Right about Japan

I am convinced that a scholar of art and architecture may draw invaluable benefits from a visit to Japan, where mature, sublime solutions to the complex spatial and human scale problems may be found: the true means through which the art of architectural creation is expressed.

Walter Gropius in K. Tange, Katsura: Tradition and Creation in Japanese Architecture, New Haven, Yale University Press, 1960

After a first visit to Tokyo and Kyoto I report here the main impressions and thoughts: I have first of all to thank my girlfriend, with whom I had a much deeper experience that the one of a tourist.

TOKYO

I think that the best way to start talking meaningfully about Tokyo and its image (as Kevin Lynch would say) is to show briefly some of the main projects and plans for the city developed in the last forty years, in order to show the key point of the architectural discourse of Japan’s Capital; I will show some possible routes through different city-quarters, where key-buildings are located or where it is more likely to get a glimpse of Tokyo’s atmosphere.

Shinjuku's panorama

Metabolists reloaded, an introduction

Quoting Livio Sacchi in Tokyo. City and architecture, page 60 onwards:

... in 1960, Tokyo’s population reached 9,676,000, with the entire metropolitan area, this figure rose to 12 million. Life within the city was getting hard, as well as expansive. For the first time, in the mid 1960s the population flown away from Tokyo was higher than the migration into the city. [...] ... the suburbanization took place for entirely residential purpose, leading to a great increase in daily commuting. [...] Planners needed to make optimum use of the permitted volumes by unraveling a tangle of regulations, so they were often compelled to design irregular frameworks, following the equally irregular shape of the lots.

Since Tokyo never had a regular grid to shape streets and because of the need to fully use the permitted density of plots the city still retains a certain degree of visual and spacial disorder that might even-though disorient more than annoy.

K. Tange, Tokyo Plan for 15 million inhabitants, 1960-61, with A. Isozaki, K. Kamiya, N. Kurokawa, S. Watanabe, H. Koh, image via cat2.mid.edu

In the 1960s Japanese modern architecture starts constantly appearing in western publications, impressed for instance by the work of the most renown architect of the period, Kenzo Tange. His Tokyo Plan for 15 million inhabitants dating 1960-61 proposed an utopian development of the city over the bay. Quoting Florian Urban in Megastructure reloaded, page 94 onwards:

... enormous platforms with houses, streets, parks, and shopping centers perched on stilts fifty meters above the bay of Tokyo. The construction begins in the old city center on the north-west shore, pushes straight out into the sea along two axes, and ends on the southeast shore. The traffic system is like a massive assembly line. Over 200,000 cars per hour can traverse the two freeway bridges heading into the city above sea level and back out. A magnetic suspension railway runs parallel to the bridges. From the central traffic axes, bridges fork off at right angles into the residential quarters. Also hovering high above the water, the living areas are punctuated with parking lots and public gardens and equipped with sub-centers containing shops, office buildings, and recreational facilities. Tange’s plan specifies exactly where it can be connected to existing streets and subway lines, and maps out the building phases in a series of five-year plans. Even the expenses to the nations budget are calculated precisely, down to the last yen.

K. Tange, Tokyo Plan for 15 million inhabitants, 1960-61, with A. Isozaki, K. Kamiya, N. Kurokawa, S. Watanabe, H. Koh,
Proposal for rebuilding the central zone

Another contemporary inspiring city plan is the the Agricultural city by Kisho Kurokawa, in which megastructures in clusters hover on agricultural land, conceiving the idea of technology mixed with nature, in a subtle Japanese way: in fact Kurokawa, Fumihiko Maki, Kiyonori Kukutake, Masato Otaka and Arata Isozaki, lead by Tange himself became known as the Metabolists, promoting scientific progress and biological principles.

K. Kurokawa, Agricultural city plan, 1960

Kurokawa designed a new Tokyo city plan for 2025 in 1987, during the so-called Heisei-boom, or bubble-boom, in which prices of land in the city skyrocketed and average square-meters for each individual shrank. After the bubble exploded in the 1990s Japan had to face new problems with its Capital: since the population is getting older rapidly Tokyo will face more likely than not a considerable shrinking: recently Hidetoshi Ohno proposed Fiber City, Tokyo 2050, studying strategies to face this phenomenon.

