Architecture, environnement et artefact total : la ville selon Reyner Banham et Oswald Mathias Ungers

When looking at the city and the land, current architectural practices face a double limitation. On the one hand, the discipline is asked to react to its own specter: the body of authoritarian spatial devices based on a questionable tradition of which the history is well established. All the usual rules that perpetuate themselves in the name of "the good settlement, one relevant and responsive to any human context" [K. Lynch, 1981]. On the other hand, architecture, as a positive and effective strength, is called upon to demonstrate its ability to resist the most evident threat weighting on the land: can architecture - its knowledge and means - contribute to counter territorial consequences of pervasive and expansive logic of advanced capitalism? In taking up this double-task for the city, is architecture then left with only two lasting dead-ends: the dissolution of its lore within a larger ensemble of social practices or the seclusion of the last parcels of its prerogatives, those that can still be rescued? In order to trace an "other" path, our research simultaneously examines the routes taken on both sides of the Atlantic by two figures of the architecture of the second half of the 20th Century: British historian and critic Reyner Banham (1922-1988) and German architect and theoretician Oswald Mathias Ungers (1926-2007). At first sight, such a choice raises two questions: that of the dissimilitude of their respective work and that of the distance which seems to separate their positions within the intellectual field of their time. One of the goals of our research is to draw closer different modes of comprehending the city and the land. Both protagonists used a wide range of tools available - those of the architectural discipline understood as a set of practices and a collected knowledge - to render, in particular, the state of the world, of the western land, of the city and what it became. The main goal of our research is then to track a possible common ground for their positions about the city, which are contemporary to one another and regarded as being differing. Our parallel study of the works on the city of R. Banham and O. M. Ungers must lead to an actualization of our understanding of a set of trails already opened and to seize the consequences on a historiographical, theoretical and practical level. Therefore, our research tends to verify the existence of such common ground in measuring the proximity of the urban and territorial conception in their work, focusing on an interval starting at the beginning of the 1960s to the end of the 1970s. To achieve it, we formulate three hypotheses regarding the themes at the basis of their convergence: the recognition of the emergence of a new condition of the western land; the will to oppose to urbanism and planning different methods; and the definition of a critical equipment based on images.

Densité et logement collectif

Nicolas Bassand

As a measurement, built density (coefficient of land surface to be built and total floor space) has been the object of numerous researches on urban morphology and architectural forms during the twentieth century. However, for the last ten years, its sensory and qualitative dimension seems to be particularly valued: the perceived density. In multi-unit housing, dense, innovating and compact forms show a significant change of architectural and urban conception. In fact, project practices seem to have been marked by three major changes. Firstly, the importance of the precept of sustainable development, attempting at reducing urban sprawl. Secondly, the increased interest in urban values and the idea of "building a city within a city". Lastly, the current asserted need to redefine density: on one hand, new means are being researched to control it, on the other hand there is a widening of its definition due to the main impulse of architects and researchers. Within this framework, it is illuminating to reconsider the multiple disciplines using this term, as well as the distinct spatial scales tackled in this notion and changes in its use through time. However, focusing only on built density, the present research concentrates on the architectural and urban framework, also known as physical density. It is measured by a density figure but is also qualified by the perception of density. We propose as preliminary approach, an examination of this perceived density in fields where it is more frequently used, such as literature, painting and music. Another important notion of this research requires definition: architectural and urban innovation. Standing out from pure invention, this type of innovation consists essentially in a reinterpretation of previous architectural and urban productions worth naming "retro-innovation". Despite a housing program dependent on past models reluctant to rapid and important changes, radical innovations do occur, though more seldomly. Several ''moments'' of the collective housing architectural history allow for an updating of the different stakes manifested in the density – innovation relationship. Density perception plays a large role in a particular problem emerging from these two notions in contemporary Switzerland. The issue is how encouraging people coming back to the urban centers by proposing larger apartments with more square meters and urban architecture composed of numerous and various spaces, but protecting them at the same time from too close a proximity between neighboring housing and from environmental nuisances. The state of the art brings to light the enormous influence of the researcher and anthropologist Amos Rapoport on perceived density starting with his article, "Towards a Redefinition of Density", published in 1975. For more than thirty years now, architects, psychologists, city planners and geographers refer to this work when defining this notion in their respective fields. As a consequence, it nourishes several reflections in this research. Following these various observations, we propose the analysis of fourteen contemporary multi-unit buildings. They represent the current urban stakes at play and show the architectural and urban conception facing the double requirement of density: to insure a high enough floor area ratio (measured density) and to qualify the housing density (perceived density). In parallel, this research determines if this conception, unique to dense multi-unit housing, tends to modify architectural practice. In the first phase, we examine seven rectangular housing units, in which the width of the building is significant, and seven courtyard buildings in order to examine the exterior spaces contained by the building's volumes. In the second phase, we focus our attention on the wall expression of the fourteen buildings. In this way, these distinct analyses offer three new definitions of the perceived density expressing conception aspects particularly significant for understanding the architecture and urbanity of these dense multi-unit buildings. As a fundamental knowledge, it is shown that density, within the corpus, orientates the architects project's mode. The frequent reinterpretation of paradigmatic dense lodgings is one of the most striking proof of this conceptual change searching for innovations in the register of collective housing. So, in the density of depth, introversion and anonymity on the exterior seems to encourage distinct individualized space within the building as common domestic spheres only opened towards the inside of the apartment. In several cases, the usual urban and public spaces are integrated into the private interior of the apartments as if to domesticate a certain urbanity. In the density of the void, the proposed introversion of semi-public courtyards seems to help maintaining a larger sense of community in these multi-unit buildings. Altogether, it demonstrates a particular capacity to produce small cities within the city, at the same time independent and linked to the city. Finally, through the analysis of wall density, the exterior materiality and expression, dynamic or static, monumental at times, present a decidedly urban architecture enhancing a compact city in quest of new inhabitants.

