Why is Architecture so profoundly ashamed with formalism. Our profession is full of people in the formalist closet. I find it absurd that architects need to justify every move they present with some deep and resonant ideology or purpose. John Frazer does a wonderful job of this. Reading his writing was like staring at a moth eaten shirt; holes everywhere. He begins his writing with “An evolutionary architecture investigates fundamental form-generating processes in architecture, paralleling a wider scientific search for a theory of morphogenesis in the natural world. It proposes the model of nature as the generating force for architectural form. The profligate prototyping and awesome creative power of natural evolution are emulated by creating virtual architectural models which respond to changing environments” (pg. 9). Something right there about natural and virtual carrying the same weight doesn’t settle well. Later in writing he proceeds with “A clear distinction is intended between sources of inspiration and sources of explanation. When natural science is used for explanation or illustration, it is essential that the science is correct and that the analogy is valid. But when it is used for inspiration and as a take off point for thought experiments, it matters less, and misunderstood or even heretical ideas can provide much imaginative stimulus” (pg. 12). For most of his writing Frazer is justifying the analogy of natural process to that of design process by saying that his architecture can emulate nature but yet he makes this distinction that really all he is doing is using these natural processes to simply generate form. He’s animate about the analogy and its “awesome power” to create architecture of evolution capable of coping with society’s complexities and chaos. In one of his closing statements he writes that the demise of society is man’s “self conscious obsession with uniqueness”. It seems to me that Frazer is suffering from such a case by emulating nature.

Unlike Frazer, Robert Smithson claims that trying to emulate natural is a huge feat to take on. He writes “there’s a need to try to transcend one’s position. I’m not a transcendentalist, so I just see things as going towards a … well it’s very hard to predict anything; anyway all predictions tend to be wrong. I mean even planning, I mean planning and chance almost seem to be the same thing”.

So where does this leave us in the profession of architecture, where are days are spent planning for society that is ever changing? Perhaps our ideas of architecture should not be so much geared towards this ideal view of nature as some awesome vital force but instead view nature as being the all encompassing world around us; “our spaceship earth”.

In this sense looking at Warner’s writing could be helpful. She states “the work of metamorphosis performed by artists today in every medium often aim at transvaluing their subject, and raising the esteem of the mode through which they are taking form. They offer reformulations of ethical value, and in attempting this refashioning of traditions, re-assess the inherent character of change and mutability themselves” (pg. 27). I can’t help but think back to our discussions of slums and their emergent qualities. How can architecture learn from such real life processes of the built environment to create architecture capable of the evolution that Frazer strives for?

Metamorphosis

In the Marina Warner reading the myth of Er is used as an example to describe the meaning of the word. In the myth heroes choose their fate for their next life. The heroes future metamorphoses in some ways to correspond to their past character. The souls are deathless and migrate from one form to another. The idea of changing from one form to another is described by Marina Warner as metamorphosis.

“Metamorphosis now evokes a vision of endless, creative energy and movement, ranging from chaos and degeneration to the possibility of almost infinite refinement and transfiguration.” It sounds like the route towards utopia. (Week four.)

The seventeenth- and eighteenth-century botanists used the word metamorphosis as the vital principle of natural processes of generation, growth, evolution and decay. Metamorphosis is now taking place all around us. It governs the organic development of all living things, and the individual transformations that take place in everyone’s life, Warner writes. She further suggests that the word has metamorphosed itself through history. Partly as it has encountered with science and the theory of evolution. “It now evokes images of not just of shape shifting but of a smooth, organic unfolding of forms in time and space – a process imitated in the computer technique ‘morphing’.”

With all the advanced technologies of the 21^st century there is a potential extent of metamorphosis. Cloning, stem cell research, cyborg prostheses, transplantation of animal organs, genetic modifications of both foods and ultimately of ourselves. As the reading points out, these are very complex issues. Are we heading towards dystopia?

The way Kapoor, as a sculptor, uses the word is close to the way architects use it. “translation of forms from plane to volume, from line to field, the tension between contour and space, and then boundary of inner and outer bodies.”