K. Kurokawa, Plan for the exoansion of the metropolitan are 2025, 1987

One for all Tange began from the last 1950s to build in Tokyo massive public complexes, some resembling gigantic machines for space trips, some organic and fluid, some extremely monumental and postmodern: in 1955 the most renowned St. Mary Cathedral in Bunkyo was built: the church with a central plan delicately grows from the ground with two “wings” mould in concrete that meet at the top forming the arms of a Latin cross, at whose ends are the windows. Despite its age the church, covered outside with aluminum sheets, holds an incredible beauty and modernity; the Yoyogi National Stadium in Shibuya, built for the 1964 Olympic Games, with its fluid volumes still is a very attractive piece of architecture. 1991 dates the Tokyo Metropolitan Government Building (Tocho) in Nishi-Shinjuku, a sheer complex of administrative function with magnificent observation point open to the public at the two top floors, which volumes recall Manhattan’s “stepped” skyscrapers with a Gotham City touch; one year later we find in Shibuya Jingumae the United Nations University Headquarters, with a facade mimicking with postmodern feeling the Dome of Milan. In 1994, close to the Tocho was completed the Shinjuku Park Tower, (that, together with NTT Docomo Building by Kajima Design, is one of downtown’s prominent landmarks) hosting stores, offices and the hotel that featured in the movie Lost In Translation. On the artificial island of Odaiba (go there with the monorail, passing the Rainbow Bridge and its magnificent might-view on the bay) Tange designed in 1996 the Fuji Television Building, with Fuji headquarters and many parts open to the public: the place is what it looks like, an impressive monumental and gigantic expression of media’s power that accepts to offer also some amenities to Anime fans and curious. Compared to this predecessor Koolhaas’ CCTV in Beijing seems even naïve...

Route 1: Omote-sando or fashion Ave.

Heading south-east from the Yoyogi Park (that acts like a green shield in the crowded and hyperactive area, with the beautiful Meiji-shrine in the middle) you find one of the most popular streets in the city, between Shibuya and Minato (Aoyama): along Omote-sando recently flourished a number of boutiques, representative retail stores of many fashion companies, seeking to promote with a well designed shop located on a high-profile street their image and brand. From west to east: Tadao Ando designed Omote-sando Hills, huge building of stores and high-class apartments; turning right following the Kyu Shibuyagawa Promenade you will find the interesting example of Quico, small shop and apartment on top located in one of the narrow parcels of the area (now become a fashion/artistic district) by Kazunari Sakamoto, with a refined use of space and an appropriate in-fill operation.

K. Sakamoto, Quico

Returning back the the main street: Dior by SANAA is a transparent and clear-cut insertion, resolving the angle-plot on which it stands; Louis Vuitton by Jun Aoki plays in the facade with a metallic rusty-color fabric, reminiscent of traditional Japanese wooden ones. Toyo Ito follows with Tod’s, a prismatic piece in which void and mass are shaped in a tree-like structure. On the other side of the road, 100 meters ahead you can see Omote-sando 111 by Kengo Kuma, notable for its sun-breakers, a contemporary correspondence to traditional Japanese wooden architecture. Here you come to a cross with Aoyama-dori, go ahead 200 meters and on the right you will see a glass prism, the Prada Store by Herzog & de Meuron: with its diamond-shaped mesh and flat, convex and concave glass, the building, with the risk of exaggerating, could recall the Glashaus by Bruno Taut (himself the modern architect together with F. L. Wright and Le Corbusier, who most contributed to the western discovery of Japanese architecture. See the again L. Sacchi’s book, page 130 onwards). The building also leaves a generous free space in front, a small square with benches, a unique decision in the area. Stepping back to Aoyama-dori, heading south you find the Spiral Building by the Metabolist Fumihiko Maki (other works by him in Tokyo are Hillside Terrace and the Church of Christ in Shibuya) and the above-mentioned United Nations University Headquarters by Tange. Heading north and turning right at Killer-dori you can see Mario Botta’s art gallery Watari-um. It is worth to note that Omote-sando could resemble a lively “typical” western street (even-though many of the shops are a bit frightening in their refined appearance and high-prices, so the remain actually nearly empty), far from the futuristic and metabolist idea of the metropolis.

