Radical Spatiality Dissident Architectural Practices in Contemporary Occupations
RADICAL SPATIALITY DISSIDENT ARCHITECTURAL PRACTICES IN CONTEMPORARY OCCUPATIONS
Ana Medina Gavilanes, Architect
2017
UNIVERSIDAD POLITÉCNICA DE MADRID ESCUELA TÉCNICA SUPERIOR DE ARQUITECTURA DEPARTAMENTO DE PROYECTOS ARQUITECTÓNICOS AVANZADOS
Título de Tesis Doctoral
RADICAL SPATIALITY DISSIDENT ARCHITECTURAL PRACTICES IN CONTEMPORARY OCCUPATIONS
Autor Ana Medina Gavilanes, Arquitecta
Directora de Tesis Atxu Amann y Alcócer, Doctora Arquitecta Codirector de Tesis Arturo Blanco Herrero, Doctor Arquitecto
Año 2017
AGRADECIMIENTOS
A mis padres. Cada paso que he dado, ha sido por ellos. A mis hermanos. Gracias por siempre estar conmigo.
A mi directora de tesis, Atxu Amann, por el tiempo, por el esfuerzo, por la presencia, por la guía, y por la energía incondicional. Solamente con ese espíritu tan fuerte este camino ha sido posible. A mi codirector de tesis, Arturo Blanco, por cada consejo y por la dedicación que me ha dado en cada momento.
Son tantas las personas que me han acompañado durante estos años que no podría nombrar a cada una, el papel quedaría corto. Pero quiero decir que todos ustedes no son solamente parte de este trabajo, sino que forman una parte importante de mí.
Cada conversación, cada café, cada noche llena de discusiones y música, cada bienvenida, cada despedida, cada skype, cada charla, cada risa, cada lágrima, cada silencio, cada viaje. A todos aquellos que me han acompañado en estas situaciones y en tantos lugares, me han llenado de energía para continuar. No habría podido sin su compañía, amigos, que me han tomado mi mano en todo momento.
RESUMEN
Tahrir Square, Occupy Wall Street, y Gezi Park / Taksim Square, son ocupaciones contemporáneas que despliegan una serie de acciones disidentes en el espacio público, cuestionando al mismo tiempo las relaciones entre la arquitectura urbana y las prácticas sociales. Una de las características de estos movimientos es la inclusión del espacio virtual como generador de acciones dentro del espacio físico, formando de esta manera un nuevo espacio. Mediante el uso de tecnologías digitales y junto a la expansión de las redes sociales, se promueven dispositivos que crean nuevas dinámicas y prácticas arquitectónicas en la ciudad, y asimismo visibilizan el estado obsoleto de una infraestructura urbana, la cual es contendida por una transformación radical de espacios públicos de manera instantánea y temporal.
En el desarrollo de estas ocupaciones, una multitud toma cuerpo en el espacio público físico y virtual, el espacio público contemporáneo, el mismo que altera la imagen y el uso de espacios fijos y establecidos y los transforma en un sistema de espacios intermitentes, afectando consecuentemente los límites entre lo público y lo privado, lo exterior y lo interior, lo cotidiano y lo excepcional. Se produce una nueva arquitectura disidente y temporal ad- hoc que conduce a la construcción de una Espacialidad Radical, la que permite generar una serie de prácticas y procesos arquitectónicos espontáneos y disidentes. Estas relaciones se focalizan en elementos arquitectónicos que son explorados y utilizados de manera disidente: actuando dentro de los límites de las regulaciones urbanas locales, analizando la situación actual espacial, proyectando zonas para habitar de manera temporal, construyendo estructuras ligeras pero resistentes que responden a las necesidades de los ocupantes, reconfigurando la organización de objetos urbanos, y aplicando dispositivos para proyectar una apropiación espacial a través de prácticas colectivas y performativas.
Por otro lado, las ocupaciones contemporáneas se relacionan con dos aspectos importantes en la construcción del paisaje arquitectónico urbano: el diseño de espacios públicos y las regulaciones urbanas. Posteriormente al desarrollo de estos movimientos sociales, distintos gobiernos locales han impulsado considerablemente la implementación de la privatización de espacios públicos a través del modelo urbano “POPS: Privately Owned Public Space” [Espacios Públicos Privados], y la elaboración de un manual de diseño arquitectónico de espacios públicos. Estas dos herramientas se aplican y reproducen sistemáticamente en ciudades geográfica y culturalmente distantes, provocando consecuentemente la construcción de un paisaje arquitectónico urbano homogéneo, desplazando la historia y dinámicas locales, y manifestando de esta manera un control espacial y social a través del diseño arquitectónico. Frente a esta situación, se plantean prácticas arquitectónicas de espacios post-públicos, como acciones disidentes que operan colectiva, temporal e intermitentemente. ABSTRACT
Tahrir Square, Occupy Wall Street, and Gezi Park / Taksim Square, are contemporary occupations that unfold a series of dissident actions in the public space, questioning at the same time the relationships between urban architecture and social practices. One of the characteristics of these movements is the inclusion of the virtual space as a generator of actions inside the physical space, forming consequently a new space. Thus, through the use of digital technologies alongside the expansion of social networks, they promote dispositives that create new architectural dynamics and practices in the city, and simultaneously make visible the obsolete state of an urban infrastructure, which is contended by a radical transformation of public spaces in temporal and instantaneous means.
In the development of these occupations, a multitude takes form in the physical and virtual public space, the contemporary public space, which alters the image and use of fixed and established spaces, and transforms them in a system of intermittent spaces, affecting subsequently the limits between public and private, exterior and interior, quotidian and exceptional. It produces a new dissident and temporal ad-hoc architecture that conducts to the construction of a Radical Spatiality, allowing to generate a series of architectural practices and processes that are spontaneous and dissident. These relationships focus on architectural elements that are explored and used in a dissident way: acting inside the limits of local urban regulations, analysing spatial current situations, projecting zones to inhabit temporary, constructing light but resistant structures that respond to occupiers’ needs, reconfiguring the organization of urban objects, and applying dispositives to develop a spatial appropriation through collective and performative practices.
Furthermore, contemporary occupations are related to two important aspects in the construction of the architectural urban landscape: the design of public spaces and the urban regulations. After the development of these social movements, different local governments have pushed considerably the implementation of public spaces privatization through the urban model “POPS: Privately Owned Public Space,” and the elaboration of an architectural design manual of public spaces. These two tools are applied and reproduced systematically in cities geographically and culturally distant, provoking consequently the construction of a homogeneous architectural urban landscape, displacing the local history and social dynamics, and manifesting the spatial and social control through architectural design. Facing this situation, new architectural practices of post-public spaces are projected as dissident actions that operate collectively, temporary, and intermittently.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
INTRODUCCIÓN ...... 1 Estado de la cuestión. Antecedentes. Hipótesis. Objetivos. Metodología. Estructura de la tesis ...... 3
INTRODUCTION ...... 19 State of the Art. Background. Hypothesis. Objectives. Methodology. Structure of the thesis .. 20
CHAPTER I. RADICAL ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEMPORARY OCCUPATIONS ...... 37 1.1 Retrospection ...... 37 1.2 Towards the Revolutionary Square ...... 44 1.2.1 Spatial Atlas of the Revolutionary Square ...... 4 8 1.3 Three events ...... 5 4 1.3.1 Tahrir Square – Cairo ...... 60 1.3.1.1 Tale of a revolution ...... 63 1.3.1.2 Spatial cartography – Tahrir Square ...... 65 1.3.2 Zuccotti Park – New York ...... 97 1.3.2.1 Urban insurgent narrative ...... 99 1.3.2.2 Spatial cartography – Zuccotti Park ...... 103 1.3.3 Gezi Park / Taksim Square – Istanbul ...... 121 1.3.3.1 Uprising depiction ...... 124 1.3.3.2 Spatial cartography – Gezi/Taksim ...... 130 1.4 Discussion. Archi-events ...... 167
CHAPTER II. SPATIAL AFFECTION IN THE VIRTUAL SPACE ...... 169 2.1 Virtual space in occupations ...... 170 2.1.1 Digital patterns of occupations ...... 174 2.1.2 Physical movement within virtual movement ...... 179 2.2 Virtual alterations as architectural urban manifestations ...... 182 2.2.1 Micro-virtual actions making spatial strategies ...... 186 2.3 Discussion. Hyper-forum ...... 190
CHAPTER III. BODIES, ARCHITECTURE AND PUBLIC SPACE IN OCCUPATIONS ...... 191 3.1 Revolt, revolution and occupation ...... 192 3.1.1 Tahrir Square, Zuccotti Park, Gezi/Taksim. Similitudes, repetitions, and oppositions ...... 198 3.1.2 Collective installation in temporal urban borders ...... 205 3.1.3 Spatiality of the rhizome in the occupation ...... 212 3.2 Bodies in the architectural space of the occupation ...... 215 3.2.1 Public space as occupation ...... 220 3.2.2 The multitude in the occupation ...... 224 3.3 Occupation as public space generator ...... 228 3.3.1 OWS generating the contemporary public Zuccotti Park ...... 228 3.3.2 Contested architectural urban space in Tahrir ...... 233 3.4 Discussion. Transmutation of the architectural urban landscape ...... 236
CHAPTER IV. ARCHITECTURE OF THE OCCUPATION ...... 239 4.1 Dissident spatiality ...... 239 4.1.1 Dissidence in occupations. Gezi/Taksim and the Umbrella Movement ...... 243 4.2 Temporality and resonance generating the architecture of occupation ...... 249 4.2.1 Temporal Architecture as a dispositive ...... 256 4.3 Performing the architecture of occupation in the state of exception ...... 260 4.3.1 Spatiality in the state of exception ...... 260 4.3.2 Performative spatiality ...... 263 4.3.3 [De] [re] territorialisation in the archievent ...... 266 4.4 Discussion. Radical Spatiality ...... 272
CHAPTER V. POST- RADICAL SPATIALITY ...... 279 5.1 The legal legacy ...... 279 5.1.1 Privately Owned Public Spaces – POPS ...... 279 5.1.2 The Nomosphere and the nomospheric OWS ...... 286 5.2 Transformation of the architectural urban landscape ...... 288 5.2.1 From Tahrir Square to New Cairo ...... 288 5.2.2 Spatializing Occupying London ...... 293 5.3 Post-occupation architectural urban landscape ...... 296 5.3.1 Post–POPS. New York ...... 296 5.3.2 Reconfiguration of the architectural urban landscape ...... 301 5.4 Extrapolation of privatized public spaces post-occupation. Tokyo ...... 305 5.4.1 Occupying Shinjuku Station ...... 307 5.4.2 Public space privatized. Miyashita Park ...... 309 5.5 Discussion. Towards the Post-Public Space ...... 339
CONCLUSION ...... 343
BIBLIOGRAPHY ...... 347 APPENDIX 1; APPENDIX 2; APPENDIX 3; APPENDIX 4; APPENDIX 5; APPENDIX 6 INTRODUCCIÓN
La Primavera Árabe, el Movimiento Occupy, los Indignados, Gezi Park, Umbrella Movement, Euromaidan, y Plaza Sintagma, son algunas de las ocupaciones contemporáneas más representativas, las cuales conducen a cambios importantes en las localidades donde se desarrollan y al mismo tiempo abren espacios de debate en campos como la política y la economía. Sin embargo, estas ocupaciones no se relacionan usualmente con la transformación del paisaje arquitectónico urbano.
A partir de 2011 y como consecuencia de estos fenómenos sociales, diferentes gobiernos locales empiezan a formular, plantear y ejecutar medidas legales que buscan el control del espacio público. Una de ellas es su privatización, en la cual la inversión privada es la encargada de crear, mantener, y gestionar estos espacios que son cada vez más demandados, especialmente en los centros de las ciudades. Junto a esta medida, se encuentra la creación de un manual de diseño arquitectónico que presenta parámetros de diseño tanto del espacio como del mobiliario urbano, favoreciendo el control visual, el movimiento de personas y objetos, y causando consecuentemente una homogenización de paisajes urbanos.
Por otro lado, durante el desarrollo de estas ocupaciones, se formulan y generan nuevos procesos de proyectación arquitectónica. Uno de los principales métodos utilizados es la inclusión del espacio virtual como activador del espacio físico, tanto en su diseño como en su producción,1 estableciendo un nuevo espacio público [espacio público contemporáneo]. De hecho, estas ocupaciones son creadas y organizadas en el espacio virtual, lo cual genera nuevas variables de acción y a su vez visibiliza la necesidad ineludible del movimiento de materializarse en el espacio público. Al momento de ocupar los espacios públicos, estos movimientos crean un campo de energía que transforma temporalmente el paisaje arquitectónico urbano. A través de una serie de micro-eventos colectivos, se introduce una espacialidad [espacio + tiempo] que responde con prácticas espaciales en tiempo real, y se pueden calificar como disidentes, pues perturban el orden preestablecido de estos espacios. Esta espacialidad actúa como mediador de dinámicas sociales, que, de manera temporal, difumina los límites entre lo privado y lo público, lo exterior y lo interior, lo legal y lo ilegal [estableciendo lo alegal]. De este modo, estas ocupaciones denominadas “acontecimientos arquitectónicos”, crean y desarrollan una serie de herramientas de relaciones espaciales, heterogéneas y dinámicas.
Para llevar a cabo esta investigación, se toman principalmente tres casos: Plaza Tahrir en El Cairo, Zuccotti Park en Nueva York, y Parque Gezi/Plaza Taksim en Estambul, pero se incluirán casos
1 En referencia al concepto de Henri Lefebvre “La producción del espacio” como un estado social complejo que afecta prácticas y percepciones espaciales.
1 relevantes a lo largo de este proceso (Umbrella Movement en Hong Kong y Miyashita Park en Tokio). Estos acontecimientos son elegidos por su doble carácter político y espacial. El primer caso es una revolución social producida en el año 2011, contra un régimen autoritario gobernado por el entonces presidente Hosni Mubarak, y la aplicación continua de la “Ley de Emergencia”2 aplicada por treinta años: se realiza una ocupación en una plaza con rotonda por dieciocho días. El segundo caso, Occupy Wall Street en Nueva York, un movimiento que pone en cuestión al sistema capitalista, nace como consecuencia de la crisis financiera de 2007-2008: se materializa como una ocupación que dura cincuenta y nueve días en un parque. El último acontecimiento comparte similitudes con los dos anteriores. Turquía con un gobierno elegido democráticamente y que al momento de desarrollarse la ocupación, éste lleva en funciones doce años. Lo que inicialmente es objeto de una pequeña protesta ambientalista para evitar la destrucción de un parque en el centro de la ciudad como parte de un plan urbano, se convierte en un levantamiento social general contra el gobierno y las regulaciones adoptadas durante los últimos años: la ocupación dura diecinueve días y se realiza en una rotonda y en un parque.
Estos acontecimientos arquitectónicos presentan distintos mecanismos de activación y desactivación de espacios de manera intermitente, conteniendo prácticas disidentes, colectivas y temporales. Al incluir al espacio virtual como parte de las dinámicas sociales contemporáneas, se crea un nuevo tipo de ágora y una red de micro-ciudades que se adaptan y transforman dependiendo de las necesidades de sus ocupantes. Este dinamismo y temporalidad generan nuevos significados y usos de objetos cotidianos que, dentro de un estado de excepción de apropiación de espacios públicos, se convierten en sujetos radicales que alteran la configuración del espacio. Esta situación implica una transformación de lo banal en extraordinario, de lo fijo en dinámico, y de lo permanente en temporal, extrayendo capacidades y características que reinventan el territorio urbano. Con estructuras ligeras, móviles y portátiles, cambiantes en estética y en función, proyectadas en el espacio físico y virtual, local y global, se [des] [re] territorializa tanto el espacio como los cuerpos y los objetos que componen el paisaje arquitectónico urbano. Se proyecta una configuración con el cuerpo que transforma el espacio público temporalmente, emergiendo así la Espacialidad Radical.
2 La “Ley de Emergencia No. 162 de 1958” fue aplicada en Egipto después de la “Guerra de los seis días” (Arabia – Israel). La ley fue suspendida por dieciocho meses en 1980 pero fue nuevamente aplicada tras el asesinato del presidente Anwar Sadar en 1981. Desde entonces y hasta 2012, esta ley ha sido aplicada y regulada en todo el país.
2 Estado de la cuestión
Las ocupaciones contemporáneas de esta investigación: Plaza Tahrir [Tahrir Square]3, Occupy Wall Street, y Parque Gezi/Plaza Taksim [Gezi/Taksim], han sido durante los últimos años, fuente de una serie de investigaciones en distintas disciplinas, como la teoría social, política, y económica. Sin embargo, respecto a la aproximación arquitectónica, estos movimientos han propiciado un estado de inquietud sobre las estrategias de diseño que, aunque no han sido exploradas en profundidad, han abierto plataformas de diálogo y de debate interdisciplinar.
En la última década, varios autores, académicos, grupos de investigación y estudios de arquitectura han vuelto la mirada a los espacios públicos, a su definición y su uso en la actualidad que, a diferencia de los movimientos sociales de finales de los años 60 e inicios de los 70, son creados en el espacio virtual, atrayendo la producción de nuevas prácticas espaciales. Pero es a partir de 2011 cuando aumenta la investigación respecto al uso y a la imagen de la ciudad en referencia a las revoluciones sociales, siendo Plaza Tahrir y Occupy Wall Street los principales acontecimientos analizados. En este sentido, la publicación “Planning for Protest”4 reúne doce casos de protestas contemporáneas, incluyendo Plaza Tahrir y Puerta del Sol, y presenta parámetros espaciales y tácticas arquitectónicas utilizadas durante el desarrollo de las revoluciones. Esta publicación evalúa el rol de los arquitectos en la representación visual de estos movimientos desde diferentes perspectivas como una contribución gráfica de la formación de las protestas. En varios de estos casos se plantean respuestas de mobiliario urbano frente al estado deficiente de los espacios públicos, pero no se observan análisis o respuestas de diseño arquitectónico en el momento de la protesta y sus posibles consecuencias espaciales.
