Architectures of Urban Agency, 23.10.19

Completed as part of ARC3401

It seems we have been relentlessly preoccupied with understanding the urban condition. Since the inauguration of its discipline - urbanism - its unfastened definition has brought about problematic understandings that have led to erroneous offspring in modes of practice and representation. From the early nineteenth century, regiments of imposition and “Newtonian principles of organisation” (Kwinter and Fabricius 2001, 496) have dictated, allocated and designated both physical and social space. Temptations presented by objective methods of representation and the development of neat, contradistinctive systems have acted as continuous inspiration for the superimposition of “orthopaedic urban structures” (Kairuz 2010, 106) on the seemingly chaotic conditions of the city. The historically prevailing practice of legibility has done nothing but perpetuate the misguided antidote of control on the ‘cancerous’ conglomeration that is ‘the city’ (Chaoy 1969, 10). These all too convenient conceptions had begun to be dismissed throughout the turn of the century. From the retroactive observations of Rem Koolhaas, to Bernard Tschumi’s ‘event-cities’ (Tschumi 1994, 13), we’ve witnessed the push to shift urban perception towards the actors, rather than the systems that contain them, “no longer concerned with the arrangement of more or less permanent objects but with the irrigation of territories with potential” (Koolhaas 1994, 969). There are great potentialities within the urban environment that are yet to be acknowledged within practice, due to both the persistence of archaic methods of representation and a lack of engagement with everyday and inevitable conditions, the city's “malleable set of variables” (Angelil and Siress 2008, 19). Through the writing of James Corner, Marc Agnelil and Carey Siress, we can observe this polemic - within the lens of mapping, its historic implications on urban and architectural thinking, and the importance of the subjective. Simultaneously we see the promotion of potential and opportunity in current environmental conditions through the texts of Melanie Dodd and Teddy Cruz, and the beginnings of architectural and urban propositions that promote relationship between the subjective and personal, with the existing social and physical structures - as seen in Guadalajara and Bogota. The combination of these vital constituents can place the architect in an ‘enabling role’, a mediator of sorts, navigating between the poles of the tactical and the strategic.

Early ‘urbanism’ existed as an “a-priori construction of a new and different” order established to “radically contest” disorder (Choay 1969, 31) - ‘authoritarian unity’ (Kwinter and Fabricius 2001, 496) superimposed on permissive complexity. This deterministic practice has been disseminated throughout urban and architectural practice, relying exclusively on abstractions and dichotomous systems that have in turn led to the production of grids of perceived specificity and legibility. There is little doubt today of the inability of such systems to accommodate the dynamic and unstable condition of contemporary society. however, we still remain “children of the 19th century” (Chaoy 1969, 7), or perhaps more appropriately, children of the 20th century: continuing to use outdated forms of representation and practice through historic misconceptions of urban control. Throughout the early twenty-first century we have experienced a shift in urban thinking, through the ‘avant-garde’ “irrational exuberance” (Dreamer 2014, 151) of Rem Koolhaas, as well as Bernard Tschumi’s prioritising of the event. Koolhaas’ work can be read as an embrace of social, political and physical conditions, in that it situates itself within “modernization and global capitalism” (Dreamer 2014, 159) - theorising an urban practice to “accept what exists” (Koolhaas 1994, 970). As he somewhat fatalistically states in his critical text ‘What Ever Happened to Urbanism?’, “urbanism will never again be about the “new”, only about the “more” and the “modefied” (Koolhaas 1994, 969). Tschumi’s work has introduced similar counter-proposals to the theoretical framing of rationalist urban practice, emphasising the “relation to the immediate reality of users” and stating that “architecture is as much about the events that take place in spaces as [it is] about the spaces themselves” (Tschumi 1994, 12-13). This ideology began to introduce considerations of ‘user’ contingency and the inherent relationship between social action and architecture, which played a significant role in the formation of an urban and architectural practice that accepts our physical, social and political urban structures as givens, therefore presenting a ‘field’ of opportunity that “refuses to be crystallised into definitive form” (Koolhaas 1994, 969) within which architecture may operate.

