(Class Notes) History as a Stepping Stone for Present and Future

Movement is an element we design around
- 1950's street design

Megastructure
Naked City: conception of unknown parks and how the city connected together, essentially making a new city.  It is a new and different understanding in a disjuncted way.

• Connection of urban blocks
• Layered construction
• Possibility of air, underground, expanding vertically, horizontally

Proposed large projects took place in the 1960's and 1970's

What are they not evident today?

• Possibility of communist countries who see the needs for larger agenda.  Democractic society doesn't seem to need the same values
• Funding is not available
• Economic drops (Recession) 
• Political regimes depict what exist

New Aesthetic Framework

• Development of electrical lines - In 1910 they were exposed.  As underground sewers and electrical lines were developed, they structural elements were actually built into the structure. 

Otherness in Architecture

• Sense of connection between humans and machines: Union station in Winnipeg, was once the largest building in 1910, it connected society.  
• Religious Structures: Churches
• Museums
• Heating/Cooling plant: aids the machine (support)
• Warehouses

All these types of "others" aid each other in the fabric of the city: machining, living, working. 

As money flow became available in the 1950's, customized housing became popular.  

Mutant Acts (out of the box)

Who are we designing for?  How can we design for and with machines, nature and humans.  

Dreamscape (desire)

• What is our ideal? Possibly desired cash flow, infrastructure development, technology
• We have to project our version of what is ideal in order to achieve it.  What is our plan?  

There are confessions and discussions in what to teach, so a collective standard of direction should be an educational goal.  We must pay attention to opportunities, such as mutant spaces (who was or maintains these?)

Anxious Landscapes: From the Ruin to Rust

The entrance into of the metropolitan infrastructure  has deteriorated from what was intentionally created for the landscape.  Many metropolitan areas have turned into ruins, which inhabit filthy land which are disturbing to the eye and discomforting for those who experience them.  

Nature has obliterated itself in these metropolitan areas. 

Natural nature no longer lives here, but instead has morphed into asphalt, warehouses and rusty cars. 

Technological landscape: objects within park, bridges.  - in contact with natural setting  The relation between man made constructions and nature is inverted.  In urban infrastructural landscapes,  the city stops being in the landscape and is now the landscape itself.  

Impressionists: city became landscape more independently from the framework of nature.    The city absorbed the countryside.  Infrastructures and equipment have obtained bigger importance then the era when sewage systems were a novelty.  

In cities, large infrastructures have not disappeared, but technology has penetrated everywhere beneath the cement and piers of buildings.  You cannot see the technology but it is still everywhere.  The presence is almost haunting in the form of billboards, video screens etc.  The ATM and road system in the neighbourhood both contain the same amount of connections in the electronic circuits, even though both items are on completely different scales.

The question seems to be: how does this landscape form itself when the intention was to create a functional urban scape.  The landscape is the visual perception, and the person who experiences it passes judgement as it appears, not by what is within.

As the timeline progresses, terms are explained which capture the feeling within the landscape: Imprisonment through the these landscapes and how sustainable development can hinge the vulnerability of these environments.

Technical objects begin to seem draining because the become so commonly used.  After awhile the contemporary technology morphs into connections of technological framework which make up the city. There is no escape of technology, it almost seems like a humans every move is marked within the space

Can over equipped city that surrounds us be considered landscape, even with aesthetic connotations attached to term? The aesthetic of a landscape resides in the visual perception and in the culture. 

Class Notes

ECOLOGICAL Urbanism           
SUSTAINABLE Urbanism
LANDSCAPE Urbanism
INFRASTRUCTURAL Urbanism
EVERYDAY Urbanism (messy urbanism)

·       Equity /democracy/ diversity

·       Big firms and mega projects

·       Actual work vs perceived size

·       Lack of core belief

·       Practice follows the dynamism of realities

·       Equity – policy

o   What equity is an important issue in urban realm?

