The Even Covering of the (Egyptian) Field

It is only a few kilometres wide and more than 900 km long. It has many more inhabitants than the capital city of its country and still looks like the countryside. It has a population density similar to the most congested global megacities, and it is nothing but a linear strip of rururban development. The field along the River Nile is an endless corridor of agricultural land turned into housing blocks, but lacking the necessary infrastructure for such an agglomeration: the ultimate metropolitan village. The Nile City is a research project led by Pier Paolo Tamburelli and Oliver Thill at the Berlage Institute in 2009/2010. The 900-kilometres city has recently been featured in the highly recommendable second issue of San Rocco Magazine, around the topic of the Even Covering of the Field. Additionally, the project shows stunning photos by Bas Princen of the housing developments of the area, consisting of completely walled buildings; they literally reflect the optimal shift from agriculture to real estate as well as harsh climate conditions. Concrete structures filled with brickwork are scattered all over as vertical extrusions of plots, but always leaving a piece of valuable arable land available. This new housing typology – almost like a cuboid version of the Pyramids – has no windows; it is too hot outside to let any breeze of air or sunlight inside. The dull homogeneity of the landscape is enhanced through these monolithic dwellings repeated ad infinitum. As Thill puts it: The quality of the individual building is also that of the whole megalopolis, and so there is no difference between architecture and urbanism. [...] the buildings are so neutral that the landscape becomes the dominant element [...]. According to the principle of isotropic field, their research concludes with a proposal using updated hieroglyphs to map this contemporary vibrating landscape: land-reclamation, exclusive clubs, garbage dumps, unused plots…

<But these agglomerations are cities only according to statistics. Nothing about them is metropolitan except their density. To understand these systems as cities is a mistake. They are merely denser rural areas crowded with restless masses of (underemployed) farmers. Finally, after the modern infatuation with cities, we are going to have to consider villages once again.> [San Rocco#2, Editorial]

[1> Informal Settlement by Bas Princen, 2009 at San Rocco Magazine#2] [2> The 900-km Nile City, fragment]

 

Published on July 13, 2011 12:25.
Filed under: urban research

air matters

In constrained urban agglomerations buildings experience a tense fight for available volume of occupation. In order to exploit maximum financial floor area ratios, constructions manage to occupy as much air as possible. In the 1920s, Hugh Ferriss already visualized the 1916 Zoning Law for Manhattan by shaping invisible theoretical envelopes into fulfilled architectural volumes. His drawings represented literal translations of urban policies.

Except for counted examples releasing cities from architecture in form of representative privately-owned public spaces, air usually matters. Legislators provide paternalistic frameworks to prevent citizens from an overly built environment. As a result, streets become victims of diagonal views, sunlight and hygienic ventilation.

Every building must be legal, but according to Yasutaka Yoshimura’s research, some can also become Super Legal. This condition is a direct result from frenetic megalopolises, looking how to supersede restrictive regulations. Super Legal Buildings 超合法建築図鑑 (建築文化シナジー). 彰国社 2006 is a compilation of strange mechanisms making architecture forms in Tokyo literally follow law and building codes. Organic setbacks, twists, perforations, distortions and extreme angles appear when air is squeezed to its most. Restrictions act as invitations for new inventions.

[images> courtesy Yasutaka Yoshimura]

Published on June 13, 2011 15:46.
Filed under: BOOKS/news, urban research

power-building

Trans-Siberian Railway was conceived as a tool to control and homogenize a vast territory. Along its route from Moscow to Vladivostok (and its turnoff to Beijing), isolated towns were suddenly turned into sites of power. Central Government built their administration branches, almost as satellites launched into the empty space of the tundra.

Trans Siberia (2010) is the resulting work of Warm Engine (Cheryl Wing-Zi Wong + Greta Hansen) after their journey throughout the built story of 20th century Communism. They travelled from Moscow to Beijing to visualize 14 administrative cities along the route, departing from the Kremlin and ending at Tiananmen Square. They question the contemporary function of these buildings and the role they play in current open-door markets: “The dearth of publicly accessible information about these communist-era built “relics” belies Russian and Chinese closed-door policies. These structures have not been erased, nor discarded, with the fall of communism in Russia or the shift to capitalism in China, much like the way that imperial-era buildings were once appropriated by communists.”

This research makes visible the direct translation of power into architectural façades. Warm Engine’s drawings illustrate different historical periods throughout Russian 20th century, ranging from the aesthetic to the austere: “the early Soviet avant-garde, the historical revivalism that reigned under Stalin, the restraint of the Khrushchev era (during which architectural excess was officially banned).” [source> triple canopy - issue 11]

Wing-Zi Wong and Hansen’s work includes a photo-essay. Their unbiased pictures simply show existing buildings; however, one can easily read the imperial ambition behind their construction. These hermetic institutions still configure an hermetic public space in their surroundings, that it is far from inviting citizens to use it freely. Trans Siberia not only depicts history but also its stigmatised remnants.

[1,3>Trans Siberia via Warm Engine][2>Trans Siberia Route via Places: The Design Observer][4> Frontier Façades via triplecanopy]

Published on April 14, 2011 17:10.
Filed under: urban research

streetvending in L.A.

“How does street vending fit in the contemporary city?” is the opening question of Kenny Cupers’ research about informal stalls throughout Los Angeles: Street Vending as Everyday Urbanism [2005]. With his statement, he supports this practice as an implemented way of urban dynamics; not to be forbidden, but highly enhanced. When formal facilities do not arrive in time, Pop-up vendors have almost the magic capacity of instantly meeting (eating, drinking, shopping…) needs of that site. They detect everyday social demands and provide a solution, which at the same time allows them to earn a living more easily in the megacity struggle.