Mapping has long been connected to the practice of urbanism and planning of urban infrastructure. It has, is and always will be a crucial component of architectural and urban design. In fact, it is perhaps the most prominent output of such practices. We have historically associated the process of mapping with direct representation and resultant intervention on the landscape, as James Corner states in ‘The Agency of Mapping’, “their surfaces are directly analogous to the actual ground conditions” (Corner 1999, 90) - the widely held understanding of representation’s agency. This understanding of mapping proves entirely inadequate in both its simplification of the ‘dynamic conditions’ (Kwinter and Fabricius 2001, 495) of the urban environment and its complete disregard for its own process of conception. Rather, Corner suggests that the map in itself can act as a “productive and liberating instrument”, a ‘world-enriching agent’ that may “emancipate potentials, enrich experiences and diversify worlds” (Corner 1999, 89). This understanding of mapping opens up the door to its ‘profound efficacy’ in its ability to disclose the complexity and richness of subjective space. It can be used as a tool through which we can observe visual biases and cultural values - less ‘tracing’ and more ‘re-tracing’, “inaugurating new worlds out of old” (Corner 1999, 100). Figure 1 shows a conceptual mapping completed within Glebe, Sydney, through the process of the situationist ‘dérive’. The dérive presents an image of ‘fragments’; “pieces abut to form an unpredictable body... yet an urban species that doesn’t succumb to a unitary order” (Agnelil and Siress 2008, 16). The result is a map of “fluctuating notions of place, origin, and context” (Wigley 1998, 6), as represented within the conceptual mapping through the streets of Glebe. Structured as a path of experience, this map was an iterative model that began with an extensive digital surveying (shown as a black gridded mass) portrayed as the massive imposition onto the drawing - the irremovable existence of preconception. What followed was the placement of images throughout a path overlayed by geometry to represent the spatial definitions experienced throughout the dérive. As a result, this map can be read as a non linear field of relations and definitions, from the zonal buffers expressed across the Darling Harbour and Wentworth Park (bottom and middle respectively), to the experiential boundary felt halfway down Glebe Point Road (top), these subjective recordings create an invaluable collection of conditions through which to work. The role of mapping, then, can be productively interpreted not as a depiction of total reality, but rather an exercise in exposing subjective potentials and temporal circumstances in urban space.

In ‘Opportunistic Architectures’, Melanie Dodd identifies multiple dichotomies in urban terminology that she frames as two sides of the same coin. Leveraging Michel De Certeau's ‘The Practice of the Everyday’ Dodd unpacks the ‘dialectical relationship’ between ‘tactics’ and ‘strategies’, with strategies representing “institutions” and “structures of power”, traditionally associated with the practice of urbanism, and tactics being “a tool of the weak, utilised by individuals to create a space for themselves in environments defined by strategies” (Dodd 2008, 126). A similar relationship is echoed in her pairing of ‘soft’ and ‘hard’ infrastructures, where ‘soft infrastructures’ are seen as “critical mechanisms that must be included within city design” and are “more complementary to more traditional ‘hard infrastructures’’ (Dodd 2008, 126), such as roads and buildings. What Dodd reveals is the potentiality within tactics and soft infrastructure for generating new models of urban design in its bottom-up, reflexive practice - they become “constructed outcomes of the practices of everyday life”, “the translation of actions into things, needs into objects” (Dodd 2008, 125) - the manifestation of the subjective in the real. These dialectic pairings expose ability within their collaboration, combining the provisional and permanent. One example that Dodd examines is the city of Guadalajara, which she praises for its temporal engagement with the ‘skeletal physical frameworks’ of its ‘strategies’, “be that an adapted bicycle cart for vending water or simply recycled building components extending to a house” (Dodd 2008, 128). Teddy Cruz identifies a similar case study in Bogota, where the former mayor, Antanas Mockus, led a public policy to promote civic imagination by “enacting idiosyncratic public legislature inclusive of social activism” (Cruz 2011, 112). This policy capitalised on the creative intelligence within the community, giving rise to citizen-led collaborations that defined new social and physical landscapes within the existing conditions. Figure 2 represents a similar proposition. This mapping shows Glebe in regeneration, from the evacuation of native landscape (left side), and the colonial, centrist model of its civic and political infrastructure (right side). The white building footprints on the map (bottom circle) demonstrate how the systematic relocation of civic infrastructures within the existing fabric of Glebe to the sites of necessity, can in fact further support the community in its convenience, whilst simultaneously departing from its colonial centrist model, promoting increased idiosyncrasy and identity for the suburb. All of these models privilege the subjective experience and creativity within the urban space and seek to promote it as a potential for agency through its pairing with the greater structures of permanence. The facilitation of tactics within the landscape of strategies thus opens up great opportunity through which architectures may act at an urban scale.

Through the exploration of tactics and strategies, the architect emerges as an ‘enabling role’, a ‘mechanism’ (Dodd 2008, 128), through which the subjective and reflexive practices may be mediated within and throughout the urban strategic landscape. As explored through the case studies of Guadalajara and Bogota, and the speculative map in regeneration of Glebe, Sydney, a wealth of opportunity lies within the potential relationship between the tactical agency of the citizen and the strategic structure of the state. The architect therefore sits within the middle of this historic binary as a navigator, and has great instrumentality in working within the existing ground conditions to promote and perpetuate the circumstantial and serendipitous outcomes of everyday life. As such, the intrinsic relationship between architecture and the city is brought to the fore, where architecture must situate itself within the urban fabric and may work with larger urban forces to enact agency. In his text ‘Scarcity and Agency’, Jeremy Till examines the potential engagement architecture may have with scarcity in our environment, and how this process could enact urban intervention. This proposition was explored in part of figure 2 (left side & radial images), in relation to the evacuation of native landscape to the fringes of sydney. The map examines the potential for vacant sites within the area to be systemically designated and permeated with outposts for native vegetation. These outposts then have the grounds to grow and re-occupy the city centre whilst concurrently educating about the native land on which Sydney is grounded. Till demonstrates this same approach in David Turnbull and Jane Harrison’s Waterbanks Initiative, where they designed a school in Kenya “specifically around the collection and storage of water. The scheme not only addresses seasonal fluctuations of water availability for local farming but also forms a community focus and educational catalyst, both of which were previously lacking” (Till 2014, 10-11). The architects here understood the environmental and social conditions of local communities and in response propose the direct translation of needs into an architectural intervention - that may thereby have agency on the urban scale.

