"there is nothing like dream to create the future. utopia today, flesh and blood tomorrow"
Victor Hugo
Utopias
Two contrasting definitions of utopia
“Utopia means nowhere or no‐place. It has often been taken to mean good place, through confusion of its first syllable with the Greek eu as in euphemism or eulogy. As a result of this mix‐up, another word dystopia has been invented, to mean bad place. But, strictly speaking, imaginary good places and imaginary bad places are all utopias, or nowheres”. (-Carey. J, The Faber Book of Utopias) Since utopia and dystopia are essentially ‘nowheres’, the qualities of both are open to completely free interpretation.
Utopia-
1. An imaginary island described in Sir Thomas More’s Utopia (1516) As enjoying perfection in law, politics, etc. 2. Any ideal place or state. 3. Any visionary system of political or social perfection.
-Webster’s Dictionary
Dystopia-
1. An imaginary place where people lead dehumanized and often fearful lives 2. anti-utopia 3.An imagined place or state in which everything is unpleasant or bad, typically a totalitarian or environmentally degraded one. The opposite of utopia.
Carey, John (1999) The Faber Book of Utopias, Faber and Faber, pp. xi
Webster’s Dictionary
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/dystopia (Accessed on 21.04.13)
http://oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/dystopia?q=dystopia (Accessed on 21.04.13)
(image)http://utopiadystopia.tumblr.com/ (Accessed on 21.04.13)
City as spectacle
Make a drawing (plan) of Canterbury exploring the city as a collage of fragments of historical memory and explore how past/present and future coexist in a space-time matrix
Consumption and the city
Iconic buildings play a major role in city branding. Demonstrate this by writing about one building which has been specifically used for this purpose.
Iconic buildings are very influential when it comes to marketing their city as a tourist attraction; as the building would raise public awareness of the country with the role as contemporary architecture in tourism.
The Empire State Building
The Empire State Building, located in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, is a 102-story skyscraper and stood as the world’s tallest building for 40 years, completed in 1931 as the world’s tallest building, until the construction of the World Trade Centre’s North Tower in 1972. It is thought of as an American cultural icon as the building’s image has appeared in hundreds of advertisements, on television and in movies. For example in the movie King Kong; King Kong’s memorable climb to the top of the building or the romantic meeting in Sleepless in Seattle. There has also been many toys, models, postcards, etc. that bare the image or the shape of the building.
Why does the Empire State Building appeal to so many?
Since the construction of the building it has attracted millions of people each year, both young and old, and is one of the main New York tourist attractions. Standing at 1,250 feet tall after construction ‘this building not only became an icon of New York City, it became a symbol of twentieth century man’s attempts to achieve the impossible’.
http://history1900s.about.com/od/1930s/a/empirestatebldg.htm (Accessed on 21.04.13)
(image) http://weheartit.com/entry/22989249 (Accessed on 21.04.13)
(image) http://www.flickr.com/photos/dennisherzog/ (Accessed on 21.04.13)
Work
Select 2 contrasting spaces of labour from the lecture and describe the various ways in which time organises space and human behaviour within it.
Labour time is the most important concept in capitalist society as it is linked directly to profit, divisions of labour and human experience of the economy, this means that people are always looking for way to increase the amount of work done but in the same amount of time.
Looking at domestic labour at home, it can be seen how over time, technologies has improved thus effecting the home space as well as human behaviour. With new technologies and gadgets around the house, for example the microwave and dishwasher, and convenient creations like PTFE usually used on pots and pans to make them non-stick, less time is spent cooking and cleaning. This effectively changes human behaviour as it frees up more time for leisure and relaxation. New technologies can also provide more home space as technology now has developed so things are wireless, as well as smaller and more compact.
Time with the development of new technologies too has made work in the office faster and more efficient, for instance faster computers, laptops and headsets leaving heads free to work, this not only making work easier but also quicker. As well as technology over time more research has been made on office working space and conditions, where they found that the workers work improved when they are content at their workplace and so work spaces changed for example workers now have their own personal spaces.
(image) http://www.ehow.com/info_8260523_tips-loading-dishwashers.html (Accessed on 21.04.13)
(image) http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2012/oct/11/fifth-of-graduates-start-work-in-london (Accessed on 21.04.13)
Play- Or The City As Public Living Room
Choose a place.
Who is it for? How has it been developed?
What is public life and space?
Carnaby Street.
Carnaby Street, located in Soho, Westminster in Central London, is known best for its numerous fashion stores of both independent unique boutiques and global brands, as well as being just a few minutes’ walk from Oxford Street- Europe’s longest shopping street, thus making it one of London’s most popular and distinctive shopping destinations. It is also known for holding shopping events, live music gigs and one-off pop-up concepts regularly, as it was like in the 1960s, a place for youth subculture. Carnaby Street, a place for fashion enthusiasts leaning slightly at young, urban middle class adults and older teenagers. It is a place where of fashion trends begin or quickly spread. It is also a place visited frequently by tourists.
