Rotch Scholar 2005

LOST + FOUND

2008-05-13T11:38:00.010-04:00

Trellis Maximus: The Hippodrome of Istanbul

LOST+ FOUND:
Radical Adaptive Re-use Strategies in Asian Mega-Cities

This blog covers research and speculation from the 2005 Rotch Scholarship year abroad. The focus was on radical forms of heritage and adaptive re-use in Asian mega-cities, specifically Istanbul, Mumbai, Bangkok and Tokyo. In each location distressed built artifacts were sought out and envisioned with interventions that adapted them to new forms of urbanity. The inquiry addresses six instances of history lost and found, from the vanishing Hippodrome of Istanbul to the contemporary ghost-skyscrapers of Bangkok. The result is a fresh look at the concept of architectural heritage in light of the pressures facing Asia's mega-cities. The chapters of the study are on the sidebar to the right.

Courtyard Cricket: The Bollywood Cinemas of Bombay

Introduction

2008-04-21T15:05:00.011-04:00

LOST + FOUND
Radical adaptive re-use strategies in Asian mega-cities

The foundation of this project is to take a fresh look at the term “architectural heritage” in the context of the pressures facing Asia’s global mega-cities. This inquiry seeks out built artifacts that have been distressed by contemporary economics, and subsequently explores strategies for adapting the artifacts to new types of urbanity. The focus is on Istanbul, Bombay, Bangkok, and Tokyo; in each location sites are documented, and subsequently interventions are proposed to engage unexpected forms of heritage. In doing so, this inquiry seeks to de-couple heritage from preservation, focusing on the contemporaneous aspect of heritage, the transmissive and mutable nature of culture.

HERITAGE REVISITED

In the most commonly understood sense, architectural heritage is the saving of obsolete but culturally important and still salvageable buildings; heritage has become essentially interchangeable with preservation. Heritage is seen as the savior of the old against rapacious progress. Indeed, it has become a common theme to discuss heritage as a bulwark against the modernist movement. Even within contemporary architectural discussions, the role that heritage plays has rarely been addressed outside the seemingly antithetical coupling of history/progress. The meaning of heritage has, to a large degree, been forfeited by most architectural discourses to the preservation movement, in spite of (or perhaps because of) growing popular appeal and support. It is in this climate that I seek a deeper understanding of heritage. While heritage is often taken for granted to indicate a reactionary preservation movement, it is worth asking the question whether it can be sympathetic with current architectural discourse. Are heritage and (post)modernist thinking mutually exclusive?

Since the beginning of the twentieth century preservation in America has become an ascendant form of construction and a rallying point for grass-roots movements, particularly the anti-modernism backlash embodied by Jane Jacobs. Notably, it roughly traces its origins and subsequent growth to the same period as modernism. The threat that modernist thinking posed to historical buildings, especially those that embodied the Beaux-Arts ethos that modernism broke from, stimulated an increasingly vocal and effective lobby for the protection of old buildings. At first the preservation was limited to canonical works of architecture, but since then has steadily grown to include vernacular buildings and entire neighborhoods. The movement’s birth by fire is often traced to the demolition of Penn Station in New York City in 1964. Pennsylvania Railroad sought to tear down the 1910 McKim, Mead and White building and replace it with the progressive Madison Square Gardens complex designed by Charles Luckman Associates. The debate over losing a much loved icon in the city galvanized disparate groups into an effective lobby, even as the battle was lost. Since then, the pendulum has arguably swung to the direction of the preservationists, beginning with the notable victory in Greenwich Village against the Lower Manhattan Expressway in 1962 and again in 1968. Today it has become an expected phase of the design process to explore the various historical regulations and zoning overlays that apply to an existing building. And organizations like UNESCO and ICOMAS export the framework of preservation beyond national borders. Further, DOCOMOMO (DOcument and COnservation of buildings, sites, neighborhoods of the MOdern MOvement) has expanded commonly defined heritage to include popularly underappreciated forms of modernism, many of which eschewed history and displaced historic structures at their inception.

It is hard not to think of modernism when discussing preservation, since each movement is linked popularly against the other. They appear to be in a zero sum game where Penn Station is considered either a victory or a loss. This duality of new vs. old is found in numerous other forms: progressive vs. conservative, novel vs. traditional, and rational vs. vernacular, to name just a few. It is a convenient story that makes a more complex situation easily digestible: new and old are locked in an eternal battle for the hearts and minds of society. Modernism took the early lead and established itself in the institutions (i.e. Walter Gropius at Harvard), while preservationism grew out of a grass-roots constellation of advocates (i.e. Jane Jacobs at Greenwich Village). The modernists had their Waterloo against Jacobs, and since then the preservationists have ascended to the establishment while modernism’s totalizing vision has been widely discredited. Or so the story goes. In fact the present condition is less divided and has settled into an accepted framework for each strain of thinking. Each goes their own way, but when they must cross there is a predictable outcome: the old is preserved as a foil for the new, e.g. the Louvre in Paris. Naturally, there is a spectrum of approaches to the additions, from the subtle Sainbury Wing of the National Gallery in London by Venturi and Scott-Brown to the highly idiosyncratic Coop Himmelb(l)au rooftop addition at Falkestrasse. Nonetheless, it is orthodoxy to assume preserving the remains of the existing project as a contrast to the new intervention. What this presupposes is a stand-off between two camps. The old is kept old (at least on the outside) and the new is kept new. I guess we can all just get along.

A closer look at the term “heritage” is needed at this point. The accepted usage of the word in architectural discipline is problematic, and as noted above, has strong cultural meanings that reach far beyond its dictionary definition. Heritage etymologically connotes a thing that has been handed down to another generation, a gift of sorts. It is linked to “heir” and often implies a tradition, or something immaterial that is passed on to the current holders (especially in American English). This emphasis on “immaterial” is a compelling distinction, since it is suggests a potentially different reading between object and action. While immaterial heritage changes and progresses with each inheritance, inherited built artifacts remain static in their historic state (excepting modifications). In the broadest sense both built artifacts and traditions are heritage, but in a more focused reading, the link to the past becomes increasingly tenuous with the aged artifacts. I propose a definition of architectural heritage that emphasizes the contemporaneous, changing aspect of tradition, rather than the static, preserved focus. This paper will thus differentiate between “historic artifacts” (objects) and “heritage” (the immaterial). Building practices, uses, and philosophical underpinnings might qualify as this form of heritage, but perhaps the actual brick and mortar do not. With the separation of heritage and artifact, it becomes liberating to view existing historic buildings as limited resources, rather than living culture. They were certainly shaped by a heritage of building, but that heritage has morphed, as in Richard Dawkins’ concept of meme transfer, into an altogether different culture which will in turn morph in the future. Dawkins points to language as an example: “Geoffrey Chaucer could not hold a conversation with a modern Englishman, even though they are linked to each other by an unbroken chain of some twenty generations of Englishmen, each of whom could speak to his immediate neighbors...” This approach to heritage allows for willful new directions, rooted, of course, in the linkage to culture preceding it.

Alois Riegl is an early and prescient figure on the topic of progress and history in the building arts. His 1903 essay “The Modern Cult of Monuments: its Character and Origin” was translated by Kurt Forster in 1982 and has since become one of the key readings on cultural preservation. In it, he introduces the distinction between “intended” monuments and “unintended” monuments. While intended monuments attempt to overcome time by keeping memory of a thing physically present in the future, unintended monuments have lost their original use but have acquired a new value by a changed social outlook. It is an approach to history in which societies are aware of the irreplaceable nature of the past, thus structures that had no intention of representing an era are repositioned in a freshly minted and sympathetic history for the agent shaping it. Further, he adds the distinctions of age-value, historical-value, use-value, and art-value. Each comes from a different line of thought, and often conflict or overlap in single artifacts. Age-value is the presence of “oldness” in a thing, an indication of the passage of time; historical-value relates to the faithfulness to which a thing represents its original intention, which boils down to restoration; use-value is the contemporary performance of the thing, the practical issues of utility; and art-value is related to contemporary cultural appreciation and is strongly tied to its newness. Riegl asserts that we are living (as of 1903) in an era dominated by age-value. Later, Alan Colquhuon reaffirms that (as of 1982) we still emphasize age-value, albeit a different form:

“Although evidence of decay is no longer, as in Riegl’s day, the most crucial element in our sense of age-value, it would seem that it is still the ‘age’ of historical buildings that constitutes their value today.”

At the same time, built projects modeled on a nostalgic reading of the past are on the rise. These appear as a form of historical-value akin to nostalgia, but one in which all parties are aware of the fraudulent, or at least faux, nature of the historical artifact. The new constructions are clearly new, but espouse a timeless approach (“main street”) that indicates a return to a better time. They are critical of progressive aesthetics and yet still work within the current economic framework. This rise of simulated historical-value, or nostalgia-value, is also important for this inquiry since it points to some difficulties in applying Riegl’s thinking directly to today. While his definitions are indispensable for my study, I take an uneasy alliance with them in seeking out alternative forms of unintended monuments.

HISTORY AS FINITE RESOURCE

A basic tenet of this work is to treat historical artifacts as a finite resource which cannot be reproduced due to changed circumstances. Like petroleum they regenerate over time, but not at the rate at which they are used up. And like any finite resource, they pose specific challenges related to “best” use. It is a choice that must be made when confronted with the peculiarities of built heritage: what is the paramount employment of something that cannot be replaced? In many cases they are simply removed, slash and burn style, in order to make way for newer projects. On the other end of the spectrum, they are preserved as reminders of bygone times. This project takes the position that human pressures make it a point of practicality that certain historic works need to be mined for contemporary needs. Nigel Coates calls this the “flywheel” effect, in which historic artifacts provide stability for a changing city, and can later be updated and made more relevant to contemporary users. They are zones of permanence that allow for periodic regeneration, with an inherent energy that can never be recreated in purely new work. At the same time, they must be treated as finite resources that should be stretched for maximum value. We can start by taking advantage of the obvious age-value, but by applying more than what might be called a preservation approach. Strict preservation is polite and respectful of the original building, but also lacks the vitality that makes it relevant. Preservation is admirable on many levels, especially since it rescues so many structures from being lost forever. But it is also freezes the living heritage, breaking the continuous culture. Thus the interventions in this inquiry commit what might be considered preservation blasphemy in the hopes of a deeper excavation of the concept of heritage. Like any limited resource it should be treated with care, but at the same time be put to use in a more engaged manner than simple preservation.

MESSINESS

Recently, Wilfred Wang made a plea for architectural additions to be included in the scope of contemporary architectural discourse. He points to both academia and the profession’s preference for “fetishizing the sole authorship of de novo buildings.” He asserts that the accumulated history of several architects working on a building over eras might be more enriching, and certainly more pertinent to the majority of construction in the world. He highlights architects who “engage with history understood as a continuous phenomenon,” who are complementary to the architecture of the past, but also relevant to the contemporary scene. Wang highlights the “messy reality” of agglomerated architecture that is more challenging, but perhaps rewarding, to design and critique than the “idealized purity” of stand alone work. Along these lines, one of the more enjoyable aspects of this inquiry has been the “messiness” of the interventions: each is in its own way a hybrid of numerous forms, ideas, uses, and eras. To quote a sympathetic proclamation by Robert Venturi, these projects embrace the “vestigial as well as innovating, inconsistent and equivocal rather than direct and clear.” There is an inherent ambiguity when examining old architecture from a contemporary milieu, ambiguity which makes for unexpected richness when pushed in new directions. The historical works studied here are similarly open to competing interpretations. By adding new forms to each project, the “original” built work is given another layer of meaning, but at the same time the new work is given richness that only historically unique objects can lend. In a sense it is adding new heritage, re-attaching living culture to a built artifact. The ambition is to produce work that appears radical, but builds on a legacy of living customs.

PALIMPSESTS

Built artifacts could be grouped into five basic forms, often as a blend of some or all: 1) Survivor: the building essentially functions in the same way that it did when it was conceived. Its formal language is still relevant and any additions are in the same vein as the original. 2) Shrine: The artifact has become a museum unto itself, with the cultural history of the original the subject of the display. 3) Vessel: The shell of the building is intact, but the programmatic functions are different, necessitating an overhaul of the non-exterior aspects of the building. 4) Memorial: There is no physical trace of the event or building that is memorialized, but instead a reminder of the episode in the form of a building or sculpture. 5) Palimpsest: The original object has become destabilized and subsumed into alternate architectures and urban conditions, leaving only traces of the original artifact.

The final category, the palimpsest, is the most intriguing for this study. This is where the original artifact leaves hints and adumbrations of its former glory, but has been eroded, pillaged, and otherwise distressed by the outside pressures of urban progress. Often, what was once an intact building is forgotten, covered by newer layers of the city, stolen from their site by museums around the world, and eroded to the point of incomprehension. The erosion is not only physical, but importantly, mental. There is a loss of collective memory for some reason or another, a blank spot covered over with newer memories of that space. Heritage that was associated with the artifact has become tenuous at best; physically or mentally, the heritage has become lost to the larger contemporary context, replaced with remnants of an artifact. What is perhaps most interesting is positioning these palimpsests as potential imagined projections in the contemporary condition; visions of what the original thing was/is/could be. In opposition to literal and neatly packaged forms of historical artifacts, palimpsests allow for a certain fuzzyness, a range of interpretations that can be mined for coexistence in the contemporary condition. Palimpsests cast a visionary overlay on top of the quotidian existence of the city, a simultaneous timeless existence that folds into the everyday world around us. They provide territory for explorations that can revive and protect the unique and irreplaceable aspects of local heritage, as well as creating architectural hybrids for the current rapidly globalizing economy.

ASIAN MEGA-CITIES

Much current preservation practice has been occurring in the United States and Europe, where cities have long stopped growing at rapid rates. While the U.S. was the paradigmatic urban environment in the 20th century, as New York, Los Angelos, Chicago, and Houston all grew into some of the largest and most researched cities, the early 21st century has belonged to Asia. The pressure on these newer global cities to modernize rapidly has lead to a fertile terrain for studying architectural heritage, as antiquities strain to find a place in the ascendant economies of a post-colonial world. On one hand they are vital to nationalism in the weakening occidental hegemony, but on the other are seen as impeding progress toward becoming truly global players. The flag for Cambodia is an appropriate synecdoche for this tension. The flag itself is a symbol of the modern world order, with its conformity to a uniform code of aesthetics, yet the image prominently emblazoned on the blue and red stripes is a stylized Angkor Wat, a building that embodies the 12th century height of the Khmer Empire.

Built artifacts such as Angkor Wat are at the heart of present day tensions between the authentic/local and the modern/global. They are integral to the history that makes a place unique socially and physically, but also create challenges to the contemporary functions of society. They play an important role in the growing international economy, but are often obsolete remnants with little relevance to the everyday lives of citizens. Because of the obvious historical and social merits of these sites, not to mention the persistent tug of nostalgia and patriotism, they occupy a unique position vis-à-vis the pressures of progress confronting rapidly modernizing cities.