Route 2: Ginza and Shimbashi

Just outside Ginza subway station you face Yoshinobu Ashihara’s Sony Building and Renzo Piano’s Hermes, with the famous glass brick facade: walking towards Higashi-Shimbashi two buildings fully clarify the Metabolist ideas. The Shizuoka, 1987, again by Tange, is a press center, and the Nakagin Capsule Building is a hotel designed in 1972 by Kisho Kurokawa; they both stem from the same constructional principle, a central core with vertical connections and some services and single units or capsules anchored to it: the capsules are identical and resemble the Existenz Minumum standards in their sophisticated and precise conception, without extra-room, and they respond aesthetically to the futuristic spaceship era of the late 1960s and 1970s. The idea is that new buildings were to be dynamic and that it was possible for them to “grow” with new units.


[K. Kurokawa, Nakagin Capsule Tower, 1972]

In Kurokawa’s vision this structures were flowers, and helicopters buzzed from one to the other, in a techno-zen mixture, different from the proposals of other western groups concerned with megastructures like Archigram, Archizoom or Archistudio. Kurokawa stood in the middle between virgilian bucholism, Star-Wars mood, and a wash-machine aesthetics. Needless to say that, just like the moon is still the only foreign “planet” on which man landed, also here not a single capsule was ever added until now. In Higashi-Shimbashi many interesting towers can be seen: Shiodome City Center by Kevin Roche, the elegant Dentsu Building by Jean Nouvel, the Nippon TV by Richard Rogers, Shiodome Tower by Kojima Design. Not far is Tokyo’s fish market, the Tsukiji-Shijo: if you want to wake up early you can see it crowded with people handling, or you can just go there to eat sushi and experience the atmosphere. Two very special buildings are not far, both by Philippe Starck: the Nani-nani Building and the Asahi Building, a black box with a chili-shaped drop of beer on the top.

Route 3: from Roppongi to Akihabara

Roppongi Hills is a massive high-rise complex, filled with offices, retail and amenities, on always changing ground levels, inside/outside, covered/uncovered passages: the TV Asahi is one of the main buildings, and if you’d like to meet Doraemon do not miss it. If you reach the JR Yamanote Line (which runs circularly, completing a whole circle in one hour, just like the Ring in Berlin), it is possible to easily visit in a row the International Forum beside Tokyo Station, the Ueno Park and the “electric” quarter of Akihabara. In 1996 Rafael Viñoly completed the Tokyo International Forum, an enormous complex in the very central area of Marunouchi: even if the dimensions and the location were not easy to handle, the design results sober and elegant, nicely linking the railway with its surroundings. In Ueno Park many museums can be seen, but most notably are Yoshio Taniguchi’s Horyuji Gallery (1999), Tadao Ando’s addition to the International Children’s Library (2002) and Le Corbusier’s National Museum of Western Art (1959). Akihabara is the electric city: tourists and Japanese go there to find the cheap or the newest electronic device; finding your way through visual and acoustic stimuli, advertisement on the walls, ground and ceiling, led and neon lights in a continuous day, girls dressed like Manga who want to appear always younger than they are, can be a tiring experience!

Bird’s-eye view

On one hand contemporary Tokyo seems a confirmation of Georg Simmel’s theories in The metropolis and mental life, 1903, in which an individual who has to bear an enormous quantity of stimuli, from visual to acoustic to physical (people in Shinjuku crossing the street at a green traffic light resemble a combat scene in a Mel Gibson’s film), must develop certain abilities to protect himself and his “spirit”, not to be torn by such inputs. For a foreigner it might be easier because at least he can’t read the meaning of all the advertising! In such an atmosphere idiosyncrasies start appearing, from Pachinko players to Otaku, as reactions understandable only in a specific metropolitan situation. Also is interesting to realize that a foreigner might not be so surprised and overcome by visual inputs (already known via TV or internet), rather by acoustic ones: advertisement through mega screens or bird-song traffic lights form incredible interference zones) . On the other hand contemporary Tokyo, rather than representing the future (it might still be for a certain western mythological vision), gives an idea of what the image of the future in the 1960s and 70s was, how NASA, pop-culture, Meiji spirit, Superman and faith in technology could forge in Japan a precise Weltanschauung.

