revealed, like puzzlesolving and empathic exploration. Explore architecture through the lends of performance art and participatory art. 82

John Hejduk, Mask of Medusa

Esra Akcan, Open Architecture as Adventure Game

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Wall House 2 Wall not as wall. The wall does not behave as enclosure or as structure but a pictorial ground against which the figures are arrayed, denying the presence of an architectural ground. 2d vs 3D. The wall as a compositional device that is operative on both 2D plane and 3D space. Each room is an independent volume, no shared walls or floors.Rooms are more free when going up. In order to travel between rooms, one must pass through the opening in the wall, inhabiting the thickness of the wall for a moment. Windows along the corridor, allows one to see the wall when approaching it. The moment one pass through the wall, its importance is emphasised. Negative space at the door and the gap between the wall and the rooms. Absence of underlying grid. Round columns instead of square. Columns are misaligned. Extension of the threshold. Threshold are both structured and unstructured, define an inflection point without having a clear center, operate as both thresholds and spaces. Undecidability between known forms, temporarity in reading and definition.

Geroges Braque, Studio V Hejduk was absessed with Braque's paining Studio V, where the bird can be read as 2d plane, or 3d bird penetrating a wall, flying towards or away from the viewer. 84

Peter Eisenman, Lateness, Wall House 2

Geroges Braque, Studio V

Figure 33

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Pewter Wings Goldern Horns Stone Veils Hejduk dead of cancer in 2000, cathedral is the last project he did. Perhaps it is the cross rather than the square or the diamond that is architecture's most primative form. it is under the sign of the cross that Hejduk brings his imagescreen, his elevational chronotope, to its destination. Single object gathering up his formal inventions and collapsing them onto a simple rectanglar volume, or a thick wall. Cathedral is intended as a summation. Arrest momentaryily the unlocalizable architectural gaze.

Literal and phenomenal transparency Literal transparency as the physical translucence inherent in a material or structure. Phenomenal transparency exists when a designer deliberately abstracts space, not through the use of overlaying transparent planes, but through the reorganization of multiple spacial grids that would normally define a plane. By breaking up and mixing spacial planes, designers are able to complicate the notion of physical space and do not need to rely on transparent materials to reveal the volume hidden behind a fasade. Differences between each form of transparency lies in how the viewer interacts with the design. Literal transparency is perceived and definite, while phenomenal transparency is conceived and indefinite 86

K. Michael Hays, Sanctuaries: The Last Works of John Hejduk

Colin Rowe, Transparency

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Venice is a city live in photograph, it is a city of illusion. The government tries to keep the myth in the beautiful facade, and this is what the tourists see when they first arrive Venice. They are invited into the Wall House and walk along the long corridor. When they look out they only see layers of façade that almost blend together. Approaching the façade form the corridor keep reminding them its importance. However only when people pass through the wall (which is the façade here) they get to see the true Venice hidden behind the mask. That’s what Venetian people see when they are standing on the rooftop. Now everyone is the participant as well as the audience, watching the death of Venice. In Hedjuk’s work there is a constant conversation between 2D and 3D, between flatness and depth. In Wall House 2 project, he emphasised the importance of the wall which separates two different worlds. And the importance of the wall is emphasised through the strip window along the corridor when people approach the wall and the critical moment when they pass through the wall to go to the room on the other side. In this project the wall is compressed into the single moment when people pass through it. Behind the façade is Hedjuk’s cathedral project, which is the last project before he died of cancer. In this project the wall is thickened and contains his previous project, which is like audience as well as company. Inside the cathedral is three lightwells that shed light to the crucifix and the seating area in the front. 88

Axonometric in progress

Capriccio in progress

Folly 1

Folly as ruins, or as imitations of ruins became the vehicles for such instant nolstalgia encouraged by historicist regrets and supported by consumerist atravism. The folly indicated not only its ruined state but also its former or future state of completion. The folly of each individual became his truth and meaning, it was represneted as an abstract structure of relationships and of interdependencies, a formal network, to be traced laboriously to its source by the techniques of a detective or an explorer. System of the Folly Referred back to or alluded to a short history of modern follies Acted as asylum for the forbidden, for the repressed, for the denied and the absolutely impossible. Exhibited a discipline, a logic, a reason in itself, which because withdrawn from the world, remains a sense of pure. 90

