broadening our architectural practice

7
Broadening our Architectural Practice Page 1 ........ Page 3 ........ Page 5 ........ Page 7 ........ Page 19 ........ Page 10 ........ Giancarlo De Carlo: Introduction Architectures Public? Sole Author The Nature of Participation Role of the Creative? Case Study: Nathen Coley

Upload: stephen-mccullough

Post on 24-Mar-2015

1.548 views

Category:

Documents


0 download

DESCRIPTION

Thesis 2 of 4

TRANSCRIPT

Page 1: Broadening Our Architectural Practice

Broadening our Architectural Practice

Page 1 ........

Page 3 ........

Page 5 ........

Page 7 ........

Page 19 ........

Page 10 ........

Giancarlo De Carlo: Introduction

Architectures Public?

Sole Author

The Nature of Participation

Role of the Creative?

Case Study: Nathen Coley

Page 2: Broadening Our Architectural Practice

1 2

Giancarlo De Carlo

Procedures of Architectural Practice

“By distancing itself from the real context of society and its most concrete environmental needs, the elite attitude of the Modern Movement just accentuated

the superfluity of architecture.”1

Giancarlo De Carlo1 Peter Blundell-Jones, Doina Petrescu and Jeremy Till. Architecture and Participation, Spon, London. [2004] p7

The above quotation is a transcript from a Lecture given by De Carlo in Liege 1969. As De Carlo gives his lecture he is concerned with the restrictions set in place through the modern movement; due to it’s disassociation from social and cultural terms, not shared throughout the structure of power. Born in 1919, he trained as an architect between 1942 and 1949. De Carlo’s philosophy was heavily influenced by the politics of the time. As a member of Team 10 he promoted participation through consensus activity, while reacting against the individualistic attitude of social anarchism.

Calling for a ‘subversion of concepts and methods’ associated with architectural practice, De Carlo placed emphasis on a ‘user’ engaged planning process. He urged architects and urban planners to practice their disciplines alongside the user, rather than in isolation. This new approach would subvert traditional values held throughout the modern movement of urban design. De Carlo believed that this would unleash energies that had ‘not yet been explored.’1 It was his philosophy that the act of participation could bring around a real change to the way we engage with our built environments, recovering architecture’s ‘historic legitimacy, or indeed, restore its credibility.’2

1 Peter Blundell-Jones, Doina Petrescu and Jeremy Till. Architecture and Participation, Spon, London. [2004] p18

2 Peter Blundell-Jones, Doina Petrescu and Jeremy Till. Architecture and Participation, Spon, London. [2004] p14

Giancarlo de Carlo

Page 3: Broadening Our Architectural Practice

3 4

De Carlo introduced the concept of an authoritarian planning process as one that is not able to question it’s product. De Carl describes the product of such a process as ‘already pre-decided by higher authority.’2 Rather than planning imposing final proposals from the outset, he explained its function as a ‘dialectical process’ opening up a ‘sequence of hypotheses’. This explanation was referred to as Process Planning, with the role of creative participation at the centre of its operation. Broadening the preconceived boundaries of current architectural practice, Process Planning offered a new framework for dialectical activity. Just as Geddes promoted the actions of the individual within a community as he worked in Edinburgh, De Carlo promoted his interest in direct action (public participation) as a new method for City regeneration. The themes of social engagement and participation were common threads running throughout the work of both Patrick Geddes and De Carlo. Both engaged in a political struggle, working against the grain of current methods of urban practice.

2 Peter Blundell-Jones, Doina Petrescu and Jeremy Till. Architecture and Participation, Spon, London. [2004] p19

This question of ‘credibility’ challenged the ability of architecture to be socially engaged, or to have a public. De Carlo posed the question of what an architectures public is? ‘The clients who commission the buildings? The people – all the people who use architecture?’1 The modern movement, through its disassociation with the reality of society, would lead us to believe that it was perhaps the clients or indeed the architects themselves that were presumed to hold the role of an architectures public. The only rational answer to De Carlo’s question would be the people as a whole, due to the all encompassing nature of a ‘public’. It is this distancing from society and misleading definition of architecture’s ‘use’ that De Carlo opposes. He argued that architecture was only reasonable when engaged with society, ‘An architectural work has no sense if dissociated from use... it’s purpose lies in its “fullness”.’ Patrick Geddes, throughout his diverse career, constantly sought the participatory role of the citizen as the key component for civic regeneration. Reacting against conventional politics, Geddes sought co-operation at every social level. De Carlo too envisaged the creative potential of citizen participation, where institutionalized culture was subverted, allowing the discipline of architecture to deal with the macro complexities of ones belonging to place.

