AE24: Undulating Metal Fins

[Aomori Nebuta House in Japan by molo design (2011) | image source]

A recent building getting a good amount of press lately is the Nebuta House in Aomori, Japan by molo design. The architects describe it as "a unique cultural building inspired by the craftsmanship and spirit of Aomori's Nebuta Festival ... a form of storytelling during which heroes, demons and animals from history and myth come to life as large-scale, paper lanterns (Nebuta) illuminated from within. The building is a house for these mythical creatures, functionally meant to share the tradition, archive the history and nurture the future of this unique cultural art form." The most notable formal aspect of the building is the wrapper of "twisted steel ribbons, each shaped to create variation: openings for light, areas of opacity, views, or opportunities for pedetrian circulation."


[Aomori Nebuta House in Japan by molo design | image source]

These ribbons, what I'm calling undulating metal fins, seem to be a recurring architectural element of late, the next step of straight projecting fins -- be they glass, metal, wood, or some other material -- that can be found on many facades, from cultural institutions to corporate campuses. An early example of undulations in metal can be found in the Central Signal Tower in Basel, Switzerland by Herzog & de Meuron, predating molo's building by over a decade. The earlier design undulates copper fins in a horizontal orientation to allow ventilation from the primarily solid cube; it elevates a typically mundane industrial structure into something mysterious and poetic. Molo's design turns the metal into fabric, as if the facade is draped from the roof, solidified into place after a breeze.


[Tenleytown-Friendship Library in Washington, DC by The Freelon Group (2011) | image source]

The Freelon Group's design for the facade of the Tenleytown-Friendship Library in Washington, DC, resembles molo's ribbons, in terms of color and direction, if not in undulation. Here the metal fins are angled to control daylighting, but it also gives a variable impression to the exterior, from transparent to solid. To put it another way, undulations across the facade are implied by one's perspective, rather than the manipulation of the fins. The same can be said if the pieces projected perpendicular from the glass wall behind, but the effect is more apparent with the angle, which varies depending on the facade's orientation.


[New Carver Apartments in Los Angeles, California by Michael Maltzan Architecture (2009) | image source]

In Michael Maltzan's design for the New Carver Apartments in Los Angeles, metal fins are used in the central courtyard, a circular space inside the spiral plan with a serrated exterior. The fins jog as they rise to give the cylindrical space a dynamism it wouldn't otherwise have. It's quite cinematic. And while the fins themselves don't undulate like molo's design, their angles give the effect of such.


[ThyssenKrupp Quarter in Essen, Germany by JSWD Architekten and Chaix & Morel et Associés | Photograph by Christian Richters | image source]

What may come to mind when speaking of implied movement and undulations is, well, actual movement. Some facades these days go that extra step and use operable fins to control daylight, but none is more impressive than the ThyssenKrupp Quarter in Essen, Germany by JSWD Architekten and Chaix & Morel et Associés. The louvered stainless steel fins of one building (above) aren't simple rectangular pieces; instead they zig-zag up the building, alternating with the neighboring fins to fit snuggly when closed but can appear folded or even totem-like when open, depending on their positioning.


[Carriage House in New York, NY by Christoff:Finio Architects (2008) | photos by archidose]

Getting back to literal undulating metal fins, here are a couple small projects that twist metal bars as they rise from the ground to the floor above; one I've seen in person (above, the Carriage House by Christoff:Finio Architects), while the other is in Hort Park in Singapore (below). I don't know any details on the latter, but the former impressively holds its own next to much bigger neighboring buildings designed by Richard Meier, Asymptote Architecture, and Daniel Goldner Architects. The fins control visibility into a transition space between the alley and house, but they also create a lovely texture from a simple gesture (the bars twist 90 degrees and alternate to create the pattern).

Sunny weekend

I hope everyone is enjoying this hot sunny weather. This amazing French ormolu decoration at the Getty seems the very height of summer sun to me!

Time is ticking....

This baroque chinoiserie clock from the Getty reminds me that summer is ticking away. I've had so many things going on I've barely had time to write about any of them but look forward to some interesting posts in the near future!

Today's archidose #514

Norris House, originally uploaded by ken mccown.

