Notes on Charles Jencks

 

Jencks makes that point that while the architectural icon is nothing new, a new form of it has emerged recently.  Strictly speaking, icons are defined by their “similitude” to something, like a footprint in the sand, a painting of a saint, or a formal evocation of a cultural concept.  A good icon is a minimal or condensed image, like the ancient Egyptian pyramids are of a funeral pyre.  In general then, the perfect icon is perfectly reductive to pure exchange value; function and material value are not important to the icon per se, as can be noted especially when the functioning  is made to be part of the icon.

                This new form of iconic architecture thrives on media attention, and in many respects that is its function.  The buildings are commissioned with this aim, and the architect becomes the agent in the image creation.  The media attention produces the exchange value of the building by rendering it into a marketing tool, that is, reducing it to its exchange value.  Early examples include Philip Johnson’s AT&T building, in which the architectural hype was a global phenomenon, Utzon’s Sydney Opera House, whose media attention was effective in drawing world attention and tourism all the way around the globe, and Gehry’s Bilbao Museum, whose worldwide image transformed the city of Bilbao into a post-industrial service and tourism-centered city.  In some sense, these buildings operate in much the same way as the Egyptian pyramids—as pure iconic forms, as pure signs. 

There are important differences with the traditional icon, however.  Firstly, traditional icons establish and exist within a hierarchy of symbols (the Pyramids are at the top of this hierarchy).  Secondly, the icons draw on the public realm. Thirdly, they form the public realm. 

The contemporary architectural icon, like other icons in culture (just turn on the TV…) operates in transgression of these principles.  Buildings as signs are produced for individual economic effect, and their images are currency within the international economy.  Jencks terms this type of icon as “the democratic icon,” not referring to the political factor so much as the individual factor.  The icons pander to popular sentiment, aim at causing upset, overturning conventions, challenging hierarchy, and utilizing paranoia (that is, the negative reactions against them) to their media advantage.  Evidence of this is that iconic buildings each have their media epithet that reduces them into a condensed image: “shard,” “erotic gherkin,” “crystal beacon.”  “Shock and awe” is the aim, as seen in projects such as Selfridges.  Jencks asks, is “this radical form of democracy and egalitarianism… [this] rampant individualism killing the public realm?”

                As Rem Koolhaas puts it, “shopping is doubtless the last form of public activity,” which we excoriates in “Junkspace.”  Nevertheless, architecture is forced to embrace it, even if it is in a mode of subtle disgust or subversion, as one might interpret OMA’s approach.  In The Harvard Design School Guide to Shopping, Rem drives home the point of the total commercialization of all culture, and he laments the role of the architect in this to be primarily the producer of the image and the icon.  In Jenck’s view, this is what gives rise to the new form of architectural icon.

                The new form of architectural icon has another important characteristic, beyond simply that it is commercial, what Jencks terms “the enigmatic signifier.”  This form of icon is metaphorical in more indirect, enigmatic ways, avoiding obvious associations, direct historical references, but instead open to, but carefully guiding interpretations.  They are like substrates or magnets to embody whatever the subject ascribes to them.  Jencks claims the “enigmatic signifier” is symptomatic of “the loss of content” (referring to the disappearance of belief and the need for inflationary symbols to replace fill this cultural void) combined with the egoism of commercial interests (which can profit from the inflationary symbol). In other words, the enigmatic signifier has deep roots in the commercial reality of the late-capitalist global economy, and the innate human religiosity and spiritualism.   The absence of  strong belief in any metanarrative, ideology, or religion, and the resulting decline of religious and historical iconographies has characterized postmodern culture for many decades, Jencks argues.  Thus the there is a very strong motivation for the iconic building to become an enigma.

                So, what is a good enigmatic signifier?  In recognition of the spiritual component of the enigmatic signifier, Jencks postulates that a successful icon is:

                -stands out from the background/city

                -is a condensed/minimal image

                -highly figural

                -metaphorical

                -symbol fit for worship

But he cautions that the architect must carefully negotiate the metaphorical associations, such that they are both obvious and veiled, connoting, but not explicit.  Moreover, it works best when the symbolism underlines the symbolic program of the building.

Symbolism:

                -obvious and veiled simultaneously

                -systematic and layered

                -related to popular images or conceptions

                -related to symbolic program

                For example, the icon is employed masterfully in some public buildings, which removes for the moment the commercial factor.  In Le Corbusier’s Chandigahr Assembly Building, locally-inspired symbolism is multi-layered with multiple references, as well as with functional considerations.  The bull-horn shape in the front is a sunshade against the very strong local sun, as well as collecting rain from the intense monsoon, channeling it into a reflecting pool (water is sacred too).  The dome on the top represents democracy, contains a cooling tower, as well as makes reference to the sun, which in local tradition is the source of all power.  In addition he uses a plethora of abstract imagery on the interior.  The same analysis goes for Ronchamp, in which the symbolism is so evocative, yet nondescript that it is an enigmatic signifier.  It draws imagery from nature, traditional churches, and it also highly personal to Le Corbusier: a “psychological work”, not explicitly Catholic, thus underlining the enigmatic aspect.  Similarly, in Norman Forster’s Reichstag Dome, powerful yet indirect historical imagery is used in the glass dome, and symbolic program is used in the intermixing of public programs and the government functions.  