Anthony Vidler, History of the Folly

Folly Example

“I thought I was the only one who knew” - Hidden and reveal - Reveal/ show: beautiful façade, eternity, strength, vivid, crowds - Hide: floating, lightness, rotten bricks, darkness, silence, isolation - A truth that everyone knows already Thirteen watchtower - Appreciation of passage of time - Shows eternity/ silence - Inhabitants live there until death, and replaced by another inhabitant - Isolation City of contradiction - Individual vs totalitarian - Isolation vs together - Restricted vs freedom - Organized vs Chaotic - Being observed vs observer - Façade vs ruin Floating City - Buildings do not spring from the earth, they tether themselves to the mud below, or they hover above it - Drifting (hovering) & anchoring (tethering) Liquid City - Carlo Scarpa Querini Stampalia - Architectural space that experience the lagoon inwards - Fluid space interior Doubling City - Michael Cadwell “Strange details” - Traditional venetian mask as an analogy to hide or manipulate one’s identity or actions to an extreme point where the real fails to be distinguished from the imitation - Buildings reflected in the canal - Threshold, transition from one condition to another, inside and outside - Worlds within worlds Venice façade - Always two side, one facing canal (important), another facing backstreet 92

Tourism in Venice

Carlo Scarpa, Monument to the Partisan Woman

City on piles Pile driving began in 421 A.D. by driving the timbers into the muddy sand bottom of the lagoon floor. Tapered at the end to provide a point to cut through the sediment Range between 2 to 8 meters in length. On average of 5 - 10 pilings per square meter with each pile being 10 - 30 cm in diameter. Each pile was installed by hand through different hammering methods in order to secure the pile into the soil. Due to reconstruction and repurposing of Venice’s buildings. Original buildings that were constructed many years prior was becoming unusable or inefficient considering the limited real estate available. Wherever possible, the existing pilings were preserved and were reused for a new building’s foundation; additional piles were added if the building footprint changed for the new building or a drastic increase in load was added. This saved large amounts of time, material and money by not having to reconstruct the foundations 94

Construction method in Venice

Detail of building foundations

Axonometric in progress

Capriccio in progress

Fragment in progress

Plan and section in progress

Folly 2

"Replicans are like any other machines, they are either benefits or hazards" - Double effect of one thing - Replicans: bridge - Benefits: see the world behind the facade/economy - Hazards: not what they expected/ detour Bridge - Connection & separation - A separate entity independent of the sides - Importance of the physical existence - Dual entrance: people cross it and people travel under it - Dual purpose: may be inhabited - Pulse point: user may go back or go straight - Collective memory - Mundane element appears everywhere in the city - Passage/ destination/ viewing Rialto bridge - Palladio (Aureli – the possibility of absolute architecture) - Infrastructure and monument linked together - A city within city Ponte Vecchio, Florence - Housing and bridge Melbourne proposal Steven Holl - Continuation of existing streets - Contradictory relation between river and train, but also clear respect to existing condition with minimum architecture to generate urban continuity 98

Steven Holl, Bridge of Houses

Andrea Palladio, Proposal for Rialto Bridge

What I found interesting about the site is the Ponte della Liberta bridge next to it, which is the only connection from Venice to the mainland. It is symbolising the end of venice independence. Venice is a city made of bridge, bridge is what holds venice together but also brings tourism. The bridge breaks into Venetian people’s daily life and turning daily elements into a scenic spot. Venice always claim or want to be independent but the fact is that venice cannot be fully isolated. Industrialisation brings venice tourism but also economy. 100

Ponte della Libertà

Ponte della Costituzione

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Axonometric in progress

Capriccio in progress

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Fragment in progress

Plan and section in progress

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Folly 3

"I can't help being deferential, it's built in" - Being deferential to: the city memory - Built in: natural fabric Campi and Calli - Venice is made of archipelago, parish islands - Each parish was built up street by street around its own church and campo, the campo is the community center - Collecting water from the well was a ritual process of Venetian's daily life - The urban fabric of Venice consisted of semi-autonomous communities, each serving as a microcosm of the city as a whole 104