“By investigating the public perceptions, discourse and political institutions that illegalize, regulate and enforce street vendors in Los Angeles, the project sheds light on the particular urbanism that street vending generates. Street vending is a pervasive element of the everyday urban landscape of Los Angeles. [...] (I)t involves an even greater variety of different actors, with divergent backgrounds and personal motivations; and it can take place using a variety of “infrastructures” – from back pockets, baskets, and bags, to carts, cars, and trucks. In Los Angeles, despite the city’s general prohibition on street vending, the practice has been growing conspicuously over the last few decades, encouraged by the Latin-American immigration since the 1980s. This situation has led a particular group of people to occupy the main stage of the public debate: recent Latino immigrants, some of which are undocumented and for whom vending is a crucial economic activity. These vendors mainly sell fresh vegetables, homemade foods and soda drinks from movable carts, and tend to be situated in particular areas in the city, like downtown, East LA, and East Hollywood. Focusing on this group, the project research has demonstrated how vendors’ mobility allows them to participate in urban life – as migrants, laborers and citizens – and how its contested meanings legitimize prohibition and shape attempts to legalize vending. It has shown ultimately how street vending constitutes a spatial politics in which mobility forms the main source of agency, contestation and site of intervention for governance.”

[all images> by Kenny Cupers]

Published on April 10, 2011 17:33.
Filed under: co-optation/zwischennutzung, urban research

standard remnants

In 1970s Matta-Clark became the King Midas of Odd Lots. By buying a series of forgotten wastelands and interstitial strips between buildings, an additional value was implemented to those fake real-estates. Nobody had shown any interest in them before, allowing him to purchase any piece for 25 USD at public auctions. While in his case they were mostly remnants of urban policies, Berlin also experienced a similar production of odd lots, being rather remnants of standardisation.

GDR only produced optimal rectangular housing blocks, no extrange shapes; and the whole industry was organised in order to supply prefabricated walls/panels/beams for such structures. As a result, triangular voids blossomed in sites where GDR rectangular estates met Prussian poligonal party walls. These boundaries almost did not want to touch each other. In Option Lots (2010), Brandlhuber+ have compiled 58 remnants of standard-oriented architecture in Berlin, ranging average lots of 10 m long by 0,4-2,5 m wide. In their research, they calculate the whole unbuilt volume in 7,563 m3 and around 20,000 m2 of windowless walls.

As Alexander Koch proposes in his recent article for Arch+ magazine, this makes one dream of Option Lots as the ideal headquarters for the future Contemporary Art Museum that Berlin is planning to build. Lacking enough economic resources for such a polemic landmark, the future of the institution is still uncertain and has generated a huge debate in Berlin. The city started the project as a simple way to boost real estate value of the area surrounding the main Railway Station, a whole economic speculation process, to be intentionally accelerated by artists. The budget was shrunk from initial 30 million euro for a permanent institution to 600,000 euro for a temporary show; now increased to 1 million euro. The chosen site is probably going to be a victim of intermediary use of a vacant lot (Zwischennutzung): a marketing excuse to avoid a permanent collection, while still rising land prices.

Brandlhuber+’s voids could at least return these spaces back to the citizens.

[1,2> Option Lots - urban research by Brandlhuber+, 2010][3> Option Lots featured at Arch+Magazine 201/202]

Published on March 30, 2011 12:30.
Filed under: urban research

A Road Trip Through Madrid’s Bubble Challenge

[by Luis Galán García & Daniel Fernández Pascual. 2010]

Building a housing block does not necessarily generate a so-called city. And it does not bring economic profits anymore. After a decade of unprecedented real estate development, Madrid starts to deal with its contemporary ruins: on one hand, more than 47,000 empty apartments wait for a first buyer (Asprima report/Dec.2009), and on the other, hundreds of kilometres of perfectly paved streets run between eerie blocks, waiting for a first construction on their sides. Like in every economic recession, the Skyscraper Index showed that Spain four highest towers (accomplished in Madrid 2008) marked the beginning of the end of a buoyant era.

Our Road Trip through Madrid’s Bubble Challenge is an on-going photo-reportage of these frozen in time areas of development. Could failed urban speculation be turning into natural reserves for the city, where migrant birds can stop in their way to Africa, and even marshes and wild flora regain their seized original location? Can they become the natural protected areas of the future?


In the very late 1990s, Madrid passed a law to expand the city periphery with over 200,000 dwellings, perfectly aware that the population growth would not correspond at all with the construction tempo. City inhabitants simply followed the national guidelines for economic development based on home ownership as the highest profit-making investment mode. As Isabel Concheiro puts it when describing Spain as an interrupted country: “If the increase in housing had been mainly related to the construction of primary housing, we would not be talking about a housing bubble, but rather the evolution of a sector to overcome a deficit. Instead, we are dealing with a real estate bubble, as much of this growth is the result of urbanization for speculative purposes, irreversible transforming the landscape and creating housing stock that is difficult to reuse.” [CONCHEIRO, I.: Interrupted Spain in “After Crisis”. Lars Müller Publishers, ETH Zürich. 2011]

More than 140,000 planned dwellings have not been built yet [Madrid Urbanism Department 30/11/2010], but most of the streets have already been paved and signposted. Our series of photographs illustrate these contemporary urban voids placed back in a rural context. We propose to learn from the beauty of the unfinished. Decaying urban contexts, which tried to be a city, are mutating into a bucolic landscape. Former networks of pathways that were destroyed come back again; extinguished native plants become the true green areas for the metropolis, whose wild growth has not been avoided; place names evoke a narrative of a landscape to be recovered, sounds of an interrupted nature… We foster the unexpected, where the uninhabited used to be.