Historic models of urbanism, routinely associated with the act of deterministic planning, have been extensively critiqued for their deficiency in accommodating of the dynamic condition of the urban environment. These rationalistic ideologies have had long lasting impacts, not only in the planning of cities and proliferation of architecture, but also in the modes in which we record and represent them. All too often maps are seen as inseparable objects from the urban condition itself, a tracing with direct implication on the landscape. Instead, there exists the enormous potential in such a practice to reveal the subjective and temporal circumstances of an environment. These circumstances present opportunities and enact tactics - reflexive interventions that, through the enabling role of the architect, can directly engage with the existing structures that they are situated within - creating infrastructures of agency across an urban scale.

  1. Wigley, Mark. “The Great Urbanism Game.” Constant’s New Babylon: The Hyper-Architecture of Desire. 1998: 5-12

  2. Corner, James. “Terra Fluxus” Landscape Imagination : Collected Essays of James Corner 1990-2010. Princeton Architectural Press, 2014: 305-316

  3. Corner, James. “The Agency of Mapping: Speculation, Critique and Invention” Landscape Imagination : Collected Essays of James Corner 1990-2010. Princeton, 1999: 89-101

  4. Kwinter, Stanford and Daniela Fabricius. “Urbanism: An Archivist’s Art?” Mutations. Bordeaux, ACTAR, 2001: 494-507

  5. Choay, Francoise. “The Critical Order.” The Modern City: Planning In The 19th Century. 1969: 7-15 & 31

  6. Angelil, Marc and Carey Siress. “City of “and...and...and…”” Urban Transformation. Berlin: Ruby Press, 2008: 14-19

  7. Deamer, Peggy. “Irrational Exuberance: Rem Koolhaas and the 1990s.” Architecture and Capitalism: 1845 to the Present. New York: Routledge, 2014: 150-171

  8. Dodd, Melanie. “Opportunistic Architectures” Opportunistic Urbanism. RMIT Publishing, 2008: 12-128

  9. Till, Jeremy. “Scarcity and Agency.” Journal of Architectural Education. 2014: 9-11

  10. Koolhaas, Rem, and Bruce Mau. “What Ever Happened to Urbanism?” S, M, L, XL. New York: Monacelli Press, 1994: 958-971

  11. Tschumi, Bernard. Event-Cities. London: The MIT Press, 2000.

  12. Cruz, Teddy. “Latin American Meander: In Search of a New Civic Imagination.” Architectural Design Vol. 81 Issue 3. 2011: 110-117

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Figure1. Conceptual Mapping, Glebe Sydney. Figure 2. Map in regeneration, Glebe, Sydney


Readings of Modernity, 04.09.18

Completed as part of ARC2402

Throughout time we see the ever-evolving dialogue between modernity and its historical representation. Through tensions between metropole and colonies, and eurocentrism and custodial acknowledgement a duality emerges – that of colonial ruling and influence, and spatial and societal evolution. This understood duality, however, seems to bounce between a history that privileges the “paradigmatic status of the western tradition” and one that is “more cross cultural” and “less Eurocentric” (Bozdogan 1999, 207), or at least more acknowledging of tradition. The way in which historians represent colonial powers and their consequence is telling of their situation of colonialism within the chronology of modernity. In his essay, London versus Sydney, 1815-1823: the politics of colonial architecture, Michael Rosenthal (through the lens of an English historian) discusses the shaping of a built environment through the influence of “the mother country” (Rosenthal 2007, 204) and establishment of a modern architectural language through a western symbolism. Unlike Penelope Edmonds, who discusses the indigenous impact on the formation of space in colonial Melbourne, Rosenthal chooses not to mention the indigenous population in the narrative of this social construction as they were “invisible in [the] scheme”. Sibel Bozdogan consequently discusses a survey of modernity through a marriage of both the ‘western canon’ and the ‘hitherto marginalized others’ (Bozdogan 1999, 207) – understanding colonial spatial implication through “cross-cultural encounters” (Bozdogan 1999, 213).

In his essay on “the politics of colonial architecture” (Rosenthal 2007, 191), Rosenthal discusses the influence of the convict/colonizer culture in the shaping of the future “seat of the empire” (Frost in Rosenthal 2010, 202). He offers us a western oriented account of architecture in a penal colony being used as a device of functional communication and its consequence in the broader discussion of architectural development in Australia. This account revolves largely around the relationship between Governor Lachlan Macquarie and architect/convict Francis Greenway. Rosenthal paints Macquarie’s ambition of a “practical reform” (Rosenthal 2007, 199) as a development of a series of systematized edifices to rule and survey convicts, and as a result, develop a visually informative architecture in the language of classicism. This form of architecture was a mix of classicism and functionalism, developed by Greenway – a belief that the ornament (European classical ornament) should assist in determining its character, exemplified in his convict barracks in Sydney with the use of “full windows [indicating] this was not a place of confinement”, “low rusticated wall… [signaling] that this was a guardhouse” and “the buildings functionalism” with its “generic linkage to British Industrial Architecture” (Rosenthal 2007, 196). According to Rosenthal, these formal resolutions by Greenway, with the original purpose of constructing penal facilities, brought to light the “potential impact of public buildings within the city scape” and “the role that architecture could play in visually communicating information about their function” (Rosenthal 2007, 204) – an architectural expression developed through pure colonial rule.