                But these successful icons have preconditions that are not able to be satisfied within the commercial context, which is what leads often to the "enigmatic signifier."  They are based on the preconditions that:

                    -the people believe in something

                    -there is a developed idea about how to represent their faith

                    -the architect can carry through the symbols

                In contrast, in Brasilia, large abstract forms are one-liners open to misinterpretation.  Boston City Hall is likened to a fortress, and Norman Foster’s London City Hall is likened to a testicle, malapropistic metaphors.  These have no “iconographic program” and no “systematic symbolism,” “expressive form with the wrong kind of content.” 

                Rem’s 1978 work Delirious New York somewhat presages this discussion of the enigmatic signifier.  Rem points to the symbolistic autonomy of the self-contained interiorized mega-buildings of New York,  attempted to find within the complex interiority and non-relational atomized condition of the city a new way to relate to symbolism.  The contemporary skyscraper is seen as a totally out-of-date, in denial of its real identity and functioning.  In  CCTV in Beijing, Rem turns this logic into a powerful enigmatic symbol, to use Jenck’s term.  “Kill the Skyscraper,” turning it in to a mutant hybrid that optimizes the symbolic value of its true identity and interior functioning.  Its centralized nature, its continuous, connected program, overturn the image of the skyscraper, turning it into an interiorized icon.  Is power is underlined by a strong form whose holistic nature is assured by a structural logic.  Moreover, it has overtones pertinent to China and the media is its totalitarian completeness, and contains imagery of a moongate, an empty TV, a Chinese bracelet, etc.

                Finally, 

HK GOVERNMENT COMPLEX: 

STATE, IDENTITY, AND FORM

NATION-STATE

    Architecture is a human creation, and thus reflects in one way or another every aspect of its culture.  One such characteristic of culture that it reflects are relations of power, and flux of ideas that contest power relationships.   Cultural products that serve as symbolic currency of power relationships abound.  In modern times, one of the most culturally dominant constructs of power is the nation-state.  It is useful to distinguish nation and state, because the nation may be referred to as a self-defining (by language, ethnicity, region, religion, custum, or race) group of a people, and the state the self-supporting ruling regime composed of government officials, bureaucrats, and private citizens with access to power.  Ideally, the nation and the state are one and the same people, a sentiment articulated by Wilsonian national self-determination, and is the conceptual object of nationalism (Ernest Gellner in Nations and Nationalism), an idea that only has begins to have currency under the post-Enlightenment modern conditions undermining the previous legitimization of states: cosmological divine rule, the idea of transregional sacred language and culture, and the temporal inseparability of cosmology and history.  But, in reality, the congruency of nation and state is never really the case.  Perhaps one could point to the case of Athens as the paragon of a true nation-state, because every member of society had direct political representation; the other 90% of the population were simply slaves and not considered at all.  This points to the critical factor which defines the nation-state: different nations of people are unified by means of ideas that transcend their otherwise divided cultural identifications. 

NATION-IDENTITY 

    An important component in the successful formation of a nation-state is the establishment of a national identity, the broad process of collective self-redefinition, through the use of images, metaphors, and rhetoric, as symbols of currency in the form of objects, events, monuments and ceremonies.  As Vale points out, flags, icons of leaders, emblems, logos, slogans, images of architecture, and the architecture itself serve as symbols to establish this identity.  These symbols work in a number of ways: appropriation of colonial symbols, importation of foreign symbols, the universalization of a sub-group's symbols, or a reference to the pre-colonial past.  Importantly, there is never a direct translation between the intended construction of identity by the ruling elite and the architecture, but instead it is outcome of a process of negotiation that synthesizes three main aspects: the subnational groups and allegiances of the ruling elite (who want to maintain existing patterns of dominance and submission), the personal predilections of the designers, politicians, and bureaucrats, and the supranational intentions (which may result in an uncritical and contradictory adoption of Western models--such as high modernism--for purposes of international prestige).  Thus, the (1)symbology, and the (2)subnational, the (3)personal, and the (4)supranational factors need to be established in order to understand the process of IDENTITY construction of the nation-state.

FORM-IDENTITY: ICON

    How does this symbology operate architecturally in terms of FORM?  In "Nine Points on Monumentality" Gideon, Sert, and Leger artculated a call for modern architecture to embrace the symbolic power of architecture as an expression of the collective identity of a people. According to Nelson Goodman, in his essay "How Buildings Mean," architecture operates symbolically to create meanings in four ways: 1. denotation, 2. exemplification, 3. metaphor, 4. mediated reference.  

1) Denotation is simple literal encoded meanings, such as written language.  
2) Exemplification operates indexically, "exemplifying" certain features through formal techniques, such as axiality, centrality, scale, proportion, etc. (SEE BELOW)
3) Metaphor operates by referring to external texts such as historical events, ideas, categories, aesthetically or otherwise.
4) Mediated reference refers to the anachronistic meanings that are subsequently or unintentionally attached.