Respecto a las relaciones sociales y espaciales, son los geógrafos urbanos los más implicados con respecto a la investigación y estudio de estas movilizaciones sociales, pues visibilizan y teorizan las acciones y las condiciones urbanas que afectan el uso de la ciudad. Entre ellos se encuentran Erik Swyngedouw, geógrafo por la Universidad de Manchester, que durante los últimos años ha definido las variables teóricas correspondientes al uso radical de la ciudad y al diseño político como proceso urbano. En su trabajo “Urban Redevelopment and Social Polarization in the City”5, Swyngedouw hace un análisis transversal de trece planes urbanos enfocándose en los mecanismos de polarización social, exclusión e integración, y los relaciona con la actuación e influencia de los movimientos sociales locales, el mercado financiero, el sistema de producción y distribución, y los procesos
3 “Tahrir Square” o “La Revolución Egipcia” son los nombres comunes de la revolución social realizada entre los meses de enero y febrero de 2011 en Egipto. Sin embargo “Tahrir Square” es reconocida como la ocupación realizada en esa plaza en la capital El Cairo, siendo el actor principal en esta revolución. 4 Allen, Ben, et al. Planning for Protest. An Associated Project of the Lisbon Architecture Triennale, 2013. 5 Moualert, Frank, y Swyngedouw, Erik. “Urban Redevelopment and Social Polarization in the City” en Final Report for European Commission, DG XII. Lille: IFRESI, 1999
3 socio-culturales. Indica asimismo el cambio organizativo de la ciudad y su dependencia en acciones locales y cómo éstas llegan a afectar el espacio en diferentes niveles, desde proyectos inmobiliarios dentro de barrios tradicionales hasta planes generales territoriales. Además, en su publicación “The Ground-Zero of Politics: Musing on the Post- Political Polis”6, Swyngedouw enfatiza las relaciones de formas neoliberales de gobernanza, las cuales afectan el estado físico de las ciudades y la necesidad de tener un trabajo creativo y experimental por parte de la comunidad. Como muchos otros, a partir del 2011 Swyngedouw investiga las relaciones de las llamadas “Plazas de la Revolución” como espacios emblemáticos y simbólicos necesarios para la construcción de la identidad social. Su enfoque es el de intervención política social para la transformación de espacios públicos como espacios igualitarios y equitativos, y referencia a filósofos como Alain Badiou, Gilles Deleuze y Félix Guattari para incluir conceptos sociales. De hecho, este método de referenciar a filósofos y conceptos filosóficos se repite con varios autores en diferentes campos que basan su trabajo en nociones socio-espaciales desarrolladas durante los años 60 y 70. El principal autor referente en términos espaciales urbanos es Henri Lefebvre7, quien define conceptos como el “derecho a la ciudad” y la “producción del espacio social”. Estos conceptos son influenciados por el movimiento estudiantil parisino de Mayo 68, los mismos que son ampliamente utilizados durante los análisis de la Primavera Árabe o del Movimiento Occupy, por su similitud con la protesta y repercusiones globales, así como la apropiación desobediente [civil] de los espacios públicos. Uno de los principales autores que referencia el trabajo de Lefebvre es David Harvey8, quien investiga los comportamientos colectivos en espacios urbanos y viceversa. En su publicación “Rebel Cities”9, Harvey relaciona al pensamiento utópico con las revoluciones de 2011, y hace un análisis de las ciudades actuales como centros de acumulación de capital, así como también de espacios necesarios de prácticas políticas. Harvey analiza a la Comuna de París de 1871, Occupy Wall Street y las protestas de Londres de 2011 como resistencias anticapitalistas urbanas. Por otro lado, se encuentra el trabajo de Jana Carp10 titulado “Ground-Truthing. Representations of Social Space”, que, con referencia en la crítica y la teoría tanto de David Harvey como de Henri Lefebvre, realiza una búsqueda de la representación del espacio social. Carp presenta intervenciones de apropiaciones espaciales para desarrollar un planeamiento urbano que relaciona acciones y participaciones sociales como método abierto para reconocer los vínculos discontinuos y no cuantificables de un lugar común.
6 Swyngedouw, Erik. “The Ground-Zero of Politics: Musings on the Post-Political Polis” en New Geographies, Vol. 2, 2009 7 Henri Lefebvre (1901 – 1991), filósofo y sociólogo francés cuyas publicaciones más influyentes son “The Critique of Everyday Life,” “The Production of Space,” y “The Urban Revolution.” 8 David Harvey es un geógrafo por la Universidad de Cambridge y profesor de Antropología y Geografía en la City University of New York. Su trabajo propone el concepto “derecho a la ciudad.” 9 Harvey, David. Rebel Cities. Nueva York: Verso, 2013 10 Jana Carp, profesora e investigadora por la Appalachian State University, cuyos intereses son el planeamiento urbano, la producción de la teoría espacial, el desarrollo sustentable y los métodos colaborativos.
4 Con referencia a las acampadas como organizaciones espaciales geopolíticas y como estrategias biopolíticas, éstas se vinculan con los escritos de Giorgio Agamben sobre el estado de excepción y los campos de concentración. Se produce consecuentemente una ampliación de los términos relacionados con el espacio y la violencia de la arquitectura con respecto a la “guerra contra el terrorismo” [war on terror], como la base área Bagram en Afganistán o el centro de detención de Guantánamo11. Por otro lado, más allá de vincular la técnica y las revoluciones contemporáneas con parámetros de diseño arquitectónico, Paul Virilio12 enfatiza el poder político de la velocidad como patrón de revoluciones en el espacio urbano. En su libro “Speed and Politics”13, Virilio presenta la velocidad como motor de destrucción a través de la tecnología desarrollada por la militarización de la sociedad. Mientras que en “A Landscape of Events”14, con introducción de Bernard Tschumi, Virilio describe un caos cultural de los años 80 y 90 en los cuales la desorientación urbana, las máquinas de guerra, y la aceleración de acontecimientos conforman una aceleración de la realidad del tiempo. En este sentido, y junto a nociones de Spinoza, hay una intensidad que afecta a las situaciones espaciales que las denomina como mecánicas espacio-temporales de agentes de expansión. Alain Badiou 15 en su libro “Being and Event”, reencuentra este estado como ‘acontecimiento’, en el que los cuerpos son vectores revolucionarios sobre el espacio atomizado.
Respecto a la inclusión del espacio virtual en la creación y gestión de movimientos sociales, Manuel Castells16 indaga profundamente en las relaciones y las dinámicas que las redes sociales promueven en la protesta contemporánea, convirtiéndose en factores principales que han marcado diferencias importantes y generado nuevos aspectos dentro de centros urbanos. En su publicación: “Networks of Outrage and Hope: Social Movements in the Internet Age”17, Castells indica la necesidad social imprescindible de sentirse “en contacto” con otros, lo cual a su vez incrementa el espacio de acción en la ciudad. Incluye en un capítulo las revoluciones de Túnez y la Primavera Árabe, así como el Occupy Movement y los Indignados, y los identifica dentro de una dimensión de acción online y offline independientes. Cuando se refiere a estas revoluciones como sistemas rizomáticos, no lo referencia a Gilles Deleuze y Félix Guattari, pero insiste que él solamente está ofreciendo una hipótesis de discusión y que sería anticipado trazar una posición clara o definitiva. La publicación
11 Véase Giaccara Paolo y Minca Claudio. “Topographies/topologies of the camp: Auschwitz as a spatial threshold.” Political Geography, Vol. 30 no. 1, pp. 3-12, 2011. Gregory, Derek, The Colonial Present. Oxford: Blackwell, 2004 12 Paul Virilio es filósofo, urbanista y teórico cultural cuyos intereses son la tecnología como relación de velocidad y poder. Basa su trabajo con aspectos de la arquitectura, las artes, la ciudad y lo militar. 13 Virilio, Paul. Speed and Politics [Vitesse et Politique]. Los Angeles: Semiotext(e), 2006 [1977]. 14 Virilio, Paul. A Landscape of Events. Cambridge: The MIT Press, 2000. 15 Alain Badiou, filósofo francés que ha trabajo extensamente en conceptos como verdad, ser, sujeto y acontecimiento, en lo que describe como una repetición de la modernidad en lugar de posmodernidad. 18 Badiou, Alain. Being and Event. Londres: Bloomsbury Academic, 2013. 16 Manuel Castells es un sociólogo español, profesor de City and Regional Planning en la University of California, Berkeley. Sus principales investigaciones abordan temas de globalización, comunicación y la sociedad de la información. 17 Castells, Manuel. “Networks of Outrage and Hope: Social Movements in the Internet Age”. Cambridge: 2012.
5 “Tahrir: politics, publics and performances of Space”18 de Derek Gregory19, cuestiona las relaciones de poder con los nuevos medios de comunicación sociales para activar la esfera pública. A través de la acción de performance en Tahrir, Gregory analiza la colectividad como un punto de atención espacial, como una forma ritual entre algo nuevo y a la vez precario. Enlaza su trabajo con el de Judith Butler20 y la noción de performance para visibilizar de manera gráfica y narrativa, las acciones gubernamentales en una búsqueda por domesticar las acciones políticas radicales en El Cairo. El enfoque principal de este trabajo es sobre las operaciones en las redes sociales tanto por parte del gobierno en un intento por controlarlas, como por parte de los protestantes para desarrollar y organizar protestas. Nadir Lahiji21 es uno de los arquitectos que critica directamente el estado de la arquitectura como un obstáculo para la política social. En su libro “Architecture Against the Post-political”22, Lahiji reúne una serie de ensayos que cuestionan el rol del proyecto arquitectónico frente a la práctica política y la estética urbana contemporánea. Al centrarse en casos específicos de estudio de ciudades como Varsovia, Barcelona, y Tokio, entre otras, presenta el discurso teórico de la arquitectura contemporánea y su despolitización en el ámbito académico, intentando reclamar simultáneamente el espacio perdido en el proyecto crítico de la arquitectura. La despolitización en la disciplina arquitectónica, según Lahiji, empezó en la última década del siglo XX, cuando la crítica radical en la arquitectura se fue poco a poco apartando hasta ser casi abandonada. Ésta fue una situación donde lo político como sujeto y materia de estudio fue separado del proyecto arquitectónico. De esta manera, las revoluciones contemporáneas del 2011 han traído de vuelta la crítica radical, incluyendo conceptos y relaciones espaciales en la exploración de procesos de diseño arquitectónico. Lahiji establece primero un proyecto de aproximación para llenar el vacío existente entre la política y la arquitectura, e incluye además al arte y la estética, lo cual fue elaborado en el simposio internacional “Architecture and the Political” en Líbano, en noviembre 2011, coincidiendo a su vez con la ocupación de Occupy Wall Street en Zuccotti Park.
Desde entonces, se realizan varios trabajos, investigaciones y publicaciones en torno a la Primavera Árabe y el Occupy Movement, comparándolos en cuestiones de organización y gestión y sus implicaciones políticas, sociales y urbanas. La publicación de “What is a Critical Spatial Practice?”23
18 Gregory, Derek. “Tahrir: Politics, Public and Performances of Space” en Middle East Critique, Vol. 22, no. 3, 2013, pp: 235 – 246 19 Derek Gregory es un geógrafo inglés, profesor de Geografía en la University of British Columbia. Sus trabajos e investigaciones son acerca de los medios de comunicación en círculos políticos, la militarización de la sociedad, la geografía cultural y explora la teoría del lugar, espacio y paisaje. 20 Judith Butler es una filósofa y teórica de género de estadounidense. Su trabajo tiene influencia en campos de la filosofía política, la ética, el feminismo, y la performance 21 Nadir Lahiji, es un arquitecto y crítico teórico, profesor de la University of Canberra en Australia. 22 Lahiji, Nadir. Architecture against the Post-political: Reclaiming the Critical Project. Londres: Routledge, 2014 23 Hirsch, Nikolaus y Miessen, Markus. What is a Critical Spatial Practice? Berlin: Sternberg Press, 2012
6 de Nikolaus Hirsch24 y Markus Miessen25, atrae a una serie de escritores, teóricos, arquitectos, filósofos, y artistas en 2012, los cuales presentan su entendimiento sobre el fenómeno social del año previo. Esta serie de escritos y reflexiones pone en paralelo las condiciones políticas que apuntan a cuestionamientos y problemáticas arquitectónicas de lo que se entiende como res publica. La publicación es una exploración urbana con respecto a prácticas espaciales ejecutadas durante las ocupaciones de 2011, en forma de ensayos y escritos más que como documentación gráfica o teórica.
En el año 2011, Saskia Sassen26 en su artículo “Global Street: Making the Political”27 observa a los movimientos sociales contemporáneos como una ocupación simbólica de lo que posteriormente denomina “Calle Global” [Global Street]; sitúa a la calle como el auténtico espacio público más allá de la plaza y el parque. “La Calle”, señala, es un espacio donde se pueden fabricar nuevas formas sociales y políticas en lugar de ser un espacio de rutinas y rituales. Sassen analiza aspectos sociales dentro de dimensiones políticas y espaciales de la Primavera Árabe, captura las cualidades históricas de las plazas en las cuales las revoluciones se materializan, y además observa cómo estos espacios son los ejecutores de visibilizar y ocultar las inequidades sociales y las distintas clases sociales hasta llegar al extremo de la opresión espacial. Con respecto a la comunicación, Sassen introduce Occupy Wall Street dentro de los límites de la lucha social e incluye el carácter neoliberal del estado que busca el control total social y espacial. Dentro del espacio urbano, Sassen señala por un lado el estado físico de la ciudad como un obstáculo para el movimiento social y, por otro lado, las tecnologías comunicativas contemporáneas como actores en la territorialización tanto del espacio digital como físico. Concluye con una interacción de estas plataformas como delineadores de procesos de actuación en red para la ocupación espacial.
En la Universidad de California en Berkeley, el grupo de investigación “Inclusive Cities” realiza estudios en ciudades como Medellín, Nairobi, Berkeley y El Cairo con respecto a movimientos sociales, participación ciudadana, urbanismo social y derecho a la ciudad. Nezar AlSayyad28 presenta componentes de casos sociales y urbanos a partir de la Revolución Egipcia, y en su artículo “The Virtual Square: Urban Space, Media, and the Egyptian Uprising”29 reescribe las narrativas de la revolución de Egipto en 2011 a través de las redes sociales. Además, el centro de investigación “Cities” de la London School of Economics, enfoca su trabajo en el estado actual de varias ciudades,
24 Nikolaus Hirsch, arquitecto y profesor en la Architectural Association en Londres y en University of Pennsilvania en Filadelfia. Trabaja en plataformas multimedia, arte y paisaje. 25 Markus Miessen es un arquitecto alemán, profesor en Práctica en la University of Southern California. 26 Saskia Sassen es una socióloga alemana-holandesa que trabaja en temas de globalización, migración humana. Es profesora de Sociología en la Universidad de Columbia. 27 Sasses, Saskia, “Global Street: Making the Political” en Globalizations, Vol. 7, no. 5, pp. 573 – 579, 2011 28 Nezar AlSayyad es profesor de Arquitectura, Planeamiento, Diseño Urbano, e Historia Urbana en la University of California, Berkeley. 29 AlSayyad, Nezar. “The Virtual Square: Urban Space, Media and the Egyptian Uprising” en Harvard International Review 33, 2012
7 sociedades, gobernanza, y contextos, y el grupo de investigación “Theatrum Mundi” fundado por Richard Sennett 30 en colaboración con la New York University; es una red internacional multidisciplinar que relaciona las prácticas culturales y espaciales en las ciudades. El grupo “Spatial Information Design Lab” (actualmente Center for Spatial Research) de la Universidad de Columbia, investiga el estado de la ciudad actual, la arquitectura, humanidades, diseño, y ciencias de la información. En la Universidad de Queens, Belfast, el proyecto de investigación “Spatial Narratives of Revolt and Perfomance” de la Escuela de Arquitectura, junto con la Japan Foundation London, estudia y decodifica el campo de acción de los movimientos sociales en las ciudades modernas y sus espacios públicos, especialmente de la Plaza Tahrir, Occupy Movement en Londres, Plaza Taksim en Estambul y las protestas en Shinjuku, Tokio. El centro de investigación “CO+LABO”, Universidad de Keio, Tokio, explora las diferentes formas y técnicas de apropiación del espacio con respecto al “derecho a la ciudad” de Henri Lefebvre en la ciudad actual. De manera interdisciplinar, este grupo desarrolla proyectos que enfocan las cualidades de los espacios urbanos a través de interacciones con el cuerpo, de manera individual o colectiva, y que producen conflictos espaciales y sociales.
En la Universidad de Barcelona, el grupo de investigación “CRIT, Creativitat, Innovació i Transformació Urbana” es un equipo multidisciplinar que estudia el desarrollo urbano y su impacto en la economía y la sociedad. Marc Pradel, miembro de este grupo, realiza un trabajo acerca de los movimientos sociales que se han generado en el barrio berlinés de Kreuzberg y cómo éstos han implicado una transformación en el espacio urbano y las relaciones sociales locales. En la Universitat Pompeu Fabra, el grupo de investigación en Teoría Política, ha colaborado con la elaboración publicaciones como “Democràcia, política i societat. Homenatge a Rosa Virós”31, la cual recoge varios artículos que tratan los movimientos sociales del 15M y Occupy Wall Street y el impacto causado en esas ciudades. En la Escuela Técnica Superior de Arquitectura de la Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, Álvaro Sevilla Buitrago, doctor del departamento de Urbanística y Planificación del Territorio, dentro de “Planning Theory & History – Spatial Justice”, ha realizado investigaciones y estudios referentes al 15M y la producción del espacio de Henri Lefebvre, el desarrollo de las ciudades y los procesos sociales, y la evolución de las formas territoriales con respecto al capitalismo.
