I'm dreaming of a highrise Christmas

Acqua alta in Venice. Photo by TracyElaine

This Christmas the "acqua alta" (high water) in Venice reached 145 cm. above sea level, the 8th highest measured ever: it reminded me of a post I read some time ago, about a series of images by Studio Lindfors, in which we see New York and Tokyo after a catastrophic flood.

Small boats cross the streets and avenues of the big apple, and Tokyo's neon lights reflect on the water surface; as Studio Lindfors puts it, in this imaginary cityscape dwellers will have to adapt to the new, liquid inhabitant of the metropolis.

It is amazing to see how Venice, even (or probably because) it is in danger, is the real and physical counterpart of the most extreme urban fantasies, and how danger or disaster can be a strong stimulus to the vitality of a city, even in terms of how do citizens perceive their own dwelling and therefore identity in a precarious place, opening up a wider range of experiments and relationship's nomadism. Just imagine to cut out the ground floor of all the buildings...

Will we connect the whole Venice cutting an infinite corridor through all the buildings like a "passage"? Walter Benjamin would probably be happy.

Constant's New Babylon

More images of Venice's last acqua alta.

Strolling around Switzerland

I've done recently a wonderful tour through Ticino and Graubünden, two Swiss regions in which the density of architectural masterpieces is incredibly high: I came across, the recent Pritzker Price Peter Zumthor, Valerio Olgiati and Valentin Bearth in the Graubünden, and Aurelio Galfetti, Mario Botta, Raffaele Cavadini in Ticino. Just a few pics here.

53rd Venice Art Biennale, "Making Worlds"

Photo by marcomassarotto

Fare Mondi. This year the Art Biennale is directed by Daniel Birnbaum, and it's a nice one. Here brief suggestions and hints: projects, artworks, pavilions worth to see.

In the Estonian pavilion Kristina Norman proposes "After-war", a complex project about identity in Tallin, based on the removal of a monumental statue of the "Bronze Soldier", wich represented for the russian minority the victory over Nazism. This led eventually to riots. The artist decided to replace a golden copy of the satue...
In the Italian pavilion the video installation by MASBEDO is just great: two screens that show in slow-motion the story of a woman always about to drown in the sea, and a man trying to get rid of a parachute in the snow...
Teresa Margolles in the Mexican pavilion collects blod of illegal immigrants and drug-traders killed along the Mexico-USA border, in order to use it to "paint", or to "clean" the floor of the pavilion. "What else could we talk about?"
The russian Pavel Pepperstein presents "Victory over the future", a collection of paintings, monuments in Europe till the year 5000. As an example there is the "Monument to the 3000 years of Christianity". Lots of irony and a rap soundtrack.
In Spain there are many works of the great Miquel Barcelò, no needs to say more...

Metropia and interview with Vincent Gallo

Photo by Planka.nu

We saw today here at the Biennale the wonderful swedish animation movie Metropia: in 2024 the whole Europe will be connected with a high-speed metro system, an enormous subway between cities. The scenery is just great (lovely Berlin's Hauptbahnhof in decay!). Here a video.

Vincent Vito Gallo (Buffalo 11.4.1961) is an American actor, director, painter, musician and model of Sicilian origin. Here at the 66^th Biennale in Venice he dubs the protagonist of Metropia, animation movie by Tarik Saleh: come half an hour late, Gallo, T-schirt, tight black trousers and leather boots, was very friendly in answering our questions.

In Metropia we face themes like environment's destruction, no hope for the future and apocalyptic human relationships: what is your own opinion about?

I would say that the film has its own view, which does not correspond to mine: if you just think that the sun is 8 and a half minutes away at the speed of light, you realize that all this things are just minor concerns, details. In the world there are lots of things that we do not even are able to imagine, so I direct my energies to a bigger goal.

How does this point of view influence your cinema?

Ma story is very simple: I come from a poor family, a tough experience for me; I started very pragmatically, elementary, without any artistic pretension or philosophy. My work was a way to earn some money, like when I used to wash dishes in restaurants, I was the best of New-York! Gradually I started to do a kind of performances, staring at the people eating in the restaurant, crying, and make them feel bad. To me it was an idea of “survival”: I started working in the cinema only when I was sure that I was going to be paid. Also in Buffalo 66 I was supposed to be only an actor, but when the producer offered me a better payment if I was also the director, I accepted. So I became director! That movie helped me to have a better relationship with girls too...

Do you like Italian cinema?

