jakarta :: (ex)pression

structure and change
i had an good conversation with a journalist here in jakarta. he explained that for the recent presidential election the campaigns were waged largely on social media (and that for a time 4 of the top 5 top trending topics were coming out of indonesia - it sounds like they were using twitterbots, but anyway...) i'd been reading up on evolutionary urbanism, and one of the tenets is to devolve decisions to as local a level as possible. the power of the very many... 

he also mentioned that the mayor of Bandung is an architect (Riwan Kamil) famous for pioneering the Indonesian Berkebun movement - taking a pejorative/joking term for outcast singles and designating small parks for these people, a move to include them in society, and turning the term on its head.

also the mayor of Surabaya, Tri Rismaharini (or Ibu Risma - Mother Risma) also an architect, rejuvenating that city’s parks and turning many derelict plots into green spaces. Once described as a ‘dirty city full of pretensions and greed’, Surabaya is now known as a ‘million-park’ city.

jakarta itself has a curitiba-inspired trans-city bus line with its own dedicated lane. I use it everyday and thank Allah it exists. otherwise, there is no getting around efficiently w/o a scooter. sadly, some developers are purposely choking the kampongs (local lane neighborhoods), in an effort to strangle the life out of them, and force the locals to sell their land. this has happened along the main roads, and the replacement product is glass-skinned office/residential towers on campus tissue, walled and gated to the surroundings, accessed by automobile. in my experience, the kampungs offer all of the redeeming qualities for this city. they are fun, easily walkable, with local food options, and the people are just lovely.

jakarta :: (com)pression

the city is fractal
jakarta really got me to think about the fractal nature of cities - there are fewer large-scale streets, more medium-scale, and many small-scale. It stands to reason the buildings associated with these street scales will be of that scale. this is true in most cases, though "breakage" of the rule can be found. more on breakage in a separate post.

[XL] multi-lane avenue - sudirman / tamrin on car-free sunday
<pedestrian overpasses and spec office towers>


[XL] multi-lane avenue - sudirman / tamrin on a normal day (relegated to the sidewalk)
<fence - people - motorbikes - autos - bus - autos - motorbikes - people - fence>

[L] wide two-way street - bendungan hilir (aka benhil)

<dearth of sidewalks and plethora of electrical wiring>

[M] wide one-way street in a kampong

[S] pedestrian lane in a kampong

jakarta :: evolution (informal, formal)

a bemo in front of warungs                                                                                                                                                                     

streetscape
on neighborhood spine streets, "chaos" results from more informal activities playing out along the street. sidewalks are rare, and the roadside is occupied by a host of vendor carts, parked cars, or scooters. warungs (less formal family restaurants and shops) often line the street. all space on the street is used and if a parked car needs to back out of a spot to get back into the flow of traffic, it requires the service of a spotter to direct them. in one instance, cars were parked so closely in front of a restaurant that the only way I could get by was to climb over a car or two.

midtown manhattan still evolving                                                                                                                                                       

informal --> formal
food carts are an example of the informal activities that begin in the street and over time acquire architectural space. the activity acquires a cart and a little space, in time a shed is built, then rebuilt with sturdier construction, then a full building is built to multiple levels. these are the stages of typology that can be seen in any city (above image shows continued evolution in midtown manhattan, where older form-types give way to bigger and taller types.

formal --> informal
but new activities will always pop up, because the city is dynamic. for example mexican laborers are now manning the corners of already formalized west berkeley. how long before they begin to get a cart for coffee and food while they wait to get picked up for work? over time maybe they’ll move into shops, with fussball and pool tables, as well as coffee and food service, while they wait for work. architect liz ogbu had already caught on to this and speculatively designed a center for the laborers where they could learn english while they wait for work, among other productive activities. an example of an architect inserting ideals into the natural evolution of the city. 

cyclical urbanism

a road is lined with opportunistic informal activity that uses carts. as the activities evolve, the carts are replaced with shacks. over time, the shacks are replaced by more formal shop/restaurant, perhaps with a level of residence above (the shophouse). as the neighborhood further evolves, the shophouse might be replaced with a shop with three or four levels of residences above (the insula). At some point sidewalks were introduced to handle the pedestrian flows and keep autos separate. this is another insertion of ideals - we assume it is safer and more logical to separate traffic modes. but this assumption is being challenged in parts of european cities, where some streets mix all traffic modes again. order can be found in each case.   

optimization or entropy?

policy can always intervene into natural systems and create breakage. consider this alternative to the natural evolution process: corporate developers raze all the piecemeal and construct gigantic shopping centers with office and residential towers on superblocks. more is being controlled now by fewer players, but what does this mean for naturally evolving street life?

