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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.
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.