Years ago I used to watch many Italian, mainly in TV: after I became interested in B-movies, I like the camera movements, the photography. The problem with Italian cinema were financial aids: these work against the idea of “survival” as I said before; you have to really get involved in your movie. I took part in some Italian productions, but they lacked the genius...

Do you make music in the same way in which you make movies?

No: in the cinema everything is stressful, you have to work with a lot of professionals, lots of people; in music you can be relaxed: for instance I paint while I listen to music (Gallo was a friend of J.-M. Basquiat).

In Metropia love is a revolutionary power...

Actually I loved more things than people: for 10 years I didn't have a girlfriend, I always felt embarrassed: even now when I sleep with a girl I have the feeling that the bed does not belong entirely to me anymore, as if I couldn't reach every corner of the bed. Maybe because I had to sleep till 11 with my grandpa, who had eventually a wooden leg! So uncomfortable...

Differences in dubbing and acting?

It was easy to just give my voice to the movie: today one gives too much importance to the image, to the personal appearance; if I don't see me I cannot think “How ugly I am!”. For instance now I don't want you to take pictures because I don't like my hairstyle. (He is preparing for his next film). Anyhow I accepted Metropia because of the money they offered: even tough I never did a blockbuster, it's just because nobody offered it to me seriously.

Do you consider yourself an outsider?

We are all insiders: I would be so happy if everybody loved me: I don't know ho said that I am a difficult and hard guy...

News from Venice

Photo by BEAT NIK

Hi there: staying in Venice for a couple of weeks I will report news and opinions about the movies at the 66th Film Biennale. My pieces of writing will be hosted at Loudvision, together with many others.
Hope you'll enjoy.

P.S. Unfortunately everything is in italian...
P.P.S. I will also tell you something about the Art Biennale in a few days!

Olympisches Dorf, Berlin, 1936

In the Sporthalle, Olympisches Dorf

A couple of weeks ago I went with some friends to the Olympic Village of Berlin, from the Nazi 1936 Olympic Games, the ones in which Hitler had to stand the "outrage" of seeing a black athlete, Jesse Owens, winning four gold medals in track and field.

Forgive me a bit of historical contextualization: Werner and Walter March (the former designing also the Olympiastadion, actually with some "suggestions" by Albert Speer, since Hitler did not like the original design of concrete and glass - a glass-cage) designed and built the Olympic Village between 1934 and 1936 for the Summer Games held in Berlin; the Nazis wanted to show the world their power and magnificience. The selected area layed around 10km from the city, in Dallgow-Döberitz, now Elstal: the project consisted of 140 one-storey, 5 two-storey buildings, the Hindemburg House, Kommandanten House, a sport-hall, a swimming-pool, sauna, hospital and restaurant - the House of Nations - plus kitchens. After the games in the buildings were installed a school and a militar hospital, while after the war the Soviet Army took control of the area; the Village in summer looks like a vacation-residence in Tuscany, with a number of little houses surronded by maritime pines. In fact the ground was heavily modified to create two different levels and an artificial lake was created, also bringing here some animals from the Berliner Zoo.

I found myself making comparisons with the recent Chinese Games, concerned as well on the symbiosis between power and the ways to express it through architecture: the Olympic Village of Berlin covers roughly an area of 54 hectares, while the Beijing one 66 only, if we think that the former was supposed to host 4.000 athletes, while the latter 16.000, consisting of 22 six-floor buildings and 20 nine-floor buildings, as well as a clinic, restaurants, a library, a recreation centre, gyms, swimming pools, tennis courts, basketball courts and jogging tracks.

Beijing Olympic Village, model. Photo by Remko Tanis

Here some pictures of the abandoned Village.

On Hitler, Hadrian, bunkers and bananas

Brandenburger Tor and at the Reichstag:you will get the scale of the domed-hall behind

Just in front of the "Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe" it is possible to visit the exhibition ]Mythos Germania[, whose main attraction is a big model of the North-South Axis designed by Albert Speer for Berlin, the supposed-to-be capital of Hitler’s Empire, Germania: I saw before a video-rendering and some images of the master plan, and honestly (considering the function of extreme monumentality) seemed to me not that bad, after all it was a boulevard connecting the stations Südkreuz and Nordbahnohf, culminating in a big domed hall; when I had a look at the model I understood I was completely wrong.
Robert Hughes titled his good documentary about Speer “Scale matters”, and this is exactly the point: apart from the “bombarding” quantity and display of architectural elements suggesting classical architecture, domination, power, from columns to eagles of stone on the rooftops, in a mixture no less than pornographic, if one looks at the Brandenburger Tor or the Reichstag, it is easy to understand why Speer’s father told him that the project completely insane. All this reminded me a passage of Richard Sennett’s marvelous book “Flesh and Stone” about the Roman Empire and Emperors’ power:

Nero bequeathed to Hadrian a cautionary tale about rulers who nakedly display their power, yet “the emperor was what the emperor did”, in the words of the historian Ferguson Millar. Making daunting, impressive buildings was among the most important of these acts, for the emperor’s own prestige and for the Empire; through their buildings, the emperors literally constructed their legitimacy in the eyes of their subjects.

