"She Changes"

two men

“Another, that while we sleep here, we are awake somewhere else, so that every man is in fact two men.” - Borges

http://jorgevaliente.tumblr.com/post/3689166320/melmoththewanderer-another-that-while-we

instant city by Archigram

Instant City forms part of a series of investigations into mobile facilities which are in conjunction with fixed establishments requiring expanded services over a limited period in order to satisfy an extreme but temporary problem.

[Instant City is] A research project based on the conflict between local, culturally isolated, centres and the well serviced facilities of the metropolitan regions. Investigating the effect and practicality of injecting the metropolitan dynamic into these centres by means of a mobile facility carrying the information – education – entertainment services of the city, extended through the establishment of this together with the national telecommunication network. The initial study for this project is to be published in May. Grant approval for the main stage is under negotiation at this time. This project is carried out in co-operation with the Architectural Association. The Systems Consultant is Professor Gordon Pask of Brunel University Department of Cybernetics; Audio Visual Consultants, Program Partnership; Film Consultant Dennis Postle of B.B.C. Television.

The illustration shows a possible configuration when the Instant City is attached to a declining industrial area. The structures used are known forms such as toweres as in building operations, air structures and converted commercial vehicles.

Archigram


The Notion

In most civilised countries, localities and their local cultures remain slow moving, often undernourished and sometimes resentful of the more favoured metropolitan regions (such as New York, the West Coast of the United States, London and Paris). Whilst much is spoken about cultural links and about the effect of television as a window on the world (and the inevitable global village), people still feel frustrated. Younger people even have a suspicion that they are missing out on things that could widen their horizons. They would like to be involved in aspects of life where their own experiences can be seen as part of what is happening.

Against this is the reaction to the physical nature of the metropolis – and somehow there is this paradox – if only we could enjoy it but stay where we are.

The Instant City project reacts to this with the idea of a `travelling metropolis’, a package that comes to a community, giving it a taste of the metropolitan dynamic – which is temporarily grafted on to the local centre – and whilst the community is still recovering from the shock, uses this catalyst as the first stage of a national hook-up. A network of information-education-entertainment –‘play-and-know yourself’ facilities.

In England the feeling of being left out of things has for a long time affected the psychology of the provinces, so that people become either overprotective about local things or carry in their minds a ridiculous inferiority complex about the metropolis. But we are nearing a time when the leisure period of the day is becoming really significant; and with the effect of television and better education people are realising that they could do things and know things, they could express themselves (or enjoy themselves in a freer way) and they are becoming dissatisfied with the television set, the youth club or the pub.

A Background to Archigram Work

With our notion of the robot (the symbol of the responsive machine that collects many services in one appliance), we begin to play with the notion that the environment could be conditioned not only by the set piece assembly but by infinite variables determined by your wish, and the robot reappears in the Instant City in several of the assemblies.

The planning implications of Instant City have emerged more and more strongly as the project has developed, so that by the time we are making the sequence describing the airship’s effect upon the sleeping town, it is the infiltrationary dynamic of the town itself that is as fascinating as the technical dynamic of the airship. Again we have to reflect on the psychology of a country such as England, where there is a historical suggestion that vast upheaval is unlikely. We are likely to capitalise on existing institutions and existing facilities whilst complaining about their inefficiency – but a country such as England must now live by its wits or perish, and for its wits it needs its culture.

A Programme Background

The likely components are audio-visual display systems, projection television, trailered units, pneumatic and lightweight structures and entertainments facilities, exhibits, gantries and electric lights.

This involves the theoretical territory between the ‘hardware’ (or the design of buildings and places) and ‘software’ (or the effect of information and programming on the environment). Theoretically it also involves the notions of urban dispersal and the territory between entertainment and learning.
The Instant City could be made a practical reality since at every stage it is based upon existing techniques and their application to real situations. There is a combination of several different artefacts and systems that have hitherto remained as separate machines, enclosures or experiments. The programme involved gathering information about an itinerary of communities and the available utilities (clubs, local radio, universities, etc) so that the ‘City’ package is always complementary rather than alien. We then tested this proposition against particular samples.

The first stage programme consisted of assemblies carried by approximately 20 vehicles, operable in most weathers and carrying a complete programme. These were applied to localities in England and in the Los Angeles area of California. Later, having become interested in the versatility of the airship, we came to propose this as another means of transporting the Instant City assembly (a great and silent bringer of the whole conglomeration).