De esta manera, todas estas referencias visibilizan un interés y una necesidad común por realizar investigaciones cada vez más amplia que relacionan los movimientos sociales contemporáneos y las prácticas espaciales en las ciudades actuales y el efecto que producen en el espacio, en la economía, en la sociedad, en la política, y en el desarrollo urbano.
30 Richard Sennett es un sociólogo británico, profesor en la London School of Economics y de Humanidades en la New York University. Estudia los vínculos entre las ciudades y la sociedad, y los efectos del individualismo urbano en el mundo moderno. 31 Jordana, Jacinto, et al. Democràcia, política i societat. Homenatge a Rosa Virós”. Barcelona: Universitat Pompeu Fabra, 2012
8 Antecedentes
Desde 2011, las relaciones entre manifestaciones sociales, medios de comunicación tanto tradicionales como alternativos, y espacios públicos en distintas ciudades, se han hecho más directas. Estos vínculos causaron un impacto significativo en el paisaje arquitectónico urbano contemporáneo, motivo por el cual muchos académicos e investigadores han conectado estos movimientos con aquellos producidos a finales de los años 60 e inicios de los 70. Sin embargo, estos dos momentos no pueden ser comparables, no solamente por las diferentes causas y consecuencias que han tenido, sino también porque se han desarrollado en estados disímiles. Por un lado, se encuentra la reacción de los gobiernos locales que es cada vez más tolerante frente a las manifestaciones sociales, en parte por el trabajo que realizan distintas ONG, muchas de las cuales no existían en los años 60 y 70. Organizaciones como Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, y Naciones Unidas se presentan como observadores y representantes de los derechos humanos y la libertad de expresión. Por otro lado, las revoluciones contemporáneas incluyen al espacio virtual tanto en su concepción como en su desarrollo, lo cual ha conducido a prácticas y relaciones espaciales diferentes a aquellas de la segunda mitad del siglo XX. De esta manera, se despliegan situaciones dispares que no son comparables en términos arquitectónicos, pero si con respecto a teorías sociales.
Durante una primera fase, las ocupaciones contemporáneas provocaron una euforia inicial por haber sido creadas y organizadas, en gran parte, en medios de comunicación alternativos y redes sociales, incidiendo directamente en la creación de nuevas formas de apropiación del espacio público. Las redes sociales se presentaron como una red de flujos de información cuyas conexiones reflejan la intensidad y la transformación de estos espacios de manera colectiva, lo que a su vez ha conformado una parte importante de estos movimientos. En esta nueva situación, se han visibilizado dos nociones urbanas en el ámbito espacial contemporáneo: el derecho a la ciudad y lo público en el espectro contemporáneo, promoviendo la realización de investigaciones sobre la teoría social y política, y cómo estas revoluciones han sido representadas y representan varias realidades sociales. Debido a este enfoque, la investigación arquitectónica de estos acontecimientos ha sido principalmente anecdótica y narrativa, constituyendo sobre todo un relato gráfico y fotográfico de las revoluciones.
La representación gráfica de las revoluciones sociales como las que tuvieron lugar en la Puerta del Sol en Madrid, en la Plaza Tahrir en El Cairo, en Zuccotti Park en Nueva York, y en la Plaza Sintagma en Atenas, entre otras, se ha desarrollado en dos aspectos: el urbano y el digital. Respecto al primer aspecto, se han utilizado herramientas arquitectónicas como la cartografía, la axonometría y la planimetría para representar las ocupaciones de estas revoluciones en el espacio público. El
9 colectivo Ecosistema Urbano32 con base en Madrid, ha realizado una serie de cartografías que representan la ocupación en Puerta del Sol. Mientras tanto MAS Studio33 ha mapeado los diferentes espacios público-privados en Manhattan, Nueva York, existentes hasta 2011 en relación al movimiento Occupy Wall Street. Además, la plataforma Cairo Observer34 ha producido material gráfico de la Plaza Tahrir y sus monumentos y cómo estos cambiaron posteriormente a la revolución. Occupy Gezi35 por su parte, ha producido un archivo digital que alberga la planimetría sobre la ocupación en el Parque Gezi en 2013. Estos grupos son los principales en representar de manera gráfica las ocupaciones en los espacios públicos.
En el segundo caso, se han realizado mapeos sobre el uso de las redes sociales durante las revoluciones, especialmente de Facebook, Twitter y YouTube. La intensidad y velocidad con las que las redes sociales han propagado información e imágenes, ha conformado un archivo de evidencia visual sobre lo ocurrido en las revoluciones en tiempo real y durante sus procesos en los espacios urbanos. Estas aproximaciones espaciales se han realizado desde un punto de observador, no desde el de actor o productor, por lo que el entendimiento espacial producido sobre las revoluciones ha contenido un carácter distante. Para ser parte de una ocupación en el espacio público como la de la Plaza Tahrir o el Parque Gezi, ha sido necesario tener un carácter de compromiso con el movimiento social, de solidaridad y de colectividad. Este carácter personal ha otorgado nuevas cualidades e información sobre el entendimiento espacial de las revoluciones sociales contemporáneas.
Sin embargo, pocos han sido los arquitectos los que han profundizado en el estudio de estos movimientos durante su desarrollo y las consecuencias espaciales. De hecho, geógrafos, sociólogos y filósofos como Slavoj Zizek, Alain Badiou, Saskia Sassen, y David Harvey, entre otros, son quienes han estudiado los fenómenos espaciales y sus efectos la ciudad actual. Esta situación indica una aproximación superficial en términos arquitectónicos con respecto a los movimientos sociales, lo que presenta una necesidad de entender la nueva arquitectura pública a través de prácticas críticas espaciales realizadas durante las revoluciones, y motivando a su vez la generación de esta tesis.
32 Ecosistema Urbano es un colectivo con base en Madrid, formado por arquitectos y diseñadores urbanos que operan en campos de la arquitectura, el urbanismo, la ingeniería y la sociología. 33 MAS Studio es un estudio de arquitectura y diseño urbano de Chicago, que trabaja de manera multidisciplinar en la investigación, proyectos arquitectónicos, publicaciones y exhibiciones. 34 Cairo Observer es una plataforma digital que trabaja en la realidad arquitectónica y urbana presente e histórica de Egipto. 35 Occupy Gezi es una plataforma digital colectiva y abierta sobre las protestas en el Parque Gezi, Estambul en 2013
10 Hipótesis
Históricamente, las revoluciones sociales han generados cambios sociales, económicos y políticos. Las revoluciones contemporáneas, a diferencia de las ocurridas anteriormente, son creadas y organizadas desde el espacio virtual a través de las redes sociales, provocando cambios en dichos campos y generando nuevas relaciones y nuevos tiempos sociales. Al poder de la multitud y la importancia de los espacios públicos, es imprescindible añadir el factor determinante del espacio virtual. Se plantea la hipótesis en esta tesis de que el espacio virtual a través de las aplicaciones móviles, las plataformas digitales, y las redes sociales, desarrolla mecanismos que conforman nuevos estados de acción, que en el caso de los movimientos sociales llevados a cabo entre los años 2011 y 2014, provocan la inclusión del espacio virtual junto al espacio físico, creando el nuevo espacio público contemporáneo. Este espacio presenta una ausencia de jerarquías explícitas en una gestión de red, dificulta el control y la represión del movimiento de personas y objetos en el espacio, y crea sistemas colaborativos en red para la elaboración de estrategias de acción urbanas.
La organización espacial de los distintos lugares ocupados en estas revoluciones, presenta algunas características comunes y también aspectos singulares, debido a factores como el contexto político y la historia local. Por ello, se pueden analizar estos movimientos como fenómenos sociales equivalentes y como acontecimientos transformadores del espacio, extendiendo la construcción teórica sobre apropiaciones espaciales. Esta situación despliega nuevas herramientas de proyectación arquitectónicas que actúan en este nuevo espacio aumentado, susceptibles de ser empleadas y transformadas por cualquier persona, de manera temporal y desplazada, ya que son realizadas bajo nuevos parámetros y condiciones particulares inexploradas anteriormente. De esta manera, se plantea una segunda hipótesis de que existen nuevas prácticas arquitectónicas que responden y se adaptan a las nuevas dinámicas sociales contemporáneas, contrastando a su vez con una arquitectura urbana como una red de espacios fijos y establecidos.
Por otro lado, el paisaje arquitectónico urbano actual ha adoptado un carácter de mayor control, que coincide con el posterior desarrollo de las ocupaciones. Los espacios públicos como las plazas, los parques, y las calles de los centros de las ciudades, incluyen cada vez de manera más extendida en su infraestructura física y legal, mecanismos de control tanto del espacio físico como de la sociedad. Por ello se plantea una tercera hipótesis de que los movimientos sociales contemporáneos están relacionados, y hasta cierto punto, son los causantes más directos de la reciente transformación espacial y legal del paisaje arquitectónico urbano.
11 Objetivos
Dentro de un contexto actual, las ocupaciones contemporáneas presentan nuevos estados de conflicto en la ciudad que, a través de prácticas arquitectónicas, alteran y transforman los espacios públicos. Con la inclusión del espacio virtual como generador y mediador de estos movimientos sociales, se forman nuevas dinámicas entre la sociedad y la ciudad, presentando situaciones espaciales que no se habían producido anteriormente. Esta investigación pretende establecer las relaciones arquitectónicas, urbanas, sociales y legales que existen en las revoluciones sociales contemporáneas con respecto al estado actual de los espacios públicos y las consecuencias posteriores producidas en dichos espacios. Para ello, se plantean los siguientes objetivos específicos.
• Indagar el modo en el que el espacio virtual y el espacio físico actúan de manera unitaria en la elaboración de herramientas de proyectación arquitectónica urbanas que sean instantáneas e in-situ. • Presentar el estado obsoleto de las infraestructuras urbanas en el momento de responder a prácticas sociales contemporáneas. De la misma manera, analizar las diferentes estrategias espaciales, físicas y virtuales, desarrolladas durante estas revoluciones que transforman este estado obsoleto en plataformas activas, dinámicas y temporales. • Detectar los nuevos comportamientos de los espacios a fin de elaborar dispositivos arquitectónicos que respondan a las dinámicas sociales contemporáneas y a los mecanismos actuales de control de los espacios públicos de manera disidente y temporal. • Determinar el alcance de la transformación del paisaje arquitectónico urbano, el significado y uso de espacios producidos durante las ocupaciones, entender los métodos de apropiación espacial, y proponer criterios de diseño arquitectónico urbano.
Metodología
Durante 2011, la imagen de las protestas sociales se ha repetido constantemente en calles y pantallas alrededor del mundo. Ciudades como Frankfurt, Túnez, Madrid, Atenas, Nueva York, Tokio, etc., han sido escenarios de múltiples manifestaciones que se han convertido en ocupaciones de espacios públicos, sorprendiendo a propios y a extraños por el alcance y la rapidez de su resonancia. Estas situaciones han presentado ciertas características y variables temporales comunes, indispensables para realizar un trabajo de investigación con una estrategia dual de trabajo de campo en tiempo real y de teoría elaborada a partir de la práctica [practice-led-theory].
12 Para obtener la información en el espacio-tiempo real, se han obtenido datos in-situ que permitieron obtener un entendimiento general y en detalle de la construcción espacial de las revoluciones desde dentro, desde la concepción y hasta el desarrollo completo del acontecimiento arquitectónico. Por ello, este proceso no ha seguido un orden lineal sino centrífugo, el cual ha realizado en diferentes ocasiones entrevistas a activistas y miembros de organizaciones sociales: Occupy Wall Street, OccuEvolve, Occupy London, Occupy Gezi, Take the Square, Umbrella Movement, 15M, y Left Unity36. Durante la investigación, la autora junto con colaboradores y activistas, han desarrollado performances y ensamblado estructuras en ocupaciones como Parque Gezi/Plaza Taksim en 2013 y 2014, Occupy London y Occupy Frankfurt. De la misma manera, la autora ha desarrollado mesas de trabajo y debate con los grupos sociales de Take the Square, Contested Cities en Londres y Madrid, Think Space en Zagreb, Alternative Banking Group en Nueva York, Spatial Agency, Working Activism en Londres, el taller Design and social change en Tokio, y organizado el simposio internacional Amsterdam+Tokyo en Tokio. Con la información y la experiencia obtenidas, se ha elaborado una documentación gráfica, tanto fotográfica como con dibujos y cartografías en colaboración con distintos grupos de investigación como el Center for Spatial Research de la Universidad de Columbia en Nueva York, el Centre for Research Architecture de la Goldsmiths University of London, considerado el programa History and Critical Thinking de la Architectural Association, y CO+LABO de Keio University. Dentro de un proceso activo, esta información ha permitido la construcción de una serie de teorías espaciales que, a través de la práctica espacial, han conducido el trabajo hacia otra segunda estrategia.
Dentro de la estrategia de investigación teórica, el conocimiento operacional ha sido construido en base a la práctica espacial. Las diferentes acciones y procesos desarrollados en las etapas del trabajo de campo, el cual ha sido continuo y a la vez centrífugo, ha dilucidado los procesos en términos espaciales durante y posterior a las revoluciones. Así, se ha creado un estado de “acción- investigación”, donde la exploración y las experimentaciones directas e indirectas de estos acontecimientos, han provocado nuevas relaciones entre prácticas espaciales, objetos y estructuras, formando un nuevo paisaje arquitectónico urbano. La práctica se ha convertido en investigación, el objeto se ha transformado en sujeto y se ha unido los diferentes estados de activista, arquitecto e investigador, en el término que se ha denominado “arquivista.”
En este proceso centrífugo, distintas disciplinas han influido y construido la investigación – la sociología, la antropología y la política – relacionadas con aspectos espaciales de las revoluciones y creando parámetros transdisciplinares e interconectados. Debido al carácter contemporáneo de la investigación, se han incorporado continuamente aspectos específicos de los ámbitos indicados previamente y de nuevos campos, los cuales han afectado y modificado el desarrollo de la misma.
36 Left Unity es un partido político británico creado en 2013.
13 Por este motivo se ha aplicado una metodología cualitativa37, la cual utiliza métodos múltiples para tener una aproximación y enfoque del objeto y sujeto de investigación en el estado más natural posible. De este modo, ha sido posible interpretar y deducir los fenómenos causados y provocados durante estos acontecimientos, lo que a su vez ha cuestionado y alterado continuamente los procesos y los planteamientos realizados previamente. A través de esta metodología cualitativa, se ha realizado un énfasis en la exploración de las situaciones complejas de las revoluciones, posibilitando la visualización de las relaciones entre los espacios, los objetos, los sujetos y los tiempos, y conformando a su vez acciones iterativas. Debido al gran número de agentes implicados durante estos acontecimientos, se ha realizado constantemente una recolección de datos, una interpretación de procesos, y una construcción de teorías que, en varios puntos de la investigación, han tendido a presentar conclusiones que necesitaban ser exploradas en ámbitos más deductivos. Para ello, se han establecido cuatro fases de investigación:
Fase 0. Atlas espacial denominado “Revolution Squares” de las distintas revoluciones materializadas durante 2011. A través de la representación gráfica, ha sido posible visibilizar ciertas características espaciales de los lugares donde se realizaron las ocupaciones: la forma geométrica de las plazas, parques y bulevares, la organización de mobiliario urbano, la superficie de lugares abiertos y cerrados, los materiales, la ubicación, niveles y altura de edificaciones, etc. Esta información ha sido desarrollada durante el primer año dentro de la fase de formación, permitiendo el análisis y la elaboración de teorías espaciales que estructuran la investigación. Esta fase ha sido el primer encuentro con un contexto construido por medio del cual se ha producido un entendimiento de la situación espacial de las revoluciones. De este modo, se ha aplicado un método inductivo, el cual organiza características espaciales y políticas de los acontecimientos a través de la observación, el registro, el análisis, y la clasificación de los datos obtenidos.
Fase 1. Una vez obtenido el atlas de “Revolution Squares”, se han planteado dos aspectos que guían el trabajo: lo político y lo espacial. Debido a que las ocupaciones de 2011 son movimientos sociales heterogéneos, la protesta se ha extendido en diversos campos como lo político, la gobernanza, la economía, y lo social. Por este motivo, se ha elaborado un mapa que es complejo por incluir diferentes campos de aproximación y práctica, para lo cual se han realizado entrevistas a activistas, a organizadores y a grupos implicados en las revoluciones, se han construido cartografías y documentación gráfica, y relacionado teorías y conceptos sociales y arquitectónicos. Esta fase se ha convertido en una plataforma múltiple y analítica que incluye distintas perspectivas dentro del trabajo de campo, identificando diversos factores que afectan la elaboración de teorías generadas a partir de la observación, y trazando varias líneas de aproximación teóricas. Esta situación ha
37 Esta metodología cualitativa está basada en la publicación Strategies for Qualitative Inquiry, de Norman Denzin e Yvonna Lincoln
14 generado por un lado la apertura hacia otras disciplinas como la política, la sociología y el diseño urbano, y por otro lado consolidado conceptos y prácticas específicas dentro de la investigación.