METHODOLOGY

In this document, each city is given a short background in order to help position the projects in terms of the inquiry. Research is then undertaken in three areas: documentation, analysis, and speculation. Documentation consists of locating and recording the most relevant examples of palimpsests for this project. The analysis stage takes that data and develops critical observations about the history, current use and strategic strengths of each site. Finally, the speculative stage presents scenarios for how new forms of heritage can be “injected” into the artifact to make it more relevant to contemporary dynamics. The speculations are highly site specific and should result in provocative outcomes. They are intended to be polemical and critical, generating new discussions around the topics of preservation, progress, modernism, and of course heritage. The goal is to explore the liminal zone between local and international; history and progress. New lines of heritage should inspire architecture that protects the authentic, embraces progress, and leverages more than would be possible with simple either/or scenarios.

The first project in Istanbul, “Harbor Walls: Theodosius Jumps,” questions basic assumptions about preservation by presenting a case of dissolving history. It attempts to provide an outlet for the sad reality of irrelevant artifacts. “Hippodrome: Trellis Maximus” seeks to revisit the idea of mass spectacle in an age of international tourism, but with a gentle and practical approach to a colossal structure. In Bombay, “Movie Theater: Cricket Courtyard” attempts to resuscitate a private, but highly civic function. The role of a gathering place is re-examined in light of new communal mythmaking activities. Bangkok is the site of “Ghost Towers: Accelerated Ruins,” which tries to find a resource in the painful reminders of a difficult era. “Canals: Elevated Voyage” brings together environmental treatment and reconfigured urban space to rescue an abused, but vital piece of the urban ecology. In Tokyo, “Nihonbashi: Urban Veil,” the tendency toward urban historicization leads to both skepticism and inspiration. By turning a much used piece of the city into an exhibit, questions about the role of historical artifacts are raised while addressing pragmatic needs for preservation.

What follows is not a solution. It is an inquiry into strategies. My inspirations are diverse, ranging from Carlo Scarpa to Rachel Whiteread, Gordon Matta-Clark to Eugene-Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc, to name a few. This inquiry is, as Rafael Moneo states, “closer to reflection and critical discourse than any desire to elaborate a systematic theory.” My own proposals for the subject at hand tend to be contradictory and uneasy, expressing “anxiety” rather than clarity. Thus it is a reluctant manifesto. Ultimately, I am uncomfortable with the current dichotomy of heritage/(post)modernism since we all simultaneously inhabit both worlds. Rather than present more dogma, I hope to bring up questions that lead to enriching design. Repositioning a widely accepted definition of heritage presents, I think, fruitful grounds for exploring some of the compelling contradictions expressed above. Further, more radical approaches to adaptive re-use will be needed as our cities continue to swell. Pure architectures will be fewer, and perhaps less relevant in a world of mounting environmental problems. The trick is to learn from the scene, but project an improved situation. Sometimes that might mean obliteration, but more likely it means incrementally working with aging artifacts. For my inquiry the explorations are intended to be both essential and confrontational.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I wish to thank the Boston Society of Architects, the administrators of the Rotch Scholarship. In particular, Peter Wiederspahn has acted as my critic and mentor throughout. Robert Miklos provided me with fresh insights into the role of heritage in contemporary architecture. Several others were also central to my thoughts on this project: Eduard Seckler, Mona Serageldin, Sibel Bozdogan, Marcel Smets, Pelin Tan, Marco Cenzatti, Rina Chandran, Murat Musullu, Sittichai Chantakrau, Greg Baldwin Anja Nelle, Zack Hinchliffe, Orhan Esen, Julian Beinart, Bradley Shanks, and Richard Sommer, to name only a few. Of course, Mom and Dad for everything. Most importantly my wife, Elaine Kearney, is the best partner-in-crime a guy could ever have.

Tokyo 3 - Mutable Museum

2007-01-30T15:01:00.001-05:00

NIHONBASHI: SITE

Nihonbashi bridge is shrinking as the relative scale of the context around it grows. Construction technology and zoning have allowed larger buildings and owners continue to take advantage of greater returns in the heated real estate of Tokyo. As in all cities, the dominant height of the building stock has gone from two or three stories in the 19th century, to a ten story standard with numerous towers that range from twenty to forty stories today. Extra vehicle traffic has been accommodated by additional bridges and the expressway above. The famous images of the bridge in harmonious scale with its neighbors are found only in museums, and what once was the central confluence of traffic, commerce and development is today an increasingly hidden mode of infrastructure. It still connects the two sides of the river and is fairly heavily used, but not more so than any of the other many bridges in the area.

On the other hand, its heritage value of the bridge has grown as evidenced by how it guided the multi-million dollar plans for the redevelopment of the area. It is like a pebble parting a river. That a bridge with relatively little use-value would engender such invasive change is testament to its powerful symbolic position. The challenge is to reconcile its emblematic role with its physical and programmatic attenuation.

ASIDE: MUSEALIZATION

The role a museum plays in determining art has long been satirized by avant-garde artists, with Duchamp’s Fountain (1917) perhaps the most salient example. By simply placing an everyday object in the realm of an exhibition, the object gains a level of preciousness that it is denied in normal existence. This is especially compelling when an object with utility (say, a urinal) is transformed into something appreciated visually, an object of respect instead of use.

Along these lines, there is much recent debate about the tendency to turn cities into museums. Wolfgang Zacharias and others used the term “musealization” to label the parts of a city that take on the quality of exhibits. They note that similar to when an object is placed in a museum, buildings and urban elements become objects of admiration instead of use. Often this preserved or re-created version of a place is intended for visitor consumption rather than local patronage. This aspiration is especially strong when the environment is perceived as threatened by newer, less desired influences. At its best, it places value on preserving aspects of the built environment that might otherwise be torn down. At its worst, it can lead to pastiche that uproots local economies for the sake of appearances. Either way, there is a fundamental shift in the relationship of users to a city when it takes on the preciousness associated with a museum.

ASIDE: TEMPORAL THEATERS

The famous bright advertising of Tokyo could be considered a logical progression of traditional Edo-era Japanese theater design. Theaters in Japan have long played the role of mediator in society, putting an acceptable but still exuberant face on what might be considered licentious and titillating activity. And by isolating and hinting at what lay inside, they seduce outsiders to see what lay behind closed doors. The activity might be considered immoral or low, but the facade makes it irresistible.

The dominant established forms of theater in Japan, No and later Kabuki, have roots in an itinerant tradition of travelling short term productions. They were more like minstrels, performing as many shows as a population could support before moving on to the next venue. Each season would bring a new production and the process would be repeated. Thus it was more important to be eye-catching than contextual. The structures were spectacles in themselves, acknowledging the limited the run of a performance, a “get it while it’s hot” message of building. The return of the buildings every year would signal the cycle repeating itself again. The leisure city of Edo ultimately provided the right mix of economics and society to engender more stable and permanent theaters, and the temporary structures were replaced with temporary signage. The ever changing advertising which is so emblematic of Shinjuku is based on a similar logic: the short public attention span needs to be piqued on a regular basis.

NIHONBASHI: MUTABLE MUSEUM

Much of the language behind the relocation of the expressway has revolved around the historic value of Nihonbashi. However, the winning proposals indicate that the more central issue is selling quality of life in a contemporary downtown environment. Rather than actually returning to any facsimile of the fabric that was in place when the Meiji–era bridge was erected, the proposals seek to compete with similar water-centric projects in cities around the world by removing buildings along the banks (that have no direct need for waterfront locations) and providing pedestrian friendly parks and street furniture. This is admirable, but still leaves room for more than dusting off the old and overlooked Nihonbashi; the bridge deserves more than a bronze plaque in the new vision.

I propose a mutable museum, a structure that simultaneously isolates and publicizes the bridge. It will effectively veil Nihonbashi, shrouding it from the environment while allowing it to inhabit the precious realm of a display. Thus it would artlessly musealize the bridge, transforming it into an obvious exhibit in the city. It is intended to delineate between appreciating a unique piece of the urban fabric and the tendency to romanticize revisionist history. While the bridge would still be functional, the mutable museum establishes a threshold between sacred and profane that tens of thousands of people would pass through every day. It would additionally mediate between the scale of the growing surroundings and the preserved Nihonbashi. In a sense, it would be the third iteration of the bridge, linking its new role as cultural artifact with contemporary leisure desires. The museum will be tall enough to span the current expressway and generate interest before the new riverfront development (which might take decades).

The building would be powerful in its scale, but the detailing would exhibit a delicacy in order to harmonize with the intimacy of the bridge; katsura and cedar wood cladding would provide a subtle link to the Edo Nihonbashi. Giant screens would partially hide the bridge, but would be raised on special occasions to reveal it fully. The structure would house a local history museum and observation deck, from which the primary exhibit of the bridge could be viewed. Alternate contexts like Edo or future plans for Tokyo could be projected on the interior of the screens to situate the bridge. The screens themselves would be replaced annually, perhaps with a contest for their new design. Thus a seasonal, cyclical freshness could be brought to Nihonbashi. A new floating cedar deck would take advantage of the river and allow people to get close to the bridge, while the underside of the arched spans would be converted into a waterfront café and restaurant. Have a latte while reflecting on who has crossed above!

Tokyo 2 - Nihonbashi

2007-01-16T15:00:00.000-05:00

NIHONBASHI

Nihonbashi has acted as an avatar of various epochs in Tokyo: the wooden Edo bridge (1603), the Euro-stone Meiji bridge (1911), the Tokyo Metropolitan Expressway overpass of Olympic era Tokyo (1964), the re-created Edo era bridge in the Edo-Tokyo Museum (1993), and most recently in the recommendation to “re-heritage” the bridge by routing the current overpass underground (2005). Its name literally means “Japan-Bridge” (Nihon-Bashi), and will thus be referred to simply as Nihonbashi. It was the crossroads of the five national highways (today it is seven), and the beginning of the famed 303 mile Tokaido Road which connected Tokyo with Kyoto. All roads literally led to Nihonbashi. Since the maintenance of safety on roads was an important aspect of the Tokugawa Shogunate’s image, bridges, and in particular Nihonbashi, became a vital form of propaganda. They symbolized an unprecedented access and unity across the nation, which until the Edo era had been fractured and warring.

The most famous representation of this era of connectivity is Ando Hiroshige’s 53 Stations of the Tokaido Road (1831), a pictorial guidebook to the journey between Tokyo and Kyoto. Each Hiroshige woodblock print is a distilled vision of a moment along the road, an 18th century hyper-reality of the cultural uniqueness of each place. Nearly every station includes a prominent view of a bridge, often as the signal of threshold to a town. In fact, the stylized views of each bridge seem to indicate less specificity of place than universality of form and symbol; after viewing several dozen of these prints it becomes difficult to tell them apart, aside from natural features like Fuji. A trip that once might stop at each station is today completed in two and a half hours on the Shinkansen, the fastest train in the world.

What is apparent from the Nihonbashi views is the relative intensity of economic activity and liveliness of the place. It was the crossroads of the empire, and the merchant class grew the area into a vibrant trading zone. Many of the powerful zaibatsu (which became keiretsu) that were later to form so much of the urban shape of Tokyo originated here: Mitsui, Tokyu, Fuyo, et al. The area today is still home to great political intrigue between the few powerful players in the Japanese economy. This fierce competition was linked physically and mentally with the Nihonbashi.

Postcard commemorating Nihonbashi's central location

As a singular piece of architecture, however, it wasn’t particularly remarkable. There were many bridges that were longer, wider, and more picturesque. Its wood detailing was simply a refinement of bridges built everywhere by the Tokugawa Shogunate, albeit finely wrought. Durable katsura wood comprised the structure of repetitive cross-braced legs, gently arching to drain water from the cedar planks. Metal strapping reinforced wooden joints and provided waterproof caps at posts. As a whole, it was austere and sturdy for the times, a bushido evolution of earlier Sino-Japanese bridges. But as a symbol of the ascendancy of Edo, nothing could compare.

In the Meiji restoration, the preferred projection of Japan’s power shifted to a blend between imperial aspiration and Westernization; Japan fitfully adjusted to the forced exposure to progress by colonial powers. The old wooden bridge, constructed of what then appeared to be outdated materials and form was replaced with a fin-de-siecle style hybrid incorporating some martial Japanese ornamentation. In the West it is an immediately recognizable style of permanence and authority, but given a local make-over. The stone bridge remains there today, designated as a historical landmark after having survived the Kanto earthquake and Allied bombing. However, as economic activity was less reliant on the physical crossroads, merchant activity spread out, leaving the bridge to play a lessor role for the new Japan.

After the physical and psychological havoc of World War Two, Tokyo became a showcase of Allied influenced rebuilding. In response to the new internationally accepted Japan, Tokyo aspired to (and was granted) the 1964 Olympics. The rapid retrofitting of the city to accommodate the urban needs prescribed by the games necessitated a massive infrastructural overhaul. It is today one of the dominant images of the city. Automobile freeways were quickly erected along land that had the fewest stakeholders: parks, rivers and canals. It was an impressive undertaking in terms of scale and vision, but left much of the open space in Tokyo in the shade of the structures. The Shuto Expressway Loop Line was run along the Nihonbashi River, over Nihonbashi and numerous other low bridges. Today 100,000 vehicles pass overhead.

Several miles away, inside an arena-sized building in Ryogoku, Nihonbashi has been resurrected. The Edo-Tokyo museum was opened in 1993 and acts as the authorized version of the events that led to present day Tokyo. As Jordan Sand states, it is “the crowning achievement of the populist historiography of Edo-Tokyo.” The initial view upon entering is the most striking and memorable moment: you look down on the enormous hall from a life-sized Nihonbashi painstakingly re-created above the exhibits. The journey begins on the bridge, and below you cross under it to move from the Edo-era exhibits to the Tokyo-era exhibits. Thus it acts as the symbolic threshold between the historic traditions of Edo and rapid modernization of Tokyo. It is the most striking element of the museum, guiding traffic and acting as the primary orientation device for circulation. As the museum states in their literature:

“Nihonbashi Bridge was the doorway from Edo (current day Tokyo) to such places as Kyoto (to the west) and Nikko (to the north). The replica at the Edo-Tokyo Museum is of the same width as the original but of half the length. Upon crossing this bridge at the Edo-Tokyo Museum, one can often smell the wood of the bridge.”

It is perhaps no accident that the bridge takes on such an important role in the museum. Of course, the museum is located several miles away in Ryogoku, but within the hermetic environment of the museum, it catalyzes the transformation to historic-era Japan. And its re-creation has presaged a more ambitious project that had been building momentum for years at the original site.

In 2005, Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi instructed the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport to find ways of re-routing a two kilometer portion of the Tokyo Metropolitan Expressway that runs through Nihonbashi neighborhood. His proclamation was the culmination of years of lobbying by various local groups to beautify, preserve, and revitalize Nihonbashi. Many of these associations like the “Committee for the 100 Year Renaissance Plan of Nihonbashi and Environs” are comprised of the same powerful keiretsu that grew out of the Edo marketplace. Very few people have called for retaining the present overpass condition. Resulting competitions have engendered predictable, if commendable, solutions along the lines of the City-Beautiful and New-Urbanism models. It has been estimated to cost around $4.5 billion, though conventional wisdom puts the number at double that. The fact that the Prime Minister is personally addressing a project of such expense indicates the important role this little bridge occupies in the collective psyche.

