abstract from the Master Thesis: "Transportation Systems in Skopje. Present situation, tendencies and possibilities for future development"
by Biljana Spirkoska
This study examines the development of the transportation systems in Skopje based on the analisys of the existing situaton and the tendencies presented through the development plans and the current projects undertaken, and gives an overview of the possibilities for future sustainable development of the transportation in Skopje. The analysis is focused on the development period from 1963th onwards given that the city’s growth peaked over this period.
The first chapter explains the existing transportation systems in Skopje and gives an overview on the conditions they are in. The second chapter analysis the development tendencies of the transport systems generated through the legitimate urban plans and specialist studies, outlining the real transformations as well, to illustrate the dynamics of realization and the actual condition of the systems in those periods. Finally, it gives an overview of the recently undertaken transportation projects to locate the at-ground situation in the development strategy. The third chapter outlines the ultimate development direction of the transportation system in the European Union - towards sustainability, and the evaluation of the possibilities of the city of Skopje for future development towards the same direction given the Macedonia’s aspiration to join EU.
Additional texts to follow
Wednesday, December 23, 2009
Monday, December 21, 2009
Cities In-Between
abstract from the Master Thesis: "Cities In-Between. The prospects for Knowledge-based Economy Region in Macedonia"
by Stefan Lazarevski
At the end of the XX century, the fragmented totality of Europe was exposed to the mighty forces of functional integration, competition, cooperation, dependency and interdependency of the different entities. The so-called globalization, derived on these principles, became the structural bond between the divided east and west, north and south. Freed from political and ideological chains the urban landscapes surfaced as the most important “playground” for these integrative processes. However, while the mega-cities thrived, the small and medium-sized cities were faced with fundamental challenge: how to become constructive part of the global arrangements? This question is even more liable in the European urban context, dominated by the lower-tier cities. As a result, many scholars proposed the idea of networks and knowledge, as the key aspect of any modern socio-economy milieu.
Flanked between several Balkan metropolitan regions, there is a group of so-called cities in-between that have experienced development in rather conflictive environment. These cities are neither large nor small; neither global, nor local; neither fully connected, nor marginal, which makes their status fairly ambiguous. Being such urban agglomeration, the metropolitan region of Skopje embodies the “fight” of the European medium-sized cities to get a fair place in the regional and global urban system. Many studies have shown that crucial prerogative in achieving this objective is maintaining strong bond between the economy and the urban planning. The relationship between these two aspects has always been a two-way, cause – consequence interplay, which depicts the ups and downs of any society. Therefore, the aim of the thesis is examining the prospects of Skopje to develop and maintain a stable and progressive knowledge-based economy that will immanently reflect on the quality of urban planning in the wider micro-region. In which way, this goal can be achieved is searched through several steps: evaluation of number of indicators that depict the score of the city within knowledge foundations; review over different actions and policies undertaken by variety of actors and constructing own coherent development strategy.
Additional texts to follow.
by Stefan Lazarevski
At the end of the XX century, the fragmented totality of Europe was exposed to the mighty forces of functional integration, competition, cooperation, dependency and interdependency of the different entities. The so-called globalization, derived on these principles, became the structural bond between the divided east and west, north and south. Freed from political and ideological chains the urban landscapes surfaced as the most important “playground” for these integrative processes. However, while the mega-cities thrived, the small and medium-sized cities were faced with fundamental challenge: how to become constructive part of the global arrangements? This question is even more liable in the European urban context, dominated by the lower-tier cities. As a result, many scholars proposed the idea of networks and knowledge, as the key aspect of any modern socio-economy milieu.
Flanked between several Balkan metropolitan regions, there is a group of so-called cities in-between that have experienced development in rather conflictive environment. These cities are neither large nor small; neither global, nor local; neither fully connected, nor marginal, which makes their status fairly ambiguous. Being such urban agglomeration, the metropolitan region of Skopje embodies the “fight” of the European medium-sized cities to get a fair place in the regional and global urban system. Many studies have shown that crucial prerogative in achieving this objective is maintaining strong bond between the economy and the urban planning. The relationship between these two aspects has always been a two-way, cause – consequence interplay, which depicts the ups and downs of any society. Therefore, the aim of the thesis is examining the prospects of Skopje to develop and maintain a stable and progressive knowledge-based economy that will immanently reflect on the quality of urban planning in the wider micro-region. In which way, this goal can be achieved is searched through several steps: evaluation of number of indicators that depict the score of the city within knowledge foundations; review over different actions and policies undertaken by variety of actors and constructing own coherent development strategy.
Additional texts to follow.
Monday, July 13, 2009
Opportunity gained, opportunity lost: The Memorial House of Mother Teresa in Skopje
by Divna Pencic
After the catastrophic earthquake on 26th July, 1963, Skopje used its chance to become a city recognised as a symbol of international solidarity (the aid for the renewal and rebuilding of the city came from 82 countries worldwide and the United Nations Special Fund for reconstruction), modern urbanism and remarkable architectural buildings from the ’70. There is not a politician or an architect who does not commit to memory that first step of globalisation when for the first time both the East and the West got together, joining their efforts to build this modern city. And as hardly anywhere in the world, most of the ideas and conceptions for reconstruction of the city were materialised and made real. The urban plan for the city was made by two eminent planning bureaus, Doxiadis from Athens and Poliservis from Warsaw in collaboration with the Institute of Planning and Architecture of Skopje. Based on the compilation of the awarded concepts of two teams of architects, one of the Japanese architect, Kenzo Tange and the other of the Croatian architects, Radova Misevic and Fedor Wnzler, received on the international competition for urban plans for the city central area, a detailed urban plan for realisation, the famous “variation IX”, was prepared. According to that plan, and under the supervision of Kenzo Tange, were build the City Wall, the New Train Station, the Complex of Banks, and later on, there was an international competition for the Cultural Centre, the University Campus and some other buildings. Skopje used that chance to establish itself as a modern city with recognisable public and residential buildings and to become an interesting destination not only for tourists but also for urban planners and architects from all over the world.
In 2006 the City of Skopje had one more chance to get another symbol for international recognitions. It was about the initiative to build a Memorial House of Mother Teresa, the laureate of the Nobel Price for Peace in 1979, supported by the Vatican and the Catholic Church, the followers of her Sisters’ order, as well as by the entire political and general public in the Republic of Macedonia. Skopje is the city where Mother Teresa was born and the place from where she started her humanitarian work and devotion to her philanthropic believes. This represents a great honour and pride for the City of Skopje.
Skopje was once again faced with a challenge that required an appropriate consideration. The Ministry of Culture announced an International Competition for a Conceptual architectural design of a Memorial House of Mother Teresa. Exquisite architectural designs were received, among which the one of Jorge Marum, an architect from Portugal, was declared as winning. However, the government and the Initiation Committee decided to ignore the expert architectural opinion and the real values of architecture, and published a new announcement for International Competition, under which they awarded the first price to a design that they previously ordered from the architect Vangle Bozinovski, known after his architectural fairytales and schizophrenic architectural creations.
Unfortunately, for the City of Skopje that meant a lost chance, and for the architects, another example of unjust intervention into a fair play. What we have now is a structure which is all but a symbol of Mother Teresa and her life and work. As noted on the Skopje Forum 2009 by Professor Erich Raith (Technical University, Vienna) “the structure is designed very perfunctorily (in a hit-and-miss manner), missing out nothing that does not attract attention, with too many stories to tell, but without any essential message to give”. For him this structure, if it wasn’t for the cross, could very well be some disco or a casino. Professor Maren Harnack (Hamburg) stated that the structure “does not symbolise her life and her giving up from material goods”. For Vera Martinez (Berlin) are also questionable “the messages given by the interior of the house: a kitsch room, with a bed and a table with five chairs and four dinner sets, pretending as if all that had something to do with Mother Teresa”. A very plastic description was given by assistant Jovan Ivanovski from the Architectural Faculty in Skopje (University Cyril and Methodius): this structure reminds you of “someone’s materialised nightmares”.
For me personally, this structure looks very much like a tastelessly dressed girl, in lace stockings, but who cannot give up her gumboots, in a brocade skirt borrowed from her grandmother and a Chinese silky shirt, with Swarovski jewellery, and cosmonaut helmet on her head. She puts everything on, all she has ever dreamt of, as now she can afford to have it. Only she cannot decide the time in which she would like to live. This is even more emphasised by the narrations from the house interior. According to the custodian, “this is the dream of the little Teresa, to live in a normal city family”. I very much doubt that “little Teresa” was ever dreaming of petty bourgeois and snobbery life, devoted to material goods.
If it wasn’t built for such a noble person as Mother Teresa was, this structure might have even been enjoyable. But as it is now, it is a big offence. It offends with the whole procedure how it was selected; it offends with its pretentiousness, it offends with its arrogance, it offends with its tastelessness, but most of all, it offends with the totally missed correlation with the life and work of Mother Teresa.
In my personal opinion I strongly believe that this is a lost chance for Skopje to be once again listed on the maps of those who truly love and admire architecture and arts. Will Skopje get another chance? After this, it does not deserve one.
References:
http://www.forumskopje.com/
http://www.porta3.com.mk/
After the catastrophic earthquake on 26th July, 1963, Skopje used its chance to become a city recognised as a symbol of international solidarity (the aid for the renewal and rebuilding of the city came from 82 countries worldwide and the United Nations Special Fund for reconstruction), modern urbanism and remarkable architectural buildings from the ’70. There is not a politician or an architect who does not commit to memory that first step of globalisation when for the first time both the East and the West got together, joining their efforts to build this modern city. And as hardly anywhere in the world, most of the ideas and conceptions for reconstruction of the city were materialised and made real. The urban plan for the city was made by two eminent planning bureaus, Doxiadis from Athens and Poliservis from Warsaw in collaboration with the Institute of Planning and Architecture of Skopje. Based on the compilation of the awarded concepts of two teams of architects, one of the Japanese architect, Kenzo Tange and the other of the Croatian architects, Radova Misevic and Fedor Wnzler, received on the international competition for urban plans for the city central area, a detailed urban plan for realisation, the famous “variation IX”, was prepared. According to that plan, and under the supervision of Kenzo Tange, were build the City Wall, the New Train Station, the Complex of Banks, and later on, there was an international competition for the Cultural Centre, the University Campus and some other buildings. Skopje used that chance to establish itself as a modern city with recognisable public and residential buildings and to become an interesting destination not only for tourists but also for urban planners and architects from all over the world.
In 2006 the City of Skopje had one more chance to get another symbol for international recognitions. It was about the initiative to build a Memorial House of Mother Teresa, the laureate of the Nobel Price for Peace in 1979, supported by the Vatican and the Catholic Church, the followers of her Sisters’ order, as well as by the entire political and general public in the Republic of Macedonia. Skopje is the city where Mother Teresa was born and the place from where she started her humanitarian work and devotion to her philanthropic believes. This represents a great honour and pride for the City of Skopje.
Skopje was once again faced with a challenge that required an appropriate consideration. The Ministry of Culture announced an International Competition for a Conceptual architectural design of a Memorial House of Mother Teresa. Exquisite architectural designs were received, among which the one of Jorge Marum, an architect from Portugal, was declared as winning. However, the government and the Initiation Committee decided to ignore the expert architectural opinion and the real values of architecture, and published a new announcement for International Competition, under which they awarded the first price to a design that they previously ordered from the architect Vangle Bozinovski, known after his architectural fairytales and schizophrenic architectural creations.
Unfortunately, for the City of Skopje that meant a lost chance, and for the architects, another example of unjust intervention into a fair play. What we have now is a structure which is all but a symbol of Mother Teresa and her life and work. As noted on the Skopje Forum 2009 by Professor Erich Raith (Technical University, Vienna) “the structure is designed very perfunctorily (in a hit-and-miss manner), missing out nothing that does not attract attention, with too many stories to tell, but without any essential message to give”. For him this structure, if it wasn’t for the cross, could very well be some disco or a casino. Professor Maren Harnack (Hamburg) stated that the structure “does not symbolise her life and her giving up from material goods”. For Vera Martinez (Berlin) are also questionable “the messages given by the interior of the house: a kitsch room, with a bed and a table with five chairs and four dinner sets, pretending as if all that had something to do with Mother Teresa”. A very plastic description was given by assistant Jovan Ivanovski from the Architectural Faculty in Skopje (University Cyril and Methodius): this structure reminds you of “someone’s materialised nightmares”.
For me personally, this structure looks very much like a tastelessly dressed girl, in lace stockings, but who cannot give up her gumboots, in a brocade skirt borrowed from her grandmother and a Chinese silky shirt, with Swarovski jewellery, and cosmonaut helmet on her head. She puts everything on, all she has ever dreamt of, as now she can afford to have it. Only she cannot decide the time in which she would like to live. This is even more emphasised by the narrations from the house interior. According to the custodian, “this is the dream of the little Teresa, to live in a normal city family”. I very much doubt that “little Teresa” was ever dreaming of petty bourgeois and snobbery life, devoted to material goods.