Venice Campi

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Venice Hospital Le Corbusier associated the origin of the design idea with the urban form of the city, identifying the paths within the building that link the four care units as calli, and the central spaces of communication between these units as campi. Through the progressive juxtaposition of building units, this framework yields a horizontal hospital. By opening the ground floor directly onto the city, the design allows for a city– hospital encounter and facilitates the visual transmission of medicine toward the outside. 106

Le Corbusier, Venice Hospital Project

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A clear motion and centrality in the pin wheel structure can also be found in some of Hejduk's work. 108

John Hejduk, 1/4 House

John Hejduk, North East South West House

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Axonometric in progress

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Axonometric in progress

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City

Circle - Nolli Map - the figurative common spaces are nested within an aggregation of inhabitated buildings Grid - Cerda's Plan for Barcelona - The modelfor the capitalist Archipelago - Le Corbusier's Unit d' Habitation - An aggolomeration of inhabitable cells Solid - Archizoom's No Stop City - A pure architectural figure with no relationship to its ground 112

Peter Trummer, The City as an Object

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Definition: absolute architecture - The individuality / autonomy of architectural form from the city / organisation / government Definition: urbanisation - An ever-expanding and all-encompassing apparatus - Based on modern form of governance - City: the political dimension of coexistences - Urbanisation: the economic logic of social management - The absorption of the city within urbanisation shows the control of capitalism Architecture in Urbanisation: dialectic of integration and separation - Follow urbanization’s integration +Offer possibilities of separateness - Archipelago: dialectic relationship of the sea and the island - A condition where parts are separated yet united by the common ground of their juxtaposition - The city frame limits the architectural form - The architectural form redefines the city frame - The transformation of modern city not through a general vision of the city, but specific architectural forms - Cities without overall plan but archipelago of site-specific interventions Archipelago: form within and against urbanization - An absence of center as the result of confrontation (both uniting and separating each other) - Emphasis the singularity of the city, redefine the city as a site of confrontation and coexistence, oppose the ubiquitous nature and supreme integration of urbanization (capitalism) - Confront existing parts of the city rather than creating infinite new iconic buildings, which only shows the market demand of uniqueness and Bad Infinity Main methods - Vast scale - Simple and finite geometries - Repetition of pattern and elements + bare walls - Idea of publicness - Symmetrical composition 114

Pier Vittorio Aureli, The Possibility Of An Absolute Architecture

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Rossi: Analogous city - The city as a static stage set and backdrop for theatrical life Hejduk: Victim - Oceanic island - The city as the accumulation of dynamic individuals - Decide upon the time sequence and their relationships with one another - Young evergreens reach maturity of the first thirty-year cycle, citizens are offered opportunity to insert structures in the second thirty-year cycle Ungers: Berlin as Green Archipelago - Continental island - Stability in unstable scene - The city as a museum of islands 116

San Rocco, Island, Two Deserted Island

TWO DESERTED ISLANDS Mark Lee

Facing page: o. M. Ungers’s “Green archipelago” and J. Hejduk’s “Victims”

Islands and Boundaries While recent research in architecture has generated a set of theoretical inquiries into the dissolution of boundaries, this trajectory is being countered by the opposite propensity for a search for limits and the decisive definition of borders. On one hand, the impetus behind the dissolution of boundaries, whether substantiated by desires for interconnectivity, indeterminacy or multiplicity, has seemingly reached an impasse. On the other hand, the proliferation of privatized, single-use programs such as gated communities, special economic zones or tax havens has reinvigorated a renewed interest in segregated organizations and their impact on cities. Consequently, the study of island and archipelago organizations and their potential as generative models in the contemporary city has gained momentum within current discourse. Rather than viewing such island-like monocultures as fissures within the inclusive mentality of globalization, these organizational models provide opportunities to promote alternative forms of connectivity through the precise demarcation of limits and borders. Characterized by impermeable, hard boundaries and limited checkpoints, island and archipelago organizations are spatial segregation taken to the extreme, a world of fragmentation where definition triumphs over blurring, separation over combination, destination over nomadism. Two Berlin Islands Given Berlin’s seven-hundred-year history as a repository of island organizations of varying degrees of effectiveness, certain models that responded to the city’s specific social political circumstances at

