Presses polytechniques et universitaires romandes
EXPERIMENTING PROXIMITY
The Urban Landscape Observatory
with the contributions of
The PPUR publishes mainly works of teaching and research of the Ecole polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), of universities and other institutions of higher education.
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© Presses polytechniques et universitaires romandes, Lausanne, 2014 ISBN 978-2-88915-022-9
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Printed in Italy
7 One Kilometer of Urban Landscape
Elena Cogato Lanza, Christophe Girot
17 Mapping Urban Landscapes Antonio di Campli
59 Landscape Video
Fred Truniger, Nadine Schütz
85 Urban Qualities and Visualization: Towards a New Pedagogical Approach Elena Cogato Lanza, Christophe Girot
93 French Abstract: Un kilomètre de paysage urbain
103 References
19
Mapping Urban Landscapes
In mapping practice the process of landscape
representa-tion is marked by its particular concern with the
identi-fication of signs, urban materials, or situations through
which the qualities or values of a given space can be described. Bringing these elements into clearer focus means adopting an openly narrative posture, as in con-structing an account of a place, something that does not apply when one is representing space in terms of quan-tity, boundary, or extent. Associating space with a narra-tive – an image or ecology – is done by means of drawing together observations on different scales and from dif-ferent vantage points. A close-up view that focuses on a sign, object, or populated situation, in which a group of
subjects interact among themselves and a specific use of
space is outlined, is usually combined with a more selec-tive view, possibly a zenithal view, capable of rendering the wider background and setting.
In representations of the battlefield of Waterloo as
described by Yves Brunier, or in descriptions of the
Pro-vençal countryside found in the infrastructure projects of Desvignes & Dalnoky, or in Alexander Von Humboldt’s section drawings of the Andean slopes, landscape is treated in a manner not dissimilar to that in which Georg-es Rodenbach and Victor Hugo, in their literary talGeorg-es, con-fer the role of lead character upon the cities of Bruges or Paris (Auricoste/Blaisse/Claramunt 1996; Marot 1996, 44-45; Von Humboldt 1997, 78-83; Desvigne 2009).
Some scholars, such as Denis Cosgrove, William J.T. Mitchell, and John Barrell (Barrell 1983; Cosgrove 1984;
Mitchell 1994), when reflecting in general terms on land -scape representation, have claimed that its primary
con-cern is the definition of a model of space and a system
of values aimed at the control of a territorial or urban area. Understood in this way, the concept of landscape acquires an ideological dimension as an expression of values and viewpoints on how space should be per-ceived and occupied. Some of the picturesque images of the English Romantic period are an example of this, like
Antonio di Campli
20
those of John Constable, where describing the landscape has a distinctly model character: “It represents a way
in which certain classes of people have signified them -selves and their world through which they have under-lined and communicated their own social role and that of others with respect to nature” (Cosgrove 1984, 15). This form of description or account occurs through a process of decantation and abstraction of signs, conven-tions of use, and values and expresses the way in which a social group implicitly tends to think of space, and to nat-uralize economic and social practice within it. The result
is a partially imagined territorial space and an expression
of a system of power relationships – by which we mean cultural power.
In the practice of mapping landscapes as narratives we
can identify at least two tendencies. In the first, the city
is seen as a palimpsest: accumulated traces, re-writings, and overlayerings that can be peeled away. This tenden-cy is concerned with uncovering the signs, inheritances, or assets linked to the forging of its identity, the ways in which a certain grammar of the construction of space persists through time and presents itself as an “implicit
project” for its modification. This way of looking at urban space finds legitimacy mainly whenever modernism is in crisis, where the design of a city is redefined as a contex
-tual critique and a tool for recuperating the genius loci.
The way in which we articulate this tendency today is ex-pressed through representations that, on the territorial level, search for the “statute” of a place (Scazzosi 2001) and its structural invariants.
The second tendency, which goes right back to Hum-boldtian forms of description (often revisited today in the debate on sustainability), is concerned with the
ecologies of a space: how the balance is defined between
different inputs, elements, or subjects living together in
a landscape, is defined. This second tendency, in which
the representation and design of cities develop
rhizom-atically, emphasizes long-term phenomena – processes rather than forms or signs – with a view to maintaining a state of equilibrium. An example would be the territorial representation of post-traumatic phenomena (Mathur/ Da Cunha 2001).
These descriptive models have formed the starting point for the experimental mapping we have explored
in our 1 km Well-being project for the representation of
qualitative landscape features and urban comfort, bear-ing in mind that identifybear-ing comfort against a general background of urban landscape analysis includes look-ing for elements and dimensions of environmental, at-mospheric, or social control. Comfort is a condition we
hope to find in well-defined environments, spaces, or atmospheres, which, due to the presence of both fixed elements and specific ecologies and evolving processes, determines the way the spaces are used and yield a defin -able result. For these reasons, we approach the descrip-tion of the aspects of comfort that connote an urban space using the two aforementioned techniques of “nar-rative description” of landscape.
At the same time, we have tried to move away from these models and their tendency towards stable
narra-tives and settled configurations, since forming a critical
judgment on the features of urban comfort in a given context must encompass a design aspect, something we cannot achieve by describing a landscape as a static or closed model.