If it wasn’t built for such a noble person as Mother Teresa was, this structure might have even been enjoyable. But as it is now, it is a big offence. It offends with the whole procedure how it was selected; it offends with its pretentiousness, it offends with its arrogance, it offends with its tastelessness, but most of all, it offends with the totally missed correlation with the life and work of Mother Teresa.
In my personal opinion I strongly believe that this is a lost chance for Skopje to be once again listed on the maps of those who truly love and admire architecture and arts. Will Skopje get another chance? After this, it does not deserve one.
References:
http://www.forumskopje.com/
http://www.porta3.com.mk/
Thursday, May 7, 2009
The Rent Gap Theory
by Biljana Spirkoska
The Rent Gap theory or renting gap theory was founded in 1979 by the geographer Neil Smith. The theory forms an explanation for the beginning of the process of Gentrification or social restructuring of a quarter, arguing that the process is driven by land prices and urban speculation rather than cultural preference for inner city living. The Rent Gap theory, according to Smith, is essentially a measure of the difference in a site's actual value and its potential value at 'best use'. In his further explanation, when the overall rent gap (the actual rent and the potential rent after rehabilitation (rent gap), in an area is determined to be great, it is suggested that the area will undergo gentrification as developers identify this difference as an economic opportunity on which to capitalize.
In his lecture on The Rent Gap Theory, Frank Eckardt explains the transformation of devalorized inner-city housing stock into an affluent neighborhood as follows. In search for low prices, authentical and central location, the more economically marginal subgroups, for example artists and yuppies, are the first to arrive in the devaluated inner-city urban neighborhoods. Since these young individuals usually live in non-family households, they have a higher tolerance for perceived urban ills such as crime, poor-quality schools, lack of amenities like shops and parks, and the presence of disadvantaged racial, ethnic, or socio-economic groups, the same main reason these areas are being avoided by the middle-class. As the number of the newcomers grows, they create amenities valued by them, particularly service establishments such as new bars, restaurants, and art galleries that serve them. These added amenities and investment to the area, increase local property values, and pave the way for attraction of the middle-class. Given that the cost of the rent in the area in turns increases significantly, the local residents no longer can afford to leave there, meaning they are priced out of their own neighborhood. In the same way, certain businesses which were catering this particular segment of population shut down once that population is displaced.
Smith further links the phenomenon of gentrification also to a restructuring of the economy. In his explanation, "deindustrialization has not only brought about the downfall of certain city districts, but also stimulated the growth of the service sector, which generated a particular employment structure in central urban areas"(GUST, 1999). In other words, while the economic activities are suburbanized, high-level service functions and executive decision-making tend to be increasingly centralized in a downtown central business district. In this context, Smith demonstrates that "gentrification is not only a local phenomenon but just as much determined by international and global factors. Gentrification is more than rehabilitation of the housing stock. It has become the hallmark of the unevenly developing global city"(GUST, 1999).
The positive and negative sides of the gentrification process are being broadly argued. While some are emphasizing the undeniable contribution made towards the revitalization of the city centers, others point to the associated displacement of lower- income residents and small-scale businesses, which results in transformation of the neighborhood's character and culture. Furthermore, they argue that "gentrification didn’t solve any of the urban problems like crime, homelessness, since the problems were only exported to other neighborhoods"(GUST, 1999). From Smits critical perspective, "the phenomenon amounts to little more than a greed-inspired attack by politicians and realtors against a mix of local minorities, lower classes, and homeless persons".
The critics on the gentrification process have mounted to the point when even community organizations have started to be established to fight against it, and rent control ordinances have been passed by some cities.
I will finalize with Peter Marcus explanation of the two opponent sides:
…the poorer residents of the Lower East Side of Manhattan, of Kreuzberg in Berlin, and of the area around the University of Southern California in Los Angeles wish to keep the gentrifiers out as much as the residents of the suburbs and luxury housing of these cities want to keep the poor out; yet the two desires are not equivalent morally. One represents the desire of those poorer to insulate themselves from losses to the more powerful; the other represents the ability of the more powerful to insulate themselves from the necessity of sharing with, or exposure to, those poorer. One wall defends survival, the other protects privilege. (GUST, 1999)
This text is based on a lecture on The Rent Gap Theory held by Prof. Dr. Frank Eckardt within the course German cities in transition at Bauhaus University in Weimar.
Further references:
― Ghent Urban Studies Team, 1999. The Urban Condition: Space, Community, and Self in the Contemporary Metropolis, 010 Publishers, Rotterdam
― http://www.sfu.ca/geog452spring00/project3/m_rent.html
― http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gentrification
― http://www.answers.com/topic/gentrification
The Rent Gap theory or renting gap theory was founded in 1979 by the geographer Neil Smith. The theory forms an explanation for the beginning of the process of Gentrification or social restructuring of a quarter, arguing that the process is driven by land prices and urban speculation rather than cultural preference for inner city living. The Rent Gap theory, according to Smith, is essentially a measure of the difference in a site's actual value and its potential value at 'best use'. In his further explanation, when the overall rent gap (the actual rent and the potential rent after rehabilitation (rent gap), in an area is determined to be great, it is suggested that the area will undergo gentrification as developers identify this difference as an economic opportunity on which to capitalize.
In his lecture on The Rent Gap Theory, Frank Eckardt explains the transformation of devalorized inner-city housing stock into an affluent neighborhood as follows. In search for low prices, authentical and central location, the more economically marginal subgroups, for example artists and yuppies, are the first to arrive in the devaluated inner-city urban neighborhoods. Since these young individuals usually live in non-family households, they have a higher tolerance for perceived urban ills such as crime, poor-quality schools, lack of amenities like shops and parks, and the presence of disadvantaged racial, ethnic, or socio-economic groups, the same main reason these areas are being avoided by the middle-class. As the number of the newcomers grows, they create amenities valued by them, particularly service establishments such as new bars, restaurants, and art galleries that serve them. These added amenities and investment to the area, increase local property values, and pave the way for attraction of the middle-class. Given that the cost of the rent in the area in turns increases significantly, the local residents no longer can afford to leave there, meaning they are priced out of their own neighborhood. In the same way, certain businesses which were catering this particular segment of population shut down once that population is displaced.
Smith further links the phenomenon of gentrification also to a restructuring of the economy. In his explanation, "deindustrialization has not only brought about the downfall of certain city districts, but also stimulated the growth of the service sector, which generated a particular employment structure in central urban areas"(GUST, 1999). In other words, while the economic activities are suburbanized, high-level service functions and executive decision-making tend to be increasingly centralized in a downtown central business district. In this context, Smith demonstrates that "gentrification is not only a local phenomenon but just as much determined by international and global factors. Gentrification is more than rehabilitation of the housing stock. It has become the hallmark of the unevenly developing global city"(GUST, 1999).
The positive and negative sides of the gentrification process are being broadly argued. While some are emphasizing the undeniable contribution made towards the revitalization of the city centers, others point to the associated displacement of lower- income residents and small-scale businesses, which results in transformation of the neighborhood's character and culture. Furthermore, they argue that "gentrification didn’t solve any of the urban problems like crime, homelessness, since the problems were only exported to other neighborhoods"(GUST, 1999). From Smits critical perspective, "the phenomenon amounts to little more than a greed-inspired attack by politicians and realtors against a mix of local minorities, lower classes, and homeless persons".
The critics on the gentrification process have mounted to the point when even community organizations have started to be established to fight against it, and rent control ordinances have been passed by some cities.
I will finalize with Peter Marcus explanation of the two opponent sides:
…the poorer residents of the Lower East Side of Manhattan, of Kreuzberg in Berlin, and of the area around the University of Southern California in Los Angeles wish to keep the gentrifiers out as much as the residents of the suburbs and luxury housing of these cities want to keep the poor out; yet the two desires are not equivalent morally. One represents the desire of those poorer to insulate themselves from losses to the more powerful; the other represents the ability of the more powerful to insulate themselves from the necessity of sharing with, or exposure to, those poorer. One wall defends survival, the other protects privilege. (GUST, 1999)
This text is based on a lecture on The Rent Gap Theory held by Prof. Dr. Frank Eckardt within the course German cities in transition at Bauhaus University in Weimar.
Further references:
― Ghent Urban Studies Team, 1999. The Urban Condition: Space, Community, and Self in the Contemporary Metropolis, 010 Publishers, Rotterdam
― http://www.sfu.ca/geog452spring00/project3/m_rent.html
― http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gentrification
― http://www.answers.com/topic/gentrification
Monday, May 4, 2009
The new Public Space?
by Stefan Lazarevski
If you Google the phrase “public space”, most likely you will hit the Wikipedia’s definition of public space as “an area or place that is open and accessible to all citizens”.
Architects and urban planners prefer to think of it as a static and materialistic space, fertile for experimenting with different tools which stimulate social interactions, accommodate public functions and provide common ground for debates. The followers of the Situationists, one of the last avant-garde movements of the twentieth century, envisioned the public space as a space for action. They thought that “every step taken in public creates a situation that changes space”. (Scymczak, 2007) Each intervention in public space, according to them, was nothing but strategy that immanently provokes publicity, because public space structures society and at the same time, it is socially produced. The projects and the participants within these public spaces should become part of the history of a place.
On the other hand, the expansion of the social networking sites has shed totally new light over the definition of public space. Reflecting on the identity construction, the social networks and the speed of the information interchange, Edwin Gardner identifies the virtual social space as the new public space. “No need for Architecture, we’ve got Facebook now”, he says. This, new social space abandons the actual, built environment in favor of an imagined, virtual one. There is no need for physical architecture anymore to enable social practice. Further on, he explains that the rise of social networking is some sort of remedy for the alienation and anonymity that inherently comes with the metropolitan life. Some of the loneliest people often live in the big Metropolitan cities, where work-life relationship is very fragile. These people have little or no time for face-to-face social interaction which ultimately could result in no interaction at all. Internet, on the other hand, has effectively changed the perception of boundaries and distances of the World, making it one global village. Here, argues Gardner, no one can comfortably disappear in the crowd, and this, in a bizarre way provides the people with psychiatric treatment against social amnesia that comes with a disconnected life. Creation of an image of ourselves, in this virtual space, anticipates deeper psychological process of how we picture ourselves. The perfect avatar, types of social networks that we are involved or even the status updates in limited characters, speak of a very sophisticated and profound identity construction. The second life provided by the virtual public space, not only doesn’t relieve the anxiety of self-consciousness, but in fact it magnifies it.
One of the biggest advantages of the social networks is the possibility of social interaction literally anywhere, making architecture’s social function redundant. However, this by no means, should be translated as goodbye to the old town squares, streets or any physical evidence of public space. On contrary, virtual social space should be understood more as “an augmentation of existing social practices. Virtual social space and the social networking as such should facilitate further development and upgrade of the traditional public space.
One of the oldest forms of virtual social networks is the Chinese Guanxi. This is translated into networks or connections and is based on individuals' having something in common. The essence of Guanxi is that each relationship carries with it a set of expectations and obligations for each participant. What was once pervasive relational business network today is one of the most common forms of online organization. However in either of the cases the conventional public space was never underutilized or abandoned, but in fact it provided physical accommodation of abstract and yet necessary organizational system.
Whichever side we choose to lean on: the traditional or the virtual public space, it is undeniably that the social media is changing how we relate to ourselves and space. Edwin Gardner underlines: “Tomorrow the invisible dimension floating over everyday life that is social media will descend and touch down; it will become omnipresent in the everyday. When the internet becomes truly mobile and computing ubiquitous, when the virtual mixes with the real and when the interface merges with the face-to-face, than we will be in a new place all together.” (2009)
Reference:
― Gardner, Edwin, 2009, Essay: No need for Architecture, we’ve got Facebook now, Volume 19
― http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/, 03.05.2009
If you Google the phrase “public space”, most likely you will hit the Wikipedia’s definition of public space as “an area or place that is open and accessible to all citizens”.
Architects and urban planners prefer to think of it as a static and materialistic space, fertile for experimenting with different tools which stimulate social interactions, accommodate public functions and provide common ground for debates. The followers of the Situationists, one of the last avant-garde movements of the twentieth century, envisioned the public space as a space for action. They thought that “every step taken in public creates a situation that changes space”. (Scymczak, 2007) Each intervention in public space, according to them, was nothing but strategy that immanently provokes publicity, because public space structures society and at the same time, it is socially produced. The projects and the participants within these public spaces should become part of the history of a place.
On the other hand, the expansion of the social networking sites has shed totally new light over the definition of public space. Reflecting on the identity construction, the social networks and the speed of the information interchange, Edwin Gardner identifies the virtual social space as the new public space. “No need for Architecture, we’ve got Facebook now”, he says. This, new social space abandons the actual, built environment in favor of an imagined, virtual one. There is no need for physical architecture anymore to enable social practice. Further on, he explains that the rise of social networking is some sort of remedy for the alienation and anonymity that inherently comes with the metropolitan life. Some of the loneliest people often live in the big Metropolitan cities, where work-life relationship is very fragile. These people have little or no time for face-to-face social interaction which ultimately could result in no interaction at all. Internet, on the other hand, has effectively changed the perception of boundaries and distances of the World, making it one global village. Here, argues Gardner, no one can comfortably disappear in the crowd, and this, in a bizarre way provides the people with psychiatric treatment against social amnesia that comes with a disconnected life. Creation of an image of ourselves, in this virtual space, anticipates deeper psychological process of how we picture ourselves. The perfect avatar, types of social networks that we are involved or even the status updates in limited characters, speak of a very sophisticated and profound identity construction. The second life provided by the virtual public space, not only doesn’t relieve the anxiety of self-consciousness, but in fact it magnifies it.
