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

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)

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).  

fez :: medina breakdown

pedestrians and animals only
fes el-bali (fez old town) remains preserved due to its status as a world heritage site and to the fact that fez new town was made on the other side of the hill. it is the largest car-free area in the world. "medina" means "town" in arabic; but also refers to the old town of current islamic cities. here are some of its the major elements.

the wall

the dar (house) + the riadh (private courtyard)

an elongated dar in marrakech with riadh off to the side

(more like 4m)

the bab (gate)


the sqaq (street) + the derb (dead-end alley)

fractal nature of the streets of fes 4.0/1.5 = 2.7 (e) 

the mosque

the souk (covered market)

the fondouk (pension)

the madrasa (islamic college)

the factory

the hammam (spa)

Q1 :: scale + grit

I Found this well-written argument on archrecord.com.  

It's always an unquestioned premise that cities have to accommodate large-scale development projects, and yet there is always an undercurrent of concern that the need to contain the scale of 'large scale' sufficiently that they don't lose their soul.

It's a tender balance, made more difficult because the sites and investments are too large to permit the city to be shaped by its own evolution. The use of large-scale development techniques favored by private-sector developers and bankers is now so ingrained in our culture that we have lost track of the fact that this is utterly at odds with the way cities organically develop from public infrastructure and incremental, lot-by-lot development.

Cities also have to adjust to the mores of each successive generation. Hardworking blue-collar places like San Francisco (or Brooklyn) became havens for messy vitality precisely because they had lost their mainstream economies and there was thus a vacuum to be filled. But you can't sustain that vacuum artificially; the city sucks up energy and comes back to life, and since the city sustains itself on that economic energy it will not, as an organism, be easily prevented from doing so.

That creative period of economic vacuum can't be bottled up and sustained, like an interesting artifact found when the demolition crews arrived. To plan their destinies more successfully, cities need to reduce the size of each incremental input, based upon a clear, simple, and publicly-owned plan of development and smaller, simpler tasks for the individual developers. 

Then we won't have to worry about bottling a few gallons of "artistic temperament" to scatter like a perfume through lifeless new urban spaces.

- someguy (screen name), ArchRecord.com, message board re: SF Pier 70 development.

e.u.r. :: ideal city for politics

EUR stands for "Esposizione Universale Roma" or the Rome Universal Exhibition, and was built in the 1930s under Mussolini, in the Italian rationalist style. Here it is a pared down revival of classical architecture, fascist in that the planning is rectilinear and axial as was classical roman town planning, but scaled for the automobile. It is close to the aesthetic architect Albert Speer was championing in Nazi Berlin, the Olympic Stadium there a realized example. Pictures can not do justice to the dwarfing effect on the human in this scale of architecture.

EUR is architecturally ordered in plan, but at street level exhibits disorder and unnavigability. The street belongs to the car. Cars clutter the streets, parked in medians and along each block. Sidewalks end suddenly in a sea of cars, and the pedestrian is left to find his own way through, sometimes walking on the street itself in order to find where the sidewalk picks up again. 

Blocks are large, and buildings do not engage the street. The facades are set back from the street, creating an unactivated strip, and resulting in long, uninterrupted stretches of fencing. There are few people on the streets at all. 

The most famous building of the lot, the Palazzo della Civilta Italiana or the "Square Colosseum" has a traffic barrier and fence around it. It is not possible to walk up to the building, or even to fully circumnavigate it. The back feels like the front, and the front drops off in a wealth of steps wide enough for the million man march, to another cross street and then the freeway.

In the shallowest of analyses, EUR is a corporate office park pretending to be a city (it does have a residential component). Upon further reflection however, EUR provides a glimpse of what european cities might have looked and felt like if the other side had won WWII. Would an entire city in this style change who we are as people?

barcelona :: (im)pression

The Ciutat Vella is the old part of Barcelona, and it is impressively dense. 

scale :: Everything is smaller and more compact. Garbage trucks, delivery trucks, stores, restaurants, cars. Buildings that average 5 or 6 stories tall are separated by streets that are sometimes as narrow as 3 meters.

flow :: The narrow streets are top-lit by indirect sunlight. Occasionally a corner building is gone, creating a small plaza, and more light. People are everywhere. Pedestrians, bikes, scooters and cars are in a languid dance, using micro adjustments to avoid collisions without breaking pace. Barcelona has the most scooters of any European city besides Rome. Refuse is removed every single day by specially designed trucks and dumpsters that open from the bottom. 

streetscape :: The streets are well organized - it is rare the pedestrian is without a pathway.