§  Public/ government

§  Community accessibility

§  Mix use X mix class

§  Possibility of mixing “CLASS” (religious)

·       Economic issues – possible rising of housing prices

o   Steven Hol – California

·       Decoupling – design and form

·       Economic planning

·       Sensibility, awareness, engage (dialogue)

Louis Kahn

(Philadelphia Traffic Study) 1952)

Traces of 15 Projects

Street/Movement (Team X)

o   Learning from investigating “streets”

1963: Archigram – Living City Exhibition

1969: Superstudio – A journey from A to B

1957: Asger Jorn + Guy Debord – The Naked City

1958: Smithsons – Berlin Haupstadt Project

            Street in Air

1959: Constant – New Babylon

1956: Yona Friedman – L’Architecture Mobile

1969 & 1970: Instant City

1971: Twelve Ideal Cities – Superstudio

Territories of Urbanism (Challenges)

Urban design create new relationship through the engagement of landscape and urbanism
Urban design might just lodge landscape architecture as a conceivable home
Challenges of urban design to move forward:

• Mobility 
• Contemporary economy 
• Ecology

Richard Marshall's arguments:

• Embedded in a discourse : landscape architecture was a central to the project 
• Diminishing of landscape role: mobilization/operability of the program and the descendant of the architecture defining urban design

The speaker thinks focusing on a single profession metaphor in urban design coincide precisely with the formation of an academic program is not coincidental. The challenges in urban design might be due to the struggle between the institutionalization of the discourse of urban design and the need we address challenges which exceed or transcend boundaries. 

Urban environment transcend disciplinary and professional boundary and thus he suggests that we need to look back in history to "rewrite our present context". 

Second person

There are three things need to be important normative principles:

1.    Equity

2.    Democracy

3.    Diversity

She said as there are a lot of issue areas of city planning and designs these three things may come out in different ways (equity, diversity and democracy). Also when the three value come out in different way it should receive priority.

Third person

He talked about challenge of urban planning

Fourth person

She talked about urban identity which has thickness, density, section use efficacy.

Fifth person

She showed the example of this building in Millennium is good example of practice of aim to produce.

She also said “be generous of design”.

Dongdaemun Market - Seoul Korea

Dongdaemoon market-seoul Korea is a strategic marketing complex designed to sell commercial/personal and random goods during the late hours of the night.  Local merchandise stores typically close the doors to their establishment at the regular closing hours of 9pm.  This is the time the Market-Seoul opens.  The regular business' come here to shop for goods which they will resell the next day.  The commercial market has become a tourism target, so it also attracts people of all kinds.  The market has slowly rebuilt over the years has been renovated into a modern atmosphere with a traditional feel.    

This seems odd to Canadian culture, and almost wrong.  However, the Korean economy circulates in a responsive and logical order, so all sellers are happy.  

Class Notes

 Temporary Contracts

-Postindustrial landscape

-Reliance on information processing

-Service industry focus

-Globally integrated market

-Mobile capital/ credit

-Speed/ mobility/ malleability

-Planned obsolescence/ disposable assets/ flexible accumulations

-Consuming relationships

-Objects in culture/ objects of consumption and public realms vs private realms

-Temporary value

-Client shareholder gratification/ intergenerational responsibility

-Commercial/ critical –equally consumable (architizer)… aspire to be ‘of the moment’

-Sophisticated market research; new technology; cultural critics

What responsibility does corporate North American have to the general public in this regard? Should large companies be held more accountable or are we as consumers simply to be the only ones held accountable for our actions.

-Temporary contracts: Minimal commitment culture attitude.

What if Walmart was no longer allowed to systematically take advantage of and destroy the economic base of small communities?

-This would be a counter-cultural movement

Nomadic Existence and lifestyle

Is a contemporary nomadic existence necessarily a negative way of life?

-No it creates a lot of jobs

Is it possible to live the lifestyle of a way of life?

What are the sustaining values of today?

Is it possible to live the lifestyle of a nomad as a collective, moving an entire city to find fresh resources?

An example is Dongdaemoon market-seoul Korea [Tower of Mega shod]

-They created a collective new paradime organizationally co-operable

Practice

-Networking/ intuitive/ situated/ uncharted

-Customization/ standardization

-Public relations

-Professional territories

-Engineering/ marketing/ construction/ management/ developer

_how can we or should we even do it?