[all images by the authors]

Published on March 16, 2011 12:37.
Filed under: mutant, post-crisis, urban research

A Peripheral Moment

The post-socialist urban condition that experienced Croatia in1990s was mainly characterised by collapse of estate-controlled urban planning and lack of investment on public infrastructures. But at the same time, and as Eve Blau points out, “(i)t is distance from power, rather than unremitting change, that creates opportunities for architecture”. Post-socialist consumption society produced wild urban villa typologies as a direct translation of Croatian free market housing, which ended up in a multiunit dwelling masquerading as a single family house: neither urban, in the sense that provides no collective amenities, nor is it a villa, as it does not provide any sense of individuality. But at the same time, architecture needed to reinvent itself to think of new housing forms between paradox and contradiction.

A Peripheral Moment (Actar 2010) is last Ivan Rupnik’s publication about a decade of architectural experimentation in Croatia. The author uses two approaches to go into the turmoil of spatial practices that were carried out between 1999 and 2010. First, and according to Ljubo Karaman’s theory, this very specific and prolific moment of artistic production can be directly connected to existing conditions of sustained instability. And second, reading the whole period from Tafuri’s perspective, instead of an avant-garde situation (“always affirmative, absolutist, totalitarian”), he approaches it as an Experimentalist phase (“constantly taking apart, putting together, contradicting, and provoking”). Consequently, Rupnik sees the necessity of publishing the whole contextual processes triggered beyond the accomplished built objects:

“While the physical products of this period have become quite common on the glossy pages and web portals of architectural journals, the innovative practices that generated them have not had the same fate.”

In Aaron Betsky’s words, this architectural moment cannot be understood as a finished form, but as a generic container that floats through the grid.

The book is a compilation of urban analysis, architectural findings, contributions by external thinkers and a series of discursive methods. Frampton writes: “the architect must become an urban guerrilla, an inventor of new strategies, or let us say, at the very least, an aesthete amid the ruins or an agent provocateur”. Croatian urban periphery is the terrain vague where all these guerrilla experiments have been taken form. Alien constructions which are “jealous of their isolation and proud of their individuality; […] projects that are […] always committed to the thought of producing a symbolic and functional “plus-value”, that offer the city and community something more than what the individual investors who are financing and producing architecture today across Europe demand”. [Stefano Boeri]

Homeland War memorials constituted the first architectural realizations of the peripheral moment, evidencing a revival of RELIGION and cultural IDENTITY. One of the most remarkable compiled works being the Field of Crosses orchestrated by Nikola Bašić (picture above). Aiming to recover nearly lost masonry construction techniques common to Croatia’s coast, groups of volunteers flocked to the construction site voluntarily, forcing Bašić to use a loudspeaker as his primary design tool.

The book understands a delirious society from its built form and vice versa. Its most relevant contribution to understanding this outskirts condition is the comparative analysis of projects, regarding their effect on urban society. A series of transitional typologies where BIG BOX RETAILERS and FAST FOOD FRANCHISES dominate an urban periphery hybridised with housing, office and public space. Managing to make a McDonald’s drive-in rooftop serve as an unused basketball court, framing speculation, recycling the urban passage, urbanizing pedagogy or conceiving Trojan horses injecting urbanity.

A Peripheral Moment is an explanation behind the invented hybrids derived from a newly born society.

[1> Field of Crosses via grad-vodice][2,3> A Peripheral Moment via Actar]

Published on March 13, 2011 14:02.
Filed under: BOOKS/news, urban research

“everything is linked”

SOMETHING FANTASTIC is about changing the world. But it is also a manifesto by three young architects on worlds, people, cities, and houses (authors: Julian Schubert, Elena Schütz and Leonard Streich, self-printed. Distributed by Ruby Press, Berlin 2010). Somewhere between utopia and activism, they want to approach reality with a perverted unconventional perspective. And somewhere between naivety and pragmatism, it is where they find their sources for their public space actions and dreamt realities: The beauty of our future buildings will be rooted in the poetry of their simplicity.

The book is divided into four sections:

POSITIONS are statements and their wish list for the world to become;

PLANS are actions, dreams and recipes resulting from their manifesto: how to profit from gentrification (see the jet-set houses), how to recycle GDR built relics (see Plattenbau Algorithm), how to enhance green energy public space (see the Dumpling Express)…

CONVERSATIONS is a series of 12 interviews with carefully selected minds, ranging from lightweight construction expert Mike Schlaich to Markus Miessen and his uninvited outsiders theory; Wiel Arets’ virological architecture influencing the environment or firm futurologist Gerd Gerken, among others.

EXCERPTS include those essential quotations that everybody mentions and nobody knows exactly.

They thoroughly deal with ecology, politics, poetics and speculation, but these are to be read between the lines, since these topics melt constantly with each other in the text and in reality alike. The audience of architecture is everyone. And in this same line, they have launched the on-line archive whatwow – an index of re-inventing construction – and an on-going compilation of pedigreed and non-pedigreed collective thinking. It collects unconventional examples of construction techniques, material use, typologies, programs etc. invented today or centuries ago that expand your possibilities beyond the building-as-usual.