One of the biggest advantages of the social networks is the possibility of social interaction literally anywhere, making architecture’s social function redundant. However, this by no means, should be translated as goodbye to the old town squares, streets or any physical evidence of public space. On contrary, virtual social space should be understood more as “an augmentation of existing social practices. Virtual social space and the social networking as such should facilitate further development and upgrade of the traditional public space.
One of the oldest forms of virtual social networks is the Chinese Guanxi. This is translated into networks or connections and is based on individuals' having something in common. The essence of Guanxi is that each relationship carries with it a set of expectations and obligations for each participant. What was once pervasive relational business network today is one of the most common forms of online organization. However in either of the cases the conventional public space was never underutilized or abandoned, but in fact it provided physical accommodation of abstract and yet necessary organizational system.
Whichever side we choose to lean on: the traditional or the virtual public space, it is undeniably that the social media is changing how we relate to ourselves and space. Edwin Gardner underlines: “Tomorrow the invisible dimension floating over everyday life that is social media will descend and touch down; it will become omnipresent in the everyday. When the internet becomes truly mobile and computing ubiquitous, when the virtual mixes with the real and when the interface merges with the face-to-face, than we will be in a new place all together.” (2009)
Reference:
― Gardner, Edwin, 2009, Essay: No need for Architecture, we’ve got Facebook now, Volume 19
― http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/, 03.05.2009
Saturday, April 25, 2009
Visual Communication
by Ivana Velkovska
"Seeing comes before words. The child looks and recognizes before it can speak." - John Berger
"Words divide, pictures unite" - Otto Neurath
From the moment we wake up in the morning, until the moment we go to sleep, we are influenced ad infinitum by images. During a walk on a street, or while staying at home, our surrounding consists of all sort of images : starting from the wall space in our room, TV, video, film, photography, digital graphics, advertisements, newspaper, printings, paintings...even t-shirts, tattoos or packaging.
We are (more or less) aware of the aggressive presence of visuals and new messages born each day, eagerly wanting our attention. These messages mark us, in a positive or a negative way, and change us or stay in our conscience, even a little bit. Some experts even warn that this mediatised bombarding with images, make people see more visuals, but read less words, which can lead to illiteracy and lawlessness. The short definition of visual communication would be: transferring a message or an information not only by using text, but also visuals. The basics of visual communication is that the sender has something to say to the receiver: a message.
The message "travels" throughout a channel or a medium: poster, TV, Internet, newspaper...
The success of the receiving the message will depend on the budget and on what the sender knows about the receiver. In other words, there are no aesthetics criterion, no artistic preferences, nor some agreed-upon standards of how a good or bad (visual) communication should look like.
The terms of beautiful or ugly are excluded and considered to be irrelevant. For this communication to be carried out, the task of graphic designers is to construct the message by using :
1. Typography (designed letters, carefully chosen for the purpose of the message)
2. Graphics (creation of the image : photography, illustration, digital art or visual which is a mixture of plenty of techniques)
3. and Design, which is arranging the text and the image in order to be more attractive and remarkable) That would be a short definition of the visual communication process.
Paul Martin Lester in his book "Visual Communication: Images with messages" (2005), employs the idea of why some messages are easily remembered by individuals or cultures while other messages are easily forgotten? He also recalls of the fact that the most meaningful, powerful and culturally important messages are those where text and image are combined equally and respectfully. "The first step towards understanding visual communication is to educate yourself about the many ways that information is produced and consumed in a modern, media-rich society. Typographic, graphic, informational, cartoon, still, moving, television, computer, and World Wide Web images are analyzed within a framework of personal, historical, technical, ethical, cultural and critical perspectives in order to complete this first step." (Paul Martin Lester, Visual Communication : Images with messages")
However, as the technology advances, the presence of visual communication gets more and more visible, and the influence stronger, but, everyone has a choice of what to watch, read, consume and finally see.
References
- Lester, Paul Martin, 2005, Visual Communication : Images with messages http://books.google.com/books?id=6oibH9roTmkC
- Bergström, Bo, Essentials of Visual Communication, 2008, Laurence King Publishing, London
Wednesday, April 22, 2009
Museification and Disneyfication of cities
by Biljana Spirkoska
Zoning has proven to be an inadequate tool, by itself, for building livable communities. Zoning came at the price of a reduced civic life, sharpened social inequities and inflated housing prices, deepened division between races and between classes, and increased car dependency and related pollution. In response, the modernist principle of separation of functions - zoning has been abandoned and the periphery has assumed almost all the functions of the traditional center.
Quite opposite, contemporary downtowns are being subjected to a process of monoculturalisation. According to Eeckhout and Keunen, "the late-capitalist downtown is almost exclusively dedicated to three functions: consumption, finance and symbolic economy. This postindustrial symbolic economy comprises tourism, entertainment, culture, sports, the media and fashion industries, and an amalgamation of services logistically underpinning these activities." Further on, they explain that this monocultures can be found either in a form of "financial and office districts that bustle with life during the day and are spookily deserted at night", or "tourist zones that are populated at certain times of the day or in certain seasons only."
Given that tourism has become No. 1 World industry after the Second World War, mass tourism has developed into major source of income for the contemporary city centers. The "city trips" and "urban safaris" have become popular especially among middle-class and well-educated population groups which are fond by culture. Since culture attracts tourists, according to Sharon Zukin, it is "no longer a mere reflection, but a principal economic motor of the city’s material and social life". Given the circumstances, the worlds of finance, politics, and the arts have united into turning the arts and their major institutions like museums, opera houses, concert halls, and theaters, from not-for-profit to for-profit by privatizing them. Furthermore the economic importance of tourism has led to competitive self promotion of cities. As Eeckhout and Keunen point out, "in a globalizing economic system that is increasingly indifferent to questions of locale for the production of goods, cities have paradoxically had to start emphasizing their identities and differences again in competition for, on one hand tourists, and on the other, cultural and business elites. This competition of the cities to position themselves in the markets of mass tourism and the culture industries has foster a strong interest in the production of urban images.
More and more, cities are being presented or sold as collections of images."
In order tourists to understand what they are seeing they have been prepared through certain repertoires of qualified images from information brochures, from the advertizing, from guidebooks and from television reports. In other words, prior to the production of the real vision of the monument, that vision has been prefigured by experts in art history and in the creation of taste. This characteristic contemporary phenomenon, Jean-Louis Déotte defines as museification. According to him, museification of architecture, in monuments or in ruins, is subject to a process of exhibition that is destined to produce their "disappearance as objects in order to enter in glory a universe in which, thanks to the suspension of every particular quality, it will be possible to include them in the empyrean realm of trans-historical values."
In his book "Variations on a Theme Park", Michael Sorkin, draws parallels between the contemporary urban environments and the Theme Parks. He argues that the template of Disneyland, template of privatized, consumption oriented theme park intended to simulate a shared middle-class culture, in recent years is used as a model for actual urban transformations. In this transformations, the urban downtowns are presented as historical attraction and streamlined for consumption, and just as the suburbs of the 1920s are designed to address the needs of the middle-class, aestheticizing social differences, offering a reassuring environment without arms, alcohol, drunks, or homeless bums.
The Disneyfication of the contemporary city can be aligned also with the gentrification of historical and industrial areas. Typically these historical sites are transformed into a new type of urban shopping mall combining shops, restaurants, small-cart boutiques, and performance spaces. As M. Christine Boyer explains, in order to meet commercial-tourist aims in these pseudo-historical sites, "the histories of cities have been manipulated, recycled, simulated, and artificially resuscitated. The collective memory of cities has been exchanged for a fictive image transforming the city like the print of giant camera obscura."
In other words, the advance of the post-industrial society has changed along the course of the forces which configure the culture and the social life of our time. In response, a new type of society has evolved- the society of the spectacle and of the total commercialization of the object around us. The new No.1 industry is evolving and with it another way of seeing, which derives many consequences some of which mentioned in the text.
Reference:
― Ghent Urban Studies Team, 1999, The Urban Condition: Space, Community, and Self in the Contemporary Metropolis, 010 Publishers, Rotterdam.
― Berlage Institute, Fundació Mies van der Rohe, 2002, New working and living conditions in cities: forum & workshop at the Venice Biennale, Actar, Barcelona.
Zoning has proven to be an inadequate tool, by itself, for building livable communities. Zoning came at the price of a reduced civic life, sharpened social inequities and inflated housing prices, deepened division between races and between classes, and increased car dependency and related pollution. In response, the modernist principle of separation of functions - zoning has been abandoned and the periphery has assumed almost all the functions of the traditional center.
Quite opposite, contemporary downtowns are being subjected to a process of monoculturalisation. According to Eeckhout and Keunen, "the late-capitalist downtown is almost exclusively dedicated to three functions: consumption, finance and symbolic economy. This postindustrial symbolic economy comprises tourism, entertainment, culture, sports, the media and fashion industries, and an amalgamation of services logistically underpinning these activities." Further on, they explain that this monocultures can be found either in a form of "financial and office districts that bustle with life during the day and are spookily deserted at night", or "tourist zones that are populated at certain times of the day or in certain seasons only."
Given that tourism has become No. 1 World industry after the Second World War, mass tourism has developed into major source of income for the contemporary city centers. The "city trips" and "urban safaris" have become popular especially among middle-class and well-educated population groups which are fond by culture. Since culture attracts tourists, according to Sharon Zukin, it is "no longer a mere reflection, but a principal economic motor of the city’s material and social life". Given the circumstances, the worlds of finance, politics, and the arts have united into turning the arts and their major institutions like museums, opera houses, concert halls, and theaters, from not-for-profit to for-profit by privatizing them. Furthermore the economic importance of tourism has led to competitive self promotion of cities. As Eeckhout and Keunen point out, "in a globalizing economic system that is increasingly indifferent to questions of locale for the production of goods, cities have paradoxically had to start emphasizing their identities and differences again in competition for, on one hand tourists, and on the other, cultural and business elites. This competition of the cities to position themselves in the markets of mass tourism and the culture industries has foster a strong interest in the production of urban images.
More and more, cities are being presented or sold as collections of images."
In order tourists to understand what they are seeing they have been prepared through certain repertoires of qualified images from information brochures, from the advertizing, from guidebooks and from television reports. In other words, prior to the production of the real vision of the monument, that vision has been prefigured by experts in art history and in the creation of taste. This characteristic contemporary phenomenon, Jean-Louis Déotte defines as museification. According to him, museification of architecture, in monuments or in ruins, is subject to a process of exhibition that is destined to produce their "disappearance as objects in order to enter in glory a universe in which, thanks to the suspension of every particular quality, it will be possible to include them in the empyrean realm of trans-historical values."
In his book "Variations on a Theme Park", Michael Sorkin, draws parallels between the contemporary urban environments and the Theme Parks. He argues that the template of Disneyland, template of privatized, consumption oriented theme park intended to simulate a shared middle-class culture, in recent years is used as a model for actual urban transformations. In this transformations, the urban downtowns are presented as historical attraction and streamlined for consumption, and just as the suburbs of the 1920s are designed to address the needs of the middle-class, aestheticizing social differences, offering a reassuring environment without arms, alcohol, drunks, or homeless bums.
The Disneyfication of the contemporary city can be aligned also with the gentrification of historical and industrial areas. Typically these historical sites are transformed into a new type of urban shopping mall combining shops, restaurants, small-cart boutiques, and performance spaces. As M. Christine Boyer explains, in order to meet commercial-tourist aims in these pseudo-historical sites, "the histories of cities have been manipulated, recycled, simulated, and artificially resuscitated. The collective memory of cities has been exchanged for a fictive image transforming the city like the print of giant camera obscura."
In other words, the advance of the post-industrial society has changed along the course of the forces which configure the culture and the social life of our time. In response, a new type of society has evolved- the society of the spectacle and of the total commercialization of the object around us. The new No.1 industry is evolving and with it another way of seeing, which derives many consequences some of which mentioned in the text.
Reference:
― Ghent Urban Studies Team, 1999, The Urban Condition: Space, Community, and Self in the Contemporary Metropolis, 010 Publishers, Rotterdam.
― Berlage Institute, Fundació Mies van der Rohe, 2002, New working and living conditions in cities: forum & workshop at the Venice Biennale, Actar, Barcelona.
Monday, April 20, 2009
Cities beyond Now
by Stefan Lazarevski
Unlike the American or Asian continent, Europe does not feature large cities (aside from London or Paris). Over the time, a series of small or medium-sized towns, each with their own history and important cultural or political establishments have proudly resisted the hegemony of the bigger cities (primarily capital cities). Even today, says Bernardo Secchi, “political and cultural importance of the European towns doesn’t strictly relate to physical or demographical size”. Globalization has acted therapeutically for some medium-sized European cities to establish themselves as global players, but, even so, they could not maintain such position on long terms relying on the traditional forms of overall development.
