Go with the Flow – Architecture, Infrastructure and the Everyday

Gilles delAlex Architecture, infrAstructure And the everydAy experience of Mobility University of Art and Design Helsinki Publication Series of the University of Art and Design Helsinki A55 www.uiah.fi /publications © Gilles Delalex Graphic Design: Kalle Järvenpää All photographs published with permission. Paper : Munken Premium White 13 115 g /m2 and Munken Lynx 300 g /m2 Font Family : Adobe Chaparral Pro Opticals ISBN 951-558-167-2 (printed book) ISBN 951-558-197-4 (electronic book) ISSN 0782-1832 Gummerus Printing Printed in Vaajakoski, Finland, 2006. contents Aknowledgments . 9 Introduction . 11 Part 1 architecture in the sPace of flows . 21 1 .0 From biomorphic to virtual architecture . 23 – Beyond the biomorphic 24 – A new modernity 27 – The semantic nightmare 26 – The shape of flows 28 – Virtual architecture 26 – Flows as primary material of design 29 1 .1 New architectures of flows . 33 – Greg Lynn : animated forms 35 – Toyo Ito : software architecture 39 – Foreign Office Architects : – OMA : chaos and indeterminacy 40 fluid topographies 36 – Stan Allen : field conditions 41 – Reiser and Umemoto : – Common traits 42 weaving infrastructure 37 1 .2 Urban fields : the renewed interest of architects in fluid urban conditions . 47 – Fields vs . Objects 49 – Exacerbated differences 52 – Urbanism without Architecture 50 – Megashapes 53 – Flexible accumulation 51 – Buildings as infrastructures 53 1 .3 The space of flows : a new paradigm for architecture ? . 59 – The network society 61 – Variable geometry 64 – Simultaneity in time and space 62 – Network realities 65 – Global infrastructures 62 – Beyond corporate architecture 67 – Dispersion and concentration 63 Part 2 the motorway and the everyday exPerience of flows . 73 2 .0 Statiorama : a video catalogue of petrol stations . 75 – Exploring the inhabited space – Mapping the standard world of the motorway 76 of the motorway 88 – Method : sampling and compiling 83 – Note 90 5 2 .1 From flow to place . 97 – A global sense of place 100 – Texts, abstraction, – Generic infrastructure and control of space 104 and non-places 101 – A response to erratic flows 106 – Effects of recognition 102 – Dwelling in mobility 107 2 .2 The urbanity of the motorway . .111 – New urban regions 113 – The civilities of the motorway 116 – Digital landscape 114 – The European metropolis 118 – Analogue landscape 115 2 .3 Crowd phenomena . 123 – Traffic jams : the motorised crowd 125 – The attributes of the crowd 131 – Busy car parks : the quick crowd 127 – The crowd character – Mobile subjects 129 of the motorway 132 – Mobility as social capital 130 – The modern crowd 133 Part 3 standardisation and difference . .137 3 .0 Landscapes of standardisation . 139 – New legalities 142 – Expert systems 144 – Prefabrication and – Standardisation as negotiation 147 commercial strategies 143 3 .1 From modules to modulations . .151 – Suburbs : the practice of modules 153 – Software infrastructure 156 – Peripheries : the multiplication – Standards as mediums of exchange 157 of standards 155 – Hypertext metaphor 158 3 .2 Standardisation as creative repetition . 163 – The core-periphery model 166 – Fields of individuation 169 – Tame zones and wild zones : – Global disjunctures 170 the fatal counterpart 168 – Creative repetition 171 – The thermodynamic model 169 Part 4 creative infrastructures . .177 4 .0 Urban mediators . 179 – Three scenarios 181 – Cities from the outside 185 – Cities as traffic 184 – The infrastructural frontier 186 6 4 .1 The mechanics of movement . .191 – Tunnels, bridges and flyovers 193 – The Mezzanine 197 – Escalators and elevators 195 – Technological landscapes 199 4 .2 Cultural infrastructures . 205 – Visions of globalisation 207 – Deep-seated aestheticisation 211 – Flows of cultural signs 208 – The infrastructure – Surface aestheticisation 209 as design condition 212 Part 5 Projects for the motorway . .217 5 .0 Interzone . .221 5 .1 S-express . .231 5 .2 Urban pacemaker . 239 5 .3 Skylines . 245 5 .4 Jam cruising . 253 5 .5 The eleven crystals . 255 conclusion . 263 Bibliography . 275 Photo/projects credits . 280 7 Ak nowledgments One cannot engage in an extended research without the support of a whole network of friends, colleagues, and institutions . I hope I can acknowledge all those who par- ticipated in one way or another in this doctoral work . This research has benefciated from different financial supports . I would like to express my gratitude to the Depart- ment of Spatial Design and Furniture Design, the Research Institute and the Princi- pal of the University of Art and Design for their grants ; The School of Architecture of Grenoble and CIMO, the Centre for International Mobility ; and the French Foreign Office, AFAA and CDC for the grant L’Envers des Villes 2001 . This thesis has benefici- ated from the scientific supervision of Pekka Korvenmaa, whom I thank for his kind and encouraging support, and François Ascher, for his great receptiveness and accu- rate comments . I am also thankful to all the members of the Polis network, in Brus- sels, Tilburg, Manchester and Helsinki, who provided