In terms of design, exemplification and metaphor are of the greatest interest since they suggest design methodologies for constructing identity.  Lisa Findley in Power, Space, and Architecture lays out a schema for interpreting the way architecture spatially exemplifies power relationships, of which the first two are most relevant for architecture: (see also Thomas Marcus Buildings and Power)  

1) spatialization of hierarchy:  
    -elevation (raised dais) 
    -scale 
    -frontality / centrality / axiality (dinner table, forbidden city, mayan temple, etc.) 
    -materiality
2) marginalization / inclusion:   
    -accessibility, or the appearance of accessibility
    -separation / proximity 
3) segregation:  
    -invisibility 
    -"double-landscape"
4) large scale spatial transformations:  -apartheid -colonialism -globalization

Thus, we can establish the relationship between FORM and IDENTITY in national architecture.  

FORM-USE: IDEOGRAMMATIC ICON

    According to Murray Edelman, this works politically by utilizing a juxtaposition of alienation and empowerment: intimidating authoritarian messages as well as inclusive civic ones are registered by the subject of the architecture simultaneously, soothing the conscience of the elites as well as comforting the non-elites.  Often, this juxtaposition of alienation and empowerment is a necessary outcome of the conflict between the USE function of state architecture, which requires security and exclusivity, and the IDENTITY functions, which require openness and inclusion, in addition to serving as a ideologically useful conflation alienation and empowerment as a way of placating the subjects of the state while promulgating a fear and respect for the government. In democratic government designs we see much more clearly in the character of spatial arrangements as well as in the iconography of the architectural forms themselves, a transparency of function, such that the architecture serves as a sort of IDEOGRAM of the functioning of the government.  In accordance with the alienation/empowerment dialectic this produces a double effect in which the transparency of the function of the government provides the semblance of access and inclusion comes into conflict with the the actual functioning of the government, which in the best case is still exclusive and security-controlled. 

EXAMPLES IN HISTORY

    1. washington D.C.      x

    1.5 freedom tower

    2. chandigarh             x

    3. ankara                   x

    4. U.S. courthouses     

    5. U.N.                      x

    6. Taipei 101

    7. Forbidden City        x

    8. IFC or Union Square

    9. Chinese Provincial Capitals: Shanghai / Urumqi            x

MONUMENT or ICON?:

monument: 

    -ritual

    -time, perpetuity

    -authority

    -shared values

icon:

    -anything symbolic

This is clear when one considers that monuments exist in many forms other than architecture: music, murals, sculpture, literature, film, etc.  Architecturally, the monument employs the techniques discussed out above to "mean."  Traditionally, premodernist monumentality relied on shared historical references a shared symbolic aesthetic culture to create a collective expression, as can be seen in the Egyptian pyramids, the imperialist Chinese monuments, and in the design of Washington DC, and Speer's Berlin.  Initially, as exemplified by utopic works such as Sant'Elia, (as well as in Le Corbusier's Radiant City and Hilberseimer's Vertical City), the early modern movement was interested in distancing itself from historicism, championing the monumentality of pure functionalism as the embodiment of a new age, in a sense replacing traditional beliefs with a new consensus faith.  In reaction to the this functionalist modern approach, Giddeon, Sert, Leger's polemic "Nine Points on Monumentality" called on modern architecture to embrace the symbolic power of architecture as an expression of the collective identity of a people, and represented an evolution in modernist discourse.  Certain tactics of metapohor, scale, elevation (raised dais), frontality / centrality / axiality, and materiality, as discussed above, were employed to create monuments.  The modernist icon relied on the structuration of the city and spatial and iconic relationships of the built form to convey meaning, as can be seen in Ankara, Brasilia, Chandigahr, and the UN building, which, encouraged by the advent of postcolonialism, articulated what could be described as a consensus progressive global culture.

    Charles Jencks points out, however, that there has been an important shift in monumentality, in which the traditional, or even modernist modes of monumentality have devolved due the breakdown of strong belief in any metanarrative, ideology, or religion, and the resulting decline of religious and historical iconographies.  This shift is the consequence and confluence of two major factors: the egoistic commercialization of global culture, and the "the loss of content” (referring to the disappearance of belief).  The disappearance of belief requires inflationary symbols to fill the void, and the egoistic commercial interests can profit from these symbols, producing what Jencks terms "the enigmatic signifier," a form of icon is metaphorical in more indirect, enigmatic ways, avoiding obvious associations, direct historical references, but instead open to, but carefully guiding interpretations. They are like substrates or magnets to embody whatever the subject ascribes to them. Most recently, the enigmatic signifier has exploded in the form of signature architecture and icon-creation for the purposes of commercialism and media exchange value.  In some sense, these buildings operate in much the same way as the Egyptian pyramids—as pure iconic forms, as pure signs, but with the important distinction that they are in total usurpation and transgression of the public realm in their quest for individualistic attention.  Evidence of this is that iconic buildings each have their media epithet that reduces them into a condensed image: “shard,” “erotic gherkin,” “crystal beacon.”  “Shock and awe” is the aim, as seen in projects such as Selfridges.  Jencks asks, is “this radical form of democracy and egalitarianism… [this] rampant individualism killing the public realm?”  As Rem Koolhaas puts it, “shopping is doubtless the last form of public activity,” which we excoriates in “Junkspace.”  Nevertheless, architecture is forced to embrace it, even if it is in a mode of subtle disgust or subversion, as one might interpret OMA’s approach.  In The Harvard Design School Guide to Shopping, Rem drives home the point of the total commercialization of all culture, and he laments the role of the architect in this to be primarily the producer of the image and the icon.  In Jenck’s view, this is what gives rise to the new form of architectural icon.