4 – 52˚31’24.26”N, 13˚24’41.04”E

Victims John Hejduk began his theatre masque series two years after Ungers’s “Berlin as Green Archipelago”. Named after rituals of Carnival, the masque series forwarded a theatrical model for the city whereby buildings were scripted as characters that played out their respective roles. Starting with the “Berlin Masque” of 1979, the series developed into the “Lancaster / Hanover Masque” of 1982 and finally culminated in the 1984 project entitled “Victims”. “Victims” was designed for the Prinz-Albrecht-Palais competition for a memorial park on an old Gestapo site in Berlin. Planned as an incremental piece to be created over two thirty-year periods, the project tested the transferability of the islands-within-an-island model from the urban scale in Ungers’s “Green Archipelago” to an architectural scale and, in many ways, became a microcosm of Ungers’s project. In “Victims”, Hejduk defined and enclosed the site with two layers of tall hedges, between which a tram circulates. Not unlike the doubletiered Berlin Wall with limited checkpoints, the site for “Victims” is entered through a controlled entry point by way of a bus stop from which visitors proceed over a drawbridge and through a gatehouse. Within the hedges the site is colonized by a grid of young evergreens, which was to reach full maturity over the course of the first thirty-year cycle. Over the second thirty-year cycle, Hejduk offered the citizens of Berlin the opportunity to insert any number of his sixty-seven anthropomorphic structures, or “Victims”, into the site, as well as the opportunity to decide upon the time sequence of their construction and their relationships with one another. As with his earlier “masques”, Hejduk emphasized the individual, discrete buildings by employing elemental biomorphism and typological variations to create the mythologized structures. Often situated on motorized wheels or limb-like supports, the structures are characterized by a lack of stability or permanence. Each structure is complete and figural; each structure is an island in its own right. But unlike Hejduk’s previous masques, in which the transient individual structures are isolated, most of the structures in “Victims” are precariously connected to one another, touching one another without interlocking. The “Victims” maintain their autonomy while implying a loosely held together network. While Aldo Rossi’s “Analogous City” treated the city as a static stage set and backdrop for theatrical life, Hejduk’s version treated the city itself as the accumulation of dynamic individuals. Whereas

Ungers provided stability in an unstable scene by treating the city as a museum of islands, Hejduk injected instability into a stable and quarantined city in which his “Victims” oscillate between the roles of contemplation and participation within a walled island. Desert Islands Within Deleuze’s endogenous framework of “Desert Islands”, “continental islands” refer to the islands formed by separating from the continent, and “oceanic islands” refer to those formed by originating from the ocean. In the case of continental islands, the ocean is understood as being always on top of the earth; in the case of oceanic islands, the earth is always conceived of as being under the ocean. Hejduk’s islands, being imported from without, are therefore essentially “oceanic”, while Ungers’s islands, having once been part of a larger urban fabric, are fundamentally “continental”. While different in origin, both continental and oceanic models rely on detachment as a means of generating an alternative connectivity. In both Hejduk’s and Ungers’s Berlin islands, the hard boundaries around the sites form new universes and allow for the smaller islands within to be removed from any sense of scale or reference. Although the scale of

Left: figure ground of “Victims” Right: redistributed figure ground of “Victims”