First and foremost, such a design-oriented approach has called for a search for information on several levels and the composition of appropriate representational languages. This is not a matter of producing “saturated” descriptions of spaces and values but of constructing open representations that permit, as in a work of
criti-cism, separate identification of the individual elements that define a state of comfort and verification of exactly
21
We have looked at a broad range of fields: the material
character of spaces, their environmental character, mor-phologies, and a number of anthropological and psycho-logical phenomena. The maps correspond to narratives constructed on different levels that allow us to convey an explicit critical judgment. They combine map sectors on differing scales, sections, quantitative and interpreta-tive diagrams, text and photographic input – all with the aim of pushing the representative potential of the map as far as it will go.
The concepts of comfort and well-being that belong to the realm of common sense have not been subject to any
specific theoretical development on our part. We have
regarded them as “black boxes” that we do not need to open up in order to use. Indeed, we have purposefully tried keeping common sense at arm’s length – to make a virtue, as it were, of “distance” in our observational mechanism. No relationships of familiarity connect the observer with the parts of the city observed. Having
iden-tified these parts as samples – exactly like those on a mi -croscope slide (Ábalos 2005; Ábalos 2008) – we have delib-erately scrutinized them with an external eye. We regard this conscious pursuit of extraneity, if not estrangement, as essential for research that has adopted the “learning from” model, describing situations and “spatially
situ-ated” forms of comfort with the goal of defining more
general, innovative ways of imagining urban comfort on a neighborhood scale.
The five case studies examined are located on the out -skirts of Geneva, a city with a morphological, environ-mental, and social character that has much in common with the bulk of Central European urbanized space. It is fair to assume that, in the near future, these areas will be
affected by densification in line with “new norms” of sus -tainable urban design. While the Lignon and Meyrin sub-urb case studies may enable us to rethink the qualities of two satellite suburbs of a decidedly modernist stamp,
the examples of Meyrin Village, Vernier, and Libellules are representative of fringe areas with a more mixed pat-tern of urban materials – residential, commercial, and industrial forms, and environmental or transport infra-structure.
The Lignon satellite suburb, built in the 1960’s, is com-posed of a single megastructure roughly 1 km in length housing 2,870 apartments. The building, which has a semi-linear form, sits on top of a promontory skirted by the Rhône and forming a large, open-sided court facing
the river bank. The surroundings are made up of a fine
grain of individual houses on plots and a productive/in-dustrial area of small-scale services.
Built between 1962 and 1963, the Meyrin suburb was designed to house 16,000 people in close proximity to CERN (European Organization for Nuclear Research). The district is made up of tall ranges of eight to ten storeys, concentrically arranged on grassy terrain around a civic and commercial hub.
Meyrin Village is a small, compact settlement, which has seen a growth in small-sized commercial/productive fabric and residential areas (with a prevalence of indi-vidual houses, their expansion held in check by residual agricultural land) resulting from the increased regional importance of the main road, the Route de Meyrin. Vernier is a ribbon settlement that dissolves into a cluster of residential spaces on the banks of the Rhône, articulated by a series of agricultural spaces that face the river to the south, with the Jura Mountains to the north. The Libellules quarter, just beyond Geneva’s urban center, is denoted by the presence of a series of infra-structure services for urban scale transportation that link and yet separate elements of a mixed residential neighborhood, sports facilities, services, commercial ar-eas, and green space.
22
where a variety of urban and rural conditions, whose materials are connoted by a contained and regular scale, exist comfortably side-by-side. This kind of territory has a
mixed configuration, that is one in which different forms
and situations of urban well-being can be discerned at neighborhood level.
A Western Project for Describing Landscape
Comfort features in this particular context of investiga-tion have, as already stated, been rendered by looking critically at the traditions of landscape description in mapping technique. At the same time, we have taken a keen interest in a number of recent experiences in rural
landscape description. This is a field in which innovative
mapping experiments have emerged in the last two dec-ades. They use techniques that can distance themselves from the “picturesque” forms of representation that, even today, often implicitly hearken back to the lessons of Lynch or Cullen (both approaches to urban analysis and design that seek to capture the identity of a given ur-ban landscape and build, coupling strategies between
lo-cal societies and urban spaces) (Lynch 1960; Cullen 1961).1
Two representational techniques in particular, found
in James Corner & Alex MacLean’s Taking Measures Across
the American Landscape and Alan Berger’s Reclaiming the American West, have yielded forms of description decoupled from traditional values, identity, or herit-age discourses, and tried to overcome the Cartesian or perspective-based representational logic that too often reduces landscape discourse within a purely spatial di-mension (Corner/MacLean 1996; Berger 2002; Mathur/Da Cunha 2001; Mostafavi/Najle 2003; Abalos 2005; Atelier Bow-Wow 2007).