Later we applied the method of the Instant City to proposals for servicing the Documenta exhibition at Kassel in Germany. By this time also there had developed a feedback of ideas and techniques between this project and our Monte Carlo entertainments facility.

A Typical Sequence of Operations (truck-borne version)

1. The components of the ‘City’ are loaded on to the trucks and trailers at base.

2. A series of ‘tent’ units are floated from balloons which are towed to the destination by aircraft.

3. Prior to the visit of the ‘City’ a team of surveyors, electricians, etc have converted a disused building in the chosen community into a collection-information and relay-station. Landline links have been made to local schools and to one or more major (permanent) cities.

4. The ‘City’ arrives. It is assembled according to site and local characteristics. Not all components will necessarily be used. It may infiltrate local buildings and streets, it may fragment.

5. Events, displays and educational programmes are supplied partly by the local community and partly by the ‘City’ agency. In addition, major use is made of local fringe elements: fairs, festivals, markets, societies, with trailers, stalls, displays and personnel accumulating on an often ad hoc basis. The event of the Instant City might be a bringing together of events that would otherwise occur separately in the district.

6. The overhead tent, inflatable windbreaks and other shelters are erected. Many units of the ‘City’ have their own tailored enclosure.

7. The ‘City’ stays for a limited period.

8. It then moves on to the next location.

9. After a number of places have been visited the local relay stations are linked together by landline. Community One is now feeding part of the programme to be enjoyed by Community Twenty.

10. Eventually, by this combination of physical and electronic, perceptual and programmatic events and the establishment of local display centres, a ‘City’ of communication might exist, the metropolis of the national network.

11. Almost certainly, travelling elements would modify over a period of time. It is even likely that after two to three years they would phase out and let the network take over.

12. As the Instant City study developed, certain items emerged in particular. First, the idea of a ‘soft-scene monitor’, a combination teaching-machine, audio-visual jukebox, environmental simulator, and, from a theoretical point of view, a realisation of the ‘Hardware/Software’ debate (which is still going on in our Monte Carlo work), as the notion of an electronically aided responsive environment. Next, the dissolve of the original large, trucked, circus-like show into a smaller and very mobile element backed by a wonderful, magical dream descending from the skies. The model of the small unit suggests two trucks and a helicopter as the carriage, with quick folding arenas and apparatus that can quickly be fitted into the village hall. Another stimulus was the invitation to design the ‘event structure’ for the 1972 Kassel Documenta, an elaborate art/event/theatre scene requiring a high level of servicing but a minimum of interference with the ‘open-air creative act’. The ‘Kassel-Kit’ of apparatus can therefore be considered as a direct extension of the original IC Kit.


Are we back to heroics then, with a giant, pretty and evocative object? The Blimp: the airship: beauty, disaster and history. On the one hand we were designing a totally unseen and underground building at Monte Carlo, and on the other hand flirting with the airborne will-o-the-wisp. The Instant City as a series of trucks rushing round like ants might be practical and immediate, but we could not escape the loveliness of the idea of Instant City appearing out of nowhere, and after the ‘event’ stage, lifting up its skirts and vanishing. In fact, the primary interest was spontaneity, and the remaining aim to knit into any locale as effectively as possible. For Archigram, the airship is a device: a giant skyhook.
Operationally, there were two possibilities. A simple airship with apparatus carried in the belly and able to drop down as required. Otherwise, a more sophisticated notion of a ‘megastructure of the skies’. Ron Herron’s drawings (ref) suggest that the ‘ship’ can fragment, and the audio/visual elements are scattered around a patch of sky. Once again, the project work of the group has picked up a dream of it own past – the ‘Story of a Thing’ made (almost) real.

We then built a model, which could hang out its entrails in a number of ways. This was the simpler ‘ship’, which reads with the scenario of a small town transformation. In the drawing with airship ‘Rupert’, a major shift in Instant City was first articulated: the increasing feeling for change-by-infiltration. The ‘city’ is creeping into half-finished buildings, using the local draper’s store, gas showrooms and kerbside, as well as the more sophisticated set-up. And there is a mysterious creeping animal: the ‘leech’ truck, which is able to climb up any structure and service from it: with the resulting possibility of ‘bugging’ the whole town as necessary. Gently then, the project dissolves from the simple mechanics or hierarchies of ‘structuring’ and like-objects. Just as did the Plug-In City: it sowed the seeds of its own fragmentation into investigations of a gentler, more subtle environmental thing.