me with very fertile ground in the early stages of this research . The Laboratory of Research on Architecture and In- frastructure GRAI, at the School of Architecture of Versailles, has also constituted a particularly useful platform for exchange and debate . My special thanks also go to Ron Kenley for raising such an important issue as the precedence of standards and their creative potential . I am grateful to those who read and commented on the man- uscript of this thesis during the various stages of its development : Minna Nordström, Peter Sylveire, Justin O’Connor, David Buwalda, Kelly Donati, Antti Alhava and Yannis 9 Go with the flow Tsiomis, who offered detailed criticisms and important suggestions . James Hanlon and the Disclosure collective provided an insightful editing of my paper on the Every- day Experience of Flows, which eventually became the central chapter of this thesis . Most of the “artistic” projects presented in this thesis were conceived as collaborative works . One project was conceived during the summer workshop, organised by the Alvar Aalto Academy, and orchestrated by Raoul Bunschoten . I am also particularly thankful to my partners : Yves Moreau, for his enthusiasm and fertile commitment, Thomas Wessel-Cessieux, for his always subtle and clever contributions, and Paul-Eric Schirr-Bonnans, for his smart and elegant inputs . The offices I have worked with in Paris, Architecture-Studio, Ibos & Vitart, and Dominique Perrault, have been particularly understanding regarding my parallel research work . I should finally thank my friends and family for their warm and patient support, despite their Olympian dis- interest in the subject, always reminding me the singularly obscure status of a long and slow research work in a mobile society… — In memoriam Jan Verwijnen, whose kind and methodological interest was the point of departure for this thesis . 10 Introduction Can architecture continue to relate to the material space of buildings and cities, when this space itself is dissolving into a universal flow ? In the mid 1990s, architecture shifts from semantics to economics . Architects no longer seek new styles and new languages, but data, diagrams and statistics . They design fluid and flexible buildings that work as the basic instruments of a world where everything is in state of flux and becomes more and more ephemeral . They redirect their imaginative and technical ef- forts towards infrastructures, and adopt new approaches derived from marketing and computer animation . The word “flow” becomes an almost tangible expression of this new attitude . “Go with the flow” – or be condemned to marginality ! Hence, flows are no longer a link between a and B, a factor or a consequence of the wish to go some- where . They no longer designate a state of movement, of coming or going . They become an end in themselves, a cultural condition for architecture and urban design . Drawing on Manuel Castells’ (1989) concept of the “Space of Flows”, this thesis que- ries the status of buildings and cities in a space increasingly shaped by flows . How do flows address architecture and urban design ? How do they influence their forms, meanings, and processes ? Can flows become an object of design ? The dependence of cities on flows is certainly not novel . Ever since Antonio Sant’Elia (1914 ) sang the praises of speed in his “Manifesto of Futurist Architecture” and started imagining buildings detached from the static media by which they had to be 11 Go with the flow designed, there has been an undeviating attitude in history toward the mobilisation of objects and images . What is new today is both the nature and the intensity of flows . In the last half of the century, flows have thus become increasingly cultural . They now consist of film, music and design . Meanwhile, buildings and public spaces become objects of exchange and partake in the fluid substance of flows . The increased intensity of global exchanges has also dramatically affected the shape and meaning of urban space . Professionals, academics and students around the world are increasingly aware that global flows have a determinant impact on urban space and that anything that happens in a local neighbourhood is likely to be influenced by global economic trends operating at an indefinite distance from that neighbourhood . Today, cities thrive upon a diversified flow of tourists, capital and subsidies . In their continuous attempt to attract erratic flows of capital and investments, they tend to adapt their shape to the fluidity of capital . They grow into peripheries spreading across vast territories . This new condition might seem as a definitive and inelucta- ble “liquefaction” of urban space (Bauman 2000) . But it can also be viewed as an ac- tive response to the dominant logic of flows . For, cities find in the loose and flexible organisation of their peripheries a means to adjust to the rapid and unpredict- able trajectories of flows . Hence, they construct a new material condition that al- lows them to integrate the erratic character of flows, without losing their centrality .

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