A New Norris House in Norris, Tennessee by students from the University of Tennessee, 2011.

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Montauk

The first stop in the Hamptons was the very tip of Long Island (to avoid traffic) - fabled Montauk. An old surf town, Montauk has really become the 'cool' young hang-out of the Hamptons with the best beaches and a laid back feeling in contrast to the other areas.

The coolest place to hang out is the charming 'Surf Lodge'. The vibe here reminded me a lot of the Soho Beach house we stayed in in Miami - old school, perfect and trendy: sort of like a photoshoot from the store anthropologie come to life.

Full of cool spots to hang out, such as the sunken living room filled with books and records, or the bar with fun game tables, this is where you want to spend the heat of the day while not eating in the chic restaurant or relaxing on the adjacent lake.

We were there early in the morning to avoid crowds so I was able to snap these pictures to give you a feel for the space.

Adjacent to the main building is the block of hotel rooms facing the lake. I love the private decks on each room with individual hammocks!

An outdoor shower is the perfect place to rinse off before heading into the restaurant.

The bucolic lake really was tempting though: inside or outside, that is the problem.

Even the transportation was stylish: I loved this coral painted retro bicycle outside.

The small beach town has a lot of restaurants, one of which had this sign which caught my eye. Now, do you think the piano player has to be able to multitask or hopefully, these functions would be done seperately!

On the way into East Hampton from Montauk is the oldest horse breeder in the country, dating back to the 17th century. What a perfect place to learn how to ride, right on the beach too! In the next few posts I'll show my highlights from the towns in the Hamptons, including the Hamptons Designer showhouse which was the start of the whole trip to begin with. Stay tuned!

Book Review: Fabricating Architecture

Fabricating Architecture: Selected Readings in Digital Design and Manufacturing edited by Robert Corser
Princeton Architectural Press, 2010
Paperback, 224 pages



A recent issue of the New York Observer covered, of all things, the Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture’s Teachers Seminar 2011, held last month at the New School in New York City. With the seminar's theme of "Peformative Practice," ASCA argues that, "The shift from tools to systems heralds the emergence of complex performance problems—active glass walls and self-powered buildings—that demand hybrid responses." SHoP Architects' Gregg Pasquarelli, the star of the Observer article and the keynote speaker at the conference, is quoted in Jonathan Liu's article as saying, "It’s about grabbing those territories back that have systematically been given away by our profession over the past 30 years. For us, that is the core of performance-based design. Think about what the buildings do, how they work, how they’re put together." Yet he also says that SHoP remains, "firmly rooted in the academic," what Liu calls, "the self-dramatizing ideas (and language) of 'capital-A Architecture.'"

Liu's article, which discusses the gulf between academia and practice but also bemoans "reducing architecture to just another consultant specialty," reminded me of this collection of "twelve key essays by important critics, theorists, and architects on [the] timely and essential topic" of new technologies in architecture. The work of SHoP Architects is found in the book (their Porter House Condo project is treated in detail in one essay), as are like-minded architects KieranTimberlake, and of course Frank Gehry. Actually this collection's title recalls the 2003 book by Stephen Kieran and James Timberlake, Refabricating Architecture: How Manufacturing Methodologies are Poised to Transform Building Construction, who contribute an essay on "Mass Customization and the Manufacture Module." In response to the Philadelphia duo's influential book and their embrace of technology towards changing architectural practice and building construction, Dan Willis and Todd Woodward's closing essay, "Diminishing Difficulty," brings a much-needed dose of skepticism and criticism to the discussion. It is a careful closing to a collection of essays -- most from Architectural Design and Harvard Design Magazine -- that for the most part optimistically champions new technologies like BIM and parametric modeling.

US: CA: UK:

Rebooting Massachusetts

[Image: From Redraw, Reboot by Ryan Sullivan].

Designer Ryan Sullivan recently got in touch with Redraw, Reboot, a series of new maps for the U.S. state of Massachusetts.

[Image: From Redraw, Reboot by Ryan Sullivan].