These two techniques, explored in various research developed in the late 1990’s and early 2000’s, talk about a “Western project” of landscape description, marked by recombined representation, image, and non-rigid
description which, rather than capturing a precise im-age of a landscape, brings several dimensions, scales of observation, and elements into play that recall various different narratives. Structured around aerial photogra-phy, drawings, and maps, these representations reveal the particular “uncanny measure” of the American land-scape: a place built according to a purely functional,
ex-treme form of logic – an abstract space, signified by para -doxical dimensions, producing effects of estrangement. The attitude – both combinatorial and estranging – that these two “critical” techniques adopt has no desire
to entrench models and values but rather to define in -novative project strategies for regenerating parts of the American landscape. The focus is on one landscape in
particular: the “post-technological” Midwest, signified by the presence of sites that have been profoundly modified
in one way or another, if not “altered,” and that, never-theless, remains imbued with potent symbolic meaning. The Midwest, like a research laboratory on landscapes not connoted by culturalist discourse – a space subject
to fluid modification – lends itself to scrutiny without
nostalgia and, therefore, can inspire innovative forms of
representation, discourse, and strategies for modifica -tion.
Alan Berger’s work considers mining sites as altered sites, raising a host of morphological, ethical, and social questions, with the aim of their “reclamation” in a post-technological context. Reclamation is understood as a particular category of landscape planning that does
not aim to define an image based on the cosmetics or re-creation of original conditions. Modification and the
hidden aspects of the alteration process are viewed
non-ideologically, with the aim of defining new ecologies and
processes.
23 stable, romantic – these representations clearly reveal
the problematic framework of describing, starting with the accumulation of information, data, text, and image over time. They activate a strategy of interaction and recombination of ideas, meanings, physical presences, forms, and processes. Reclamation is a dual movement, where one experiments with descriptive methods that lie in between narration and visual recording, while dis-tancing oneself from preconceived judgments about the landscape.
Three types of graphic “objects” are deployed to con-struct these representations: cartography,
notation-mapping, and aerial imagery,2 all used to describe
sur-faces, geological strata, jurisdictions, topographies, sequences, cleared areas, movements, diversions, dislo-cations, volumes, dispersions, and ecologies. Measure-ment is an objective datum that plays an important role in constructing a spatial order of events or relational se-quences which allow us to interpret the organization of
a given landscape, but its language is modified to deliver
something more graphic, less sectorial in aspect, capa-ble of stimulating public debate on changes made to the landscape.
In this sense, mapping produced in Berger’s research
is reflexive in character; it loses the holistic character of
traditional cartography and becomes a tool for decon-struction made up of fragments and information that dif-fer in both nature and provenance.
James Corner and Alex MacLean combine aerial pho-tography, maps, captions, and short essays to develop ideas about conventions of use and construction in the landscape of the Midwest. Description focuses on tak-ing a “measure” understood in the sense of a numerical dimension, a functional device for describing land use and relationships between anthropic and natural forces. They talk of material quantities (spatial rhythms and ge-ometries) and instruments (technical tools), but also in
terms of the measure of moral and social justice, and spa-tial, legal, or technological control from the angle of de-termining what is socially just. The intention is to show, through the combinatory handling of various forms of information, the reciprocity between functional aspects (like those connected with the subdivision of farmland into lots, or with spacings, security buffers, etc.) and
measurements that reflect the imaginative and symbolic
features of landscape dwelling.
Although denoted by “modern” functional and ana-lytic measurements, there is no doubt that the shape of the American landscape also contains aesthetic valences that are revealed as ambiguous, estranging, and para-doxical.
This process of “taking measures”3 requires us to come
to grips with tools, methods, and practices. Ends, limits, and time have to be recognized, and judgments and val-ues expressed as the basis of the representational exer-cise. Taking measures calls for a zenithal viewpoint, com-bined with aerial photography: Alex MacLean’s images look at space and show its dimensions, but also have a particular kind of immobility and permanence. While re-calling the traditional language of photography, they are also almost indifferent to the subject.
The combinatory materials explored by these authors, whose research predates that of Alan Berger by a few years, are assembled from a series of map-drawings overlaid with photographic and satellite imagery,
main-taining a certain relationship of scale.4 Map-notations
25 (maquette 1/2000)
(1/2000)
1 km = 50 cm
1 km
1 km = 25 cm
square maquette (greys)
maquette section (greys/one color)
maps/diagrams (color)
26
The critical tension and openness to design innovation in these representations of the American landscape have made them essential models for the representation of
urban comfort at the local level in the 1 km Well-being
project. The combinatory, estranging technique, aimed
at forming a judgment, has in our case been re-defined as
an intersection of two viewpoints.
The first is the zenithal point, the cartographic view
that selects spatial structures, grids, or precise situations capable of producing urban comfort within the context under scrutiny. Attention focuses on the dimensional
character and shape of the objects identified. Taking
measurements is a key operation, used here to construct a discourse applicable to the disciplinary context – archi-tecture, urbanism or landscape – with implicit allusion to the issue of design. This view from above reveals orienta-tions, patterns, recurrences, sequences; it describes and measures form and morphology.
The second is the view from below, resulting from in-vestigations in situ, an outline that concentrates, on the
one hand, on urban materials and how they define the
subject landscape, and, on the other, on uses of space.