In order to remain competitive, many of the European cities understood and enforced the knowledge-economy concept of economic and social development. What is more, European Union in 2000 reached the so-called “Lisbon Policy Brief” which stated: “The development of a modern knowledge economy reflects a larger transition from an economy based on land, labor and capital to one in which the main components of production are information and knowledge. Because of that, the most effective modern economies will be those that produce the most information and knowledge – and make that information and knowledge easily accessible to the greatest number of individuals and enterprises”. One of the most important aspects of this document was recognition by the leading European countries that further progress does not rely, anymore, on competition with countries that offered low-skilled work at low wages, but rather production and implementation of knowledge within their own societies.
The trigger for transition from conventional to knowledge-economy based societies was different for different cities. For some it was economic crises, decline of economic bases or fleeing of the knowledge base, whereas for others improvement of level of competitiveness, rise of the economy or strengthening of the current network balance. In any case, Knowledge-Economy centers such as Helsinki, Dortmund, Rotterdam, Munich, Zaragoza or Manchester have proven, over the years that investments in stronger education, R&D areas, stable organizational structure, investments in clustering and diversification of the economy, can worthwhile step in building up stronger societies. What is more, they have shown proactive behavior in upgrading the knowledge foundations, strengthening the knowledge activities and applying sophisticated strategies to attract the knowledge capital of the region.
In terms of urban planning this meant strategic approach based on the knowledge foundations and knowledge activities. The pillar foundations: knowledge and economic base are essential in upgrading the urban diversity, social equity, accessibility and thus overall quality of life. Additionally, the cities need to undertake number of actions to become stronger in the knowledge economy. This is an on-going process which is based on four types of “knowledge activities”: creating new knowledge, applying new knowledge, attracting knowledge workers and developing new growth clusters.
Naturally, not all cities have similar prerogatives to initiate, much less to develop knowledge-economy based society. According to van Winden and van der Berg from the European Institute for Comparative Urban research and based on the size of the labor and cultural diversity there can be isolated: Metropolitan and non-Metropolitan cities. While the first group anticipates primarily big cities with solid knowledge foundations and stable position in number of global networks, non-Metropolitan cities are of smaller scale, they have weaker knowledge foundations, but have strong organizing capacities, low level of crime and congestion and strong local leadership. This category also differs within, and therefore stretches over to: star techno-towns, techno-towns in transition and university towns. However, there is a thin line that separates these cities especially if they are engaged in polycentric networks and alliances. It is generally accepted that non-metropolitan cities have more difficulties in applying knowledge economy. The common thing for all of them, however, is that they all are formulating comprehensive and explicit strategies to attract and retain KE activities by utilizing their own strengths and resources, founded on education, technology and research as well as designing sustainable housing policies and city marketing.
The cities today, aim to become international destination known for the high quality of life provided to its inhabitants and to be sustained by a vital public realm rich in cultural and social opportunities. Knowledge-economy concept, for many of them, has turned out to be the next step forward.
Reference:
― Van Winden, W. and van den Berg, L., 2004, Discussion paper - Cities in the knowledge Economy: New Governance challenges, European Institute for Comparative Urban Research
― Calthopre, Peter, 1993, The Next American Metropolis – Ecology, Community and the American Dream,Princeton Architectural Press, New York
― http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/43/11/36278531.pdf, 19.04.2009
Unlike the American or Asian continent, Europe does not feature large cities (aside from London or Paris). Over the time, a series of small or medium-sized towns, each with their own history and important cultural or political establishments have proudly resisted the hegemony of the bigger cities (primarily capital cities). Even today, says Bernardo Secchi, “political and cultural importance of the European towns doesn’t strictly relate to physical or demographical size”. Globalization has acted therapeutically for some medium-sized European cities to establish themselves as global players, but, even so, they could not maintain such position on long terms relying on the traditional forms of overall development.
In order to remain competitive, many of the European cities understood and enforced the knowledge-economy concept of economic and social development. What is more, European Union in 2000 reached the so-called “Lisbon Policy Brief” which stated: “The development of a modern knowledge economy reflects a larger transition from an economy based on land, labor and capital to one in which the main components of production are information and knowledge. Because of that, the most effective modern economies will be those that produce the most information and knowledge – and make that information and knowledge easily accessible to the greatest number of individuals and enterprises”. One of the most important aspects of this document was recognition by the leading European countries that further progress does not rely, anymore, on competition with countries that offered low-skilled work at low wages, but rather production and implementation of knowledge within their own societies.
The trigger for transition from conventional to knowledge-economy based societies was different for different cities. For some it was economic crises, decline of economic bases or fleeing of the knowledge base, whereas for others improvement of level of competitiveness, rise of the economy or strengthening of the current network balance. In any case, Knowledge-Economy centers such as Helsinki, Dortmund, Rotterdam, Munich, Zaragoza or Manchester have proven, over the years that investments in stronger education, R&D areas, stable organizational structure, investments in clustering and diversification of the economy, can worthwhile step in building up stronger societies. What is more, they have shown proactive behavior in upgrading the knowledge foundations, strengthening the knowledge activities and applying sophisticated strategies to attract the knowledge capital of the region.
In terms of urban planning this meant strategic approach based on the knowledge foundations and knowledge activities. The pillar foundations: knowledge and economic base are essential in upgrading the urban diversity, social equity, accessibility and thus overall quality of life. Additionally, the cities need to undertake number of actions to become stronger in the knowledge economy. This is an on-going process which is based on four types of “knowledge activities”: creating new knowledge, applying new knowledge, attracting knowledge workers and developing new growth clusters.
Naturally, not all cities have similar prerogatives to initiate, much less to develop knowledge-economy based society. According to van Winden and van der Berg from the European Institute for Comparative Urban research and based on the size of the labor and cultural diversity there can be isolated: Metropolitan and non-Metropolitan cities. While the first group anticipates primarily big cities with solid knowledge foundations and stable position in number of global networks, non-Metropolitan cities are of smaller scale, they have weaker knowledge foundations, but have strong organizing capacities, low level of crime and congestion and strong local leadership. This category also differs within, and therefore stretches over to: star techno-towns, techno-towns in transition and university towns. However, there is a thin line that separates these cities especially if they are engaged in polycentric networks and alliances. It is generally accepted that non-metropolitan cities have more difficulties in applying knowledge economy. The common thing for all of them, however, is that they all are formulating comprehensive and explicit strategies to attract and retain KE activities by utilizing their own strengths and resources, founded on education, technology and research as well as designing sustainable housing policies and city marketing.
The cities today, aim to become international destination known for the high quality of life provided to its inhabitants and to be sustained by a vital public realm rich in cultural and social opportunities. Knowledge-economy concept, for many of them, has turned out to be the next step forward.
Reference:
― Van Winden, W. and van den Berg, L., 2004, Discussion paper - Cities in the knowledge Economy: New Governance challenges, European Institute for Comparative Urban Research
― Calthopre, Peter, 1993, The Next American Metropolis – Ecology, Community and the American Dream,Princeton Architectural Press, New York
― http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/43/11/36278531.pdf, 19.04.2009
Wednesday, April 15, 2009
Transformation of Urban Public Space
by Biljana Spirkoska
Most current debates concerning the Public Space, are dealing with the different transformations that the public spaces are undergoing in/under the new urban conditions, among which the Virtualization and Privatization of the public space are most discussed.
Ideally and traditionally conceived, the public spaces were seen as "a part of the urban territory that is supposed to be accessible to everyone". They were representing the political authorities, and at the same time they represented "a place of sociability and interaction".
In the contemporary city the public spaces are undergoing fundamental change. It is argued that, in its most immediate material sense, the public spaces are facing the same fragmentation and separation as the overall post-urban space. The debate continues that the public domain even "no longer resides in parts of the city, but it has been displaced to the realm of the mass media and has sprawled through the global networks of communication technologies". The traditional material urban spaces of streets, squares, shops, cafés, and clubs are no longer the primary places of public debate, but as Marc Augé remarks have "often became no more than a transitional space which is being used in traditional sense only by outcasts".
Not only that the public space has in a way been dematerialized by the various media and communication technologies, it has also been physically and materially threatened by economic and social privatization processes. In the recent debates a new category of space standing in-between the public and private space has been introduced. "Collective space", as Manuel de Solà-Morales explains, „refers to those meeting-places in the city which, though privately owned and hence in some respect exclusionary, continue to form the scenes for various public activities: places like the shopping mall, the sports stadium, the theme park, or the grand café". Those spaces are neither public, nor private, but "public spaces that are used by private activities or private spaces allowing a collective usage". The introduction of the new term, according to Solà-Morales, is a result of the processes of privatization, collectivization and separation of public spaces by diverse groups in a multicultural society. The urban public spaces of today, he argues, are subdivided into sections, taken over by particular group, whether we are talking about street gangs using spray paint or homeowners associations using neighborhood signs, and avoided by other groups.
Among the most obvious examples of appropriation of public space are those of the park, the atrium and the shopping mall.
Historically speaking, the parks have for a long time been an exclusive domain of the urban upper classes. They became open to the general public at the beginning of the twentieth century. Today, however, the urban parks are again more and more exclusionary. As a result of the growing presence of unwanted visitors (drug addicts or homeless people), in an answer of the middle classes demand for safety actions, different measures are undertaken, ranging from: not providing public toilets, seen as magnets for transients, to fencing, the gates of which are closed after dark.
The desire for shielded, constantly monitored public environments goes even step further in the skyscraper’s atriums. The atriums are not only revamped to keep unwanted visitors out, but they also simulate urban totality. By attracting selective parts of population, "skyscrapers tend to become cities-within-cities", but as more exclusionary they become, the more they weaken the essence of the traditional downtown: „its messy condition, its complexity, its irregularities, its densities, its ethnicities".
The last example can be found in the shopping malls, the suburban phenomenon, which found its way into city centers. Not only that the malls became urban, but by including facilities like hotels, fitness clubs, banks and medical centers, entertainment industries, they become in a way new type of downtown. But, what differs them from the traditional metropolitan downtown, beside being privately owned and privately run, is that by being exclusively design to respond to the demands of the middle-class, they "reject many of the activities of a true center- controversy, soap boxing, passing and leaflets, impromptu entertaining, eccentric behavior- harmless or not".
The three given examples represent only a part of the adapted forms of urban public spaces. The fragmentation and appropriation of the contemporary metropolis continues in various forms and directions. The New phenomenon of BID’s (Business Improvement Districts) is another example of the further administrative and managerial fragmentation characterizing the contemporary metropolis.
What all those examples have in common is that they are all working on the principle of inclusion and exclusion on different segments of the urban population. Because of the exclusionary politics, they face a subsequent loss of possibilities for interaction, which make them "lack the socioeconomic reaches and diversity of the traditional metropolis".
Reference:
Ghent Urban Studies Team, 1999. The Urban Condition: Space, Community, and Self in the Contemporary Metropolis, 010 Publishers, Rotterdam.
Most current debates concerning the Public Space, are dealing with the different transformations that the public spaces are undergoing in/under the new urban conditions, among which the Virtualization and Privatization of the public space are most discussed.
Ideally and traditionally conceived, the public spaces were seen as "a part of the urban territory that is supposed to be accessible to everyone". They were representing the political authorities, and at the same time they represented "a place of sociability and interaction".
In the contemporary city the public spaces are undergoing fundamental change. It is argued that, in its most immediate material sense, the public spaces are facing the same fragmentation and separation as the overall post-urban space. The debate continues that the public domain even "no longer resides in parts of the city, but it has been displaced to the realm of the mass media and has sprawled through the global networks of communication technologies". The traditional material urban spaces of streets, squares, shops, cafés, and clubs are no longer the primary places of public debate, but as Marc Augé remarks have "often became no more than a transitional space which is being used in traditional sense only by outcasts".
Not only that the public space has in a way been dematerialized by the various media and communication technologies, it has also been physically and materially threatened by economic and social privatization processes. In the recent debates a new category of space standing in-between the public and private space has been introduced. "Collective space", as Manuel de Solà-Morales explains, „refers to those meeting-places in the city which, though privately owned and hence in some respect exclusionary, continue to form the scenes for various public activities: places like the shopping mall, the sports stadium, the theme park, or the grand café". Those spaces are neither public, nor private, but "public spaces that are used by private activities or private spaces allowing a collective usage". The introduction of the new term, according to Solà-Morales, is a result of the processes of privatization, collectivization and separation of public spaces by diverse groups in a multicultural society. The urban public spaces of today, he argues, are subdivided into sections, taken over by particular group, whether we are talking about street gangs using spray paint or homeowners associations using neighborhood signs, and avoided by other groups.
Among the most obvious examples of appropriation of public space are those of the park, the atrium and the shopping mall.
Historically speaking, the parks have for a long time been an exclusive domain of the urban upper classes. They became open to the general public at the beginning of the twentieth century. Today, however, the urban parks are again more and more exclusionary. As a result of the growing presence of unwanted visitors (drug addicts or homeless people), in an answer of the middle classes demand for safety actions, different measures are undertaken, ranging from: not providing public toilets, seen as magnets for transients, to fencing, the gates of which are closed after dark.