Metamorphosis vs. statics

Marina Warner opens her discussion of metamorphosis by proceeding in a historical fashion to explain the origins of metamorphosis as a concept in mythology and its etymological roots in the physical sciences. Warner goes on to say that our understanding of the word itself continued to change as it interacted with the physical sciences, especially with the case of evolutionary theory. What began in the realm of supernatural and spiritual trickled into theories of natural order, slowly increasing its ‘breadth and depth’ as more and more modes of physical metamorphosis become available. The variable applications of the word are exemplified as Warner articulates:

“Oddly enough, Arnold Schwarzenegger’s career, from Pumping Iron to the Terminator to Governor of California, typifies one trajectory of metamorphosis in contemporary culture, in its most menacing form” (p.21)

“An ancient ambivalence still governs any blurring of boundaries between human and beast. Yet this fantastical merging of categories is increasingly becoming a reality as the arts of cloning and genetic modification advance.” (p.21)

What becomes evident is how embedded the concept of metamorphosis is in culture of the human race. There has been a keen awareness of it in literature, philosophy, science, spirituality, and more recently graphical/experiential representation & architecture. However, simultaneously there is also a consistent fear of metamorphosis in culture. Change, in the form of metamorphosis is oft perceived as unnatural and undesired. Hybrid entities are often frowned upon and outcasted, whether it’s the The Golden Ass or someone with a xyy chromosome mutation leading to hermaphroditism.

In many cases people prefer stability over metamorphosis – views of life that eliminate unpredictability. Religion is one such way to impose regularity and absolutism. As a species we have been obsessed over the course of history, and especially in the last century, with models of prediction and organizing randomness – the pre-entropic concept of a ‘mechanistic world view’. As Robert Smithson points out, architects, with “this attitude of set design solutions throughout the world” (p.2) fit nicely in that category: “Architects tend to be idealists, and not dialecticians. I propose a dialectics of entrophic change.” (p.2)

That brings us to John Frazer’s attempt to frame architecture from an evolutionary/ metamorphic stance. In this natural model, “Architectural concepts are expressed as generative rules so that their evolution may be accelerated and tested. The rules are described in a genetic language which produces a code-script of instructions for form-generation.” (p.9). This stands in direct opposition to the result & product oriented view of architecture currently so prevalent. In this proposed model, we as designers would be less concerned with a final form (output) of a building, but much more concerned with the instruction set (inputs) that begin to generate and influence the output. This puts architecture more along the lines of hardware and software design. A processor may have millions of transistors but only a few hundred instructions. But it can dynamically adapt to almost infinite variables so that you can render an image or encode a video without being aware of the inner workings. But the nature of the instruction – how the core communicates with the memory controller or how it allocates cache, will drastically affect how the resultant experience is for the end user.

Architects have the tools available to begin exploring new morphological typologies but the real problem lies in the mode of thought of society as a whole (incl. construction industry). As a society we are very much “goal-directed” in our approach. In any given profession the bottom line is the result, the end product, a static finale. Architecture is much more readily understood and appreciated as an image, an icon, than an endless series of permutations. But just as true we are beginning to realize that static modes of analysis (in all fields of study) are incapable of accounting for entropic change. Shifting programs, the morphing fabric of the city, could be better understood through the dynamic model. Such is the draw of the great unified theory.

Metamorphosis

Architecture 209X, Spring 2007

Words and Cities: The rhetoric and meaning of statistically improbable phrases

Nicholas De Monchaux

Qing Wang

Metamorphosis

The definition of metamorphosis is quite clear. According to the article, it comes from Greek and means cross-form, namely, transformation from one form to another form. Now we deal with the controversial topic like form and transformation. It is not issue only architects concerns. It almost involved all the visual creative activities. It has been discussed for centuries by the philosophers. A static form is hard to understand in terms of that it only shows the results of the forming not process. Transformation gives the opportunities for us to witness the changing form. It shows the magic how form has been generated or evolved. The invisible force which shapes the form has been seen by this process. It is so intriguing that numerous films and paintings try to capture as much detail as they can to anatomize, unfold and expose to the viewers. Unfortunately, these slowing down images are never true enough to represent the natural transformation. People are familiar with Darwin’s theory already, but they don’t see it in nature because it takes longer than their patience. For them, understanding form may be just a fun. As architects who deal with artificial form generation, take it extremely serous. Exaggeratively, all the architecture education is to understand forms and make forms. We know forms existing in nature. They are done by some forces. We learn from nature and physics to analogize. Comparing to nature, architectural form is limited to a pathetic degree. We simply take the mathematic geometry as our default basic form to add on some kinds of architectural conventional forces: circulation, program, sun angle, and view angle, etc to finish the design. We do that because we can understand simple geometry. Our brain cannot do such complicated analysis. Computational simulation makes this happen. It can represent the natural evolution more accuracy by counting more and more potential impacting force. We might not understand the form like the box which we deal with hundreds of years, but with the aid of computational simulation, we can generate form more free. John Frazer believes this ultimate form can also adjust to its environment like the creatures. The responsive form can be evolved, recycled like other natural objects. We are far away to understand nature. The best form maker is still nature itself. I wonder if the ultimate form is the nature or we can go beyond that.

metamorphosis_cindy moon

Metamorphosis could understand as a changing moment or responsive situation or environment. Theses articles are talking about how architecture deals with volatile contemporary circumstance momentary experience.