Archigram, Edited by Peter Cook, Warren Chalk, Dennis Crompton, David Greene, Ron Herron & Mike Webb, 1972 [reprinted New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 1999].

Basento River Bridge, Potenza. Itália 1967-69. Sergio Musmeci

can't image such amazing form and structures were build in 1960s! it is a typical sample of usage of the space under huge bridges,which i am also curious for many bridges in Istanbul

test for final carnival-kartal

test of carnival network- sogutlucesme

The problem of Sogutlucesme here is typical of modern metropolis. The new developments and constructions created lots of abandoned space in-between. Here is a station

test for carnival network-eminonu

My own experiences of Eminonu come from how the square and coast line were occupied by different activities during the day. The square is hard paving and lack of landscape or furnitures. It acts more like a transportation space. Where people gathered is the place full of mobile vendors. The restaurant boats parking beside the coast line are also attractive for human flows. Some of the store owners set up fake grass land on hard pavements to attract guests, some people just sit on the barriers and stairs of the square.

My initial thought of the intervention here is to create several floating green platforms supported by the structure made by recycled plastic bottles. Those lands can be flat or have different shapes of terrain. They can floating on the water or be put in the square as a place for leisure and rest.

Those green lands can also be used as the green roofs of the final carnival.It provides a platform for visitors to have picnics or enjoy the sunshine.

test for carnival network-topkapi

The urban space along the old city wall in Topkapi is full of heterogenous elements and disconnections. Between the high speed motoway and the historic wall there are traditional bostan agriculture garden growing by migrants. Most of the farmers live right in the temporary shelters on the field.And the residents of the gecekondus inside the wall are difficult to access the outside by only a few gates along the hundreds of meters long wall. The wide green land and new city realm all seem far away from their life.

The intervention i want to do is an installation made by recycling vegetable crates on the historic wall for local children. Children can access the playground by "catway" flying across the 1 floor high gecekondu's roof and the pedestrian way,and people can also access the nearby minibus stop by the catways crossing the agricultural fields from the wall.

At the same time, the wall can also be foundation of the shelters for farmers and children,which may make this abandoned space more vital.

carnival catalogue

test of carnival network- Taksim Square

why i pick out Taksim square as one station of the carnival network is its importance both in the city and in citizen's mind. It represents the formal open space which exist for long period and own rich memory. It is a busy transit point for almost all kinds of transportations ,and a destination for people who wandering along the commercial area of beyoglu. It is a square under the consideration of transformation. Some planners suggest to keep the place as political symbol and communist-style square for the city while others think it should be more like a public space where citizens can have leisure and fun as lots of romantic squares in Europe.

The reality of the space is crowded but isolated, full of people but lack of

life.Travellers,passengers,vendors,new comers all come here, wandering and gathering .To them this place is heart of Istanbul, but here they can only watch other's life and don't know where to go next. Their life status is like "floating" in the city.

People use to prefer sit on the barrier of the lawn on the square ,there they may talk to each other or make friends, but those barrier were demolished last year,and the square became totally flat. I want to make a temporary structure like a "public hammock"(popular in balat when doing picnic in wood), which can create a in-between layer above the ground of the square, where different group can meet together, sitting,laying,jumping.On the other side of the net, the city still go on.

The transformation project on Taksim will definitely happen in near future. The carnival installation will try to let people rethink about position of the square in the city and obtain new memories.

general introduction of Kartal's urban transformation project by Zaha Hadid

The Kartal – Pendik Masterplan is a winning competition proposal for a new city centre on the east bank of Istanbul. It is the redevelopment of an abandoned industrial site into a new sub-centre of Istanbul, complete with a central business district, high-end residential development, cultural facilities such as concert halls, museums, and theatres, and leisure programs including a marina and tourist hotels.
The site lies at the confluence of several important infrastructural links, including the major highway connecting Istanbul to Europe and Asia, the coastal highway, sea bus terminals, and heavy and light rail links to the greater metropolitan area.

The project begins by tying together the basic infrastructural and urban context of the surrounding site. Lateral lines stitch together the major road connections emerging from Kartal in the west and Pendik in the east.