Sullivan's maps "explore new boundaries for municipalities in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts," he explained. "They range from a John Wesley Powell-inspired watershed map to a Voronoi-driven Dunkin' Donuts township map."

[Images: From Redraw, Reboot by Ryan Sullivan].

The project began with a series of questions: What if the official internal boundaries of Massachusetts were entirely erased? "How would we redraw them? And how could new municipal boundaries better align government with our needs today?"

Many of Massachusetts’ town lines were based on geographic features; forgotten disputes among parishes; long-dead landowners’ property lines; and, yes, craven political gamesmanship—this is, after all, the state that invented the gerrymander. Now, as the Commonwealth contends with the politics of congressional redistricting, we realize how arbitrary many of these designations are.

Of course, Sullivan's suggested replacements are less serious political proposals than whimsical parameters for a surreal new state to come—its jurisdictions defined, for instance, by doughnut consumption—but if we are to redesign the political units through which contemporary governance functions, I suppose you have to start somewhere.

In any case, the images seen here are just a glimpse; they were all originally published in and commissioned by ArchitectureBoston.

Three Videos

Here are a few videos that recently landed in my inbox.

A mini-documentary on Seattle Modern architects Build LLC by FRANK:


Genre de Vie, an in-progress project -- currently seeking funds -- about "the relationship between man and their living environment, the city, with the bicycle as the discovering function.":

Genre de Vie from Photo Booth Works on Vimeo.

Bartlett School of Architecture's Year 1 2011 final project (see also 2010 and 2009):

Monday, Monday

My weekly page update:

This week's dose features Milanofiori in Assago, Milan, Itlay by OBR:


The featured past dose is Bathhouse in Como, Italy by Marco Castelletti:


This week's book review is The Green Studio Handbook, Second Edition: Environmental Strategies for Schematic Design by Alison Kwok and Walter Grondzik:



american-architects.com Building of the Week:

LandWave in Boston, Massachusetts by Ground:


Some unrelated links for your enjoyment:

barkitecture
"Soon to be THE architecture webzine"...reminds me of The Gutter. (Added to sidebar under Blogs » Architecture.)

cosmopolitan scum
"An occasional collection of writing, pictures and videos about architecture by Tim Abrahams," the 2011 Visiting Scholar at the CCA. (Added to sidebar under Blogs » Architecture.)

Jacob Gines: Intimations
" This blog provides the opportunity to showcase my own design work, travel and interests. In addition, I frequently display the work of others from around the world." (Added to sidebar under Blogs » Architecture.)

Klat Magazine
"Klat (Talk written back to front) is a publishing project launched at the end of 2009 with the aim of exploring the many-sided world of contemporary art, design and architecture, through a close encounter with its protagonists." (Added to sidebar under Architectural Links » Publications.)

Looking At Glass
"A daily reflection of glass used in design and architecture." (Added to sidebar under Blogs » Architecture.)

Sag Harbor's Old Whalers Church

I'm back from a long weekend spent in the Hamptons and while I organize my photos and unpack, I wanted to leave you with an amazing church I saw in Sag Harbor: The Old Whalers Church. Designed by Minard LaFever in 1840, the building incorporates the then popular Greek revival style with the unusual and quirky Egyptian Revival Style. The original 185 foot tall steeple blew down in the hurricane of 1938 but they hope to rebuild it at some point. I saw this church on a small street in the center of town and it literally took my breath away! Can you blame me?

historic photo courtesy of cardcow.com As always -the other is my own.

Today's archidose #513

Below are some photos of Zaha Hadid Une Architecture at the Institut du Monde Arabe in Paris, France. The exhibition (on display until October 30, 2011) is inside the Chanel Mobile Art Pavilion designed by Hadid, which toured New York, Tokyo and Hong Kong, starting in 2008, and is permanently installed in the plaza in front of Jean Nouvel's 1998 building. Photographs are by Simon Dubreuil.











Video from imarabe.org:



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Twisty little passages

Churchyards and private farmlands throughout the German state of Bavaria are perforated from below by "more than 700 curious tunnel networks" whose "purpose remains a mystery."

[Image: Photograph by Ben Behnke courtesy of Der Spiegel].