Hadrian was able to built impressively but nicely, he built the Pantheon: if Hitler was able to realize Germania I suspect that he would have followed Nero’s fate, who, after building his Domus Aurea gained just the hatred and voluntary oblivion of the Romans.

Boros bunker. Photo by World-3

Near Friedrichstrasse there is one of the most famous and visible bunkers of Berlin: built in 1943, used by the DDR as deposit for bananas, since the temperature and humidity were perfect for the fruit to become ripe (I can already imagine the advertisement of the “Bunker Banana”), turned in a Club known (not so originally but effective) as “The Bunker”, with even more darkrooms than the Berghain. Because it was built so late, on the facade there are many decorative elements, in case it would be kept for further use, as actually happened. In 2003 the building was bought by Christian Boros, who appointed "Realarchitektur" to renovate and transform the building, with the idea of hosting there his private collection of contemporary art. Booking some 3 months in advance it is possible with 10 euros to visit the collection and the building with a guide, in groups of 10 people: if the works of art are not masterpieces the bunker-experience is really worth. Originally there were five floors, each 2,30 m. high, so the architect had to cut the slabs to create double heights and spaces more apt to host works of art and to mitigate the suffocating and oppressing feeling of such low ceilings. The construction of the bunker in 1943 took one year, 7 months of which were spent only to build the roof, a 3 m. thick armed-concrete slab; the transformation of the building was obviously longer and more complicated lasting something like 4 years. Another curiosity: the stairs are doubled, following a principle developed by Leonardo and employed in the Chambord Castle, in order to provide access to the double of users.

Fumata nera, fumata bianca

During a weekend trip to Leipzig a couple of weeks ago I was baffled by the quantity of chimneys dispersed all around the dismissed and not so peripheral industrial areas of the city, which seems fortunately interested in reusing the majority of the buildings, factories etc. for different uses (the main industrial complex is now a collective “atelier” of artists and craftsmen). Most of all, these factories lie along a very nice water canal, that, if once upon a time was just a matter of usefulness, today constituted a pleasant pedestrian promenade.

Place de la concorde, Paris, images by Marco Capitanio

Relics of industrialization, victims of the “shrinkage”, I started to think how one could use effectively chimneys in an active way: what if they could be used as modern obelisks, with the function of urban “arrows” that Sixtus V gave them in the 16th century in Rome? What would think Domenico Fontana, who won the competition to place the obelisk in St. Peter’s square, employing for his effort 44 winches, 140 horses and 907 workmen?

 St. Peter's square, Rome. The chimney could even be used, with the white and black smoke, during the papal election..!

Praising heterogeneity of goals

I already introduced what I would call recreational urbanism, so now it’s time to go a bit deeper and try to explain what I really mean: a crucial question for the Situationists was whether the practice of urbanism is a collective matter or a discipline which needs to be regulated by a few specialists, professionals, who have the training (and the power) to decide for the community. Of course nearly everyone, trying to be a little politically-correct would answer that, yeah, this is a collective matter, at least should be; anyhow avoiding this naïveté is a big deal of honesty, since (from architects’ experience) an urban planner, an architect can quite easily justify his own work with the usual magic words like democratic, open, flexible etc. but we know that words have a very subtle power, and are often employed to justify one-self's work, to convince the client or to sell an idea to some politician in order to get him interested in the project. By the way words can somewhen be helpful to make people understand some needed and critical project for the place in which they live, to avoid easy nimbyism or to make them conscious of how to improve the conditions of their city or village. Like for politicians a few lines earlier, a way to get them involved in the process.

