Story Telling

Posted on April 6, 2013 by Nicholas Binder

In this past week’s reading, “Spatial Agency; Other Ways of Doing Architecture”, the authors started their chapter with a section about briefing. They consider “Briefing” to be, in a sense, the contract or understanding in the client-architect relationship. The client has an agenda to build a specific building with a specific program and gives their agenda to an architect. The architect is paid for their services. But the authors go on to explain that some believe design without, or outside the boundaries of regulations are more appropriate to social conditions. Cedric Price believes, “These instances of space that are found outside the rules and regulations that typically govern the production of space open up a more variable understanding and interpretation of space” (70). Unfortunately clients don’t want experimentation or anything out of the norm because it usually ends in failed attempts, law suits, and over budgeting. The architect must then decide how can you earn a client’s trust to design an unexpected architecture?

This is a question whether you are working in slums or even in the middle of Manhattan. Clients do not want to pay more and developers will strip designs down to the bare minimum. We have seen from case studies that it is easier to cross the legal regulations in the Global South because there are no regulations to cross. These squatter settlements are in themselves illegal. We have seen small information boards put up for news to be shared. We have also seen instances where a can of paint can transform a street into a soccer field or reorganize a market. These projects required no permits or contracts, just planning on construction at the open opportunity. But what about constructing a larger structure that can displace residence for instance? Architects must still find a way to convince not only the client, but the locals.

I thought that the point brought up by the firm DEGW has a good perspective on the client-architect relationship. They mentioned, “The brief is the first stage in the design of a set of social relations” (70). The rules and regulations set prior to the building’s design, is seen as part of the design process. Architects must be included from the start in order to have a productive use of spatial regulations. DEGW is seeing this first process as an opportunity for the architect to have some control of what boundaries can be used or crossed. This is also a good opportunity for the architect to be involved with not only the client but the other organizations involved such as the locals and the government.

Also mentioned by the firm Crimson, “…being able to tell a good story, a gripping story, a touching, exciting, spectacular story is the core of designing and planning” (71). There are many examples of storytelling in architecture from the past and it can be used as a design tool to work with clients. In the past, churches were carved with biblical stories because many people were illiterate. Also seen in the promenade architecturale by Le Corbusier, he tells a story through a montage of views. Architecture has told a story in the past, why can’t it be used to win over clients now. We can make up our own stories which engage the clients and locals. The key is to win over the clients for them to agree with the design.

Now I am not saying that architects should deceive clients and communities. Deceit will end in even more issues and law suits. But architects should learn how to effectively work with clients and the community and I believe that being a part of the process from the beginning and learning to win over clients is productive. Story telling can be understood by everyone, and I believe that it is a tool that is underutilized today. Not only can stories be told to communicate with clients, but also the community at the same time. It is an opportunity to connect everyone to the same space.

1. Spatial Agency

Young Cities

Posted on March 24, 2013 by Nicholas Binder

Informality is NOT exclusively a term for slums and poor cities. Although we have discussed informality within the context of the Global South, I believe that we need to remember that informality occurs within cities in Western Europe and the US. Architects have even shed light on this condition in what we may call cities of the Global North. For example, Rem Koolhaas describes in “Delirious New York” behavioral attributes within one of the most regulated cities in the world. Informality is a condition of human behavior and multitude of personalities colliding within a cluster of space. I believe that if the term “Informality” is going to be used specifically towards cities of the Global South, its definition must be detailed more towards slums or a new and more appropriate term must take its place.

Informal, by definition, means, not according to the prescribed, official, or customary way or manner. I believe that as many authors have mentioned, slums exude informality. I also believe that formal cities also exude informality. Not necessarily to the same amount but it is not strictly a quality of slums. There is a clear distinction between what these authors are calling the informal city and the formal city but I don’t believe that it is simply as black and white as formal verse informal. There must be something else that causes this disparity of formality.

Looking back through the histories of formal cities, there was a time when informality had a stronger presence within that society. For example, looking at Italian cities like Florence, before a ruling merchant controlled the entirety of Florence; the city was broken up into hundreds of tower houses that demarcated neighborhoods of powerful families. This same condition is seen in the favelas of Rio De Janiero as described by Daniela Fabricius in “Resisting Representation”. She explains, “If favelas are islands and the city is the sea, then that sea is filled with currents, routes tides…and pirates” (5). Although Florence is considered a formal city today, it was far from formal when it was still a young settlement.

Even age might not be the most appropriate term to explain what occurs in cities of the global south; but, I believe that it is getting at something beyond simply the formal verses the informal. There are slums and favelas which are now receiving infrastructure which made them, by definition, slums for not having them. I am starting to believe that it is just a matter of time before cities of the global south step towards the global north.