As Der Spiegel reports, "The tunnel entrances are sometimes located in the kitchens of old farmhouses, near churches and cemeteries or in the middle of a forest. The atmosphere inside is dark and oppressive, much as it would be inside an animal den."

Although the subterranean networks are considered an "extremely unusual ancient phenomenon," other "small underground labyrinths have been found across Europe, from Hungary to Spain, but no one knows why they were built."

[Image: Diagram courtesy of Der Spiegel].

Small might actually understate the case: indeed, "the tunnels are often only 20 to 50 meters long. The larger passageways are big enough so that people can walk through them in a hunched position, but some tunnels are so small that explorers have to get down on all fours. The tiniest passageways, known as "Schlupfe" ("slips"), are barely 40 centimeters (16 inches) in diameter."

[Image: Photographs by Ben Behnke courtesy of Der Spiegel].

I'm particularly fascinated by examples of these tunnels being found on what is now private property. For instance, a family named the Greithanners, "from the town of Glonn near Munich, are the owners of a strange subterranean landmark. A labyrinth of vaults known as an Erdstall runs underneath their property. It is at least 25 meters (82 feet) long and likely stems from the Middle Ages." I'm genuinely curious what the legal status of such discoveries might be. If, for instance, you discover someday that your house sits atop hundreds of feet of artificially excavated underground space from the Middle Ages, do your property taxes go up—or down, due to the structural inconvenience of owning land hollowed out from below?

[Image: Reasons to be cheerful; photo by Ben Behnke, courtesy of Der Spiegel].

In any case, Der Spiegel goes on to explain how local archaeologists (who, in order to avoid underground suffocation, once "blew air into a tunnel with a 'reversible vacuum cleaner'") have teamed up with engineers to explore these spaces—including a man named Nikolaus Arndt, who earlier in his career helped to build the Great Man-Made River of Libya. For now, the tunnels' original purpose still remains unclear:

The vaults could not have served a practical purpose, as dwellings or to store food, for example, if only because the tunnels are so inconveniently narrow in places. Besides, some fill up with water in the winter. Also, the lack of evidence of feces indicates that they were not used to house livestock.

There is not a single written record of the construction of an Erdstall dating from the medieval period. "The tunnels were completely hushed up," says [Dieter Ahlborn, leader of the Working Group for Erdstall Research].

Archeologists have also been surprised to find that the tunnels are almost completely empty and appear to be swept clean, as if they were abodes for the spirits. One gallery contained an iron plowshare, while heavy millstones were found in three others. Virtually nothing else has turned up in the vaults.

The rest of the occasionally bizarre article—one of the locals, for instance, says that sitting alone inside an Erdstall makes him "feel like a Hopi Indian"—is worth reading, though any hope that these tunnels might someday be found to rival the discovery of Derinkuyu should, alas, be put aside. Read more at Der Spiegel.

(Thanks to Derek Upham for the tip!)

Another Website Ranking

After compiling the list of the 66 Most Popular Architecture Websites -- since added in updated form to the sidebar near right -- I installed Alexa's status bar in my browser, which shows a website's traffic rank and a graph of its six-month trend. My browsing has been altered slightly through its presence, by being made aware of this ranking for each site I visit. Some web pages that I think are popular don't turn out to be, clocking in somewhere in the millions (remember Google is #1). Others that I find myself on for some reason turn out to be in the top 1,000, yet I never knew they existed before my visit. Of course, this ranking is only one indicator of popularity, and it is constantly changing, but it's still interesting to gauge websites with it.

So I started paying attention to the websites of architects' web pages, most of which are also up there in the millions. I wondered if any are in the top one million sites on the internet. Here is the list of the 36 Most Popular Architects' Websites I generated:

1. AECOM
2. Pentagram
3. Arup
4. Zaha Hadid Architects
5. Foster + Partners
6. BIG
7. SOM
8. Aedas
9. Steven Holl Architects
10. HDR
11. Gensler
12. VOA
13. Olson Kundig Architects
14. molo design
15. Heatherwick Studio
16. Perkins Will
17. OMA
18. HOK
19. Legorreta + Legorreta
20. BUILD LLC
21. WATG
22. Santiago Calatrava
23. Kengo Kuma and Associates
24. Shigeru Ban Architects
25. Populous
26. Bohlin Cywinski Jackson
27. Studio Gang Architects
28. MVRDV
29. UNStudio
30. KPF
31. Henning Larsen Architects
32. Studio Daniel Libeskind
33. Robert A.M. Stern Architects
34. HKS
35. RTKL
36. Ateliers Jean Nouvel