    The "enigmatic signifier" leads to skepticism about whether monuments are really possible anymore, whether they have devolved into simply the icon, that is devoid of ritual, perpetuity, authority, and shared values, especially when they proliferate through the city.  Rem’s 1978 work Delirious New York somewhat presages this discussion of the enigmatic signifier, as New York in the 1970s could be said to presage the expanding urban conditions worldwide.  Rem accepts the symbolic complexity of the city as the new "Culture of Congestion" in which competing systems of symbols and meanings render each building autonomous, a city within a city with its own ideology and lifestyle, and thus meaningless, an idea later developed in SMLXL into the concept of "generic city," in which the meaningless skyscraper dominates the symbolic landscape as the final architectural typology.  These ideas are supported by the work of David Harvey in The Condition of Postmodernity, which theorizes that the global flux of interconnectedness which has replaced the traditional Fordist, "decongested" model of the city has resulted in homogenous architectural types that are globally distributed, cities-in-cities whose autonomy is reinforced by their internal heterogenous program, that are more related to a global culture that to any local culture or nation.  In contrast to projects like the the Seagram Building, which is a modernist icon of Fordist principles, projects such as the Rockefeller Center and the World Trade Center exemplify this dilemma, for while they are certainly iconic, owing to their figuration, size, centrality, and importance as loci of power, it is not clear what they signify.  They exist on their own terms, as cities-within-cities, but paradoxically still attempting to address formally some exterior order of signification that is in fact meaningless, or inconsistent with their actual autonomy.  (Interestingly, the WTC as we know, became not just an icon, but a fated monument to global capitalism.)  

    Pointing to the symbolistic autonomy of the self-contained interiorized mega-buildings of New York, Rem attempted to find within the complex interiority and non-relational atomized condition of the city a new way to relate to symbolism.  The contemporary skyscraper is seen as a totally out-of-date, in denial of its real identity and functioning.  In  CCTV in Beijing, Rem turns this logic into a powerful "enigmatic symbol," to use Jenck’s term.  “Kill the Skyscraper,” turning it in to a mutant hybrid that optimizes the symbolic value of its true identity and interior functioning.  Its centralized nature, its continuous, connected program, overturn the image of the skyscraper, turning it into an interiorized icon.  Is power is underlined by a strong form whose holistic nature is assured by a structural logic.  Moreover, it has overtones pertinent to China and the media is its totalitarian completeness, and contains imagery of a moongate, an empty TV, a Chinese bracelet, etc.

     So, what is a good enigmatic signifier?  In recognition of the spiritual component of the enigmatic signifier, Jencks postulates that a successful icon is:

                -stands out from the background/city

                -is a condensed/minimal image

                -highly figural

                -metaphorical

                -symbol fit for worship

But he cautions that the architect must carefully negotiate the metaphorical associations, such that they are both obvious and veiled, connoting, but not explicit.  Moreover, it works best when the symbolism underlines the symbolic program of the building.

Symbolism:

                -obvious and veiled simultaneously

                -systematic and layered

                -related to popular images or conceptions

                -related to symbolic program

                For example, the icon is employed masterfully in some public buildings, which removes for the moment the commercial factor, for example in Le Corbusier’s Chandigahr Assembly Building, Ronchamp, and Norman Foster's Reichstag Dome. But these successful icons have preconditions that are not able to be satisfied within the commercial context, which is what leads often to the "enigmatic signifier."  They are based on the preconditions that:

                 -the people believe in something

                 -there is a developed idea about how to represent their faith

                 -the architect can carry through the symbols

SYMBOLS OF HONG KONG

-motifs:  illegal facades, small spaces, interiorized culture, escalators...

-existing icons

-layering

-verticality

-labyrinth

-vertical travel

-short-perspective

-top-down views

-feng shui

                panorama                      medium-urban                     short                              interior

                elevation                        plan                               perspective            circulation plan diagram, program diagram

    IFC: -non-figural, iconic due to scale/height accentuated by sleek design.  highly interiorized...    

    AIA tower: figural surface

    AIG: figural object, integrated city  fig/gnd

    Gherkin: figural object                  fig/gnd

    HSBC: facade, traditional axiality (feng shui), figural floating object

    BoC: figural object, separated city

    

    Culture of interiority.. XXXX

    Moreover, the tactics of scale, elevation (raised dais), frontality / centrality / axiality, and materiality, the traditional methods of constructing an icon, are called into question in the present day.  Scale had been usurped, elevation has been usurped; in New York, axiality has bas been usurped.  Traditionally, organically organized cities such as Rome, London, Berlin, and Paris, have successively reorganized themselves to employ these tactics, which are all the more effective against a disorganized background.  In Hong Kong, this can be seen in the Flagstaff Legislative Council, as well as in Norman Foster's HSBC building.  