But still there is the question, why recreational? Recalling our latin classes at high-school, this word is composed of the adjective for creation and the prefix re-, which, just in case you forgot, means that an action is repeated several times; so a continuous creation, expression that with time assumed a character of ludicity (not lucidity!); for an interesting and professional analysis of the two terms have a look here. In fact, again for the Situationists, a key expression was “ludic city”, a fertile ground for situations to happen; I would say that a healthy urbanism is recreational in a way that permits spontaneous happenings, likely to change over time, actions which are not programmed and are outside range of strict control, sometimes on the border of legality, informal (another magic word, this time let me use it). And complex: I cannot imagine anything spontaneous between the blocks of the Ville Radieuse, where everything seems already programmed and decided once and for all; I rather can imagine plenty of actions in a middle-age city, in the squares but also in the narrow alleys and streets, with plenty of nooks and crannies. And if the Ville Radieuse seems clean, hygienic, safe, a medieval city carries a degree of riskand uncertainty: within limits of vivibility of course I would say that a recreational, complex urbanism cannot do without a percentage of risk: if you want to keep your door open you have to deal with the fact that also somebody whom you don’t want to meet could go through...

La Ville Radieuse

"A battle of giants? No! The miracle of trees and parks reaffirms the human scale." (from "Vers une Architecture" by Le Corbusier). Robert Hughes spoke of Le Corbusier's city planning in his series "The Shock of the New":

"...the car would abolish the human street, and possibly the human foot. Some people would have airplanes too. The one thing no one would have is a place to bump into each other, walk the dog, strut, one of the hundred random things that people do ... being random was loathed by Le Corbusier ... its inhabitants surrender their freedom of movement to the omnipresent architect."

Not many people around the Ville, isn't it? Density matters after all...

Here we go with some examples:

In Kreuzberg, images by Marco Capitanio

1st of May in Kreuzberg, now the most vivid of Berlin’s quarters, and its historical turkish community feel the Worker’s Day stronger than others: in a leftist stronghold a whole day and night of parades, speeches, music, typical food sold on the streets; a community makes itself visible to the other people, and was not uncommon to hear this year, during the rap improvisations, many singers referring proudly to their own quarter, which was able to develop maturely its identity. Identity and visibility applied to people rather than buildings (as we saw in the first part of the writing speaking about the Spreebogen), in a form of self-organization, already gaining the historical dimension, as many berliners wait every year to enjoy the 1st of May in Kreuzberg.

Thai Park: down the subway U7 we find a park (whose real name is actually Preussenpark but nobody knows that!) which has been “colonized” by the thai community, selling, when the good season comes, ready-made traditional food with ingredients prepared at home and brought to the park: if it is anyhow better to go there with some thai friend, everyone can buy his meal there, basically every day, in a kind of collective pic-nick. Thais can therefore gather and simultaneously show themselves off.

What is interesting is that this activity is (luckily) informally approved by the city, as far as selling food on public ground is theoretically illegal without a proper license; rather than the duality legal/illegal, we face allowed/not allowed, category much more sensible, able to decline the legal/illegal in response to different contexts and goals; a much more human(e) criterion. It is also interesting to note that the middle-English verb “to allow” comes probably from Latin allaudare (to praise), reinforced by the medieval Latin allocare (to place), as well a derivative (ad + locare) from the key-word locus (place): in a way, something which is allowed seems to be beneficial for a particular place, (I add) depending on the situation.

Just to finish with a détournement: if the Situationists saw this guy sleeping in Unter den Linden in front of the Russian Embassy, they would have loved him...

Related posts:

Praising heterogeneity of goals (PART 1)

Road through Agadez

Refugees in Malta. Photo by Olmovich

I just report a very interesting reportage which I found on the magazine Espresso Online about the new routes of illegal immigrants, coming from Niger and nearby states, traveling in rows of 30 to 50 caravans and trucks, until the coasts of Libya, trying to reach Europe. Unfortunately the reportage is in italian only but here there are some interactive maps that one can see. Even a nice video.

Travel conditions of the immigrants are worsening, since their road passes through the now militarized city of Agadez and continues in territories mainly controlled by the tuareg rebels, financed by the French Government in order to push on the so-called uranium war. The Italian Government, while hammering the public opinion with security-concerns, has signed bilateral treaties with Libyan leader Muammar Gheddafi and with Nicolas Sarkozy, officially in order to regulate the matter, but actually to give the nulla osta to France's strategy to destabilize the region and to make some propaganda with Gheddafi.

Now the immigrants travel together with the Libyan army to reach the seashores, before paying easily even 5.000 euros to start a trip to Italy, Greece or Spain that has the 10% chance to be mortal. Actually the amount of immigrants who reach Europe is not so huge: in Italy they are around 6.000 a year, barely enough to replace Italy's shrinking population; anyhow the result of strengthening control, security etc. has only produced a shift of the route, every time more dangerous (increasing the number of deaths) but maybe more lucrative. Obviously the mudin don't want to lose their profits, neither immigrants to remain home, so the main "european gate" from Tripoli-Lybia to Lampedusa-Italy just shifted to Annaba-Algeria to Cagliari-Italy.