What does the list say? It tells us what types of architects are visited frequently:

» One of a number of Big Firms tops the list, followed by many more (Arup, Aedas, SOM, HDR, HKS, etc). Besides being big, they are international in scope and include engineers and other disciplines within the fold. In the latter case this means their sites are visited by a diverse audience, not just architects and their (potential) clients. Pentagram is a good example of this; while not as large as many on the list, their main focus is graphic design, and most people visiting their site are probably visiting for that aspect of their work.

» Not surprisingly, Starchitect Firms are in abundance (Hadid, Foster, BIG, Holl, Calatrava, etc.), but I was surprised by ones that did not clock in under one million: Renzo Piano, Morphosis, and Diller Scofidio + Renfro, in particular.

» A small part of the list are Blogging Firms, those that actively update a blog component of their site. Pentagram is one such firm, as is BUILD LLC, who may not be as well known as others on the list for their architecture, but their blog is quite popular and very well done. If I included Life at HOK, the firm's dedicated web page with various employee bloggers, it would actually be ranked #33. Likewise, Denver, Colorado-based EVStudio's blog would squeeze in between MVRDV and UNStudio, but the firm's portfolio site (which is what I'm gauging here) unfortunately doesn't make the cut. (This is an example where the blog and portfolio are two separate domains, but in the case of BUILD LLC and Pentagram, the blogs are integrated into the same domain as the portfolio.)

Please comment if you know of an architects' website that I may have omitted, and I'll adjust the list.

Source: Terrain Vague - de Sola Morales

A formative source in thinking about indeterminant spaces is Terrain Vague, a 1995 essay by Spanish Architect Ignasi de Sola-Morales.  The essay starts with a discussion of the idea of photography, which is mentioned by the author as vital to our understanding, particularly through photomontage and their inventive juxtaposition of forms, aiding our ability to explain the urban realm. Conversely, with its ability to frame and 'edit' the urban conditions - resulting in a disconnect of image from reality.  As mentioend by de Sola-Morales, "When we look at photographs, we do not see cities - still less with photomontages.  We see only images, static framed prints." (109)  From this jumping-off point of photography comes the 'non-space' of terrain vague, as defined by the author:

"Empty, abandoned space in which a series of occurrences have taken place seems to subjugate the eye of the urban photographer.  Such urban space, which I will denote by the French expression terrain vague, assumes the status of fascination, the most solvent sign with which to indicate what cities are and what our experience of them is." (109)

The etymology of the definition is explored, due to the lack of a clear translation into English.  First, the concept of terrain (as opposed to the concept of land) is more expansive, including more spatial connotations and the idea of a plot of land fit for construction, meaning that it has more direct ties to the urban.  Vague, on the other hand - has ties to a range of ideas.  From German 'woge' which is tied to the movement of seas - we get "movement, oscillation, instability, and fluctuation."  From French, the roots lie in 'vacuus', which yields connotations of vacancy, emptiness, and availability.  Another meaning is derived from the Latin 'vagus' which is most closely related to the origins in landscape urbanism thinking giving "the sense of 'indeterminate, imprecise, blurred, and uncertain.'"  (110)

Thus the dual concept of a plot of land defined by indeterminacy is the key to understanding of terrain vague, which has both a spatial as well as a social connection - defined by what it is, but that being specifically defined by how the space is used.  As de Sola Morales mentions, these become "spaces as internal to the city yet external to its everyday use.  In apparently forgotten places, the memory of the past seems to predominate over the present." (110)

These spaces have an innate duality - due to their marginalization, they have the sense of externality ot the order and security of the city making them alluring as a way of out the typically homogenized urban realm, meaning they become "both a physical expression of our fear and insecurity and our expectation of the other, the alternative, the utopian, the future." (111)  Identified as a certain 'strangeness' which has been cataloged throughout urban history as tied to the social dislocation of our shift to urban dwellers - most notably captured in Georg Simmel's 'The Metropolis and Mental Life' and our evolution to the blase cosmopolitan. 