Fase 2. Durante el desarrollo de esta investigación han aparecido continuamente nuevas revoluciones. Por ello, se han incluido tres ocupaciones: Gezi Park de Estambul en 2013, Umbrella Movement de Hong Kong en 2014, y Miyashita Park en Tokio, 2011. Se ha realizado un desplazamiento hacia la primera localidad donde se ha podido ejecutar, capturar, experimentar y producir una revolución contemporánea in-situ. Esto ha permitido la elaboración de conceptualizaciones cualitativas, las cuales visualizan situaciones sociales y espaciales que hasta entonces habían permanecido ocultas. Se han estructurado entrevistas con contenido más profundo y específico, y se han producido imágenes experienciales, las cuales se convierten en herramientas de investigación para representar la experiencia personal dentro de situaciones complejas. Es una fase de práctica metodológica constituida por las dos primeras fases, empleando interpretaciones y significados dentro de un contexto específico pero que comparte prácticas y tácticas previamente exploradas. Es decir, se ha aplicado un método deductivo por exponer conceptos y demostrar relaciones previamente presentadas, lo cual ha otorgado un soporte teórico para la construcción de nuevas teorías espaciales.
Fase 3. Esta es una fase realizada a lo largo de toda la investigación, la cual incluye el desplazamiento a distintos lugares donde se desarrollan o se han desarrollado las ocupaciones contemporáneas, así como también lugares donde se encuentran grupos de investigación que trabajan con temas afines. Se aplican las dos estrategias iniciales: trabajo de campo y teoría a partir de la práctica, lo que a su vez permite una investigación transversal y procesual. Esta red de trabajo se desarrolla en los siguientes lugares:
Nueva York / noviembre 2013 _Columbia University Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation Center for Spatial Research Este grupo de investigación vincula el diseño, la arquitectura, el urbanismo, las ciencias humanas y data science. De manera interdisciplinar, se realizan investigaciones de tipo activas y prácticas, con visualización de datos en diferentes contextos urbanos durante un mes bajo siguiendo el trabajo de la directora del centro, Laura Kurgan. Esta estancia ha sido principalmente de recolección de datos, investigación en el archivo de la escuela de arquitectura, aprendizaje y entendimiento de herramientas de visualización espacial, y asistencia a seminarios y conversaciones sobre temas relacionados con la investigación.
15 International Affairs Department Alternative Banking Group Este grupo se dedica a la investigación del sistema financiero y su difusión adecuada para el 99% mediante las mejoras en las regulaciones financieras. Evalúa y fomenta opciones financieras alternativas dentro de la actual disfunción del sistema e inspira al activismo y la participación pública. Se ha asistido a seminarios y se ha colaborado en mesas de trabajo con Suresh Naidu, Profesor de “Economics and International and Public Affairs”.
_Occupy Wall Street – OccupyWallSt.org Es un movimiento social generado durante la ocupación de Zuccotti Park en Nueva York entre los meses de septiembre y noviembre de 2011. Con este grupo se han realizado entrevistas a activistas y miembros del grupo, así como también se ha participado en debates y discusiones junto a Micah M. White, PhD en Media and Communication de la “European Graduate School”, y Priscilla Grim, co- fundadora del grupo “We Are The 99 Percent” y co-fundadora y editora de “Occupied Wall Street Journal”. Se han obtenido documentos escritos y gráficos elaborados durante la ocupación en Zuccotti Park en 2011, así como también videos y audios.
_OccuEvolve Es un movimiento social derivado de Occupy Wall Street que funciona como un centro de pensamiento, información, empoderamiento, acción y difusión a nivel de comunidad local. Se han realizado entrevistas, asistido a mesas de trabajo, colaborado con el trabajo gráfico y de difusión, y participado en la construcción de estructuras realizadas durante la ocupación de 2011.
_New School Parsons Vera List Center for Art and Politics Este grupo de investigación identifica la urgencia espacial con las necesidades sociales de manera política, por lo que es interdisciplinar al incluir a diferentes investigadores como artistas, estudiantes, activistas, intelectuales públicos y dirigentes políticos y culturales. Se ha desarrollado el trabajo de recolección de datos y archivo, asistido a debates y a seminarios junto a Annie Shaw, profesora, y se ha desarrollado mesas de trabajo con Pablo Bustinduy, doctor en filosofía.
Londres / marzo 2014 – enero 2016 _Goldsmiths University of London Centre for Research Architecture Este centro multidisciplinar se basa en plataformas culturales, políticas, conflictivas y de derechos humanos mediante la búsqueda de herramientas urbanas y de su práctica por parte de los ciudadanos. Durante dos años y bajo la dirección de Eyal Weizman, director del centro, se ha utilizado el método teoría a partir de la práctica [practice-led-theory] para promover procesos
16 investigativos arquitectónicos que envuelven una crítica radical en la naturaleza de las características inherentes de la arquitectura relacionadas con las revoluciones sociales. Por medio de lecturas, seminarios, congresos, mesas redondas, y práctica de docencia, se ha constituido la base teórica de la investigación de manera multidisciplinar. _Occupy London Es un grupo social parte del Movimiento Occupy de 2011 con base en Londres. Utiliza los mismos fundamentos y promueve asambleas ciudadanas que respondan o promuevan respuestas contra el sistema político y financiero. Se han realizado entrevistas a activistas y miembros del grupo, obtenido documentación fotográfica y escrita sobre el movimiento y la ocupación de 2011 – 2012, asistido a debates y mesas de trabajo, colaborado con la organización de eventos, y desarrollado prácticas espaciales de apropiación de espacios públicos.
_Architectural Association School of Architecture History and Critical Thinking Este programa promueve métodos de investigación colaborativos interdisciplinares. El objetivo es conectar contemporáneamente proyectos arquitectónicos dentro de ámbitos históricos, culturales y políticos para explorar parámetros arquitectónicos y urbanos. Siguiendo el trabajo de Marina Lathouri, directora del departamento, se ha buscado producir un conocimiento relacionado con las prácticas espaciales desarrolladas durante las revoluciones y posteriormente a ellas, con una aproximación a las distintas culturas públicas de las localidades de las ocupaciones con respecto a la arquitectura. Durante un año, se ha asistido a seminarios, grupos de trabajo, mesas redondas, se han realizado presentaciones públicas y práctica docente.
Tokio / diciembre 2016 – septiembre 2017 _Keio University Faculty of Science and Technology CO+LABO Es un grupo de investigación especializado en el estudio, análisis y desarrollo de herramientas arquitectónicas urbanas y teorías aplicadas. Este grupo realiza representaciones de espacios establecidos con el fin de responder a las prácticas humanas en parámetros arquitectónicos. Durante seis meses junto a Darko Radovič, director del grupo, se elabora un proyecto colaborativo el cual experimentará en Tokio, las relaciones espaciales arquitectónicas generadas durante la investigación. Asimismo, se realiza práctica de docencia y se desarrollan artículos colaborativos y personales.
17 Estructura de la tesis
La investigación se estructura en cinco capítulos.
Capítulo 1. En este capítulo se introducen los acontecimientos arquitectónicos seleccionados. A través de una exploración de las revoluciones sociales producidas entre 2011 y 2014, se realiza el atlas de “Revolution Squares” y se seleccionan tres casos de estudio complementarios en cuanto a sus aspectos políticos y espaciales, Plaza Tahrir, Occupy Wall Street, y Parque Gezi/Plaza Taksim, que se analizan y establecen la base para el desarrollo del resto de la investigación. Mediante un estudio histórico de la situación política y urbana de cada caso, se realizan cartografías que visibilizan esas condiciones.
Capítulo 2. Se exponen las relaciones y las potencialidades del espacio virtual en la creación y desarrollo de la revolución social contemporánea. Las plataformas digitales y las redes sociales se presentan como mediadores y provocadores de estrategias espaciales urbanas, alterando los modelos establecidos de la ciudad y afectando el uso de los espacios públicos. Con mapas y documentación gráfica, se representan los patrones de comportamiento en el espacio virtual y su impacto en el espacio físico para plantear estrategias de proyectación espacial.
Capítulo 3. Se produce la base de una plataforma teórica a partir de la práctica y el trabajo de campo. Se construyen conceptos y relaciones donde el cuerpo y su movimiento en el espacio, el espacio público de la ocupación, y el paisaje arquitectónico urbano configuran la parte teórica de la investigación. El análisis se realiza según los aspectos arquitectónicos y teóricos, presentando nuevos parámetros que incluyen diferentes disciplinas como la teoría social, el diseño urbano, la economía, y el campo político, como un solo cuerpo hacia un proceso arquitectónico.
Capítulo 4. Plantea nociones teóricas y prácticas con el objetivo de configurar el concepto de la Espacialidad Radical. Al ensamblar características y reacciones espaciales durante las ocupaciones, se presenta un conjunto de nuevos espacios que responden a las dinámicas sociales contemporáneas de manera disidente. “La Arquitectura de la Ocupación” establece respuestas arquitectónicas realizadas durante las revoluciones seleccionadas, adaptando la lucha urbana histórica con el espacio virtual y la transformación del paisaje arquitectónico urbano. Mediante un planteamiento teórico–práctico, se presentan una serie de estrategias arquitectónicas como estados temporales, constituyendo la base para formar la Espacialidad Radicalidad.
Capítulo 5. Presenta las consecuencias espaciales de estas ocupaciones en forma de regulaciones urbanas a nivel global. En este capítulo, se consideran las normativas urbanas de diferentes ciudades que han delimitado y proyectado el diseño arquitectónico de espacios públicos, la
18 creciente privatización de los mismos, y cómo éstas direccionan una homogeneización general del paisaje construido. Con base en Tokio, esta exploración se desarrolla mediante la visibilización ocupaciones en el espacio virtual y físico, y se presenta la formación del espacio post-público, un dispositivo arquitectónico urbano que se activa en la ciudad contemporánea y que se extiende como un nuevo proyecto de investigación.
INTRODUCTION
The Arab Spring, the Occupy Movement, los Indignados, Gezi Park, the Umbrella Movement, Syntagma Square, and so on, are some of the most representative contemporary occupations, which conduct important changes and open debate in fields like politics and economics. However, they are not usually related to the transformation of the architectural urban landscape. Since 2011 and as a consequence of these social phenomena, different local governments begin to formulate, propose and execute legal measures that seek the control of public spaces. One of them is the privatization of public spaces, in which private investment is in charge of creating, maintaining, and managing these spaces that are demanded especially in city centres. Moreover, a manual of architectural design has been created, which presents parameters of spatial and urban design, favouring visual control, movement of people and objects, and causing a homogenization of architectural urban landscapes.
Besides, contemporary occupations formulate and produce new processes of architectural design. One of the main methods is the inclusion of the virtual space as a physical space activator, both in its design and in its production, 38 establishing a new contemporary public space. In fact, contemporary occupations are created and organized in the virtual space, generating new variables of action and making visible the inescapable need to be materialized in the public space: at the moment of occupying public spaces, these movements create a field of energy that transforms temporarily the architectural urban landscape. Through a series of collective micro-events, a spatiality [space + time] is introduced, it responds in real time to spatial practices, and can be described as dissident because it disturbs the pre-established order of public spaces. This spatiality is a mediator of social dynamics and in a temporary mode; it blurs the limits between private and public, external and internal, legal and illegal [establishing the alegal]. Hence, these social movements called “architectural events,” generate and develop a series of tools of spatial, heterogeneous and dynamic relations.
38 This statement refers to Henri Lefebvre’s “The Production of the Space” as a complex social state that affects spatial practices and perceptions.
19 Three main case studies are taken in order to carry out this research: Tahrir Square in Cairo, Zuccotti Park in New York, and Gezi Park/Taksim Square in Istanbul, but two cases will be included along this process (Umbrella Movement in Hong Kong and Miyashita Park in Tokyo). These events are chosen due to their political and spatial character. The first case is a social uprising in 2011 against an authoritarian regime governed by president Hosni Mubarak, who regulated continuously an "Emergency Law"39 exercised for thirty years: an occupation is produced in a roundabout for eighteen days. The second case, Occupy Wall Street in New York, a movement that defies the capital system, was born as a result of the financial crisis of 2007-2008: the occupation is materialized in fifty-nine days. The last event contains similarities with the previous two: Turkey has a democratically elected government but at the time of the social uprising, it has been in power for twelve years. The protest starts as a small environmental occupation in order to prevent the demolition of a park in the city centre as part of an urban plan. Soon, it becomes a general social uprising against the government and the regulations adopted during the last years: the occupation lasts nineteen days and takes place in a roundabout and a park.
These architectural events present different mechanisms of activation and deactivation of intermittent spaces, containing dissident, collective and temporal practices. By including the virtual space as part of contemporary social dynamics, a new kind of agora and a network of micro-cities are created, which adapt and transform themselves according to occupiers’ needs. The dynamism and temporality generate new meanings and uses of everyday objects, which in a state of exception, the appropriation of public spaces become radical subjects that alter the spatial configuration. This situation implies a transformation from banal to extraordinary, from fixed to dynamic, from permanent to temporary, extracting capabilities and characteristics that reinvent the urban territory. With light, mobile and portable structures, changeable in aesthetics and functions, projected in the physical and virtual space, local and global, space, bodies and objects that compose the urban architectural landscape are [de] [re] territorialized. A configuration is projected with the body that transforms the space temporarily, emerging the Radical Spatiality.
State of the Art
The contemporary social movements of this research: Tahrir Square,40 Occupy Wall Street, and Gezi Park and Taksim Square [Gezi/Taksim], have been the source of a large number of investigations in
39 The “Emergency Law No. 162, 1958” was applied in Egypt after the “War of Six Days” (Arab – Israel). The law was suspended for eighteen months in 1980 but it was reinserted after the assassination of the president Anwar Sadar in 1981. Since the and until 2012, this law has been applied and ruled in the entire country. 40 “Tahrir Square,” or “Egyptian Revolution” are the common names of the social revolution developed between January and February 2011 in Egypt. However, “Tahrir Square” is recognized as the occupation done in this plaza in Cairo, becoming the main stage of this revolution.
20 different disciplines such as social, political, economic theory, planning, and urban design. Regarding to the architectural approach, these movements have led to a state of general concern that question spatial design strategies, which, although not explored in depth, have opened platforms for dialogue and interdisciplinary debate.
In the last decade, several authors, academics, research groups and studies of architecture have looked towards public spaces, to their definition and current use that, unlike ‘60s and ‘70s’ social movements, these are created in the virtual space, provoking the production of new spatial practices. From 2011, research related to social movements has increased in different centres, being Tahrir Square and Occupy Wall Street the main analysed occupations. In this sense, the publication "Planning for Protest" 41 brings together twelve cases of contemporary protests, including Tahrir Square and Puerta del Sol, and presents spatial parameters and architectural tactics used during the development of revolutions. This publication evaluates the role of architects by representing visually these social movements from different perspectives as graphic contributions of protests. In many of these cases, the reactions are the alteration and creation of new urban elements, although there is nor an analysis or response from the architectural design at the moment of protest and its possible spatial consequences.
Regarding to social and spatial relations, urban geographers are more involved than architects in the investigation of social mobilization in urban centres; they make visible and theorize actions and urban conditions that affect the use of the city during revolutions. Erik Swyngedouw, professor of geography at University of Manchester, has defined the theoretical variables about the radical use of the city and the political design as an urban process. In his work "Urban Redevelopment and Social Polarization in the City,"42 Swyngedouw makes a cross-sectional analysis of thirteen urban plans focusing on the mechanisms of social polarization, exclusion and integration, and relates them to the action and influence of local social movements, financial market, the production and distribution system, and socio-cultural processes. He indicates the organizational change of the city and its dependence on local actions, and how they come to affect the space at different levels, from real estate projects within traditional neighbourhoods, to general territorial plans. In addition, in his publication "The Ground Zero of Politics: Musing on the Post-Political Polis,"43 Swyngedouw emphasizes the relations of neoliberal forms of governance that affect the physical state of cities and the need for creative and experimental works done by the community. Swyngedouw also investigates the relations of the "Squares of the Revolution," like emblematic and symbolic spaces that are essential for the construction of the social identity. He approaches to the social policy
41 Allen, Ben, et al. Planning for Protests. An Associated Project of the Lisbon Architecture Triennale, 2013. 42 Moualert, Frank, y Swyngedouw, Erik. “Urban Redevelopment and Social Polarization in the City” en Final Report for European Commission, DG XII. Lille: IFRESI, 1999 43 Swyngedouw, Erik. “The Ground-Zero of Politics: Musings on the Post-Political Polis” in New Geographies, Vol. 2, 2009
21 intervention for the transformation of public spaces as egalitarian and equitable, and references to philosophers such as Alain Badiou, Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, who include social concepts. In fact, several authors from different disciplines who base their work on socio-spatial notions developed during the ‘60s and ‘70s, repeat this method of referring to philosophers and philosophical concepts. The leading author on urban spatial terms is Henri Lefebvre,44 who defines concepts like "the right to the city" and "the production of social space." These concepts are influenced by the Parisian student movement May 68, and therefore are widely referred in analyses of the Arab Spring and the Occupy Movement especially because of its similarities with mass protest, global repercussions, and disobedient [civil] appropriation of public spaces. One of the main authors that references Lefebvre's work is David Harvey,45 who also discusses collective behaviours in urban spaces and vice versa. In his publication "Rebel Cities,"46 Harvey relates the utopian thinking of the 2011 revolutions and analyses current cities as centres of capital accumulation as well as necessary spaces for political practices. He analyses the Paris Commune of 1871, Occupy Wall Street and the London protests of 2011 as urban anti-capitalist resistances. On the other hand, the work of Jana Carp47 entitled "Ground-Truthing. Representations of Social Space,” references to the criticism and theory of Harvey and Lefebvre, and searches the representation of social space. Carp presents spatial appropriation interventions in urban planning that transmit actions and social participation as open methods that recognize the discontinuous and unquantifiable links of a common place.