In a perhaps less Eurocentric manner, Penelope Edmonds, in her text This Grand Object”: Building towns in Indigenous Space, also speaks of spatial/societal evolution of Australia (Melbourne) during its original colonization. She highlights the tension in architectural production between the colonizer and the traditional owners of the land: the “other culture” (Bozdogan 1999, 209). Edmonds admits that “the land of the Kulin Nation was a world fully formed and complete unto itself” and recalls a history whereby the Europeans utilized indigenous knowledge and labor, and appropriated indigenous land, to realize their entrepreneurial goals” (Edmonds 2010, 70). Through an analysis of the formation of Melbourne, she is explaining that even whilst the Europeans were superimposing this western “machine plan”, a “spatial signature of modernity” (Edmonds 2010, 84), there was a “dependency of aboriginal knowledge” (Edmonds 2010, 82). Edmonds goes as far as to suggest that Batman’s famous quote when first arriving in Wurundjeri land, “this will be the place for a village – the Natives on the shore” (Batman in Edmonds 2010, 75), suggests that the presence of the indigenous semi-sedentary was a motivation in siting the British colonial town. She implies this by contrasting it against the commonly mistaken form of the quote which omits ‘the natives on the shore’ – generally used to reinforce the argument of an independent imperial development of Melbourne. In this incentive Edmonds is negating Rosenthal’s conception of a history of spatial development through pure colonial rule, instead suggesting that, whilst the British force did envelope the Aboriginal cultural markers, it was still an “over coding of indigenous space” (Edmonds 2010, 74) and was informed by the Aboriginal placement at the time.

Finally, Sibel Bozdogan, in Reflections on Postcolonial Challenges to the Modern Survey, through a more broadly historical lens, critiques the colonial-traditional duality in relation to postcolonial history. She is promoting a more “plural and heterogenous history” (Bozdogan 1999, 211), a history whereby we are no longer trapped between the “binary opposition” of a western account and a history of the “other cultures” (Bozdogan 1999, 209). Bozdogan challenges the Eurocentric discussion of modernity, illustrated in Rosenthal’s analysis of Australian architectural morphology, by demonstrating how this narrow vision excludes the “historical connections, exchanges and confrontations between them” (Bozdogan 1999, 208). She refers to the book A History of Architecture, by Spiro Kostof, as it attempts to explain sixteenth century ottoman architecture through the terminology of western architectural theory, without a discussion of the uniquely Ottoman societal influence of the time – the “untranslatable” (Bozdogan 1999, 213). We can draw a parallel here with Rosenthal’s conversation around the shaping of a penal colony. In his text, he speaks purely through a British historical understanding (i.e. “the mother country” (Rosenthal 2007, 204)) and expresses this architectural production with no mention of the inherently Australian quality (indigenous people and land/material). Like Edmonds, Bozdogan sympathizes with the ‘other cultures’ who are often misrepresented in the chronical of modernization and hence advocates a historical discussion exposing the “biases and exclusions of the western canon without discarding it altogether” (Rosenthal 2007, 207). She is admitting the integral role of colonial higher powers (e.g. British influence in Australia) in the shaping of an urban fabric and calling for the admission of the traditional culture (e.g. Aboriginals) into the modern survey. She continues to emphasize this point, expressing that “other cultures have been essential to the very definition of the western canon” (Bozdogan 1999, 211) – much in the same vein as Edmonds claim of British reliance on indigenous knowledge, the knowledge which catalyzed the western architecture typifying Australia today. Bozdogan attempts to extract a colonial history whereby we are acknowledging the intertwined nature of Western and traditional perspectives without ‘neutralizing’ or ‘essentializing’ the relationship between the two (Bozdogan 1999, 208).

Imperial rule saw some of the most radical shifts in environmental and societal infrastructure. Rosenthal and Edmonds, through their case studies of early Australian colony, discuss colonialism and its profound influence in spatial fabrication. In these texts we see the polarity emerge between the views of pure imperial production (Rosenthal) and architecture facilitated through indigenous land/knowledge (Edmonds), a tension which Bozdogan attempts to diffuse through her review on a Postcolonial approach to a modern architectural lineage. Overall, however, we see the reflection of a historical confusion; the realisation of a Eurocentric, endemic and intertwined perception (respectively) of the colonial narrative of spatial and societal evolution.

  1. Bozdogan, Sibel. Architectural History in Professional Education: Reflections on Postcolonial Challenges to the Modern Survey, Journal of Architectural Education 52, No. 4. May 1999, Journal of Architectural Education (1984-), pp. 207-215.