Japan 1 - Introduction

2007-01-15T14:59:00.000-05:00

THE MANAGED CITY

Tokyo is arguably the apotheosis of the global city. It certainly performs on a world class level in all the expected criteria of the new order: an ethos of overworked white collar workers (salaryman); easy access to culture and leisure; and an almost invisible service sector keeping everything running smoothly. And the numbers are impressive: the most populous city in the world, the three busiest train stations in the world (Shinjuku, Shibuya, Ikebukuro), the most trafficked airspace in the world. Tokyo seemingly leads the world in urban statistics. It’s a collection of figures that don’t seem possible, numbers that begin to blur together in strings of zeros and commas. There are 34,000,000 people living in the Tokyo-Yokohama urban area, an unfathomable amount. From a perusal of the figures, Tokyo seems like an impossible city.

But for all their grandiosity, the numbers belie the order on the street. It might be crowded, but the crowds perform with practiced choreography. Some 3.5 million people move through Shinjuku Station every day (3,000 per minute!), and yet any one of many cheerful station attendants will retrieve a missing ticket from the busiest turnstiles on the planet. The throng simply adjusts to the slight change in environment and flows around to the next most efficient outcome. It is as mesmerizing as watching schools of fish dart in group synchronization. Thus, it is rarely overwhelming in the prototypical modern metropolis sense. The advertising might seem outlandish and bold, especially in the iconic photographs of Shibuya, but the overall effect is of fun and harmless bricolage. Further, a five minute walk on pristine streets will take you away from colorful signage into quiet alleys of precious, cared-for homes. As far back as the 17th century, foreign observers were remarking on the cleanliness of Edo-Tokyo. Today some of the most notable formal aspects are the careful responses to zoning management: strange roof angles, fire stair facades, and little red triangles (escape windows) on otherwise spotless facades. Tokyo might be the most successfully managed city in the world; it hums like a machine.

A pass thought the city reveals the slim and bloated: tiny little parcels that maximize their holdings with inventive and often acrobatic use of space, and oversized keiretsu-built urban-scale development that feeds on commuter traffic. In between, the typologies form a fluid space of public, private, station, mall, plaza, sidewalk, store, campus, and park. Tokyo is of course famous for its petite jewel houses that make use of quirky and impossibly small parcels. Numerous magazines and books are devoted to the resourceful and whimsical solutions to the problems of building in the tightest urban conditions. The trophy houses might be few and far between, but the pressures of high real estate costs and precious free space leads to unexpected combinations of program and form, as Atelier Bow-Wow’s book Made In Tokyo attests to. The book seeks out the results of “a certain obstinacy of character that refuses to let any space, no matter how insignificant, go to waste.” This obstinacy might crudely be linked to the chado (the way of tea) ethos of celebrating rustic simplicity. Often, the highest form of an object was the imperfection, as illustrated in a broken bowl lovingly reassembled with gold (kintsugi) to highlight the jagged cracks. In this sense, chado resembles the Yankee spirit.

On the other end of the scale, much of what might pass for urban planning was done by the numerous private railways owned by keiretsu that coincidently own the real estate around the stations. Keiretsu are the outgrowth of the zaibatsu, a collection of powerful banking conglomerates that essentially formed a competitive oligarchy until they were dismantled after World War Two. These complex financial structures are increasingly challenged by international finance pressures, but still comprise most of the mega-sized landscape around the stations. Navigation around the labyrinthine tunnels (Shinjuku has 200 exits) is inevitably done by shopping malls (“take a left at Tokyu Hands and then a right at Sunshine City. It’s above the Pizza Hut.”) At a certain point, the opposition of public versus private space seems superfluous when hundreds of thousands of square feet of railway circulation is owned by a department store. Meanwhile the city reaches out into the bay with speculative monumental urban tentacles, a public-private-ecological cyborg.

Tokyo’s phenomenal scale is in many ways surprising. While it has usually been the largest city in the world since the 17th century, it really doesn’t have a convenient reason for its founding. Even more than St. Petersburg, Edo was a city that was willed into existence. It wasn’t a particularly good port, didn’t lie on a strategic piece of land, and wasn’t at a natural crossroads. In fact, it was likely chosen because of, not in spite of, its lack of obvious blessings. In 1590, when Ieyasu, the first of the Tokugawa shogun, sought a location that was removed from the historically loaded city of Kyoto (and home to the emperor), instead of naming any of the obvious secondary towns he chose a new location. It was a fresh start for the recently united Japan, founded on the power of the shogunate.

Daimyo (regional feudal-generals) were required by the shogunate to spend every other year in Edo in and their families were held virtual prisoners while they were away. This requirement (sankin kotai) quickly gave shape and life to the inchoate city. The daimyo kept spacious compounds in the hills surrounding the shogun’s castle. This half of the population, the military class, took up 85% of the land in grand style, while commoners filled in the leftover lowlands. As the old city transitioned to a bureaucracy after the Meiji Restoration, these daimyo compounds provided a convenient setting for the campuses of modern democracy such as parks, libraries, museums and universities. At the physical center of the city was the shogun’s castle, a place of secrecy and reticence. It still isn’t possible for most people to visit. Thus Edo-Tokyo has been called a “doughnut” or a “cyclone,” with a density of activity growing outward from a central void. Today the most common orienting device is the Yamanote Line railway, roughly traversing the hills around old Edo where the daimyo once lived. The machi system, on the other hand, was a dense and efficient block structure for the common class, the other half of the population. It was an easily duplicable layout that could be placed anywhere in the territories. A dense perimeter of narrow shop-houses (due to taxation on frontage) opened up to a shared common area in the middle of the block. Each machi had a rigid system of interdependence and a representative that reported directly to the Shogunate; it was an arrangement that traded privacy and freedom for security and stability.

The military class, and their newfound wealth brought on by peace-time growth drew a massive retinue. Very quickly, Edo grew to be the most populous city in the world, almost double that of London. At the same time the Tokugawa regime essentially cut ties with the outside world, turning inward for 250 years. In general, the military nobility encouraged an ethos of bushido, or military asceticism. It was a period of extreme refinement, when most of the famous Japanese traditions were codified as we know them today: the tea ceremony (chado), swordplay (kendo), and wrestling (sumo).

Perhaps inevitably, counter to this rarefied culture, a flowering of debauchery arose: ukiyo (the floating world). It is likely the most widely-known cultural production from that era (ironically now seen as a high form of Japanese culture), made famous in evocative wood prints (ukiyo-e) that remain popular today. The floating world was the term for the life pleasure and leisure that became the hallmark of Edo. Geishas, drinking, and kabuki theater were all part of the good life. Ukiyo was one of the most important economies, and remains one of the defining aesthetics of Japan. The block prints were responsible for the transmission of geisha and kabuki images to the wider populace. There was a messy evolution of style as entertainers, nobility, and townsfolk negotiated between novel and traditional aesthetics. The entertainers aped and transformed the tastes of the aristocracy, who in turn borrowed from the street culture of ukiyo.

Tokyo was twice leveled in the 20th century, first by the Kanto Earthquake in 1923, and the Allied fire bombing in 1945. These tabula rasa were in turn re-shaped into the form of a modern, global metropolis. This period saw the arrival of the salaryman, who embodies the capitalist duality of bushido and ukiyo in his grinding hours and drunken walks home. It is no surprise that the salaryman is often a central character in manga, and a metaphor for post-war urban Tokyo. He is close to both high and low culture, all of which is readily available. Today, Harajuku is arguably the primary zone of transmission between high and low. On Takeshita Avenue the street fashion scene explodes with inventive and innovative cosu-purei (play costumes), as captured by Shoichi Aoki in his book Fruits and popularized by pop star Gwen Stefani. Nearby on Omotesanto Avenue, luxury fashion houses like Tod’s and Prada trot out the most inventive and innovative architects (Toyo Ito and Herzog and DeMeuron, respectively) to design their built costumes. Strolling down either is voyeurism encouraged by a promenade of sidewalk exhibitionists.

This report will focus on Nihonbashi, the famous Japan Bridge that was literally the center of Edo-era Japan. It is today the site of a massive re-historicization project that could cost well over $5 billion. As Japan moves into the 21st century, it seeks to re-establish its cultural roots in the pre-Meiji era. It is an elision of post-Meiji Westernization, one that freezes the evolution of culture in the mid 19th century. The pace of change was slow due to lack of outside influence, but it was an evolution nonetheless. Such truly Japanese elements as tatami, yukimishoji (snow viewing screens) and tokonoma (decorative recess) were innovations that built on inherited Chinese form. This measured progress was challenged by the forced entry of the Americans in 1853, and discarded altogether in the post-war rebuilding and modernization. This move toward valorizing old Tokyo-Edo is echoed in global cities everywhere, a “musealization” of historic assets that has clear economic and branding value. The Tokyo Bureau of City Planning calls it “creating the face” of Tokyo. Unequal parts tourism, quality of life, and civic boosterism, it is an aspect of the competition among cities for an idealized urban growth. It is an attempt to capitalize on a particular vision of the past, defined and negotiated by the national government, corporate interests, and grassroots movements. In the face of perceived loss of unique and traditional culture, there is a scramble to re-animate places that suffered the genericisizing effects of heavy handed progress.

Bangkok 5 - Elevated Voyage

2006-12-15T14:58:00.000-05:00

CANALS: SITE

Khlong Suan Luang lies between the heritage area of Rattakosin and the popular shopping area of Siam. It is fed by the Klong Saen Sab, the heavily used east-west canal connecting to the suburbs, and runs almost a mile until running underground and connecting to the Khlong Chong Nonsi in Silom. It runs parallel to the busy Banthat Thong Street, built in the early 1900’s only 60 feet to the east. The western bank has perpendicular alleys roughly every 100 feet. The edges are formed with sloped concrete, leading to water which is infrequently dredged. The base of the canal is permeable soil, allowing some water to leech back into the aquifer. Ad-hoc bridges are built every 50 feet or so. The Bangkok Department of Drainage and Sewerage which oversees the canals has done an admirable job of improving water quality, but they simply don’t have the resources to keep up with a rapidly growing, industrialized city that still often dumps waste directly into the water; Khlong Suan Luang has a powerful stench and unnaturally dark water with trash floating slowly by. Notably, the shop-houses lining the khlong were built in response to the roadway, and present their backs to the water. The strip between the canal and the building is used for cleaning, storage, and trash.

ASIDE: ELEVATED CITY

Bangkok is navigated on many overlapping levels. At the lowest point, the subway snakes 50 feet below grade; canals channel water just below the streets; most roadways are laid at grade; pedestrian walkovers are often the only means of crossing intense traffic; vehicle flyovers at busy intersections rise just enough to let traffic through; the Skytrain runs at the 4th floor of many apartments beside it; and new expressways arc over 100 feet in the air. Additionally, many of the malls around the shopping areas of Silom and Siam have elevated quasi-public plazas that abut the Skytrain or parking garages. It is the built manifestation of Ludwig Hilberseimer’s City Plan of 1927.

These elevated worlds are perhaps fortuitous as the city sinks several inches every year and the nearby ocean rises, increasing the possibility that Bangkok will again be a truly water-based settlement. Some day soon the current street level might lie abandoned, good only for exploring with scuba gear. Buildings and lobbies everywhere in Bangkok would begin on floor 2, causing confusion to visitors. A modern day Atlantis, the sunken world would disappear as the new city rises in layers over the tidal waters.

CANALS: ELEVATED VOYAGE

I propose an elevated canal over Khlong Suan Luang, a new level of infrastructure that acts as a demonstrative cleaning project and relaxed voyage through the city. It would follow the existing air-rights of the canal through several distinct parts of the city. The new canal would be a recreational experience for tourists and citizens, tapping into the desire for quiet, leisurely urban movement, an almost unheard-of phenomenon. It would signal a renewal of the characteristics that nostalgia seeks from village life, but updated for a modernizing and growing city. There are moments that approach this ideal, up on the pedestrian walkovers and Skytrain platforms where you can get up into the city and see it removed from the volume of traffic below. But even these are shared with the massive flow of people on their way to someplace else. A new viaduct would capture these moments but extrude them into paths. Thin boats would glide quietly on a fixed path and allow for hopping on and off. It would be an infrastructure that adapts the captured flow of a theme park ride and places it in one of the great environments in the world. Riders would literally drift through the city, experiencing it from a new perspective. The viaduct itself would be a machine for cleaning the water. Taking water from the canal terminus and returning it against the drainage flow to the source, the water would be cleansed in stages that would be linked with the stations: Sedimentation, Aeration, Biofiltration, Polishing and Integration.

Thus the canal would respond both to the surrounding urban context and the specific requirements of cleansing. The cleaner water would give the original Khlong Suan Luang new life below. The elevated canal would also effect the transformation of the built fabric above by giving the upper stories access to the viaduct. Currently, the shop-houses are appropriately aligned with the canal, but turn their backs to it in seeking to draw business from the roadway. The new elevated canal would tap into these blank facades for access and advertising potential. They would become 2-way shop-houses; the ground floor would service the roadway, and the third floor would service the elevated canal. Discrete bridges would reach out to passers-by and give local residents an opportunity to take advantage of the flow of riders. These bridges would act like old Thai canal entrance pavilions, allowing the boaters to choose whether to stop or not, rather than the street stalls that force pedestrians through a gauntlet on the sidewalk. The elevated canal would bring some of the comforts of driving a car (refuge and personal space), but would fold it into a new means of moving through the city. Future networks of elevated canals could traverse other neighborhoods in the city, ultimately linking up in a quiet network of water scrubbing machines.

Bangkok 4 - Accelerated Ruins

2006-12-15T14:55:00.000-05:00

GHOST-SCRAPERS: SITE

An abandoned ghost-scraper is located along Patchaburi Street, about 5 kilometers from the river in the Ekkamai area. Patchaburi is a busy road that saw a number of new towers erected in the 1990’s. This tower was planned at 22 stories, likely as commercial space. The building got as far as hanging the ductwork before halting. At this point it has been lying fallow for nine years.

In some respects, there is little to say about the site of an abandoned skyscraper: the building and location are fairly standardized. This spot was at one time considered a good risk to locate a building, but now lacks the conditions to continue. It is obviously big, larger than the surrounding context, but also in sheer quantity of material. The 12,000 tons of reinforced concrete cannot really be recycled, and the chances of it being re-used are diminished every day due to economic and liabilty issues. Is there a way to take advantage of this mountain of stuff without taking it down?

ASIDE: IN PRAISE OF RUINS

Ruins are the rarest heritage to be found in Bangkok. To see them you have to go an hour north to Ayutthaya, the seat of the Siam Empire from 1350 until 1867. It is now a quiet UNESCO heritage site of decaying temples that are fastidiously maintained to prevent the tropics from taking over. Actually, what is so remarkable about these ruins is their presence in a nation otherwise cultivating an ethos of renewal. Historic temples elseware in Thailand might be 5 or 250 years old, it is hard to tell; often they have been rebuilt numerous times. In each case, the materials and details have been altered to reflect contemporary techniques, but the overwhelming result is one of familiarity. In some ways there is more continuity with the past, since the styles are clearly living and evolving today, not codified into history or charged with post-modern baggage.