The most naïf ideas usually foster the most talented discoveries. This manifesto and its unusual visions inspire both further action and fiction. I do believe that Something Fantastic’s Nighttrain Station with its 6 km long train, moving the equivalent amount of passengers to the whole daily air transit between Berlin and Munich, will someday arrive at the Central Railway Station.

[1 &2> Encyclopedia and The Dumpling Express. Courtesy: Something Fantastic]

Published on February 22, 2011 15:20.
Filed under: BOOKS/news, non-pedigreed, unsolicited, urban research

unité d’habitation

A home is not a house was an statement from 1969 by Reyner Banham, emphasizing the relevance of technology applied to dwelling forms. Part of Carmelo Rogríguez Cedillo’s on-going PhD research on Archaelogy of the Future, one of my favourite blogs, these pictures collect knowledge about distinct modes of nomad homes. An extremely appealing way of living, which has always been en vogue until today, but not as popular as in 1950-1960s.

In his futuristic architectural visions from the past, Rodríguez Cedillo focuses on Popular Science American publication featuring mobile dwellings, either fully or partly movable structures, between 1930s-1980s. He relates the prototypes from every decade to different contextual solutions. If in 1930s mobile homes were a solution for cheap housing, in the following decades they adopted the form of second dwellings for leisure picnic activities; they were followed by a general use as cheap modes for travelling, and lately in the 1990s to an envisioning hyper-technification of the object itself.

But his relevant point underlines that these popular publications were most of the times ahead of the architecture of the time. They not only introduced a revolutionary dwelling participative environment, but even encouraged readers to build their own lifepod, according to their personal tastes or needs. In 1954, a total of 1,700,000 Americans owned a mobile home.

[1> train as a dwelling from 1927 Vs. a mobile home from the 1960s via Arqueología del Futuro] [2-6> mobile homes published in Popular Science in 1941 - 1958 - 1964 - 1965 - 1971 - 1984 via Arqueología del Futuro]

Published on December 31, 2010 11:24.
Filed under: nomads, urban research

extrude to the max

A purely economical use of ground has led HongKong towards a variety of singular built inventions. Simply by translating contextual requirements of mountainous topography and high demand for housing, the city develops itself almost as a literal result of urban policies. The recently published HongKong Typology, by the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zürich (Profs. Emanuel Christ and Christoph Gantenbein), researches into these phenomenal morphological constructions, pure victims of height limitations, street shadowing policies and absolute minimization of elevators.

Although every building has an author, it seems as if they had almost no choice when land market is the main concern. “Their language swings between an anonymous lack of design and a classical modern expression. HongKong’s architecture is thus thoroughly like a traditional anonymous architecture without architects.”

Their research focuses in 36  case study of rare species, with their correspondent photo, floorplan and axonometric diagram, classified in seven characteristic, almost radical, typologies. Among them, Pencil towers, for example, are a direct extrusion of the lot, over 20 storey high. Like in the Fullic Court Building below, each storey consists of a 22 m2 apartment with 39 m2 dedicated to vertical circulation. Even though such a contradictory ratio could sound nonsense in other megacities, it was the simplest formula for developing real estate property without involving owners from different adjoining lots. If the pencil typology deals with micro-property land structure, star shape towers can expand as much as they can; objective: achieve the maximum outer perimeter by folding and folding the façade again. Once every room has its own window, up to 8 big apartments can be fit in every floor, all concentrated around one single elevator nucleus. Inheriting this same principle of land profitability, Industrial blocks dedicate their whole height to light industrial use. Similar floorplans stacked one above the other, with chimneys cladding the façade up to the roof.

As questioned in their publication, what can other cities learn from such economic and aesthetic efficiency in our post-crisis urbanity?

Should/Could their buildings also extrude to the max?

[image1>HongKong Typology case studies] [images 2&3> Fullic Court Tower and MeiKei vertical Industrial Building] all published in HongKong Typology by gta publishers, ETH Zürich

Published on December 7, 2010 21:08.
Filed under: BOOKS/news, urban research

amidst the ocean

In order to make 40,000 people cross a bridge in an hour at 25 km/h, the bridge needs to be 138 m wide in case they do it by car, 38 m if by bus, 20 m if on foot and only 10 m wide if by bike. So this brief lapse of 10 minutes time could only be achieved otherwise by hyper-speed trains running at 100 km/h every 30 seconds. But the bike still beats, since it is the only means of transport resolving door-to-door connection. [source> Ivan Illich via la ciudad viva]

The Bridge Project is Do Ho Suh’s recently inaugurated show at Storefront for Art and Architecture NewYork. It consists of a two year speculative research results about how to build a fantastic bridge linking his two cities, NewYork and Seoul. His study also focuses on the sociopolitical and environmental complexity of the ocean as an strategic building site. The bridge should join his two homes into one, with a transpacific straight line, but his perfect home would actually be located just in the middle of it; within a new space of projected desires where neither economic nor structural optimization are the defining elements of design.

…would he ride his bike back home?

[all images> A perfect home: the Bridge Project by Do Ho Suh. Courtesy of Storefront for Art and Architecture]

Published on September 16, 2010 23:31.
Filed under: nomads, urban research

unfinished emporio

The density of dots representing unfinished architectures in the map of Italy, already shows in itself the complex world of political urbanisms. If Northern part seems to have forgotten only some buildings while constructing them, Southerners have to deal with concrete left-overs too usually.