form follows finance                                                                                                                                                                                

jakarta :: (im)pression

two urban orders
on the one hand social relationships are established in the street where information can easily be exchanged. this is the driving social order behind a dense pattern of low-rise live/work form-types, where the street is heavily populated by pedestrians, bicycles, tricycle trucks, scooters, and donkeys - the old town.

on the other hand modern urban life is characterized by “increasing individualization by way of social relationships established through various networked media and dispersed work careers. so people can now lead functional urban lives without ever having to take others with whom they nominally share living and public spaces into any substantial consideration.” (abdoumaliq) this is a social order conducive to high-rise and suburban living - the new town.

evolution
the former urban order has been around as long as cities have been around. the latter has been around since the automobile and the telephone. the former is dying - perceived as impoverished, dirty, and backward, while the latter is growing, and becoming our global culture of space. finding the designer of the former is like trying to find the chef that created the hamburger, while the latter is financed by developers and designed by architects.

*Simone, Abdoumaliq. City Life from Jakarta to Dakar. New York: Routledge, 2010.

singapore :: (com)pression

kampong glam: two streetscape compressions and one five-foot-way compression

arab street

haji lane

five-foot-way

singapore :: (ex)pression

is singapore fractal? 

here i take to a neighborhood with some ideas put forward by urbanist and mathematician nikos salingaros, who has in turn incorporated a number of ideas from christopher alexander. 

universal scale distribution: increasing numbers with decreasing scale

sleeve tattoos continue universal distribution of the body + some building facade analysis

traditional architecture tends to be fractal

a theoretical fractal street network forming a neighborhood

tiong bahru (an actual fractal neighborhood in singapore)

singapore :: (im)pression

singapore is a city of superlatives and firsts, but the one i would be most proud of is "city with the highest population density in the world" (people/area). one might think this a negative - how is less area per person a good thing? - fact is singapore, a country and a city, boasts a good deal of nature and yet it is able to effectively organize and house multiple millions on such a small footprint. this requires order and efficiency. question is: have they held on to "cityness" after all this optimizing? or is the city now a lifeless machine with good numbers but no soul?    

areas of study in singapore (l-r): tiong bahru | orchard | tanjong pagar | singapore river quays | bugis | little india | kampong glam | joo chiat

the yellow lines are connecting walks. the red line is an elevated railway/metro from which i take tracking videos (i nickname these "streetpans") for later comparison with other cities.

Q2 :: (com)pression

cultures of space
these images are taken every thirty paces with the same focal length and horizon line, then overlaid. the idea is challenge traditional opticality by compressing both time and space, highlighting rhythms and flows unique to a place. comparing these montages across different cultural and physical latitudes would hopefully reveal more about the respective cultures of space.

fez medina | villeurbaine gratte-ciel

rabat ave mohammed V (ville nouvelle) | paris ave du marechal gallieni (hotel des invalides)

firminy unite d'habitation | marseille quai du port 

Q2 :: islamic | christian

visual priority

The Islamic city privileges environment. Streets are narrow, opening only to courtyards inside buildings. The city is a fabric made up of a similar building type throughout. Surfaces outside the building are simple, while inside the courtyards are decorated with zelige - geometric designs and script that strive to achieve a vibration between our reality and the cosmos. The city is structured for meditation, which is key to the Islamic faith. Though minarets rising high above the urban fabric are easy to spot, as a visitor to an older Islamic city it is possible to be standing next to a great mosque without realizing it is there. 

The Christian city privileges spectacle. Long straight avenues create major axes that end in focal points (spatial nodes). Churches almost always enjoy a front plaza for gathering. Here the facade becomes a design that narrates stories and aggrandizes the entrance. The naves are continuations of urban axes, culminating in a pulpit, the closest space to God. Like the passion of Christ, linear procession is reinforced. The streets in a Christian city are wider than their Islamic counterparts, creating a space ripe for spectacle. This usually takes the form of procession (parade). These processions comprise spectacles, effigies, and costumes that narrate the Christian stories. A visitor to a Christian city quite easily sees the churches both from afar and through the streets. 

urban ordering

In the Christian city, streets are laid out first. As buildings fill out the blocks, courtyards are formed. These serve as semi-public or private outdoor spaces. The street is the public realm. Blocks that have not been built upon become public Squares. Courtyards are semi-public, sometimes turned private. Indoor spaces are private. 

In the Islamic city, private courtyards come first (riads). Buildings are created by laying out living spaces around the riad. As families grow, the house grows by laying out more rooms around the riad. The maze of  streets result from this spatial aggregation.

object | field

The Christian city exhibits far more object buildings than the Islamic city. This could stem from traditional spatial usage resulting from religious ideas. The Bible is made up of stories, with characters doing things. These lend themselves to depiction. The Quran is largely a book of prayers, that are meditative in cadence. The architecture that results from these different backgrounds exhibits these values spatially.