All buildings have a life-cycle and typically buildings built today are in the 50 year range, assuming regular maintenance. After this the building may be considered uninhabitable, but the ruins stand for many more years. At a certain point the building is subject to small structural failures depending on the materials and methods used to put it together; Albert Speer famously attempted to build in techniques that would last a thousand years. In contrast to Speer’s vision, most standardized reinforced concrete floors will begin to crack with the failure of the rebar. The most likely scenario is the acidification of the alkaline concrete over time by carbon in the air. Cracks and fissures caused by the freeze/thaw cycle and plant life accelerate the process by introducing air deeper into the material. The rebar corrodes and no longer resists the failure of the concrete in tension. This will happen unevenly as the structure begins to crumble. It won’t fail catastrophically, but deform in time like an eroding cliff. Like a leisurely wrecking ball, the elements distress the building until it sags into rubble.

On one end of the spectrum of forces that conspire to ruin a building are catastrophic events like implosions and earthquakes, while on the other is the much slower and more insideous neglect of abandonment. In between is a rogue’s gallery of problems from mold to pigeons that must be battled by regular upkeep. The effects of these parasites were sought out by romantic theorists like Ruskin who desired the “additional complexity” to be found in cultivated aging:

This sublimity, belonging in a parasitical manner to the building, renders it, in the usual sense of the word, ‘picturesque.’ (Ruskin)

North of Bangkok, in Chiang Mai, there is a provocative system of accelerating a building’s ruin. At the Wat Chedi Leung a system of pulleys allows visitors to water the Buddha’s relics located on the top of the wat structure. For a small donation, water can be hoisted up and overturned on the ancient crumbling structure. While the water may cleanse the relics, the by-product is that the destructive plants on top of the building are kept well nurtured.

GHOST-SCRAPERS: ACCELERATED RUINS

I propose an accelerated ruins project that introduces an urban wilderness to the city. By repositioning the structure away from traditional building values and toward a vision of natural decaying matter, the project would respond to the loss of primal space that is so evident in an international metropolis, while slowly eroding (and paradoxically preserving) a legacy of late 20th century globalism. It would take several generations before the building became too dangerous to use, and in the meantime it would foster a vertical jungle for urban explorers. Like any hiking trail, it would need a certain amount of maintenance and oversight (i.e. use passes and permits), but mostly it would be left to nature. In order to accelerate the process, the floors would need to be sprayed down with a mixture of the most destructive weeds. It would be the world’s first Chia-building. A system of irrigation tubes would run from a cistern “crown” at the top of the tower. Bundled with these tubes would be LED lighting to give the ghost life at night, and allow nighttime camping and hiking for the after-work crowd.

The leftover site area would be given relief, allowing for additional FAR to be added to the site in trade-off for loss of “highest and best” value of the existing ghost tower floor plates. A visitor and interpretive center would meet the street, offering retail and restaurants the advantage of a memorable location. From here, an explorer could hike up a light superstructure to whichever floor they haven’t yet visited. This snaking circulation addition would be made of steel and recycled construction netting and cantilevered from the existing structure. Assuming a 22 story building, the height is similar to the famous Golden Mount in Bangkok, a popular destination that takes 318 steps to reach the top. It provides one of the only publicly accessible panoramas in the city and is usually filled with people taking advantage of the vista. The viewing platform at the Golden Mount is some 200 feet above grade, while the ghost tower reaches around 230 feet. The circulation structure for the ghost tower would draw out the walk at a 1:2 incline, with one side along the building and the other providing views of the city. It would be about a half mile round trip to the top. A pretty good walk, but manageable as a day hike.

Bangkok 3 - Canals

2006-12-01T14:55:00.000-05:00

CANALS

Canals are perhaps the most degraded aspect of historic Bangkok, increasingly walled in and covered over by new forms of infrastructure. The city was founded on the khlong (canal) system and is even today called the “Venice of the East,” but considering its relationship to the surrounding polder agriculture, a more fair comparison would be to an unplanned version of Holland. At the fringes of the city, the morphology of rural canal land ownership is still evident, but the closer to the center and the more agglomerated the urbanization, the less obvious this history. Canals aren’t very useful to most flows of goods in modern Bangkok and the putrid miasma that surrounds them hardly makes them an amenity. At this point they are more used as convenient dumping grounds for waste; while the government has recently attempted to enforce waste water treatment, most homes and businesses still dump directly into the khlongs.

The stench of the water is less distressing, however, than the larger environmental issues at stake. As the city built up over marshland, the canals provided an important runoff system for the heavy monsoon rains and replenishment for the fresh water aquifers. Fewer canals combined with less permeable surface area leads to heavy flooding that doesn’t infiltrate back into the ground. Today the city sinks at a rate of two to three inches per year due to the depletion of the aquifer. Anything built on deep pilings hovers in place while the ground slips away; ad hoc steps and ramps negotiate the difference. The government recently announced that Bangkok will be threatened by tidal flooding within 15 years unless a complex levy system similar to Holland’s is built. In the meantime, a more or less permanent arrangement of wooden planks and sandbags allow access to waterfront activities.

The original site for Bangkok was created when the existing minor canals were connected and fortified to provide a protective barrier around the new royal city in 1782. As the city grew, a third ring canal was added in the 1850’s to expand the city limits. In the second half of the 19th century, major transportation and irrigation projects were undertaken in response to the increasing international demand for sugarcane and other Thai natural resources. The canal era culminated in the 1890 Rangsit project, adding over 500,000 acres of cultivated land to the system of canals and irrigation. By 1900, however, road construction became the priority of the government. After the turn of the century, very few new canals were excavated, and none after 1915. Today, some dredging occurs on the few remaining communicating khlongs, but they are largely surviving on their own. Life has continued along the canals, but they have been supplanted as the infrastructure of choice. The emphasis on roads and transit infrastructure has allowed the canals to remain in unimproved stasis. In many cases, however, modern infrastructure trumps the canals, and they are filled in for road widening or transit improvements. In this sense they are like the old boulevards of Europe, the most likely places to put a new road without upsetting the populace.

There is a range of canal sizes depending on the need, from 70 feet wide for barges to just a few feet for slender personal boats. In most cases, houses are built on stilts out over the water, with a family pavilion that marks the interface with traffic. This pavilion is something like a water porch, with built-in seating and tables for lounging and watching the world float by. The raised houses often have partially usable space below for cooking and toilets, abandoned during flooding and reclaimed in the dry season. The house itself tends to fall into two categories: the thin, steep-roofed Ayutthaya style, and the low, wide, shallow-roofed vernacular. Often it is a combination of the two, assembled over time, compound style. Rarely is there more than one story of living space, typically an open arrangement with mutable screens and walls. They are traditionally wood, but with the scarcity of teak today are increasingly made of concrete or composite materials. With the canals acting as a lifeline, the housing is packed in tightly along the waterfront; rarely is there a break in the line of buildings. Of course, the houses can range from carefully restored antiques to slum shacks depending on the neighborhood. Roughly speaking, the closer to the heart of the city, the poorer the housing stock along the canals. Outside the city, antique teakwood houses are a sign of status, while in the center shanties occupy most of the frontage. In the fringes, the canals can handle the usage and renew themselves, but inside the city they stagnate into cesspools. Depending on their proximity to downtown, they are either desirable addresses or places to avoid.

In spite of their neglect, the image of the khlong is still strong in the myth of the city. Every tourist book outlines visits to the intact canals, mostly located on the less developed left bank in Thonburi. These tours are popular and expensive, tapping into the desire to see the living museum of historic existence. As one tourist service puts it: "Bangkok is changing fast, but if you want a close up perspective of traditional Thai life then spend some time exploring the city’s charming waterways…en route you’ll discover the remnants of an old way of life, one that leaves the modern face of Bangkok behind." (Bangkok.com)

One of the key driving concepts in tourism, of course, is the idea of a journey to explore the authentic. This drive toward authenticity, as indicated in the descriptions of the canal tours, brings up an interesting perception vis-à-vis city form. The canal might represent the authenticity that people are willing to spend their money in search of, but is also an inefficient method of building a modern city. This dilemma can best be understood in contrasting the canal with the road; each represents competing forces of rural and urban, respectively. The road is fast, modern, progress, growth, greed, and superficiality. The canal is slow, historic, regressive, moderation, and authenticity. Each is vilified or praised depending on the context; each is an obstacle or an amenity depending on the situation.

Bangkok 2 - Ghost-scrapers

2006-12-01T14:54:00.000-05:00

GHOST-SCRAPERS

In 1997 the “Asian Miracle” came to an abrupt end. Up until then, the 1990’s had been synonymous with economic growth, a period of international investment and globalization. In Bangkok, as in other Southeast Asian cities, this was most easily seen in the rapidly changing skyline; at the time of the crisis there were hundreds of buildings under construction in and around the city. However, the money to build was overextended, lent on shaky grounds. When the Thai bhat was devalued, the banking sector shut down almost overnight. Many lending institutions, including the largest in Thailand, collapsed in a short span.

The stepchildren of this crisis were hundreds of empty, partially completed tower buildings littered throughout the city: ghost-scrapers. In 1998 there were 508 total building projects lying fallow. Compounding the lack of funds to build were legal issues; clarifying liability in transferring the ownership of abandoned skyscrapers is a new field for the courts. Over the past two years, however, the story has tentatively shifted back to growth. The Finance Ministry is attempting to speed up the development of the abandoned sites, promising various incentives to recapture the potential revenue. Numerous buildings have found owners and many more are in negotiations. Citizens are investing again, albeit cautiously, and rarely for unbuilt units. Projects near amenities like the Chao Praya River or Skytrain have found the most new life, often as luxury hotels for the rapidly growing tourism economy, or condominiums for business and foreigner demographics. Today there are 281 abandoned buildings of varying heights totaling 68 million square feet, a far cry from the original numbers, but still daunting. Of these, about two dozen are towers.

Construction of towers in Bangkok favors cast-in-place concrete since labor is inexpensive relative to material. Sitting on deep pilings to resist the sinking Bangkok marsh, the column spacing and floor to floor heights are economical rather than extravagant. They are testament to the happy marriage of standardized methods and socially acceptable conformity. The relatively thin floor plates allow views through the structure to the sky on the other side; they appear purer and more sculptural than completed buildings that have taken on the telltale signs of human inhabitation. They stand out against the rest of the white and taupe skyline, unadulterated Maison Dom-Ino’s not yet ready to join their finished siblings. They are grey skeletons, incomplete and idle, waiting for the skin and guts that never came. In many cases they were interrupted mid-construction and sport prickly rebar bundles reaching out for the next layer of concrete. They may be structurally compromised due to years of unprotected exposure to the environment. Up closer, the structures bear the obvious markings of neglect: graffiti, tall weeds, rusting rebar, and miscellaneous construction detritus. Most ghost-scrapers have security, often a person who has set up an impromptu house on site. They live in modest shacks underneath 300,000 square feet of failed real estate.

Most Bangkokers hate the ghost-scrapers. They will tell you they are ugly, and for a population that is so universally well appointed, perhaps this is true. For one, they are covered with blemishes, warts of exposed fittings and weld plates. And considering the robust sale of skin-lightening cosmetics in Thailand, it is hard not to infer a connection to the creamy white skyline. The stained and aging concrete stands in contrast to the generally smooth off-white buildings around it. Without any residents to claim the space, they possess an aloof and sterile quality. The repetition of the bays is more evident without a human touch; the sheer bulk is more powerful. Drying laundry fluttering on balconies, uneven curtains, lights at twilight, and myriad satellite dishes...all soften the effects of scale. The ghost-scrapers are stripped bare of standard inhabitation and empty bigness is all that is left.

Most importantly to anyone who knows Bangkok, they exist as brutal and obvious reminders of a painful era. They are failures that are too tall to ignore, white elephants that remind locals of a too-recent hubris. More than visually ugly, they are mementos of hardship and fragility. As in any global city that prides itself on growth and progress, material signs of failure are like tumors that need excising. Current economic developments are still contextualized against the 1997 crisis, and the ghost towers represent the vanishing physical traces of those events. They are memories that are clearly present in the minds of locals, but are actively sought for physical erasure, or at least whitening.

Since they are ugly and painful they bring up a challenging question about heritage: how is it determined? Loosely defined, heritage is something passed down from one generation to the next, a kinship gift. If gifts are often unasked for and unappreciated, ghost-scrapers are the equivalent of fruitcake. They are monuments to hubris and reminders of folly. Maybe these are even more precious than the victories, a physical heritage to avoid repeating. After all, success has many parents, but who will care for the ghost towers? Stripped of their loaded symbolic meanings, they are strange, rude black holes in the city. While around them the world seeks growth and progress, they deteriorate quietly, readymade ruins in the city of the future.

Bangkok 1 - Introduction

2006-12-01T14:35:00.000-05:00

CITY OF ANGELS

Bangkok sprawls like a spider, consuming the rice paddies that lie along roads and canals. With no natural barriers to contain the city, it simply grows were the strategic land is located, following the corridors of trade and utilities. From the ground it looks ad hoc, but from above the polder structure is clearly intact and structuring the growth. In contrast to the auspiciously planned and controlled royal city center, Rattokosin, the city grows in dense commercial ribbons along the few major routes, and everything in between settles into a thick landscape of private compounds. Taken as a whole, Bangkok has a relative evenness to its density, with outer districts almost as heavily settled as the core. The real difference is seen taking a slice through one of the major avenues. Activity and density is clustered next to the road, while spacious residential compounds fill out the inner block. The rare connecting soi (side-street), inevitably jogs mid-block, and often turns into one-way traffic discouraging driving through. The combination of limited connecting roads and dense, even settlement results in one of Bangkok’s most notable features, the almost constant gridlock. At all hours of the day the streets are packed full of waiting cars. Thankfully, the Buddhist ethos means that almost no one honks; the cars just patiently move up a car length at a time, spewing more exhaust into the thick yellow haze.

The popular new Skytrain follows already established avenues, offering a substitute to the crawling traffic below. It is an efficient commerce machine, providing an air conditioned and captive audience with equal parts efficiency and marketing. Modern train cars host closed circuit televisions broadcasting music videos and advertisements until you reach one of the many shopping malls conveniently linked by a second floor pedestrian flyover directly to the station. No need to ever set foot on the street below. It is an environmentally controlled system that feeds on the ciy, an encapsulated and sanitized alternative to the hawker-filled humid streets outside. And it is filled. Clearly shopping is taken seriously, though it is a patent lawyer’s nightmare. Within sight of each other you can buy the real Louis Vuitton bag from the mall store, a grey market bag on the street, a knock-off next to that, or a Joe Louis look-alike next to that. Consumption of readily available foreign brands is tempered, however, by a striking culture of conformity and hierarchy. Fashion in Bangkok can loosely be expressed as variation on the uniform, with appearance obsessed youth giving studied personality to their communal outfits. Even the ubiquitous yellow royal insignia polo shirts (worn especially on Mondays to honor the king) are available in a variety of shapes and styles.

This uniformity can be extracted to the skyline, a generally prosaic collection of buildings that are guileless in their forms. They follow fairly straightforward aesthetic rules according to their typology (apartment tower, office, shop-house, mall, etc.), with certain elements that can be described as “flair”; gates, balconies, and signage act as ties, cufflinks and handkerchiefs. Built responses to the environment give the city a uniform scale: deep eave overhangs, ventilation block walls, pilotis, and fenestration eyebrows are lasting techniques used in contemporary construction. Over this basic urban fabric, however, is added a further accessory. Signage and advertising, supposedly temporary embellishment to the buildings, are hung like outrageous masks on the restrained facades. At busy intersections it is ordinary to see entire apartment facades shuttered with multi-story graphics; the streetscape of Bangkok is a dance of demure uniforms and crass costumes.