In relation to encampments as geopolitical spaces, organizations and biopolitical strategies, these are linked to Giorgio Agamben, who explores them as a state of emergency and concentration camps. Agamben’s work results in an expansion of terms related to space and violence in architecture with regard to ‘war on terror,’ such as the Bagram area base in Afghanistan or the Guantanamo detention centre. 48 On the other hand, Paul Virilio49 emphasizes the political power of speed like pattern of revolutions in the urban space. In his book “Speed and Politics,”50 Virilio presents speed as the engine of destruction through technology developed by a militarized society. In "A Landscape of Events,"51 with Bernard Tschumi's introduction, Virilio describes the cultural
44 Henri Lefebvre (1901 – 1991), French philosopher and sociologist. His most important publications are “The Critique of Everyday Life,” “The Production of Space,” and “The Urban Revolution.” 45 David Harvey is a geographer by the University of Cambridge and professor of Anthropology and Geography at the City University of New York. His work proposes the concept “right to the city.” 46 Harvey, David. Rebel Cities. Nueva York: Verso, 2013 47 Jana Carp, researcher and professor at Appalachian State University. She investigates urban planning, production of spatial theory, sustainable development and collaborative methods. 48 See Giaccara Paolo y Minca Claudio. “Topographies/topologies of the camp: Auschwitz as a spatial threshold.” Political Geography, Vol. 30 no. 1, pp. 3-12, 2011. Gregory, Derek, The Colonial Present. Oxford: Blackwell, 2004 49 Paul Virilio is a philosopher, urbanist, and cultural theorist whose interests are technology as a relationship of speed and power. He bases his work on architectural, art, city and military aspects. 50 Virilio, Paul. Speed and Politics [Vitesse et Politique]. Los Angeles: Semiotext(e), 2006 [1977]. 51 Virilio, Paul. A Landscape of Events. Cambridge: The MIT Press, 2000
22 chaos of the 1980s and 1990s in which urban disorientation, war machines, and the acceleration of events form an acceleration of the reality. In this sense and alongside Spinoza's notions, there is an intensity that affects spatial situations that he denominates spatio-temporal mechanics of agents of expansion. In addition, Alain Badiou52 in his book "Being and Event,"53 rediscovers this state as an 'event,' where bodies are revolutionary vectors of the atomized space.
Regarding to the inclusion of the virtual space in the creation and management of social movements, Manuel Castells54 investigates the relationships and dynamics that social networks produce in contemporary protests, becoming major factors that mark differences and generate new aspects within urban centres. In his publication "Networks of Outrage and Hope: Social Movements in the Internet Age," 55 Castells indicates the social need to feel ‘connected’ to others, increasing subsequently the space of action in the city. In one chapter, he includes the revolutions of Tunisia and the Arab Spring, as well as the Occupy Movement and los Indignados, and identifies them within a dimension of independent online and offline action. When he refers to these revolutions as rhizomatic systems, he does not refer to Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari; however, Castells insists that he is offering an initial hypothesis for discussion and that it would be anticipated to draw a clear or definitive position. Moreover, Derek Gregory's publication "Tahrir: politics, publics and performances of Space,"56 questions power relations with the new social media that activates the public sphere. Through the performance action in Tahrir, Gregory57 views the collectivity as a point of spatial attention, as a ritual form between something new and at the same time precarious. He links his work to Judith Butler58 and the notion of performance to make visible graphically and narratively, governmental actions in a quest to tame the radical political actions in Cairo. The main focus of his work is the operations in social networks by the government in an attempt to control society, and by protestors to develop and organize protests.
Nadir Lahiji59 is one of the architects who critics the state of architecture as an obstacle to social policy. In his book "Architecture Against the Post-political,"60 Lahiji brings together a series of
52 Alain Badiou, French philosopher that works extensively in concepts such as truth, being, subject and event, and describes them as a repetition of modernity in a place of postmodernism. 53 Badiou, Alain. Being and Event. Londres: Bloomsbury Academic, 2013 54 Manuel Castells is a Spanish sociologist, professor of City Regional Planning at the University of California, Berkeley. His research involves globalization, communication, and the society of information. 55 Castells, Manuel. “Networks of Outrage and Hope: Social Movements in the Internet Age”. Cambridge: 2012 56 Gregory, Derek. “Tahrir: Politics, Public and Performances of Space” en Middle East Critique, Vol. 22, no. 3, 2013, pp: 235 – 246 57 Derek Gregory is an English geographer, professor of Geography at the University of British Columbia, His work and research include topics of political communication, militarization of society, cultural geography, and explores the theory of the place, space, and landscape. 58 Judith Butler is a philosopher and theorist from the United States. Her work influences fields of politics, ethics, feminism, and performance. 59 Nadir Lahiji is an architect and critic theorist, professor at the University of Canberra, Australia.
23 essays that question the role of the architectural project in the face of contemporary political practice and urban aesthetics. Focusing on specific cities such as Warsaw, Barcelona and Tokyo, among others, he presents the theoretical discourse of contemporary architecture and its depoliticization in the academic field, while attempting to reclaim the space lost in the critical project of architecture. The depoliticization in the architectural discipline, according to Lahiji, began in the last decade of the 20th century, when the radical criticism in architecture was turning away until being almost abandoned; it was a situation where the political as a subject was separated from the architectural project. In this sense, 2011 revolutions bring back the radical criticism, including concepts and spatial relationships in the exploration of architectural design processes. Lahiji establishes first an approximation to the project in order to fill the gap between politics and architecture, and includes art and aesthetics. This work was elaborated at the International Symposium "Architecture and the Political" held in Lebanon in November 2011, coinciding to Occupy Wall Street in Zuccotti Park.
Furthermore, Nikolaus Hirsch61 and Markus Miessen's62 "What is a Critical Spatial Practice?"63 brings a number of writers, theorists, architects, philosophers, and artists in 2012, who present their understanding of the social phenomenon from the previous year. This series of writings and reflections parallels the political conditions that point out at architecture and its relation to res publica. This publication is an urban exploration of spatial practices executed during the occupations of 2011, in the form of essays and writings rather than graphic or theoretical documentation.
In 2011, Saskia Sassen64 in her article "Global Street: Making the Political,"65 she sees contemporary social movements as a symbolic occupation of what is subsequently called the "Global Street." She places the street as a real public space beyond the square and the park. “The street,” she points out, is a space where new social and political forms could be fabricated instead of being a space of ritual routines. Sassen analyses social aspects within the political and spatial dimensions of the Arab Spring, captures the historical qualities of places, and observes how these spaces are executors to make visible and to hide social inequities. With regard to communication, Sassen introduces Occupy Wall Street within the limits of social struggle and includes the neoliberal character of the state that seeks total social and spatial control. Within the urban space, Sassen points at the
60 Lahiji, Nadir. Architecture against the Post-political: Reclaiming the Critical Project. Londres: Routledge, 2014 61 Nikolaus Hirsch, architect and professor at the Architectural Association, London, and the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia. He works in multimedia, art and landscape platforms. 62 Markus Miessen, German architect, professor at the University of Southern California. 63 Hirsch, Nikolaus y Miessen, Markus. What is a Critical Spatial Practice? Berlin: Sternberg Press, 2012 64 Saskia Sassen is a German-Dutch sociologist that works in topics of globalization and human migration. She is professor at Columbia University. 65 Sasses, Saskia, “Global Street: Making the Political” in Globalizations, Vol. 7, no. 5, pp. 573 – 579, 2011
24 physical state of the city as an obstacle to the social movement and, focuses on contemporary communicative technologies as actors in the territorialisation of both digital and physical spaces. She concludes with an interaction of these platforms as delineators of network action processes for spatial occupation.
At the University of California at Berkeley, the “Inclusive Cities” research group conducts studies in cities such as Medellin, Nairobi, Berkeley and Cairo on issues related to social movements, citizen participation, social urbanism and right to the city. Nezar AlSayyad66 presents components of social and urban cases from the Egyptian Revolution and in his article "The Virtual Square: Urban Space, Media and the Egyptian Uprising,"67 he rewrites the narratives of Egypt's 2011 revolution through social networks. In addition, the research centre "Cities" of London School of Economics, focuses its work on cities, societies, governance, and contexts, and alongside the research group "Theatrum Mundi" founded by Richard Sennett68 in collaboration with New York University, the research is established as an international multidisciplinary network that relates cultural and spatial practices in cities. The "Spatial Information Design Lab" (currently Centre for Spatial Research) at Columbia University, investigates current city status, architecture, humanities, design, and information science. At the University of Queens, Belfast, the School of Architecture's "Spatial Narratives of Revolt and Performance" research project, in collaboration with the Japan Foundation London, study and decode the field of action of social movements in modern cities and their public spaces, especially Tahrir Square, Occupy Movement in London, Taksim Square in Istanbul and the protests in Shinjuku, Tokyo. The research centre "CO+LABO," University of Keio, Tokyo, explores different forms and techniques of appropriation of the space with respect to Lefebvre’s "right to the city" in the present city. In an interdisciplinary platform, this group develops projects that focus on qualities of urban spaces through interactions with the body, individually or collectively, by producing space and social conflicts.
At the University of Barcelona, the research group "CRIT, Creativitat, Innovació i Transformació Urbana" is a multidisciplinary team that studies urban development and its impact on economy and society. Marc Pradel, a member of this group, works on social movements that have been generated in the Berlin district Kreuzberg, and analyses the transformation of urban space and local social. At the Universitat Pompeu Fabra, the research group “Political Theory” has collaborated with the development of publications such as "Democràcia, politica i societat. Homenatge a Rosa Virós,"69
66 Nezar AlSayyad is professor of Architecture, Planning, Urban Design, and Urban History in the University of California, Berkeley. 67 AlSayyad, Nezar. “The Virtual Square: Urban Space, Media and the Egyptian Uprising” in Harvard International Review 33, 2012 68 Richard Sennett is a British sociologist, professor at London School of Economics and New York University. He studies the links between cities and society, and the effects of urban individualism in the modern world. 69 Jordana, Jacinto, et al. Democràcia, política i societat. Homenatge a Rosa Virós. Barcelona: Universitat Pompeu Fabra, 2012.
25 which includes several articles about social movements such as 15M and Occupy Wall Street, and their impact caused in cities. At the Technical School of Architecture of the Polytechnic University of Madrid, Álvaro Sevilla Buitrago, PhD of the Department of Urban Planning and Territory, in “Planning Planning and History - Spatial Justice,” has carried out research and studies related to 15M and Lefebvre’s “production of the space,” the development of cities and social processes, and the evolution of territorial forms related to capitalism.
All these references make visible a growing interest and need to investigate in a wider mean the relationships with contemporary social movements and the spatial practices in current cities, and their effect produced in the space, economy, society, politics, and urban development.
Background
Since 2011, different social manifestations have begun to be related among traditional and alternative media, and public spaces. They have provoked significant impacts in the contemporary architectural urban landscape, reason why many scholars and researchers have linked these movements to those produced in the late 1960s and early 1970s. However, they cannot be comparable, not only because of the different causes and consequences they have had, but also because they have been developed in dissimilar states. On the one hand, the current reaction from local governments is more tolerant to social demonstrations, partly because of the work of various NGOs, many of which did not exist in the ‘60s and ‘70s. Organizations such as Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and the United Nations stand as observers and representatives of human rights and freedom of expression. On the other hand, contemporary revolutions include the virtual space in its conception and development, which has led to different practices and spatial relationships from those of the second half of the twentieth century.
During the initial phase of contemporary revolutions, they generated a general euphoria, especially in social networks and alternative media, and provoked different forms of appropriation of the urban space. During these events, social networks have been presented as a network of information that connects intensity and transforms public spaces collectively. In this situation, there are two urban notions: the right to the city and the new conception of the public, promoting research on social and political theory, and how revolutions represent and were represented in several social groups. Due to this approach, the architectural research of these events has been mainly anecdotal and descriptive, constituting above all a graphic and photographic narrative of revolutions. In this sense, there are different situations that could not be comparable in architectural terms but in social theories.
26 The graphic representation of social revolutions such as Puerta del Sol in Madrid, Tahrir Square in Cairo, Zuccotti Park in New York, and Syntagma Square in Athens, has been developed in two aspects: urban and virtual. In the urban scope, architectural tools such as cartography, axonometric and plans have been used to represent them. The collective Ecosistema Urbano70 based in Madrid, developed a series of cartographies representing the occupation in Puerta del Sol. Meanwhile MAS Studio71 mapped different public-private spaces in New York, related to Occupy Wall Street. In addition, the “Cairo Observer”72 platform produced graphic material of Tahrir Square and its changes during the revolution. In addition, “Occupy Gezi”73 generated a digital archive with plans and drawings of the occupation in Gezi Park in 2013. These groups represent graphically occupations in public spaces. In the second case, there are maps about the use of social networks during revolutions, especially Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. The intensity and speed of information propagated in social networks has formed a file of visual evidence of public spaces in real time. These spatial approximations have been made from an observer point, not from an actor or producer; thus, the spatial understanding produced on these revolutions contains a character of distance. To be part of an occupation in the public space such as Tahrir Square or Gezi Park, it requires a character of commitment, solidarity and community with social movements. This personal character has given new qualities and information about the spatial understanding of contemporary social revolutions.
However, few architects have deepened in the study of these movements and the spatial consequences. In fact, geographers, sociologists and philosophers like Slavoj Zizek, Alain Badiou, Saskia Sassen, and David Harvey, among others, are the ones that have studied this spatial phenomenon and its effects in cities. It is a situation that indicates a superficial approach in architectural terms with respect to social movements, presenting a need to understand the new public architecture through critical spatial practices during the revolutions, and motivating subsequently the generation of this thesis.
Hypothesis
Historically, social revolutions have generated social, economic and political changes. Contemporary revolutions, unlike previous ones, are created and organized in the virtual space through social networks, causing changes in these fields and generating new social and spatial
70 Ecosistema Urbano is a collective based in Madrid, formed by architects and urban designers that operate in fields of architecture, urbanism, engineering, and sociology. 71 MAS Studio is an architectural and urban design studio based in Chicago. It works in a multidisciplinary way, involving research, architectural projects, publications, and exhibitions. 72 Cairo Observer is a digital platform that works in the architectural and urban scope of the historic Egypt. 73 Occupy Gezi is a digital, open and collective platform created during the protests of Istanbul in Gezi Park, 2013.
27 relationships. To the power of the multitude and the importance of public spaces, it is imperative to add the virtual space as a determining factor. The hypothesis in this thesis is that the virtual space through mobile applications, digital platforms, and social networks, develops mechanisms that form new states of action, which in the case of social movements generated between 2011 and 2014, provoke the inclusion of the virtual space in the physical space, creating a new contemporary public space. This space presents an absence of explicit hierarchies in a network management, making difficult to control and repress the movement of people and objects in the space, and creates collaborative-networked systems for the elaboration of urban strategies.
The spatial organization of the laces occupied in these revolutions, present some common characteristics and also singular aspects due to the political context and local history, among others. For this reason, these movements are analysed as equivalent social phenomena and as transformative events of space, extending the theoretical construction on spatial appropriations. This situation unfolds new architectural projection tools that act in the contemporary public space, susceptible to be used and transformed by any person, in a temporary and displaced means, since they are generated under new parameters and particular conditions previously unexplored. In this sense, a second hypothesis arises, which conducts to new architectural practices that respond and adapt themselves to contemporary social dynamics, contrasting with an urban architecture as a network of fixed and established spaces.
Furthermore, the architectural urban landscape has adopted a more controlled character that coincides with the following development of occupations. Public spaces such as plazas, parks, and streets in city centres, include in a more extended way in their physical and legal infrastructures, control mechanism of spaces and society. Thus, there is a third hypothesis, which claims relationships between contemporary occupations and their effects on the spatial and legal transformation of the architectural urban landscape.
Objectives
In the current context, contemporary occupations present new states of conflict in the city, which through architectural practices, alter and transform public spaces. With the inclusion of the virtual space as a generator and mediator of social movements, new dynamics are formed between society and the city, presenting spatial situations that have not previously occurred. This research aims to establish the architectural, urban, social and legal relationships that exist in contemporary social revolutions in relation to the current state of public spaces and the subsequent consequences produced there. To this end, the following specific objectives are proposed:
28 • To investigate how the virtual and physical space act in a unitary way in the development of architectural urban projection tools that are instantaneous and in-situ. • To present the obsolete state of cities’ infrastructures at the moment to respond to contemporary social practices. Similarly, to analyse the different spatial, physical and virtual strategies developed during these events that transform the obsolete state into active, dynamic and temporary platforms. • To detect new behaviours of public spaces, in order to elaborate architectural devices that respond to contemporary social dynamics and to current mechanisms of control of public spaces. • To determine the scope of transformation of the urban landscape, the meaning and use of public spaces produced by contemporary social revolutions, to understand the methods of spatial appropriation, and to propose criteria of urban architectural design.
Methodology
During 2011, the image of social protest has been constantly repeated on streets and screens around the world. Cities like Frankfurt, Tunisia, Madrid, Athens, New York, Tokyo, etc., have been scenarios of multiple manifestations that have become occupations of public spaces, surprising to own and strangers due to the reached scope and the speed of their resonance. These situations have presented certain characteristics and common variables, indispensable for carrying out a research work with a dual strategy of real-time fieldwork and practice-led-theory.