This view is rendered chiefly by means of photographic
investigation, sometimes with additional diagrams to render sensory qualities and degrees of well-being. Ref-erences for this view from below come from the tech-niques used by Guido Guidi (Zannier 2006), an Italian photographer who more than anyone has trained his eye to observe marginal and intermediate spaces, and the
ur-ban research of the New Topographical Movement. This
movement looks at the city as a context of the unfamiliar, a crime scene waiting to be investigated, like in the pho-tographs of Lewis Baltz (Salvesen 2009; Baltz/Callahan/ Porter/Digrappa/Adam 1980).
In our experiment, as regards the format, the represen-tation of each case study is made up of 25 × 25 cm map sequences. A small-square format, combined with non-conventional representation, deactivates the customary representational systems of the discipline, in particular as regards format and scale. It places the viewer in the situation of not being able to draw on familiar tech-niques, thereby doubling the effect of unfamiliarity one senses in the presence of the site. The square produces an initial isotropic perception of the place, without hi-erarchies or ordered ranking, and forces an extremely selective approach. Each of the 25 × 25 cm maps is mount-ed on a rigid support, like a tablet, and presents itself
as a flat, yet solid, manageable object. Together, these
tablets form a cinematic sequence of photograms where different developments – narrative, demonstrative, se-rial, etc. – are possible. The tablet sequence is accompa-nied by a 3D representation twice the size of the map (50 × 50 cm). By constructing a physical model, certain characteristics that cannot be rendered graphically can be expressed. This model is generally neutral in colour
– white and grey; a sheet of Plexiglass is fitted on top
onto which the viewer can position the section most meaningful for describing the comfort features of the box being studied.
27
Three Areas of Investigation
Our inquiry into the comfort conditions pertaining with-in a 1 × 1 km extract of the urban environment has been steered, to a large degree, by the practical and technical modalities of looking at it. In other words, how do we
ob-serve a terrain that is a priori unfamiliar, with a view to
rendering it in a predefined shape? In contrast, a themat -ic view of the comfort features associated with walking has been intentionally left open to ensure the process does not channel subjective and corporeal aspects of the encounter with a place and the imaginative realms con-jured by it. Despite this, our explorations have not led to a jumble of irreducible viewpoints. The maps of Geneva and videos of Zurich can be grouped according to three areas of investigation (with three corresponding catego-ries of “visual” knowledge as well as corresponding areas of design). We identify them as Dwelling, Formation, and
Atmosphere. Dwelling refers directly to a survey of the
relationship between space and body size, and the ways
in which inhabitants use space. Formation addresses
both the form and the movement, giving rise to the form as part of the generative processes of the city. The
notion of Atmosphere qualifies urban space synestheti
-cally according to ambient conditions; in this case,
com-fort is defined according to an “immersive” practice in
which urban landscape is regarded experimentally as an envelope.
Dwelling
According to De Certeau, the search for comfort by a city’s inhabitants might be described as a tactic (De Cer-teau 1974) that rewrites space and recombines materials, customary rules, and codes – as the capacity of a subject to utilize the folds and furrows of spatial and social or-ders, reconstruing them to personal advantage. It is tak-ing possession of a topographic system, appropriattak-ing
and defending the “given.” In this “comment from below” on the features of an urban landscape, inhabitants fo-cus only on some of the conditions present in the urban
field, leaving others in a state of inertia. Investigation and representation operate in a similar way, like a filter
or grid, sifting the urban landscape, selecting elements and situations that underpin states of well-being. Within
a given field, viewed as a composition of parts, only some
of these elements and situations prove relevant; it is a matter of evincing the selection made by the subject to fathom a setting or customary sequence and to act within it. As it will be shown, in some cases we have had
to find adequate techniques for making explicit the im -aginary constructs activated in relation to particular ob-jects or places. In the work assembled here, our analysis has led us to a thematic treatment of comfort conditions, expressed in terms of friction, thresholds, and estrange-ment.
28
15'
18' 14'
19'
1'
5'
11'
11'
20'
7'
7'
2'
1'
4'
2'
19'
LINEAIRE
RECTILIGNE
IMPERSONNEL
LIMITE
HUMAIN
SORDIDE
LARGE
VERT
ETR
OIT
GRIS
DROIT
SOIGNE
FAMILIAL DECORE
29
VEGETATION REPERES VISUELS
30
cimetière buissons
parking ikea
silo
Les moulins residences
parc
car wash
arrêts de bus
arrêt de bus
parc
31
150 m 300 m 660 m
horizons
nature
confort bruit avion
4,10 m fleuve 59 m
5,20 m Les moulins
Threshold [V01]
1,90 m 9,03 m 2,40 m
2,90 m 1,20 m
2,80 m
Arrêt de bus
3.5 m
7 m 46 m 17 m
32
«Le but de l’art est de communiquer la sensation des choses telle qu’elles sont perçues et non pas telle qu’elles sont connues. Le procédé de l’art consiste à rendre des objets étranges, de
fabriquer des formes difficiles, pour augmenter la difficulté et la durée de la perception, car la perception est une fin esthétique en elle même et doit être prolongée.»
Viktor Shklovsky, L’Art comme technique. Théorie de la Prose. 1925
33
HORIZONS ÉTRANGERS HORIZONS PLASTIQUES
34
a “slow” space is controlled and safe, unlike a space that one would traverse “quickly” – the case for nearby indus-trial areas.