No need to say that since one lets these people leave their places and travel 300 km in the desert paying an enormous amount of money, carries them with the army along the way and leaves them on the seashores waiting for a ship, it is absurd to stop them in the open sea and to bring them back: where to? Especially if everybody from the Libyan Government to the Italian one (and the whole EU) knows the way things work.

Praising heterogeneity of goals

“... The architect today has to constantly prove that things can and should be done differently, by different people, with different goals.”

Vanstiphout and Provoost, Facts on the Ground: From Dutch to Ditch Urbanism

Here follows a rather inorganic piece, mainly a walk through Berlin concentrated in the new political-administrative area of the Spreebogen, followed by a short trip to the quarter of Kreuzberg, during the last 1st of May-worker-celebrations. I tried to focus on specific themes, most of all symbolism, the architectural notion of transparency and on what I would call and explain better later recreational urbanism. I chose this two places since the represent to me some crucial urban battlefields in Berlin and I see one as a great urban value achieved thanks to time and population’s vitality (Kreuzberg), the other as potential that could be displayed in a brand-new and highly representative city quarter (Spreebogen).

Image via Wikipedia. By Lienhard Schulz

In the area of the Spreebogen (arch of the Spree, the main river of the city), in northern Berlin, we can find today the administrative complex called “Das Band des Bundes”, a 900 meters-long structure, composed of three main buildings, the Bundeskanzleramt, the Paul-Löbe Haus and the Marie-Elisabeth Lüders Haus, crossing the Spree two times on the east-west axis: the idea of the project was established in 1992 by the architects Axel Schultes and Charlotte Frank, later with the collaboration of the architect Stephan Braunfels. Construction began in 1997 and finished in 2003. Close to the area are the Reichstag (house of the Parliament) and the Hauptbahnhof (central station), both highly representative project deeply connected with the Spreebogen. After the fall of the Wall a huge architectural complex was needed first to provide essential services to the Parliament, and secondly to try to regenerate or recreate a new symbolic effect connected with german recent political history and its capital city.

The intention to build along the E-W axis comes basically from a couple of reasons: to react against Albert Speer’s nazi project of a grand North-South axis, and also because the Wall dividing East and West Berlin run exactly through the Spreebogen. Thus the symbolic choice of “reunification”. From Wikipedia:

"Hitler ordered Speer to make plans to rebuild Berlin. The plans centered around a three-mile long grand boulevard running from north to south, which Speer called the Prachtstrasse, or Street of Magnificence; he also referred to it as the "North-South Axis". At the north end of the boulevard, Speer planned to build the Volkshalle, a huge assembly hall with a dome which would have been over 700 feet (210 m) high, with floor space for 180,000 people. At the southern end of the avenue would be a huge triumphal arch; it would be almost 400 feet (120 m) high, and able to fit the Arc De Triomphe inside its opening. The outbreak of World War II in 1939 led to the postponement, and eventual abandonment, of these plans. Part of the land for the boulevard was to be obtained by consolidating Berlin's railway system. Speer hired Wolters as part of his design team, with special responsibility for the Prachtstrasse. When Speer's father saw the model for the new Berlin, he said to his son, "You've all gone completely insane."

Image via Wikipedia. By BArchBot

Hauptbahnhof today rests alone right in front of the Spreebogen: the project was drawn by the Hamburg’s firm GMP, and the main concept, stated quite clearly, is that of transparency: apart from the technical issues, the station holds a strong symbolic meaning, since it proposes itself as the main railway hub of the city and is collocated in such a decisive position. Anyhow now all the area around still needs to be developed and constructed, and Hauptbahnhof seems a bit afraid of being alone, especially at night, when she needs to turn on all the lights she has, an apotropaic action, giving the impression of a little girl in the wood. When one is inside the station it is possible to see as far as Potsdamer Platz, and obviously also the Reischtag and the Band des Bundes.

Here we face for the first time a concept that permeates all the surrounding political and administrative buildings: why transparency is so crucial? I will try to give some simple reasons. I would go back first of all to Haussmann’s 19th century parisian boulevards: it is renown that the Baron’s urbanism moved toward a safer, more hygienic, controllable “modern” city. Traffic-flow and shopping facilities together with housing concerns were taken into account in planning; last but not least, large boulevards were necessary to prevent rebels and rioters to build barricades in the streets, blocking the police: was therefor easier to reach different parts of the city from the centre and immediately stop riots. Transparency as a way to strip everybody naked, easily recognizable, identifiable and after all harmless. A kind of extended panopticon, where the guard can see everything and everybody, and it is impossible to hide. I would call also this, with a big degree of simplification, homogeneity of goals, when there is no space (intended as opportunity, possibility, situation) to differ from the specific use and intention of a determined place. (A shopping-mall for instance is such an example since the main goal by far is selling as much as possible and gaining as much money as possible). The opposite is obviously a heterogeneity of goals, in which is possible to have at the same time and the same place many different activities, aiming at different, often unpredictable and informal results. Mixture in the same spatio-temporality. Exactly because of this reason the Situationists harshly criticized Haussmann, targeting his urbanism as repressive, a state and capitalist science.