The desire for shielded, constantly monitored public environments goes even step further in the skyscraper’s atriums. The atriums are not only revamped to keep unwanted visitors out, but they also simulate urban totality. By attracting selective parts of population, "skyscrapers tend to become cities-within-cities", but as more exclusionary they become, the more they weaken the essence of the traditional downtown: „its messy condition, its complexity, its irregularities, its densities, its ethnicities".
The last example can be found in the shopping malls, the suburban phenomenon, which found its way into city centers. Not only that the malls became urban, but by including facilities like hotels, fitness clubs, banks and medical centers, entertainment industries, they become in a way new type of downtown. But, what differs them from the traditional metropolitan downtown, beside being privately owned and privately run, is that by being exclusively design to respond to the demands of the middle-class, they "reject many of the activities of a true center- controversy, soap boxing, passing and leaflets, impromptu entertaining, eccentric behavior- harmless or not".
The three given examples represent only a part of the adapted forms of urban public spaces. The fragmentation and appropriation of the contemporary metropolis continues in various forms and directions. The New phenomenon of BID’s (Business Improvement Districts) is another example of the further administrative and managerial fragmentation characterizing the contemporary metropolis.
What all those examples have in common is that they are all working on the principle of inclusion and exclusion on different segments of the urban population. Because of the exclusionary politics, they face a subsequent loss of possibilities for interaction, which make them "lack the socioeconomic reaches and diversity of the traditional metropolis".
Reference:
Ghent Urban Studies Team, 1999. The Urban Condition: Space, Community, and Self in the Contemporary Metropolis, 010 Publishers, Rotterdam.
Friday, April 10, 2009
Shaping the Society through the Public Sphere
by Nora Arsovska
“High columns and domes in antique-roman style. This is the description for the new building of the Constitutional Court, legislative organ of greatest importance in Macedonia. .. Zivkovski (the author) sais that this building will raise the consciousness of the Macedonian nationality for their own cultural heritage.” Quotation from a short column written and announced by the magazine Kapital.
Antique-roman style/raising the consciousness of the Macedonian nationality for their own cultural heritage. The above quotation represents the current state of conducted public opinion, which actually is an image of non-existing productive critics or an instrumentalized public thought.
What is actually happening with the public sphere in countries in transition? Where is it positioned in the state constellation? The public sphere, according to Habermass is a category that should intermediate between the society and the state and it should shape the public opinion. It is public information for which battles had been fought against the hidden politics of monarchies. The public opinion has enabled the democratic control of the government activities.
On contrary, the situation in countries like Macedonia is different. The public opinion is not a democratic tool for controlling the government activities. It is easily bribed and corrupted, especially for the cost of identity.
During the 18th century, the bourgeois public sphere had been formed representing the rational exploration and debate between the government and the private sector. The literature clubs, newspapers and political magazines, institutions for political debate that had been formed show the liberal and democratic public sphere in the early modernism. That had been a society where individuals criticize the common interests, where the individuality and citizenship could have shaped the society through their activities in the public sphere.
Another situation in the epoch of the modernism that Habermass illustrates (similar to the situation in our society) is the transition from the entrepreneurs, market capitalism into the governmental or monopolistic capitalism. This is the stage where the state and the private corporations overtake the vital functions of the public sphere and at the same point the liberal and democratic public discussion transfer into sphere of domination. Through the mechanism of bureaucracy the government manipulates the economy, trying to prevent the crises and at the same time controls the public functions like education, social care, and public mediums.
The giant corporations enter the public sphere and transform the individuals from citizens and public debaters into mere observers of the political, cultural and public matters. The developments of new media, marketing, public relations are becoming controlling tools of the private corporations. These tools empower the private corporations in the realm of public sphere and at the same time suppress the rational individuals and citizens.
After analyzing the transformation of the capitalism, Habermass encourages the idea of communicative acting. The instrumental acting directly connects the instruments to the goals, without rethinking the rationality of the aim. The communicative acting is focused on inter-subjective communication and understanding the goal, or forming consensus over a question.
The described tool according Habermass is the tool for initiating critics and reconstruction of the society.
Reference:
Steven Best and Douglas Kellner, 1991, Postmodern Theory, Critical Interrogations, The Guilford Press
“High columns and domes in antique-roman style. This is the description for the new building of the Constitutional Court, legislative organ of greatest importance in Macedonia. .. Zivkovski (the author) sais that this building will raise the consciousness of the Macedonian nationality for their own cultural heritage.” Quotation from a short column written and announced by the magazine Kapital.
Antique-roman style/raising the consciousness of the Macedonian nationality for their own cultural heritage. The above quotation represents the current state of conducted public opinion, which actually is an image of non-existing productive critics or an instrumentalized public thought.
What is actually happening with the public sphere in countries in transition? Where is it positioned in the state constellation? The public sphere, according to Habermass is a category that should intermediate between the society and the state and it should shape the public opinion. It is public information for which battles had been fought against the hidden politics of monarchies. The public opinion has enabled the democratic control of the government activities.
On contrary, the situation in countries like Macedonia is different. The public opinion is not a democratic tool for controlling the government activities. It is easily bribed and corrupted, especially for the cost of identity.
During the 18th century, the bourgeois public sphere had been formed representing the rational exploration and debate between the government and the private sector. The literature clubs, newspapers and political magazines, institutions for political debate that had been formed show the liberal and democratic public sphere in the early modernism. That had been a society where individuals criticize the common interests, where the individuality and citizenship could have shaped the society through their activities in the public sphere.
Another situation in the epoch of the modernism that Habermass illustrates (similar to the situation in our society) is the transition from the entrepreneurs, market capitalism into the governmental or monopolistic capitalism. This is the stage where the state and the private corporations overtake the vital functions of the public sphere and at the same point the liberal and democratic public discussion transfer into sphere of domination. Through the mechanism of bureaucracy the government manipulates the economy, trying to prevent the crises and at the same time controls the public functions like education, social care, and public mediums.
The giant corporations enter the public sphere and transform the individuals from citizens and public debaters into mere observers of the political, cultural and public matters. The developments of new media, marketing, public relations are becoming controlling tools of the private corporations. These tools empower the private corporations in the realm of public sphere and at the same time suppress the rational individuals and citizens.
After analyzing the transformation of the capitalism, Habermass encourages the idea of communicative acting. The instrumental acting directly connects the instruments to the goals, without rethinking the rationality of the aim. The communicative acting is focused on inter-subjective communication and understanding the goal, or forming consensus over a question.
The described tool according Habermass is the tool for initiating critics and reconstruction of the society.
Reference:
Steven Best and Douglas Kellner, 1991, Postmodern Theory, Critical Interrogations, The Guilford Press
Tuesday, April 7, 2009
Space Syntax as a new Master Planning Tool
by Biljana Spirkoska
The architectural knowledge is knowledge of formal and spatial architectural possibility and of how to use this knowledge to create an actual form. Accordingly, the two domains of architectural knowledge are the physical and the spatial forms of buildings. These domains of knowledge are about complexes of relations between things- physical elements on the one hand and individual spaces on the other. As such they are subject to the general way of thinking about complex relations: namely that, as with the grammar of a language, we think of words, but with the unconscious rules that form them into sentences. This is the problem of architecture: its primary domains of knowledge are non-discursive: we deal with them competently, but intuitively.
This is where architectural theory enters. It has always been the aim of classical architectural theories to render the non-discursive discursive-so we can talk about it in an explicit way. However, Hillier argues two problems with the ways in which architectural theories had approached the analysis of the non-discursive in architecture: firstly, most aimed at the analytics of physical form, few aimed at the analytics of space, and secondly this has usually been done in a partially normative, rather than fully analytic way. In effect architectural theories tent to be normative rather than analytic and close down the solution space in the direction of particular aesthetics, rather than open it up as theory should.
What he suggests it is needed is a "general theory of description of space, able to describe the differences between one spatial pattern and another in a way that is both analytic, in that it could describe all kinds of case, and theoretical in that it would aim at an effective description in terms of as few terms and concepts as possible."
In an answer he develops the space syntax project as: "a search for a spatial language to describe the relational properties of spatial patterns in buildings and cities, so a language of the spatial non-discursive, with sufficient precision to design with it and testable through comparing and correlating spatial and functional patterns."
The fundamental proposition of space syntax, one that underlines all others in some sense, is that the emergence of spatial patterns from the placing and shaping of objects is subject to simple laws. These are not in any sense laws which tell human beings what to do, but take the form: if we do this with objects than that emerges in an ambient pattern of space. These simple but pervasive spatial laws could only be brought to light by learning to analyze space configurationally that is by considering relations between all spatial elements, however defined and all others.
As a set of techniques, space syntax is about: applying configurational analyses to different representations of space: rooms, convex spaces, lines, street segments and similar, and through this- identifying structure in the spatial patterns and looking for observable functional correlates of these spatial patterns. In this way cultural patterns can be identified, underlying deep structures in architectural space can be brought to light, clear structure-function relations can be showed, theoretical ideas can be experimented, designs to see how they would work in context can be simulated and spatial laws about the relation between the placing and shaping of objects and the shapes of space that emerge from this can be identify. Once created, those analyses are powerful design tool, since they can be used for exploration of the effect of changes by just drawing and re-analyzing.
Space syntax is increasingly being used as a master planning tool, not only at the scale of the urban area, but also at the scale of the city and its region.
The strength of the space syntax urban models in comparison to the traditional planning models is seen in its ability to synthesize with great precision all kind of urban data-movement, land use, densities and similar- on the basis of a functionally intelligent spatial analysis of the street network and use it in a new kind of evidence-based design, to work across urban scales with the same level of precision at the micro scale as at the macro scale, to deploy science in design in a way which does not tell the designer what to do, but helps the designer to understand what he or she is doing, and to create theories which do not close down the solution space, but open it up to new thinking about design and new problems.
This text has been based on the lecture ''Space Syntax as a Thinking Machine for Architecture'' held by Bill Hillier on the 11th International Bauhaus Kolloquium in Weimar.
The architectural knowledge is knowledge of formal and spatial architectural possibility and of how to use this knowledge to create an actual form. Accordingly, the two domains of architectural knowledge are the physical and the spatial forms of buildings. These domains of knowledge are about complexes of relations between things- physical elements on the one hand and individual spaces on the other. As such they are subject to the general way of thinking about complex relations: namely that, as with the grammar of a language, we think of words, but with the unconscious rules that form them into sentences. This is the problem of architecture: its primary domains of knowledge are non-discursive: we deal with them competently, but intuitively.
This is where architectural theory enters. It has always been the aim of classical architectural theories to render the non-discursive discursive-so we can talk about it in an explicit way. However, Hillier argues two problems with the ways in which architectural theories had approached the analysis of the non-discursive in architecture: firstly, most aimed at the analytics of physical form, few aimed at the analytics of space, and secondly this has usually been done in a partially normative, rather than fully analytic way. In effect architectural theories tent to be normative rather than analytic and close down the solution space in the direction of particular aesthetics, rather than open it up as theory should.
What he suggests it is needed is a "general theory of description of space, able to describe the differences between one spatial pattern and another in a way that is both analytic, in that it could describe all kinds of case, and theoretical in that it would aim at an effective description in terms of as few terms and concepts as possible."
In an answer he develops the space syntax project as: "a search for a spatial language to describe the relational properties of spatial patterns in buildings and cities, so a language of the spatial non-discursive, with sufficient precision to design with it and testable through comparing and correlating spatial and functional patterns."
The fundamental proposition of space syntax, one that underlines all others in some sense, is that the emergence of spatial patterns from the placing and shaping of objects is subject to simple laws. These are not in any sense laws which tell human beings what to do, but take the form: if we do this with objects than that emerges in an ambient pattern of space. These simple but pervasive spatial laws could only be brought to light by learning to analyze space configurationally that is by considering relations between all spatial elements, however defined and all others.
As a set of techniques, space syntax is about: applying configurational analyses to different representations of space: rooms, convex spaces, lines, street segments and similar, and through this- identifying structure in the spatial patterns and looking for observable functional correlates of these spatial patterns. In this way cultural patterns can be identified, underlying deep structures in architectural space can be brought to light, clear structure-function relations can be showed, theoretical ideas can be experimented, designs to see how they would work in context can be simulated and spatial laws about the relation between the placing and shaping of objects and the shapes of space that emerge from this can be identify. Once created, those analyses are powerful design tool, since they can be used for exploration of the effect of changes by just drawing and re-analyzing.
Space syntax is increasingly being used as a master planning tool, not only at the scale of the urban area, but also at the scale of the city and its region.
The strength of the space syntax urban models in comparison to the traditional planning models is seen in its ability to synthesize with great precision all kind of urban data-movement, land use, densities and similar- on the basis of a functionally intelligent spatial analysis of the street network and use it in a new kind of evidence-based design, to work across urban scales with the same level of precision at the micro scale as at the macro scale, to deploy science in design in a way which does not tell the designer what to do, but helps the designer to understand what he or she is doing, and to create theories which do not close down the solution space, but open it up to new thinking about design and new problems.