THRESHOLD [V01]. Our research on comfort within the urbanized fringe of Vernier, delimited by the Rhône to
the south, has identified a constellation of discrete plac -es, spread over an especially eventful topography. Each
of the places identified is a threshold, a portal between
mobile and static situations, seemingly protected and introverted on one side, and open to a dynamic setting or distant landscape on the other. Car parks, carwash stations, bus stops, parks, and cemeteries contain these threshold points, placed at different altitudes and dis-tributed across the map in heterogeneous fashion. These are precise locations in a topography best rendered using the language of a geological survey: in our three-dimensional model, the cross-section containing these thresholds implies a stratigraphic reading of the urban landscape. In terms of sensing the landscape, this
strati-fied topography is contained by the water level below and the soundscape of the air traffic corridor above; the
northward view is blocked by the crest, while the south-ern horizon is blocked by the Lignon housing precinct and Mount Salève.
ESTRANGEMENT [V02]. The quality of any habitat also has an imaginary dimension whose intensity can distort our sense of the surroundings. The idea of estrangement has been used to render the properties of Vernier as a landscape suggestive of distant horizons, analogous landscapes. Certain presences around the edges of the 1 × 1 km sector stimulate an abstract, mental
relation-ship with the place, characterized by reflection rather
than sensation. The colour of the Rhône, for instance, is
linked back to the confluence of the waters of Lake Ge -neva and those of the Arve river, originating around Mont
Blanc, a presence on the far horizon. Added to the sensa-tion of being at the point where the waters of the pre-sent merge with the ancient dynamics of geology, there is the feeling of being in a paradoxical space, closed in
and protected by the confines of the traditional village of Vernier, yet traversed by the air traffic corridors out
of Geneva Airport, representing a node and departure point to the planet’s farthest corners. Finally, the gasom-eters, highway infrastructure, and the residential giant
of the Lignon estate bring to mind a specific repertory
of images and situations with no direct relationship to the context – US-style freeways, iconic modernism in
the image of the Unité d’habitation in Marseille, with
all the imagined social and visual narratives that these engender.
Read in this way, comfort loses its traditional inflec
-tion as a “condi-tion” in which we find ourselves, and
assumes instead an active character, as a “relation” pro-duced and repropro-duced over and again through the direct involvement of a subject.
Formation
When thinking of urban comfort in terms of formation, we accentuate its spatial character, its dependency on a particular “infrastructure” or spatial palimpsest (Corboz 1983, 14-35). Attention to form is one of the features of a particular period in architectural research – the period from the mid-1950’s to the early 1970’s. Scholars in this period adopted a critical standpoint in relation to mod-ernist urban design, seen as too remote from contextual values, and the elements and formal arrangements of
permanence that characterize that context.5 We have
to go still further; for our students this field of inquiry
has often meant ranging over several scales of
observa-tion, and defining systems of calculation or inventories
35
vue végétation espace libre silence
ELOIGNEMENT PAR OUVERTURE SUR LE QUARTIER
coupure route confort ouverture coupure
route frontière
batiment
ELOIGNEMENT PAR CHANGEMENT D’HORIZON
végétationvueespace libre silence
coupure route
tampon trottoir
confort espace ouvert sur le paysage
36 Archipelago [V03] ATRIMOINE SURPREN
37 work presented in our chapter on formation, we have
pri-marily used mapping and measurements, but not to the exclusion of the psychological and imaginary dimension. We have conceptualized urban comfort as a phenom-enon linked to measurements and morphologies that we
denote using the notions of cut, distancing, archipelago,
and visual porosity.
CUT [LB02]. Transport infrastructure transects the Libel-lules quarter and produces fragmentary, discontinuous urban space. Such a cut is normally seen as negative but here, in some situations, it can yield a sheltered space where we can explore conditions of well-being connected with a state of isolation. The sheltered spaces are a prod-uct of the association of several urban materials: blade-infrastructure, a buffer space between the infrastructure and the residential zone, a built frontage stabilizing the frontier that separates the residential from the sheltered
space, and, finally, the sheltered environment itself. Dif -ferent combinations of these materials can be described as resulting from a “process of lateral isolation” of shel-tered space in relation to infrastructure; a “central isola-tion,” where the sheltered area is surrounded by residen-tial buildings; “detachment,” when the isolated space offers “visual apertures” to neighbouring quarters; and “horizon change,” where an outlook is revealed towards a distant horizon. An assortment of structures come together to set out a spatial grammar comprising both large residential buildings and a smaller, more mixed ur-ban fabric.
ARCHIPELAGO [V03]. Even in Vernier it is possible to de-scribe comfort as a discontinuous condition, exploring it in terms of the notion of an archipelago – a group of islands with different characteristics. The ribbon of ur-ban fabric running along the hill crest, with a vale on either side, includes more dense areas with a special,
pic-turesque, somewhat intimate or semi-medieval atmos-phere – semi-public spaces, access conditioned by form, symbolically connoted by the presence of materials, sur-faces, and signs that inspire us to imagine them in such terms. In opposition, one can equally pick out places of more extrovert character, framing views and distant
ho-rizons, and signified by the presence of elements such
as especially imposing trees. The second group tallies with breaks in the built fabric, where one can explore conditions of tranquillity and release. Together, the two different types of “island” describe a comfortable urban sector, in that they offer opposing yet complimentary situations. The image of the archipelago accentuates the micro-reticular nature of comfort: something dispersed yet connected.