But the ability to make an icon is not as much the point as the ability to make a monument, that is to instill with icon with meaning.  In the "culture of congestion," buildings talk past eachother, and meaning cannot be organized.

In the disorganized cities of Asia, such as Hong Kong, also the traditional structured urban-scape in which these devices were to operate in the modern schematic are rendered ineffective.  Scale, elevation, frontality, centrality, axiality, operate differently in such a disorganized city.  

    

the Monumentality Debate: (non-exhaustive)

-Giddeon, Sert, Leger: "Nine Points on Monumentality": call for modern architecture to embrace the symbolic power of architecture as an expression of the collective identity of a people. 

-Rem Koolkaas: Deliriious New York, SMLXL, Junkspace, The Harvard Guide to Shopping

-Nelson Goodman, "How Buildings Mean:" architecture operates symbolically to create meanings in four ways: 1. denotation, 2. exemplification, 3. metaphor, 4. mediated reference.

-

-Charles Jencks, The Iconic Building: buildings as icons now rely on metaphor, which is comic and cheap.  

-Charles Moore: metaphors are ok

-Peter Cook: ???

-David Harvey, The Condition of Postmodernity: post-capitalist "regime of flexible accumulation" means nodal points within cities are more connected to the worldwide networks than to their immediate context.  Thus they cannot serve as monuments in the traditional sense.

-size:  traditionally, icons relied on size to convey their meanings: Speer's Berlin, etc.  This has been usurped by non-monumental large architecture.  

-culture: traditionally, monuments represented a collective understanding, and an authority thereby.  now, there is flux, skepticism, lack of consensus, lack of symbolic culture, 

time:

-monument attempts to assert power over time.

-"collective memory" in HK.  how do they think of themselves, how do they want to represent themselves through the ages...

-flux of the city: charts / graphics???  zaha project...

rituals:

-protests, philipinos, 

authority

-flagstaff

-chinese traditional

-symbol

what does the monument symbolize

THREE IDENTITIES

    A government administrative complex in Hong Kong will have to negotiate three competing realms: that of the PRC and its agenda, that of HKSAR and its, and that of the populace of Hong Kong, a complex entity in itself.  In many ways, one can conflate the HKSAR government with the PRC, since the influence of the PRC is included already within the functioning of the HKSAR government, since the PRC appoints executive members, as well as the fact that the entire HKSAR government must anticipate the intentions and desires of the PRC.  Nevertheless it would be useful to speculate on what image / identity PRC in particular would like to construct for Hong Kong, as separate from the HKSAR, whose elected Legislative Council has a different agenda from that of the PRC appointed members, and from the bureaucracy as well, which has its own agenda summarized in various symbolic identity-constructive slogans, such as "Asia's World City."  Furthermore, there are constituents of the populace that have differing views of their own, some of which are represented by the parties participating in the HKSAR government.

ICON

    In any case, whatever political agenda is to be represented, it must do so within the context of Hong Kong.  Hong Kong has its own terrain of symbology, a uniquely dense urban condition, and a uniquely ubiquitous interiorized culture.  How does one make an icon in Hong Kong?  History can provide some clues...

land/city-scape

-figure/ground

-Nolli plan with semi-public mall spaces

-skyways

buildings:

-HSBC building, 

-Bank of China,

-Zaha Peak competition

-Flagstaff / LegCo

interiorized buildings:

-IFC

-Union Square

MTR development model

-random podium in Tseung Kwan O   

VOCABULARY:

zoology of interiority - types of buildings, spaces

vocabulary of this interiority: how does it operate?     

-vocabulary of movement

-vocabulary of stasis

-scales

in addition, hk iconic symbols in general:

(see Elizabeth Mossop article)

(money, other hk stuff)

(Chinese National City / Hong Kong City / Global Capital --> symbology, subnational, personal, supranational)

for HK, see "Identity of the Port City" notes, introduce landscape idea in symbology, chinese traditions/metaphors, hong kong traditions/metaphors, 

THREE FORMS

CHINESE NATIONAL CITY

HONG KONG CITY: 

City Between Worlds (Leo Ou-fan Lee) notes...,

elizabeth mossop notes

GLOBAL CAPITAL: 

-Neil Brenner (New State Spaces) "city-regions have become key institutional sites in which a major rescaling on national state power has been unfolding," thus enhancing the place-specific symbolic assets of globally linked cities.

-Global Hong Kong (McDonough and Wong) notes

So, along with TV, the internet, one of the most important functions of architecture is as a mediator between the powerful and the powerless (Nietzsche???).  

MOBILE MONUMENT

-nodes at central locations

HK GOVERNMENT COMPLEX

HISTORY / THEORY: 

    -aesthetics power / surveillance

    -iconography / formalism of capitol buildings / regional governments

    -tiannenmen square, whitehall (two ideological progenitors), washington mall, reichstag, brasilia, CCTV

    -hong kong's historical iconography: colonial / industrial / global-capitalist architectural symbols    

    -political attitudes in hong kong / attitudes towards government

    -new china

    -history of hk integration with mainland, HKSAR

IDENTITY / ICONOGRAPHY:

    -globalized / consumer-culture / mobile society vs. new china

    -spatial expression of symbology in hong kong: object vs. interiorized rhizome

    -**analysis of iconic landscape (a la washington mall), but for HK: this means a mapping of the interior spaces, the connection malls, etc...