  2. Rosenthal, Michael. London versus Sydney, 1815-1823: the politics of colonial architecture, Journal of Historical Geography 134, 2008, Journal of Historical Geography, pp. 191-219.

  3. Edmonds, Penelope. “This Grand Object”: Building towns in Indigenous Space, Urbanizing frontiers: indigenous peoples and settlers in 19th-century Pacific Rim cities, 2010, UBC Press, pp. 70-89.

  4. Herman, Morton. Greenway, Francis (1777-1837), Australian Dictionary of Biography Volume 1. (MUP), 1966.

  5. King, Anthony, ed. Introduction, Buildings and Society, 1-13. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1980.


Urban Determinism and its Counter-Practice/Theory, 07.09.19

Completed as part of ARC3401

Abstract

This essay examines historical practices of urbanism and ‘orthopaedic urban structures’ (Kairuz 2010, 104), through the writing of Francoise Choay and Kenneth Frampton, and discusses the counter theories and spatial practices that have emerged in reaction to them. Through the theoretical texts of Edward Soja, Jane Rendell, Bekaert, May & De Geyter and Rem Koolhaas, the text undertakes a conceptual examination into these urban theories and highlights their ideological contribution to thinking about metropole. A simultaneous exploration occurs on the seemingly more spatial counter-practices and their focus on architecture. These more architectural studies involve an analysis of the writings of Jeremy Till, Graeme Evans, Peggy Dreamer (on Koolhaas) and Susan Klingmann (on Gehry). Their arguments bring to the fore the significance of architecture as urban catalyst and new ways in which architecture can situate itself in the present urban environment. Throughout, this essay seeks to expose the inherent link between these theoretical urban practices and the spatial architectural ones, striving for a hybrid practice in which these forms may reinforce one another.

Urban Determinism and its Counter-Practice/Theory

Urbanism, a word loaded with connotative meaning, can generally be described as an “a-priori construction of a new and different” order established to “radically contest” disorder (Choay 1969, 31). Historical conceptions of the urban structure have framed this ‘disorder’, or the “urban agglomeration” as “a diseased condition, or worse, a monstrous deformity” (Choay 1969, 10), establishing this ‘cancerous’ condition as the villain of a technocratic urbanism of control and organisation. As a result of this deterministic ideology, we have seen countless impositions of rigid, “idealistically rationalistic” (Frampton 1980, 270) urban structures that have subsequently dispersed notions of a “rural/urban contradistinction” (Bekaert, May & De Geyter 2002, 21) and concentric city dogmas. Following this urban organisation, we have whitnessed the introduction of counter-ideology, criticizing modernist city concepts and speculating on a new urban conception, whereby a reframing of the city and its complexity is necessary for progress, exemplified in the texts of Edward Soja, Jane Rendell and Bekaert, May & De Geyter. On the other hand, we have also seen spatial counter-practices emerge, whereby architecture is re-conceived as a catalyst for both the transformation of cities and their progress into the 21st century, approaching the current urban condition as a field of opportunity, demonstrated in the writings of Jeremy Till and Graeme Evans, and also through Peggy Dreamer’s analysis of Rem Koolhaas’ work. The emergence of these seemingly independent spatial and theoretical counter-practices exposes a great potential within the urban/architectural field, a necessary hybrid emerges, locating itself between “the parasitic refuge of architecture” and a “new urbanism” of “enabling fields” (Koolhaas 1998, 969-967).

The origins of urbanism’s practice of order and control over the city can be traced back to the 19th century, where the emergence of “neoclassical ceremonial form”, “British residential pattern” and the “colonial checkerboard schema” (Choay 1969, 31) quickly laid its grasp on the urban environment. These early structural impositions have been generally accepted as the founding forms of the urban fields we inhabit today; as Choay says “we are all children of the 19th century… however profound our discouragement” (Choay 1969, 7). Furthering this systematic organisation, we have seen the introduction of “the functionalist city” and metropolitan arrangements of “labyrinth clarity” (Frampton 1980, 277) that continued the pursue the ideal of a city sanitized by order. A strong polemic was formed in response to the relentless organisation of modernity, with counter-theories emerging as a combative tool. These theories include Edward Soja’s notion of “postmetropolis” (inspired by Iain Chambers’ post-modern theories on the metropolis), feminist influence of critical practice and the subsequent emergence of “tactics” (Rendell 2018) as urban ideology, and Bekaert, May & De Geyter’s ‘after-sprawl’ which looks at the lack of preparedness of the “urban landscape dichotomy” ” (Bekaert, May & De Geyter 2002, 21) to abandon ideas of the city countryside split, instead proposing a theory of ‘negative’ and ‘collective’ space. Soja presents a post-modern formulation of the ‘postmetropolis’ which begins to introduce ideas of dissipation, horizontality and polycentricism, and seeks to explain how city “boundaries are becoming more porous” (Soja 2000, 150), promoting a new theoretical framework through which to understand cities. Similarly, what Rendell examines as “tactics” (Rendell 2018) – describing the “practices that seek to critique… existing social and spatial orders” (Rendell 2018) - displays a bottom-up approach to urban thinking, examining past inequalities on a large scale. Finally, the ideology presented in ‘After-Sprawl’ examines a new system of thinking about sprawl conditions (sprawl being the ‘other’ to the ‘city’ and the ‘countryside’, “the occupation of the landscape” (Bekaert, May & De Geyter 2002, 21), whereby the ‘negative space’, the space that is not consciously planned, could “define the overall image in the after-sprawl condition” (Bekaert, May & De Geyter 2002, 29). Rem Koolhaas, in his text ‘What Ever Happened to Urbanism’, provides a similar critique to the ‘escapist’ practice of urbanism, describing it as “simultaneously dogmatic and evasive” (Koolhaas 1998, 967) and summarising the key motivator of these theoretical counter-practices against urbanisms rigid organisation as “the city’s defiant persistence and apparent vigour, in spite of the collective failure of all agencies that try to influence it – creatively, logistically, politically” (Koolhaas 1998, 961).