Metamorphosis comes from Greek and it means changing from one form to another. The meaning of changing brings so many interpretations and it includes layer of self-reference (1, Marina Warner) In this concept, everything changes and nothing dies. So it could expend and self-modified to adjust the environment. Because of transformation concept, it also used in philosophy to understand personal identity. As KAFKA wrote about metamorphosis, it couldn’t need to be transformation of appearance. It also contains transformation of self consciousness; it’s more about potential extent of metamorphosis.

In the article ‘A natural model for architecture’, the author mentions responsive environment and soft architecture. To adjust evolutionary environment, flexible approach is requested. And some kind of possibility of alteration enables because the development of technology could apply to architecture and it helps to create self-organizing system.

In other hand, entropy could be or not be metamorphosis. In Robert Smithson’s opinion, on going aspect of things be a kind of entropic architecture or de-architecturalization. Because architecture try to manifest it and architect seems to be idealists and not dialecticians. But certain mistakes cause entropy and people could experience marvelous and energetic juxtaposition occur.

Matter and Change

“The beautiful is a manifestation of natural laws that otherwise had remained hidden forever.” - Goethe

Two views of metamorphosis are presented in these articles. One is that of the shape shifting discrete change, and the other of a continuous, organic presence of change. The concept of metamorphosis is traced by Warner from Ovid to Darwin. “The concept has itself metamorphosed through history, partly as a result of its encounter with science – expecially with the theory of evolution. It now evokes images not just of shape shifting but of a smooth organic unfolding of forms in time and space.” (Warner, 18)

Frazer talks of an evolutionary architecture whose content is not in expression, but in a code-script. Analogous to DNA building blocks. It is not the expression that evolves, but the coding. The expression is a result. ‘genetic language of architecture’ is an evolving continuous phenomena - metamorphic. “Our architectural model, considered as a form of artificial life, also contains coded manufacturing which are environmentally dependent, but as in the real world model it is only the code-script which evolves.”( Frazer, 14) Frazer uses the computer to test a simple rule to its evolution into form. “Very large numbers of evolutionary steps can be generated in a short space of time, and the emergent forms are often unexpected.” (Frazer, 9) These forms may very well be the type of beauty Goethe was speaking of. While the intense computation in Frazers method has come under scrutiny, he assures us that the seed, the Cotyledon, if you will, is human, sublime. “The prototyping, modeling, testing, evaluation and evolution all use the formidable power of the computer, but the initial spark comes from human creativity.” (Frazer, 19)

In an alternative presentation of metamorphosis, we see a less idealized vision of change is presented in the idea of entropy. Like Humpty Dumpty, entropy represents a “…closed system which eventually deteriorates and starts to break apart and there’s no way that you can really piece it back together again… T]he irreversible process will be in a sense metamorphosed, it is evolutionary, but it is not evolutionary in terms of any idealism.” (Smithson, 1-2)

Smithson echoes sentiments similar to Gould’s non-idealistic view of evolution. “I don’t think things go in cycles. I think things just change from one situation to the next, there’s really no return.” (Smithson, 4)

Warner’s sentiments in recalling the shape-shifting metamorphoses of myth (Greek not Russian) are a stark contrast. “The core of this strange and ghostly myth offers the promise of another chance at happiness… [Metamorphosis] governs personal fate and identity that in some profound way, you are what you make yourself.” (Warner, 15) But given recent development in thinking, Warner even admits the conflicts now apparent in the ‘story of the unified integral self’ (ibid. 29)

I’m fascinated how computational evolutionary theory leads a tortuous path to Heraclitus. Really the first dialectic philosopher, he is famous for allegedly claiming you can’t cross the same river twice. In an evolutionary view, surely one can’t cross the same river twice because one is not the same, and the river is not the same, though both participate in a continuous identity. One is the same one but one is always changing. In it’s most basic form, there is matter and there is change. Smithson accepts this notion of change as constant, unavoidable, irreparable. So as our cites go through irreparable changes, so to must the code-script for those cites change and respond to the also changing needs. Our cites too could benefit from the metaphor of digital genetics.