Although Carnaby Street still remains a place of trend setting fashion, it developed from the 1960s where Vince Man’s Shop became the first male fashion boutique to open in the area, which was ran by Bill Green, a local photographer. Whereas now the street holds a number of male fashion stores ranging from Ben Sherman, to Diesel Male and Mark Powell.
I think ‘public life’ is person you are projecting yourself to be in public and how you wish to be seen, it is the ‘life’ you experience with other people and away from privacy; where you are aware you are seen and perhaps judged. As for public spaces, I think it is a social place where you put the public life you have. It is places where you interact with people you are not very familiar with, this means that it can be both physical and virtual as online social sites can also be defined as a public space.
http://www.visitlondon.com/things-to-do/place/46455-carnaby (Accessed on 21.04.13)
http://www.westendlondon.com/?history-and-fact=the-first-fashion-boutique-in-carnaby (Accessed on 21.04.13)
(image) http://lizeatsdirt.tumblr.com/post/24405797299/carnaby-street-1960s (Accessed on 21.04.13)
(image) http://skyliving.sky.com/latest-on-fashion/carnaby-kicks-off-lfw (Accessed on 21.04.13)
The Functional City
How did CIAM’s Athens Charter encapsulate the modernist idea of the functional city?
List 5 key aspects and illustrate.
With the Sarraz declaration, architecture was no longer an isolated state from the government but that the economic and social conditions of the government would have an effect on the buildings of the future. The signed declaration also asserted that with society becoming more industrialised, architects and those of the construction industry should justify their methods and embrace the new technologies for greater efficiency. This means that at quite an early stage of CIAM there was a desire and intention to ‘reshape’ cities and towns; to rid the ‘chaotic’ jumbles of the streets, shops and houses and instead comprising the city/town of standardised spaces with different areas for work, home and leisure.
The Athens Charter expressed the modernist idea of a functioning city by demanding that housing districts should occupy the best sites, and a minimum amount of solar exposure should be required in all dwellings. For hygienic reasons, buildings should not be built along transportation routes, and modern techniques should be used to construct high apartment building spaces widely apart, to free the soil for large green parks.
5 Key Aspects Of Athens Charter
8. The advent of the machine age has caused immense disturbances to man’s habits, place of dwelling and type of work; an uncontrolled concentration in cities, caused by mechanical transportation, has resulted in brutal and universal changes without precendent [sic] in history. Chaos has entered into the cities.
10. In the congested urban areas housing conditions are unhealthy due to insufficient space within the dwelling, absence of useable green spaces and neglected maintenance of the buildings (exploitation based on speculation). This situation is aggravated by the presence of a population with a very low standard of living, incapable of initiating ameliorations (mortality up to 20 per cent).
36. Unsanitary slums should be demolished and replaced by open space. This would ameliorate the surrounding areas.
47. Industrial sectors should be separated from residential sectors by an area of green open space.
62. Pedestrian routes and automobile routes should follow separate paths.
The CIAM:
http://www.open.edu/openlearn/history-the-arts/history/heritage/ciam-congres-internationaux-darchitecture-moderne (Accessed on 21.04.13)
http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/40113797?uid=2&uid=4&sid=21101929946073 (Accessed on 21.04.13)
Mumford, Eric (2000) The CIAM Discourse on Urbanism, 1928-1960, The MIT Press, pp. 85
http://www.getty.edu/conservation/publications_resources/research_resources/charters/charter04.html (Accessed on 21.04.13)
(image) http://www.open.edu/openlearn/history-the-arts/history/heritage/ciam-congres-internationaux-darchitecture-moderne (Accessed on 21.04.13)
The City and Modernity
Consider Charles Baudelaire’s definition of modernity in ‘The Painter of Modern Life’:
“By modernity I mean the ephemeral, the fugitive, the contingent, the half of art whose other half is the eternal and the immutable”.
Does this definition still have something to say to us about our experience of the contemporary city?
Charles Baudelaire’s definition of modernity describes modern life to be constantly changing and subjected to chance. This definition still reflects our experience of the contemporary city today as modern life is changing for example the growth and development of technology. With the culture we have today, there is a fierce competition to produce the most innovative and advanced technologies. This can be seen when you look at the corporation apple Inc., where every few months apple would bring out a new latest model of phone, ipad, and ipod. The modern culture is constantly moving at a fast pace, in not just technologies but in everything around us, fashion, music, and lifestyles. However ‘Baudelaire’s idea of modernity was not merely a question of being up to date… but is an experience that is always changing, which does not remain static and which is most clearly felt in the metropolitan centre of the city.’
The flâneur as Baudelaire describes is ‘the ‘lounger’ ‘idler’ and urban explorer who strolls the streets, observing activities of the inhabitant, he aims to be at the centre of the world, and yet to remain hidden from the world.’ He would be at the centre of the city in Paris in the nineteenth century. The arcades in Benjamin’s The Arcades Project, provides an urban space which the flâneur could consume his surroundings.
Today, the street is the flâneur’s would be his inspiration, the cafe his study. The flâneur is a native of the cityscape. He can use the city as an open book; reading the street and the activities it contained.