In order to obtain information in real space-time, in-situ data has been obtained, which allowed obtaining a general and detailed understanding of the spatial construction of the revolutions from inside, from their conception until their development as architectural events. Thus, this process has not followed a linear order but a centrifugal one, with interviews to activists and members of social organizations such as Occupy Wall Street, OccuEvolve, Occupy London, Occupy Gezi, Take the Square, Umbrella Movement, 15M, and Left Unity. 74 During the investigation, the author, collaborators and activists have developed performances and built structures in occupations such as Gezi Park/Taksim Square in 2013 and 2014, Occupy London, and Occupy Frankfurt. In addition, the author has developed working and discussion tables with social groups like Take the Square, Contested Cities in London and Madrid, Think Space in Zagreb, Alternative Banking Group in New York, Spatial Agency and Working Activism in London, Design and social change workshop in Tokyo, and organized the international symposium Amsterdam+Tokyo in Tokyo. With the information and experience gained, graphic documentation, photographs, drawings and cartographies have been produced in collaboration with different research groups such as the
74 Left Unity is a British political party created in 2013.
29 Center for Spatial Research of Columbia University in New York, the Centre for Research Architecture of Goldsmiths University of London, considered the History and Critical Thinking program of the Architectural Association, and CO+LABO, at Keio University. Within an active process, this information has allowed the construction of a series of spatial theories and through spatial practices that have led the work towards a second strategy. Within the theoretical research strategy, operational knowledge has been constructed based on spatial practices. The different actions and processes developed in the stages of the fieldwork have been continuous and at the same time centrifugal, elucidating processes in spatial terms during and after the revolutions. In this way, a state of "action-research" has been created, where the exploration and direct and indirect experiments have provoked new relations between spatial practices, objects and structures, forming a new urban architectural landscape. The practice has become research; the object has become a subject and has joined different states of activist, architect and researcher, in a term denominated "archivist."
In this centrifugal process, different disciplines have influenced and constructed the research: sociology, anthropology and politics, which are related to spatial aspects of revolutions and create transdisciplinary and interconnected parameters. Due to the contemporary nature of the research, specific aspects of the previously mentioned areas and new fields have been continuously incorporated, affecting and modifying its development. For this reason, a qualitative methodology75 has been applied, which uses multiple methods to have an approximation and approach to the object and subject of the investigation in the most natural state possible. In this way, it has been possible to interpret and deduce the phenomena caused and provoked during these events, which in turn have questioned and altered processes and approaches previously made. Through this qualitative methodology, an emphasis has been placed on the exploration of complex situations of revolutions, making possible the visualization of relations between spaces, objects, subjects and temporalities, and forming iterative actions. Due to the large number of agents involved during these events, data collection, process interpretation, and the construction of theories have been constantly carried out at various points of the research, which have ended to present conclusions that needed to be explored in a more deductive scope. To this end, four phases are established:
Phase 0. Spatial atlas "Revolution Squares" of different 2011 revolutions. Through a graphic representation, it is possible to visualize certain spatial characteristics of places where these revolutions are produced: the geometric form of squares, parks and boulevards, the organization of urban furniture, the surface of open and closed places, materials, location, levels and height of buildings, etc. This information is developed during the first year as a training phase, allowing the analysis and elaboration of spatial theories that structure the research. It is the first encounter with
75 Qualitative methodology is based on the publication “Strategies for Qualitative Inquiry,” by Norman Denzin and Yvonna Lincoln.
30 a context that defines and specifies through an understanding of the spatial situation of revolutions. In this sense, an inductive method is applied, organizing spatial and political characteristics of events through observation, recording, analysis, and classification of the data obtained.
Phase 1. Once obtained the atlas of "Revolution Squares," two aspects guide the work: the political and the spatial. Because 2011 occupations are heterogeneous social movements, protests are spread in diverse fields such as political, governance, economy, and social. Therefore, cartographies were produced, including different fields of approach and practice. The process contains interviews to activists, development of cartographies and elaboration of graphic documentation. This phase is a multiple and analytical platform that contains different perspectives within the fieldwork, identifying several factors that affect the development of theories generated from observation, and draws theoretical approaches. It opens up to other disciplines such as politics, sociology and urban design, and consolidates concepts and practices within research.
Phase 2. During the development of this research, new revolutions appear continuously presenting sometimes, new spatial aspects. Three occupations are included: Gezi Park in Istanbul in 2013, Hong Kong Umbrella Movement in 2014, and Miyashita Park in Tokyo, 2011. In Istanbul, it is possible to execute, capture, experiment and produce architectural practices in situ. It allows elaborating qualitative conceptualizations that visualize social and spatial situations that remained hidden. The interviews are deeper and include more specific content, structuring and experiencing images as research tools that represent personal experience within complex situations. It is a phase of methodological practices that are constituted by the first two phases, using interpretations and meanings within a specific context and sharing practices and tactics previously explored. It is a deductive method applied to expose concepts and to demonstrate relationships of theoretical support for the construction of new spatial theories.
Phase 3. This phase developed alongside the entire research, includes the displacement to the different places where revolutions were produced, and intends to interact and work collaboratively with research groups. The two initial strategies are applied: field work and practice-led-theory, which in turn permit a transversal and processual investigation. This network is developed in the following places:
New York / November 2013 _Columbia University Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation Center for Spatial Research This research group links design, architecture, urbanism, human sciences and data science. In an interdisciplinary way, active and practical research is carried out through data visualization in
31 different urban contexts following the work of Laura Kurgan, director of the centre. The work includes mainly data collection, archival research, learning and understanding spatial visualization tools, and assistance to seminars and conversations on research-related topics.
International Affairs Department Alternative Banking Group This group is dedicated to the investigation of the financial system and its adequate diffusion for the 99% through improvements on financial regulations. It evaluates and promotes alternative financial options in the current system dysfunction and inspires activism and public participation. The author attended to seminars and collaborated with Suresh Naidu, Professor of Economics and International and Public Affairs.
_Occupy Wall Street - OccupyWallSt.org These social movements are horizontal and leaderless, and were generated during the occupation of Zuccotti Park in New York. Interviews were conducted with activists and group members, as well as discussions and conversations with Micah M. White, PhD in Media and Communication at the European Graduate School, and Priscilla Grim, co-founder of the group "We Are The 99 Percent," and co-founder and editor of "Occupied Wall Street Journal." It is produced written and graphic documents, and videos and audios were obtained.
_OccuEvolve It is a social movement derived from Occupy Wall Street and functions as a centre of thought, information, empowerment, action and dissemination at the local community level. The author did interviews, attended to work tables, collaborated with graphic and broadcasting work, and participated in the construction of structures of the occupation.
_New School Parsons Vera List Center for Art and Politics This research group identifies spatial urgency with social needs in a political way, making it interdisciplinary by including different researchers as artists, students, activists, public intellectuals and political and cultural leaders. There was data collection and archive work, attendance to debates and seminars with professor Annie Shaw, and developed working tables with Pablo Bustinduy, PhD in philosophy.
32 London / March 2014 - January 2016 _Goldsmiths University of London Centre for Research Architecture This multidisciplinary centre is based on cultural, political, conflicting and human rights platforms through the search of urban tools and spatial practices. For two years and under the direction of Eyal Weizman, director of the centre, the theoretical-method used was a practice-led-theory in order to promote architectural research processes that involved radical critiques of the nature of architectural inherent characteristics related to social revolutions. Through lectures, seminars, congresses, round tables, and teaching practice, the theoretical basis of this research was established in a multidisciplinary manner.
_Occupy London It is a social group part of the 2011 Occupy Movement in London. It uses the same foundations and promotes citizen assemblies that respond and promote responses to the political and financial system. The author developed interviews with activists, obtained photographic and written documentation about the occupation, attended to debates and workshops, collaborated with the organization of events, and developed spatial practices.
_Architectural Association School of Architecture History and Critical Thinking This program promotes interdisciplinary collaborative research methods. The aim is to connect simultaneously architectural projects within historical, cultural and political spheres to explore architectural and urban parameters. Following the work of Marina Lathouri, director of the department, there was a production of knowledge related to spatial practices developed during and after the revolutions, approaching to different public cultures of occupations in relation to their architecture. For one year, the author attended to seminars, working groups, round tables, and public presentations.
Tokyo / December 2016 - September 2017 _Keio University Faculty of Science and Technology CO + LABO It is a research group specialized in the study, analysis and development of architectural urban tools and applied theories. This group performs representations of established spaces in order to respond to human practices in architectural parameters. For six months and alongside Darko Radovič, director of the group, a collaborative project was developed through the spatial and conceptual experience in Tokyo, generating architectural spatial relationships. Likewise, teaching practice was carried out and collaborative and personal articles were developed.
33 Structure of the thesis
This thesis is structured in five chapters:
Chapter 1. This chapter introduces selected architectural events. Through an exploration of the social revolutions produced between 2011 and 2014, the "Revolution Squares" atlas is generated and three complementary case studies are selected in terms of political and spatial aspects: Tahrir Square, Occupy Wall Street, and Gezi Park/Taksim Square, which are analysed and establish the basis to develop the research. Through a historical study of the political and urban situation of each case, the production of cartographies makes visible spatial conditions.
Chapter 2. The relations and potentialities of the virtual space are exposed in the creation and development of contemporary social revolutions. Digital platforms and social networks are presented as mediators and activators of urban space strategies, altering the established models of the city and affecting the use of public spaces. With maps and graphical documentation, the behavioural patterns on the virtual space and their impact on the physical space, represent spatial projection strategies.
Chapter 3. The basis of a theoretical platform is produced from practice and fieldwork. Concepts and relationships construct the body and its movement in the space of the occupation, and the architectural urban landscape form the theoretical part of this investigation. The analysis is done according to architectural and theoretical aspects, presenting new parameters that include different disciplines such as social theory, urban design, economics, and the political field, as a single body towards an architectural process.
Chapter 4. It proposes theoretical and practical notions with the objective to configure the concept of Radical Spatiality. By assembling characteristics and spatial reactions during occupations, a set of new spaces is presented, which respond to contemporary social dynamics in a dissident method. The "Architecture of the Occupation” establishes architectural responses made during the selected occupations, adapting the historical urban struggle with the virtual space and the transformation of the urban architectural landscape. Through a theoretical–practical approach, a series of architectural strategies are presented as temporal states, constituting the basis for the formation of the Radical Spatiality.
Chapter 5. It presents the spatial consequences of these occupations in the form of urban regulations at a global level. In this chapter, it considers urban regulations from different cities that delimit and project the architectural design of public spaces, their increasing privatization, and how they address a general homogenization of the built landscape. Through this exploration and
34 alongside the development of occupations in the virtual and physical space, the formation of the post-public space is presented, an architectural urban device that activates the contemporary city and extends a new research project.
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CHAPTER I. RADICAL ARCHITECTURE IN CONTEMPORARY OCCUPATIONS
1.1. Retrospection
‘Radical Architecture’ as a concept, was referred mainly to an extreme form or structure between the 1960s and 1970s. It was mostly discussed in the Italian architectural journals Casabella1 and Domus,2 which published projects from Archizoom, Superstudio, and Archigram, and questioned the constitution and notion of architecture in its more formal language:
Nowhere was the post-war avant-garde more radical than in architecture. In order to shake off the “hegemonic grip” of academic classicism – and therefore bourgeois society – architecture would have to undergo a complete definitional transformation. Instead of buildings serving functional uses for consumers’ lives and thereby reinforcing unjust social divisions, architecture would form a “single continuous environment, the world rendered uniform by technology, culture, and all the other inevitable forms of imperialism.” And just what does that look like? What does it look like to start over? To traverse the radical city of the mind? Beinecke,3 Superstudio’s Radical Architecture
At that time, there was an atmosphere of social and political disturbance around the world: May 68 in Paris, the feminist movement in the United States and Europe, the student movement in Chile, and so on. These social movements influenced the Italian Radical Architecture Movement to start an experimental education program called “Global Tools,” 4 a counter-school of architecture. Global Tools pushed “the return to a more primitive architectural language by other architects of the Tendenza teaching in the schools of Venice and Milan” (Branzi 1973). Through radical pedagogies, this program addressed local political, ecological and socio-economical situations, calling itself the “non-school.” They focused on everyday objects and experimented with craft and design, held “happenings” or “pre-ecological” seminars and performances, and promoted the use of ‘poor’ materials to restructure different assemblages. In this two-year program, its members shaped a resistance platform, simultaneously bringing together archaic and technology forms for practicing a different architecture. Global Tools and the radicalization of everyday life objects, influenced the work of Walter Benjamin, Henri Lefebvre and Michel de Certeau, to mention a few, who explored these radical
1 Casabella is a monthly Italian architectural magazine that focuses on radical design. It was founded by Guido Marangoni in Milan, 1928. 2 Domus is an Italian architectural and design magazine founded by the architect Gio Ponti and Barnabit father Giovanni Semeria in 1928. 3 Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library. Yale University Library. http://beinecke.library.yale.edu/about/blogs/2013/02/04/superstudios-radical-architecture (consulted in May 2014) 4 In January 1973, different writers, artists, intellectuals, architects, and designers gathered in Casabella’s editorial office and founded “Global Tools” (1973-1975), a multidisciplinary experimental program about design and pedagogy. See also V. Borgonuovo & S. Franceschini’s Global Tools 1973 – 1975 (2015).
37 notions and spatial practices. In Michel de Certeau’s “Practice of Everyday Life” (Certeau 1984), he identifies certain moments of ‘freedom’ in daily life, in which a subject goes beyond limits, structures and restrictions of the built environment by making visible the ‘ordinary’ like walking, cooking, standing and so on. He re-establishes human action within its quotidian environment through radical practices that are possible only when they are done collectively. While in the contemporary scope, Beatriz Colomina relates Global Tools as “technologies of the global marketplace” (Colomina 2015); in other words, to economy. Colomina positions them as a set of experiments and connections that involves architecture, philosophy, art, performance, and design. It is an interdisciplinary project that disperses ideas and modes of working with daily life objects, sometimes precarious and archaic, in a radical gesture based on sharing.
However, the radical approach to/through architectural practices started between 1952-1955, when the Smithsons introduced a continuum project of art and life, through everyday British forms of the ordinary. The Smithsons were members of the London-based Independent Group, 5 and worked together with the sculptor Eduardo Paolozzi and the photographer Nigel Henderson, also members of this group. They collected and documented daily actions in London east end streets, and highlighted the quotidian life as an emergent status, focusing on improvisation, spontaneity, urban choreography, sociability, and territorial flexibility. They created the project: “Urban Re- Identification” (Img. 1), and presented the transformation of Golden Lane’s streets grid in Bethnal Green through children playing. Games and movements were denominated as “everyday reverse strategy,” practices that altered temporally the top-down urban planning into a bottom-up practice. “Urban Re-Identification” was presented at the ninth CIAM Conference in Aix-en-Provence in 1953, and Peter and Alison Smithson criticized the generalized modernist dogma of the rational city, for dividing and separating functions in different zones. Instead, they proposed a strategy that connected spaces [house-street] in an intuitive way, embodying a stronger social cohesion and spatial affection. Understanding the space through quotidian actions radically, caused a shift in the conception of the urban landscape and the concept of ‘habitat.’ By the end of the following decade, Tschumi appeared as a figure that transgressed the notions of the conceived space. Influenced initially by the events of May 68 in Paris, his interventions on social and political spheres dominated his projects. For “Do-It-Yourself-City” project, he collaborated with Fernando Montés and generated a system of equipment and stations that connected urban elements. Tschumi and Montés created a catalogue with different strategies to use the environment autonomously. Only a catalogue was provided, which served as explorer of the imagery networks, screens and links, and were accompanied by a description of temporal events rather than permanent spaces, a system they refer as “counterdesign” (Img. 2).
5 The Independent Group was a radical group of young artists, writers and critics who met at the Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA) in London in the 1950s. They challenged the modernist theories and paradigms for seeing them as elitist, and proposed a more common and popular approach to the art’s scope. www.tate.org.uk/learn/online- resources/glossary/i/independent-group
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“Counterdesign” can be described as a desperate and nihilistic attempt to use one particular feature of architectural expression, with all its cultural values and connotations. It is desperate in that it relies on the weakest of all architectural means, the plan, since we have defined that, by nature, no built object could ever have an effect on the socioeconomic structure of a reactionary society. It is nihilistic in that its only role is to translate the pessimistic forecast of the intentions of the holders of financial power into an architectural statement. (Tschumi, Architecture and Disjunction 1996)
Img. 1 CIAM Urban Re-identification Grid, Aix-en-Provence, Alison and Peter Smithson. Photographs by Nigel Henderson, 1953
In one of Tschumi’s slogans from May ’68, it reads: “Imagination takes power,” presenting the role of acting and performing in the space. This statement is extended in the introduction of his book “The Manhattan Transcripts:”
In architecture, concepts can either precede or follow projects or buildings. In other words, a theoretical concept may be either applied to a project or derived from it. Quite often this distinction cannot be made so clearly, when, for example, a certain aspect of film theory may support an architectural intuition, and later, through the arduous development of a project, be transformed into an operative concept for architecture in general. (Tschumi, The Manhattan Transcripts 1981)
Later, Tschumi created a series of posters named “Advertisements for Architecture,” a détournement for advertising techniques, similar to the Smithsons’ illustrations and those used by students during May ‘68 in Paris (Kaminer 2011). In one of these posters, there is a man falling, or being thrown out of a window (Img. 3), which contains the caption: “Architecture is defined by the actions it witnesses as much as by the enclosure of its walls. Murder in the Street differs from Murder in the Cathedral in the same way as love in the street differs from the Street of Love. Radically.”
