Ville vs Cite

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French language_ville: the overall city/ cite: it designated a particular place (the character of life in the neighborhood), cite can refer a kind of consciousness. The distinction is old, however, it helps clarify the difference between the built environment (English phrase for ville) and how people dwell in it.

Cite: Engels 1840, The Condition of the working-class in England in 1844, based on his testimony of scenes of daily life in Manchester. He noticed aspects of the life in the streets that did not fit the new language of class like Balzac, Stendhal, Flaubert whose characters are crashed in the city. Urban life is unsettled (all that is solid melts into air), modernity consists of the transient, as in Bauman’s term “liquid modernity.” There is also however, a need to balance between change and stability, ” distill the eternal from the transitory.” Only a precise analysis of details will make the cite comprehensible to the the urban dweller; the mental space of complexity consists of analyzing small bits of reality.

Ville-First generation urbanists: Haussmann, Cerda, Olmsted

Network-Paris | The accessible city: hygienic issues (plague), new drainage systems, boulevards to avert rebels and barricades (police state) that however served transportation and more positive social purposes and had a spectacle quality, new housing that serves as a vertical theatrical scenery, glazed facades of department stores. Design of the ville was more than utilitarian; indeed display displaced the ethical reckoning of life on the street. The Haussmannian city privileged space over place: the networked ville had diminished the cite.

Camille Pissarro: Boulevard Montmartre, image available here

Fabric-Barcelona | The equal city: once again hygienic issues, Cerda also wanted to address ethnicities and religions into a kind of cooperative socialism and produce conditions of equality between the residents. He used the additive grid, a system of equal-sized blocks with mixed housing (Dutch model) and green spaces distributed throughout the city. To accommodate turning vehicles Cerda cut off the edges of his blocks diagonally. That created an hospitable site where people could gather, space became place. His idea also embodied a danger: if one block begins to degrade, there is no reason other blocks, exactly similar in form, to succumb (monoculture).

4 6 2009 BARCELONA VISTA AEREA DEL EIXAMPLE FOTO XAVIER JUBIERRE, image available here

Artifice-New York (Central Park) | The sociable city: social value of nature in the city, Olmsted thought of parks as places where the races could mix; inclusion was more possible in an impersonal space of strangers than in the more intimate space of neighborhoods (from labor to leisure). Rural life was destroyed in favor of an integrated urban life, the park was far from central NY at the time. Modest gates were used to show that all were welcome, the landscape was totally artificial. As the city expanded, the park’s perimeter was filled with mansions for the wealthy: people inside it became less mixed. In CP nature suspends reality, artificial pleasure to promote social integration

Central Park 1870, image available here

References: all notes are excerpts from Richard Sennett’s book “Building and Dwelling: Ethics for the City,” Penguin Books 2019

Storm King Art Center

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I just heard of this today on a tv documentary, I wish I could visit. The centre covers a vast rural area one hour north of Manhattan. It was established in 1960 by Ralph E. Ogden and its collection has been growing ever since. The image above, belongs to one of the most prominent works -in my opinion- of Menashe Kadishman and his 1977 collection “Suspended”:

With no visible evidence of the engineering holding the sculpture up, Suspended prompts contemplation of the relationship between its two conjoined, towering masses, coupled with questions about what lies below ground. Rich and rusted, the patina of the weathered steel wraps the stark geometric shapes in a skin-like sheath.

Excerpt from The Storm King Art Center webpage

The center also accommodates many of the works of Mark di Suvero, among which “Mother Peace” (image below), a work completed just before Di Suvero left the US to protest against the war in Vietnam.

Image retrieved here

Circular cities

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Article discusses the efforts of Prof. Williams in UCL in promoting the ideas and practices of the Circular City by establishing UCL’s Circular Cities Hub in 2016.
A book is to be expected in 2020 entitled “Circular Cities: A Revolution in Urban Sustainability” by Williams that will be published by Routledge.

Part of this has involved viewing cities holistically. This means not just looking at resources, but seeing urban areas as organisms that constantly adapt to changes, such as migration and increasing diversity, as well as considering different trajectories of development, from shrinking, post-industrial cities such as Detroit, to places like London, where corporate and foreign investment is squeezing out lower-value, circular activities.