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Secularisation - The sacred is a force that has played and still plays a crucial role in defining fundamental concepts of the city, its fuindamental pervasiveness make it an instructment of government and politics - Paradox of sacred 1: the sacred is often defined in antithesis to the profane, and the city is qualified as the profane space. However, the founding of the cities were usually centred around sanctuaries. Communities centered around shared beliefs and governments, tried to instrumentalise the force of the sacred. - Paradox of sacred 2: sacred transform from a shared belief to religion, it set a set of rules for ordering nor only worship but also life itself. Sacred is something that supposed to be set apart from worldly reality can in effect only be practised by organising everyday exercise. - Paradox of secularisation: in order to be effective, state and civil society must inherent the theological power of religion. Like a religion, the state authority is above individual will. In this sense the state is nothing less than a secularised theological concept. - Sacred is a condition in which everything that appears stable and familiar suddenly reveal itself as radically unfamiliar and distant from our known condition. Limit - Difference in defining sacred space between Greek and Rome: in Greek it is embedded in things and space, in Rome it is an abstract juridical category. The goal of sacred space is no longer to maintain the purity but to manage the mode of behaviour of a community. - Paradox of religion: religion is a symbolic order that meant to transcend reality, but its practise includes concrete experiences involving objects and places. It is always a social condition that needs to be recognised and shared by a collective body. Within religion, communication and interaction plays fundamental rules. Ritual/Object/Space - Rome: holy places linked by ritual circulations, emphasis the journey rather than the object - Movement can only be enacted by imposing a limit, either an object or a wall. - In Greek the significance relied on exteriority, in Rome it relied on interiority of the basilica - Roman basilica is originally a public space, later transformed into sacred space, vision towards a single point. Basilica was chosen because it represents an infinite realm of possibilities, now power allows, includes, accommodates 118

Time - Modernity destoryed the temperal different/festive time in sacred space and replace it with a homogeneous, flat, linear time - Sacred space is no longer defined through its limits or specific points of movement but is everywhere, endless ritual towards a better future that is out of reach - Sacred becomes an immense and totalising machine whose only goal is selfpreservation - Paradox of modernity: appeared to be devoid of sacred space, actually works as a total sacred space - A careful control of movement - Chraracteristics of sacred space: clear boundary/wall, suspension of normal rules and everydaness, state of exception, form follows function, clear direction, movement control, not only contained within interior but exoressed within the city, the experience of a different time Pier Vittorio Aureli, Rituals and Walls, P11-25

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Elements of Venice

Venice 2nd Document

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Venice 2nd Document

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Venice 2nd Document

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Venice 2nd Document

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5 0 1

The Vencie Variations

5 2

8 11 12

1. Doge’s Palace 2. Porta della Carta 3. San Marco 4. Orologio 5. Old Procuracies 6. San Geminiano 7. Area initially occupied by the 13th-century Procuracies 8. New Procuracies 9. Loggetta 10. Libreria 11. Porta da Mar 12. Mint

LOW INTEGRATION

HIGH INTEGRATION

Figure 2.14 Piazza San Marco, sixteenth century. Visual integration. Drawing by the author

Gentile Bellini’s painting of the Procession in the Piazza San Marco, produced before the Renovatio (1496), seemingly provides an accurate representation of the Piazza and religious processions at the time (Figure 0.5). Looking closely, one discovers that Bellini deliberately moved the Campanile to the right, allowing a view to the Palace and the Porta della Carta. A large number of paintings in Venice mediated between the viewers’ actual experience of the city and its representations. They organised

Stat ec r a f t : a r em a r k a bly w el l- ord ered Societ y

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105

8 0 1

The Vencie Variations

Orologio

Porta della Carta

Porta da Mar

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HIGH INTEGRATION

Figure 2.16 Piazza San Marco, fifteenth century. Visual integration in the urban context of the adjoining islands. Drawing and photos by the author

Orologio

Porta della Carta

Porta da Mar

LOW INTEGRATION

HIGH INTEGRATION

Figure 2.17 Piazza San Marco, sixteenth century. Visual integration in the urban context of adjoining islands. Drawing and photos by the author

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Pilgrimage and tourism

Chapter Title: RITUAL, BELIEF, AND MEANING IN THE PRODUCTION OF SACRED SPACE Chapter Author(s): SUE ANN TAYLOR Book Title: Transcending Architecture Book Editor(s): JULIO BERMUDEZ Published by: Catholic University of America Press Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt130h9f6.16 JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org. Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at https://about.jstor.org/terms

Catholic University of America Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Transcending Architecture

