Flânerie in the alternative cultural spaces of Lisbon

Lisbon is a city of labyrinthine paths, due mostly to its irregular territory. The experiment of Flânerie in is explored in this paper through the identification of particular paths linked to the contemporary alternative cultural life, a debate being undertaken on how space and culture (alternative or dominant) mutually inspire one another. Urban and architectural elements will be analysed in connection with these paths, as well as the sensorial aspects of particular ambiences. Some attention is also given to accessibility, visibility and contrasts. The analysis of these aspects will lead us to explore the labyrinths and the entertainment that you can find in Lisbon’s streets, but also in inner spaces (alternative cultural places). These spaces tend to exist in the interstices of the city (wastelands), where urban exploration may happen thanks to its veiled character. One particularity of alternative cultural spaces is that they can both be visible and invisible, more or less accessible. Since they are spaces that suffered many transformations through time, by trying to adapt to different functions, their inner paths are often irregular and labyrinthine. This characteristic invites us to explore them and wander. Lisbon’s almost dramatic and quite poetic promenades have in fact a close relationship to its diverse cultural heritages and realities (fado, multiculturalism and contemporary alternative culture). Lisbon’s walls seem to speak poetry, but also to warn us about the general political and economic situation and complain about it. As if the city would talk to us while we take a promenade. Lisbon’s attractive scenography has become the perfect territory for managers and sponsors. Wouldn’t our urban experience become much less boring if adventure and “strong emotions” were constantly part of our routine? Fun and excitement in an urban form has already been tested and confined in Luna parks. But today the city streets are planned to be a place where leisure is permanently possible, urban landscape being invested in a ludic way (through interactive objects, irregular pavements, water jets in squares, colourful lights and materials). Graffiti is no longer illegal, but part of well-organized tourist tours, and alternative cultural places start to look more like a franchised entertainment centres than actually places for hosting underground culture. Labyrinths are now planned as part of the creative process of an architectural project in order to amuse users of coworking places. There’s no space left for hazard. Everything is created or manipulated in order to capture our attention and play with our senses. Urban exploration and dérive have now also become part of the dominant ideology, absorbed by this “new spirit of capitalism”. Nevertheless, the act of flâner cannot really be tamed. Its inherent praise of laziness and pleasure of being inutile goes against any attempt of control by productive work principles and market laws. May therefore flâner still manage to be a moment of introspection, and therefore of reflection and resistance?

Les étudiants, l'université de masse et la ville durable

Ismail Haddad

In a globalized space where mobility is growing, the capacities of attraction of the city are becoming increasingly decisive. Between the cities, through its attractive quality and attraction capacity, the university will become a decisive factor of location activity. The contribution of the capacity of city culture, development of meeting places is fantastic. Universities cannot live permanently on their side, next to the city. However, for too long, the city and the university in Tunisia have developed in ignorance of each other. Universities, since they have existed, admit with difficulties contingencies of civil societies. Governments are wary of students and teachers. This latent divorce materialized especially through the creation of campus, away from city centers in the functionality and the monotony of isolation. The urban university countdown is now universally condemned. Addressing universities as major facilities for both generating modern middle classes and meet the needs of these classes is probably a new perspective in the architectural and urban studies in Tunisia. Investigate the essence of the university and its space, understand, give it a face, it takes to trace the sources of the university, the genesis of the position in relation to our time, in any its specificity, to lay a few landmarks able to give an account for the complexity of its course. Why, how, by whom and under what conditions taking shape at a given time an edifice (the university) from a social vocation? What general needs and specific answers? In short, what is the territorial space that University now covers? In this sense, the systemic approach presents an additional interest because it proposes to connect into a single and same application dimensions of reality that are sometimes addressed separately by different disciplines and different actors, professional town planning, culture, life student or teaching. Indeed, we have chosen to begin this research by presenting a sample of general policies of academic development in an international perspective. In a second stage, we will continue research on the same theme, but by focusing it on Tunisia. In this context, we will consider the current inadequacy between the university and the changing needs of society. In the third part, we will study the spatial impact and synergy between the university and the economic environment. This theme is central to the debate on the complex interactions of urban dynamics and local development. We will conclude by reviewing the first two parts in the light of the results of the third. Furthermore, this research involved a provision of knowledge, which is able to provide solid foundations for working professionals in architecture and urban, social scientists, lawyers, economists and current officials in charge to define strategies and projects of agglomeration.

