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Trellis Maximus: The Hippodrome of Istanbul
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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
Next stop: Introduction
-or- skip Intro: go straight to Istanbul.
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.
Next stop: Istanbul
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!
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
