aalto highrise shuffle

THE ‘HIGH-RISE SHUFFLE’ ALVAR AALTO MEETING TO BE HELD IN JYVÄSKYLÄ ON
SATURDAY 27 AND SUNDAY 28 AUGUST 2011
The International Alvar Aalto Meeting on Modern Architecture being held at the weekend this week will focus on the world of
high-rises: the history of and design solutions for skyscrapers, as well as many different takes on the environmental and social
potential of dense building developments and their effects on their surroundings. Before the meeting, an international
architecture workshop will explore the potential of high-rises to be built in Otaniemi, a district of Espoo.
Antti Ahlava, the chairman of the meeting and the newly appointed head of the Aalto University Department of Architecture,
had this to say about the theme of the meeting:
“It was just announced that Jeddah in Saudi Arabia will get the highest skyscraper in the world, reaching 1 km.
Simultaneously, the city of Espoo is developing its new Finnoo Centre with groups of high-rises. The problems of tall
buildings and the need to create more humanistic versions are more acute than ever.
Our High-Rise Shuffle seminar in Jyväskylä approaches – next weekend! We are anxiously waiting for the great keynote
speeches by some of the leading developers of experimental architecture in the world. Jeanne Gang, the principal of
Studio Gang, is the designer of the groundbreaking Aqua Tower in Chicago. Ulla Hell is a partner in Plasma Studio, the
office responsible for the astonishing International Horticultural Fair in Xian, China. Steffen Lehmann is the idiosyncratic
emphasiser of ethical architecture from Australia. Panu Lehtovuori is one of the leading Finnish urban thinkers. Anne
Stenros is the design director of Kone Corporation, and Zhiqiang Wu is the chief planner of the 2010 Shanghai World
Expo. All of these remarkable guests have been able to combine experimental thinking with groundbreaking architectural
creation.
In addition to the keynote speeches, we will also have state-of-the-art presentations on specific topics related to high-rise
building, infill building, and research and development in architecture. This seminar shows that it is possible to break the
boundary between theory and practice in architecture and that there can be new architecture only with new thinking
behind it.
The seminar will also present an exhibition of new designs in the collaboration between Aalto University and the City of
Espoo, accomplished according to the principles of "Soft Tower" design.”

So we went, Mariola and I, and presented in a Pecha Kucha session a paper tittled:

the void in the city : the graft, the tower, and the (not exactly) new public space

This is a short abstract:

Two ends, at least, meet in one: a kind of aporetical situation. Maybe, in any case, we could conceptualize it through one word, or better saying, by one operation: that of the graft.

Understanding cities as towers, both allows to and demands for a new approach to public space; points to the necessary redefinition of the old pair public/private in those times of globalization—precisely the times when private is overcoming the public. The question is not the “technical” accomplishments of new towers—especially in terms of efficiency, both of space consumption and energy waste—problem solvers of a ecoFriendly and ecoLogical self responsible future (which nevertheless is a main point), but the necessary rethinking of the whole concept of the city in terms of its public/private constitution—included the wired and wireless nets of the virtual “communities” and facebook worshipers.

How could towers in-corporate public space since they are always private (corporate)? That’s the main question if we are going to live them as cities. Because the city, the polis, is defined from its origin in ancient Greece as a political space—and that’s public. Architecture build a void in the city, inoculated what is absolutely different, incommensurable with itself in the form of a negative space, that is neither empty nor static: agora.

Grafting could pave a new approach: grafting and its double logic, between inscription and prescription. What kind of grafting must be exercised upon a tower to develop in its core something akin to an (im)possible agora that will renovate/innovate the political space? A new—but so old—fruit?

The final paper is published in a book, available from Aalto Academ: HighRise Shuffle 2011

María de la O del Santo Mora / José Vela Castillo

CAH 20thC

Next 14-16 june in Madrid the Cah 20thC International Conference will be held. The general theme being Intervention Approaches for the 200th Century Architectural heritage.