Alterazionivideo mapped all these abandoned structures, focusing on Sicily ruins, in their project Incompiuto Siciliano. These contemporary ruins result not from the decay of a whole Roman Empire, but from speculative Power and Trading Emporios. Unfinished urban utopias, which might deserve a whole archaeological study of their never-arrived inhabitants, or anthropological studies of missing lifestyles…

“Unfinished projects are the ruins of modernity, monuments born of laissez-faire creative enthusiasm. [...] Landmarks in their own way, Incomplete public works radiated out from Sicily to the rest of the peninsula, creating an Unfinished Italy. [...]Reinforced concrete is Incompiuto’s constituent material. Its colours and textures are determined by the ageing and weathering of materials. [...]The conflict between form and function is resolved. Lack of function becomes a form of art. [...] Incompiuto Siciliano is a symbol of political power and artistic sensibility. Unfinished projects are not only the products of architectural talent, but also the nerve-ends of a complex and structured organism. Unfinished projects are born of the union of exuberant Sicilian creativity and the ancestral oratorical skill of these people. This skill has allowed the Sicilians to be conquered – by Greeks, Normans, Turks, Garibaldians – without ever submitting to their conquerors.” [extract from Incompiuto Siciliano Manifesto]

[images 1-5> Unfinished architectures in Sicily as contemporary ruins by Alterazionivideo]

[images 6-9> stills from the recorded process of taking one contemporary ruin from Sicily to the Venice Biennale]

Published on September 12, 2010 10:57.
Filed under: urban research

hyper-real estates

Finally, my Urban Design research thesis and proposal on HYPER-REAL ESTATES: Shanghai, the partycipatory megacity just released!

In Post-1978 Shanghai, there are two major forms of urban dwellings resulting from previous Chinese Maoist society: formal high-rise compounds and informally restructured ancient urban housing. Under the incessant trend of flash growth in last decades, both types, the Real Estates and the Un-Real Estates, reveal decisive for city making. Traditionally, standard high-rise have led to a monotonous and impersonal city; and over-crowded ancient housing (Lilong) have led to interactive modes of appropriation of public space. The Un-Real Estates manifest themselves as participatory environments, where dwellers build up social networks and achieve personal fulfilment.

On one hand, a discourse throughout currents of thinking on Participation is followed, ranging from classic Lefebvre, Heidegger, Constant, Situationism, Everyday and Tactic Urbanisms, Turner and Habraken, to more recent thesis on the Open City and Temporary Use. On the other, diverse research thesis concerning the redevelopment of Shanghai’s Lilongs and new Estates are compared.

Regarding the role of dwellers in contemporary and future Chinese developments, this research investigates whether real estate compounds are becoming the new kind of participatory architecture in Shanghai. To achieve this purpose, Do-It-Yourself strategies have been field-studied and a survey on the amount of services that real estate developers offer in their new housing compounds has been conducted.

Combining current trends and niche market strategies with desired improvements, a tactic approach to the housing process, instead of a strategic one, can lead to a new urban housing typology. By learning from both Real and Un-Real Estates in Shanghai, this paper proposes a more socially sustainable mode of Hyper-Real Estates. Once the desirability and likeliness of dwellers’ participation in the housing process in today’s Shanghai is proved, it concludes by introducing the party-cipatory city model, where the triad investors-government-people can all better meet their needs.

Keywords: Participatory Architecture / Leisure Space / Spatial Appropriation / Real, Un-Real, Hyper-Real Estates / Everyday Urbanism / Tactic Approach / Zwischennutzung / Temporary Use

Published on June 19, 2010 11:34.
Filed under: urban research

the pulse of the city

After seeing Doug McCune’s visualizations of San Franscisco according to 8 different crime rates, one understands the city as a mountainous landscape, where valleys are supposed to be the safest areas and peaks the least boring ones.

Also understanding urban dynamics, this reminds me of the Real Time Rome project and its raster images. If San Francisco maps aim an artistic impression of a reality, the Rome ones deal with scientific time accuracy. Their software, developed in 2006 by MIT SENSEable City Lab, represented cell phone activity in Rome under mass events; for example, they showed the vital energy of the city by relating it to the assistants to Madonna concert in Stadio Olimpico or the World Cup Final at Circo Massimo.

Citizens’ fluxes, together with public transport intensity movements, mobility in definitive, could also be adjusted to changing demand in real time, by understanding how neighborhoods are used in the course of a day, how the distribution of buses and taxis correlates with densities of people, how goods and services are distributed in the city, or how different social groups, such as tourists and residents, inhabit the city. [senseable - MIT]

[images 1&2> San Francisco Crime topography via strange maps] [images 3&4> Real Time Project]

Published on June 14, 2010 11:43.
Filed under: urban research

civil air defense

Migrant workers from the countryside in Chinese megacities need to take care of their own housing needs. Not having the official right to stay in the city, it is hard for them to find any kind of shelter (the urban/rural hukou drama). RufinaWu already documented the squatting of rooftops in HongKong, but she previously did an exploration on its underground version in Beijing between 2005-2006.

The so-called floating population houses herself in this case in a former civil air defense basement in the capital city, creating a perfectly organised sort of hostel, where tenants struggle to make its mouldy walls more habitable. Compact to the limit, these shared rooms along a tunnel are micro-worlds also trying to defend themselves from the consumption society going on above ground, from which they are both supporters and victims.