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Pilgrimage and tourism to the designation and handling of sacred objects and locations. He refers to this as “sight sacralization” in reference to sightseeing as a modern ritual and the distinguishing characteristics that make places significant. In fact, Graburn explains his ritual theory of tourism as “a stream of alternating contrasts” in which he compares the alteration between the sacred/nonordinary and the profane/ workaday/at home experiences.28 MacCannell identifies five stages of sacralization. The first is “when a site is marked off from similar objects as being worthy of preservation” (e.g., the Great Pyramids of Giza or an object that has been named as having historical or other social values). The second entails “framing and elevation.” This is most likely seen by putting it on display (e.g., a figurine placed on a pedestal, a cross hung above the pulpit, a religious painting). Third is a form of “enshrinement” (e.g., setting an object apart by encasement such as the copy of the Gutenberg Bible at the Library of Congress). Fourth, the “mechanical reproduction” of the object is found at tourist sites as well as religious centers and bookstores (e.g., postcards, books, prints, photographs, and souvenirs). The final stage is one of “social reproduction when groups, cities, and regions begin to name themselves after famous attractions” (e.g., The Holy Land).29 The concept of the sacralization of space or objects is useful in thinking about the way people make sacred something that is ordinary. The circumstances directly or indirectly responsible for the creation of a site lend credence to an awareness of the sacredness of place and the power it retains to evoke a response or satisfy a need. All over the world, examples reveal the power of place in the creation of what becomes a temporary

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or permanent sacred space and one that is either public or private. People create altars or shrines in their homes or in public places to express symbolic meaning, self-expression, or a space for contemplation and affirmation.30 Sacred space need not be a building but can just as well be a makeshift memorial leaving flowers and tokens of remembrance at the actual site where someone died. We see this along the roadside of a fatal automobile accident, on the sidewalk in front of a home, embassy, or palace, and at the Apple offices after the death of founder Steve Jobs in 2011. Prominent sites become sacred as people respond to national tragedies such as the bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City and the attacks on September 11, 2001, at the World Trade Center in New York, the Pentagon, and the loss of life as Flight 93 crashed to the ground in Shanksville, Pennsylvania. Ten years later, on September 11, 2011, a waterfall cascades over the sides of the footprint of the two towers as part of the memorial park constructed on the site. The Vietnam Veterans Memorial grounds located in Constitution Gardens on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., is considered by some veterans as a sacred place. The wall with over 58,000 names etched into the black granite panels, the Three Soldiers Monument, and the Vietnam Veterans Women’s Memorial are places of reverence and commemoration.31 These and other historical places, memorials, and grave sites become, paradoxically, both a spectacle as a tourist attraction and a place of mourning and memorialization.32

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Bibliography

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Aureli, Pier Vittorio. “The Difficult Whole.” Log, no. 9 (2007): 39–61. http://www. jstor.org/stable/41765133. Ghirardo, Diane. Aldo Rossi and the Spirit of Architecture. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2019. Eisenman, Peter, and Elisa Iturbe. Lateness. Princeton University Press, 2020. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctvrs8zsh. Winkler, Astrid. Torino city report. 2007.https://www.researchgate.net/ publication/30524992_Torino_city_report Akcan, Esra. “Open Architecture as Adventure Game: John Hejduk in a Noncitizen District.” Perspecta 48 (2015): 128–43. http://www.jstor.org/stable/45215805. Hejduk, John. Mask of Medusa. New York: Rizzoli International Publications, 1985. Rowe, Colin, and Robert Slutzky. “Transparency: Literal and Phenomenal.” Perspecta 8 (1963): 45–54. https://doi.org/10.2307/1566901. Trummer, Peter. “The City as an Object: Thoughts on The Form of the City.” Log, no. 27 (2013): 51–57. http://www.jstor.org/stable/41765780. Aureli, Pier Vittorio. The Possibility Of An Absolute Architecture. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2011 Lee, Mark. “The Deserted Island”. Island. San Rocco, 2011. Aureli, Pier Vittorio. Rituals and Walls. London: AA Publications, 2016. Marini, Sara, and Bertagna Alberto. Venice 2nd Document. Venice: Bruno, 2017. Psarra, Sophia. “City-Craft: Assembling the City.” In Venice Variations: Tracing the Architectural Imagination, 27–81. UCL Press, 2018. https://doi.org/10.2307/ j.ctvqhspn.6. Neumann, Dietrich. “Instead of the Grand Tour: Travel Replacements in the Nineteenth Century.” Perspecta 41 (2008): 47–53. http://www.jstor.org/ stable/40482312. Bermudez, Julio, ed. Transcending Architecture. Catholic University of America Press, 2015. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctt130h9f6.

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