Shinjuku's night view

KYOTO

We headed then to Kyoto, capital of the imperial court after Nara (and shortly Nagaoka) in 794, before passing the title to Edo, future Toyko: experiencing the city is necessary to establish a relationship and a counterpart to Tokyo, since the atmosphere, the city fabric, places to visit are profoundly different. First of all if the general appearance of Japan’s capital is one of moderated chaos and crowded vitality, in Kyoto, due to its definitively smaller size and a regular grid defining the main part of the city (originally the Imperial Palace and the Rajomon -made famous by A. Kurosawa- constituted the north-south axis), a western foreigner faces a more familiar situation; with its aura of tradition Kyoto holds “slower” mood, and has been often regarded as the place where “japanness” manifests itself at its higher degree, even in architectural terms. After visiting common tourist attractions belonging to the World Heritage, like Kiyomizu-dera, Kinkaku-ji (golden pavilion) and Ginkaku-ji (silver pavilion), walking by the lovely Tetsugaku no michi (philosopher’s walk), we had our extraordinary experience in the Saiho-ji or Koke-dera: situated at the outskirts of Kyoto and receiving just by appointment, the Zen Buddhist temple holds probably the most beautiful moss garden you could ever find; in a group of 20/30 people you are invited to half an hour of meditation, in which a monk and two assistants repeat singing a prayer, accompanied by rhythmic beats of bells, both in wood and in metal. After that you are allowed to visit the moss garden, which is just sheer beauty, quietly moving: we had the luck of having sun rays popping out of the trees and lightning the ever-changing nuances of green on the ground. Here David Bowie got the inspiration for its piece Moss Garden (from “Heroes”, 1977, in which he plays koto).


[Koke-dera]

Unfortunately we couldn’t visit the Katsura Imperial Villa, considered by many masters like K. Tange, A. Isozaki, W. Gropius, B. Taut, F. L. Wright like one of the finest examples of traditional japanese architecture (see for instance this book).

B. Taut wrote a book titled Ich liebe die japanische Kultur, an expression of the overall influence and fascination it has on the West, which has even-though to care about not being naïve.

Here you can see images of the whole Flickr set.

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)

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?”.

Architecture stripped of its ornate garment

I post today a recent article of Zvi Hecker, already published in some architectural magazines and journals, which I translated in italian here.

The continuous unfolding of the world economic crisis not only inflicts hardship on the personal wellbeing of individuals and societies, but will inevitably create radical shifts in our aesthetic sensibility.
Taken unguarded by the collapse of the world stock markets and the demise of financial institutions, we should not be surprised by the deepening of the moral-ethical breakdown that generated this economical crisis in the first place.
The erosion of the moral-ethical standards caused by the decline of personal responsibility and institutionalized social inequality and injustice may prove to be more destructive than a military force. History’s graveyards carry the names of great military powers that ran their course and disintegrated into a total break down of their political structures, even before their legions reached the battlefield. Rebuilding the moral-ethical foundations that have been undermined in the present crisis will be more laborious and will take longer than to arouse the appetite of the panic-stricken credit-financed consumerism.

