1 Approximate Translation: Media, Narrative, and Experience in Urban Design by Jonathan Crisman Bachelor of Arts in Architectural Studies School of the Arts and Architecture, UCLA, 2009 Bachelor of Arts in Geography with College Honors College of Letters and Science, UCLA, 2009 Submitted to the Department of Architecture and the Department of Urban Studies and Planning in partial fulfi llment of the requirements for the degrees of Master of Architecture and Master in City Planning at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology February 2013 © 2013 Jonathan Crisman. All rights reserved. The author hereby grants to MIT permission to reproduce and to distribute publicly paper and electronic copies of this thesis document in whole or in part in any medium now known or hereafter created. Signature of author _____________________________________________________ Department of Architecture Department of Urban Studies and Planning January 10, 2013 Certifi ed by ____________________________________________________________ Mark Jarzombek Professor of the History and Theory of Architecture Associate Dean, School of Architecture and Planning Thesis Supervisor Certifi ed by ____________________________________________________________ Dennis Frenchman Norman B. and Muriel Leventhal Professor of Urban Design Thesis Supervisor Accepted by ___________________________________________________________ Takehiko Nagakura Associate Professor of Design and Computation Chair of the Department Committee on Graduate Students Accepted by ___________________________________________________________ Alan Berger Associate Professor of Urban Design and Landscape Architecture Chair, MCP Committee 2 Thesis Committee Mark Jarzombek Professor of the History and Theory of Architecture Associate Dean, School of Architecture and Planning Dennis Frenchman Norman B. and Muriel Leventhal Professor of Urban Design Gediminas Urbonas Associate Professor of Art, Culture and Technology Alexander D’Hooghe Ford International Career Development Associate Professor of Architecture and Urbanism 3 Approximate Translation: Media, Narrative, and Experience in Urban Design by Jonathan Crisman Submitted to the Department of Architecture and the Department of Urban Studies and Planning on January 17, 2013 in partial fulfi llment of the require- ments for the degrees of Master of Architecture and Master in City Planning Abstract Approximate translation is developed as a design process through which the place-embedded history of an urban environment can be understood, allowing for better design and intervention in that urban environment. Generally, ap- proximate translation champions media, narrative, and experience as design elements that have traditionally been excluded from disciplinary discourse and are necessary for any design in contemporary practice. The processes of displacement, replacement, and surrealization are proposed as three such translations and are demonstrated in the transformation of the Boston neigh- borhood of Allston into Allstonland (a theme park in Hong Kong), New Allston (a revised Allston with six interventions organized around Platonic Forms), and a live model of New Allston. The live model is developed as a new form of ar- chitectural and urban design representation that can incorporate the temporal, mediatic, and experiential elements which are ill-conveyed through convention- al means. Ultimately, approximate translation is intended to transform urban environments into their ideal forms, to inject new meaning into empty urban signifi ers, to alter local subjectivities, and to generate a new sense of civitas. Theories of media, theming and scripted space, Pop and Surrealist art, Marx- ism and neoliberal capital, postmodernism, aesthetics, semiotics, modernist architecture, epistemology, and hermeneutics are drawn upon in order to con- struct a framework for this that is both robust enough for use in practice and pedagogy, as well as mutable enough for further refi nement and expansion. Thesis Supervisors Mark Jarzombek Professor of the History and Theory of Architecture Associate Dean, School of Architecture and Planning Dennis Frenchman Norman B. and Muriel Leventhal Professor of Urban Design 4 Acknowledgements To my family, Stuart, Hae Ja, and Mark, for their unconditional love and sup- port. To Mark, Dennis, Gediminas, and Alexander for being an unimaginably won- derful committee—no other group of four people could possibly have had such collective wisdom and intelligence across a diverse set of fi elds, yet still all manage to have the eccentricity necessary to get so excited about my idio- syncratic project. And thesis aside, you have each been incredibly infl uential in my thinking, successes, and learning throughout my time at MIT. To my classmates