    -how to define banal / sacred in the HK urban landscape?

FUNCTION:

    -functioning of the regional HKSAR government

    -functioning as an icon: inclusion of civic programs and other hong-kong like programs for identity

    -interior symbology / exterior symbolic function

    -separation of banal and sacred, architecturally.  

"what does it mean to integrate with the city in Hong Kong???  in DC, it means monumentality, axiality, formal integration with the city/the mall.  (assuming political integration and the contextual attitude towards a gov't building, i.e. not the forbidden city model, but must justify this --> ) in HK, the city is interiorized, multifunctional (study this civic towers with the squash courts etc.), so it makes sense to integrate MTR, mall, civic functions into the government building, ignoring the issue of the waterfront for now, how can the question of iconography express itself in such an interiorized/mobile building?"

POTENTIAL TOPICS:

-prefab mobile housing

-parking as public space in a culture of mobility.  ("mobility space; making place")

-archipelagos of mobility: identity of place in HK transit-superblocks

-synthesis of identity: new PRC government complex in HK

-government functioning
-political iconography in an interiorized, mobile culture

-dynamic city: HK building lifecycles

-climatic contextualism: Western architectural models in hot climates

Mobile Architecture (short version):

    Mobility as a topic of interest has long been part of the Architectural discourse.  Advancements in technologies of movement, such as the elevator and the railway, made possible entirely new types of architecture.  The modern project, with its ambitions to use architecture as a medium for the progressive reorganization of society, envisaged cities of perfectly organized movement, and employed new infrastructures of the automobile and rail to link together new architectural types. (Hilberseimer, Ville Radieuse).  

    In the post-war period there were a number of trends in reaction to the modern urbanist dogma of "decongestion," such as Archigram (Plug-in City, Walking City), Superstudio (Continuous Conveyer Belt City), the Megastructuralists and Metabolists, Team 10 (Cluster City), Lous Kahn (Philly City Center), in addition to critics such as Jane Jacobs (Death and Life of the American City), Rem Koolhaas (SMLXL), among others, who reacted, in various ways, to the modernist project on the city.

  This dialectic of the tension between mobility and the city is still very much at issue, for mobility at once defines and realizes the city as well as destroys it.  Now, the issue of mobility is beginning to take two other dimensions, related to the information technology revolution and globalized urbanism. The revolution in information technology, while contributing to a globalized culture, primarily plays out in the increased mobility of everyday life, in which more than ever, mobility is a ubiquitous phenomenon of normal people, a fact of everyday life, a life-pattern and a life-style.The globalized urbanism revolution plays out primarily in the hubs of global exchange, that is in airports, hotels, etc, and in the homogeneous global design aesthetic.

    The opportunity presents itself: to realize a synthesis between the desire to redress the ills of a modernist city of movement, and an acknowledgment of the our collective identity in ubiquitous and strengthening culture of mobility.  My interests thus can be divided into two basic areas of interest, depending on the cultural context:

A) CaliforniaIn the case of California, an investigation into the architectural responses to the culture of mobility would entail addressing the archipelago urban condition resulting from the car-culture of (auto)mobility. This could take the form of a research investigation on 

1) PARKING as public space, to realize public potential of the mobile city of archipelagos.  Mainly, cars are the means of transport, point A to point B.  How does the car interact with architecture?  How might is interact.  Take point A and point B: PARKING, as a case study.  A case study on how to solve the old problem of the modernist city, the remedying of public space, as well as the new problem of how to address the new subjectivity of driving to define the public realm in an information age.

Survey and speculate on the architectural potentials of parking to operate not as as part of an architecture which seeks to exploit the intermodal nature of parking--as mediating between the car and the building--in the mobile lifestyle.  This line of research, exhibiting a positivist focus on the overall culture of mobility expresses another line of thought, as opposed to the reactionist ones above ones above, conceptualizes of the city as a mobile entity, as in Kevin Lynch's The View from the Road, Reyner Banham's Los Angeles: The Architecture of Four Ecologies. Banham considers a view of LA as a system in flux, focusing not only on the geographical, social, and historical context, but also he describes what he terms ecologies of architecture.  The idea of the ecology of architecture redefines the conventional term to include all forms of human structure, from the freeway to the hotdog stand to the surfboard, to the parking lot, thus including a plurality of forms of expression beyond just high architecture.  These ideas have recently reemerged in the works of Nick Barley in Breathing Cities, and Francine Houben in her recent "Mobility: Room with a View," which echoes this approach by focusing on interpreting and designing the city from the perspective of the driver, reiterating the continuing validity of this overall approach...

2) BART commutes.  Instead of thinking of BART as a commuter train (as it has been shown to be relatively ineffective in challenging the supremacy of car-culture), reconceptualize BART as a mobile building, housing and servicing a new type of distributed, franchised flexible office, and/or public facilities.