Contrasting with the profane world, sacred buildings exhibit a marked divergence in layout and decoration. Wats and palaces might resemble classic Ayutthaya houses in form, but they are blown up to super-human enormity and covered with dazzling ornamental gaudiness. Seemingly every architectural element reaches for the sky and glitters in the sun with some variety of precious appliqué. Not confined to serving the roads or canals, the compounds are ordered and spacious, with courtyards and ceremonial plazas allowing for generous views of the oversized spiritual architecture. The effect is one of peace and kitsch, repose and extravagance.

The primacy of Bangkok lays in its role as the royal city. It is the literal and figurative head of the nation, and the only true city. As the home of the king, it is merged with his image as a sort of timeless myth of Thailand. The adoration of Thais for their royal family and the present king, Bhumibol, is thus at least partly reflected in the inability of the national government to grow secondary cities like Chang Mai. Modeled directly on the previous Thai royal city of Ayutthaya, Krung Thep (the abbreviated version of the official 164 letter name, translated as “City of Angels”) grew out of the ashes of the former after it was sacked by the Burmese. The continuity began in finding a similar crook in the Chao Praya River, and platting a similar defensive layout. Additionally, many buildings were either transported or recreated.

The new location had strategic trading advantages that Ayutthaya never did, especially in being located closer to the sea for burgeoning international trade. Thailand shrewdly grew as a center for open trade and avoided colonization (the only nation in Southeast Asia to do so) by playing neighboring colonies of England, France and Portugal against each other. In order to further prevent dependency on Europe, the royal family decided to out-modernize the Europeans. Beginning in the 19th century they instituted a policy of progress and openness that made Bangkok one of the world’s most cosmopolitan cities. Without a single overseas master the city took in competing foreign ideas, resulting in the collage of styles found today.

Building typology in Bangkok is linked closely to its adjacent transportation method. Older canals beget stilt houses, newer roads beget shop houses, and modern transit corridors beget towers. Each type is a layer that is laid over the previous as the city is continuously upgraded. Originally all traffic was canal based and floating houses evolved into stilt houses to avoid flooding and tropical fauna. As roads became the infrastructure of choice in the 19th century, stilt houses gave way to multiple story shophouses, with generic retail and industry at grade and apartment housing above. In the latter half of the 20th century, as roads were overlaid with thoroughfares and rapid transit, the tower block emerged from the shop-house. Towers sport parking garages as tall as the shop-houses around them and reach 20-50 stories. Since they sit back from the infrastructure around them, they are also the first typology to eschew a front and back face. All exist side by side in the metropolis, often on top of each other. It is one of the pleasures of wandering Bangkok that at these overlapping moments you are simultaneously in a 19th, 20th, and 21st century city.

This study will focus on built remnants from two divergent eras: the canals that were responsible for Bangkok’s growth, and the abandoned skyscrapers that recall the uncontrolled hubris and resulting financial collapse of 1997. Each, in their own way, presents the tension between growth and preservation. Canals are viewed as central to the historic myth of Bangkok, but appear increasingly incompatible with the growth of the city. The ghost-skyscrapers, on the other hand, are an unwelcome souvenir from a painful era, but nonetheless present issues about the role and criteria of built heritage.

Bombay 3: Couryard Cricket

2006-11-19T10:38:00.002-05:00

CINEMAS: SITE

Map indicating private use (white) and civic (color)

The Regal in Colaba started the original cinema building boom and defined the Bombay typology. At the time of its opening in 1933 it was the height of modernity, and a civic jewel to match the Prince of Wales museum across Wellington Circle. Today the auditorium is rarely even half full. Like other theaters of this type it has a grand entrance and multiple story lobby reflected in the marquee detailing of the facade. Flanking the entrance, ground floor retail occupies the street, with one to two additional stories of offices and apartments depending on the side. These additional program elements wrap and protect the auditorium from the noisy streets outside and present a transitional zone to the neighboring urban fabric. There are 1200 seats in the audience chamber with one balcony, and the screen itself is set within a proscenium and small stage. The interiors have all been re-done since the original Art Deco design in a much less opulent style.

The Regal, like many of the Art-Deco cinemas, is heritage listed. Its particular listing requires the exterior of the building to remain unchanged, while the interior and program can be renovated. The tendancy is for the cinemas to be gutted and converted into upscale shopping centers, taking some marginal advantage of the large open space. But retail has no problem finding an outlet in the city; it grows like kudzu, filling in leftover, forgotten and negotiated space. Can there be a profitable solution that revisits the quasi-civic and social role that cinema once fulfilled?

ASIDE: JOIN THE BLUE BILLION

Cricket is officially more popular than Bollywood according to a recent Times of Bombay online poll: it was chosen 55% to 45% as the “new religion of India.” However questionable the methods, it is an indication of the rise of cricket. Within ten years it has gone from a gentlemen’s’ game among former colonies, to a $10 billion enterprise where cricketers rival movie stars in celebrity status. Recently the Indian national team, with Pepsi, has unveiled a new ad campaign starring mega movie star Shah Rukh Khan with the tagline “Join the blue billion,” a shocking reminder of the size of the fan base/market. However, as popularity for the sport has grown, the number of places to play has not.

In Bombay, the acceleration of population has led to a corresponding loss of open space. There is less than one square meter per person, compared with a recommended 16 sq. m/person. Most of this is found in the bundle of town greens called maidans in the old Fort area, only some of which are open to the public. Public gardens have extensive restrictions that rule out anything beyond walking and sitting. Elsewhere in the world the rise in urban population and lack of open space has meant a similar rise in urban sports. The ascendency of basketball as a world sport is only one signal of the shift from rural to urban. Thus it is not surprising to see the invention of indoor cricket, though still in its infancy, complete with a governing board and codified system of rules.

ASIDE: VERANDAS

Bombay’s most widespread architectural feature is the verandah. Arguably a Hindi word in origin, verandahs were developed in the Indian subcontinent as a response to heavy monsoon rains and hot, humid summers. Indigenously they covered ground floor patio spaces but have evolved into any of the deep, semi-screened balconies that surround buildings. In the chawl multi-family housing typology it is also the means of circulation and primary socializing area. They are, in effect, like front yards. Laundry is hung, plants are put out, and little shrines are erected. Often each zone will be painted a different color to indicate ownership.

It is also where the line of cleanliness begins. In a city with little municipal cleaning, the public areas reach a neglected griminess that looks and smells of pollution, trash and sewage. But personal spaces, beginning at the verandahs, are spotless. Great care is taken in maintaining the order and aesthetics, since it is the most public aspect of the household. They are also the best place to watch street theater. The railings are just the right height to lean on and watch the crowds go by. Removed from the pressing flow, dirt and noise below, they offer a rare moment in the city where you can gain some perspicuity. Open to one side and “owned” by the other, they are simultaneously circulation, front yards, and opera boxes.

CINEMAS: CRICKET/COURTYARD/HOUSING

I propose a new hybrid cricket courtyard/courtyard housing typology. It would combine indoor cricket fields called pitches set in a courtyard surrounded by housing. The raked auditorium would be “terraced” into individual pitches and covered with turf and rented out by the hour. Ground floor retail would additionally be converted into pitches, allowing street views into the games. With a new glazed roof structure cricket can be played all year long, even during the four months of monsoons.

The existing housing would turn inwards for views of the light-filled courtyard, no longer at odds with isolation requirements of a movie theater. By carving up the acoustic shell around the auditorium, a new verandah would be created where there was previously an enclosed hallway. The verandah would overlook the games below; tenants would become figurative stewards of the courtyard. The residents would have access to the pitches during nighttime hours, thereby encouraging more ownership over the shared space. The existing lobby for the theater would become a cricket oriented leisure enterprise with food, drinks and a viewing area. Since it is already the public face of the building, it would retain its role in drawing people in and exhibiting the action.

1. Terrace the auditorium in coordination with the structure. Convert the terraces into rentable indoor cricket pitches with turf. The pitch can be closed during certain hours to allow residents access. It can be rented out for weddings and other events.

2. Preserve the existing facade and floor plates. Develop the lobby into cricket related leisure zone. Retain screen and projection booth for displaying games taking place inside; anyone can be a star! For important screenings of national team matches the terraces can be converted into a viewing hall.

3. Punch through the auditorium shell, creating a verandah out of the existing hallway. Add stairways that act as seating for watching games.

4. Add color coded movable netting between pitches. Take advantage of Bombay’s newly relocated and modernized textile industry.

5. Replace opaque soundproof roof with transparent glazed courtyard structure. The courtyard can be used throughout the monsoon season.

Bombay 2: Cinema

2006-11-19T02:36:00.001-05:00

CINEMAS: BACKGROUND

Going to the cinema was historically one of the strongest collective links in a diverse and segmented nation. Families eagerly anticipated Fridays when the latest Bollywood offerings would be released. The notoriously rowdy cheaper seats were up front, while more genteel patrons could pay more for the balcony seats. Audiences would often watch their favorite films dozens of times, singing along and providing commentary during the screenings. Films that were really big might play continuously at a single screen theater for years. The cinemas fulfilled a quasi-civic role, providing a community escape that was simultaneously anonymous and unifying. In a nation and city comprised of so many disparate cultures and their attendant communalist (in the Indian usage of the word, “sectarian”) conflicts, it is rare to find this common ground.

The classic era of cinema design was the 1930’s. During this decade, Art Deco imported from Continental Europe and the United States was the preferred style. Theaters embraced this decorative modernism, becoming subtle symbols of a modern, independent India. On one end of Marine Drive the Regal was showing the great Indian myth-building epics of early Hindi cinema, while on the other end Gandhi was finalizing his self-rule and resistance doctrines. A succession of ever more sexy theaters opened from 1933 to 1938 in the most opulent period of building: The Regal, The Plaza, The Central, The New Empire, The Broadway, and culminating in the 2000 seat Eros across from Churchgate Railway Station. Each featured car parking, elevator lifts, air conditioning, and the latest audio-visual equipment. They were technological marvels covered in streamlined wrappers. Additionally, ground floor retail and housing above would provide supplemental income for the owners, while matching the scale of the neighboring buildings. Openings were not just to watch the movie, they were events with elephants and lights and glamour. Single screen construction continued through the 1960’s, incorporating contemporary fashions in their aesthetics, though tempered by India’s “self-reliance” policies. These later theaters combine a sort of space-age bachelor pad look with the local brand of socialist-realist construction. Notably, the Bombay typology of combining apartments and retail with the theater also continued.

Bombay was the natural backdrop for many films, especially in the post independence era. If the script called for new or modern, they shot Marine Drive; elegance was done at the Taj Motel; lushness was captured in the Oval Maidan; seediness in the backstreets of the cabbies. Films became a sort of propaganda for lifestyle and location, notably the burgeoning metropolis of Bombay. Of course the films were based on and shot in the city, but run through the fantasy factory of filmaking. The city was projected on screens across the nation; it is at least partially responsible for migrants relocating to the mythical city, especially the young runaway boys. Bollywood was a central player in selling the story of a progressive India, and often it took the shape of Bombay.

Bollywood productions are increasingly commodified, no longer reliant on “real” Bombay as a setting. Now most shooting is done abroad or on tightly controlled sets in the north of the city. Also evident is a shift in focus from the dream of a modern India to the dream of an affluent one. The new target audience is the 20 million NRI (Non Resident Indians) living abroad, particularly in London and New York where ticket prices can be ten times that in India and there is more disposable income for associated products. NRI revenue now accounts for 65% of the returns. Marine Drive in Bombay used to be the iconic location of emerging India; argueably it is now any given swanky London night club.

Today single screen theatres are obsolete and closing at an alarming rate. Since 1983, over one third of the 160 or so single screen theaters have shuttered. Multi-screen theaters are increasingly bigger and more diverse to lure patrons that might otherwise watch videos; alternative leisure activities are a requirement to justify the night out: restaurants, stores, bars, cafes, etc. Thus the mall is a more ideal economic location for the theater, where the hermetic environment can capture more revenue than any single activity. Often the movie itself is only a fraction of the overall revenue. Additional tax breaks by the state government compound the trend, as multi-screen cinemas are exempt the otherwise very high entertainment taxes (around 50% of the ticket price). Single screen theaters simply don’t make enough money to thrive, much less renovate. Some have enough nostalgic value (Eros, Liberty) to gain a reprieve, but how long can it last? Unless the theater is full most of the time, it cannot keep up. Thus they tend to play blue chip movies without venturing into more experimental or independent territory. Lacking revenue to renew and refurbish the theater the quality erodes. It might slink into B-movie action/sex films, or just fade into the fabric with shops or squatters taking over the lobby, as in the Strand.

Map of Bombay indicating railway lines and cinema locations

Viewed simply as objects, the theaters are unique in the city for two important reasons: location and shape. First, they occupy a privileged lot in each neighborhood, often associated with a railway station. A typical theater will be located on or near one of the corners of the city’s chowks (major intersections), along with municipal buildings and train stations. Second, they present a large volume of space inside a recognizable landmark. Most theaters have prominent towers above the marquee corner entrance, with shops and apartments that turn the corner and provide a smooth transition to the neighboring fabric. They are simultaneously sensitive and narcissistic. Inside, the auditoriums hold from 800 to 2000 seats with large open spans and typically one balcony; they are wombs away from the teeming streets outside. Today there are often insensitive additions in order to make up for the lost revenue: apartments, offices, and other unidentified boxes that help offset the cost of the movies.

Plans of various cinemas indicating theater (yellow) and apartments (white)

Bombay 1: Introduction

2006-11-07T03:04:00.001-05:00

CITY OF DREAMS
Bombay is choking on its own success, straining under the mass of 18 million inhabitants that could grow to be the largest city in the world. The streets are overloaded, the sewers overworked, the trains overfilled, and the rents overpriced; it is a city of crushing superlatives. Massive slums in the colors of tarpaulin blue and corrugated rust squeeze between million rupee high rises. After Dhaka, it is the densest city in the world, at 76,000 people per square mile. Daravi, near the airports and the largest slum in Asia, and packs in about a million people in little over a square mile.

It is also a relatively new city, or at least what you see is. Little more than an outpost until the 18th century, most of the fabric is comprised of concrete flats punctuated by massive neo-gothic colonial reminders. Because of the humidity, most buildings sprout a layer of mildew. It is simple to see how posh a place is: those who can afford it will repaint regularly to stave off the spreading green and black stains.

Originally named Bom Bahem (“Good Bay”) by the Portuguese, the present day peninsula was comprised of seven distinct islands. The British East India Company grew the settlement when they established their headquarters on the bay. Today the original island colony is unrecognizable, submerged and surrounded by fill. Distinct fortifications that used to protect the various islands are now found only in the naming of the districts like Fort, Bandra, and Malabar Hill.