The SULP approach

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SULP: Synergetic Urban Landscape Planning

This is an integrated approach that allows us to explore, imagine and plan synergies so as to accelerate the transition to a liveable, low carbon city. During the research process, SULP has continuously been reinforced by incorporating the results of the separate studies on water, climate, energy, urban agriculture and nutrients. Synergetic urban landscape planning forms the bridge between CO2 and livability goals on the one hand, and principles for sustainable urban development on the other.

More on SULP here

The sidewalk ballet of city neighbourhoods

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A statistical indicator called the Storefront Index measures the number and concentration of customer-facing businesses in the nation’s large metropolitan areas. A series of maps represent location, size and intensity of neighbourhood business clusters down to the street level for 51 metropolitan areas. The Storefront Index, claims the writer, is one indicator of the relative size and robustness of the active streetscape in and around city centers. The index material is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution license and it is openly available for further investigation to researchers. around the globe

 

References

  • Joe Cortright, 2018. Quantifying Jane Jacobs. In City Commentary, full article and image available here

Nordhavn Copenhagen

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fishers in front of the international school, architect: C.F. Moller

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silo transformation to housing units, COBE architects

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a model of the future redevelopment along with designs and models of all future projects was exhibited at the ground floor of the COBE building

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Park’n’Play by JAJA Architects

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UN city in the back, swimmers in the front

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small scale housing and re-use

Amsterdam edible roofs.

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One of the best bike rides ever!IMG_1357

We started at the Circl, with a delicious brunch. Then we visited Hopp, Zoku and Restaurant Vermeer.

The edible roofs initiative is managed by Hrbs and is a project in progress. Thanks to a innovative system of cultivation and watering, hotels and restaurants can grow their own herbs and maintain their own flower gardens to attract bees and butterflies on their rooftops. Our guide Kelai Diebel was amazing.

Best surprise of the day: the six course meal offered to us by chef  Christopher Naylor. It was exquisite! Thank you guys!

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Circular Buiksloterham report

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This report contains the final results of a study on Buiksloterham’s potential to
become a leading example of Circular City development in Amsterdam. The study was commissioned and executed by a consortium of local stakeholders who are active in the area of Buiksloterham and see its potential as a global example for a new kind of sustainable urban development (…) Though Buiksloterham is unique in Amsterdam, it also has many features that make it a good case study for the transformation of other post-industrial neighborhoods in cities around the world (…) Its polluted lands and open spaces can become the center of the implementation of new clean technologies and a hub for the closure of urban material cycles. The activities needed to close these local material flows can be used as a driver for local industry and the strengthening of local social networks.

Action Plan

  • Designate Buiksloterham as an official experimental zone or Living Lab
  • Develop an inclusive governance and management structure for Buiksloterham
  • Create new incentive structures and financial vehicles
  • Build capacity for urban sensing and open data
  • Implement a Circular Neighborhood Action Plan

Technical Interventions

  • Fully Renewable Energy Supply
  • Water Innovation
  • Alternative Mobility
  • Soil as Natural Capital
  • Close the Loop

Full Report and Image available here

ZARCH Publication now available!

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I am very pleased to see our article ‘Pedagogical approaches to embodied topography: a workshop that unravels the hidden and imaginary landscapes of Elaionas,‘ get published in ZARCH Journal and I am also very happy to share this with you. It is based on a collaborative project that began in 2015 with Prof. Nelly Marda and Christos Kakalis from the University of Newcastle along with the students of our postgraduate course in NTUA.

The article highlights the importance of mapping in urban design and uses the concept of embodied topography to describe how activating the human body through a series of sensory motor tasks can help individuals immerse themselves in the landscape to acquire a better understanding of the urban phenomena. This process is presented here as a tool of mapping and managing the complexity of the urban landscape as it enables the individuals to recover the more hidden or even imaginary aspects of the city and their own relation to it.

As this is an ongoing research I hope that there will be plenty of opportunities to discuss what we are doing with more people involved in this kind of research in urban design. So, feel free to comment and write back your own experiences on the matter.