EPFL2009

Entre ville et campagne

Sophie Lufkin

Environmental, social and economic concerns linked to the sustainable development of the built-up environment are increasingly calling into question models of territorial development based on urban sprawl. This is because the process of dispersed urbanization generates social inequalities; it is based on the extensive use of automobiles, and leads to increased spending on infrastructure networks. This phenomenon tends to be explained by the search for a combination of life in the city and life in the wide-open which creates new life-styles based on the extensive use of transportation and communication systems. The analysis of these emerging practices indicates that they arise from a double pressure exerted on the population: on one hand, attraction to rural and mountain areas, and on the other hand the economic and cultural dependency vis-à-vis the large urban centers. In this context, the regeneration of urban wasteland areas appears to be a strategy capable of favoring a better anchoring between urbanization and public transport. The dynamics of off-shoring enterprises has freed up a large number of plots that are however connected to existing networks, and benefit from good accessibility and sometimes enviable centrality. The requalification of industrial wasteland has been the object of much research in the nineties, which has led to establish as principles density, mixed use and the preservation of the industrial heritage (for instance Escher-Wyss in Zurich-West, Sulzer in Winterthur, ABB in Baden, SIP in Plainpalais-Geneva). In the same way, following the abandonment of some mobility structures, research has started to focus on the fate of urban railroad wastelands. These are considered to be strategic locations to develop "compact cities", attractive for habitat and favorable for the development of social and cultural activities. Several examples in Switzerland illustrate these attempts: Ecoparc in Neuchâtel, Zurich HB, La Praille in Geneva, etc. Today, in order to offer alternatives to the urban paradigm of the compact city we focus our attention on a different type of railroad wasteland. By regional railroad wasteland we refer to areas located close to a train station, either abandoned or in the process of being abandoned, and situated in suburban or periurban zones. Though these regional railroad wastelands present advantages similar to those of the urban wastelands in terms of accessibility to public transport, they are very different by their relationship to the landscape and nature. In addition, much more affordable land prices than in city centers allow more flexibility in the choice of programs and target users. In line with the thinking led by Thomas Sieverts among others, we attempt to go beyond the antagonisms between city and country, by formulating the hypothesis that these regional railroad wastelands bring an answer that is able to reconcile the aspirations to life in the country with the requirements of sustainable territorial development. The present research aims to explore a series of urbanism strategies induced by the simultaneous and inseparable presence of the railroad and natural dimensions, which constitutes the specificity of these periurban and suburban sites. In a first phase, in order to reveal these specific characteristics we conducted a typology exercise on a sample of thirty railroad sites located on the Geneva to Sankt-Gallen axis. It extends the whole length of the country from Lake Geneva in the southwest to Lake Constance in the northeast and goes through the main city areas of the country as well as several so-called calm areas. These thirty wastelands were measured, photographed, described, analyzed and finally represented according to an innovative methodology that combines architectural, urbanism and sociological approaches. This first phase concludes with the construction of the "face" of each site; beyond the fundamental distinction between urban and regional wastelands, it leads to the identification of six individual types. In a second phase, the focus moves to the project process. In order to understand precisely the mechanisms and the stakes at play, we have analyzed several case studies of urban wastelands in various stages of advancement, going from construction finished (Zurich-West), to the beginnings of the launch of a project (Fribourg), the first stages of construction (Zurich Stadtraum-HB) and planning in the course of development (Lausanne-Malley). We thus show the main obstacles to development, then the levers, triggers or planning instruments capable of surmounting them. Finally, in the last part, we elaborate development scenarios up to 2025 for three regional wastelands of the Lake Geneva urban hub, which come from a distinct group within the typology: Versoix, La Plaine and Palézieux. The project recognizes two scales of intervention: the train station and its immediate surroundings on one hand, and the extended perimeter on the other hand, which includes land within a 500 meter radius around the station. The developments of these two perimeters are intimately linked: the creation of a pole of urbanization may induce an improvement of the rail service and vice-versa. These two embedded scales thus constitute a complex dynamic system, within which specific, though coordinated urbanism strategies are implemented, and the stakes proper to each perimeter dictate these. For the station and its immediate surroundings, the goal is primarily to increase the hospitability of the site, that is principally to increase the symbolic role of the station, to plan the equipment and infrastructure necessary in view of the increased flows of travelers, and arranging the external space by accentuating the presence of vegetation, in agreement with the local character. All of these interventions lead to the creation of a "railroad landscape" which is the regional counterpart to the urban public space. Within the extended perimeter, the project strategy rests upon the recognition of five complementary qualities: inhabited, equipped, wild, productive, to be contemplated, whose proportions vary according to the territorial insertion of the wasteland. Densification is then effected in a punctual and targeted manner, in coherence with the logic resulting from the encounter between rail and nature.