Now have a look at this: Salome, the idealized female dangerousness through erotic power takes form in the shape of some white containers and tent-like structures overlooked by a bunch of “arabic” golden domes. It is really a circus lying under a branch of the Hauptbahnhof, on a sandy Spree’s shore; I see it a kind of heroic trial to inject some heterogeneity of goals, demonstrating and showing a possible way to a different urbanism, putting together a very representative with a rather informal and nomadic architecture. I would here call helping me Constant and in general the Situationists, who, in my opinion, reached the most interesting results in term of urban thinking in the last century.

I quote Tom McDonough in Metastructure: Experimental Utopia And Traumatic Memory In Constant’s New Babylon:

“...Constant’s work on New Babylon was already presaged by an earlier project, which set in place the terms of the particular relation to nomadism articulated in the later work. It was in Alba, in the Italian Pedemont, that he visited the artist Pinot Gallizio, who had welcomed onto his lands Romany people who had been driven off the surrounding countryside; for them, Constant invented the Project for a Gypsy Camp (1956-58). [...] His Gypsy Camp was no simple provision of emergency shelter, nor was it a means to fix this mobile population to a definite point. [...] It was a punctual refusal of the underlying assumptions of this regime of postwar rebuilding: at the very moment where bureaucratic planners were concerned with a housing crisis, Constant would insist that the stakes lay elsewhere. [...] (It) did not propose a “housing” solution, but a means of simultaneously fulfilling and superseding the function of dwelling."

I find really extra-ordinary this kind of “happening” or better, situation, combining two elements which are so distant, in terms of durability, scale, value etc. We are at least surprised, creating free space for a poetic of the détournement. To me a symptom of healthiness. Even a “lido”, full of people informally sunbathing, drinking beer and resting, just on the Spree shores, in-between the Hauptbahnof and the Band des Bundes goes in my opinion in such a direction: one starts to see that people is gaining some interest in these places, for the moment still too much orphans of use, activities. Neither to say that time plays the protagonist in such a process.

But let us go towards the buildings I introduced earlier: in the Spreebogen the concept of transparency seems reversed at the first sight; one could think that all this glass, as effectively does, reveals what is happening inside, suggesting the idea (in some degree naive) that people can control politics and what politicians do, as in a democracy should be. I cannot say that this is not true, but it is also interesting to see which kind of implications a design like this one generates on the outer space: since the area is so vast, since the space is so huge, since there are not real streets, police can come and act quickly, helicopters can land with ease, every riot-attempt is automatically neutralized. Where to begin a possible revolt? Some anchor point is obviously lacking... A vast, flat space is automatically transparent. If we add the constant and spread illumination, security devices etc. we see that our heterogeneity of goals is more and more reduced, since one cannot for instance lay relaxed on the grass with his girlfriend, or eat a kebab, since there is no place to find one around. I am not anyhow just because of that implying that the esplanade in front of the Reichstag has to be an informal place, but even the original project for the Band des Bundes proposed, between the Paul-Löbe Haus and the Bundeskanzleramt a public “forum” with facilities for the people, supposed to give architectural expression to the demos, but for many reasons this idea has been abandoned.

Now let’s go in detail with some (rather curious) examples. The Swiss Embassy is the only historical building here around: in fact the general impression that one has is that of closure, no extra glass, no spectacular architectonical solutions... Also the new construction attached later speaks in the same language.

The Paul-Löbe Haus, a massive glass facade which seems strangely only penetrable with the eyes (but note the reflection of the Swiss Embassy at the bottom of the picture!). Along its sides there are many courtyards in series, which are at level -1, so that one can see them from a balustrade, but are inaccessible from the outside.

We all now the glass dome of the Reichstag by Norman Foster: I don’t know why but the huge “park” in front of the building is closed with a metal fence... Interesting at least: from the Parliament are departing some underground corridors connecting to surrounding buildings, just like this one we can see from above (the glass strip on the pavement).