1968 was a shifting point for radical interventions in the physical and theoretical space, and challenged the classical architectural paradigms. In this year, Bernard Tschumi and Rem Koolhaas
39 were both 24 years old living in Paris: Tschumi as a recent graduated from the ETH and working for the architects Candilis, Josic and Woods, and Koolhaas as a journalist-script-writer. One year later, they joined the Architectural Association in London: Koolhaas as a student and Tschumi as a young teacher, both working with political connotations. Tschumi kept the intellectual ties with politics and critical circles of Paris, making his work more utopic and related to activism, which was reflected in his course “Politics of Space.” Influenced by Georges Bataille, he proposed a rebellious surrealist program that identified as an architecture with authority and bureaucracy. Instead of trying to order space, Tschumi projected a stage of unprogrammed events. Koolhaas on the other hand, transgressed the profane human world of the ‘sacred’ animal disorder of Bataille. In Berlin Wall and Exodus projects, he designed an inhabiting wall within the city, both as prison and utopia, resulting in a general citizens’ conception of being voluntary prisoners within that society:
In the early seventies, it was impossible not to sense an enormous reservoir of resentment against architecture, with new evidence of its inadequacies – of its cruel and exhausted performance – accumulating daily; looking at the [Berlin] wall as architecture, it was inevitable to transpose the despair, hatred, frustration it inspired to the field of architecture… Were not division, enclosure, (i.e., imprisonment), and exclusion – which defined the wall’s performance and explained its efficiency – the essential stratagems of any architecture? In comparison, the sixties dream of architecture’s liberating potential – in which I had been marinating for years as a student – seemed feeble rhetorical play. It evaporated on the spot. (Koolhaas 1995)
The work of both collaborative projects, “Do-It-Yourself-City” and “Exodus,” explored movement as a spontaneous invention through architectural elements such as ramps and squares; it was a question about the role of the program in cities. On one side, Tschumi proposed three strategies: disprogramming, transprogramming and crossprogramming as means of subverting the traditional and established. While Koolhaas compacted programmes by structuring bands and voids, destabilizing them in terms of function, which resulted in a more dynamic and active space. These two different approaches are represented in a sense in Tschumi’s La Villette follies or Koolhaas’ Hotel Sphinx of 1975-1976.
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Img. 2 Do-It-Yourself-City by Img. 3 Bernard Tschumi, “Advertisement Bernard Tschumi & Fernando Montés for Architecture”
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_Radical This disruption on architectural traditional language involved a direct influence from the theory, practices and actors in May ‘68, as a stage of political agitation towards the exploration of spatial relationships. In a similar way, this state was present in contemporary occupations such as Occupy Wall Street or the Arab Spring, which have opened discussions and opportunities to redefine architecture in radical means. To continue with this research, it is necessary to understand and define ‘radical’ as a concept. ‘Radical’ refers to a denotation of a concerted attempt to change the status quo according to the Collins Dictionary of Sociology (Jary and Jary 1991). The Dictionary of Philosophy (Mautner 1997) indicates that the origin of radical comes from the Latin radix – root, and it is a fundamental thoroughgoing. The Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary 7th Edition (Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary 7th Edition 2004) refers to radical as: Adj. 1. Concerning the most basic and important parts of something; thorough and complete. 2. New, different and likely to have a great effect. 3. In favour of thorough and complete political or social change. Noun 1. A person with radical opinions.
In Macmillan English Dictionary (Rundell 2002): Adj. 1. A radical change or way of doing something is new and very different from the usual way. 2. A radical increase or decrease is extremely large and important. 3. A radical person or group believes that important political and social changes are necessary. Radical opinions are based on the belief that important political or social changes are necessary. 4. Relating to the most basic or important part of something. Noun Someone who believes that important political and social changes are necessary.
In Longman, Dictionary of Contemporary English (Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English, Fifth Edition 2009): Adj. 1. A radical change has a lot of important effects 2. Radical opinions, ideas, leaders, etc., support thorough and complete social or political change. 3. Related to the central or most important qualities of something.
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In Credo, Etymology Dictionary (Credo Online Etymology Dictionary n.d.), radical means “of roots,” based on the metaphor of fundamental change that emerges in the 18th Century. In the late Latin, rãdīcãlis derivatives from radix, ‘root’ (source of English radish [OE] and probably related to root). Adj. 1. Concerning or relating to the basic nature or root of something, fundamental, intrinsic. 2. Far-reaching, thoroughgoing ‘radical changes.’ 3. In favour of – or tending to – produce thoroughgoing or extreme political and social reforms. 4. Relating to a political group or party in favour of extreme reforms. Noun 1. A root or basis in any sense. 2. Someone who is a member or a radical political group, or who holds radical political views.
Jeremy Bentham (1748 – 1832) an English philosopher and political radical according to The Philosophical Society of England, develops the concept of ‘moral philosophy,’ which evaluates actions based upon its consequences. He indicates that radical mental constitution is connate, containing the fundamental: “favouring major change, especially social and political. Theories, movements, parties are so described. In France, radicalism has been a general term for liberalism, republicanism and secularism” (Pringle-Pattison 1907).
In the Radical Reform movement in the late 18th century, representative members of the Whig Party6 press for thorough – or radical – changes to democratize the British Constitution. Their political enemies often apply the term reproachfully: “Radical is a word in very bad odour here, being used to denote a set of blackguards” (Sir Walter Scott, letter. 10 October 1819). Its connotations improve following passage of the Reform Bill of 1932,7 but the radicals could not manage to form a parliamentary party, becoming instead extreme Liberals. Meanwhile in the United States, the term is associated first with socialists, and later on leftist, many of them from European origin. Although radix – root (plants) – and ‘dig with the nose’ are distinct words, the first one comes from the Old Norse rót with the Indo-European base *wrd. Root ‘dig’ is and alteration of an earlier wroot, which dates from Old English wrõtan. In the late 19th century in the United States, root emerges as ‘cheer’ and ‘support’ (YouDict n.d.).
Hence, radical from radix, root – of plants, words, numbers, basis, systems, or concepts – is the significance this research takes: going back to and penetrate the roots of something (architectural
6 Whig Party was a political party in the United Kingdom from 17th to 19th century. 7 The Reform Act 1832 was an Act of Parliament that introduced wide changes into the electoral system of England and Wales. Source: The British Library, http://www.bl.uk/learning/histcitizen/21cc/struggle/chartists1/historicalsources/source2/reformact.html
43 spatial projections, notion of public space, socio-spatial urban relationship, and design) through contemporary occupations. These events challenge architectural spatial conceptions of established urban elements, proposing instead spaces that serve to people’s immediate needs. In this research, contemporary occupations act within the radical architecture as a strategy, creating radical spaces by using everyday life objects under dissident techniques. As in the Smithsons’ “Urban Re-identification Grid,” and Tschumi and Montés’ “DIY-City,” contemporary occupations act radically in the movement of public spaces through collective and simultaneous spatial practices. In this state, the city and the body are agents towards the radical spatiality.
1.2 Towards the Revolutionary Square
Since 2011, some public spaces have adopted a radical character for being emblematic places to protest. They stand as points de capiton,8 giving them different and new significances within the collective imaginary. Contemporary revolutions like Occupy Wall Street or Indignados, took form of occupations in public spaces through processes of intervention, marking a post-political9 order for handling and moving spaces, objects and bodies in radical practices. Rancière relates them as a heterogeneous set of technologies and strategies that designate spaces (Philosophy 1999), transgressing spatialized policies such as planning, urban architecture, and urban regulations. However, their spatial configuration played a significant role in the evolution of occupations, which were mainly in squares. As one of the most important urban spaces cities have, the design of squares follow a series of parameters that are presented in Camillo Sitte’s10 guidelines (Sitte 1889):
● Enclosure. Closed and protected space ● The centre should be free ● Monuments place on the perimeter ● Existence of surprise elements ● Attractiveness of architectural façades ● Concavity and aesthetic pavements
8 ‘Point de capiton,’ French concept used by Jacques Lacan to signify a chain at which “the signifier stops the otherwise endless movement of the signification” and produces the necessary ‘illusion’ of a fixed meaning. Referred as ‘quilting point’ or ‘anchoring point’, ‘point de capiton’ is a point at which the “signified and signifier are knotted together”. Jacques Lacan, “The Seminar. Book III. The Psychoses. 1955-1956.” London: Routledge 9 Erik Swyngedouw (Professor of Geography at the University of Manchester, School of Environment and Development) Post-Political City takes as basis Rancière, Zizek, Mouffe, Badiou and Dikeç critics towards the critical theory and radical political praxis of the de-politicising gestures for urban policy. Swyngedouw indicates that a consensual post-politics arises, one that either eliminates fundamental conflict or elevates it to antithetical ultra- politics. “The consensual times we are currently living in have thus eliminated a genuine political space of disagreement.” The post-political relies on either including all in a consensual pluralist order and/or on excluding radically those who posit themselves outside the consensus. 10 Camillo Sitte (1843 – 1903) was an Austrian architect and city planning theoretician that worked mainly in the urban development of European cities.
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For Sitte, the square needs a sense of enclosure that follows the Gestalt psychology of grouping, indicating that people tend to group objects that look similar (Arnheim 1949 [1961]). The straightforward way of creating enclosure is grouping buildings around a central space. Based on Sitte’s work, Rob Krier11 on the other hand, focuses on basic geometry using angling, addition, subtraction, overlapping, segment, division, and distortion (Img. 4) (Krier 1979).
Img. 4 Morphological series of urban squares. Rob Kier
In addition, Paul Zucker suggests five types of urban square forms (Zucker 1970):
1. Closed Square. Self-contained space, often with a regular geometric form and interrupted by streets that lead to it. 2. Dominated Square. Space directed to a building or group of buildings. 3. Nuclear Square. Space formed around a centre. The central feature creates a tension that keeps the whole together. 4. Grouped Squares. Space units that are combined, individual squares linked organically and/or aesthetically. 5. Amorphous Square. Space unlimited, it is unorganized and formless.
These principles, based on human scale, refer to form, not function. For instance, Bedford Square in London, built between 1775 and 1783 (Img. 5), was conceived as a garden square. The layout was transformed in 1894 and since then, it remained basically intact, with a Georgian style surrounded by houses that are currently offices or academic institutions like the Architectural Association, Yale University Press, New York University’s London campus, Hong Kong Economic and Trade Office, among others. It is a private square open for residents and hosts specific events such as installations or pavilions made by AA students (Img. 6). Bedford Square reveals two situations: the presence of a private square in a public land, and how minimum the physical aspect has changed in more than two hundred years.
11 Rob Krier, architect, sculpture, urban designer and theorist. He is Professor of Architecture at Vienna University of Technology.
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Img. 5 Bedford Square. Left: first edition Ordinance Survey, 1871. Right: Second edition Ordinance Survey, 1894.
Img. 6 Rainforest pavilion by GUN Architects, Architectural Association, 2014.
To this situation, Matthew Carmona12 reflects the design of public spaces in London. He subdivides them in two categories: (i) under-management of public spaces, and (ii) over-management of public spaces (Carmona, Contemporary public space: critique and classification, Part one: critique. 2010). The first group focuses on poor design and function loss of publicness, increment of vehicle traffic, neglecting of public spaces, grow of individual private relations, and separation of the public sphere from the public space. The second group criticizes designers and planners for undermining publicness of public spaces through commodification and homogenization. None of these groups represent the basis of public spaces, where identity, history, cultural background and social relationships are practiced (Levy 2012). This social component of square relies directly on the Greek agora – the polis public space, which hosts different kinds of gatherings such as political meetings, sport games, musical concerts, theatre performances, and commercial activities.
12 Matthew Carmona is Professor of Planning and Urban Design at the Bartlett School of Planning UCL. He is editorial board of ‘Urban Design Quarterly’, European Associate Editor for the ‘Journal of Urban Design’, and edits the ‘Design in the Built Environment’ book series for Ashgate. He is a regular advisor to government and government agencies both in the UK and overseas and writes a column for Town & Country Planning, the journal of the Town & Country Planning Association.
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During the time of the Roman Empire, the Greek agora is transformed in the Roman Forum [‘market-place’], a large open space where people meet for political, economic and social activities – as the agora, but contains the acropolis. It involves temples, halls of justice, council houses, shrines, and markets. In the Middle Ages, basilicas, churches and cathedrals become the focus of daily life, they are open spaces that serve mainly commercial purposes and religious ceremonies. In the Renaissance and Baroque period, the Italian piazzas designs are symmetric, ordered, balanced and hierarchical, creating visual and ceremonial effects. The Baroque concept “dynamic motion in space” is introduced and there appear monuments and fountains.
Img. 7 Left: Plan of the Agora in Athens. Centre: Plan of the Roman Forum. Right: Plan of Piazza del Capitolio, Rome.
In the Industrial Revolution, the bourgeoisie is more participant of urban life, provoking the emergence of shopping streets, bazaars, cafes, and parks. In the second half of the 19th century, big green areas emerge as new public places while the population grows in cities (Sedláková 2012). In the 20th century, the automobile changes the city’s structure and becomes the main factor for urban design guidelines. Many cities start turning sidewalks into crossroads, shopping malls are located in new peripheral zones, and there is a significant reduction of open spaces in city centres. During the first years of the 21st century, the Internet takes the role of the ‘other’ public space, where people interact and produce social activities, trading, or political participation like the Greek agora. These processes, as Carmona indicates, are related “not only to the types of self-consciously designed schemes that catch the wye of the press, but also to the un-self-conscious processes of urban adaptation and change that continuously shape the built environment all around” (Carmona, Heath, et al. 2010).
Like the vehicle provoked the transformation of the city’s infrastructure, the virtual space alters the relationship of urban life, time, and movement. Therefore, affection and transformation of the virtual space in the physical space and vice versa is related for the purpose of this thesis as the Contemporary City. Following these new interactions, the public spaces of occupation challenge the physical and social status quo in the contemporary city, by altering borders, aesthetics, use, functions, and designed purposes through the presence of bodies in the physical and virtual space. These public spaces are denominated as “Revolution Squares.”
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1.2.1 Spatial Atlas of the Revolution Square
Img. 8 Countries involved in the Arab Spring and Protests, 2011
2011 (Img. 8): - Arab Spring o Tunisian Revolution o Algerian protests o Egyptian Revolution o Libyan Civil War o Syrian Uprisings – Civil War o Bahraini uprisings o Iraqi protests o Jordanian protests o Omani protests o Yemeni Revolution o Moroccan protests o Djibouti protests o Iranian protests o Western Sahara protests o Saudi Arabian protests o Kuwait protests o Sudan protests o Mauritanian protests o Palestinian protests o Somali protests o Lebanon protests - Israeli social protests - Azerbaijani protests
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- Russian protests - Spanish acampadas - UK Students’ protests - Greek Occupation - Occupy Movement o 95 countries o 1025 locations13 - French protests According to the database of ‘GDELT Project,’14 there were 31,502 protests around the world in 2011: 34,695 in 2012, 3,551 in 2013, and 49,007 in 2014 (Img. 9): o Cairo Tahrir Square o Madrid Puerta del Sol o Athens Syntagma Square o Benghazi Benghazi Courthouse o Bucharest Bucharest University Square o Damascus Umayyad Square o Istanbul Taksim Square / Gezi Park o Kiev Maidan Square o Manama Pearl Roundabout o New York Zuccotti Park o Sana’a Sana’a University Square o Tunis 14 Janvier Square o London Paternoster Square / St. Paul’s Cathedral o Frankfurt European Central Bank o Hong Kong HSBC lobby o Aleppo Sabaa Bahrat Square o Ramallah Al Manara Square o Tehran Azadi Square
Sidi Bouzid and Tunis, Alexandria and Cairo, Madrid and Athens, London and Paris, Tel Aviv and Manama, Mexico and Kolkata, Santiago de Chile and New York, Moscow and Bogotá, etc., hosted occupations as protest against the political and financial crisis of 2011. The Arab Spring is one of the most representative social events of 2011, usually referred as the “Roundabout Revolution” (Weizman 2015) because most of the protests and occupations took place in roundabouts [Tunisia, Cairo, Damascus, Manama, Sohar, Tripoli, Sana’a, and Tehran].
13 According to Occupy Movement website, information updated in September 2012. www.occupywallst.org 14 The GDELT Project. Database mapping protests worldwide. http://gdeltproject.org/data.html#documentation
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REV_S
Benghazi_Libya Bucharest_Romania Cairo_Egypt Damascus_Syria Istanbul_Turkey Kiev_Ukraine
REV_S
Benghazi_Libya Bucharest_Romania Cairo_Egypt Damascus_Syria Istanbul_Turkey Img.Kiev_Ukraine 10 Revolutionary Squares
Benghazi_Libya Bucharest_Romania Cairo_Egypt Damascus_Syria Istanbul_Turkey Kiev_Ukraine
Benghazi_Libya Bucharest_Romania Cairo_Egypt Damascus_Syria Istanbul_Turkey Kiev_Ukraine
Img. 11 Geometry of Revolutionary Squares
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REV_SQUARES
Madrid_Spain Manama_Bahrain New York_United States Sana’a_Yemen Tunis_Tunisia
REV_SQUARES
Revolutionary Squares Madrid_Spain Manama_Bahrain New York_United States Sana’a_Yemen Tunis_Tunisia
Madrid_Spain Manama_Bahrain New York_United States Sana’a_Yemen Tunis_Tunisia
Madrid_Spain Manama_Bahrain New York_United States Sana’a_Yemen Tunis_Tunisia
Geometry of Revolutionary Squares
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Img. 9 Occupations’ Squares
As an urban element, the roundabout dates from the 19th century, when Haussmann’s Paris plan was designed to avoid barricades, communes, or revolutions. Napoleon III addressed Baron Haussmann to re-think the city as a hyper-penetrable mass; wide avenues and boulevards were created to serve for fast deployment of artillery and military mobilization as an operative war-field. Some focal points work as intersections and meeting points in form of roundabouts, breaking up the medieval tangle of the downtown, becoming one of the most important elements in his design. Nonetheless, its functionality was part of an international process that lasted years. William Phelps Eno (1858 – 1945), created the first roundabout at Columbus Circle in New York in 1905, in order to ameliorate the increasing vehicular traffic (Img. 12). There were not specific instructions about its use, so there were a significant number of car accidents (Weizman 2015).