1 Peter Blundell-Jones, Doina Petrescu and Jeremy Till. Architecture and Participation, Spon, London. [2004] p6

Architectures Public?

The church is not a building. . . It is a people

Patrick Geddes | An Unfinished WorkA Career of EngagementP 4

Page 4: Broadening Our Architectural Practice

5 6

It is through this relationship that architectural procedures can be transformed from the preconceptions of an architectural object to that of a dialectical process of participation. De Carlo realized the new potentials of working through a framework of participation. He believed that architectural growth and flexibility would be made possible through the users interaction with the planning process from its conception. It was inevitable that the changing circumstances in our cities today require the creative reconfiguration of buildings. A reinvention is required in order to avoid these instances falling into a state of redundancy or disuse. De Carlo stated that through authoritarian planning, ‘these devices are immediately blocked,’4 due to their contradiction of a pre-established formal order. ‘Process planning’ on the other hand offered a new creative potential through collaboration and user participation, open to manipulation, free from the shackles of a preconceived authoritarian outcome. Written in 1998, Bruce Mau’s ‘Incomplete Manifesto for Growth’ was a collective set of strategies taken in approach to any project. His third statement reflected De Carlos distancing from an authoritarian process of operation, ‘when outcome drives the process we will only ever go to where we’ve already been.’ Mau placed primary importance on the process itself as a design procedure, and as with de Carlos process planning, ‘we may not know where we’re going, but we will know we want to be there.’5

4 Peter Blundell-Jones, Doina Petrescu and Jeremy Till. Architecture and Participation, Spon, London. [2004] p21

5 INCOMPLETE MANIFESTO FOR GROWTH: http://www.brucemaudesign.com/112942/

Jonathan Hill in his text ‘Actions of Architecture’ challenged the authority through which the architect operates, raising ‘use’ as a creative activity. Influenced by Roland Barthes’ text ‘The Death of the Author’, Hill suggests that the importance of the author has been over rated. Hill draws attention to the process by which the reader would engage with the text, as an important part of the creative process. Hill does not suggest the death of writing, as if it were not for the author, the text would not be there to be read, but rather the death of the author’s authoritarian nature. Barthes stated that ‘the birth of the reader must be at the cost of the death of the Author’1. This highlights the reconstruction of the text as a creative act and not a direct process. Barthes suggested both a new author and reader; both possessing creative roles in the production of a text. Hill did not suggest a direct parallel between text and building He commended the ‘writer-text-reader relations as a whole to be analogous to architect-building-user relations.’2 Iain Borden in his paper ‘The value of arts and humanities research to life in the UK’ stated that what matters much more than the identity and presence of an architect is ‘the quality of actual buildings that are produced, and how these buildings impact on all of us.’3 Through this argument, the authoritarian nature of the architect was somewhat diminished, placing utmost importance on the engagement of people with the built environment. De Carlo suggested throughout process planning, the user should be treated as a leading character. A subversion of the architect as an authoritarian ruler takes place; the architects role transformed from sole author, to collaborator.

1 Barthes, ‘The death of the Author’ p 148

2 Jonathan Hill, Actions of Architecture: Architects and creative users, London : Routledge, 2003 P72

3 Iain Borden, The value of arts and humanities research to life in the UK. ARQ . Vol 12 . no 3/4 . 2008. p216

Sole Author

Page 5: Broadening Our Architectural Practice

7 8

“I think architecture is a form of art; one that is deeply and problematically involved in pragmatism...the threat posed by other realities is what makes architecture so specific...You can either see this as a problem or as potential. I see it as a potential.”2

Nicolaus Hirsch

Today throughout our many media channels we face the prevail of user removal from our built environment, commonly failing to acknowledge the everyday use of buildings. De Carlos questioning of an architecture without a public as end user is raised once more as we see the removal of the everyday user from the built environment. As a result, architecture is further removed from its real context. It could be argued that this hesitance to acknowledge the user could result from a certain threat posed by the user. It is this threat that participation takes up by the horns, seeing it as potential for real change.

2 Nikolaus Hirsh, On Boundaries Sternberg Press Berlin and New York [2005/06] p44

All to often we see a shift of participation from a user-engaged process to a tick the box exercise. Institutions such as local authority initiatives have established ‘percent for art programmes’ which stipulate that funding is set aside to incorporate art into a building. Backing from these institutions has led to the integration of art as nothing more than an exercise of bolting on. Such initiatives restrict the creative process of collaboration and participation, placing focus on output rather than on process.