On the other side of this critical response, we see the construction of an architectural, as opposed to strictly urban, narrative - a finer and more spatial/architectural approach to the urban condition after modernism. The significance of architecture within the metropolitan environment has been increasingly highlighted through the introduction of new spatial counter-practices, revealing both the detrimental impact of “prototypical attacks on built structures by human beings” (Millard 2004, 38) and histories of “savage imposition” of architectures and their creation of “fragmented barriers” (Kairuz 2010, 107), and the catalytic potential of architecture – from the revolutionising ‘Bilbao Effect’ and subsequent inflammation of “spectacle culture” (Klingmann 2007, 240) to newly understood potentialities in “culture-led regeneration” (Evans 2005, 960) and “scarcity” and its “agency” (Till 2014, 9) in the contemporary architectural environment. Historical surveys, such as Eduardo Kairuz’s text on Caracas and Bill Millard’s piece on ‘urbicide’, “the deliberate assault on urban structures” (Millard 2004, 39), reveal, with fierce brutality, the impact of remorseless architectural imposition and destruction of the urban environment. This impact can be viewed alongside the new spatial propositions for the urban environment, given their exemplification of the power of architecture on the structural and social milieu. These new spatial propositions are presented in new critical literature, such as Jeremy Till’s location of potential within the moments of ‘scarcity’ in our current urban environment, Graeme Evans’ ‘culture-led revitalisation’ whereby “cultural activity is seen as the catalyst and engine of regeneration” (Evans 2005, 968) and Susan Klingmann’s analysis of ‘the Bilbao Effect’ and ‘the icon’ as a “catalyst for urban renewal” (Klingmann 2007, 237). Situated amongst these new conceptions of urban spatial practice we see the ‘counter-cultural’ work of Rem Koolhaas, that Peggy Dreamer classifies as “Irrational Exuberance” (Dreamer 2014, 151). She continues to discuss Koolhaas’ acceptance and even embrace of “the impacts of modernisation and global capitalism” (Dreamer 2014, 159), describing his rejection of “the rigid, repressive and decisive order of ‘architecture’ in favour of the fluid…and productive disorder of the capitalist, market driven ‘metropolis’” (Dreamer 2014, 159). All of these practices similarly accept the existing urban condition as a dynamic environment, within which architecture may find potential in methods of situating itself.

These spatial and theoretical propositions arise from critiques of the rationalist and systematic urban planning that has informed cities well into the twentieth century. The urban counter-theories seen in the literature of Soja, Rendell and Bekaert, May & De Geyter seek to move away from the positivistic metropolitan theory that has led to regularisation and the “periphery-CBD dichotomy” (Choay 1969, 8), expanding on prior ‘monosemantic’ urban conceptions. Similarly, the proposed spatial practices of theorists such as Till and Evans, alongside Dreamer’s reading of Koolhaas’ work and Klingsmann’s analysis of the architectural icon, provide a polemic of the imposed “orthopaedic urban structure’ (Kairuz 2010, 104) whilst simultaneously introducing ways in which architecture can situate itself within capitalist, post-urbanist society. Spatial and theoretical urban re-conceptions represent two sides of the same coin – reactions against the historical practice of urbanism and its negative physical manifestations. By delving further into these texts and theories provided in these polemics we can see the inherent link between theory and spatial practice and their reaction against urbanism. Despite the fact that the largely theoretical works (e.g. of Soja, Rendell and Bekaert, May & De Geyter) are presented at the larger scale of the metropolitan condition, and the spatial works at the scale of architecture (e.g. Till, Evans, Koolhaas etc.), the link that can be made between them creates a powerful and critical urban practice that embraces the current urban condition as inevitable and full of potential, ultimately revealing the uncontrollable and spontaneous nature of urban environment. We already see this hybrid counter-urbanist process start to reveal itself within the avant-garde architecture of Rem Koolhaas, embracing the inherent contradictions of architecture (e.g. “art and commerce, fantasy and pragmatism” (Dreamer 2014, 155) etc.) and the urban condition, while proposing a new architecture that situates itself within it, a bottom-up architectural approach that is still strongly measured against larger social and metropolitan understandings. Collectively, the marriage of these conceptual approaches towards the modern city and the spatial tactics within the current condition can create an architectural practice of incremental but global impact, a new spatial and conceptual process for its given condition.

