Le vide | EPFL Graph Search

Today the question of how to work in the continuous contemporary urban landscape, is a big concern for urban development professionals. Still marked by the modern obsession to define the building forms, a vision influenced by the functionalist movement of the Thirties, these same professionals have lost their means of working sustainably in a contemporary city which is both continuous and fragmented, like an individualised collection of various materials and shapes without urban links, spreading out without limits in the overall landscape. In this chaos, an urban approach has appeared, changing the interest from the building to its landscape, from the built to the non-built, and above all from the filled to the void, and offers a new approach more adapted to the context of today's urban environment, capable of creating links with the non built, of offering new urban materials through the 'non urban', and generating public spaces in the presence of 'non-form' buildings. This approach, which here is called The void. New urban strategies, works with the 'non-materials' such as the landscape, the infrastructure or the programmes, and tries to meet the challenge of a new urbanism in the contemporary city. To understand this, the thesis will strive to explore the chronology of this idea through its different chapters. A 'prehistory' will provide an understanding of the origins of this, via its discoverers, pioneers and precursors and will present an astonishing picture of first attempts to define the urban environment via the void. The case of Melun-Senart, the urban strategy developed in 1987 by Rem Koolhaas and his Office for Metropolitan Architecture (OMA), considered as the starting point for this search and as the masterpiece of the Void approach, will demonstrate the extremely innovative phenomena which resulted from what it called by its author as the "Strategy of the void". Putting this into perspective in the work of Rem Koolhaas will reveal a dense web of projects and writings on, or with the void, which again reinforces the idea of its pertinence. The exploration of the artistic fields and parallel philosophies, will demonstrate the pre-existence of the 'void' concepts amongst the protagonists and will prove the huge influence that they had in the construction of this new urban idea for the architects and the urban planners, and in particular Koolhaas. Finally, other contemporary urban protagonists will illustrate through their projects and their writings, a variety of approaches for the void up to the present day. And right at the end, an experiment through the void projects of the author, will offer an introspective vision of the process. More than two decades after the 'Strategy of the void' this approach goes beyond the diagrammatic stage of a competition, confirming not only its pertinence, but also its ability to provide answers that are both varied and renewed to the extremely complex and confused situations that are to be found in today's urban environment. This new way of conceptualising the urban landscape by the void, the reference for the dense area of the historical city, is replaced by the informal void of the contemporary city considered as the very identity of this new continuous urbanism and shows itself ultimately to be the void. a new urban strategy.

Spaces and Flows: An International Journal of Urban and ExtraUrban Studies

Nancy Raewyn Couling

Ocean space is currently being urbanized on an unprecedented scale, a phenomenon under investigation by the architectural laboratoire bâle, EPFL Switzerland. Lefebvre writes of the all-encompassing process of urbanization, that agriculture, industry and urbanization follow each other (Lefebvre 2003). This model can be tested for ocean space, which already plays a major role within mobility and organisational networks and is at the same time a fluid, partially industrialised landscape of dimensions often far exceeding comparable zones on land. The research aims to investigate these relationships, position ocean spatial typologies within the urban debate and identify planning tools informed by the physical, as opposed to the virtual, condition of flow, which implement the ocean itself as an “active” agent. In the case of the Barents Sea in northern Norway, the interest in ocean space is fuelled by the opening of the Northern Sea Route to Asia and the prospect of releasing vast off-shore reserves of oil & gas on the one hand, and the alarming rate of global warming as reflected in the receding ice-front on the other. The strategic development of infrastructure, the provision of access and the complex grid of international networks active in the region are indicators of a particular type of urbanism acting at the territorial scale. This specific character, however, demands an urbanism of flows. Despite its remoteness, its vastness, its extreme climatic and light conditions, its relatively sparse human population and its abundance of natural habitats, this territory is under extreme pressure. The Barents Sea exemplifies the need for a new kind of spatial strategy, a strategy which works with the dynamics of the ocean and its potential for the current urbanization processes. How can urban design methods and principles be applied to ocean territory and how can natural “clients” such as inhabitants, or phenomena such as ice, be catered for in planning terms? The laboratory’s project developed “territorial constitutions” for the Barents Sea which were then further articulated in singular architectural projects as a proof of concept. The context revealed itself to be both an extremely harsh and aesthetic natural environment and a correspondingly extreme artificial and utilitarian built environment.

2014

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

Roundabouts and City Limits: The Agency of Visual Phenomena

Antoine Vialle

This contribution proposal is based on a photographic campaign I have conducted over the last years on the borders of the Paris metropolitan and more specifically on the science campus located on the agricultural plateau of Saclay. It is supplemented with an analysis of both implicit and explicit roadbuilding normative standards I am now conducting as first step of my PHD research. Like most of the most of the traffic devices that modern road design practices have introduced in the non-dense urban territories, the roundabout is often regarded as being an impediment to urbanity. Indeed, considering its formal aspect, the roundabout implies intense and discontinuous land consumption. Associated with strict programmatic zoning and separation of traffic flows, it generates spatial and programmatic segregation. Considering its functional aspect, it increases fluidity and security of car traffic flow, precluding sensory interactions with the surrounding context. Beyond its material and technical rationality, the roundabout is implemented with untouchable ornaments, often considered as kitsch. Its esthetical aspect is thus based on top-down territorial branding strategies. Being composed of a highly visible green space, it also has a strong non-urban connotation. However, its ancestor, the “rond-point”, was formerly used in forest landscape design to articulate the collective hunting practices and visual sequences of bridle paths. Then it became the backbone of city’s extension plans for the “embellissement des villes”, during the first modernity of the 18th century. Today, even if the modern roundabout has little to do with what the traditional public square used to be, it is still a landmark for the driver: it signals the exit from the highway network, the entrance in the urbanized area and the immediate proximity of industrial and commercial zones. Despite its triviality, the roundabout is thus related to the expression of city limits, which are not any more embodied in a single unitary device. Which role does the roundabout play then in the spatial, social and symbolic emergence of urbanity? To understand and evaluate the monumental dimension of such a traffic device, it seams necessary to consider not only the material aspects, the social uses or the discourses that underpin its design, but also the dynamic interactions between the user and the built environment. Herein, the sophisticated visual phenomena generated by the roundabout are quite informative. Making the car flow rotate around an inaccessible platform that is vegetated as an idealized piece of nature, this perfectly circular device disorientates the driver and immerses him into the road network. We can observe then how the roundabout involves a special cognition of the urban footprint – usually symbolized by a circular surface in the European culture, as opposed to its supposedly natural limit. In this purpose, we will make a comparison with another circular device that belongs to the spectacular domain: the painted panorama in the 19th century, which played an important role in the evolution of urban and territorial representations at the time of the mergence of metropolises, during the first industrial revolution. The aim of this proposed contribution is to consider how the visual phenomena generated by the technical and normed roundabout device contribute to the current redefinition of the “urban” and the “natural”. It also aims to discuss about the agency of what may be called the urban landscape or image, compared to the one of the physical built environment.

2015