The public streets are remarkably similar no matter which area: a riot of taxis, touts, pedestrians, buses, rickshaws, and the odd cow. Even the richest Malabar Hill residents have to step over sleeping families if they want to get a photocopy from the shack built in front of their exclusive gated condominium; of course it is more likely that a wallah would do it for them.

Because the original city is laid out along a thin north-south peninsula, the flows are limited to a few major arteries that can become intensely gridlocked. Think Manhattan without bridges or tunnels. New intersection flyovers, a pet project of the local government, sprout around the city and have had a marginal impact on relieving congestion. Several large scale projects have been in the works for years, but most locals roll their eyes when told of them. That said, traffic is relatively efficient considering the lack of municipal presence. Huge numbers of people manage to flow through the streets, and once you get the hang of system, it becomes tolerable. Vehicles fight it out in the middle, often overtaking in the oncoming lane, while the colonnaded sidewalks fill with informal retail. The strip between parked and moving vehicles becomes the pedestrian and bike zone. If you wish to walk somewhere quickly you use this area, otherwise you are forced to browse the bootleg DVDs and jewelry.

The common myth of Bombay as cosmopolitan melting pot has been shaken by a decade of riots and terrorism; during this time thousands have died in bombings and immolations. Yet outside these infrequent explosions, the city is quite safe on a day to day basis. Popular belief points to the 24 hour desire to make money that unites an otherwise disparate collection of people. The myriad religions and languages are more evident here than in New York or London: Hindu, Jain, Moslem, Buddhist, Christian, Zoroastrian, Sikh, Hindi, Tamil, Maratha, Parsi, Urdu, English, or often some hybrid of the above. The mix of languages and beliefs is strong and most Bombayites know the signifiers of each. Whether you say namaste or salaam (or something else) can be tricky for an outsider, but locals are well attuned to the differences.

Bombay has no shortage of thinkers and ideas. There are internationally recognized art and fiction scenes, and a healthy backbone of activism and academic involvement. Unfortunately, they are largely ignored when building projects are parceled out - as evidenced in the recently rebuilt textile mills area. Located in a factory belt in the heart of Bombay, the mills replaced the original suburban bungalows with industrial might in the 19th century. The first great wave of growth in Bombay can be largely attributed to the mills, with colonies of workers housed in chawls (single room flats with communal balconies and toilets) filling in the spaces around the factories. After World War Two, the mills went into a prolonged, state subsidized decline and have been mostly silent since the early 1980’s. The estimated $5 billion worth of property was originally slated for redevelopment with socially responsible open space and housing requirements, but in fact turned into a land grab by private developers. An environmental non-profit organization won a stay of building in 2005, but in April of 2006 the state’s highest court allowed the developers to proceed as before. Most of the old mill buildings have been torn down and replaced with luxury condominiums and expensive retail. Strangely the smokestacks have been preserved, like lonely middle fingers. Reuters, Deutsche Bank, Lord and Taylor, and McDonalds are the new tenants. At least for now, the small cadre of developers and their political allies carried the day. Lately, this cozy relationship has come under fire and more restrictions are being put into place, albeit too late for the mills.

The documented built heritage in Bombay overwhelmingly relates to the great 19th century colonial neo-gothic structures that dominate the old city skyline. Victoria Terminus, Bombay University, the High Court, and the Prince of Wales Museum all presented a relatively uniform stylistic framework that allowed for a flourish of Indo-Sarcenic details. They are unmistakably British, but have enough Indian interpretation to give off a sort of local pride. This genteel Bombay is often at odds with the hungry Bombay that is eager to take advantage of the post-1991 relaxing of international tariffs to push the city into the global limelight. This is the Bombay more in tune with the crush of street touts; it is the city that openly worships the Hindu goddess Lakshmi, who represents money and success. After all, you aren’t poor in Bombay, you just aren’t rich yet. However, the least obvious but perhaps the most lasting legacy of the genteel Bombay is the floor area ratio (FAR) restrictions. While cities of comparable size and density like Hong Kong and Seoul have an allowable FAR of 15, Bombay is limited to 2. This only increases the pressure on real estate.

Ultimately, Bombay is a city of dreams. It is choking because people come here in droves: it is freedom from the constrictions of village and caste life; it is the stock exchange and financial capital of one of the world’s biggest and fastest growing economies; and it is the location of one of the most prolific entertainment centers on the planet, the Hindi film industry known as Bollywood. Coinciding with Bollywood, and playing an important role in the city are the theaters in which the product is consumed. This study will focus on the classic cinemas of Bombay and their socially unifying role. The original star of Bollywood was the city itself and lavish cinemas were the primary means of carrying the message. They were wrapped up in a feedback loop of living the city and generating the myth of the city; each informed the other and the cinemas thrived. Today these older palaces of spectacle are anomalies that scrape by on nostalgia, while multiple screen complexes dominate box office sales and define the new Bombay landscape.

India aside: Chawls

2006-11-07T02:34:00.000-05:00

CHAWLS

During the middle of the 19^th century Bombay experienced an economic boom when it took up the slack in the textile industry left by the American Civil War. Coupled with the completion of the Suez Canal, Bombay assumed a primary role in manufacturing and processing cotton and other textiles. The mills were built on the then edge of the city, in the suburbs that originally held the elite’s bungalows. Around the factories, the chawl typology of multi-unit housing arose. Originally intended as single room occupancy units for the men working the shifts, they quickly filled with entire families moving from the uncertain life of the countryside. Chawls comprise several floors of single room units connected by a shared verandah and bathroom. The units are often as little as ten feet wide and fifteen feet deep. The buildings are mostly structural brick covered with decorative concrete, and each unit has a wooden door and window that will be ornamented and painted by the tenant. Bathrooms represent the biggest challenge to living in chawls, since they were intended for a smaller group of male only users. Naturally families and children strain the limited facilities and often as not they are broken in some fashion. Aside from the plumbing, however, the rooms themselves present a better alternative to the unreliable shacks on the street and are often inhabited by city municipal employees. They are seen as the stepping stone to an apartment with bathroom en suite, the gold standard for Bombayites.

There are some who point to chawls as a relatively successful solution to housing the millions of slum dwellers in Bombay (an estimated 60% of the population of 18 million live in shacks with little or no access to sanitation or drinking water). But two major planning obstacles exist that hinder low cost housing supply: the limit on floor-area-ratio (FAR) and rent control. Even while developing into the second densest city in the world, the allowable FAR of two has made it difficult for builders to make cost effective high density housing. Cities with similar populations and densities such as Seoul and Hong Kong allow an FAR of fifteen. Furthermore, after construction is complete, strict rent control laws discourage maintenance and improvements. Most landlords will simply wait until a building is deemed structurally unsafe, and then re-build as something more profitable. These hurdles each represent a different era that has passed. The FAR limit remains from the genteel colonial time, when uniformly low apartment buildings in leafy streets were punctuated by civic gothic towers at the intersections. The hierarchy was admirable, but hardly justifies the conditions of millions of slum dwellers. And rent control is a voter palliative, originally installed for the working poor moving to the city and preyed upon by slumlords. No politician wants to risk making rent control their crusade. These restrictions are exacerbated by corruption that consistently ranks among the worst in the world. The capricious nature of rules enforcement means that smaller, less profitable, and more challenging projects have a lesser chance of completion than blockbuster deals that generate money for the city coffers (and officials’ pockets). Real estate already hemmed in by natural boundaries has the additional burden of laws that make if very difficult to re-create the chawl typology in the current environment. The chawl might be the answer to housing the poor, but there are several political steps that need to be taken before it can do so.

India aside: Strip villages

2006-11-07T01:59:00.000-05:00

STRIP VILLAGES

There is a pure and ubiquitous form of strip mall that springs up along northern India’s village highways, particularly the roads built prior to the year 2000. These roadways are two-lane affairs, littered with potholes and filled with traffic of all sorts; camels pulling carts, impossibly laden rickshaws, intercity buses, brightly painted trucks and white Ambassadors all negotiate the little usable asphalt. The combination of lack of surface and abundance of transport means that nobody gets anywhere in a hurry. Even speedy new cars can only average about 30 m.p.h. on the major roads. The staple architectural result of this pace is the standardized concrete garage strips that gather in bundles where a highway passes near a town. They are mostly single story with hopeful fingers of rebar sticking up at the roof or terrace level, waiting for enough money to move to the second story. Every now and again a unit will have added a second floor that resembles a snaggle-tooth in the gums of the village. How old and/or prosperous a village is can be determined by how many second floor units there are.

The buildings are set back about fifty feet from the road to allow for parking, temporary stalls and display. Each unit measures about twenty feet deep by fifteen feet wide, and will often snake in collections of four to six. They all face the street, like monastery cells with garage doors flanking a courtyard of traffic. Every third unit or so, a thin shared staircase will lead to the roof/terrace, where storage and drying away from the dirt occurs. The less frequent second floor additions will usually have a balcony, also facing the street. Surfaces are painted and festooned with signage; advertisements are the only decoration, at least which can be seen from 30 m.p.h. These strips will continue for as much as a kilometer or two, depending on the size of the town. Between the strips traffic moves slowly as people, animals and carts shuffle among the shops, rendering it akin to driving through a pedestrian mall.

Istanbul 5 - Trellis Maximus

2006-10-14T14:33:00.000-04:00

HIPPODROME: SITE

Piece by piece the hippodrome, formerly one of the most monumental buildings in the city at 500 meters long and 120 meters wide, has been broken down into the fragments of park and road that are found today in what is called At Meydanı (Square of Horses). This massive palace of spectacle is relegated to sidebar anecdotes in tour guides. The 30,000 killed in the Nika revolt sounds huge, but the physical presence of the building that brought them together is nowhere to be seen. This massive piece of the city is gone, traced by the shortened roadway and crumbling but still muscular sphendome. Constantine has been emasculated.

Almost everyone in the area is a visitor or serving the visitors. The hippodrome site is pretty close to ground zero for tourism. It is within walking distance to the four most visited places: the Blue Mosque, the Hagia Sophia, the Covered Market, and Topkapı Palace. And yet, the park is curiously vacant. With the July and August sun bearing down during prime tourist season, the few people that are in the At Meydanı are either quickly getting their fill of the monuments, or are clustered in the shade of one of the small trees. It doesn’t have the shade of the courtyard of the Blue Mosque, the fountain of the central garden, or the refreshments of nearby tea gardens. Neither does it have the monumentality of the nearby sites; as such, it is reduced to a curious footnote between bigger and better things.

HIPPODROME: SHAPING THE SUN

In a climate with an abundance of hot sun and cooling breezes it is natural that a tradition of screens and trellises would develop. Pervasive carved window screens did triple duty of keeping prying eyes and the sun out, and allowing air circulation in. They are mostly simple masonry affairs, sturdy and meant to convey security, though often in the palaces they achieve a high degree of fragility that belies their stone origins. This mediation between dark and light is found everywhere from Byzantine churches to the Ottoman baths; these buildings prized shade and darkness as much as light. The threshold between dark and light, inside and outside, was an opportunity to shape the light into the formal mode of that era.

A more quotidian and prevalent form of sun control are the many overhead trellises around the city. Many streets have this form of public covering, negotiating between several different buildings. It usually covers a café, where it is normal to rest at length while playing backgammon and drinking tea. This is one of the most common scenes in Istanbul, whether in Sultanahmet or Zeytinburnu (though in Levent it is more likely you will find umbrellas and a Starbucks). The trellises usually host thick vines, allowing only dappled light to hit the seats below, which die off in the winter time when it is more appropriate to have direct sunlight.

HIPPODROME: TRELLIS MAXIMUS

My proposal is to add a monumental trellis to the former space of the hippodrome, roughly the height and size of the original structure. This would float above the space that is presently broken up by surrounding buildings, paths, trees and street furniture, and allow a vision of the scale of the original structure. Additionally, it would provide much needed shade to the park. Since so much of the ground of the former hippodrome is occupied, a trellis floating about 30 meters above would pass over the impediments below, and approximate the height of the former building. It would unify the area and become an attraction and point of discussion in its own right, a new entry in the tourist itinerary.

The site would be cleared of as many obstacles (trees, fences, light poles, etc.) as possible, allowing once again a view along the length of the spina. Necessary vehicle traffic would still follow the path of the old track, though calmed for the additional visitors using the park and viewing sphendome. Ideally the school on the sphendome would eventually be torn down (and added to the recycled park wall, of course), freeing up the privileged axial view of the Sea of Marmara from the city center.

The trellis would use an Ottoman motif (why not vine leaves?) for the screen, conflating multiple cultural histories in the new structure. The sun screen would employ ceramic technology, an industry that reached its high point in the Iznik tiles covering the Blue Mosque interior, and used today for everything from tourist plates to covering the space shuttle. At night, the ceramic screen could be lit from below, eliminating the need for the numerous pole fixtures, and during the day, it would glisten in the sun while giving shade. The goal would be to take advantage of the already existing Turkish ceramic industry, producing a scintillating, monumental structure that would provide highly practical sun protection.

Istanbul 4 - Theodosius Jumps

2006-10-14T13:49:00.000-04:00

HARBOR WALL: SITE

The urban renewal in the 1980’s that exposed the harbor wall also created a park where there once was a crowded fishing and maritime industry. Preservationists decried this sterilization for tearing down more than a few treasures that stood in the way, although there are a handful of historic structures trapped in peculiar traffic islands. Over the past 20 years there has been an admirable effort to clean the Golden Horn, so that today it is common to see people swimming and fishing in it. It no longer has the stench of pollution, and is seen again as an amenity, this time for recreation instead of industry. It is a common story around the world, and as the water again gains in popularity, so does the park. People arrive early on the weekends to stake a claim, and those who arrive later are relegated to the zone by the street. The waterfront and roadfront are two different worlds, though due to the demand, both are filled.

The park is heavily used by families picnicking, but the traffic is bad. It is dirty and noisy, and creates a modern wall of noise and danger that separates the neighborhood from the waterfront and impinges upon their recreation. Often illegally parked cars provide the only filter between the activities and the high speed roadway. The noise is intense and the grilled food acquires the unfortunate flavor of road pollution. Today’s marauding hordes are buses and taxis.

HARBOR WALL: THE RECYCLED CITY

The old city walls present an alternative, possibly heterodox, version of preservation. It is often stated that Istanbul is a city of layers, but more precisely, it is a city of layered conquest. There have been many distinct masters of the city, and each time the city was reborn in the image of the conqueror. Byzas.…Constantine…Justinian…Theodosius…Mehmet…Ataturk…Dalan…Topbaş…at each transition, the contested city became an urban canvas on which the projections of the new authority were writ. The Byzantine Milion (the Golden Milestone) was disassembled to construct a nearby water tower. The Roman Basilica Cistern is supported by 336 columns taken from the extent of the empire; Süleyman took the top tier from the hippodrome and used it in part to support his mosque complex.

No where is this recycling more evident than in the city walls. Looking closely at the walls you will see column pieces, entablature, gravestones, steps and other miscellany of the past. It is a masonry soup of losers; civilizations consigned not to the trash heap of history, but the recycling bin. There was also a practical reason for the layering of disparate materials: the diverse material properties would react to earthquakes differently and make the wall less likely to fail catastrophically. Great works that once indicated wealth and power in turn made ample filler. The first line of defense was comprised of the cultural oeuvre of the previous empire.