B) Hong KongIn the context of Hong Kong, an investigation into the architectural responses to the culture of mobility would entail addressing the MTR culture of subway-linked corporate mixed-use tower blocks.  Harking back to the earlier modernist visions of a topologocal, vertically integrated city, the hong kong mixed-use podium tower block presents a similar challenge to Hong Kong as the modernist urban planning did in the West, but with a twist.  While the historical city is being overrun by these developments, the developments themselves offer a new type of complex urbanism of their own, an interiorized city-in-city composed of trains, escalators, travelators, skybridges, stairs, and elevators, in a homogenized, streamlined, and totally commercialized environment engineered for maximum profitability.  What are the potentials of this building type to realize the urban potentials of the culture of mobility?  How give such a building type, with the tools of corridors and elevators, the real qualities of a city, with a "sense of place?"

Mobile Architecture:

    Mobility as a topic of interest has long been part of the Architectural discourse.  Advancements in technologies of movement, such as the elevator and the railway, made possible entirely new types of architecture.  The modern project, with its ambitions to use architecture as a medium for the progressive reorganization of society, envisaged cities of perfectly organized movement, and employed new infrastructures of the automobile and rail to link together new architectural types. (Hilberseimer, Ville Radieuse).  While the architectural component of the modern project, that is collective housing could be considered a failure, the hierarchical organization by function of cities via the imposition of the interstate highway system continued, Wright's Broadacre city realized, and the traditional idea of the city subordinated by infrastructure (MVRDV).  These visions strictly segregated functions by use, with infrastructure as the the linking element; thus hierarchy was the dominant organization.  Sanford Kwinter remarks on the importance of the television in facilitating this change, by substituting the "quick" of city life with the thrill of entertainment received through the television.  The one-to-many broadcast nature of the television reinforced the restructuring of space according to separated uses linked by the highway, and produced visions of life and culture that declined to challenge the neatness of this reality, thus reinforcing it.  As Urry puts, it, this produces the "non-places" of infrastructural movement, akin to Le Corbusier's "corridors", in which movement between "private worlds is through dead public spaces by car." (Freund, P.)

    In the post-war period there were a number of trends in reaction to the modern urbanist dogma of "decongestion," as Houben puts it.  Archigram and Superstudio propose versions of the city in which the architecture is again subjugated to the infrastructure, but the infrastructure is responsive to the people, allowing for dynamic reorganizations, such as in Plug-in-City, and allowing for movement in Continuous Conveyer Belt City and Walking City.  Focusing more on the role of architecture, the Megastructural and Metabolist movements, in opposition to the clearly delineated separation between architecture and infrastructure by the intervening element of empty landscape, theorized on the integration of infrastructure and architecture, imagining autonomous expandable buildings with integrated infrastructure, and functioning like self-contained cities (an architecturalization of the city).  As in Team 10's Cluster City, Louis Kahn similarly argued for density, vertical stratification, mobility in his Philadelphia City Center project, which proposed an integration of automobile infrastructure with architectural types in megabuildings incorporating parking, housing, offices and situated strategically along infrastructural routes.  Megabuildings of a different type actually begin to emerge on their own in American cities, resulting from the ubiquity of the interstate highway system and a lack of overall planning: mixed-use buildings with miniature, atomized "downtowns" for each mega-building, a cluster of autonomies, replacing the real downtown with "its messy contradictions, its complexities, its irregularities, its densities, its ethnicities," which Rem criticizes in the exemplary work of John Portman, as the result is the obliteration of the city, everywhere is the city such that the term loses its meaning.  As an alternative, Rem proposes to use the complexities of integrating the different programs of the mixed-use building to produce new public spaces, as can be seen in his Paris Library project.  These views point to an opportunity for architecture to claim lost ground by re-engaging the topic of mobility, not by trying to restructure it, or encompass it, but by incorporating and facilitating its complexities, to realize the "absorption of bridge-and-tunnel people" as Rem puts it in SMLXL, using Albert Pope's famous term.  The life of the city exists in this movement of people, and thus the architecture that facilitates these movements participates in the new life of the city, that is the idea of the city in motion. 

    Mobility is especially appropos to current discourse because the world is experiencing an urban revolution in which mobility plays a primary role.  Cities  are the symptom of flows of people, good, and information through infrastructural networks centered on cities (Stephen Graham, Mark Wigley).  And physical movement becomes more and more relevant even in an information society, for as information flows more freely, places that are farther apart become more interconnected. From one perspective, the relevance of this effort again proves that we are not far from the original postmodern condition, for we are still looking to remedy the attack on the city by modernist planning principles. 
    But who are the "bridge-and-tunnel people" today?  There is the rising
importance of a small but significant demographic of internationally
mobile people, realizing a meta-metropolis of interconnected inter-regional and inter-national metropolitan networks; but in the contemporary metropolis, mobility is a
ubiquitous phenomenon of normal people, a fact of everyday life, a
life-pattern and a life-style.  The opportunity presents itself: to realize a synthesis between the desire to redress the ills of a modernist city of movement, and an acknowledgment of the our collective identity in ubiquitous and strengthening culture of mobility.  My interests thus can be divided into two basic areas of interest, depending on the cultural context:

A) California

In the case of California, an investigation into the architectural responses to the culture of mobility would entail addressing the archipelago urban condition resulting from the car-culture of (auto)mobility. This could take the form of a research investigation on 

1) PARKING as public space, to realize public potential of the mobile city of archipelagos.  Mainly, cars are the means of transport, point A to point B.  How does the car interact with architecture?  How might is interact.  Take point A and point B: PARKING, as a case study.  A case study on how to solve the old problem of the modernist city, the remedying of public space, as well as the new problem of how to address the new subjectivity of driving to define the public realm in an information age.