The following contribution by myself has been selected by the scientific comittee:

ISC20C

ICOMOS

CAH 20thC

Criterios de Intervención en el Patrimonio Arquitectónico del Siglo 20

CFP

T1: La identidad del patrimonio arquitectónico del Siglo 20

Arruinar la modernidad o ¿Cuando un edificio moderno se convierte en patrimonio?

La ruine ne survient pas comme un accident à un monument hier intact. Au commencement il y a la ruine

J Derrida

Dos cuestiones se entrelazan, se doblan y se injertan una en otra en un círculo de reapropiaciones arquitectónicas continuas. Dos cuestiones o solo una: la cuestión del origen y de la institución, de la autoridad y de su declinar. La cuestión del padre. La cuestión de la herencia.

Si la ruina se halla al comienzo, al inicio (también) de la arquitectura, si la ruina opera no como un accidente sobrevenido, fruto de la usura o el descuido, sino como ruina inserta en el origen, como tara o falla absoluta e irremediable, si la institución de un origen se ve así desestabilizada, si la autoridad de un padre que lega una herencia, un patrimonio, queda conmovida en sus cimientos (metáfora necesariamente arquitectónica)…

…es desde luego necesario un esfuerzo, particularmente sutil, de bisturí exquisitamente afilado para deslindar la paja del grano, para establecer una pauta de catalogación y conservación. Y no podemos fiarlo a un criterio histórico basado en un estado inicial puro y perfecto y en un valor patrimonial derivado de una institución de poder (un arquitecto, un programa, un material, un uso) que, como hemos apuntado, queda deconstruido desde su propio origen. Puesto que además, la modernidad es aún nuestra contemporánea: no otra cosa es la posmodernidad que la conciencia de la contemporaneidad de lo moderno con lo presente.

La constitución de un archivo, el archivo de la modernidad (arquitectónica) queda así afectado de una específica imposibilidad: de una parte, imposible archivo físico de aquello que aún está en uso (es decir, de fijación de un momento “perfecto” a conservar); de otra archivo sin lugar fijo de inscripción (papel que deviene CD rom que deviene cloud computing: virtualización sin fin del soporte) para su registro asociado.

No es fácil, no, la tarea.

josé vela castillo

agora und void | unplanbar 2

Next june, TU Dresden organizes an International Conference called Agora and void. The staging of the center in architecture and urban planning. They invited us to deliver a paper at the Conference, that we have given the name:

…or how to build the void in the city

It will be a very interesting meeting, and an opportunity to meet colleagues in Dresden working under similar theoretical illusions. We are very pleased and have great expectations about the Conference.

The general issue is defined below:

Architectural visions of human society often culminate in
monumental community buildings that symbolically or concretely occupy the center. In the 20th century, these buildings often propose new concepts for content concepts and the place of traditional symbolization of transcendence, such as the cathedral or the grand palace, is often replaced by the blank, although structurally dominant place or the metaphorically exaggerated concept, detached from material substance. Particularly in realized ensembles, the staging of the center is often planned, yet not always implemented. Community buildings can also move to the edge and thus become attractions beyond the local context. The
staging of the center thus becomes an important indicator of social structure.
This conference will review and discuss concepts of forming centers in the 20th century from different regional and temporal relations with their the societal implications: of
interest is both the adoption of traditional settings in terms of aesthetics or content, as well as the development of new
concepts. In addition to the architectural visions and plans, the
development of existing centers is of interest as well as changes in their use and symbolic meanings. The range extends from the concept of the Civic Center through the possibilities of spaces of the void, to dystopian visions of centers with negative
transcendence such as the New Tower of Babel in Fritz Lang’s film Metropolis. The debates which often accompany these topics also make the public-minded aspects of urban development in the 20th century clear.

And this is the abstract of our contribution:

…or how to build the void in the city

We became accustomed to understand the city, both the physical (i.e. built) space of the city and its ‘sociological’ counterpart (i.e. the political space) as a kind of representation of the society in which it appears and in which is developed, as the image of a present (actual) state of things and as its solidification as built environment.