Participation opens up a new architectural process, unconventional due to its non-prescriptive itinerary. Patrick Geddes’ work between 1889 and 1904, brought people and place together. He was in pursuit of people taking responsibility for their current and future environment. This pursuit led him towards a new kind of museum movement. Throughout this process, Geddes never failing to recognize his endeavours as experiments in the social evolution of the city. The most significant expression of Geddes’s thought can be seen in his Outlook Tower, where the user acted as a participant in the museums evolution. By nature this evolutionary work could not be predetermined, evolving throughout the macro complexities of a participatory process. As a result, Geddes never new what the next move would be. De Carlo reflected this consequence from engaging in a process of participation, whereby we have to engage in walking blind as part of the process, ‘Collective participation introduced a plurality of objectives and actions whose outcomes could not be foreseen.’1

1 Peter Blundell-Jones, Doina Petrescu and Jeremy Till. Architecture and Participation, Spon, London. [2004] p15

The Nature of Participation

Walking Blind

User Threat

Page 6: Broadening Our Architectural Practice

9 10

Coley posed a challenge to the architectural profession, as his work explored the urban environment in search of interactions between architecture and society. Primarily concerned with the user, he was interested with architecture’s reflection of the users needs and aspirations, a direct challenge to sole authorship, “How does public space add meaning to the cultural identity of a cities inhabitants?”. As Coley approaches his work, he sets about engaging with people and place, using research methods such as site visit, photography, interview and archival research. Coley entered into collaboration with Neil Gillespie of Reiach and Hall Architects in 1996, through the invitation to make an artwork relating to the redevelopment of the Stills Gallery in Edinburgh. Using this opportunity, he became interested in the architectural process, commenting that the complicated concerns of architecture leaves ‘little space for ideas and making.’3 Redirecting the original commission to make a permanent work for the gallery, Coley formulated a public sculpture in the form of a book titled ‘Urban Sanctuary’. His actions were the start a process of engagement, whereby he displayed public planning notices communicating that an urban sanctuary would be built in that area. The reaction to this notice allowed the public to consider the subject of what an urban sanctuary might be, and what form it might take in the given context. Throughout this process as well as giving out copies of the book, Coley considered the users in location, not in search of an immediate outcome but a process whereby the public would begin to consider how they relate to the urban environment surrounding them.

3 Jes Fernie. Two Minds: Atrists and Architects in collaboration. Black Dog Publishing. London, 2006. p74

In approaching the nature of participation we must consider the role of the creative throughout the process. Lewis Mumford (a disciple of Patrick Geddes) through his text ‘Art and Technics’, contrasts man the artist to man the technical, envisaging renewal through personal initiative. Through his lecture ‘Art, Technics, and Cultural Integration’, Mumford promoted the development of arts and technics as ‘a means of throwing some light upon the major problems of our all too interesting age.’1 It was through this approach that we may begin to consider the role of the creative throughout a participatory process. Mumford emphasized a link between the work of the artist and the participator, where through engagement, ‘the work of art springs out of the artist’s original experience, becomes a new experience, both for him and the participator.’2 Mumford’s philosophy was not that the artists within society would operate through linear rational towards a preconceived end goal, but rather to operate through a constant dialectical cycle of engagement with society. It was through this process that Mumford saw the creative bringing something new to the table in order to engage the consciousness of the general public. A further consequence of this process would have been that man was encouraged to respond through further creative practice, and this would ignite the personal initiative that Mumford believed would bring renewal.

1 Lewis Mumford: Art and Technics London : Oxford University Press; Geoffrey Cumberlege, 1952. P136

2 Lewis Mumford: Art and Technics London : Oxford University Press; Geoffrey Cumberlege, 1952. P139-140

Role of the Creative? Case Study: Nathen Coley

‘Architecture also, however, has another role to play, this time in a more dispersed yet equally pervasive manner. This is architecture as it engages with the wider context of other

creative arts, design practices and cultural activities’1

Iain Borden

1 Iain Borden, The value of arts and humanities research to life in the UK. ARQ . Vol 12 . no 3/4 . 2008. p219

Lamp of Sacrifice. Nathen Coley. [There will be no miracles here. Edinburgh : The Fruitmarket Gallery, 2004.]

Page 7: Broadening Our Architectural Practice

11

Stephen McCullough Material 2010 | 2011 Dundee School of Architecture

www.stephenmccullough.co.uk