[images1,2,3&4> interiors of Beijing underground migrant dwellings via unhoused] [image5> map of Beijing Underground hostels via one small project]

Published on May 28, 2010 01:08.
Filed under: urban research

corner kiosk

Rationalist large-scale housing in Moscow produced vast neighbourhoods of standard pre-fab dwellings. But this rationally imposed city cannot deal with Everyday commerce.

In post-socialist cities, small retail kiosks have been popping up according to demand for flowers, drinks, snacks and knick-knacks. Raumlabor-berlin launched in 2005 an urban research on the social potential of such mobile devices, which hold the magic power of turning monofunctional monotony into an outburst of valuables.

Meeting points between self-organization and daily needs, these kiosks may easily adapt to seasonal scarcities. In the same way as itinerant circus provided entertainment in bored townships, mikrorayons housing mega-blocks depend on such trading resources to make their environment more habitable.

Kioskisierung consists of a documentation of this temporary retail in Moscow (Russia), Halle/Neustadt (Germany), Bratislava (Slovakia) and Lûdz (Poland), proposing guidelines to initiate such an activity, as well as possible flaneurial dérives to enjoy these challenges of contemporary city-making. If the word kiosk once dated back to Persian “corner” or “angle“, nowadays it turned into a successful vivid corner shop, struggling to survive in over-planned societies.

[All images> Kioskisierung project by raumlabor.net & kioskisierung.net]

Published on April 30, 2010 11:12.
Filed under: urban research

post-oil city

Gathering plausible solutions for a non-dependent society on fossil energies, Arch+ is opening in Berlin the exhibition Post-Oil City, with sustainable solutions for cities in Dubai (such as SMAQ’s Xeritown) or new mobility initiatives (transport system in Curitiba, Brazil).

Part of it, is also the research on Taiwan Strait by Chora. In the Atlas this London-based team has developed, the liminal space of the sea-void between mainland China and the island of Taiwan, is described as a culture and energy-efficiency incubator.

[Image 1> post-oil city via arch+ magazine] [image 2> climate-incubator on taiwan strait via ifa] [images 3&4> taiwan strait atlas by chora]

Published on April 15, 2010 02:15.
Filed under: urban research

reclaim luxury refuges

The Charter of Dubai is a future urban vision by SMAQ architecture urbanism research, berlin.

Proposed for the Rotterdam Biennale 2009/10, “it has been drafted at a moment in time when the global real estate market has ground to a halt. Looking around, we find ourselves with the remains of an investment practice that focuses on built premium spaces: malls, business parks, gated communities, retreats, resorts. This document is based on the thesis that the luxury refuges of today will be inevitably reclaimed.

Across the world, these refuges have been confirming the tendency towards the development of a fragmented and socially stratified urbanity, which was pertinently described as splintering urbanism by Stephen Graham and Simon Marvin. [...] By manipulating the perimeters and parameters of the refuge, new forms of interdependencies will proliferate. This act of border manipulation also provides gaps, occasions, or potentials to misuse infrastructural networks.

How to turn the refuge from a traditional burgh (a fortified town) into a borough, a quarter that is a functional and thorough part of the urban landscape?

The Palm Jumeirah, also called the Palm Dubai, is not only the most spectacular of upscale refuges but it is also the paradigm: the ultimate diagram in terms of figure, internal organisation and external relations. [...] On the Palm, so-called virtual villas have been bought and re-sold ten times before the first stone was laid. Prices tripled and when they suddenly fell, people with no actual interest in using the homes called themselves owners. In the aftermath, what remains of these dysfunctional spectres is the laid-out infrastructure, literally the earthwork, roads, cables, tubes, and building stock.”

[Images> googlemaps and The Charter of Dubai by SMAQ]

Published on March 29, 2010 09:25.
Filed under: post-crisis, urban research

manual of decolonization

P’sagot Hill used to be an open space for recreation in Palestine, which turned to a conventional single-family house settlement after the Israeli occupation.

Salottobuono researched this condition of the new residential area and proposed strategies of subversion: a Manual of Decolonization. It is a generic toolbox for post-occupation scenarios, aiming to reuse existing structures.

Since 20 years ago, Jewish single-family houses adopted red pitched roofs as standard. Since Palestinians mostly build terraced roof tops, Jewish settlements were a political statement in themselves; far beyond aesthetics, they could be easily recognised by Israeli troops, and prevented them from attacks against Palestinians. Therefore, the Manual of Decolonization proposed in its Un-roofing strategy to rethink these stigmatized roofs towards an interactive social space.

By re-parcelling, re-combining, re-plugging, re-settling, un-folding, un-homing or un-grounding, their strategies seek a better future for the area through processes of negotiation among dwellers.

[All images> Manual of decolonization by Salottobuono, currently exhibited at UNPLANNED - Superfront L.A.]

Published on March 26, 2010 09:24.
Filed under: urban research

a room with a view

how much does a balcony in Madrid cost?

8 neighbourhoods in downtown were researched in 2008.

maravillas*lavapiés*chamberí*goya*recoletos*jerónimos*ibiza*argüelles

from the intricate medieval urban fabric to the rational modern Extension, there is a wide range of housing typologies depending on its courtyards. from some deepest apartments (3 metres of façade x 20 metres depth) to the brightest (50 metres of façade x 6 metres depth).

Apart from showing the trilateral relationship euros/m2/balconies, conclusions led to question the relevance of the Address as well.

In the wealthiest areas [with wide promenades], price did not exceedingly depend in the amount of balconies, but the ZIP code counted; makes one dream of windowless bunker-buildings along every block… Meanwhile, in the most economic areas [with tight streets], balcony was The Luxury. Could buildings turn into an explosion of micro-openings, so that apartments would be filled with virtual balconies along inner corridors?

windowful!