Over time we have witnessed various attempts to control the urban condition. From the 19th century foundation of urbanism to functionalist and rationalistic urban zoning, these models of industrial metropolis have had lasting impact on the social and urban fabric today - largely restrictive, and at times devastating. As a response to this, we have seen an emergence of theoretical and spatial ideologies and practice that have been established as a combative framework to the naïve urban understandings of the past. These new ideologies, within theoretical and spatial fields, have created potential for architecture to situate itself within the current modern condition, between the poles of theory and practice. No longer can we seek the “escapist” tradition of urbanism, nor hide within the “parasitic refuge of architecture” (Koolhaas 1998, 967). Instead, we should seek the marriage of theoretical urban reinterpretations and new architectural practices fitting themselves amongst our present-day urban landscapes, creating a critical practice that is engaging with the greater urban conditions that define our environment, while seeking to utilise the cultural climate within its architecture.

  1. Choay, Francoise. “The Critical Order.” The Modern City: Planning In The 19th Century. (1969): 7-15 & 31

  2. Frampton, Kenneth. “The vicissitudes of ideology: CIAM and Team X, critique and counter-critique 1928-68.” Modern architecture: a critical history. (2007 [1980]): 269-279

  3. Park, Robert & Ernest W. Burgess & Roderick D. McKenzie. “The Growth of the City: An Introduction to a Research Project.” The City Reader. LeGates, Richard & Frederic Stout, eds. (2017 [1925]): 178-186

  4. Soja, Edward J. “Six Discourses on the Postmetropolis-Introduction.” Postmetropolis: critical studies of cities and regions. (2000): 147-155

  5. Rendell, Jane. “Only resist: a feminist approach to critical spatial practice.” The Architectural Review. (19 February 2018)

  6. Bekaert, Geert & Andrew May & Xaveer De Geyter Architects. “Section through Europe: different urban conditions.” After-sprawl : Research For The Contemporary City. (2002): 19-32

  7. Koolhaas, Rem, and Bruce Mau. “What Ever Happened to Urbanism?” S, M, L, XL. New York: Monacelli Press, 1998: 958-971

  8. Klingmann, Susan. “Beyond Bilbao.” Brandscapes: Architecture in the Experience Economy. (2007): 236-253

  9. Kairuz, Eduardo. “Fearscapes: Caracas - Postcards from a Violent City”. Architectural Design. 80(5). (2010): 102-107

  10. Till, Jeremy. “Scarcity and Agency.” Journal of Architectural Education. 68(1). (2014): 9-11

  11. Millard, Bill. ‘Violence Against Architecture: Quixote Comes of Age in Sarajevo’. Content. Koolhaas, Rem. ed. (2004): 38–43

  12. Evans, Graeme. “Measure for Measure: Evaluating the Evidence of Culture’s Contribution to Regeneration.” Urban Studies. 42(5/6). (2005): 959-983

  13. Perera, Nihal & Wing-Shing Tang. “In Search of Asian Urbanisms: limited visibility and intellectual impasse.” Transforming Asian Cities: Intellectual Impasse, Asianizing Space, And Emerging Translocalities. Perera, Nihal & Wing-Shing Tang, eds. (2012): 1-19

  14. Deamer, Peggy. “Irrational Exuberance: Rem Koolhaas and the 1990s.” Architecture and Capitalism: 1845 to the Present. New York: Routledge, 2014: 150-171


Total Design, Compare and Contrast, 04.09.18

Completed as part of ARC2402

Dreams of a “total design” (Wigley 2015, 1) have permeated through the dialogue of modern architecture for years, questioning the idealization of “the complete building” (Harries 1980, 36) – a prevalent fantasy about architecture as control and total unification. Wigley defines total design in terms of a dichotomous relationship between two inherently linked concepts: “explosion” and “implosion” (Wigley 2015, 1). Implosion, or “implosive design”, refers to the “focusing of design inward on a single intense point”, “subjecting every detail, every surface, to an over-arching vision” (Wigley 2015, 1), whereas explosion, or “explosive design” expresses the “expansion of design out to touch every possible point in the world”, “from the teaspoon to the city” (Wigley 2015, 1).  Through the modern case studies of Boyd and Clerehan’s Small Homes Service (SHS) and Frank Lloyd Wright’s Fallingwater we begin to see that this dichotomy is really a duality whereby both implosive and explosive qualities rely on each other’s existence in order to fuel the concept of total architecture. By further analyzing these totalizing themes however, we see that the very notion of total architecture remains within the realm of the ‘dream’ (Harries 1980, 36) – seeing no possible materialization in modern society.