EPFL2010

Resistance & Compromise

Letícia Cabeçadas Do Carmo

Contemporary architecture and urbanism concern everyday life in multiple contradictory ways. Floating between alienation and hope, post-industrial and other interstices often hold beautiful and poetic aesthetics of decay, attracting people driven by curiosity or political causes, stimulating the creativity of these spatial environments. Driven by struggles against standardised and authoritarian urban contexts, a search for Alternative Cultural Spaces (ACS) as concrete contemporary examples of spatial, convivial, creative and political experiences is the main objective of this research. Case studies selected in Lisbon, Ljubljana and Geneva (cities affected by different physical conditions, particular histories and general urban and economic contexts) focus on the years 2005-2015, but also look back to the 1970s. Based on participant observation and other qualitative methods, such as photography, sketching or mapping, the research gives a big importance to visual and spatial production and analysis, in order to reflect social and political engagement as part of wider urban contexts. Considering that the "aesthetics of resistance" of the ACS are influenced by practices of counter-cultures and avant-gardes (DIY, collage, site-specific), we believe that these "re-architectures" (re-use, re-habilitation, re-conversion) are also architectures of resistance (to mainstream, standardised and normalised spatial practices and to abandonment and negligence). However, these alternative aesthetics have become trendy over the last few years, becoming no longer exclusively used by leading resistance or subversive actions but being object of recuperation and consequently of instrumentalisation by neoliberal strategies. Culture and creativity are now at the core of urban planning, based on competitive processes and aiming at economic profit. Three kinds of aestheticisation processes were identified: alternative experiences born from grassroots projects, built over time; top-down processes that force the projects and their spaces to adopt restricted norms in order to assure survival; processes born with the projects designed, recreated and guided by a for-profit concern. The last two cases contributively reduce the diversity of urban experience and control creativity, through annihilation or a forced ambiance. This thesis shows that the visual expression of Ljubljana's alternative aesthetics of resistance is stronger than Lisbon's, and that Geneva's is suffocated by normalisation processes over recent years. The way a spatial ambiance is perceived by the user of a particular space depends largely on the mode of production of that same space, and on the primary intentions existing behind the creation of a particular design or construction, varying from mainstream and institutional approaches to the most subversive ones. Compromise is present and visible through the aesthetics of an ACS. Logics of urban-spatial occupation highlight the importance of the squat movement in Geneva, of the counter-cultures in Ljubljana, and of the fragmented networks of ACS in Lisbon. They also show how ACS propose a cultural network that is complementary to the mainstream one. Besides, either ACS move in the city or they experience a process of aestheticisation. One and another are directly related with survival strategies. Assuming a dialectic perspective of resistance and compromise, this thesis exposes the complex, hybrid and ambiguous dimensions of ACS.

EPFL2016