This is captured by de Sola-Morales as 'estrangement' which becomes the formative construction of the terrain vague: "The photographic images of terrain vague are territorial indications of strangeness itself, and the aesthetic and ethical problems that they pose embrace the problematics of contemporary social life. What is to be done with these enormous voids, with their imprecise limits and vague definition?"   Thus these become fertile ground for artists whom "seek refuge in the margins of the city precisely when the city offers them an abusive identity, a crushing homogeneity, a freedom under control.  The enthusiasm for these vacant spaces - expectant, imprecise, fluctuating - transposed to the urban key, reflects our strangeness in front of the world, in front of our city, before ourselves." (112)


Terrain Vague is a difficult concept - being essentially 'non-design'- but is also powerful in its ability to theorize on the margins of the ordered world in which we reside.  On the difficult side, the actions of a designer is somewhat in opposition to the unstructured configuration of these spaces.  As de Sola Morales mentions:  "the role of the architect is inevitably problematic.  Architecture's destiny has always been colonization, the imposing of limits, order, and form, the introduction into strange space of the elements of identity necessary to make it recognizable, identical, universal."  (112)  This innate desire to transform disorder into order leads to a catch-22 in the employment of design 'agency' within these structures, as mentioned in the text:

"When architecture and urban design project their desire onto a vacant space, a terrain vague, they seem incapable of doing anything other than introducing violent transformations, changing estrangement into citizenship, and striving at all costs to dissolve the uncontaminated magin of the obsolete into the realism of efficacy." (112)

While design is about form, there is still plenty of potential in exploring the concept of terrain vague, as it offers the opportunity to give shape (both spatial and social) to an existing urban phenomenon of indeterminancy, tapping into the city inhabitants continual seeking of "forces instead of forms, for the incorporated instead of the distant, for the haptic instead of the optic, the rhizomatic instead of the figurative." (112)  It is still unclear how we use this, but further investigation should yield the possibilities of learning from this existing urban condition - not trying to recreate it, which is inevitably an exercise in futility, but looking at the ability to allow disorder, not fall into the trap of modernism in trying to rationalize and organize all of the spaces within a narrowly defined set of uses.  Can it work?  de Sola Morales posits that:

"Today, intervention in the existing city, in its residual spaces, in its folded interstices can no longer be either comfortable or efficacious in the manner postulated by the modern movement's efficient model of the enlightened tradition.  How can architecture act in the terrain vague without becoming an aggressive instrument of power and abstract reason?  Undoubtedly, through attention to continuity: not the continuity of the planned, efficient, and legitimized city, but of the flows, the energies, the rhythms established by the passing of time and the loss of limits... we should treat the residual city with a contradictory complicity that will not shatter the elements that maintain its continuity in time and space." (113)

More on this as we tie together threads of the 'terrain vague' with the ideas of 'heterotopias' and other models of indeterminate 'otherspace' in the urban context.  In classic urbanistic inquiry, the field of study has been identified, theorized, and classified - the translation of this into actions of architecture, urban design, planning, and landscape architecture - is another, more difficult jump.  But then again, that's the fun, no?

Originally published in 'Anyplace' - edited by Cynthia C. Davidson (1995) - citations here are from 'Center 14: On Landscape Urbanism' (Almy, ed. 2007)

Source: Whatever Happened to Urbanism? - Koolhaas

In 1995, Rem Koolhaas & Bruce Mau published 'S,M,L,XL', one in a line of oversized volumes so fondly disseminated by the Dutch.  Amazon mentions the work as "extraordinary, massive, and mind-boggling 1,300-page book combines essays, manifestos, diaries, fairy tales, travelogues, a cycle of meditations on the contemporary city--and complex illustrations..." giving shape to a mixed bag of visuals and texts on the work of OMA/Koolhaas and their speculations on the city.  One short essay, 'Whatever Happened to Urbanism?' by Koolhaas is fixed into the literature of landscape urbanism, quoted by many - specifically a key, oft- mentioned fragment:

