2 Scales of Design: Circulation Network + Node
In the words of Charles Renfro
“We’re all about the public realm…like taking what has historically been at Lincoln Center an elitist institution and democratizing that institution through the use of architecture and design. Breaking down the physical barriers through glass and transparency, but also digitally and through media, providing glimpses into places that are usually not glimpsable. In that regard, we encourage people to behave badly.” – Charles Renfro (Diller Scofidio + Renfro)
Gentrification (Thesis Prep Excerpt)
- Tompkins Square Riot, New York City, 1988, Ángel Franco/The New York Times
There is not a clear solution to the predicament of gentrification. However, there may be ways to spatialize an existing behavior with a certain set of constituents while allowing for the unstoppable force of commercialization and subsequent privatization to take its course. This can be termed as spatial diplomacy. There are various dialectical trajectories for this negotiation. One could approach the site through discourse (heterogeneity), singularity (homogeneity), or debate (hypergeneity).
This thesis chooses a spatial diplomacy of hypergeneity and confrontation. Deliberate tension between various users and programs promotes a subversive negotiation. In this case, the artist squatters at Tacheles exist with the commercial users to illustrate that they are needed for commercial gentrification. Without them, the Mitte area of Berlin would not be nearly as desirable a destination. This type of situation is common in urban environments around the world. In Neil Smith’s “New City, New Frontier” (in Michael Sorkin’s “Variations On A Theme Park” compilation about the proliferation of privatized and commodified urban spaces), he discusses the Manifest Destiny phenomenon of the Americanized commercial obliteration effect:
“…the processes and forces reshaping the new city are global as much as local. Gentrification and homelessness in the new city are a microcosm of a new global order etched by the rapacity of capital. Not only are broadly similar processes remaking cities around the world, but the world itself impinges dramatically on these localities. The gentrification frontier is also an ‘imperial frontier’” (Sorkin 91-92).
Theories developed saying that the Lower East Side landlords lowered the rent in the early 1980s to attract artists to make the area vibrant, only to inflate the rent once the area was “gentrified” just enough for developers to make a profit. The medieval economic theory of Gresham’s Law -“Bad money drives out good”- sums up this process. Similar to New York City’s Lower East Side, the squatter artists at Tacheles gentrified the Mitte area to the point where developers want to further “gentrify” or obliterate what exists. The Marxist dialectic of class struggle as central to social and economic life is clearly at play in this particular process. In Walter Benjamin’s Arcade Project, the flâneur, prostitute, and sandwichman’s existence is threatened when their physical space is threatened (Hanssen 35). In order to move forward in a non-utopian world and lessen the social divide, the two forces -being the status quo and commercialization must coexist in order to the challenge the momentum of the new urban Manifest Destiny.
Thesis Prep Final Pin-Up
Thesis Prep Book v.1_in progress
Curating Architecture
The Rising Currents Exhibit at the MoMA
With the completion of Crisis City review number one, the group is facing a turning point, contemplating the next leap forward. While we are finding more and more connections amongst our individual trajectories, we are seeking a solidifying idea about the current state of architecture, which links us together. After visiting the MoMA as a part of a class with Barry Bergdoll, Philip Johnson Chief Curator of Architecture and Design, I was struck by how relevant the concept of “curation” is to Crisis City. Due to architecture’s current pluralist state, Crisis City’s format captures the zeitgeist and promotes it is a way to test a multitude of ideas. Pluralism is not a style, nor is it a design movement. In architecture, it merely suggests a rejection of modernism and an alternative to post-modernism. There is no longer one solution, one “style”, or one process by which architecture addresses the world’s problems.
The recent issue of Log (#20) features articles on “Curating Architecture”. Bergdoll’s article entitled “In the Wake of Rising Currents: The Activist Exhibition” describes his recent Rising Currents exhibit as a way in which “the design professions recapture a place at the table of the most important national debates about everything from land use to infrastructure”. Rising Currents is an exhibit at the MoMA, which addresses the alarming rise in sea-level due to global climate change. Previous interventions put in place ‘hard’ fortress-like infrastructure that fails as a sustaining long-term model. Therefore, the prompt promotes adaptive ‘soft’ infrastructures. MoMA chose 5 young -yet seasoned- architecture firms to contribute design solutions to 5 coastal zones of Read more…
Crisis City Review #1
Over the course of the semester, thesis students are required to have 3 major reviews with their primary and secondary advisors. On Friday, Crisis City completed it’s first of these 3 reviews with a turnout of 5 faculty and a few fellow thesis students. The rapid-fire presentation was intended to get our thoughts out quickly in order to save more time for discussion. The structure of the review went more-or-less as follows:
1) Logistics
-Grading, scheduling, etc.