Architecture, while embracing the human dimension constitutes an integral part of the economic landscape. It therefore can’t be absolved from the moral-ethical dimension of the present crisis, nor is it immune from the fallout of the economic slowdown and the appearance of a new aesthetic perception. For more than a decade architecture sucked-in cheap and abstract money that was channelled to fuel an excess of building construction, resulting in the infamous sub-prime mortgage meltdown. Abstract projects solidified into Architectural form, and, sponsored by oil and stock market wealth, were "grounded" in the most socially unjust locations and in the most environmentally wasteful ways. Real-estate, disguised as Architecture, falsely credited with sustainability, turned out to become the profitable terrain-for-surplus capital, absorbing into its ever more elaborate shapes money that could have been invested otherwise.
The more obscure and environmentally irresponsible were the financial investments – the more excessive became the Architectural form. In its most extreme version the Architecture’s mere existence became its function, just as the inflated growth of the financial market became its only raison d'être. Architecture, like the world at large, turned a blind eye to global poverty and enduring conflicts. Equally indifferent to ethics, Architecture preferred instead to glorify the zeal and the leverage of the financial wizardry. Draped in layers of ornate garments, glamorous and decorative, it carefully disguised its narcissistic genesis.
Strangely enough, this self-referential Architecture of negligible conceptual depth was embraced as long overdue evidence of the multifarious talents of the Architect. Long said to be inhibited from expressing his talent, the enterprising practitioner responded eagerly to overseas requests for colonial patronage to adorn repressive regimes with warmed-over-architectural images. Obsessed solely with maximum visibility, Architecture relied on the image of the "Architect as Artist" committed only to his or her inner fantasies and desires, "Architect as Designer" engaged in designing clothes, fashion collections, ashtrays and carry bags, and "Architect as Entertainer" staging pseudo intellectual spectacles.

No longer required to follow the rules of logic, coherence and clarity of the plan, the "Architect as Architect" became rapidly irrelevant. This may explain why in recent years so very few significantly innovative designs emerged in Architecture's core fields of engagement: solutions for housing, urban design, and integration of the socially deprived, subjects which were the bedrock of the Modern Movement.
Denied any incentive to explore and innovate, the Architect thrived on the work of earlier generations in a kind of parasitic subsistence. Old architectural schemes and banal off-the-shelf plans were hastily recycled and wrapped within a dress of different materials, glass at the top of the list. To broaden its appeal, glass elevations were belligerently promoted as being ecologically sustainable and environmentally friendly. Heavily dependent on sophisticated high-tech for its functioning and maintenance, the environmental claims were never confronted nor seriously contested. However, paradoxically, this all-glass Architecture found its partner and prey in the world of banking and international business. With its claim for the virtues of transparency, glass Architecture offered respectability and supplied the best possible alibi for the murky transactions it wrapped so elegantly. In today’s crisis the glass alibi might be short-lived and insufficient in restoring the vanished trust in the operations of business.

Even Berlin, not yet carried away by the hysteria of capitalist development, yielded to the pressure of historians promoting architectural nostalgia in disregard of the legacy of radical modernism that the city harbours so proudly. Berlin’s pseudo-aristocratic genealogy will be rightfully restored by rebuilding fake elevations of the eighteenth century castle. Of no great architectural merit in its original version, the fake replica of the castle will become a farce. The ultimate irony is however that the Berlin of today is unable to distinguish between stylistic novelty and true originality, thereby excluding any possibility for a refined masterpiece to be recognized and welcomed. Essentially, every economic crisis not only breaks with the immediate past but provides moments of accelerated change, an opportunity to transgress the present status quo and to leave a contemporary footprint.
The crisis of the late 1920s and the Great Depression that followed was such an intense force that it wiped out the ostentatious ornament of late nineteenth century classicism. White, plain and undecorated, the emerging Architecture was a clear break with the past and was total anathema to that which it replaced.
The underlying roots of the two crises, though eighty years apart, stem from a soil contaminated by the level of dishonesty to which financial institutions had sunk.
A moral-ethical position will be needed to put into motion creative forces that were silenced by the wide spread decadence. A natural change of our aesthetic perception will follow.
The inevitable slowdown of building construction and the emergence of another aesthetic reality will provide a fertile ground for the germination of new ideas. They will be conceptualized, developed and codified, like musical notes, through architectural plans, built years later when the economy picks up again.
Architectural form is a reflected image of the idea that inhabits the plan. Hierarchies of human scale is its measure, and clarity of intention its means of to beauty. It unites needs and dreams into ever new aesthetic sensibilities. This inseparable duality is what makes Architecture such a uniquely profound profession.
Centuries of creative commitment and the endowment of new ideas generated a rich architectural tradition. It is entrusted upon us on the condition that our own generation will enrich and broaden the horizons of this great heritage.
In our ever-changing world, Architecture’s eternal relevance lays in its degree of idealism and its responsibility to alleviate the contemporaneity of the human condition. New ideas are the sole means of its attainment.

Architecture is a human art, never humane enough.

Zvi Hecker
January 2009