Metamorphosis_liwen

Metamorphosis_idealized process in architecture
Liwen Zhang

Throughout John Frazer’s work, An Evolutionary Architecture, I’ve felt an urge to continually question his statements. This is fundamentally attributed to that fact that Frazer’s work relies heavily upon the assumption that evolution is a natural “self-organizing intelligent” process upon which the end result is optimal. However, after having read Gould’s article in class a few weeks back, we come to realize that this is not always the case, Gould have proved that evolution is not always intelligent and purposeful.

Frazer’s work is framed around the idea that “architecture as a living, evolving thing” as Gordon Pask puts it in his introduction of Frazer’s work. This statement is perhaps not so hard to digest and even provocative as we have learned to see our cities in that way. Much of what Frazer advocates has been promoted by my previous studio instructors – in 100B we were told to come up with ‘generative rules”’ which is then applied to an ‘operational logic’ that is eventually creates a building, somehow. In Greg Lynn’s work we read for the word ‘Hybrid’, we learn of an architect’s insecurities with techniques that are so heavily reliant on the use of the computer. Not only is the authenticity of the designer’s creations questioned, but also the process is considered to be superficial because it may be purely formally driven. The need here calls for differentiation, yes emergent forms are “often unexpected” as Frazer puts it, but is this on a purely formal level or can it be performative? Furthermore, how is the ‘performative-ness’ measured anyway?

Frazer is quick to address the former issue regarding the authenticity of the designer. He thinks that the design process is ultimately reliant on “human skill and for the essential first step of forming the concept”, what he deems as the “initial spark”. I agree with his comments but nonetheless I question if the “initial spark” is all that is needed on our behalf, as implied by Frazer, since then the computer as a “slave [with] infinite power and patience” will do the rest of the work for you. I cannot help that feel that he is idealizing the computational process in design, especially in calling it the “the electronic muse”. The word muse, aside from the convention meaning, in the classical mythology sense means a “goddess presiding over a particular art” (taken from dictionary.com). Thus Frazer is indirectly elevating the role of computer-aided design to that of a goddess.

metamorphosis

Metamorphosis/Bin

I am very interested in the term of “entropy”. It means moving towards a gradual equilibrium and it’s suggested in many ways. However, entropy also has been associated with disorder and chaos. Robert Smithson had mentioned that “planning and chance almost seem to be the same thing.” In some degree, architecture practice can be seen as a chaotic system which appears to be random. He then argued, “Geology has its entropy too…so that the irreversible process will be in a sense metamorphosed, it is evolutionary, but it’s not evolutionary in terms of any idealism”. Based on my experience, I feel it has more possibilities for architects to make the system chaotic rather than equilibrium, very much because architects turn to be so “ideal” and “creative”. For example, among this year’s thesis projects in our department, most students intend to solve a certain social chaos by insert another system, most of which have impressive forms. The result is that we add one more system in the chaos. Although we may solve the problem by now, we can hardly predict the problems coming soon. The city is evolutionary. Hence the new system can be a new chaos. We are making more and more architecture debris for the planet. The entropy theory does suggest that the cosmos will die because of unsolvable chaos. Before that the cities may already reach an end. We cherish the pureness of ancient cities because “things just change from one situation to the next, there’s really no return.”

The judgment to great architecture is usually described as “solve the problem in a creative way.” To creative something new is human’s instinct. I haven’t seen any wrong with it. However, to create something new doesn’t necessarily to add something new. If we think reversely, reducing the existing forms may also be something new. Metamorphosis can be a useful term not only for architects to create new forms but also to reduce forms. In that case, architects may design some “returns”. The question is, do we have the courage to say “I haven’t added anything new”? At least I don’t. That may be a weak point of the profession of architecture design.

Despite of the chaos we make, whether architecture should have a stable or metamorphosed form is not the point. What of most significance is that one part of architecture, as an intellectual and creative thinking, should have the sensibility to reflect the changing of the world we are living in. From Newton to Darwin, Leibniz, or whoever it is, their theories can be the catalysts of architecture. As result, the concept of “architecture” changes. As Marina Warner said in the article, “The concept (metamorphosis) has itself metamorphosed through history, partly as a result of its encounter with science. It now evokes images not just of shape-shifting but of a smooth, organic unfolding of forms in time and space.” In this circumstance, architecture itself is a metamorphosis.

fabric_ cindy moon

The using the word fabric seems so different in architecture and fashion. In fashion, fabric is about how fashion could be expressed and in urban and architectural view, it’s about the organization of city.
The Quinn’s article mentioned that the production and consumption of space could come from fashion industry. And the fabric of city could be all about form, system of common urban life.