Published on February 21, 2010 13:13.
Filed under: urban research

reclaim the lane

Lilong housing characterizes the city of Shanghai, dating from 1840s to 1949. An exotic mixture resulted from intellectual Chinese planners having studied abroad and Western architects fascinated with oriental dwellings. Lilong settlements still comprise the majority of housing stock in the old city centre today, consisting of 3-storey row housing along vivid narrow lanes. After the Cultural Revolution, Lilongs had to reinvent themselves; each single unit was turned into multi-family housing, due to lack of other residences; consequently, the new subdivided units obliged their dwellers to occupy the lanes, as an implementation to the minuscule indoor space. This informal use of the lanes has survived until today, with many advantageous features: hierarchical spatial organization networks, separation of public and private zones, high degree of safety control, strong sense of neighborly interaction and social cohesiveness. These factors make the Lilong settlements a pleasant place to live and hence local populace loves them. [from Qian Guan]

Before gentrification ends up with this intense unplanned way of experiencing public space, RECLAIM THE LANE! aims to translate the high degree of already achieved D.I.Y. sustainability into contemporary necessities. It is in only in extreme situations of lack of facilities that normal inhabitants use their wit to create low-cost or even no-cost solutions.

After several months of urban expeditions through these paradises of informality, unnoticed from the main streets, 8 basic patterns of squatting strategies were detected, dealing with: greenery, health, laundry, storage, entertainment, eatery, information and fragmentation of facilities. Aiming a future where dwellers do choose their living environment, how can these experiences reduce costs of housing and implement social relationships among dwellers?

RECLAIM THE LANE! wants to show another way of interactive no-cost housing…

Published on February 19, 2010 16:50.
Filed under: co-optation/zwischennutzung, urban research

learning from tacky tourism

More than 30 years after Venturi and Scott Brown admired Las Vegas as a self-made city based on gambling, Southeast Asia seems to be winning positions nowadays as a world-wide Mecca for cheap tourism.

After suffering countless massacres, wars, battles, colonizations and protectorates of every kind, Thailand, Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia are decided to reinvent themselves to attract tourism at any cost for their urban redevelopment. The vast offer of extravagant activities appeal youngsters from all over the world, under the promise of living exotic experiences. As a result, lost towns are increasingly becoming reference points in the map of cheap entertainment for the masses, which is making informal local economies grow, as well as towns themselves.

*Sex in Bangkok, Thailand> multi-billion dollar sex industry running massage parlors, where everything can happen inside: money-boys, lady-boys, go-gos,… “Unlike brothels or strip clubs, Ping Pong Shows do not lure clients through promises of sexual arousal, but promises of sexual perversion — if not sexual torture.  They offer freak shows where women’s bodies are reduced to grotesque objects exploited for tourists’ entertainment.”

more> untold stories pullitzer center bbc news

*Tubing in Vang Vieng, Laos> “I survived” is the printed motto on the popular tank-tops, one can show off after his experience. It consists of hiring a floating doughnut on the local river and just let oneself flow downstream stopping at any of the dozens of the bamboo cocktail bars, which have lately flourished along both banks. (several people have already died whilst tubing in last years)

*Tailors in Hoi An, Vietnam> a world-heritage fishermen village turned into a huge instant tailors market. Each and every store along its ancient streets houses a tailor-made business, either for coats, dresses, suits or sneakers, promising a finished result in even 12 hours, just in time before the tourist departs from this stressful location again. Imitation and Original, who is first? Nike shoes already launched the Do-It-Yourself official design in their website.

*Home-stays in Minorities villages> when the first travelers reached these mountainous landscapes of Northern Thailand, Vietnam and Laos, the hundreds of different ethnic minorities were a rarely precious piece of originally preserved culture. Nowadays tourists want also to be travelers and home-stays are offered everywhere at a high price. Intimacy can be bought and sold, and no one seems to care, whenever money is handed in.

[Dzao Minorities, Northern Vietnam]

[Miao Minorities, South Yunnan]

*Cooking courses> after having perverted local restaurants into a variety of international dishes advertised everywhere in these Tourism Meccas, they also reinvent back now their own locality. Learning how to cook local food is sometimes the only way left to scape to fried eggs with bacon…

*The Backpackers alley> is the latest trend in ghettos. Almost every destination in Southeast Asia has developed a street with cheap guesthouses (double price as anywhere else in the city) one after the other, surrounded by all-you-can-eat canteens, and fake opium street dealers at night.

I wonder how relevant is the role of Lonely-Planetarism in all these perversions of local spots; as long as travel-guide Bibles keep on recommending activities, travelers’ spontaneous decisions become very limited.

On the other side, however,  local informal economies are boosting in a short-term perspective; their future sustainability is what still remains uncertain for urban life.

Published on February 12, 2010 05:04.
Filed under: urban research

dear lily

Dear Lily,

When I first saw you, the “romantic Italian and dignified French style” of your place captivated me. Actually, I became a bit confused, since I sometimes had the impression of being somewhere else, neither teleported to a harmonious Toscana village, nor to a delicate villa in the Normandy. The “elegance and subtleness of your Mediterranean architecture” drove me rather to some other anonymous city: Zhenzhou, Hefei, Deqing or Haining, to some other similar compound also produced by Greentown, one of the top 10 Real Estate Groups in China[1].