           

We looked at three firms:

MY MASS STUFF

MY – Mystudio

Mass – Massstudios

STUFF – Studies on Transformative Urban Forms And Fields

Examples:

-Steel Pattern Partition prototype

-My studio-loop chair

-One study propagates the further study

-My studio hover

-Massstudio – art trad

-Goganhyme at new york

-Massstudies – torque house

Rem Koolhaas (Class notes)

Being an architect

OMA (largely based on process)

·      Writing

·      Research/diagrams

·      Models

REM KOOLHAAS :

Delirious New York (1978)

·      Manhattan’s grid led to important role of connections within the city?

PARC DE LA VILLETTE (1982)

·      Continuous field - non-plate diagram

photo taken from http://france-for-visitors.com/photo-gallery/paris/parks-and-gardens/parc-de-la-villette.html

IIT McCormick Campus center (1999)

·      Utilizing the common spaces to incorporate sensuality experience and the spatial reality

photo taken from http://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/EoeSLEIa2oL0TWD59ybIZw

Process of developing ideas and designs in architecture is generally “slow”.

OMA AMO 

-not about building>people density-space

CONTENTS

·      socio/political/cultural/economics discussions of the works he done over the years.

·      Importance/intensity of making models

Y2K House (1999)

Casa Da Musica (2005)

CCTV & OMA

·          Exposing rather than imposing iconic symbols onto the building by uncovering the structures that form the building by removing the redundant materials (steels) and those fundamental structural beams and steels are revealed as the cover of the building.

PRADA TRANSFORMER


GOVERNORS ISLAND (Rex architects) 2008

·         As a development strategy not landscape proposal?

Temporary Contracts: On the Economy of the Post Industrial Landscape, by Ellen Dunham-Jones

Temporary contracts are forming a worldwide pattern of post industrial landscape, in turn encouraging short term profit and minimal commitments. 

Post Industrialism:  “Information Age” and the “Service Economy.   Manufacturing is still important, but it has lost it’s dominant position in production, because hardware and software required for information managemenent epitomizes the temporariness of post industrialism. 

4 interrelated phenomena characterize post industrial economy which encourage growth in temporary contracts:

1)Reliance on telecommunication and information processing

2)More jobs in services than manufacturing

3)Globally integrated markets for production and consumption

4)Mobility of capital

Industrial economy promoted city building and centralization, post-industrial economy promoted urban function to transition from the core into decentralizing. 

Postmodernity in manufacturing economy means speed, efficiency, aesthetically pleasing as well as technological. 

Fordism: high volume mass production, before the post industrialist age. 

Post Fordism: high quality, consumer responsive, flexible production.  The speed of innovation and changing product became strategies for demand.  Prodct change keeps the interest of the buyer, but requires technology in order for this to be productive. 

It seems we’ve entered a non-committal nation since the the post industrial economy began.  Proof is shown in the divorce rate, public frequently moving households, leasing rather than owning.  This also occurs for large corporations who control a major part of our economy.  One third of U.S. employment is part time.  As well, many companies have seen benefits in moving head offices out of big urban developments and into smaller “edge cities”.   For large corporations, this means non unionized workers in smaller towns, that  don’t require long commitments, benefits, cheaper employment, cheaper rent, easy exporting to international market.  Cutting out the overhead and life cycle costs  of the big cities, and entering into smaller rural communities benefit the corporations immensely. 

Over the past quarter century, the industrial economy has changed from the downtown setting to suburban manufacturing, wholesailing, commercial back offices etc.  Suburbs have captured majority of job growth in manufacturing, and central cities have lost drastic amounts. 

Walmart is an example given of a temporary contract corporation.  They locate their stores in rural areas, eliminating distributors, and linking directly to computer controlled manufacturing and limiting advertising.  They in turn cut prises and expand market share.  They can destroy a small towns economy, but entirely taking over the regional market.  Typically, they buy land, and lease the building.  They use the strategy of abandoning the market once it has damaged the local economy and begin competing with the next Walmart closest to them. 