Marie-Elisabeth Lüders Haus: the bridge above is for the employees, politicians etc. The one below for all the rest.

To summarize, here are some intuitions on a kind of adolescent place, very delicate since it involves issues like visibility/invisibility, transparency, symbolism: will it be possible, necessary, useless, to inject some “deviations” in what is supposed to be homogeneous and non-contradictory? In the following part I will put on the table some loose thoughts, mainly about the quarter of Kreuzberg and on what I will call recreational urbanism.

(Go to PART 2)

Flesh and Stone

After a recent visit to the Schloss Sanssouci’s complex and his gardens in Potsdam I wanted to post a comment sans-souci as well, carefree.

While admiring the gardens’ composition and design, by Peter Joseph Lenné, (and having some rest in the sun on the grass) I focused on the various buildings in a rather naive way, a bit overwhelmed by the extreme, grand ornamentation of the facades, result of Frederick the Great’s taste, turned into stone mainly by G. W. von Knobelsdorff and by the Dutch architect J. Bouman. This peculiar style is therefore known as “frederician rococo”. Starting from the Schloss Sanssouci and ending with the Neues Palais, I concentrated especially on the theme of human body integrated into the design of a building, in the form of sculpture and ornamentation, the classical prototype of which is, as backwards as I can remember now, the caryatid in ancient Greece: if Vitruvius wrote that this figure might symbolize a mythological punishment, I like to think that the caryatids are the main historical source upon which we can state the intimate relationship between architecture and the human body (Atlas of Emotions by Giuliana Bruno is a wonderful text to explore this territory).

Image via Wikipedia. By Harrieta171

The five codified Orders in architecture (Tuscan, Doric, Ionic, Corinthian, Composite) were intended, at least as I perceive it, to give the impression of a kind of newtonian third-law, a feeling of action-reaction of the construction and of materials. So, the entablature has its own weight, and the capital gives the impressions as to have been “suffering” from the compression above, squeezing (in the Doric) or generating two volutes (Ionic). Reduction of diameter towards the top etc. seem to me optical devices to suggest the idea that the column is reacting to the wight above and slightly deforming. In some sense, this “system” could be called an aesthetic of compression, since with stone this was the only force allowed. Maybe in a couple of hundred years we will have an aesthetic of tension as well... For some "serious" explanation and history there is The Classical Language of Architecture by John Summerson.

Here caryatid and atlas (the male counterpart) of the Schloss Sanssouci: the pilaster is not a metaphor anymore; we can see the couple suffering. Maybe they are just pretending, kind of a game, and they wait for the moment to leave the entablature and fall in each other’s arms.

The Chinesische Teehaus: since fake is the code, here you find groups of three people sitting around a palm-column, not giving a damn that the entablature-roof might fall on their heads; the kind of angel with feathers is not so good as an actor instead, and we can feel that he is pretending no to be worried and tired.

And here we come to the Neues Palais: more seriousness, the figures seem concentrated on their task and the do not look being too comfortable. I guess they are always about to say: “Want to get my place?”.

Talking Heads

Bärbel Rothhaar, Apis Regina / Osmose, 2007, Installation

My friend artist Bärbel Rothhaar is currently taking part into a collective exhibition at the Georg-Kolbe Museum in Berlin, "Tierperspektiven" (animal perspectives), before travelling with her work to the Umweltbundesamt in Dessau and then to Montreal, Quebec: since many years she's especially interested in combining her own artistic pieces with a kind of unpredictable process, resulting from placing, like in this case, some small wax-heads into a beehive, letting the bees building their own cell-structures all around. No need to say that every time the results are surprisig, since considerable part of the final, unique piece is out of the artist's control.

For this site-specific installation the visitor can see this process through a glass-pane, looking directly into the beehive: even for those who cannot visit the exhibition there is a webcam streaming during all the exhibition's time.

Related posts:

-Strategy for integration of beehives, Detroid, Michigan

-Spatial Limits vs. Temporal Limits

WasAEG or Behrens in Sweden

Wasaskjulet,

While recently visiting the Arkitektur Museet in Stockholm, I came across a model, which at the first sight I thought was Peter Behren’s AEG Turbinenfabrik in Berlin-Moabit (actually 1 km away from where I am living). Just like Dali and other surrealists, I fell in a state of critical paranoia, believing or trying to believe something that doesn’t exist (but in one’s imagination) for about 10 seconds, before realizing with great disappointment that Behrens had nothing to do with the model I was looking at.