Robin Boyd’s (and Neil Clerehan’s) Small Homes Service, established in 1947, was a modernist campaign whereby house plans were for 5 pounds each to middle-class families in Melbourne, attempting to alter the architectural fabric of Australia. These plans were advertised to a mass audience through the media (The Age) and were all designed in a distinctly modernist style (see figure 1) - as Boyd believed that the modernist house “would greatly improve the living environment of all Australians” (Dingle and O’Hanlon 1997, 33) and alleviate “the fundamental poverty of modern architectural ideas” (Rybczynski in Dingle and O’Hanlon 1997, 42). This projection of modernist ideals into society expressed an explosive technique of total design, with “mass reproducible designs” and the “embracing progressive machine-age reproduction” (Wigley 2015, 1) of Boyd’s mass-produced homes. Robin Boyd’s dream of a singular modernist vision for domesticity was exploded throughout the urban fabric of Victoria, to the extent that “40 percent of new homes in Melbourne were being built through the Small Homes Service” (Lawrence 2011, 22). It was however this singular vision that the entire scheme was extrapolated from, the “nexus of the explosion” which was ultimately an implosion in which everything was “governed by a single idea” (Wigley 2015, 2). The architectural management of Boyd’s Small Homes Service cannot be denied as the proliferation of a singular self-referential modernism.

Contrary to Boyd and Clerehan’s Small Homes Service, Frank Lloyd Wright’s Fallingwater was initially conceived as an implosive design by means of its nature-focused “hyper-interior” (Wigley 2015, 1). Fallingwater was designed under Wright’s “obsession with breaking down barriers between inside and outside” (Wigley 2015, 3) – he maintained several natural features, which also informed the designs layout, materiality and formal composition. Wright had a reputation for “demanding to design every detail, right down to the tablecloths” (Alexander 2018), and Fallingwater was no exception to this inward facing architectural control – with its earth red painted steel window frames, vertical membrane of glass, staircase connecting to the river to the sky and intrusive bolder acting as the fireplace floor (and more – see figure 2) all developed under the “renewal of the human spirit in nature” (Kaufmann 1989, 115). Similar to the Small Homes Service, Fallingwater also contained explosive ideas, however in an inverse procession to that of the SHS. It is through Wright’s “suffocating pressure” (Wigley 2015, 3) of environmental constitutionality – the stitching of the building into the landscape on all scales – that Fallingwater is exploded outwards into its environment. The “hyper-interior has an explosive intensity” (Wigley 2015, 4) which further reinforces the inseparable nature of ‘implosive’ and ‘explosive’ design.

Through further analysis into the construction of both the SHS and Fallingwater we see that “the complete building remains unrealized” (Harries 1980, 36). It is the unpredictability and adaptability respectively that debunks the totalizing ideals of both approaches. In Boyd and Clerehan’s SHS the exported schemes were “undefended by supervision”, accepting that “this could be the fate of up to half of the plans sold” (Dingle and O’Hanlon 1997, 42). This inability of management makes impossible any real materialisation of a total design. Likewise, in Wright’s Fallingwater, the building underwent serious alteration through its development and ultimately formed around the clients needs. Edgar Kaufmann Jr (son of clients) recalls a multitude of client informed changes, including a redesign of the entrance and the request for another set of stairs from the plunge pool to the bedrooms so that water would not be brought inside (Kaufmann 1989, 102). Most significant however was the later change of introducing a long clearstory window within the guest wing to help with cross ventilation and the resultant shifting of the bridge walk to pierce a suitable bank wall (Kaufmann 1989, 102). All of these alterations express the truth - that total architecture “cannot be realized without compromise” (Harries 1980, 39), the compromise here being the desire of the clients, and in the SHS the cost of the designs – the fulcrums on which their success lies, thus eliminating the possibility of a ‘total architecture’.

Both explosive and implosive notions of total design are highly dependent on one another. As seen through both Boyd and Clerehan’s Small Homes Service and Wright’s Fallingwater, both the intensity of a singular vision, and the explosion of architectural ideals outwards, can only form from one or the other. Both of these buildings, however convinced of an architectural management they are, disprove the concept of a total architecture through their ungovernable development as functioning homes.

  1. Wigley, Mark. What ever happened to total design?  Harvard Design Magazine. Harvard University Graduate school of Design, 2015.

  2. Harries, Karsten. The Dream of the Complete Building, Perspecta volume 17. Pp.36-43, Perspecta, 1980.

  3. Hoffman, Donald. Frank Lloyd Wright’s Fallingwater: The House and Its History. Dover: S.n., 1978.

  4. Kaufmann, Edgar, Mark Girouard, Christopher Little, and Thomas A. Heinz. Fallingwater: A Frank Lloyd Wright Country House. London: Butterworth Architecture, 1989.

  5. Wright, Frank Lloyd, Lynda S. Waggoner, Christopher Little, and Rick Darke. Fallingwater. New York: Rizzoli, 2016.

  6. Raisbeck, Peter. Architecture or AntiArchitecture? In Fabrications. Fabrications, Jan, 2012, Vol.21(1), p.88(25)

  7. Dingle, Tony; O'hanlon, Seamus. Modernism Versus Domesticity: The Contest to Shape Melbourne’s Homes, 1945-1960 in Australian Historical Studies. Australian historical studies, Oct 1997, Vol.28(109), pp.33-48

  8. Money, Lawrence. A Grand Plan for Small Homes in The Age. Fairfax Media Publications, Dec 2011, p.22