HARBOR WALL: THEODOSIUS JUMPS

I propose a recycled and repositioned harbor wall, fortifying the park against the proximate undesirable vehicles. But more than a wall, it would be a repository for all the fast diminishing cultural artifacts in the city. Over time it would increase at the pace of the renewal of the city. As historic structures are disassembled, they would be added to the new wall in discreet segments approximately half a meter high. Each segment would represent one “lost” project recycled back into a new use. The segments would march along the park where they are needed, and leapfrog over defined thresholds and areas where the park is not used for recreation. After the approximately two kilometers of park is lined, a second layer would begin snaking back to the beginning. Instead of the current condition of tertiary heritage being simply thrown out or lost as aggregate in new projects, the new park wall would be a zone of collection and growth. Thus the wall would mature, acting as a barometer of urban renewal. The taller the wall, the more things lost, the more progress gained.

At the same time, recreation in the park would be protected from the traffic on Abdülezel Paşa Avenue on the other side of the wall. At first it would simply act as a line of definition, but in time would grow above the height of cars and tour buses. Grilled meat wouldn’t taste like exhaust anymore. Children would kick balls against the wall, perhaps hitting a Byzantine relief. People would lean against Roman bricks and columns. Thresholds in the wall would accommodate sidewalks and the few building uses, and in places where the park is too thin to be usable, the wall would disappear, giving the drivers a periodic view of the Golden Horn. Because each segment would be a discrete demolition project, the final wall would be a sort of calico of competing works, all laid to rest in the same format. Between segments, a small space would allow the projects to “breathe” and give glimpses of the other side.

Istanbul 3 - Hippodrome

2006-10-14T13:48:00.001-04:00

PANEM ET CIRCENSES

“Two things only the people anxiously desire,
Bread and circuses.” (Juvenal c. 60-130)

The Hippodrome was the center of social and processional life in the Roman Era, and continued to be a place of public demonstration and celebration through the Ottoman Era. This colossal space functioned as the main repository of spectacle, long after the original structure of tiered seating was torn down and the original track was buried beneath 4 meters of new roadways; until the 20th century Sultans still celebrated auspicious events like their son’s circumcision there. It is today known primarily for the three monuments that align with the original spina, spine, the Column of Constantine, the Serpent Column, and the Egyptian Obelisk. What was once one of great manifestations of the circus in one of the great cities in the world is reduced to three columns.

Almost every text today lists the same stories and descriptions, but with slightly different statistics. Depending on what source we use, the numbers can vary: its width was between 117.5 and 127 meters; its length was between 450 and 525 meters; it held between 60,000 and 100,000 spectators; it was begun between 196 A.D. and 203 A.D. by Septimius Severus, and enlarged to its largest size by Constantine. There are no original measured drawings, only images after its disassembly. This limited and varied reportage is likely due to the inbred nature of the few authentic sources. Much of the city, including the Hippodrome, had been laid to waste in a pair of three day sackings by the Crusaders in 1204, and the Ottoman in the 1453. This was the state of the Constantinople when classical scholars began chronicling the Byzantine city. By the time Petrus Gyllius arrived in the 1540’s, he had to piece together the former city using the 5th century Roman catalogue Notitia Urbis Constantinopolis. Many researchers have followed, but the resulting body of work reads like each era’s variation on the theme. As the facts have been transmitted into tourism texts, one can’t help but sense a certain amount of reductionist inbreeding. As described today, the few physical traces are augmented by the same juicy history:

After enlargement by Constantine, the factions supporting the charioteers coalesced into the greens, representing the poorest (green with envy?), and the blues, representing the rich merchants (blue bloods?). In the early days of Justinian’s reign in 532 A.D, both factions revolted and organized in the Hippodrome chanting, “Nikka” or Greek for “Victory.” They were mercilessly slaughtered and 30,000 were supposedly buried in the track. To atone for this gruesome event Justinian built the Hagia Sophia, one of the wonders of the modern world. While the factions never quite recovered their intensity, the Hippodrome continued to be a social center. It was supposedly open 24 hours per day, and people could gather when they wanted.

Without the centralizing agent of the spectacle it had fallen into disrepair even by the time the Crusaders sacked it. It was further eroded when Ibrahim Paşa took the marble steps for his palace, which he built in 1523 over the ruins of north-west seats. Süleyman’s Mosque complex took the columns and entablature from the top tier in the 1550’s. Ahmet’s Mosque complex (The Blue Mosque) leveled what was remaining in 1609, probably using it as building material. Napoleon pilfered some remaining monuments from the area in 1797. At the turn of 1800, all that remained were the three columns, the sphendome (semi-circular end), and the space around the expunged former structure. In the mid 19th century, a school complex was built over the sphendome, shortening the original track alignment to its present day location.

The current park and street lie 4.5 meters above the old track, covering untold fragments; the best view of the original surface is in the pits surrounding the three columns. Recently one of the royal seats was found, but bureaucracy and lack of funding holds up any further digging. Meanwhile, the park in the middle is a transient space for visitors. Since the high season for tourism in Istanbul occurs during the hottest months of the year, shade is in high demand. The benches are mostly located along the exposed paths, often remaining empty while a shady spot of grass will fill up. Coupled with the taxis and buses racing around the square, most people will move on to the surrounding tea gardens or buildings after a cursory visit to the columns.

The sphendome is today the most impressive remnant of the Hippodrome, and one of the more surprising finds in the city. Istanbul’s dramatic topography required that the end of the Hippodrome be supported by a 40 meter tall retaining structure. This exposed end led to an underground system of rooms where the horses and services were kept. It is not as often mentioned in the tourism books, but today this presents a sheer drop of 30 meters and splendid views if you can get into the school yard. H.G. Dwight lamented the loss of this extraordinary space in the city in 1915:

"I wish the edifices encumbering the sphendome of the Hippodrome might be sold as building material, in order to give back to the city its supreme ornament of a sea view. Imagine what such a wide blue vision might be, seen from the heart of the town – perhaps through a dark green semi-circle of cypresses!"

Now the base of the sphendome is unceremoniously surrounded by a parking lot with nets catching falling debris. The former arches have since been bricked in and plants have taken over the wall. Traces of former buildings adorn the bricks. Sometime during the Ottoman Era, the underside of the former Hippodrome was converted into a cistern, which today still has water in it. There is a local preservation group pushing to open up the sphendome for archaeological study, and ultimately restore this remaining fragment. No current vantage point gives an adequate panorama of the 500(?) meter long expanse. In short, what was once a singular spectacle and orienting device is only grasped in a series of discrete moments.

Istanbul 2 - Harbor Walls

2006-10-14T13:46:00.002-04:00

HARBOR WALLS

Contrary to Zeynep Celik’s claim that “the city lost its face on the Golden Horn” when the 1980’s municipal government performed some heavy handed urban renewal, it actually sloughed off an acquired layer of industry that was not present when the original defensive harbor walls were built. The chaotic and colorful collection of fishing shacks and storage buildings may have been lost, but the city walls were brought back to light. For several hundred years these walls were subsumed into the workmanlike fabric of the Fener neighborhood, becoming so much impediment and building material. Over the years, houses were built through them, chunks were knocked down for roads, and structures were perched over them. Walls that once repelled the Huns are today used to prop up living rooms.

The original system of walls was built under the reign of Theodosius II to enclose an expanded Constantinople in 413. The harbor walls along the Golden Horn were the lowest and weakest in defense terms, with the bulk of the effort going to the western front that could be easily attacked by land. The Marmara Sea walls, that could be easily reached by boat, were somewhere in between. The Golden Horn had the noteworthy security of two towers that would stretch a chain across the inlet to prevent ships from entering.

The western walls, known today as the Theodosian Walls, are the most intact and easily viewed piece of the original system. There have been numerous archaeological studies and ongoing efforts to rebuild them have led to a patchwork of impressive monumental sections, though the veracity of these reconstructed sections is questionable. Swaths of grassy landscape make viewing these walls relatively easy and approachable. Since they stretch seven kilometers from the Golden Horn to the Marmara, a popular way to see them is via bus or car; a high speed motorway conveniently follows the walls, in places where the moat would have been. They are still one of the most scenic monuments in the city, with their picturesque air of decay conforming to the popular notion of Istanbul as a fading old man.

"I have seen the ruins of Athens, of Ephesus, and Delphi: I have traversed the great part of Turkey and many other parts of Europe, and some of Asia; but I never beheld a work of nature or art which yielded an impression like the prospect on each side from the Seven Towers to the end of the Golden Horn" (Lord Byron)

The Marmara walls are in decent shape, though exhibit more vernacular use than the western walls. Due to the steep topography of the city, many houses have been built up on the inner side and to varying degrees poke through or hang over into the mostly unused parkland below. Compared to the walls on the Golden Horn, the Marmara walls are mostly discernible as an object, and are noted in most guidebooks for viewing. However, for the purposes of this study, the eroded harbor walls along the Golden Horn in the Fener neighborhood are the most compelling.

The Golden Horn was considered one of the greatest natural harbors in the world. Coupled with the growth of the “new” city in Galata, the walls along the Gold Horn tell the story of the city’s desire to escape its imperial confines. Military tactics in the 19th century made city walls obsolete, and the fortifications along the Golden Horn were the first to be subsumed by more important economies facilitated by the harbor. Istanbul grew to the north, with the Golden Horn and the independently international mercantile city of Galata as the center of gravity in the 18th through the 20th centuries. The stronger the flow of traffic, the more the wall was eroded. Most of the urban landscape in Eminönü, near the busy Galata Bridge and ferry landings, is barren of the once vital harbor walls.

In this sense the entire wall system traces the pressure of urban flows. The southern and western walls were allowed to remain since the neighborhoods had no specific need to communicate through them, and regional arteries of traffic are aligned with historic trade routes through the original gates. Neighborhoods to the west remain some of the most conservative and isolated in spite of their proximity to the tourist friendly old city. The sea walls to the south haven’t had any pressure for access since the Theodosian Harbor silted up in the 8th century. The northern harbor walls, on the other hand, display the increasing pull of international trade to the north.

The harbor wall has lost its original use of keeping enemies out and now sits on land that is used for shops, garages, restaurants, and other uses related to newer economies. In many ways it is a nuisance, and is treated as such. Originally it had 12 well defended gates that could be closed in times of threat; today there are at least 24 roads that lead down to the waterfront, and numerous other ad hoc openings. Its original purpose as an impediment is now problematic considering the city’s rapprochement with the Golden Horn.

In the Fener neighborhood, the walls reach their palimpsest apex, where a constant siege is taking place by the denizens on the walls. The walls are eroded, punctured, mounted, patched up and otherwise occupied in the rough desire to improve individual surroundings. Many buildings today use the walls for structure, rendering the wall as an independent object null. It has become a hybrid of the city, co-opted into the fabric in many small stages. In most cases it is reduced to 3-4 meters tall. A generous rough estimate would place the amount of wall remaining at 20% or less along the Golden Horn. That would mean that somewhere around 130,000 cubic meters is missing, enough to fill the Hagia Sophia. Sometimes a nice café will strategically re-build the wall in order to highlight its venerable location, but the bricks and mortar are clearly new. Other times the wall is a highly utilitarian enclosure, and concrete will be used to fill in the missing bits. Most often, though, it is in the way, and windows and doors are carved out of something meant to repel cannonballs.

Istanbul 1 - Introduction

2006-10-14T13:31:00.002-04:00

CITY OF LAYERS

Like several times in its past, Istanbul has exploded in population and income to become a truly global city. Today the population stands at around 11 million, one of the largest cities in Europe or Asia, and is Turkey’s foremost economic domain. Agricultural policies in the post war era, as well as a long simmering war with the Kurdish population has led to a dramatic immigration from the rural lands. The quirky Turkish law that allows any structure built overnight to remain led to a black market economy of gecekondu, literally overnight housing, for this migrant population. As much as 60% of the city may have originally been built this way. This newly relocated and underemployed population provides for the highly energetic service economy. Even small cafes and shops have half a dozen staff catering to you. This remarkable level of service both enhances and defines the tourist experience; the competition to hook a sale leads to the gauntlet of “hey mister” cries that can tire out even the sturdiest of visitors.

Its location between Europe and Asia makes Istanbul an intriguing destination for each continent to get an accessible taste of the other. Flights from both Frankfurt and Cairo routinely run $100 and take only 2 hours. Its proximity and allure to different cultural spheres has made it one of Europe and Asia’s fastest growing tourist destinations. However, this liminal position means that it is also subject to greater vicissitudes of visitors during good and bad times. This year tourism from the west is down due to the combined news of the bird flu, renewed terrorism by the Kurdish PKK, and war in the Middle East. Tourism from the east remains strong and likely will continue to grow with the recent reawakening of Islamic pride in Turkey; seeing the Sultan Ahmet Mosque during Friday prayer is an awesome sight because of the numbers of religious tourists in collective prayer.

In addition to being a gateway to the “other,” Istanbul is also claimed by multiple cultures; depending on whom you ask, Constantinople either “fell” or was “conquered” in 1453. Greeks, Romans, Christians, Moslems, Turks, Hittites, and Mongols have in time ruled. This piling on of conquest has resulted in a city uniquely endowed with cultural heritage. As a world center of commerce and empire for 2500 years, Istanbul simply cannot dig without unearthing its past: this year, when excavating for a railway tunnel under the Bosporus, construction workers discovered a rare intact 4th century port. It is true that relics continue to disappear at an alarming rate, but it is difficult to persuade the general public of the danger. The city is the equivalent of a rain forest of antiquities.

The extent of the tourist city is neatly indicated by the Plan Tours bus route. For only €20 one can get a grip on the city in 58 bite sized chunks. Not included on the tour is the new middle class city. Skyscrapers are kept at a healthy distance from the old city after some unfortunate examples were built in nearby Beşiktaş and Taksim; the wildly popular Kanyon Mall in Levent by Jerde Partnership, connected by a quiet and clean metro has security check-in; Kemer Country, designed in part by Andreas Duany, is a suburb that blends Ottoman stylings on an American suburban superstructure:

"These are modern homes, each one carefully designed to blend in not only with their lovingly landscaped setting but with a tradition of architecture and the inspiration of the great Turkish architect Mimar Sinan, whose awesome aqueducts rise up in the distance. This is Istanbul? As seen from Kemer Country." (From KemerCountry.com)

Kanyon Mall by Jerde Partnership

The old city is kept free of these new symbols of growth, and in fact might be regressing to an earlier form as the city government pushes forward with plans to rebuild several streets in their best approximation of the Ottoman style. This is clearly the acceptable historic era, exhibiting the once great Turkish empire while also satisfying the contemporary traveling public’s desire for a sensory experience with the past. What better way to really see Istanbul/Constantinople than to wander the “same” streets that beguiled Pierre Loti? After all, when you’ve come this far, you don’t want to see concrete government buildings. This is the heart of cultural tourism: not to see the re-creations (we go to Miniatürk for that), but to be among the aura of the original. Thus, the skyscrapers and growing middle class of new Turkey are banished to the outskirts like the North African banlieus of Paris. They are neither seen nor heard and the old city can go back to being its timeless self.