In addition to the meaning of fabric as skin, urban fabric system could also show the concept of ’trasformation over tine takes place Hertzberger, 55). The basic concept of fabric shows the history of city. ‘The Venetian fabric as a coherent whole : it is composed of parts created in different but akin to one another’ (Hertzberger, 60) Merging the time of confliction between gothic and renaissance, the article said we could easily find out parts of city as different in shape, but similar in sturctire. It expressed to living field as it shows relationship between individual architecture space and urban context.

Also fabric is not just appearance but the space of living life. There are so many possibility to change the environmental fabric for citizen. Users are born, live an die in urban space and while they use the space, they change, adapt and translate the space. (Hertzberger, 63) All the phenomenon could change the fabric of space and also it affect the our life

Usually fabric seems to be 2-d appearance in city. And it could be read as form or shape of space. However, the form or shape could be translated for our use of space and it also affects urban fabric. So that’s the reason why Pompidou center which broke the flow or urban appearance is weird in Paris, but also it became the part of city currently because people use and translate it to adapt contemporary part with old historical spaces.

FABRIC

Hertzberger describes fabric as the grid of a masterplan - here the fabric is a top-down implementation and/or overlay in which its threads provides the 'objective pattern' or 'proto-form'. He writes: "The grid functions as a generative framework which contains within it the basic inclination that it transmitted to each solution...not only will the parts determine the identity of the whole, but conversely the whole will contribute to the identity of the parts." Whereas Hertzberger and Habraken's articles dwell upon the idea of urban fabric on a conceptual level, Coates focuses on a more physical implementation of fabrics in architecture and design. He concedes that with the advent of digital technology, it is now possible to explore architecture with the properties of fabric, such as reviving the Baroque style 'beyond the limitations of masonry.' He establishes a link between fabric and skin, speaks of skin's dynamic qualities that are architecturally compelling: "skin has the quality of adapting and stretching, but ultimately it needs flesh and bone to support it. It is true that some textiles are so close to the body that they become a second skin, and on other occasions it is the distance between body and textile surface that makes them wearable." Quinn takes it one step further, or one scale down, directly to the fabric that engages our bodies. Most compelling for me is Quinn's statement "Clothing, as an extension of the skin, can be seen as a heat-control mechanism and as a means of defining the self socially. In these respects, clothing and housing are near twins, though clothing is both nearer and elder; for housing extends the inner heat-control mechanisms of our organism, while clothing is a more direct extension of the outer surface of the body." Using the body as an anchor, 'fabric' can then be freely scaled in relationship to it, from clothing itself to the skin of a building, to the connections of a city.

‘As technology accelerates the interface between fashion and architecture, the synergy between them could even rearrange the patters of human association and community, dislocating and dividing individuals into their own self-contained shells rather than unifying them into a single environment.’ (Quinn, 5)

‘That’s hot.’ (Paris Hilton, Tom Wiscombe)

Fabric will soon be an outdated metaphor for an infrastructure that presupposes coherence. Paris and Tom’s famous declaration is the natural result of the emerging nature of the metaphor of fabric into an idea of fashion and further. With mass housing, digital technology, late-capitalism, and the commoditization of common shelter, the means of understanding our urban fabric, even the metaphor of urban fabric, has to be as flexible as a sheet of Mongolian silk, and maybe, as Nigel Coats might argue, much thicker.

Hertzberger discusses the warp and weft of a fabric and uses the metaphor to describe an interdependent relationship between infrastructure and style, but we can see that the two-dimensionality of the metaphor allows for many other possibilities: Structure and geometry, grids and plans, cohesiveness and variation as in Habraken’s writing. The metaphor serves well for initial understanding, but it also presupposes a necessary relationship between coherence spatial continuity.

Habraken discusses fabric the least literally, and, I would argue, the most insightfully. Tracing the history of the modern American and European urban fabric, societal memory and a collective understanding, a cohesion, is shown to be critically important, even in the case of a massive planning event as shown in the example of Paris. ‘In the history of architecture, the emergence of downtown fabric as we have known it for more then a century did not come from an act of volition but from a condition thrust upon the profession.’ (Habraken, 71) This seems to imply that it is the weft of the fabric where architecture finds its agency, and the warp is an emergent phenomena. Hertzberger however argues that the warp and weft are ‘reciprocally generative’, (119) the whole informing the part and the part informing the whole.