Survey and speculate on the architectural potentials of parking to operate not as as part of an architecture which seeks to exploit the intermodal nature of parking--as mediating between the car and the building--in the mobile lifestyle.  This line of research, exhibiting a positivist focus on the overall culture of mobility expresses another line of thought, as opposed to the reactionist ones above ones above, conceptualizes of the city as a mobile entity, as in Kevin Lynch's The View from the Road, Reyner Banham's Los Angeles: The Architecture of Four Ecologies. Banham considers a view of LA as a system in flux, focusing not only on the geographical, social, and historical context, but also he describes what he terms ecologies of architecture.  The idea of the ecology of architecture redefines the conventional term to include all forms of human structure, from the freeway to the hotdog stand to the surfboard, to the parking lot, thus including a plurality of forms of expression beyond just high architecture.  These ideas have recently reemerged in the works of Nick Barley in Breathing Cities, and Francine Houben in her recent "Mobility: Room with a View," which echoes this approach by focusing on interpreting and designing the city from the perspective of the driver, reiterating the continuing validity of this overall approach...

  

2) BART commutes.  Instead of thinking of BART as a commuter train (as it has been shown to be relatively ineffective in challenging the supremacy of car-culture), reconceptualize BART as a mobile building, housing and servicing a new type of distributed, franchised flexible office, and/or public facilities. 

B) Hong Kong

1) In the context of Hong Kong, an investigation into the architectural responses to the culture of mobility would entail addressing the MTR culture of subway-linked corporate mixed-use tower blocks.  Harking back to the earlier modernist visions of a topologocal, vertically integrated city, the hong kong mixed-use podium tower block presents a similar challenge to Hong Kong as the modernist urban planning did in the West, but with a twist.  While the historical city is being overrun by these developments, the developments themselves offer a new type of complex urbanism of their own, an interiorized city-in-city composed of trains, escalators, travelators, skybridges, stairs, and elevators, in a homogenized, streamlined, and totally commercialized environment engineered for maximum profitability.  What are the potentials of this building type to realize the urban potentials of the culture of mobility?  How give such a building type, with the tools of corridors and elevators, the real qualities of a city.

Max, 

For my thesis I would like to propose a special type of development geared towards the mobile user strung out along the new California High Speed Rail, where new infrastructural linkagages produce new opportunities for designing for the mobile subject.

Perhaps you can suggest ways for me to begin this effort.  I believe the preparation for the project can be broken down into these tasks:

1. Identifying and quantifying the mobile subject in California.

2. Identifying and prescribing methods / characteristics of designing for these mobile subjects.

(programmatic functional innovations, types of program, arrangement of program, iconography)

3. Identifying and prescribing the infrastructures and linkages which can enable the mobile subject.

(existing infrastructures, building circulation relationship w/ infrastructure, building as extension of infrastructure, urbanistic relationship...)

Can you recomment some source material on specific projects that get into the details of the mobile subject and infrastructures? (I have already been looking at the course reading list for the theory aspect).  

Also, as we discussed, I've been thinking about my experiences and interests in Hong Kong as a point of departure for my thesis investigation...  Perhaps I can use some of the examples from Hong Kong to elucidate some of the principles above, before I actually jump into the California context.  I would like to spend at most two weeks in this phase, so I have plenty of time to get into the specifics of the California case.

here are some general ideas:

-Hong Kong mega-structure podium-tower complexes, for example ICC or IFC

MOBILE SUBJECT aspect:

-How the mobile user types (commuter, philipino weekend goers, flaneur, airport goer, ferry goer, office goer, hotel-traveler, convention-goer, medical tourist(???), etc) can be quantified, how do you analyse the effect on the architecture... 

-how lack of design for these constituents has produced unintended effects, disturbances that are not accomodated (perhaps this is what is interesting)

INFRASTRUCTURAL aspect:

-How they are an extenion of the rail infrastructure

-How it is a through-way allowing access to various types of infrastructure

-How it is a city-in-a-city in itself, a network of viaducts for shopping, office, residence, for the flaneurs...

-How it is an archipelago, a maximized site boundary walled off from the traditional ground-level city, or a parasite insinuated into the city, plugged in, but not deferential to the urban context and the city's traditional ground-level infrastructure.

So, for example, for IFC, how would I really document and quantify these two things: 1: the infrastructural relationships, and 2: the character of the mobile users.  Importantly, how do I analyse or identify the effects on the architecture, beyond simply the forms required to accomplish the infrastructural relationships?

Moreover, what do you think overall of this as a thesis investigation?  Do you think it is feasible, or is it too big and unfocused???

Thanks so much for your help Max, 

Best Wishes, 

Russ Gould