DISTANCING [V04]. From the fields and farmland inter
-posed between single-family dwellings, spaces that
rep-resent a terrestrial equivalent to the air traffic corridors
38
6
12
155
7 202
20
200
229
27
C h a m p
E s p a c e m e n t Les maisons sont confondues avec ce grand paysage agraire. Leurs revendications individua-listes sont estompée par la distance et la courbe topogra-phique du champ.
E c a r t e m e n t Cette distance est sécurisante Psychologiquement, le danger perçu ailleurs, est éloignée.
R é s e r v e
Le champ est un objet poten-tiellement exploitable à l’échelle collective ou individuelle; Je peu l’emprunter en lieu et place du chemin pour effectuer un trajet.
C o n t r a s t e Le paysage primordial agricole est partagé par l’environnement sonore produit par la proximité de l’aéroport
Distancing
bien aux usagers sportif.
Contraste
1852_mise_PPUR.indd 39
40
relations visuelles et influences du paysage environnant
41 limité...
„Une maison est une machine à habiter.“ Le Corbusier
... et illimité
„L’architecture est le jeu, savant, correct et magnifique des volumes sous la lumière.“ Le Corbusier
42
verges. Fields, slope, and verges are experienced as
shar-ing a sshar-ingle soundscape: the flowshar-ing of the river, the rus -tling of the trees, birdsong, the rumble from the freeway. Distancing here appears measured so as to hold off dan-gers that seem remote. The presence and dimensions of
the fields, slope, and verges create a frame within which distant, and potentially conflicting urban realities, like
the picturesque Vernier village and the modernist megas-tructure of the Lignon, are situated.
VISUAL POROSITY [MC01]. The Meyrin residential quar-ter, located halfway between the airport and CERN, is an example of modernist town planning, its open space invested with a pastoral, prairie-like feel, a picturesque place that hosts a series of variations on the multi-sto-rey, linear “range” form. Allied to an orderly hierarchy of structures dedicated – in keeping with the modernist blueprint – to mobility (motorized or pedestrian, relating to public facilities or residential clusters, etc.), there is the prospect of unobstructed vistas in all directions. Here we have explored and tested the spatial dimen-sions of comfort in terms of visual porosity: a gaze that percolates the urban surroundings owing to the mor-phology and architectural character of the built environ-ment. At ground level, buildings stand on pilotis or con-crete walls that permit outward glimpses through and beyond the quarter in all directions, acting as semi-trans-parent membranes. At higher levels, at least in the build-ings that adhere to the pure rationalism and stereometry of the modernist idiom, the conditions are reversed.
Re-flective, large-sized windows transform the business of
looking into a game of cross-reference, a “gazing into the mirror,” where, looking across to the building opposite, one sees only a replica of one’s own position. If the mod-ernist project was concerned with imagining space as a place in which to contemplate oneself, others, and the landscape (di Campli 2010, 52-53), the Meyrin residential
quarter can be seen as an immense machine à regarder,
where the qualities of the habitat correspond closely to the act of looking, of relating oneself both to the nearby rural landscape and distant horizons.
Atmosphere
The notion of atmosphere defines comfort as an “im -mersive practice” in which urban landscape is explored as an “envelope” endowed with intrinsic environmental and climatic features. Experience of the atmosphere of a place is in a sense beyond measurement, a thing that cannot be rendered using traditional representations contrasting physical space with lived space. As Gernot Böhne has said (Böhme 2010 [2001], 92) atmospheres are
intermediate phenomena, “interstitial” between subject and object, situated between the psychic interior and the environmental exterior spheres. They are tied to given en-vironmental qualities and are relatively independent of the inner life of a subject. Atmosphere is a spatialized, su-pra-personal (Griffero 2010) sensation that resists attach-ment to solid, circumscribed or discrete eleattach-ments, but has a connection with situations that possess a mean-ing of their own. To render this contextual relationship or perceptual, situational attachment requires us to pay attention to the forms of mutation and variation in at-mospheric performance. We primarily use combinations of diagrams, axonometric views, images of spatial use, and close-up details. In the Geneva studies, investigation has allowed us to accentuate microclimate, domesticity
43 MICROCLIMATE [MC02]. Observed from a zenithal
view-point, the Meyrin estate appears as an isotropic urban space with assorted pairs of linear ranges disposed con-centrically around a civic core. As a whole, the spatial features of the place appear somewhat uniform. Read from below, though, one sees how different orientations and compositions of ranges divest this space of its ho-mogeneity, tracing instead an alveolar spatial structure
with a combination of microclimates. These are defined
by the varying atmospheric performance of materials in the open spaces (grass, asphalt, concrete, stone) and the orientation and composition of the residential bars with the varying levels of protection they afford from wind and sun. Investigations have revealed essentially four of these microclimates: the open court/plaza, shel-tered from the wind, primarily in use in summer; the sun-lit semi-court mainly occupied in winter; the semi-court
with part grass and part asphalt floor treatment, occupa -tion differing according to season; and, lastly, the closed, perfectly air-conditioned shopping center, which, on an urban level, separates both climatically and in landscape terms the open space to the west – with its car parks and access features – from the garden treatment to the east. One of the cornerstones of urban comfort in Meyrin is the ability to frequent environments and microclimates in which various forms of exposure, both to atmospheric agents and public life, can be experienced.