The Imported City

Posted on February 26, 2013 by Nicholas Binder

In “Generic City, S,M,L,XL” Rem Koolhaas asks, “Did the Generic City start in America? Is it so profoundly unoriginal that it can only be imported?”(2.2). It seems that the shift of movement out of the city rather than in has caused an emotionless calm of character making these cities generic. The global market has not only looked at foreign models for business capital, but also for their urbanism. In the efforts to become capitalist, higher classes are moving to the suburbs into gated communities designed off foreign models making the city loose its identity and culture.

The city must have place and without place, the character and identity are lost. The Generic City is made by populations/cultures on the move.

“The same (let’s say ten-mile) stretch yields a vast number of utterly different experiences: it can last five minutes or forty; it can be shared with almost nobody, or with the entire population; it can yield the absolute pleasure of pure, unadulterated speed-at which point the sensation of the Generic City may even become intense or at least acquire density…” (3.2)

Without the controlled experience which occurs in a city, there is no memory. The identity is constantly changing. It becomes gray within a black and white picture and everything blends and blurs together. There are no clear connections with other parts of the city or with other people and cultures. Without culture, the Generic City gets imported through the global market blurring the lines of large geographical and cultural boundaries.

Capitalists and the global economy have been pushing the generic city while also destroying the city which once had identity. As seen in Beijing, capitalists and the government have been destroying, abusing, and suffocating money from the poor. These efforts are not only for economic value, but also for the rich to move out to the suburbs. They have imported cities like the Chateau Maison-Laffitte which was a copy of the one designed by Francois Mansart in 1650. There is a direct insertion into a culture which cannot appropriately benefit. What was once a village with farmers and cultivation and a lot of culture and history, is not a Disneyland effect of capitalism. As these different cultures get inserted on a global scale, there is no chance to return back to identity. The world is becoming an unclear, gray, super-society.

Koolhaas, Rem, and Bruce Mau. S M L XL: OMA. S.l.: S.n., 1993.

Broudehoux, Anne-Marie. Delirious Beijing: Euphoria and Despair in the Olympic Metropolis.

Prefabricated IKEA House Potential

Posted on February 18, 2013 by Nicholas Binder

The Swedish company IKEA has brought through its “Big Box Store” furniture and appliances at a low-cost. Now, in collaboration with the Oregon based firm Ideabox, they are offering a prefabricated home that can be constructed for around $86,500. Although the Aktiv House may be out of the price range for disaster relief, it reminds society of the efficiency and potential of prefabrication in architecture.

At the beginning of the modern era of architecture, prefabrication was emerging as the new method of construction. It is low cost and produces less waste. The ability to construct several parts at the same time also cuts down on time of construction which makes this method viable for emergency situations.

Although the prefab system is based on producing the same kit of parts for every unit, there is still potential for customization. There is not a single dwelling design that can be picked up and moved anywhere and then fit perfectly within that new environment. Design must be site-specific to have a positive effect on its surroundings. The Aktiv House is not sustainably sensitive to the environment around it, but again it is a reminder of prefab potential. The open layout allows for customization of any IKEA appliances and furniture. Customers can choose the cost, make, style, and even color of the products to fill their home with and it fits efficiently in the Aktiv House.

The Aktiv House is not appropriate for any site. It is a completely inward focusing project. But it takes a step back to remind us of the opportunities in prefabricated construction. By designing a kit of parts, architects, can then study and site and propose architecture that is customizable and sustainably appropriate.

http://www.ideabox.us/models/aktiv/

Pulsing City

Posted on February 11, 2013 by Nicholas Binder

Manuel DeLanda recognizes in the book “Nonorganic Life” that the practice of studying and perceiving phenomena in science is changing culturally (1). We have new technologies and have clearer and flexible views on the possibilities of nature that previously were not possible to see or to comprehend. At one point, all of western civilization thought the world was flat and there was no convincing otherwise, yet now we are capable of traveling to outer space and view the planet as a sphere. With the improvement in technology and more open conception of the world around us, we are recognizing science at a more biological level, rather than a physical level. Even in a controlled and constructed environment, there are factors which are unseen at one moment in time which can shed light on how a city grows and pulses as an organism.

On YouTube, you can find time lapse videos of the city of Vancouver (2). Although this city is a contemporary city, there are many systems and networks interacting that are clearly visible through a sped up video. It is clear to see the oscillations of the sun, tides and fog as they cause the city to light up or be hidden at certain times of day. At the same time, there are networks through the street grid which act as patterns and connections similar to neurons in the brain. It acts as a pattern that pulses with the flow of traffic. At the same time, lights in the buildings are switching on and off due to different reactions constantly. As DeLanda explains, these reactions are not counterintuitive and can be caused by several factors that are likely not to be represented in a linear model (3). Vancouver is constantly beating with life.