This text has been based on the lecture ''Space Syntax as a Thinking Machine for Architecture'' held by Bill Hillier on the 11th International Bauhaus Kolloquium in Weimar.
Monday, April 6, 2009
Collective memory under siege
by Stefan Lazarevski
The recently held Bauhaus Kolloquium in Weimar revealed several issues that planners, architects, sociologists and other city researchers are being occupied with at the moment. The questions of control and freedom, core and periphery, state and society as well as networks that are enforced, based on Michael Hardt’s and Antonio Negri’s perception of the new World-order, were addressed. There were two focal points; the relationship between theory and practice overshadowed by the economic, political, social and moral issues that pervade in any globalized society; and how to escape the conformist role that architecture tends to aspire by focusing on moods, ornaments and atmospheres.
Sounds familier? Yes, it already had been an issue in the early 20’s when the founders of Bauhaus Gropius and Mies van der Rohe demanded a “resolute affirmation” of the current conditions and responses adequate of the needs, goals and the time.
Now, standing in the turning point of humanity, clinched between economic and moral crises, architecture must once again rise and answer the social dilemmas. This can, very easily, be understood as self-centered and arrogant position of architects but it also must be considered that, as Keller Easterling said in her expose, some of the most radical changes to the globalized world are being written, not in the language of law and diplomacy, but rather in the language of architecture, urbanism and infrastructure. Finally, the city is the physical evidence of the collective memory and the changes in global trends will most definitely be embedded in the urban form and architectural language and as such will remain to justify our actions in the society of our time.
In her book “The city of collective memory”, Christine Boyer asks probably one of the most fundamental question of the identity of cities and ultimately the nation states; the question of what is collective memory? Today when identity is attacked by forces of globalization, is the collective memory under siege? This question seems to be very liable in a societies that are driven by political figures and pseudo-scientific workers on constant alert of strengthening the national identity. The rise of the nation states has mobilized and commercialized the collective memory, bringing it to a mere product, that can be easily sold, once it’s branded. This only proves that collective memory is rather political question than programmatic and in most of the cases it has nothing to do with the past. The reflection of such memory is to be found in different layers of the city which piled over the time.
However, what happens with the memory once it has been subjected to the instants of war, of genocide, of totalitarian rule or nationalistic amnesia? Is it a break from conventional form of memory or an absolute memory free situation? Christine Boyer argues that memory is absolute zero in such actions, that Bogdan Bogdanovic describes as urbicid; but she does not differentiate the true from the false memory. Perhaps this is the right approach, because if collective memory conveys only data, than the value of that information or its accuracy is of no importance to the identity structure. Then why totalitarian rule is bad for collective memory? In the globalized world, most of the spectacular architectural production by star architects happens in countries with soft or absolute totalitarian rule. The cities in these countries get inerasable urban form and thus build up its own collective memory.
“The more centralized the power, the less compromises need to be made in architecture” says Peter Eisenman. However, the liability of such collective memory hovers over the issues of morality, truth and its independent reading. Sure, we have the chicken, but is it really not important if it came first or was it the egg. The lack of dialog, transparency and process, corrupts and undermines this collective memory giving it a questionable and false face. Yes, it is a memory but it is a declarative one.
Professor Eckardt in his expose on modern Empires refers to Foucalt’s ideas of understanding urban society and says that it is all about power. People are controlled by places, by its culture and habits and most certainly by the different forms of power such as the State or the modern companies. Sometimes, they are controlled by the burden of its own collective memory. It is also true that people are the creators of all forms of control and they are the ultimate key in changing them.
“Before any process of memorization can take effect, silencing has to be undone.”
Christine Boyer
This text has been inspired by the lecture ''Collective memory under siege in the age of Empire'' held by M. Christine Boyer on the 11th International Bauhaus Kolloquium in Weimar.
The recently held Bauhaus Kolloquium in Weimar revealed several issues that planners, architects, sociologists and other city researchers are being occupied with at the moment. The questions of control and freedom, core and periphery, state and society as well as networks that are enforced, based on Michael Hardt’s and Antonio Negri’s perception of the new World-order, were addressed. There were two focal points; the relationship between theory and practice overshadowed by the economic, political, social and moral issues that pervade in any globalized society; and how to escape the conformist role that architecture tends to aspire by focusing on moods, ornaments and atmospheres.
Sounds familier? Yes, it already had been an issue in the early 20’s when the founders of Bauhaus Gropius and Mies van der Rohe demanded a “resolute affirmation” of the current conditions and responses adequate of the needs, goals and the time.
Now, standing in the turning point of humanity, clinched between economic and moral crises, architecture must once again rise and answer the social dilemmas. This can, very easily, be understood as self-centered and arrogant position of architects but it also must be considered that, as Keller Easterling said in her expose, some of the most radical changes to the globalized world are being written, not in the language of law and diplomacy, but rather in the language of architecture, urbanism and infrastructure. Finally, the city is the physical evidence of the collective memory and the changes in global trends will most definitely be embedded in the urban form and architectural language and as such will remain to justify our actions in the society of our time.
In her book “The city of collective memory”, Christine Boyer asks probably one of the most fundamental question of the identity of cities and ultimately the nation states; the question of what is collective memory? Today when identity is attacked by forces of globalization, is the collective memory under siege? This question seems to be very liable in a societies that are driven by political figures and pseudo-scientific workers on constant alert of strengthening the national identity. The rise of the nation states has mobilized and commercialized the collective memory, bringing it to a mere product, that can be easily sold, once it’s branded. This only proves that collective memory is rather political question than programmatic and in most of the cases it has nothing to do with the past. The reflection of such memory is to be found in different layers of the city which piled over the time.
However, what happens with the memory once it has been subjected to the instants of war, of genocide, of totalitarian rule or nationalistic amnesia? Is it a break from conventional form of memory or an absolute memory free situation? Christine Boyer argues that memory is absolute zero in such actions, that Bogdan Bogdanovic describes as urbicid; but she does not differentiate the true from the false memory. Perhaps this is the right approach, because if collective memory conveys only data, than the value of that information or its accuracy is of no importance to the identity structure. Then why totalitarian rule is bad for collective memory? In the globalized world, most of the spectacular architectural production by star architects happens in countries with soft or absolute totalitarian rule. The cities in these countries get inerasable urban form and thus build up its own collective memory.
“The more centralized the power, the less compromises need to be made in architecture” says Peter Eisenman. However, the liability of such collective memory hovers over the issues of morality, truth and its independent reading. Sure, we have the chicken, but is it really not important if it came first or was it the egg. The lack of dialog, transparency and process, corrupts and undermines this collective memory giving it a questionable and false face. Yes, it is a memory but it is a declarative one.
Professor Eckardt in his expose on modern Empires refers to Foucalt’s ideas of understanding urban society and says that it is all about power. People are controlled by places, by its culture and habits and most certainly by the different forms of power such as the State or the modern companies. Sometimes, they are controlled by the burden of its own collective memory. It is also true that people are the creators of all forms of control and they are the ultimate key in changing them.
“Before any process of memorization can take effect, silencing has to be undone.”
Christine Boyer
This text has been inspired by the lecture ''Collective memory under siege in the age of Empire'' held by M. Christine Boyer on the 11th International Bauhaus Kolloquium in Weimar.
Saturday, April 4, 2009
Architecture and Destruction
by Stefan Georgievski
Architecture, by nature, is an act of politic. From its design stage, architects primarily are solving problems with functional and formal aspects of the building, negotiating within themselves, planning carefully step-by-step, sometimes even making revolutions or terror. The new edifice, on an empty plot in the city, is bringing changes to the landscape not only visually, but socially. Between its users and neighbors new social relationships emerge, shaping a new realm. It changes the conditions of living and builds the environment where we live in.
A project for a building, once completed, can and will change the society that builds it. A building, act of architecture, could directly catalyze a transformation of social, economic and political fabric. The emerging new architecture in the world brings hope and faith of a better world. The spectator admires the courage and boldness of an architectural sign, believing that everything is possible. All problems are solvable. With skillful use of technology and space, architects of today, more than ever, can shape and create a world without scarcity and fear. Brighter future. We can build the perpetuum mobile, the tower of Babel, produce abundance of resources and improve the human life on global scales. We can shape a better world.
So, the role of the architect is instrumental, not expressive. Real architecture is a tool, sign and manifesto, that motivates to think, to do, to become, to know, and also to pass away, to inspire, be an echo and vestige, new soil for other acts and future to shape. Architecture shouldn’t be something that follows up the event but be a leader of events. It can become initiator and an active participant of a massive change of the society. Expressive architecture is a product of architect – conformist. This is not creation it’s a mere execution of the will of investors, embracing the current regressive spatial and social order. The architect is becoming a pyramid builder, a slave. “The practice of architecture today is protected from confrontation with changing political conditions in the world within a hermetically sealed capsule of professionalism, which ostensibly exists to protect its high standards from the corrupting influence of political expediency and merely topical concerns.” (Woods, 1995) Albert Speer's buildings were like Adolf Hitler's speeches: huge, hammeringly repetitious, banal but filled with machine-like-force. Language of power; big buildings that intimidate the people. The grandiosity of his architectural fantasy belongs to a whole tradition of visionary architecture, which encompasses idealist architects like the 18th century Frenchmen Boullée and Ledoux, but larger. In fact, a debased 18th century neoclassicism has long been the universal language of political power from Leningrad to Paris—and even Washington. By wedding neoclassicism to Hitler’s Kampf, Speer could have killed the style. But the style emerges not only in dictatorships, but in corrupt societies like Macedonia and others (even democratic) that glorify the power of the government.
“People shouldn’t be afraid of the government. Government should be afraid of the people!” (V)
Change within the society doesn’t necessarily come by building, but by destroying the monuments corrupt architects create. The fall of Berlin Wall meant liberation and gave hope for new era of cooperation. It restored the faith in people that better days are coming. V with a Guy Fawkes mask destroyed Houses of Parliament in one big firework as a symbol of change and an end of a corrupted regime. Demolishing architecture of terror gives me hope for freedom. Flatten the walls. Create freescapes.
Reference:
Woods, Lebbeus “Anarchitecture: Architecture is a Political Act”, 1995
V for Vendetta (the movie), 2005
The Zeitgeist Movement
Architecture, by nature, is an act of politic. From its design stage, architects primarily are solving problems with functional and formal aspects of the building, negotiating within themselves, planning carefully step-by-step, sometimes even making revolutions or terror. The new edifice, on an empty plot in the city, is bringing changes to the landscape not only visually, but socially. Between its users and neighbors new social relationships emerge, shaping a new realm. It changes the conditions of living and builds the environment where we live in.
A project for a building, once completed, can and will change the society that builds it. A building, act of architecture, could directly catalyze a transformation of social, economic and political fabric. The emerging new architecture in the world brings hope and faith of a better world. The spectator admires the courage and boldness of an architectural sign, believing that everything is possible. All problems are solvable. With skillful use of technology and space, architects of today, more than ever, can shape and create a world without scarcity and fear. Brighter future. We can build the perpetuum mobile, the tower of Babel, produce abundance of resources and improve the human life on global scales. We can shape a better world.
So, the role of the architect is instrumental, not expressive. Real architecture is a tool, sign and manifesto, that motivates to think, to do, to become, to know, and also to pass away, to inspire, be an echo and vestige, new soil for other acts and future to shape. Architecture shouldn’t be something that follows up the event but be a leader of events. It can become initiator and an active participant of a massive change of the society. Expressive architecture is a product of architect – conformist. This is not creation it’s a mere execution of the will of investors, embracing the current regressive spatial and social order. The architect is becoming a pyramid builder, a slave. “The practice of architecture today is protected from confrontation with changing political conditions in the world within a hermetically sealed capsule of professionalism, which ostensibly exists to protect its high standards from the corrupting influence of political expediency and merely topical concerns.” (Woods, 1995) Albert Speer's buildings were like Adolf Hitler's speeches: huge, hammeringly repetitious, banal but filled with machine-like-force. Language of power; big buildings that intimidate the people. The grandiosity of his architectural fantasy belongs to a whole tradition of visionary architecture, which encompasses idealist architects like the 18th century Frenchmen Boullée and Ledoux, but larger. In fact, a debased 18th century neoclassicism has long been the universal language of political power from Leningrad to Paris—and even Washington. By wedding neoclassicism to Hitler’s Kampf, Speer could have killed the style. But the style emerges not only in dictatorships, but in corrupt societies like Macedonia and others (even democratic) that glorify the power of the government.
“People shouldn’t be afraid of the government. Government should be afraid of the people!” (V)
Change within the society doesn’t necessarily come by building, but by destroying the monuments corrupt architects create. The fall of Berlin Wall meant liberation and gave hope for new era of cooperation. It restored the faith in people that better days are coming. V with a Guy Fawkes mask destroyed Houses of Parliament in one big firework as a symbol of change and an end of a corrupted regime. Demolishing architecture of terror gives me hope for freedom. Flatten the walls. Create freescapes.