PROTECTION [LG01]. The Lignon satellite precinct, built
at the same time as the Cité de Meyrin, was designed to
make a major impact in both urban and landscape terms.
The main bar is twelve floors high, clad in a panel system
that outlines a stereometric arrangement of volumes ar-ticulated by walkways at three storey intervals. The spatial layout is reminiscent of a broken line track-ing the course of the river, emphasiztrack-ing the topography
of the plateau sloping towards the banks and defining
a half-enclosed semi-court, stopped by a pair of towers, one of twenty-six and the other thirty storeys. The main building embraces a sophisticated array of communal services and open spaces. The introverted aspect of this
space, primarily defined by the morphology of the site,
constitutes a controlled atmosphere – a tranquil, safe
environment enjoyed chiefly by the residents. It provides the benefit of specific conditions of shelter and protec -tion. From within this space, the façade is read as an
immense screen delimiting the space and reflecting the
outlying landscape. We have linked the conditions of pro-tection afforded by the space and its enveloping
megas-tructure to the notions of domesticity and filtering.
DOMESTICITY [LG02]. Domesticity is an invention of the bourgeoisie, something traditionally associated with family values and family spaces, their intimacy, and their symbols of hearth and heritage (Reed 1996, 7). But through observation of the morphologies and usages of the furnished central space at Le Lignon, framed by its residential megastructure, we have been able to pinpoint comfort features more properly belonging to a domestic space. Residents tend to occupy the services and open spaces in the center by exporting behaviours more com-monly found in the home, such as studying or resting, perhaps in corresponding attire. The state of privacy is here transformed into a state of intimacy (Sennett 1977, 187); looking becomes more introverted. The ground and the volumes housing the shopping center, school, church, sports club, leisure center, car park, and garden, are
mod-elled using a technique reminiscent of Loos’ Raumplan
(Colomina 1996, 233-281), the result resembling an inte-rior composed of different degrees of intimacy. Here one can experience different situations and atmospheric
densities, defined by surface materials (mainly asphalt and grass), different kinds of artificial lighting, and the
44
N
45
Microclimate [MC02]
«ICI, NOUS SOMMES À L’ABRI DU VENT ; LÀ-BAS, ÇA SOUFFLE, C’EST AGRÉABLE EN ÉTÉ.»
ouverture et vent
séjours chambres
«EN HIVER COMME EN ÉTÉ, LE MOUVEMENT DU SOLEIL DÉFINIT NOS ACTIVITÉS EXTÉRIEURES.»
été printemps automne hiver
séjours chambres
protection et soleil
47
48
ways at different times of day, in the same way that one uses the interior spaces of a dwelling. In the morning, outdoor areas close to the range and the two towers at the end are used; at midday, spaces further way, closer to the river bank are occupied; in the evening, it is again the surfaces adjoining the building and grassed areas. Space
usage varies, in other words, according to fixed material
factors (components and materials found in the central services) and variable climatic factors. At this scale, do-mesticity is not a homogeneous feature but a discrete, intermittent condition, expressing itself in response to multiple use patterns and times of day.
Domestic comfort, traditionally associated with the dwelling as a place of protection, is found all around the exterior public spaces of the Lignon estate. Moreover, comfort here turns on a “swing” between the large open area, protected by the wall of the open court, and the
in-terior of the dwelling itself, with residents able to benefit
from both. This swing movement plots a vertical axis, via the stairway-elevator block, to the horizontal space of the semi-court, describing a domain of secondary com-fort where experience of – and choices made about – the two dimensions of protection and shelter are both in op-position and in mutual equilibrium. In this exchange, the portico on which the building stands is the main player.
A transparent space, defined only by the blades of the su -perstructure and the volumes of stairwells, this portico is an interface separating one domain and one scale of comfort from another.
FILTERING [LG03]. Defined by the layout of the Lignon
site in terms of morphology, with its enclosure of space
and introspective gaze, the portico is a filter signposting
a controlled microclimate: It mitigates the force of the wind (like a comb, owing to the alternating solids and
voids accentuated by elevator shafts); it filters human traffic (pedestrians retained in the filter, where they are
sheltered from atmospheric agents as well as observers in the apartments above); and it reduces both the volume and speed of approaching vehicles. The Lignon portico serves as a membrane separating an external urban en-vironment from the protected inner space of the Lignon court, and, at the same time, as a thickening device serv-ing a cluster of other nearby landscapes. The place exerts attraction on people, as one of the main nodes of en-counter and functional exchange, where internal space connects to the wider city.