As architects, it is imperative to understand buildings as in the “Emergence in Architecture”. The Emergence and Design Group acknowledges that,

“Emergence requires the recognition of buildings not as singular and fixed bodies, but as complex energy and material systems that have a life span, and exist as part of the environment of other buildings, and as an iteration of a long series that proceeds by evolutionary development towards an intelligent ecosystem.”(4)

Although buildings are controlled and constructed objects, the effects to itself from the surrounding networks and systems as well as the effects of itself to the surrounding networks and systems are deeply imbedded in a higher organization.

There is a hierarchy in the city that links individual structures and beings together in a larger overarching institution with many layers of information. As more individuals link to the institution, it becomes more complex at one level of understanding, yet more refined at the higher level of understanding (5). With the technology and perspective society uses today, the complexities of organisms are revealed as sophisticated and clear systems.

Nonorganic Life
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_xMz2SnSWS4
Nonorganic Life
Emergence in Architecture
Nonorganic Life

Informal Intervention

Posted on February 4, 2013 by Nicholas Binder

Architects have to ability to become urbanites and work with the higher political and economic powers which cause constant movements of religious and trade communities in the slum cities. At the street level, architects have no business with clients but they are able to work at a larger scale. I am not saying that there is a need to change the systems that are already in place because they are in some way problematic, but these systems can be enhanced and nurtured to produce even more efficiency to the system.

In “Living in the Endless City” by Ricky Burdett and Dayan Sudjic, Rahul Mehrotra discusses how Mumbai is a Static City and also a Kinetic City. The Static City is all the infrastructure and permanent constructions that define streets and neighborhoods and overlapping with those is the constantly changing Kinetic City. There is the city which is constructed by markets and festivals which changes space and ownerships by the minute. The Kinetic City is out of the control of any political, economic, or even architectural organization, it simply exists in the present. As communities get pushed out of certain areas, others move in and change the Static condition making the Static City affected and part of the Kinetic City. There is potential in this overlapping relationship which can foster opportunities for architectural interventions.

In the case of Dharavi, “’Redeveloping’ a place like Dharavi is no easy matter, as successive government and planning authorities have discovered” (xxiv, Sharma). Slums don’t necessarily need to be redeveloped or gentrified for the higher classes to move in later. Instead, infrastructure can be focused on to benefit existing conditions so that people can stay and thrive rather than be pushed out. Monuments become markers and public transportation offers connectivity. These Static City constructions can be strategically useful for networks like the Dabbawalas which are illiterate and need symbolic markers throughout the city. Architects can recognize the realities of slums like Mumbai and Dharavi and instead of proposing a Haussman plan to destroy and rebuild the land, they can increase the effects of positive cultural systems.

Sources

“Living in the Endless City”, London School of Economics

“Dabbawals, Tiffin Carriers of Mumbai: Answering a Need for Specific Catering”, Marie Percot

“Rediscovering Dharavi: Stories From Asia’s Largest Slum”, Kalpana Sharma

“Formality” Growing Out of “Informality”

Posted on February 4, 2013 by Nicholas Binder

“The physical result is a high heterogeneity of use and function at the scale of the compound, homogeneous and porous space at the scale of the neighborhood” (1). This description of property in the city of Lagos explains the common misunderstanding that slums are disorganized and broken communities. At a naïve scale, slums appear unsanitary, inefficient and deprived, but when viewed at the proper vantage points, one has the ability to recognize networks overlapping and energizing a living city.

These “informal cities”, as described by Mike Davis in Planet of Slums, are only considered “informal” because they are not recognized by first and second world norms. In considering the laws and cultural understandings abided by citizens and businesses, slums are more “off-the-books” (2). These primitive communities formalize their own politics and economies and infrastructure. Alaba in Lagos is the largest electronics market in the world, and as the majority of income to Lagos, Alaba funds improvements to the city (3). From the market came money which was reinvested in making an “informal sector” more “formal”. There are more network connections in the market for global trading, better organized storefronts, and even forms of security. Although slums may appear unsuccessful, they are growing and adjusting to become more efficient and more successful.

It is understood that as the population grows and exceeds the city limits, crisis will emerge and destroy communities. Is this really a problem? We spend so much time looking at the issues at hand and debate over how to fix them. Why not just let the uproar emerge and harness it as a revolution? Any first-world country today started as a squatter settlement, and over time, there were many flaws that grew to hostile situations, yet these events throughout history shaped these countries and cultures into what we believe creates a proper city. Why not let slums destroy themselves in order to build themselves up better than before? People may think there is too much chaos in slums that a crisis would annihilate the entire city, but these communities are hard-working and incredibly flexible organisms that can adapt for the better.