Reference:
Woods, Lebbeus “Anarchitecture: Architecture is a Political Act”, 1995
V for Vendetta (the movie), 2005
The Zeitgeist Movement
Friday, April 3, 2009
"Ich bin ein Berliner" in Rennes
Exibition on 20 years of the fall of the Berlin Wall
by Ivana Velkovska
by Ivana Velkovska
On June 26, 1963 , the American president John F. Kennedy, held a speech in Berlin, supporting West Germany, after the Communist State of East Germany build up the Berlin Wall, which separated the East from the West.
All free men, wherever they may live, are citizens of Berlin, and, therefore, as a free man, I take pride in the words 'Ich bin ein Berliner!'
Students of last year in graphic design at Lisaa ( College of Applied Arts) in Rennes, France, were given a task to create posters on Europe, seen throughout its history, sociology, economy, geography and culture...
The goal was to express different visions and ideas of young people, who have lived in a "free" Europe without a Wall separating the Est from the West. The quotation "Ich bin ein Berliner" was here represented as a part of European consciousness for freedom, tolerence and diversity. Later, the Euporean motto will be : "Unity in diversity".
The only remark is that in general, there was very little critics, or personal point of view on the given subject. The exibition remains a polite and at the moments, sterile image of Europe. The most of the posters waer only just beautiful visuals projecting optimism and harmony in the "Unity"...
Despite many negative elements still present in Europe, the students gave a very optimistic vision of what Europe represents today. Maybe just too much optimistic. The exibition took place in the Franco-American Institut in Rennes, from 17 to 31 March.
Reference:Thursday, April 2, 2009
Architectural Trends in Macedonia
by Nora Arsovska
Another example of the eclectic tendency is the plan for the building of the Constitutional Court/Archeological Museum/Archive that is planned to (or not) be situated on the left bank of the river Vardar. This monument is mimicry of antique temple, situated in a non-suiting contemporary surrounding.
The winning project for the competition for architectural design of a new building for the theater Center in Skopje is more progressive and contemporary solution that follows the world trends. According the authors the geometry of the auditorium is derived from the classical European theater. The appearance of the theater, the skin of the building that is a kind of city curtain is very similar to the one of the Dallas Center for performing arts.
Dallas Center for performing arts
The project for the Macedonian Philharmony should be situated near the Neo-antique temple of the Constitutional Court/Archeological Museum/Archive on the left key of the river. This is a complex building with contemporary look , rounded shape that obviously fits more in the surrounding than the building of the Constitutional Court/Archeological Museum/Archive.
The post earthquake reconstruction of Skopje is the golden (only) period of Macedonian architecture and urbanism, when it follows the global trends and sets certain contemporary designing tools and directions on the domestic scene. This is the period when great number of important urban and architectural plans had been completed or partially realized and had become representatives of their time. Most of the realized plans had been made in accordance with the principals of the Modernism. Many dwelling parts in the town of Skopje have the contemporary urban concept and are realized with modern analytic and synthetic methodology.
During the second half of the 90’s, XX century, parallel with the independence of Macedonia as a republic, a tendency of gradual degradation can be noticed in the architectural and urban development. The descending trend at first was explicitly presented in the single family dwelling design, when the investor took the role of the architect. Eclecticism and kitsch progressed rapidly fast, and for short time the neo-styles reached their higher level in Macedonia. Neo-classical, neo-antique and many other neo styles become the favorite architectural solution for the single family houses. Soon the neo-styles transferred from individual housing to the public buildings in the central urban tissue. The transfer of eclecticism made from individual to public level concerned certain number of professionals that quietly disagreed with this trend.
The eclectic urban esthetic escalated and reached its pick, when the government became investor of public buildings and monuments according individual taste. The bizarreness of shaping the city culminated when several buildings with hybrid appearance were planned to be or are positioned on locations that are not planed as building parcels in the Master Plan for the City Center, without initiating public debate.
In general, two opposite tendencies can be distinguished in the latest public urban activities in Macedonia. The first one is inclined towards resurrecting the pre earthquake neo-classical buildings so called ghosts, realizing neo-antique and other public building with eclectic styles. The numerous winner projects on the international competition announced by the government certify this tendency. On the other hand there is certain number of competition winner projects that with their function and appearing are bringing back the faith in the urban aesthetic.
Here follows an illustration of the opposite tendencies through a number of examples, some realized and some waiting (or not) to be realized:
The Monumental Home of Mother Teresa is the strangest surreal experience one could have. This “monument”, chosen as a winner on a second competition call under curious circumstances provoked controversial public reactions. In general, the building should represent the traditional Macedonian house that was the unrealized dream of Mother Teresa. The quazi-monument is out of time and fashion placed on non existing building area on the most attractive walking street in Skopje in front of the modernistic concert hall of the Army of Macedonia.
During the second half of the 90’s, XX century, parallel with the independence of Macedonia as a republic, a tendency of gradual degradation can be noticed in the architectural and urban development. The descending trend at first was explicitly presented in the single family dwelling design, when the investor took the role of the architect. Eclecticism and kitsch progressed rapidly fast, and for short time the neo-styles reached their higher level in Macedonia. Neo-classical, neo-antique and many other neo styles become the favorite architectural solution for the single family houses. Soon the neo-styles transferred from individual housing to the public buildings in the central urban tissue. The transfer of eclecticism made from individual to public level concerned certain number of professionals that quietly disagreed with this trend.
The eclectic urban esthetic escalated and reached its pick, when the government became investor of public buildings and monuments according individual taste. The bizarreness of shaping the city culminated when several buildings with hybrid appearance were planned to be or are positioned on locations that are not planed as building parcels in the Master Plan for the City Center, without initiating public debate.
In general, two opposite tendencies can be distinguished in the latest public urban activities in Macedonia. The first one is inclined towards resurrecting the pre earthquake neo-classical buildings so called ghosts, realizing neo-antique and other public building with eclectic styles. The numerous winner projects on the international competition announced by the government certify this tendency. On the other hand there is certain number of competition winner projects that with their function and appearing are bringing back the faith in the urban aesthetic.
Here follows an illustration of the opposite tendencies through a number of examples, some realized and some waiting (or not) to be realized:
The Monumental Home of Mother Teresa is the strangest surreal experience one could have. This “monument”, chosen as a winner on a second competition call under curious circumstances provoked controversial public reactions. In general, the building should represent the traditional Macedonian house that was the unrealized dream of Mother Teresa. The quazi-monument is out of time and fashion placed on non existing building area on the most attractive walking street in Skopje in front of the modernistic concert hall of the Army of Macedonia.
Another example of the eclectic tendency is the plan for the building of the Constitutional Court/Archeological Museum/Archive that is planned to (or not) be situated on the left bank of the river Vardar. This monument is mimicry of antique temple, situated in a non-suiting contemporary surrounding.
The winning project for the competition for architectural design of a new building for the theater Center in Skopje is more progressive and contemporary solution that follows the world trends. According the authors the geometry of the auditorium is derived from the classical European theater. The appearance of the theater, the skin of the building that is a kind of city curtain is very similar to the one of the Dallas Center for performing arts.
Dallas Center for performing arts The project for the Macedonian Philharmony should be situated near the Neo-antique temple of the Constitutional Court/Archeological Museum/Archive on the left key of the river. This is a complex building with contemporary look , rounded shape that obviously fits more in the surrounding than the building of the Constitutional Court/Archeological Museum/Archive.Reference:
The Monumental Home of Mother Teresa
http://www.a1.com.mk/vesti/default.aspx?VestID=103721
The Constitutional Court/Arcehological Museum/Archive of RM http://www.utrinski.com.mk/?ItemID=E7F273AA5FEB0F4AB2EE8092AEE7C837
Theater Center
http://www.novamakedonija.com.mk/DesktopDefault.aspx?tabindex=0&tabid=2&fCat=1&top=1&EditionID=354&ArticleID=21450
Dallas Center for performing arts
http://www.designboom.com/weblog/cat/9/view/5657/rex-architects-dallas-center-for-the-performing-arts-dee-and-charles-wyly-theater.html
Macedonian Philharmony
http://www.a1.com.mk/vesti/default.aspx?VestID=82863
The Monumental Home of Mother Teresa
http://www.a1.com.mk/vesti/default.aspx?VestID=103721
The Constitutional Court/Arcehological Museum/Archive of RM http://www.utrinski.com.mk/?ItemID=E7F273AA5FEB0F4AB2EE8092AEE7C837
Theater Center
http://www.novamakedonija.com.mk/DesktopDefault.aspx?tabindex=0&tabid=2&fCat=1&top=1&EditionID=354&ArticleID=21450
Dallas Center for performing arts
http://www.designboom.com/weblog/cat/9/view/5657/rex-architects-dallas-center-for-the-performing-arts-dee-and-charles-wyly-theater.html
Macedonian Philharmony
http://www.a1.com.mk/vesti/default.aspx?VestID=82863
Tuesday, March 31, 2009
New Planning tools for shaping cityscapes in the American Cities
by Biljana Spirkoska
The American city had changed markedly during the first eight decades of the century. The man-made environment experienced a transformation on a scale not seen since the Renaissance.
At the turn of the century, the downtown had been the center of urban transportation, business, industry, amusement, and government. City Hall, soaring skyscrapers, department stores, impressive theatres, mammoth hotels, spacious rail terminals, and a dense knot of streetcar lines- all were part of the downtown scene. The downtown was truly the business hearth of the metropolis, the center of city government, the place where public policy was made, and also it was the transportation hub, where people from all sections of the metropolis crossed paths. The downtown was a shared experience, holding together the varied fragments of the metropolis.
Over the century, the role of the downtown was narrowing. By the 1980s, the American city no longer had a single dominant nucleus. Instead, retailing was increasingly dispersed, industry was spread out along the superhighways and rail lines, and government authority was distributed among the multitude of municipalities that made up the metropolitan area. There was no longer one mayor and city council which had to mediate among the divergent social, economic, and ethnic interests within the city, but each suburban municipality had jurisdiction over a small segment of the whole. Beside the appearance of the office parks, the central-city downtown remained the dominant hub of finance and business services. The diversity of the early-twentieth-century downtown was replaced with rows of towers and office workers. There was no longer any one dominant economic, intellectual, or cultural center to the metropolis. Instead there were many. The city had fragmented, breaking into its component parts.
In other words, the twentieth century has seen a radical transformation in American cities. Paradoxically, this transformation has stimulated an interest in the older forms of cities and increased peoples’ respect for the planning tradition that created them. For example, the single-family suburban tract development after World War II has led to a new understanding of older residential areas where a pedestrian scale and a dense, complex mixture of housing types and other land uses seemed to lead to better opportunities for community. The revolutionary decentralization in retailing and the rise of "Mallopolis" on every major highway has made the surviving older Main Streets a focus for civic pride and redevelopment. This dispersal has made understandable the special value of the central regional downtowns, with their irreplaceable heritage of diversity, public space, historic structures, and regional identity.
Consequently, many urbanists have started to look at ways of retaining or re-creating the qualities that comprise livable, memorable, and diverse community life. They began to develop new tools to address the issues of character and quality. The most influential among these new tools for shaping cityscapes are Traditional neighborhood development ordinance, Mixed- use Districts, and Form- based codes.
Traditional Neighborhood Development Ordinance (TND Ordinance): Traditional Neighborhood Development is a planning concept that is based on traditional small town and city neighborhood development principles. Traditional Neighborhood Development basically means: compact, mixed use neighborhood where residential, commercial and civic buildings are within close proximity to each other.
Traditional Neighborhood Development does not stand for one-solution-fits-all policy. Contrary, it is based on analyze of the development patterns and designs of the past to provide a context for the specific standards contained in the ordinance. Anyways, as cities and villages modify the model ordinance to meet the unique circumstances found within their communities, the ordinances developed should seek to achieve several basic principles: compact development, mixed use, multiple modes of transportation and response to cultural and environmental context.
Mixed- use Districts: Mixed- use districts is another new zoning tool developed to mitigate the strict separation of uses. Mixing use is recognized to have the potential to increase social interaction and enrich civic life, to bring important benefits in efficiency (by optimizing the use of infrastructure), equity (by providing a variety of housing options and better access to services for different income groups), and sustainability (by reducing the consumption of land and the need for cars). In short, Mixed-use development introduces new development patterns that are civic-oriented, pedestrian-friendly, economically vibrant, environmentally sustainable, and evoke a unique sense of place.
Form- based codes: Form-based development codes are a tool for regulating development to achieve a specific urban form. They focus primarily on the public realm and the type of urban form necessary to create welcoming public spaces and walkable neighborhoods.
The most popular form-based code is the SmartCode. The SmartCode moves beyond regulating only the form of a specific piece of land and instead further regulates how a singular form fits into the larger context of the region.
However, despite the mounting evidence that standard zoning rooted in the 1916 New York City zoning ordinance that categorized land uses, created districts appropriate for those categorized uses has many costs, the system remains the unspoken assumption, and the default planning system. In addition, none of these new codes is adopted as a standalone regulatory ordinance. The new codes usually end up incorporated into a local government’s development regulation as: Optional (parallel) codes, Floating-zone codes, and only rarely as Mandatory codes, making the new code a seamless part of, or a complete replacement for the existing zoning ordinance.