This seems a comprehensive means to understand the notion of urban fabric. Until one realizes that given the right means, one could find a big mac on six continents within twelve hours without a map, and likely a Starbucks coffee to wash it down. Mass housing and so-called ‘junk spaces’ have rendered obsolete any notion of urban fabric without an understanding of it as also a discontinuous network.

‘[Mass housing] represented a new process broadly applied to the ongoing piecemeal transformation of the fine grained fabric. . . Fine grained transformation in response to life, itself, was effectively excluded. . . Mass housing did not evolve out of historical ways of building. Nor did it embody universal cultural understanding. . . They cannot properly be called fields.’ (Habraken, 76-77)

Mark Auge begins Non Places – the Anthropology of Supermodernity with the most familiar scene so that almost everyone reading is reading their own first person account. It is the scene of getting through an airport and into the air, from a generic commercial sector onto banal transportation, arriving at a neutral destination to stay in the same new hotel. ‘The artificiality, fragmentation and transience common to urban spaces are, paradoxically, the cohesive elements binding them together.’ (Quinn, 4) The modern global identity is by definition not bound by local conditions, but it is not undefined in its multiplicity. Instead it is often constrained (to use Hertzberger’s word) by what Koolhaas calls ‘…the architecture of junk space…[which] organizes society’s time and space in accordance with consumer agendas.’ (Quinn, 4)

So if one aims to understand the local urban fabric, it is necessary to understand the global trends and nodal relationships. Our metaphor for fabric must be at once both 600 thread count cotton and a thick net. Continuous at a local scale and nodal in nature. In effect, it must be quantum fabric. It is thus that one could argue that San Francisco and Shanghai have more in common than San Francisco and Portland.

‘But the special can also be constructed by the builders of the common house. Is spatial organization can parallel or sharply contrast the typology common to the field. In all such cases, however, we find meaning in the relation of the two, and an expression of the culture of the age.’ (78)

In most of the developed and developing world, formal and informal, it would be hard to find a newly built work that was not in some way a manifestation of a simultaneously local and global culture. In Habraken’s description of Cairo, we see an dense emerging local fabric of houses, concrete slabs upon pillars, with steel reaching out, waiting for the next floor. In my travels to Ecuador last summer, one of the most vivid scenes I can remember is looking out over the Barrios of Guayaquil, seeing these steel flagposts of optimism. A fabric slowly accumulating as societal memory dictates, but reinforced by a network of global trade and production of steel and concrete. A raw, rugged site, but filled with optimism. I, like the owners of the houses, and the reaching steel, can’t wait to see what’s next.

Fabric: Woven vs Surface

Fabric: Woven vs Surface
The idea of fabric seems to go only skin deep in Nigel Coates article skin/weave/pattern. He presents a proposal for the Rainham Marsh in Essex as a culmination of fabric elements in plan that will layer against other random patterns in section to create a three dimensional environment. As if the collage of random geometric patterns applied from high above in the designers chair would somehow create an “identity built into the local DNA” for that community. In another example the author strews jackets across the room to study the architectural potential of the fabrics folds however he does not delve into the potential of fabrics layers, construction methodologies or veiling characteristics. For Coates, fabric is simple a malleable surface that contains two dimensional patterns that should be applied everywhere. He talks about the three dimensional aspects that can be studied with computer modeling, yet the images are about two dimensional surface slapped on a terrain.
Lebbeus Woods presents a poetic article in “Radical Reconstruction,” however idea for inhabiting the devastated city is a more romantic view of the desolation of place than a viable solution. He states that “wherever the restoration of war devastated urban fabric has occurred in the form of replacing what has been damaged or destroyed, it ends as a parody, worthy only of the admiration of tourist.” Many of the worlds most culturally diverse and vibrant cities were war torn and rebuilt including London, Paris, and Rome. The fact that tourist visit these places do not make them equivalent to visiting Epcot in Orlando because a rich local fabric exist with or without visitors. I agree that the local fabric should not be imitated or superficially memorialized. There is richness to these virgin war zones and his says it beautifully writing, “ there exists within this degraded layer of urban fabric another, more intimate scale of complexity that can serve as there point of origin for a new urban fabric.” The pictures that he is trying to paint are not backed by viable models shown through history and begin to make him sound like another quixotic socialist visionary. These environments have always existed and grow further, yet today we call them slums.
Habraken’s commentary “Palladio’s Children” takes a strong urbanist approach of architectural history. He claims that while the buildings facades change overtime, the guts of the building remain ordered by time honored cultural customs. He asserts that the cities architecture can be broken into type, pattern, system which create the block and ultimately the city. It is this social memory that creates the architecture for even those removed from the architecture community, and that while architects try to stylistically break free, the customs ultimately prevail. While I agree with most of Habraken’s urban commentary on field, the conclusions prognoses seems to be a stretch. He grounds his argument for the departure of the time told thematic variety to a centralized shelter on a massive scale as being a decision of professionals. While it is true that the modernist architects were thinking about how to improve the social condition through large scale housing projects, this could only have been a discussion after large scale industrial buildings were already being built in communist and socialist countries. He mentions this, but as an afterthought leading you to believe that it was primarily the ingenuity of the design professional that revolutionized the new housing type rather than the new economic models, industrialized methods and importantly the radical change in political ideologies.

