Programming a vertical city.

From “Re-inventing the Skyscraper”, diagrams on vertical theory:

Starting to think about the skyscraper in terms of ‘variable linkages’ instead of shelving is helping tremendously. Using Kevin Lynch’s traditional paths, edges, nodes, landmarks, and districts in terms of vertical inhabitation will be useful for the massing stage we’re now in.

	What works is the idea of pulling traditional, horizontal urbanism, vertical; with linked, open spaces.
What doesn’t is the author’s literal transition of a historic city grid into a theme’d skyscraper. Eeeee gad! Officially creepy.

• Programming the variety of a city block into the sky,
• The elevator as the equivalent of the metro system,
• Visual connections at multiple levels instead of a singular, observation deck,
• Spatial folding to enable local conditions,
• Vertical land use mapping, a high rise matrix,
• Transitional areas switching between modes of circulation as where the opportunities lie.

Very useful.

 

10 Urbanisms

Also in the GSD Winter 07 magazine, is a short article – list really – of an ongoing research project conducted by Joan Busquets. The research attempts to classify the various types of urban and architectural interventions that are taking place in our cities today. This is, when I signed up for history of urban form, modern american public policy, introduction to urban design, history of city planning, introduction to the fields of city planning and the like, what I thought I would be getting. A direct comparison of the various ways and scales with which to integrate the social, policital, economical, and environmental aspects of city design, regeneration, and planning. But, like many introductory survey courses are, they only skimmed at the surface of some of the more experimental and innovative methods of urban transformation.

‘The work in the forthcoming catalog to “Cities – 10 Lines” does not argue that all urbanism fits within the proposed categories, but it does propose that each line of work is endowed with a precise set of methods and instruments that can foster change in city-building.”

	Synthetic Gestures – work relying on high profile, clearly delimited, yet spectacular design projects that use their impact to trigger broader urban revitalization. Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao. Ghery.
	Multiplied Grounds – This uses converted infrastructures and/or high density reuse. The new conditions establish a restructuring of the surrounding fabric. Lille Intermodal Station, France. Koolhaas.
	Tactical Maneuvers – The project involves reducing the intervention to the least possible dimension, wherein its strength and success lie. Malagueria Housing Project, Siza.
	Reconfigured Surfaces – The restructuring of fine-grain, open space. Urbanity achieved by providing a new lease on life without the cost attached lo larger restructuring operations. Schouwburgplein, Rotterdam, West 8.
	Piecemeal Aggregations – An intermediate scale intervention of approximately eighteen to twenty five city blocks. This type realizes it can use an urban fragment as a starting point to address general city issues. Battery Park City, SOM.
	Traditional Views – This model assumes the lasting apeal of the late 19th and early 20th centrury residential city. Seaside, FL, DPZ.
	Recycled Territories – This results in the restructuring of large tracts of land in which human settlement becomes a single element that participates ina broader ecological system. Emscher Park, Germany.
	Core Retrofitting – The updating of historic cores without altering the city’s most delicate tissues, providing access to the center as well as new uses of old facilities. Master Plan Toledo, Spain. Busquets.
	Analog Compositions – Rethinks the scale of the master plan to take advantage of urbanistic projects at small and intermediate scales. Towards an Urban Renaissance: London’s Urban Task Force. Richard Rogers.
	Speculative Procedures -Experimental investigations in urbanism adapted from theories in philosophy, hydraulics, thermodynamics, the computer, etc. Provides a way for formulating new planning principles. Blur Building. Diller + Scofidio.

 

soja’s got it down

Ha. So the very next article in my new book, called “Restructuring the Industrial Capitalist City”, was written by an LA architect who also teaches regional planning at UCLA, Edward Soja. Pictured, is him at the TransUrbanism symposium hosted by V2|Organization.

The best paragraph:

You describe in many ways the core architectural view when you said that a city consists of streets, roads, and a built environment located within a vaguely defined ‘urban cloud’. In this vision, the city becomes a collection of separate cells with built environments compacted together to form an urban mas. This view is radically different for the larger scale spatial vision of a city as an expansive system of . . . not just people living in the built environment but in constructed geographies characterized by different patterns of unemployment, income, education levels, ethnic cultures, housing and job densities, etc. All these things are often pushed aside in the obsession – sorry, the passionate concern – architects have for design.

Because architects fix their attention to these cells, or clusters of buildings and their typologies, they reduce everything to design and put blinkers on their ability to think regionally about cities. They miss the power of these multiple scales.

Fun stuff.

 

the structure of vagueness

To waste time before school starts to kick in, I’m reading TransUrbanism, and thus naturally jumped right to the first chapter with Lars’ name in the byline, ‘The Structure of Vagueness’. He actually starts off with the same historical architecture references that he uses in our studio proposal (Transurbanism published in 2002, studio proposal written in 2008, respectively). But at least now I understand the pretense better, the references being Antonio Gaudi (Sagrada Familia) and Frei Otto (Institute for Lightweight Structures).

Apparently, they both deal with ‘materials that can process forces by transformation’.

He experimented with this idea through a studio at Columbia that used the “wool water technique” to ‘calculate the shape of city patterns’ with a merging and bifurcating geometry. (I’m sure all my CP friends/professors would flip right about now – what? using threads to determine the lay out cities?!). I’ll post some scans showing the results of this process later, but basically, what emerges is a not a highly formalized, axial based grid like Paris, Rome or DC, but a “vague order” (with still connecting street blocks, thank goodness) that more resembles an Olmstead-ish Ansley Park. Lars’ names this new experiment “soft rigidity” instead of the “frozen rigidity” of angular geometry past. Thus the voids become the definition of space, rather than the strict and forceful axial roadways.

This is not really a novel idea. Maybe in architecture used to form buildings, but forming a city structure around public space isn’t a new concept. But then he goes on to mess with the architect’s historical penchant for unprogrammed ‘open space’. We all know, through many, many, many poor examples in urban planning, that unplanned, unprogrammed open spaces go vacant, eventually to become derelict and menaces to their surroundings. But the article here seems to suggest that if we just rename this space, we’ll solve the social, political, economic, and psycological problems humans encounter while moving through and trying to operate in it. He suggests,

We must replace the passive flexibility of neutrality with an active flexibility of vagueness.

Uh huh. The theory goes that if neutrality merely allows for formal and informal conduct, vagueness actually relates them. In a vague building, this is named structural Situationism, purposely allowing for derives (woohoo Libero!) as structural properties. If events/spaces/structure is precisely unplanned, that is now ok, because “the structure will engage itself in the ways decisions are made”. The theory opposes Mies’ empty openness and encourages solid vagueness.

Right.