How can the standard Chinese megacity turn out to be even more mega-standard? The strategic tool for these developers is the Model: a magic formula combining housing and public image, repeated all over the country. Common features reiterate, whether Hopson, Shimao, Evergrande, Vanke or Coli are the assemblers. Lily apartments have numerous twins: the Rivieras, Oasis, Splendors, Rosegardens… These homogeneous complexes differ only on diverse niche products, which have been carefully detected. What can we learn from the supply-demand market of housing, regarding dwellers’ needs in current urban China?

After analysing the G-10 of the Chinese contemporary Real scene, four strategies are to be highlighted:

First, as far as Geopolitics is concerned, Hopson prefers to focus in the 3 Chinese metropolitan areas (Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou). Meanwhile, Evergrande ventures himself to set up residential units in 22 second-tier cities, following the official “Going West” policy: Chongqing, Xian, Kunming, Chengdu… These new unknown urban centres are quickly becoming decisive for national economics, relieving oversaturated Shanghai. Diplomacy also plays an important role for the Hong Kong-based Coli. In order to “grace China” for letting them operate in Mainland, they are philanthropy masters.

Second, “the creators of perfect lifestyles” stand for marketing a public image. Every Western allure is subject to be duplicated, in form of French neo-Royalty or a Mediterranean patio, branding “art, elegance and culture” for the sake of luxury. Consequently, their Architecture and public space develop together with their bombastic slogans; Shimao’s theme park gardens blossom in every decent Chinese compound, making olive trees, Louis XVI mazes, and Hawaii coconuts distort the perception of place – unused gardens simply pretending to be.

Third, target customers are generally city-based consumers with high earning power. However, Vanke has found another niche product in the growing middle-class. In addition, Hopson leads the supply of custom-made services for dwellers through its on-line community (banquets, delicacy order, education…).

And finally, anticipating to future developments or decreases, every G-10 company is amassing vast land reserves as a secret weapon to shock the world. But Lily, don’t be overwhelmed about the future! It seems that star Jackie Chan launching compounds is being gradually replaced by starchitects launching Real Estate headquarters.

Looking forward to…“making your dreams come true”.


[1] According to the last ranking report for the Q3 2009, recently released by CRIC China Information Technology Co. Ltd.

Published on January 23, 2010 17:19.
Filed under: urban research

metromadrid moves

Distorted reality of the metro system in madrid, depending on the amount of users of each station. This scanning of the city leads to another mental map of what happens both above and underground.

With the gathered data of one working day from November 2006, this data-visualization was made in 2008.

Published on January 23, 2010 17:18.
Filed under: urban research

local heroes / berlin neukölln

Neukölln is a traditional working class district and former location of much of Berlins’ industrial employment. Many companies in former West Berlin times ran highly subsidized production sites here and created a high demand for workers. After the fall of the wall, subsidies, and therefore production, were eliminated. For many, this meant the loss of their existence, and was especially true for migrant workers. Today 160 different nations live in Neukölln. More and more enterprises are owned and run by migrants. Turkish and Arabic enterprise, but increasingly also African, Asian, and Eastern- European, take on an important role. The establishment of enterprise happens mostly out of necessity.

In order to get an overview of the area, we investigated all shops with regard to its ethnic economies along Karl- Marx- Straße, between Hermannplatz and Grenzallee. Most of the app. 350 enterprises have ethnic background. The job market is particularly difficult for migrant workers. „Unsatisfactory“ language skills are a big obstacle, as well as the unwillingness of professional degrees from their home countries to be acknowledged. Most of the businesses are established with private capital funds. Through these enterprises the creation of value is increasing in Neukölln. The high potential of the ethnic economies – those which can bring further changes for the Neukölln economy – are often not obvious. The project Local Heroes therefore aims to investigate special features of ethnic economies along Karl- Marx- Straße, and to show its potential. With regard to the concept of the reorganization of the Karl- Marx- Straße in Neukölln and a revitalization of the former shopping district, Local Heroes wants to preserve the existing multi- ethnicity within the development of the local site, and highlight its cultural diversity.

As a recall for the city of Berlin we organised a street performance, together with one of our Local Heroes.

Svetla Dimitrova was born in Bulgaria. She has been living in Berlin since six years, and opened her studio for bridal wear in the Karl-Marx-Straße one year ago. Svetla is a fashion designer and worked in the fashion business in her home country as well. Her dresses are self- designed and produced; her customers are welcome to bring in their own ideas. On average Svetla works 14 hours per day, seven days a week. She does not have any employees thus far. The business is going well. She already has regular customers though she has never used advertising. Her business works through “word-of-mouth”. Her customers are living mainly in Berlin, but originate from Turkey, Germany, Poland, Russia and the Balkan countries. Besides Bulgarian, Svetla speaks German and Russian fluently, and has a working knowledge of Turkish. She sees the existence of the many other bridal shops in the nearby environment as a potential. Svetla has good relations with other business owners, even friendships. With her customers she is friendly, almost familiar. And although it does not go as far as meeting privately – Svetla wants to keep the line between business and private life here – she still listens to her customers problems and supports and offers her advice. Svetla often gets invited to her customers’ weddings.

Wedding international was performed in June 2009, showing the differences of social habits in weddings configuring outfits. Polnish women like to wear short, since they have to dance all night long, Russian dresses need to glitter…

[A project with Katharina Rohde]

Published on January 23, 2010 06:01.
Filed under: urban research

hello world!

Published on January 4, 2010 22:53.
Filed under: co-optation/zwischennutzung, hybrids, participation, post-crisis, urban research