Fabric - Anders

Fabric

Public and private hierarchies create multi-layered societies, rich with diversity and control. These multi-layering is stitching together an urban fabric. In an event of a war this multi-layered complexity is being reduced to a one-layered structure. During the attempt to restore the fabric of old cities you cannot just replace what has been damage or destroyed. Wood argues that a replacement like that would end in parody. Governments and corporation cannot create new and multi-layered societies, according to Wood these must raise from below. There is of course the importance of time, the embodying of history that must not be denied. Once the patterns have been reduced to one pattern they can’t be restored or renewed in a single step. But an intimate scale of complexity can serve as a breeding ground for a new urban fabric. New additions can be made but there is a need for time to fill in the gaps between the spaces. Today’s cities demands architecture that can handle changing conditions. Architecture that collects its strength from “patterns of unpredictable movement”, “architecture resisting change, even as it flows from it”. If Woods would have ended his text with just a few “architecture that…” But instead he goes on like it was a presidential election. It’s a petty because I believe the “Radical reconstruction” reading is touching a very present subject of how rapidly emergent new cities in Asia is being planned.

In the “Palladio's children” reading Habraken talks about spatial organization as the greatest quality in a field. How they are able to combine coherence and variation. The cultural preference has great influence on the urban fabric. In today’s global society where the cultural preference and building technique is getting unified what will happen to the urban fabric? Will a newly planned urban area in China look just like one in America? Are the variations between cities becoming the buildings instead of the urban fabric?

Fabric__rather off topic but nonetheless...

Fabric
Liwen Zhang

When reading the variety on interesting texts that are posted for the word fabric this week, I felt especially drawn to Bradley Quinn’s piece, The Metropolis, which attempts to bring out the parallels between fashion and architecture.

Having lived most of my life in Hong Kong, an urban metropolis with hyperdensity (of people, cultures, buildings, fashion, trends…etc), the term “culture of hypervisibility” in particular resonated to me. There is definitely a codified surveillance present when you walk through the streets of Hong Kong, where the term “eyes on the street”, as Jane Jacobs would say, is taken to a whole new level – hypervisibility in an area of hyperdensity.

In Hong Kong, fashion is definitely what Quinn would argue as “walking signifiers” of “urban space”. This coupled with the city’s inherent need for speed and efficiency, brings about an intense and accelerated circulation of commodities. The competitive nature of the market in Hong Kong demands products to be consistently recalibrated to not only achieve high turnover rates but also to keep up with demanding consumers. The city has, in a certain sense, gone beyond what Quinn describes as “glorified consumption zones” unto what Walter Benjamin would call a “place of pilgrimage to the fetish Commodity”.

What is interesting about Quinn’s article in this context is how he relates fashion to contemporary discourse in architecture, namely Augé’s non-places and the Foucaultian notion of the ‘heterotopia’ (perhaps not really contemporary discourse in architecture, but nevertheless has a huge impact on how we think about the city). In Ananya Roy’s ED 100 course, we learn of heterotopias to be impossible, ambiguous and imaginative spaces that are not easily pinned down. Aside from the many examples given by Quinn of spaces that could be heterotopias (such as parks, theatres, galleries, libraries), we learn of the camp as another genre of heterotopic space. The example given in class is the detainment camp in Guantanamo Bay, where despite being a US territory, the prisons at the camp exist outside of US laws and jurisdiction. Thus vile acts of violence happen unaccounted for in such spaces. Roy described it to be a “strange extension of American power”, where the prisons are spaces of exception and desubjectification , where there is a suspension of one’s status as a subject. After that particular lecture I felt quite depressed – Roy was basically suggesting that the prison or refugee camp is now a paradigmatical space which questions the way we think about cities and perhaps even serves as a marker to the end of the city. This rather longwinded description has a connection to the Quinn reading, I promise – I basically wanted to bring out a certain contrast to Quinn’s overly optimistic and perhaps even superficial reading of the “potential uses of heterotopic spaces” – as warehouse turned catwalk for high fashion. I understand that it is not the goal of Quinn’s work at all to talk about human desubjectification, however I cannot help but see a vast contrast in the application of the notion of heterotopia illustrated between the two examples.