The integration of these lateral connections with the main longitudinal axis creates a soft grid that forms the underlying framework for the project. Locally, this net can be bundled to form areas of higher programmatic intensity as well as a vertical build-up of the city fabric. In certain areas the net rises up to form a network of towers in an open landscape, while in other areas it is inverted to become a denser fabric cut through by streets, and at other times may completely fade away to generate parks and open spaces. Some areas extend out into the water, creating a matrix of floating marinas, shops, and restaurants.

The fabric is further articulated by an urban script that generates different typologies of buildings that respond to the different demands of each district. This calligraphic script creates open conditions that can transform from detached buildings to perimeter blocks, and ultimately into hybrid systems that can create a porous, interconnected network of open spaces that meanders throughout the city. Through subtle transformations and gradations from one part of the site to the other, the scripted fabric can create a smooth transition from the surrounding context to the new, higher density development on the site.

The soft grid also incorporates possibilities of growth, as in the case where a network of high-rise towers might emerge from an area that was previously allocated to low-rise fabric buildings or faded into open park space. The masterplan is thus a dynamic system that generates an adaptable framework for urban form, balancing the need for a recognizable image and a new environment with a sensitive integration of the new city with the existing surrounds.

Total Project Area: 555 Hectares (6 million square meters construction area)

Christiania in Copenhagen

change of Christiana:

a former military barracks in Copenhagen ---- military left and fenced off----took over by group and become a children's playground------autonomous settlement and a Freetown

reason of Christiana:

response to the lack of affordable housing and social facilities

Status of Christiana:

spontaneous ---- be granted semi-legal---under the attempts of "normalise"

Life of Christiana:

community/neighbourhood

social structures

children care

free planning and advice service

free newspaper and radio

gay activism

parties and theatre

performance and actions

carnivalesque

social experimentation and interaction

Mainly welcome and support:

homeless

unemployed

drug addicts

...

Carnivalesque

(from wiki)

Carnivalesque is a term coined by the Russian critic Mikhail Bakhtin, which refers to a literary mode that subverts and liberates the assumptions of the dominant style or atmosphere through humor and chaos.

Bakhtin traces the origins of the carnivalesque to the concept of carnival, itself related to the Feast of Fools, a medieval festival originally of the sub-deacons of the cathedral, held about the time of the Feast of the Circumcision (1 January), in which the humbler cathedral officials burlesqued the sacred ceremonies, releasing "the natural lout beneath the cassock."^[1]

The Feast of Fools had its chief vogue in the French cathedrals, but there are a few English records of it, notably in Lincoln Cathedral and Beverley Minster. Today, carnival is primarily associated with Mardi Gras, a time of revelry that immediately precedes the Christian celebration of Lent; during the modern Mardi Gras, ordinary life and its rules and regulations are temporarily suspended and reversed, such that the riot of Carnival is juxtaposed with the control of the Lenten season, although Bakhtin argues in Rabelais and His World that we should not compare modern Mardi Gras with his Medieval Carnival. He argues that the latter is a powerful creative event, whereas the former is only a spectacle. Bakhtin goes on to suggest that the separation of participants and spectators was detrimental to the potency of Carnival.

In his Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics (1929) and Rabelais and His World (1965), Bakhtin likens the carnivalesque in literature to the type of activity that often takes place in the carnivals of popular culture. In the carnival, as we have seen, social hierarchies of everyday life—their solemnities and pieties and etiquettes, as well as all ready-made truths—are profaned and overturned by normally suppressed voices and energies. Thus, fools become wise, kings become beggars; opposites are mingled (fact and fantasy, heaven and hell).

Through the carnival and carnivalesque literature the world is turned-upside-down (W.U.D.), ideas and truths are endlessly tested and contested, and all demand equal dialogic status. The “jolly relativity” of all things is proclaimed by alternative voices within the carnivalized literary text that de-privileged the authoritative voice of the hegemony through their mingling of “high culture” with the profane. For Bakhtin it is within literary forms like the novel that one finds the site of resistance to authority and the place where cultural, and potentially political, change can take place.

For Bakhtin, carnivalization has a long and rich historical foundation in the genre of the ancient Menippean satire. In Menippean satire, the three planes of Heaven (Olympus), the Underworld, and Earth are all treated to the logic and activity of Carnival. For example, in the underworld earthly inequalites are dissolved; emperors lose their crowns and meet on equal terms with beggars. This intentional ambiguity allows for the seeds of the “polyphonic” novel, in which narratologic and character voices are set free to speak subversively or shockingly, but without the writer of the text stepping between character and reader