AEG Turbinenfabrik, images from wikipedia.com

This building actually is a covered dock in Sweden, about 150 years older than the AEG Fabrik. Here is the text accompanying the model:

Wasa Covered Dock
...The “Wasa Shed” (Wasaskjulet) was erected over stocks, so that building work on warships could continue in all winds and weathers. A series of upward-tapering pillars and a hipped roof imparted both rhythm and character, endowing the building with an intrinsic aesthetics value transcending its practical purpose.”

Location: Kariskrona
Year of construction: 1759
Materials and structure: Wall pillars of brick, mansard roof
Architect: Carl Johan Cronstedt

I haven’t the faintest clue whether Behrens knew this building (I googled, but I could’t find anything), which might be also a kind of “traditional construction” of the time, but anyhow I find this comparison highly fascinating, since both architectures were intended to be purely functional buildings, but turned out to be beautiful, monumental pieces: now the Wasaskjulet hosts sometimes performances, and the AEG Turbinenfabrik since decades is part of Germany’s architectural heritage.

Prometheus Bildarchiv, Imago, Humboldt-Universität, Kunstgeschichtliches Seminar, Berlin. By Vogt, Arnold. 1900 ca.

Velvet Fence

Photo by Jk***

“When one talks of mass-production houses one means, of course, the “housing scheme”. Unity in the constructional elements is a guarantee of beauty. A housing scheme affords the variety necessary for architectural composition and lends itself to design on a large scale and to real architectural rhythm. A well mapped-out scheme, constructed on a mass-production basis, can give a feeling of calm, order and neatness, and inevitably imposes discipline on the inhabitants. America has given us an example by the elimination of hedges and fences, rendered possible only by the modern feeling of respect for other people’s property which took its rise over there; such suburbs give a great sense of space; for once hedges and fences are removed, light and sunshine reign over all.”

Le Corbusier, Vers Une Architecture, 1923

Photo by yan2003

I know that I will be banal, but I just couldn’t resist to comment on these lines which I went through a couple of days ago. Let’s go brainstorming now: ...America, fence, tunnels, Mexico, Tijuana, border, suburb, sprawl, gated communities, Los Angeles, Mike Davis, police, Iraq, Ford, Detroid, crisis, respect, Richard Sennett, Cabrini Green, black people, bus, woman, hamburger, cheese... (I stop because I am going too far.)

This L-C’s text reminds me the beginning of Blue Velvet by Lynch, in which you have the perfect suburban house and lawn, but the wooden fence is too white, roses too red, grass to green, people quietly gardening, the 1950’s fireman smiling as he passes by: everything larger than life. In fact, just in the adjacent vacant lot, you could find a decomposing human ear, your door to the dark, night, evil side of suburban life.

Snake + Highway = Autobahnüberbauung

Images: Georg Heinrich's Autobahnüberbauung in Wilmersdorf, Berlin

I visited some days ago one of these buildings which carry a sort of heroism in their aesthetics and design: it holds a very strong and, almost, paranoiac Zeitgeist.

The “Autobahnüberbauung” (building over the highway), called also “Schlange” (snake) was designed by Georg Heinrichs (born 1926) from 1971 on, and built between 1976 and 1982: the name is no cheat, it is really an extruded pyramidal structure of 570 meters in length housing around 5.000 people built over the existing highway in Berlin’s Wilmersdorf district. Heinrichs (who was raised in an apartment by Bruno Taut and learned the profession with Alvar Aalto) under the influence of megastructural thinking was able to design (and build, even after strong citizen’s opposition) something that I consider totally heroic: the building does not seem out of human scale, mainly due to the terraces growing gradually, and the Snake, compared with the surrounding is not so strident as one could think.

It is surprising the difference between the lateral, greenly side of the building and its impact from the highway: no signal of cars trespassing the structure, nothing that could suggest a high speed, noisy connection when one walks along the pedestrian ways. With such a scale and idea the risk of building an enormous monster was very high, and very easy to achieve this result. The Autobahnüberbauung holds the kind of complexity that prevents boredom but is still easily understandable: considered as it is, 1980’s social housing built over a highway, the result is somehow great. I did not have the opportunity to visit an apartment, but as far as I know as I’ve read people is quite satisfied about their “accommodation” and the investor considered the Snake a commercial success.

Heinrichs was also eventually supposed to design another similar structure in Berlin-Wedding, and this time he tried lightweight construction: anyway this second project did not have so much fortune.

All this reminds me the project Fiber City, Tokyio 2050 by Hidetoshi Ohno, connected with the Shrinking Cities research, in which basically infrastructure and structure are concentrated along communication ways (in this case mainly railways), and of course Le Corbu’s 1930 plan for Algiers.

Some more pics of the Snake here.