This paper will state that things are rather otherwise. Paradoxically, maybe is the material configuration of the city the one that allows its social and political configuration appear. First we have the spaces, then community gathers.

To illustrate this point, we will focus on the birth of classical Greek polis. Of course we know that the classical city is highly distinguishable from today's cities. Nevertheless, some issues remain unthought and deserve our attention.

Our first aim is to explain how the classical polis was formed not as a result from a specific social context and social organization, but as the result of the physical, architectonical construction of a certain type of space, a ‘multipurpose’ space that the community could feel as their own precisely because is empty, useless, free. That of the agora: the void in the city.

Our second (and main) aim is now revealed: how architecture today could think and build the new emptied spaces that could allow, in our superurbanized and hyperconnected world, for a new polis? Which kind of ‘void’ inside the limitless cities of today must be constructed? Could it be enough? Could we say that the ‘limits’ we search for should be traced from within? What can architecture (and urbanism) propose? In the world of ‘liquid space’, is still possible to retrace the empty space (empty because should be filled) of poli^(s)tical community? What about oïkonomia?

maría de la o del santo mora
josé vela castillo

metaphora cagliari

Next week I'll present a paper on metaphor and architecture at the International Conference Metaphor and Communication, that will be held at Cagliari University. This is the abstract.

Donner lieu : Architecture as metaphor

Metaphor always takes advantage of lateral ways, circuitous roads, labyrinthine paths. So does architecture. Metaphor suggests ideas without making them present, reigns in the realm of insinuation and uncertainty, always operates a transfer between what is present and what not, elusively retreats itself and discloses its “meaning” and reason in never-ending meanders and translations… So does architecture, although it will seem the opposite. Architecture is metaphorically oriented, looks for the sun at its naissance, makes understandable through a movement of transference what otherwise will remain undisclosed… and in doing so erases its own tracks, trapped itself in the double genitive of proper meaning, of its own meaning.

Of course, in any metaphysics of presence the figure of metaphor is looked at with suspicion, the real thing is what is present, what could be recognized, in its image, as being truly in front of us, apprehended as such through reason, no malignant genius confusing my clear and distinct ideas... but at the same time only in metaphysics metaphor could find its pace (as Heidegger pointed out). Nevertheless, things are not that clear. Every philosophical concept (and Begriff maybe is the best example) has its etymological roots in sensible world, but at some extent this direct relation has been forgotten. And this very oblivion is what deconstructs even the possibility of a meta-metaphorical meaning.

True, architecture is metaphor. And if it sounds a little bit provocative, this is just the idea. Take labyrinths, for example. If metaphor is labyrinthine, certainly architecture is labyrinthine from its very beginning—the mythical Daedalus being the first architect, the one that designed the Minotaur labyrinth, and at the same time, the one that designed the monstrous artifact that allowed queen Pasifae real (not “metaphorical”) coupling with her beloved bull. Architecture suspended always between being real and being metaphorical, having a right meaning and a figured one at the same time. In fact, architecture (as metaphor) has only one meaning. Its ever and ever flee.

Metaphor always is caught in the economy of the proper meaning as opposed to the un-proper one. Metaphor is translation, motion between the right place and the metaphorical one. In this sense, again, architecture is metaphor, or maybe architecture destroys the possibility of metaphor. Because architecture annihilates the right place, the “concept” of true place, of real and right one. Architecture (nevertheless the common interpretations and common explanations usually offered), is not about place, but about the void, the cutting, the interruption, the no-place. If architecture is to have any sense, it will appear in its cutting, in the articulation of time in space, in the destruction of the lieu in order to allow a donner lieu. Its espacement. Architecture must retire itself in order to donner lieu (“give place”, dar lugar in Spanish), just as metaphor does…

If deconstruction (the word) is metaphorical, maybe architecture is its (im)proper meaning?

This paper will explore this very possibility. Its (im)possible possibility.

José Vela Castillo