In our current networked society which requires architecture and planning to respond in hybrid ways, the idea of heterotopia is perhaps fitting – programmatic organization of space then becomes ambiguous and multifaceted. However, as Quinn briefly mentions, this may result in fragmentation of space and culture. How do we as architects and planners then respond to spaces like Guantanamo Bay, where fragmentation has basically taken up a life of its own?

Urban fabric- Digging inside ot it

Jungmi Won

N.J. Habraken examined urban fabric at the aspect of social memory and transformation of the city. With this article, I came up with a question about the eye view seeing urban fabric. In spite that he dealt with transforming issue of city, is it valuable or even possible to think a city as an urban fabric itself? When we think our face, fabric of our face is only a tissue covering bone structure. One’s appearance is already decided in the level of bone figure. Then, if urban fabric makes a character or impression of a city, don’t we have to focus on its structure, energy flow or inner layer than fabric to scrutinize its route of transform?

Ram Koolhass said that ‘Not only are large of its surface occupied by architectural mutations, utopian fragments and irrational phenomena, but in addition each block is covered with several layers of phantom architecture in the form of past occupancies…’ e in his book, Delirious NY. He saw NY as a city covered with fabric expressing desires.
Urban fabric is a subject that we can approach in terms of transformation and it is the main figure of city. But, I cannot shake off a thought it is a superficial approach without level of somewhat software. It’s because I keep thinking the radical transforming of city like Lebbeus. ‘In the spaces voided by deconstruction, new structure can be injected. Complete in themselves, they do not fit exactly into the voids, but exist as spaces within spaces, making no attempt to reconcile the gaps between what is new and old, between two radically different system of spatial order and thought.’ (2page, Radical reconstruction)

Also, with this phrase, ‘Healing is not illusory, cosmetic process, but something that-by articulating difference-both deeply divides and joins together’. I come up with a sentence ‘The professionals of the city are like chess players who lose to computers…We have to imagine 1,001 other concepts of city; we have to take insane risk; we have to dare to be utterly uncritical; we have to swallow deeply and bestow forgiveness left and right. (P971, What ever happened to Urbanism?)

What we see in the city is how we pursue. I wish urban fabric can be accepted as a result not a phenomenon.

fabric

Fabric/Bin

The cities before modernism are more about hierarchy while cities after modernism are more about typology. In the maps displayed in “Palladio’s Children”, we can probably tell where the high class buildings are just by the size and position, but it is hard to tell where houses, temples, shops are respectively. The cities are as a whole. They are constructed on experience. In modern city, we can easily know the function of a building just by passing the building but it is difficult to distinguish the identity of a house’s owner. Although typology is based on experience, most times experience beats types.

The cities before modernism are more about coherency while cites after modernism are more about difference. The old cities have very organic fabric while “the Modernist era was the first in history where the dialogue between field and architecture was disrupted”(from “Palladio’s Children) In modern cities, housing, industry, public space are separated apparently that the organization of the city is totally different than the old cities. Actually, deconstruction is also a kind of construction. Demolishing and Removing are significant forces which embody development and transformation. The reason why modern fabric so much differs from the past is that science, technology changed dramatically in the last century, hence changed people’s life tremendously.

As the modern technique tends to be universal, architects turn to seek their personal differences. We know more about “Gehry Building”, “Zaha Building” rather than “American Building” or “European Building”. We have so many master marks in this world. The paradox is that when buildings become different, cities become the same. A Gehry building can be in LA, in Spain and I am sure it will show up in China someday.

One thing hasn’t been changed is the power that architecture conveys. In any times, buildings represent the social power of the owner. For example, CCTV in China chose Koolhaas’s project to show its center status in media corporations. Actually China chose this project intending to show the world its development and openness, just like building a palace in old time. Interesting enough, clothing shares the similarity of architecture. While people wore different classes of clothing in ancient time, people today wear the same: T-shirt, suit, etc. The difference is that if it is an Armani or LV.

Regionalism is important, but globalism is the tendency . City is an environment for people to live in. City fabric reflects from political policies to ordinary life.
New technology changes the way people living. It is the way people live that changes the fabric. It is less difficult for us to preserve the fabric rather than to maintain the way people live. If old fabric merely become a place for tourists, at some extend they are meaningless.