2) Connecting our Projects through Crisis:
-1 min/paragraph each
3) Presentation of Individual Projects:
-3 min each (more like 5)
4) Group discussion with Faculty
-50 min
Here are my quick notes of feedback from faculty:
- 3 terms being thrown out a lot by individuals; infrastructure, event, & spectacle. Wants us to explore these & any other repeated topics more as a group. What is the project that emerges? What are the projections of the crises?
- Marxism in these projects (economics, anti-capitalism), however, Tafuri has a more optimistic tone. We should map out the alternative, not traditional capital “A”rchitecture. What is the city (be aware of “Manhattanism”)? What are the issues amongst the group & what are the individual responses to those issues?
- Lay out a problem and gain knowledge, thesis-prep is great for that. Brought up Tafuri to look at again. We need to create an “introductory essay” (like a publication) tying our projects together, similar to our 1 min paragraphs at the beginning of the review. Noticed several connections in our projects that we should explore more together; agency, infrastructure, territory.
-We presented about 90% truisms, & research needs to become generative enough to produce architecture. Where is the moment of entry in each project? There is a short & long-term response to these issues. A tactic/strategy for the group would be to operate like a UN assembly, where we propose issues and resolutions. Know your skills set. Look at Habermas & Latour more for views on “public” and the “social”. Read more…
I SUPPORT TACHELES!!!
After more-or-less confirming my thesis site as the Tacheles department store block, I figured I should participate in the “I Support Tacheles” campaign. While this is a minor way of displaying my support, I hope that my thesis design project provides the highest level of support by projecting a possible solution to the crisis. Visit www.tacheles.de/ for more information (*you can translate the page to English through Google).
According to the Tacheles website, Alfred Hitchcock supports Tacheles from the grave!
Thesis Abstract #2
The Phantom City: Interview with co-creator Brett Snyder
Phantom City creators, Irene Cheng and Brett Snyder
The Phantom City is a cyber/physical scavenger hunt that disperses people with their iphones throughout the city. People “tour” NYC’s significant speculative architecture at their intended sites. Who knows what one may discover while touring NYC’s architectural phantoms. Below is an interview with co-creator Brett Snyder of Syracuse University School of Architecture and Cheng+Snyder -a multi-disciplinary design studio based in New York City.
Daley Wilson: First off, what spurred the idea behind Phantom City? Are you responding to dialogue about cyberspace vs. physical space?
Brett Snyder: My partner and I have dual backgrounds; she is an architect- historian and I’m an architect –graphic designer. Prior to the explosion of iPhones, we were simply discussing the need to harness mobile technology to allow urban dwellers new ways to get information about their surroundings. The idea that only buildings from the 18th and 19th century contain building plaques with minimal information (year of construction, developer, architect, owner, name of building, and so on) seemed entirely limiting in comparison to the rich and powerful narratives that is latent in the built environment.
DW: A major motive behind Phantom City seems to get people out into the city and explore areas they may not have before. How much of the project was about curating the speculative architecture and how much was about producing an urban intervention?
BS: This is a really interesting question – and I think gets to the heart of our project. We saw it first and foremost as a “museum without walls.” In this sense, we wanted to allow people to navigate the city in ways that haven’t been explored enough to this point. The idea, however that this might produce new ways of curating architecture is more of a by-product, but certainly one that would be interesting to us in future incarnations of the project.
DW: Was there any sort of system for choosing those particular speculative projects? It seems like you are now taking suggestions from the public for projects to add.
BS: Absolutely, there were heated discussions about what types of projects would be interesting for viewers and enhance the database – and others that felt like it would muddy the water so to speak. Initially, we used the term “utopia” to help us select projects – but this became problematic as we were equally interested in dystopian projects (and felt these would also be interesting to viewers). At the same time projects that were just never built, because they were not of great quality seemed less important to include in the database. Ultimately we chose the phrase “visionary but speculative architecture” which allowed us to select a rich but varied grouping of projects. Something we had in the back of our minds was that each of these projects may have at least a “seed” (and sometimes more!) of un-buildability in their DNA – such as Buckminster Fuller’s dome or Superstudio’s Continuous Monument.
Listen to the rest of my interview with Brett on YouTube:
http://phantomcity.org/
