LOST + FOUND

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

Next stop: Introduction
-or- skip Intro: go straight to Istanbul.

Introduction

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

Bangkok 5 - Elevated Voyage

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

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

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

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

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.