Baudelaire, Charles (1863) The Painter of modern Life
Fer, Briony (1993) Modernity and Modernism: French Painting in the 19th Century, Yale UP, pp.9‐10
http://www.flaneur.co.uk/frabout.html (Accessed on 20.04.13)
(image) http://www.creativetourist.com/articles/outdoors/manchester/tours-of-manchester-or-the-life-of-a-northern-quarter-flaneur/ (Accessed on 20.04.13)
Bigness- OMA
‘Bigness or the problem of the large’ The concept of Bigness is looks how architecture and urbanism comes together, the confrontation of town planning as a method of organizing the city and buildings of such a size, whose impact and autonomy makes of them cities in themselves. The problem of scale in relation in architecture and urbanism is what the threshold size when architecture becomes urbanism, if any?
“Bigness is ultimate architecture.’ Beyond a certain scale, architecture acquires the properties of Bigness. The best reason to broach Bigness is the one given by climbers of Mount Everest: “because it is there.”
Bigness is where architecture becomes both most and least architectural: most because of the enormity of the object; least through the loss of autonomy- it becomes instrument of other forces.
http://www.cityfutures2009.com/PDF/81_Marcos_Carlos_L.pdf (Accessed on 20.04.13)
http://superstudio09.wetpaint.com/page/Bigness+and+the+Problem+of+Large+%5B1993%5D (Accessed on 20.04.13)
(image)http://bldgblog.blogspot.co.uk/2007/03/agitation-power-space-interview-with.html (Accessed on 20.04.13)
Uneven Development and Conflict
Uneven development is a Marxist concept, where the condition of an economy which has not benefited equally from the development either in a spatial sense and/or within the classes of society.
Over the past decade, the relationship between conflicts and development has grown. Developmental factors can act as a trigger for violent conflict (usually civil wars). It is important to recognise that with uneven development, there would be conflict due to fierce competition over resources, the population displacement, environmental degradation and the erosion of social structures. Conflict can occur when masses of people struggle to survive in poverty whilst the people who benefited most from the development live in luxury.
The five main reasons for uneven development are:
-Social
-Historical
-Economic
-Physical
-Political
http://www.answers.com/topic/uneven-development (Accessed on 20.04.13)
http://www.slideshare.net/luoyanjie/reasons-for-uneven-development-15058139 (Accessed on 20.04.13)
MacGinty,Roger and William, Andrew (2009) Conflict and Development
(image) http://majorkarnage.net/2011/01/05/fp-photoessay/ (Accessed on 20.04.13)
x10 Big Ideas About Urbanism Questions
1. Urbanisation- Socio-Spatial Process
What is causing the increase in urbanisation?
2. Ecology Model, Or Systems Thinking
How has the ecology model further develop our understanding of human behaviours?
3. Habitat- Lessons From Ecosystems
How has Patrick Geddes’ ideas influenced urbanisation today?
4. The City Is Not A Tree
Why is a semi-lattice structure a more suitable urban model then a tree?
5. Uneven Development and Conflict
Why has uneven development endured today? - and what are the social damages caused by it?
6. Urbanisation- A Manageable Model Of Data
How is urbanisation a manageable model of data?
7. Disurbanism- OSA
What would a city be like after undergoing disurbanism? What are the ideologies of the OSA disurbanists?
8. Unitary Urbanism SI
What is unitary urbanism? What lead to the Situationist International’s dissolution?
9. Bigness- OMA
What are the aims of the Office for Metropolitan Architecture?
10. Whatever Happened To Urbanism?
Whatever happened to urbanism?
The Gruen Transfer – The City As An Economic Machine
The term Gruen derived from the architect Victor Gruen, who was most known for designing shopping malls that would most likely maximise unplanned, impulsive purchases. The Gruen transfer is based on the assumption that people would make irrational economic mistakes due to the influence around them. This idea is supported by places like London’s Oxford Street or Manhattan’s Times Square in America where there would seem to be endless busy long roads of different stores all enticing people in with bright neon lights and signs of sales.
http://smallbusinessplanned.com/marketing/gruen-transfer-what-is/ (Accessed on 20.04.13)
(image) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Times_Square (Accessed on 20.04.13)
Utopia -City as vector of the imagination
Utopia is an imagined ideal place or state. It is often pure fantasy and used as an escape from the everyday reality, whilst also highlighting the problems in society. Utopian societies would use systems of justice, control, economy, law, custom and belief to support their particular vision of the ideal world. It is designed with aspects of the real world in it, paralleling but a perfected version of the world. There is, however a danger where with an obsession of making utopia a reality, can make even the most well-intentioned to do anything to achieve their paradise even genocide, an example being Adolf Hitler’s utopia of an Aryan society.
http://www.bl.uk/learning/histcitizen/21cc/utopia/utopia.html (Accessed on 20.04.13)
(images) http://www.usaprepares.com/guns/hitler-we-voted-him-in-america-be-warned (Accessed on 20.04.13)