Temporary contracts  are based on consuming rather then sustaining relationships.  It’s encouraged to build fresh, instead of maintaining an existing structure.  This becomes evident in stock market statistics. 

How can we respond to this the popular trend of  temporary contracts in society.  Given these facts, what can we do to create or fight back to endure a sustainable landscape? 

Sustainability and Architecture.

San Francisco is designed in the worst place. An earthquake could happen at any moment and people are living in denial of the inevitable. An example of the disaster to come is the stadium. It is being pulled apart by a technique called creep showing the eventual quake signs. In 1906 in April an 8.2 earthquake was recorded and it led to 3000 dead, huge fires and left thousands homeless. City Hall was one of the buildings that was destroyed and rebuilt. This was one of the smart decisions of San Francisco’s architecture. It no longer rests on the ground; it was built with shock absorbers. The bridge was as well built with the latest earthquake technology to prevent a bridge collapse. The narrow chambers act as the structural expansion.

The main concern of San Francisco is the ordinary homes. The city was built wrong.  If an earthquake was to occur its estimated that 3000-5000 would die and all the homes would be lost depending on the time of day that it occurred. This disaster is certain, it will happen. When it happens is unknown, but it will happen and people live with a near certainty of the appending disaster in their daily lives. 

Image taken from http://unionstreetinn.com/images/sanfrancisco3.jpg

(Class Notes) Infrastructure and Hybrid Development

Pure land (soil) vs. building slab (hydro, pipes)

This is related to urban infrastructure.

Site/Non site: the in between is important, especially in terms of sustainability (highways).  The cloverleaf is the space used, which is equivalent in size to a small town – the bends in the road, the size of the structure depends on particular reasons.

 We are not typically conscious of these spaces.  These non-sites prove efficient transportation.

Think of the reality: We need to deal with better ways to deal with highays, malls and the in between structures.  We should understand this and create new ideas. 

Architecture is not fixed – infra, archi, structure, scape, land, tecture – they all relate and intermingle.

Living/desire (texture/pattern)

We need pattern and desire it. 

Patterns: dense proximity of urban infrastructure (street patterns)

Toyota green design example: The dancers created energy w/ “Pizas” to energize the music based on the movement.

Water importance

Artificial Landscape: Dams.  How it reacts to nature, it’s the precondition of our water.

Amsterdam example: The canals incorporate nature as well as transportation.

Think of the reality: We need to deal with better ways to deal with highays, malls, irregation and the in between structures.  We should understand this and create new ideas. 

Fluid Hybridities:

We are romantically connected to house living instead of high-rise living.

Temporal Conditions

Stadium example: town stadium, low density in urban environment – it’s own town.

On the opposite spectrum: tent in the middle of nowhere still using a TV dish to stay connected to the world.

The need: developers of educated sustainability. 

Hybridity/Identity

Buildings have access to energy.  We can tap into the availability. Many spaces are charged with excess energy potentials. (ex. heating ducts on exterior of building)

There is an importance in using the in-between spaces to create sustainability. 

-       Graveyard placed on a building

-       Driving school on top of building

Weiss Manifeld: Olympic Sculpture Park

-       makes a non site into a site

-       makes a new experience

-       maintains industrial, transport needs, stitching together land in layers.

-        

The bigger scenarios require staging through layering and linking the elements. 

Rem Koolhaas

Rem Koolhaas talks about his book "Content" with a theme of “Go east" with the exploration of European/Asian/Russia cultural activities and its influences on architecture. 


Question: Why European? Question on whether then America is not a place to be?

He chose not to participate the project “Ground Zero” but instead to build the Television Centre in Beijing. The possible reason may be the political condition in 2002 eventually change his initial doubt to build anything in China: the improvements based on Koolhaas of new organizations and government in China has refined the connection between China and other countries economically as well as architecturally.  

Bejing Television Centre - Rem Koolhaas
photo taken from http://innovativebuildings.net/2010/06/22/china-central-television-headquarters/

Koolhaas: “Architect is important but not influential”

• Is more critical to capture initiative rather than influential elements