The American city had changed markedly during the first eight decades of the century. The man-made environment experienced a transformation on a scale not seen since the Renaissance.
At the turn of the century, the downtown had been the center of urban transportation, business, industry, amusement, and government. City Hall, soaring skyscrapers, department stores, impressive theatres, mammoth hotels, spacious rail terminals, and a dense knot of streetcar lines- all were part of the downtown scene. The downtown was truly the business hearth of the metropolis, the center of city government, the place where public policy was made, and also it was the transportation hub, where people from all sections of the metropolis crossed paths. The downtown was a shared experience, holding together the varied fragments of the metropolis.
Over the century, the role of the downtown was narrowing. By the 1980s, the American city no longer had a single dominant nucleus. Instead, retailing was increasingly dispersed, industry was spread out along the superhighways and rail lines, and government authority was distributed among the multitude of municipalities that made up the metropolitan area. There was no longer one mayor and city council which had to mediate among the divergent social, economic, and ethnic interests within the city, but each suburban municipality had jurisdiction over a small segment of the whole. Beside the appearance of the office parks, the central-city downtown remained the dominant hub of finance and business services. The diversity of the early-twentieth-century downtown was replaced with rows of towers and office workers. There was no longer any one dominant economic, intellectual, or cultural center to the metropolis. Instead there were many. The city had fragmented, breaking into its component parts.
In other words, the twentieth century has seen a radical transformation in American cities. Paradoxically, this transformation has stimulated an interest in the older forms of cities and increased peoples’ respect for the planning tradition that created them. For example, the single-family suburban tract development after World War II has led to a new understanding of older residential areas where a pedestrian scale and a dense, complex mixture of housing types and other land uses seemed to lead to better opportunities for community. The revolutionary decentralization in retailing and the rise of "Mallopolis" on every major highway has made the surviving older Main Streets a focus for civic pride and redevelopment. This dispersal has made understandable the special value of the central regional downtowns, with their irreplaceable heritage of diversity, public space, historic structures, and regional identity.
Consequently, many urbanists have started to look at ways of retaining or re-creating the qualities that comprise livable, memorable, and diverse community life. They began to develop new tools to address the issues of character and quality. The most influential among these new tools for shaping cityscapes are Traditional neighborhood development ordinance, Mixed- use Districts, and Form- based codes.
Traditional Neighborhood Development Ordinance (TND Ordinance): Traditional Neighborhood Development is a planning concept that is based on traditional small town and city neighborhood development principles. Traditional Neighborhood Development basically means: compact, mixed use neighborhood where residential, commercial and civic buildings are within close proximity to each other.
Traditional Neighborhood Development does not stand for one-solution-fits-all policy. Contrary, it is based on analyze of the development patterns and designs of the past to provide a context for the specific standards contained in the ordinance. Anyways, as cities and villages modify the model ordinance to meet the unique circumstances found within their communities, the ordinances developed should seek to achieve several basic principles: compact development, mixed use, multiple modes of transportation and response to cultural and environmental context.
Mixed- use Districts: Mixed- use districts is another new zoning tool developed to mitigate the strict separation of uses. Mixing use is recognized to have the potential to increase social interaction and enrich civic life, to bring important benefits in efficiency (by optimizing the use of infrastructure), equity (by providing a variety of housing options and better access to services for different income groups), and sustainability (by reducing the consumption of land and the need for cars). In short, Mixed-use development introduces new development patterns that are civic-oriented, pedestrian-friendly, economically vibrant, environmentally sustainable, and evoke a unique sense of place.
Form- based codes: Form-based development codes are a tool for regulating development to achieve a specific urban form. They focus primarily on the public realm and the type of urban form necessary to create welcoming public spaces and walkable neighborhoods.
The most popular form-based code is the SmartCode. The SmartCode moves beyond regulating only the form of a specific piece of land and instead further regulates how a singular form fits into the larger context of the region.
However, despite the mounting evidence that standard zoning rooted in the 1916 New York City zoning ordinance that categorized land uses, created districts appropriate for those categorized uses has many costs, the system remains the unspoken assumption, and the default planning system. In addition, none of these new codes is adopted as a standalone regulatory ordinance. The new codes usually end up incorporated into a local government’s development regulation as: Optional (parallel) codes, Floating-zone codes, and only rarely as Mandatory codes, making the new code a seamless part of, or a complete replacement for the existing zoning ordinance.
Monday, March 30, 2009
The importance of Place
by Stefan Lazarevski
The emergence of the so called Age of Mass intelligence, sponsored by the rise of Internet, Social Networking and Reality TV, has exposed an ongoing debate, within the sociologists, economists and urbanists, of whether place really matters. In a world where modern economy is powered not by labor and production, but by knowledge and communication, the question of importance of place is very liable.
In 2005, the New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman published a book (Friedman, 2005), where he outlined a picture of the global economical shifts. He announced: “The World is flat!” What he referred to was the global shift of the economies from local to global scale, resulting in increasing trend of the outsourcing, off shoring, supply chaining and in-sourcing; this proved that the creative class has established networks which are not place based anymore.
On the other hand, the explosive growth of cities and urban areas worldwide, the rise of the creative centers, and concentration of economic and cultural activities has exposed the clustering force as a strong factor that keeps the value of the location very high. The World’s economical landscape according to Florida (2008) is anything but flat; on contrary it is a spiky World that we live in, today!
The discussion of whether place really matters is especially fierce within the contemporary knowledge-economy based societies. In such a society, the knowledge is the driving force for overall development; there, the economical and political evolution, the social relations and habits of the citizens as well as, the urban growth and the physical form of the city are just a reflection of the level of accumulated knowledge. To understand how these cities work, we must first define and understand what knowledge economy and knowledge – based societies are?
Etymologically, the phrase Knowledge Economy was introduced by Peter Drucker in his book “The Age of Discontinuity” (1968). In the late 60s of the XX century, speaking about the brain drainage in economically inferior countries, Drucker identifies the knowledge as the key factor in future economical development of the western civilization. “For the intellectuals knowledge is what is in a book. But as long as it is in the book it is information if not “mere data”. Only when man applies the information to doing something does it become knowledge.” (Drucker, 1968) Therefore the emergence of Knowledge Economy, according to Drucker, is not only a product of intellectual activities, as it is normally conceived, but rather part of “history of technology” which recounts how man puts tools to work. Today, the economies must be knowledge based in order to perform, to grow and to compete. The question remains what is the basic economic, social and political unit that stages such progress.
sketch of the core-principles of the Saraswati knowledge-economy based city in India, Calthorpe Associates, 2008
The artificial political boundaries of the nation states cannot be taken as the framework for analyses of the knowledge-economy based societies. The cities on the other hand, being endowed with knowledge infrastructure, human capital, widely spread communication, social and financial networks and ultimately being decision making centers, are the actual focal point of knowledge economy in many respects. Over the history, the most serious force to challenge the endurance of the cities was the Technological Progress. Every technological invention, throughout the history was a promise to a boundless world. The invention of telephone, car, air plane even the World Wide Web, were step forward in freeing people from geography. But, as compelling as it sounds, this notion repeatedly proved its self wrong. The cities kept the high concentration of the main economic factors: talent, innovation and creativity or what Florida refers to as the “clustering force” (2008). In the knowledge economy, talented people tend to go where other talented people are, because one of the drivers of innovation is the exchange of implicit knowledge among actors. Cities can be good environments for this type of exchange, which ultimately sponsors the competitive and creative edge of the society. Face to face contacts also enhance the mutual trust which only proves that proximity is vital in terms of preserving already established networks or conceiving new ones. Finally, cities, with their urban diversity, are the promoters of creativity. Namely, places which are able to attract diverse groups of people by ethnicity, nationality, gender and sexual orientation, argues Florida (2000), are an environment that is easy to plug into; such places can be said to have low entry barriers for talent. Therefore these places - cities are fertile ground for establishing and maintaining the knowledge economy and ultimately they are our “playground”.
This is why the place and the city, as most conflictual place of them all, is and will be very important and immanent to our self-identification.
reference:
― Drucker, Peter, 1968, The Age of Discontinuity, Chapter 12, Harper & Row, New York
― Florida, Richard, 2000, The Economic Geography of Talent, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh
― Florida, Richard, 2008, Who’s Your City, Basic Books, New York
― Friedman, Thomas, 2005, The World is Flat, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, New York
The emergence of the so called Age of Mass intelligence, sponsored by the rise of Internet, Social Networking and Reality TV, has exposed an ongoing debate, within the sociologists, economists and urbanists, of whether place really matters. In a world where modern economy is powered not by labor and production, but by knowledge and communication, the question of importance of place is very liable.
In 2005, the New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman published a book (Friedman, 2005), where he outlined a picture of the global economical shifts. He announced: “The World is flat!” What he referred to was the global shift of the economies from local to global scale, resulting in increasing trend of the outsourcing, off shoring, supply chaining and in-sourcing; this proved that the creative class has established networks which are not place based anymore.
On the other hand, the explosive growth of cities and urban areas worldwide, the rise of the creative centers, and concentration of economic and cultural activities has exposed the clustering force as a strong factor that keeps the value of the location very high. The World’s economical landscape according to Florida (2008) is anything but flat; on contrary it is a spiky World that we live in, today!
The discussion of whether place really matters is especially fierce within the contemporary knowledge-economy based societies. In such a society, the knowledge is the driving force for overall development; there, the economical and political evolution, the social relations and habits of the citizens as well as, the urban growth and the physical form of the city are just a reflection of the level of accumulated knowledge. To understand how these cities work, we must first define and understand what knowledge economy and knowledge – based societies are?
Etymologically, the phrase Knowledge Economy was introduced by Peter Drucker in his book “The Age of Discontinuity” (1968). In the late 60s of the XX century, speaking about the brain drainage in economically inferior countries, Drucker identifies the knowledge as the key factor in future economical development of the western civilization. “For the intellectuals knowledge is what is in a book. But as long as it is in the book it is information if not “mere data”. Only when man applies the information to doing something does it become knowledge.” (Drucker, 1968) Therefore the emergence of Knowledge Economy, according to Drucker, is not only a product of intellectual activities, as it is normally conceived, but rather part of “history of technology” which recounts how man puts tools to work. Today, the economies must be knowledge based in order to perform, to grow and to compete. The question remains what is the basic economic, social and political unit that stages such progress.
sketch of the core-principles of the Saraswati knowledge-economy based city in India, Calthorpe Associates, 2008The artificial political boundaries of the nation states cannot be taken as the framework for analyses of the knowledge-economy based societies. The cities on the other hand, being endowed with knowledge infrastructure, human capital, widely spread communication, social and financial networks and ultimately being decision making centers, are the actual focal point of knowledge economy in many respects. Over the history, the most serious force to challenge the endurance of the cities was the Technological Progress. Every technological invention, throughout the history was a promise to a boundless world. The invention of telephone, car, air plane even the World Wide Web, were step forward in freeing people from geography. But, as compelling as it sounds, this notion repeatedly proved its self wrong. The cities kept the high concentration of the main economic factors: talent, innovation and creativity or what Florida refers to as the “clustering force” (2008). In the knowledge economy, talented people tend to go where other talented people are, because one of the drivers of innovation is the exchange of implicit knowledge among actors. Cities can be good environments for this type of exchange, which ultimately sponsors the competitive and creative edge of the society. Face to face contacts also enhance the mutual trust which only proves that proximity is vital in terms of preserving already established networks or conceiving new ones. Finally, cities, with their urban diversity, are the promoters of creativity. Namely, places which are able to attract diverse groups of people by ethnicity, nationality, gender and sexual orientation, argues Florida (2000), are an environment that is easy to plug into; such places can be said to have low entry barriers for talent. Therefore these places - cities are fertile ground for establishing and maintaining the knowledge economy and ultimately they are our “playground”.
This is why the place and the city, as most conflictual place of them all, is and will be very important and immanent to our self-identification.
reference:
― Drucker, Peter, 1968, The Age of Discontinuity, Chapter 12, Harper & Row, New York
― Florida, Richard, 2000, The Economic Geography of Talent, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh
― Florida, Richard, 2008, Who’s Your City, Basic Books, New York
― Friedman, Thomas, 2005, The World is Flat, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, New York
Saturday, March 21, 2009
Welcome to the NPA blurbs
The (Non)Place Architects, created by Stefan Lazarevski and Biljana Spirkoska, is a platform for sharing information, opinions or starting discussion on architectural, urban and social aspects of contemporary lifestyle in Macedonia and the World..
We started with the idea of writing short posts on topics that we are working on at the moment or sharing an interesting new ideas or concepts that captured our attention. If you find it interesting, you can participate either by sending your comments on the topics given, or by contacting us on the emails given for presenting your own post. If you want to get opinion from broader public, the posts must be written in English.
Stefan and Biljana
We started with the idea of writing short posts on topics that we are working on at the moment or sharing an interesting new ideas or concepts that captured our attention. If you find it interesting, you can participate either by sending your comments on the topics given, or by contacting us on the emails given for presenting your own post. If you want to get opinion from broader public, the posts must be written in English.
Stefan and Biljana
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