This study will focus on two remnants of the fallen city, artifacts that once demonstrated greatness, but now get in the way. As such they have been pulled into the fabric of the city by both municipal projects and individuals. First, the old city walls, as in so many contemporary cities, are obsolete. They are also ugly; while many remark on their impressive scale, few will wax on their aesthetic value. Because of their original use of providing safety, they are at odds with contemporary needs for free flowing communication. This combination makes them an interesting tool with which to read the growth of the city. Second, the former Hippodrome is today conspicuously absent from the scene. It is often remarked upon in tourist guides and occupies an almost mythical role in the history of the city, but is represented by three decaying monuments and a strangely anonymous 40 meter wall.

Ceramics high and low

2006-09-05T11:05:00.000-04:00

Ceramics wrap seemingly every other building in Istanbul. It is the recognizable form of decoration on many of the great monuments, and is a particular favorite of collectors and tours coming to

Turkey

. The Blue Mosque (Ahmetiye Cami) is perhaps the high point of the famous Iznik tile period, adorned with the trademark blue and green flower motifs of the 17^th century. The interior of the mosque is stunning. Handmade tiles cover seemingly every wall, often in symmetrical arrangements that are unique from bay to bay. They still give the mosque its characteristically bright and sunny feeling; it is hard to believe that many of the tiles are almost 400 years old. Floral motifs in particular became a high art in Ottoman Turkey, since their Sunni form of Islam didn’t allow animal or human form in a place of worship. Tulips, lotuses and roses wrap together in seemingly organic forms that belie rigid geometric and mathematical logic. One can spend an entire afternoon walking the circumference of the interior of the Blue Mosque, soaking in this hybrid of art and science. Even better, you can go down the street to the covered bazaar and buy the “same” tiles for a few dollars. The ceramic business is alive and thriving. You can take home loads of cheap mass produced tiles from the markets, or pick out a plate of the highest quality made, of course, in the authentic tradition. You can even play sultan: order custom designed work from Iznik Foundation over the internet and it will be shipped to your home. Like Bordeaux wine, Parmesan cheese, Kobe beef and other region-based brands, it is often a target of copying by outsiders and fiercely protected by the authentic/original source.

In contrast to this “high” form of ceramics, there is also a more prevalent “low” form (though not yet considered part of the heritage of the city): most post-war apartment buildings are covered in sheets of small ceramic tiles. They are a cheap, durable and easy to clean covering for the hastily constructed buildings, often arranged in motifs and colorful patterns. These buildings, known as yap/sat (literally “build/sell”) are made when a gecekondu land owner who has no money goes into partnership with a local builder who also has limited funds. They will divide the new building in half, each owner taking, say, four of the eight new units. Thus someone who previously owned one unit can now make some additional income without the investment, and a builder will acquire property for the material and labor investment. Much of the city grew this way after the 1950’s. The ubiquitous yap/sat buildings make up a significant portion of the fabric, but also are the first to be targeted for renewal by the government eager to clean up the look and feel of the city. The ceramics that decorate these workmanlike buildings are reminiscent of the Turkish tradition of ornamental tile work. Rolled in sheets, they are combined in different ways on each building, each owner’s personal take on beautification. Since they mostly come from the same limited family of products, the tens of thousands of buildings around the city are linked by their prosaic apartment typology and glowing ceramic tile wrappers.

Drizzled grafitti

2006-07-16T17:39:00.000-04:00

Don’t walk down the street in Istanbul in sandals unless you want wet feet. In this dry and dusty city the shopkeepers keep a constant drizzle of water in front of their establishments, usually dispersed from old plastic drinking water bottles. Because the streets are so full of people and the proprietors parcel out the water one bottle at a time, there tends to be as much dry land as wet after they are done. The resulting patterns create a layer of wet filigree that slowly dries on top of the textures of the paving materials. Some ambitious proprietors go so far as to intentionally create designs that might pass for Ottoman calligraphy. It is a temporal scene that is loose, idiosyncratic, and beautiful. These private claims on the public way bring to mind the nature of graffiti in its most basic etymological form, from “Italian, diminutive of graffio, a scratching, scribble” (American Heritage Dictionary). Like this timeless phenomenon now known as “tagging,” each graffiti waterer is in a sense marking his territory, carving it out with entrepreneurial spirit for as long as it takes the water to dry.

The first thing one notices about watering the street is the decadence of the practice in a hot climate with only marginal access to potable water for the 12 million people that live here. Or maybe it’s as good a use as any for the tap water often containing bacteria from the aging plumbing rendering it unsanitary for many. Regardless, there is also a question of whether or not there is an improvement. If you ask any shop owner he will tell you that it keeps the dust down. After all, the streets are unquestionably dusty, but do they really need to be muddy? The slick of water and street filth make walking slippery and arguably unhygienic. When you get home and knock the collected muck off your shoes it is hard to reminisce about the aesthetic value of the grime turning your new shoes black. The standing water only contributes to the miasma that afflicts the city on hot summer days.

On Sunday mornings the full scale cleaning of the streets occurs. Shops bring out the hoses, squeegees and soap and really scour their stoops. It is an impressive sight, the public way cleaned in so many small pieces, with each contribution adding to the small river running down the center of the inversely crowned street. Thus, the middle of the street is rendered off limits, a collective stream of street washings.

The municipal authorities are complicit in this practice. Streets are carefully constructed in order to capture any water that doesn’t turn to steam and shed it from the premises. In many of the old neighborhoods this is quite a challenge; the cacophony of dimensions, angles and intersections makes standardization more than a challenge. Ultimately, the square paver of Turkish granite becomes the building block of the larger street. The square is adaptable to be laid in any direction and is easily broken to create all of the unique shapes needed at any of the myriad changes in direction. Pavers are laid by hand using strings struck between guide rods and the resulting street is sloped subtly to a swale to guide the runoff to various city drains. Old world technique results in a largely effective machine.

And the ablutions go on. The splattered moiré reclaims the street every day as the sun gets high and hot, and the foot traffic gets heavy and relentless. It is wiped and smeared by the teaming pedestrians and vehicles, and dries quickly in the intense summer heat. A rug merchant near Sultanahmet drizzles intricate figure-8’s, while the manager of Şark restaurant in Beyoğlu splashes wide heavy arcs. This ephemeral graffiti on the city streets appears as quickly as it disappears. It makes you jump, dance and slip, adding another layer to this already most multi-layered of cities. As the last blotches steam from the pavers, the shop owner returns with his water bottle and creates another sudden masterpiece or mess, depending on his degree of pride and flourish.

-Istanbul July 11, 2006

First impressions

2006-07-05T05:14:00.000-04:00

I have arrived in Istanbul with anticipation for the personal journey of exploration that the Rotch allows, but also with trepidation for accomplishing something contributory to the wider architectural discourse in my relatively short time here. After doing some preliminary research it is of course clear that myriad books and academics have already covered this incredible city more than I could ever dream of. So, personally, I must re-frame the goal of this travel from research to reconnaissance. Reconnaissance is a more appropriate term for the brief but intense periods of time spent in each of these locations, gathering information that will hopefully grant some insight into a niche that hasn’t already been covered, and that can be further explored on return trips (already thinking of coming back!) or back home academically. To that end, the results might be somewhat open-ended and less definitive. Likely, it will lead to more questions than answers. Ultimately, I hope there is a kernel of research that will be of interest to the community back in Boston

History here is king. The major monuments have incredible funds for cleaning, restoration and maintenance, and draw millions of visitors annually. This visitation directly contributes to a huge chunk of the municipal and national economy, buoyed by the fact that Turkey is relatively inexpensive for most visitors (though rapidly catching up with Europe). Houses in the older parts of the city go for a premium if they have a piece of a Roman wall or Ottoman staircase, which is not uncommon. In a city so layered with heritage, there is a realty market for history. Thus, Istanbul actually has a deep ethos of preserving their heritage, if only for speculation. The sheer volume of artifacts here means that almost every construction endeavor will unearth another piece of history. In many ways, it is easier to incorporate it than to destroy it. Most streets have an old wall or gate on it, often covered with weeds and with a pipe running through it. This accretion of tertiary artifacts gives the city an air of dilapidated energy when you step away from the shining monuments reserved for tourism. Multi family apartments step around a garden terrace that might be 50 or 500 years old, modern streets avoid crumbling wooden houses pinched between concrete buildings, and metal staircases are bolted to steps that might have led to an Ottoman medrese. Turkey, in contrast to the other cities on my itinerary, appears to possess the greatest desire for keeping the little bits of its past. This isn’t necessarily due to some unique affinity for history, but rather the economics of it all, since there is obvious incentive in the local market. While there are museums with great collections here, the city itself is the greatest compilation of antiquities, in situ and squeezed between cell phone shops and internet cafes.

A promising area of inquiry seems to be the Golden Horn, the river that splits Eminönü from Beyolu, historically an area of heavy marine industry. As the technology and needs of marine trade demand larger, deeper ports, former working waterfronts are being transformed for recreation and public consumption. It is a worldwide phenomenon and the Golden Horn is no different. The southern bank, Balat and Fener, is a very poor neighborhood mostly of immigrants from Eastern Turkey, separated from the Golden Horn by a traffic choked artery. It was part of the original Byzantium and the old city wall still runs along the river, with reclaimed land along the banks.

The northern bank on the other hand, Karaköy, is slated to become a model development for the New Istanbul, with mixed-use housing and cultural facilities. It is to be an exemplar of the progressive, international and optimistic Istanbul. No longer will the city be under the dusty blanket of the lost Ottoman empire; no longer will it be the city of hüzün (collective melancholy), as Orhan Pamuk writes. The New Istanbul will be one of culture, specifically a unique crossroads where the tired East/West dichotomy swirls together in hybrids that defy explication. These two very different but interconnected limnal zones have rich potential for further study. The pressure to develop the river and the thick layering of artifacts in the area creates an ideal zone of research.

Back in Boston I started with a number of interviews and will continue at the American Research Institute of Turkey and the Arkitera Center this week. I hope to uncover some of the urban analysis of the Golden Horn on a larger scale. Meanwhile, I will hit the pavement along each side of the river in search of more focused sites for architectural interventions.

Finally, as I sit here at the café drinking tea and listening to the sounds of backgammon dice and tavla pieces rattling around me, I wish to thank the Rotch Committee for this uniquely invigorating opportunity to explore the world and hopefully bring something back to the architectural community in Boston.

Research Itinerary

2006-05-03T12:31:00.000-04:00

ABSTRACT

The object of the study is to examine works of architectural heritage that have been distressed by forces of contemporary urbanity, and subsequently explore how these artifacts can be adapted in new ways that enhance their historical significance while making them relevant to newer urban economies.

LOCATION

Istanbul July 1 – Sep 9 2006 2.5 months
Mumbai Sep 9 – Nov 5 2006 2 months
Bangkok Nov 5 – Jan 20 2007 2.5 months
Tokyo Jan 20 – Feb 20 2007 1 month

Asia is home to the fastest growing tourist economies in the world, as well as some of the most rapidly growing cities in the world. Asian cities are swiftly urbanizing the population, and embracing contemporary global economies that lead for a number of reasons to a more homogenous physical appearance. But a large part of the growth of these cities is due to the unique historical aspects that make the place unlike any other, a history that, apocryphal or not, leads to Hong Kong having a different presence than Taipei in spite of the obvious similarities in most of their contemporary architectural endeavors. This history finds a new life in applications to recent architecture, though mostly these are notoriously kitschy and arguably a disservice to the significance of the historical style imitated. At the very least, this historicizing tendency indicates a larger tension between the rapid growth of modernism and the city, and the desire for authentic, local, and rooted architecture. The mega-cities of Asia present a rich zone for the exploration of this tension with their specific mix of population, tourism and fiscal growth.

The criteria for establishing the cities are 1) their global importance (based on theorists like Saskia Sassen and Ed Soja; their growth in GDP and population; and the growth of international tourism), 2) density of canonical artifacts, 3) ease of local and international travel 4) seasonal weather patterns (i.e. avoiding 28 inches of rain in Mumbai).

HERITAGE AND MODERNITY

Works of architectural heritage are sites of present day tensions between the authentic/local and the modern/global. On one hand, they are integral to the history that makes a place unique physically, but on the other create challenges to the contemporary functions of a city. They play a central role in the growing economy of international tourism, but are often obsolete remnants with little relevance to the everyday lives of citizens. Because of the obvious historical and social merits of these sites, not to mention the mysterious tug of nostalgia and patriotism, they occupy a unique position vis-à-vis the pressures of progress confronting rapidly modernizing cities.

There are five basic forms that buildings of cultural heritage take on, often as a blend of some or all: 1) Survivor: the building essentially functions in the same way that it did when it was conceived. Its formal language is still relevant and any additions are in the same vein as the original. 2) Shrine: The artifact has become a museum unto itself, with the cultural history of the original the subject of the display. 3) Vessel: The shell of the building is intact, but the programmatic functions are different, necessitating an overhaul of the non-exterior aspects of the building. 4) Memorial: There is no physical trace of the event or building that is memorialized, but instead a reminder of the episode in the form of a building or sculpture. 5) Palimpsest: The original object has become destabilized and subsumed into alternate architectures and urban conditions, leaving only traces of the original artifact.

The final category of cultural heritage, the Palimpsest, is the most intriguing for this study. This is where the original artifact leaves hints and adumbrations of its former glory, but has been eroded, pillaged, and otherwise distressed by the outside pressures of urban progress. Often, the various pieces of what was once an intact building are covered by newer layers of the city, stolen from their site by museums around the world, and eroded to the point of incomprehension. But what is most interesting is that these palimpsests exist as imagined projections in the contemporary condition; visions of what the original thing would be/was/is. In opposition of the literal and nicely packaged other forms of heritage, palimpsests allow for a certain “fuzzyness,” a range of interpretations that can be mined for coexistence in the contemporary condition. Palimpsests cast a visionary overlay on top of the quotidian existence of the city, a simultaneous timeless existence that folds into the everyday world around us. They provide a rich territory for exploration of interventions that can revive and protect the unique and irreplaceable aspects of local history, as well as creating architectural hybrids for the current rapidly globalizing economy. Nigel Coates calls this the “flywheel” effect, in which historic artifacts provide stability for a changing city, and can later be updated and made more relevant to contemporary users. They are zones of permanence that allow for periodic regeneration, with an inherent energy that can never be recreated.

METHOD

The research will be undertaken in three areas: documentation, analysis, and speculation. Documentation will consist of locating and recording the most relevant examples of palimpsests in each city. The analysis stage will take that data and develop critical observations about the history, current use and strategic strengths of each site. Finally, the speculative stage will present scenarios and options for how the palimpsest could be made more relevant based on the guidelines of the study. The speculations will be highly site specific, based on observation and interviews that can only be done in situ, and result in provocative directions for future discussion. They shall be polemical and critical, attempting to generate new discussions around the topics of preservation, heritage, globalism and modernism. Elucidating the overlapping nature of these topics will be a primary target of the speculations. It isn’t clear what form the representation and content will ultimately take, but the goal will be to explore the liminal zone between local and international; history and progress. Traces of history will become the inspiration for architectures that protect the authentic, embrace the international, and leverage more than would be possible with the more common either/or scenarios. The results should bring relevance on multiple levels to distressed examples of architectural heritage.