ZARCH: Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies in Architecture and Urbanism, Num. 8, image available here

Teddy Cruz-Fonna Forman

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Chicoco Radio _en cours_Port Hartcourt, Nigéria

Teddy Cruz has spent a number of years studying the growing divisions and inequalities evident in the neighboring communities of Tijuana and San Diego in the region spanning the US/mexico border. He claims:

It is, in fact, in the most depressed, disenfranchised and underrepresented neighborhoods that some of the more interesting social and political agendas have begun to emerge (…)  In slums and other informal spaces, there are certain procedures— social, political, and economic actions, exchanges, and transactions —that suggest an alternative political economy (…) The notion of the neighborhood as a site of experimentation is fundamental to rethinking our institutions in the wake of the economic crisis (…) This is what I consider to be the political in art or architecture: not the production of political architecture, but the construction of the political itself, towards an architecture of social relevance (…) I’m not interested in the image of the informal, but rather what’s behind it: the procedural, political, social, and economic characteristics of a place, and the process of translating them into operational devices that enable us to rethink urbanization

 

Link 01/ Link 02/ Link 03/ Link 04/ Link 05/ Image 

On the schism between architecture and technology, by S. Giedion

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1806 Napoleon founded Ecole des Beaux Arts (…) the program maintained the unity of arch with the other arts as in the baroque period (..) bad administration caused an increasing isolation of the arts from the conditions of ordinary life

the Ecole Polytechnique had been founded during the French Revolution in 1794 as an ecole speciale (…) it offered a uniform scientific preparation for the higher technical schools (…) it combined theoretical and practical science and it directly influenced industry (…) the school set itself the task to establish a connection between science and life (…)

the gap was between science and its techniques and arts (…) the separate existence of Ecole des Beaux Arts and Ecole Polytechnique point to the schism of architectural and construction. the schism revolved around two questions: a. along what lines should the arch training proceed at the time and b. what was the relation between engineer and architect.

Rondelet was the first to insist that scientific techniques had an important role to play in arch and that constructional methods had to be allowed much more influence upon the character of a building design (…) Van de Velde recognized that the engineer promised the regeneration and not the destruction of architecture (…) LeCorbusier in 1924 marked the solution between the two by saying that the century of the machine had awakened the architect…

Even before Le Corbusier, Henri Labrouste, born in Paris in 1801, was the first to have united the abilities of both the eng and the arch. In 1830 he objected to the curriculum of the Ecole des Beaux Arts and thus he opened his own atelier. The Ecole, isolated Labrouste until 12 years later when he was finally commissioned to design the Library of S. Genevieve in Paris in cast- and wrought-iron and the National Library just after that.

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Markets: Hall of the Madeleine 1824, Hungerfort Fish Market (London) 1835, The Grandes Halles 1853 by Baltard (rejected 1:Horeau rejected 2:Flachat)

Department Stores: Bon Marche (by Eiffel and Boileau)

The great exhibitions: A’ period 1798-1849_National/B; Period 1849-1900_International (…) They represent the history of iron construction and the important changes in aesthetic response (…) it became all the more difficult to differentiate between load and support (…) the vaulting problem has always brought forth the greatest architectural expressions of every epoch (…) Crystal Palace in 1851 and the Galerie des Machines of 1889 represented the two most prominent buildings of the great exhibitions (…) Crystal Palace in particular was an application of mass serial production (…) Paxton used the ridge and furrow system (…) The design of the building was planned around the largest standard sheet of glass (four feet long) (…) The CP realizes the intention to dematerialize landscape and dissolve it into infinity. 

 

References

Giedion, S., 1982 (1941), Space, Time and Architecture, Fifth Revised and Enlarged Edition, Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, pp. 146-191

  • Image of Ecole Polytechnique available here
  • Image of Library Reading Room available here

Urban Memory Infrastructure by Ben Vershbow and Shannon Mattern

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TreeCensus

NYPL Labs’ work provide a new, and deeper, understanding of city streets, buildings, and society, over centuries of change (…) Turning vast collections into usable data, connecting maps, photographs, menus and community memories, NYPL Labs created a series of multilayered projects that point the way to a new information ecosystem.

Full article available here/ Image available here