Q2 :: architecture (realm, role)

this is problematic, but over-simplification can still get discussion going...

all scales are in the realm of architecture, if we're talking about form and its counterpart, space. a building should be considered a part to a greater whole. medical doctors who specialize in an area of the body have first to learn all the systems of the human body and how they work together. like this we should approach the study of architecture. in our post-study apprenticeship we will begin to specialize in building design; later, if we like, we would specialize in a type of building, or an aspect of architectural service (spatial design, technical design, project management). On small projects an architect can and should wear all these hats; on large projects it is impossible - only a team of people performing different roles can pull it off. But I digress…

the realm of an architect is space. therefore architecture is environmental - thinking of our surroundings - how we have structured and articulated space. a building as object has its place, but it should be only one out of hundreds. It must be so, or we get dubai (though i haven't been there). Indeed the fewer special buildings a city has and the more continuous fabric a city can produce to set up its special buildings, the better. Examples: guggenheim bilbao, the eiffel tower, empire state building, chrysler building, freedom tower (point towers supported by a sea of slab towers), the skylines of venice, san francisco, zurich. the church in a medieval european town, the pompidou center in paris. All these examples are set up by a dense, continuous urban fabric.

at the lower level of the city the same spirit of hierarchy occurs in material and form. the cooper union school of engineering and the new museum in lower manhattan are striking departures from their pre-war, masonry surroundings. if the whole block of these buildings were of forms and materials similar to the morphosis or saana designs, then i would be celebrating the one masonry building on the block. 

it's okay to be a-contextual, as long as your project is the first and only one in the immediate area to be so. if too many buildings are a-contextual: dubai (though i haven't been there)

in the villa borghese gallery in rome, one is surrounded by great art. the sculptures of ancient rome create a mood, and the renaissance paintings line the walls and in some cases the ceiling. the architecture takes a decidedly understated role, but that is not my point here. my point is that when one turns the corner and enters the room with bernini's "rape of proserpina", one is almost knocked off one's feet. that is the essence of the special object set up by continuous context. and truth be told, there is another scale of space - that which is created by the object itself. all in the realm of the architect.

cities cannot be curated (at least not so easily). for cities to be composed like this, it comes down to architects. future architects: if you want to create the object then you must become a master. dive into architecture and sacrifice a lot. and even then, no guarantee. if you are not a master, take pride in your work all the same, and create excellent, continuous fabric. otherwise: dubai (though i haven't been there).  

Q2 :: report

breakage

Use overrides the ideal ordering of space in “planned” cities, while ordering mechanisms emerge in “unplanned” cities. I call this “breakage” and analyze its impact on flow (people, sunlight, wind).

space / form typology

An indicator of typology of space is my level of comfort taking photographs. In public space I feel free to photograph anything I want. In semi-public I begin to feel conscious of subjects in the frame, and in the private realm permission to photograph is necessary. I study how these spaces transition. Additionally, I study building form types - whether their use has changed over time and how the form types change with culture and climate. Together these space and form types aggregate into urban fabric. Where two distinct fabrics come together is of interest.

culture of space

Religion as ordering mechanism makes the Islamic city a field, while the Christian city is object-oriented. In Fez I stood next to a great mosque without realizing it. In Rome, churches are on axis, with large plazas clearing space to appreciate the decorated facades. In the Christian city streets come first, and the courtyard results within the block. In the Islamic city the courtyard comes first, and the street results outside of the block.

methodology

Sketching, writing, and sound recordings have been most effective, with photography documenting light qualities and people flows that are difficult to sketch. A photo montage technique captures continuity and movement through space while challenging traditional opticality.

paris :: (com)pression

paris exhibits straight, large scale avenues that are organized with focal points. how do we experience these in time and space? below is an attempt to demonstrate parallax in a single image.

rabat :: (com)pression

rabat is now the capital of morocco, but it was only chosen by the french in the 20th century to be a strategic city, setting up a delicate integration of the old medina with the new french city. rabat has a very special layout with physical and visual connections - the casbah is connected to the medina and the medina is connected to the new town. moreover, a strong visual connection exists between rabat and its neighbor city, salé.

outside the old wall

medina (blvd mohammed V)

ville nouvelle (blvd mohammed V)

fez :: self-trace

Self-traced paths through the medina begin to reveal the urban structure. There are two main streets climbing the hill (to the left). At the bottom of the hill the great mosque (to the right).

Fez looks so manageable. The map I made of Fez el Bali (old Fez) shows only streets that connect to another street on both ends. There are THOUSANDS of dead-end streets not shown here.