FILTERS [LB03]. The filter concept has also been used to
designate conditions set up by vegetation amid the frag-mentary tissue of the Libellules quarter: lines of trees placed within this urban tissue, hedges and screens of greenery alongside transport infrastructure, and river-side vegetation. These various materials establish
differ-ent relationships with buildings and also create filter ele -ments, mitigating sound and solar radiation. The screen
filter limits the extent of inhabitants’ exposure; its ef
-fectiveness depends chiefly on a concurrence between
vegetal matter and the materials of buildings, such as various types of cladding (some of which are opaque and
absorb light, others reflective). Using the terms bubble,
cloud, gallery, and trench, we have sketched out a typolo-gy with which to designate (respectively) opaque vegetal
filters, transparent vegetation, translucent vegetation, and opaque built materials. The filters are linear in char -acter and, morphologically speaking, not far removed
49
Utilisation des espaces dans le temps. Dans une maison on n’utilise pas tout le temps tout les chambres. On est dans la chambre à coucher pour dormir pen-dant la nuit, dans la cuisine penpen-dant des heures de manger, .... A Lignon on peut trouver la même changement d’utilisation des endroits
dans le temps. « at home » Laura Rijsbosch; Marta Lopez de Asiain
Temps Eclairage des Nuits / Ombres des Jours
Lumière_nuit
Après le coucher du soleil, la lumière artificielle donne la qualité de domesticité aux lieux.
Ombres_jour
Les espaces domestiques sont caractérisés par les changements d’ombres pendant la journée.
« at home » Laura Rijsbosch; Marta Lopez de Asiain
« at home » Laura Rijsbosch; Marta Lopez de Asiain
Raumplan L’habitat compact est contenu dans un volume cubique simple.
De l’extérieur, c’est le côté centripète qui domine. (A.Loos)
Les différents matériaux qu’on trouve dans le quartier nous donnent une gradation de domesticité. Selon le matériaux on peut sentir que l’espace es plus ou moins domestique
Matériaux
« at home »
51
Filtering [LG03]
53
54
1 America in the early 1960’s is the contextual reference for Kevin
Lynch’s representations. The aim is to identify elements and condi-tions in order to design urban settings capable of anchoring the lives of citizens to an urban space. Gordon Cullen aimed to define a new urban art form capable of restoring density, meaning, and significance to traditional urban settings at a time (1950’s) when the widespread American model for residential development was beginning to impose itself on British towns.
2 Also representational forms normally used by the mining industry,
for example, aimed at verifying and gauging how much material lies just beneath the surface of the earth to be removed.
3 Representations have brought into focus five distinct types of
measurement. Measures of land represent, in a synthetic fashion, the way in which America has been observed and regulated start-ing with the National Land Survey established by Congress in 1785. Measures of control record some of the more noteworthy aspects of technological capacity in the control and transformation of nat-ural forces. Measures of rule demonstrate the need for demarca-tion, timetabling, procedure, and method governing the way activ-ity on the ground is organized. Measures of fit show how adaptive actions can literally embody ecological and ethical choices (insofar as these are seen as “good,” “right,” or “appropriate”). Measures of
faith look at the series of signs traced to sustain and promote hu-man spirituality expressing a relationship between the symbolic and the formal in territorial settlements.
4 Consistent use of United States Geological Survey (U.S.G.S.) maps
has allowed comparisons to be built up between environments that always contain precise coordinates and cartographic data.
5 The main examples in Italy are the “operante storia urbana” by
Saverio Muratori, Aldo Rossi’s scientific approach, Carlo Aymonino’s interest in urban phenomena, and Vittorio Gregotti’s architecture of the countryside. Alongside these, we can consider the ideas of permanence in Pierre Lavedan, and themes of duration and evolution in the work of Marcel Poëte.
55
List of Student Work
FRICTION [LB01]
Fanny Christinaz and Christophe Mattar, Fall 2009.
CUT [LB02]
Albert Kreisel, Laurent Chassot, and Benedikt Hengartner, Fall 2010.
FILTERS [LB03]
Elena Núñez Segura, Ana Bistuer Vilaseca, and Elisabet Guasch Casadevall, Fall 2010.
56
Lignon
PROTECTION [LG01]
Romain Girard
and Aurélie Nyota Monet-Kasisi, Fall 2010.
DOMESTICITY [LG02]
Laura Rijbosch and Marta Lopez de Asiain, Spring 2010.
FILTERING [LG03]
Alexander Hertel, Loïc Jacot-Guillarmod and Lila Held,
Fall 2010.
VISUAL POROSITY [MC01]
Lea Stocker and Dominique Brunner, Spring 2010.
MICROCLIMATE [MC02]
Angelo Comina, Rossana Lucchini and Elodie Roy,
Fall 2010.
57
THRESHOLD [V01]
Julie Hennemann, Julien Emery and Isabel Stella Alvarez, Fall 2010.
ESTRANGEMENT [V02]
Camille Delaunay, Axel Ferret and Paola Repellino, Fall 2010.
ARCHIPELAGO [V03]
Delphine Quach and Marwen Feriani, Spring 2010.
DISTANCING [V04]. Olivier Ilegems and Leila Yasmina Hassen, Fall 2009.