EPFL2009

Care. Emerging Natures

Pieter Versteegh

The work addresses research by design as a subject and a method. It explores theorizations, experimentations, and verifications, all of them engaged in writing, drawing and building. It is discovery-led, and starts from a blurry "state of the arts". It oscillates between architectural processes, products and performance without considering any of them isolated as research. Its relevance emerges. It is the design process that constructs, delimits the research corpus and produces architectural insight and knowledge. The first part addresses architectural meaning. It engages interdisciplinary connections: structuralism in linguistics and philosophy, color theory, and a displacement into deconstruction. It concludes that, although an architectural design process can deliberately try to produce and uphold determinate architectural meaning, such (objective) meaning is immediately deviated, notably by the appearance of architectural usages, scale, and possibilities of appropriation. The second part investigates deviation as a substantial part of architectural creation. If noise is irreducible, it must also structure architectural creation. It connects to domains resisting to reductionist thought: complexity sciences, literary critics, archaeological processes, and theorizations dealing with the secondary such as psychoanalysis and gender studies. The work is marked by a dilemma related to empowerment: the originality and authenticity of design and its delivery at a certain moment always seem to prohibit inhabitation, appropriation. The secondary, subject to dominant, single authorship, becomes primary. Architecture seems resistant to modernity in the Kantian sense. The work re-centers on psychiatry, gender studies and (health) care: the understanding of natures rather than appearance, structure or essence. In the third part, it moves from the production of difference to inscriptions of memories and future possibilities; from design as making to design as the initiation and care of a shared transformation process, accompaniment of differance. The understanding of architectural reality shifts from the finality of object to a process beyond control, co-construction between different authors/users occurring in minor events, in a very local and specific context. The work proposes a design process driven by care, encounter of authors and users in quality, accompanying different and specific emerging natures of (territorial) identity.

EPFL2012

Typological Problems of Housing in Vienna and Frankfurt

Alessandro Porotto

The purpose of this paper is to consider a number of valuable architectural accomplishments from the beginning of the XX century, built in Vienna (1919-1933) and Frankfurt am Main (1925-1931), by means of Aldo Rossi’s theoretical thought and analytical approach. Through the author’s re-drawings of selected case studies, it is possible to analyse the relevance of housing in the construction of the city and the fundamental role of the typology and morphology. Of the European experiences Das rote Wien and Das neue Frankfurt developed the most convincing typological solutions in answer to issues raised by housing problems in the nineteenth century. They correspond to two opposite urban and typological models: the large courtyard block (Hof) and the slab formation block (Siedlung). In this regard, Aldo Rossi provided a thorough examination concerning housing typology showing a particular interest in Vienna and Frankfurt examples: for instance, the article Un piano per Vienna published in Casabella Continuità 277 (1963); some essays on typological features in Aspetti e problemi della tipologia edilizia (1964); The Architecture of the City (1966); and Neues Bauen in Deutschland (1973), edited when he was professor at the ETH Zurich. He also investigated the 1920s housing examples through the relationship between “socialist realism” and “architectural rationalism”. The main purpose of this contribution is to propose a comparative analysis between the housing projects built in Vienna and Frankfurt that present inspiring and relevant qualities concerning morphology, density and typology. The study is conducted through critical re-drawings of the Höfe and Siedlungen typological assemblage plans by employing the same graphic code in order to get the highest degree of homogeneity and comparability. On the one hand, the purpose is to produce new and original analytical documents – in line with Rossi’s attitude about the project knowledge as necessary instrument –, on the other hand, to demonstrate that these dwelling complexes, even though they were designed almost one hundred years ago, are a fundamental presence within the contemporary city and offer key insights relevant to today’s housing design. The significant teaching of the Vienna and Frankfurt housing initiatives consists in their critical attitude to building the city through typological research, that they posit as an essential element for the society. Architectural historians and critics have often neglected or looked at these examples from a mere ideological perspective. Thanks to Rossi’s contribution about the observation of the city assumed as “urban artifact”, today, it is possible to investigate these typological solutions using a new approach which intends to better comprehend 1920s’ social housing experiments and, thus, provide a wider understanding. To sum up, the comparative approach has two goals: on the one hand, it establishes a homogeneous instrument that could efficiently be applied to several other housing cases in order to increase the studies and the research concerning this topic; on the other hand, it stresses the importance of morphological and typological research within the contemporary housing debate and architectural design.

Il Poligrafo2020