for a smashing three and a half years—and especially to Nancy for being my partner in crime, to Matt for dancing yrself clean, to Amrita for being practically perfect in every way, to Alan (always an LA spirit in a time of need) and Catherine for being my co-geniuses, to Dennis for that one time in Hong Kong, to Stephen and Alice for all of the worldly experiences (and to everyone else in the Israel studio for all the cats), to Lili for being fabulous, to Sarah and Adam for being my Thresholds mentors, and to Daniel and Pam for being stellar Thresholds authors and even better friends. To all of the teachers that I’ve had at MIT, both in class and out, for transform- ing the way I see the world. In particular, to Annette Kim for all of the discus- sions and experiences with SLAB, to Eran for your unbelievable enthusiasm and the experiences in the Israel Studio, to Nader for being an ally (and for all of those swanky parties at your place), to Yung Ho for your wisdom, to Mi- chael Dennis for teaching me what urban design was, and to Ana for being the fi rst. And to all of the friends who chipped in as part of my “Polaroid Posse”—you are each credited with your creation in the book. I could go on. 5 Preface This book has been organized with the “mosaic approach” demonstrated by Marshall McLuhan in The Gutenberg Galaxy. The main body of the book con- tains several short chapters, images, and a running margin of footnotes and quotations, and the book is concluded with several appendices. It is intended that you can read the book from beginning to end, by turning to a random page and reading it, from end to beginning, or any which way. The elements of the book are topologically placed such that, like the tiles of a mosaic, ele- ments with greater proximity are more closely related, allowing a full reading of “approximate translation” to emerge the longer one sits with the book. 6 Tesserae 8 Process of Approximate Translation 9 What Is an Approximate Translation? 10 Allston 11 Agglomeration Mapping: International Market Cluster 12 An Urban Design for Allston 13 Why No Style? 14 Three Architectural Films 15 Jonathan Crisman Loves Pop (And So Does Everybody Else) 16 Experience Allstonland: Packard’s Corner 17 Plan for Packard’s Corner in Allstonland 18 Allstonland 19 Plan for Allstonland 20 Plan for Charles River Circle in Allstonland 21 Experience Allstonland: Charles River Circle 22 Marshall McLuhan’s Middle Meddling 23 Experience Allstonland: Rock City 24 Organizational Patterns in Disney’s Parks 25 Displacement/Replacement 26 Plan for Harvard Square in Allstonland 27 Experience Allstonland: Harvard Square 28 The Theme Park as Plinth 29 Site for Allstonland: Hong Kong Disneyland 30 Experience Allstonland: Comm Ave 31 Plan for Comm Ave in Allstonland 32 Experience Allstonland: Brighton Park 33 Misunderstanding Scripted Space 34 Altering Allston 35 The CSX Railyard 36 Allstonland: CSX Excavation 37 New Allston: Brighton Park Development 38 Ideal Forms of New Allston 39 Ideal Forms 40 Plan for Media Circle Complex in New Allson 41 New Allston 42 The Line and the Corner 43 The Circle and the Square 44 Plan for Brighton Park Development in New Allston 45 The Polyline and the Circle 46 Approximate Columbus: A Pedagogical Proposal 47 Approximate Translation as Pedagogy 48 Plan for Packard’s Corner in New Allston 49 Plan for International Market Arcade in New Allston 50 Place-embedded History 51 Plan for Harvard Square Development in New Allston 52 Micro-, Mezzo-, and Meta-narratives 53 Four Architectural Films 54 Surrealization No. 2: Lights, Camera, Judgement 55 Two Architectural Films 56 Surrealization 57 Surrealization No. 1: Discipline and Fun-ish 58 The Live Model 59 Recipe for a Live Model 60 Plan for a Live Model 61 Surrealization No. 3: Stop Making Scales 62 Approaching Infi nity 63 Plan for New Allston Appendices 7 64 Indigenous Culture of Allston 68 Polaroids of Approximate Translation 76 Precedents in Pop 78 Fry’s Electronics vs. Best Products 80 Screenplay for a Live Model 98 Documentation of Live Model Performance 104 Original Proposal—An Urban Massage 142 Hong Kong, Tokyo, Singapore 148 Disneyland 152 Image Credits 153 Bibliography Sources for Quotations BB—Benjamin Buchloh, “Allegorical Procedures: Appropriation and Montage in Contemporary Art,” in Art After Conceptual Art, ed. Alexander Alberro and Sabeth Buchmann (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2006). ES—Edward Soja, Postmodern Geographies: The Reassertion of Space in Critical Social Theory (London: Verso, 1989). KV—Kurt Vonnegut, Bluebeard (New York: Delacorte Press, 1987). LC—Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (London: Macmillan, 1865). LW—Langdon Winner, “Silicon Valley Mystery House,” in Variations on a Theme Park: The New American City