"If there is to be a 'new urbanism' it will not be based on the twin fantasies of order and omnipotence; it will be the staging of uncertainty; it will no longer be concerned with the arrangement of more or less permanent objects but with the irrigation of territories with potential; it will no longer aim for stable configurations but for the creation of enabling fields that accommodate processes that refuse to be crystallized into definitive form; it will no longer be about meticulous definition, the imposition of limits, but about expanding notions, denying boundaries, not about separating and identifying entities, but about discovering unnameable hybrids; it will no longer be obsessed with the city but with the manipulation of infra-structure for endless intensifications and diversifications, shortcuts and redistributions - the reinvention of psychological space." (123)

The term 'irrigation of territories with potential' always struck me as akin to pissing in the wind - perhaps just in its alliteration, but as a phrase it does resonate with many of the formative elements of LU theory - particularly the idea of uncertainty, hybridization, infrastructure, and process above form.  The other important idea that fascinates me is the concept of 'urbanism' when realized in Euro-centric terms as 'study', whereas Koolhaas definitely considers urbanism as a more active endeavor, stating in the context of rapid urbanization, that "urbanism, as a profession, has disappeared at the moment when urbanization everywhere - after decades of constant acceleration - is on its way to establishing a definitive, global 'triumph' of the urban condition?" (122)

This demise of the urban is rooted in the reactions and rejections in the professional and educational realms to the mid-century pinnacle of high-modernism - which has caused a retreat into nostalgia.  Koolhaas considers the irony of this as the current form and idea of a city has totally shifted - becoming "beyond recognition," summed up as "'The city no longer exists."  Thus the clinging to nostalgia comes at the exact time when the classic idea of the city, the context urbanism, was snuffed out by rampant urbanization that erased our understanding and approaches to the fuzzy realm of urban/suburban/hinterland that currently exists.  Koolhaas claims then:

"For urbanists, the belated rediscovery of the virtues of the classical city at the moment of their definitive impossibility many have been the point of no return, [the] fatal moment of disconnection, disqualification." (122)

The result is that urbanism is gone, replaced with architecture... creating a gap in the overall understanding of the city beyond that of the architectural object.  This focus on architecture "exploits and exhausts  the potential that can be generated finally only by urbanism, and that only the specific imagination of urbanism can invent and renew.  The death of urbanism - our refuge in the parasitic security of architecture - creates an immanent disaster: more and more substance is grafted on starving roots." (123) 

While I would say there has been a re-emergence of urbanism since the mid-nineties (albeit an urbanism confused with urban design and planning), the overall idea of an urbanism project is still valid - and the resultant current dialogue/discussion is vital and gets to the root of non-design urbanism.  As mentioned by Koolhaas, "Redefined, urbanism will not only, or mostly, be a profession, but a way of thinking, an ideology: to accept what exists." (123)  Thus,

"To survive, urbanism will have to imagine a new newness... We have to imagine 1,001 other concepts of city; we have to take insane risks; we have to dare to be utterly uncritical; we have to swallow deeply and bestow forgiveness left and right."  (123)  

This is what we lost in the disaster of the modern project, the ability to think big, and perhaps fail, while trying to deal with this unprecedented urban condition.  This has left us with small ideas tiptoeing around the crisis under the rubric of safe interventions or tepid theorizations.  The final words then ring true:  "What if we simply declare that there is no crisis - redefine our relationship with the city not as its makers but as its mere subjects, as its supporters?  More than ever, the city is all we have." (123)

Originally published in 'S,M,L,XL' (OMA/Koolhass/Mau - 1995) - citations taken from Center 14: On Landscape Urbanism (edited by Almy - 2007).

Today's archidose #512

Below are some photos I took of the recently opened Elinor Bunin Munroe Film Center at Lincoln Center in New York City by the Rockwell Group. It is part of the redevelopment of the 16-acre Lincoln Center campus and is on West 65th Street below the Illumination Lawn by Diller Scofidio + Renfro.









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