Eugène Hénard, Paris’ City Council architect, solved the chaotic and dangerous situation by regulating and simplifying the entering and exiting of roundabouts (Img. 13). But it was only until 1956 when Frank Blackmore, traffic engineer from the British Transport and Road Research Laboratory, proposed specific regulations that led to a definitive solution.
The continuous flow of the roundabout depends on its capacity – exemplified in sufficient gaps between cars within the cycle to allow more traffic to emerge in. The traffic circles gave priority to entering traffic, which meant that more vehicles entered the circulatory roadway that could exit. This rule was akin, one traffic engineer later wrote, to making “people get into a confined space – such as an elevator or a bus – before the others are allowed to get out.” Blackmore proposed to invert the priority rule: those entering the roundabout would need to yield. Experiments proved successful and in November 1966 the “yield at entry rule” was officially adopted for all new roundabouts. By the early ‘80s roundabouts began to proliferate again throughout continental Europe, and by 1990 they had returned to the United States. (Weizman 2015)
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The self-regulation, as Weizman points, was the method for this element to survive in the city, which responded to the car’s movement - spring and inner rolling movement – inducing the possibility to ‘yield’ at entry rule. This state of autonomy and collectivity is reflected in the evolution of 2011 occupations. As Jonathan Liu15 points: “the symbolism is almost jokingly obvious: what better place to stage a revolution, after all, then one built for turning around? Or, a general might point out, for being encircled.”
Img. 12 Columbus Circle, 1905. Left: under construction. Right: built.
Img. 13 Carrefour à giration, designed by Eugène Hénard
Img. 14 Circle. Left: Heliocentric model by Nicolaus Copernicus, 1543. Centre: The City of Dis, circles 1 to 5 of hell, Dante's Divine Comedy. Right: Taksim Square, 11 June 2013.
15 Jonathan Liu, “Roundabout and Revolutions: The ‘Arab Street’ Begins and Ends in a Circle.” Motherboard, 20 February 2011. http://motherboard.vice.com/blog/roundabouts-and-revolutions-the-“arab-street”-begins-and-ends-in- a-circle
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The “Revolution Squares” show a state of self-organization and self-reinvention, done through collective actions that are temporal; it is a situation built as a need to survive the city, similar to the initial formation of the roundabout. The “Revolution Squares” present different capacities and qualities, therefore, through the spatial atlas, three revolution squares are taken as main actors based on two factors: their physical and political state.
1.3 Three events
Nadie lo vio desembarcar en la unánime noche, nadie vio la canoa de bambú sumiéndose en el fango sagrado, pero a los pocos días nadie ignoraba que el hombre taciturno venía del Sur y que su patria era una de las infinitas aldeas que están aguas arriba, en el flanco violento de la montaña, donde el idioma Zend no está contaminado de griego y donde es infrecuente la lepra. Lo cierto es que el hombre gris besó el fango, repechó la ribera sin apartar (probablemente, sin sentir) las cortaderas que le dilaceraban las carnes y se arrastró, mareado y ensangrentado, hasta el recinto circular que corona un tigre o caballo de piedra que tuvo alguna vez el color del fuego y ahora el de la ceniza. Ese redondel es un templo que devoraron los incendios antiguos, que la selva palúdica ha profanado y cuyo dios no recibe honor de los hombres. El forastero se tendió bajo el pedestal. Lo despertó el sol alto. Comprobó sin asombro que las heridas habían cicatrizado; cerró los ojos pálidos y durmió, no por flaqueza de la carne sino por determinación de la voluntad. Sabía que ese templo era el lugar que requería su invencible propósito; sabía que los árboles incesantes no habían logrado estrangular, río abajo, las ruinas de otro templo propicio, también de dioses incendiados y muertos; sabía que su inmediata obligación era el sueño. Hacia la medianoche lo despertó el grito inconsolable de un pájaro. Rastros de pies descalzos, unos higos y un cántaro le advirtieron que los hombres de la región habían espiado con respeto su sueño y solicitaban su amparo o temían su magia. Sintió el frío del miedo y buscó en la muralla dilapidada un nicho sepulcral y se tapó con hojas desconocidas. El propósito que lo guiaba no era imposible, aunque sí sobrenatural. Quería soñar un hombre: quería soñarlo con integridad minuciosa e imponerlo a la realidad- ese proyecto mágico había agotado el espacio entero de su alma; si alguien le hubiera preguntado su propio nombre o cualquier rasgo de su vida anterior, no habría acertado a responder. Le convenía el templo inhabitado y despedazado, porque era un mínimo de mundo visible; la cercanía de los leñadores también, porque éstos se encargaban de subvenir a sus necesidades frugales. El arroz y las frutas de su tributo eran pábulo suficiente para su cuerpo, consagrado a la única tarea de dormir y soñar. (…)
[No one saw him disembark in the unanimous night, no one saw the bamboo canoe sinking into the sacred mud, but within a few days no one was unaware that the sacred mud, but within a few days no one was unaware that the silent man came from the South and that his home was one of
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the infinite villages upstream, on the violent mountainside, where the Zend tongue is not contaminated with Greek and where leprosy is infrequent. The truth is that the obscure man kissed the mud, came up the bank without pushing aside (probably without feeling) the brambles which dilacerated his flesh, and dragged himself, nauseous and bloodstained, to the circular enclosure crowned but a stone tiger or horse, which once was the colour of fire and now was that of ashes. The circle was a temple, long go devoured by fire, which the malarial jungle had profaned and whose god no longer received the homage of men. The stranger stretched out beneath the pedestal. He was awakened by the sun high above. He evidenced without astonishment that his wounds had closed; he shut his pale eyes and slept, not out of bodily weakness but of determination of will. He knew that this temple was the place required by his invincible purpose; he knew that, downstream, the incessant trees had not managed to choke the ruins of another propitious temple, whose gods were also burned and dead; he knew that his immediate obligation was to sleep. Towards midnight he was awakened by the disconsolate cry of a bird. Prints of bare feet, some figs and a jug told him that men of the region had respectfully spied upon his sleep and were solicitous of his favour or feared his magic. He felt the chill of fear and sought out a burial niche in the dilapidated wall and covered himself with some unknown leaves. The purpose which guided him was not impossible, though it was supernatural. He wanted to dream a man: he wanted to dream him with minute integrity and insert him into reality. This magical project had exhausted the entire content of his soul; if someone had asked him his own name or any trait of his previous life, he would not have been able to answer. The uninhabited and broken temple suited him, for it was a minimum of visible world; the nearness of the peasants also suited him, for they would see that his frugal necessities were supplied. The rice and fruit of their tribute were sufficient sustenance for his body, consecrated to the sole task of sleeping and dreaming.] Jorge Luis Borges, “Las Ruinas Circulares” [The Circular Ruins], Ficciones, 1944
The 2011 global revolutions began in a small town of Tunisia, when a street-vendor committed immolation. In the morning of 17th December 2010 in Sidi Bouzid, a town 200 km south of Tunis, 26-yearl-old Mohammed Bouazizi was selling products in a streetcar when the police officer Fayda Hamdy, fined, grieved and confiscated his scale (according to Bouazizi’s friends and family, this was not the first time that the police officer hassled him). 16 Bouazizi walked straight to the provincial capital building trying to recover his scale but did not succeed. At the gate, he drenched himself on fire. This act shocked Tunisia, not only because of the magnitude of a human’s tragedy, but also because of the generalized corruption and social inequality that reached to that point. That same day, many spontaneous protestors gathered in the streets of Sidi Bouzid and used social media to share
16 Beaumont, Peter. “Mohammed Bouazizi: the dutiful son whose death changed Tunisia’s fate.” The Guardian, 20 January 2011. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/jan/20/tunisian-fruit-seller-mohammed-bouazizi
55 images and videos. Immediately, there were massive demonstrations all around the country, resulting in the resignation of the president Ben Ali and initiating the Arab Spring.
Img. 15 Avenue Habib Bourguiba and Place du 7 Novembre [now Place du 14 Janvier]. Tunisia, 2011
There were 21 countries involved in the Arab Spring: Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen, Bahrain, Syria, Libya, Algeria, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Morocco, Sudan, Oman, Saudi Arabia, Mauritania, Djibouti, Palestine, Somalia, Lebanon, Iranian Khuzestan, United Arab Emirates and the borders of Israel.17
In Tunisia, social protests started on 17th December 2010, when Mohammed Bouazizi’s committed immolation. Protestors gathered first at the Avenue Habib Bourguiba and marched towards the Square Place du 7 Novembre (Img. 15). The revolution lasted 28 days and led the president’s outstanding after 23 years of government. The day the president Ben Ali left the country, 14 January, people changed the name of the square to Place du 14 Janvier. Algeria was the following country on joining the protests. They started on 29th December 2010 and lasted for more than one year.18 In Jordan, the protests began on 14th January 2011 and lasted over a year.19 In Oman, the occupation took place in Sohar’s Globe Roundabout between 17th January 2011 and May same year. The 25th January, the revolution started in Egypt. Thousands of people occupied Tahrir Square for 18 days, resulting in the dissolution of the government and a series of major political changes. There were protests all around the country but it was in Cairo where the largest number of people gathered. In Syria, protests started on 26th January 2011; however, the situation turned into a civil
17 Garry Blight, Sheila Pulham, Paul Torpey, “Arab Spring: an interactive timeline of Middle East protests”. The Guardian, 5 January 2012. http://www.theguardian.com/world/interactive/2011/mar/22/middle-east-protest- interactive-timeline 18 Algeria, with a population of more than 40 million people and an area of 2,381,741 km², was leaving under the State of Emergency for 19 years. The protests started on 29th December 2010 and lasted more than a year. There was not an occupation but an almost daily series of protests throughout the entire country. 19 Jordan has around 9 million inhabitants and an area of 89,341 km². The protests resulted in the firing of the cabinet of ministers, electoral reforms and the end of the monarchy rule.
56 war that continues to this day.20 The Yemeni Revolution started on 27th January and lasted until February 2012. The occupation took place in Sana’a University Square and resulted with the government overthrow. On 28th January, there were minor protests in Djibouti that lasted until 11th March.21 The same day, there were protests in Somalia but due to the ongoing civil war, they did not have an impact. The 30th January in Sudan, there were protests, demonstrations, strike actions, riots, occupations, and online activism that lasted nearly three years. In Palestine, on 10 February several protests claimed political changes, especially the demission of Prime Minister Salam Fayyad. Although the protests lasted until 5th October 2012, they did not have the expected response. Similar to Israel and because their borders are not defined, it is not possible to estimate neither the area implicated nor the amount of people involved, thus it is difficult to establish the intensity of the protests. In Iraq, influenced by the region’s demonstrations, protests started on 12 February 2011 and ended on 23rd December 2011 despite the U.S. Army occupation since 2003. In Bahrain, protests were produced between 14th February and 18th March. In its capital, Manama, protestors occupied the Pearl Roundabout, a country’s symbol for including in its centre a monument of the Gulf Cooperation. The occupation was possible after days of clashes with the police, but on 16th March, security forces removed it by using tanks and helicopters. The day after, the Pearl monument was demolished and the roundabout destroyed; in its place the government built a star-shape intersection and some checkpoints around the area to control people that entered into the space. From 17th February to 23rd August 2011, protests started in Libya against president Muammar Gaddafi, who was in charge since 1969. The government was overthrown, although there is a civil war that continues until present day. In Kuwait, protests started on 19th February 2011 and ended in December 2012, with the dissolution of the parliament and the resignation of the Prime Minister. The 20th February protests began in Morocco and lasted until April 2012.22 In Mauritania, the protests started on 25th February and continued until 2012. In Lebanon, the uprising started on 27th February 2011 and ended in December 2011. In Saudi Arabia, protests commenced on 11th March and lasted nearly two years, with a series of demonstrations, online activism and sit-in in the mosque of al-Rajhi. The occupation reached some political and economic changes and women’s suffrage. A month after, on 15th April in the Iranian region of Khuzestan, protests lasted 3 days. The 15th May in the undetermined borders of Israel, there were major protests on the Arab side that ended on 5th June.23 In March 2011, around 300 women and men put
20 Syria’s population is 17 million people and has an area of 185,180 km². Mass protests spread around the country; they were initially peaceful but due to the heavy sense of dictatorship, protests were turned into an on-going civil war that has devastated the country. 21 Djibouti’s population is around 800,000 in an area of 23,200 km². The protests were against the government that was in power for 34 years. At some point, people tried to occupy the national stadium but were removed after clashes with the police. 22 Morocco has 33 million inhabitants and an area of 710,850 km². There were continuous demonstrations, riots and online activism and resulted in constitutional reforms and governmental changes. 23 France 24, “Syria says 23 dead as Israel opens fire on Golan.” 6 June 2011. https://web.archive.org/web/20110609033742/http://www.france24.com/en/20110606-syria-says-23-dead-israel- opens-fire-golan#
57 an official petition calling for democracy system in the United Arab Emirates, who were rapidly controlled and supressed by local authorities according to Amnesty International.24 The results from the Arab Spring were the overthrown of four governments, one civil disorder leading to governmental changes, five protests leading to governmental changes, five major protests and five minor protests, two governments overthrown in the aftermath, and three civil wars in the aftermath (Syria, Iraq, Libya) (Img. 16).
Img. 16 Arab Spring timeline
Img. 16 (a) Zoom in: Arab Spring timeline
24 Amnesty International, “There is no Freedom Here. Silencing dissent in the United Arab Emirates.” http://www.amnestyusa.org/sites/default/files/mde_250182014.pdf
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In the case of the Occupy Movement, outcomes were different from the Arab Spring for several reasons. The movement was formed months after the peak point of the Arab Spring and the Spanish acampadas. The Occupy Movement started in New York on 17th September 201 as Occupy Wall Street [henceforth OWS] and lasted 59 days, until 15th November. It was rapidly propagated to more than one thousand cities around the world (Img. 17). 25
Img. 17 World Map Occupy Movement Protests September 2011-September 2012
From all the 2011 occupations, Tahrir Square was the biggest and most influential. It faced an authoritarian political system that ruled the country for thirty years. Meanwhile, OWS was produced under softer circumstances because of the political state in the United States, a democracy, which allowed the movement to remain longer. Although there were social protests around the world during the following two years, it was until protests in Istanbul took place that a dissident atmosphere came back to scene. Protestors occupied Gezi Park and Taksim Square, located in the centre of the city for 19 days, from 28th May 2013 to 15th June same year. These events are chosen for this research due to their dual political and spatial character. Politically, Tahrir Square was a social uprising against the authoritarian regime of Hosni Mubarak, who ruled Egypt for thirty years. In terms of space, the occupation was carried out in a roundabout for eighteen days. In the case of OWS, it was pushed as a result of the 2007-2008 financial crisis, and challenged the current state of the capitalist system. The occupation was placed in a park in lower Manhattan. Finally, Istanbul’s occupation contained similarities with the previous two: Turkey had a democratically elected government but at the time of the social uprising it had been in power for twelve years. The occupation was placed in a park and a roundabout: Taksim Square/Gezi Park. These three events dissented different modes of political systems: authoritarian [Egypt], democratic [United States], democratic authoritarian [Turkey]; and were placed in three different spaces: roundabout [Tahrir Square], park [Zuccotti Park], roundabout park [Taksim Square/Gezi Park] (Img. 18). Therefore, these events and spaces are denominated as archievents, for presenting diverse mechanisms of intermittent activation and deactivation of spaces and political systems, including dissident, collective and temporal practices.
25 The Appendix 1 specifies the official list of cities involved and dates in which protests took place.
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Cairo_Egypt New York_United States Istanbul_Turkey
Cairo_Egypt New York_United States Istanbul_Turkey
Img. 18 Geometry of Revolutionary Squares: Tahrir Square, Zuccotti Park, Taksim Square / Gezi Park
1.3.1 Tahrir Square – Cairo
Midan al-Tahrir [Tahrir Square] is one of the most iconic places of the 2011 revolutions. It was the scenario where thousands of people performed their citizens’ role, occupying this public space and simultaneously using virtual platforms actively.
During the eighteen-day-occupation, Twitter, Facebook and YouTube were the most important digital platforms used, spreading real-time information of the occupation and becoming the contemporary Tahrir Square. This was the main reason why on 26th January, the Egyptian government blocked first Twitter and Facebook, the day after local and international SMS services, and on 28th January, it shut down Egypt’s four Internet service providers, closing off virtually all Internet access. Paradoxically, while the government was trying to control the mob and block people’s gathering in the city, this Internet’s blockade generated enrage and fury among the general population. Without access to Internet, people joined the street-protests and made them larger and more intense. It was the shifting point that transformed a general protest into the Egyptian Revolution.
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At that moment, Egypt was being ruled under the Emergency Law No. 162 of 1958, which was re- enacted after the “1967 Six-Day War” (Arab – Israel War). It was suspended for 18 months during the early 1980s but after the assassination of President Anwar Sadat in 1981, Hosni Mubarak became President of Egypt, who re-established and extended it until 2012. This Emergency Law extended police powers, suspended constitutional rights, legalised censorship, and abolished the habeas corpus. Despite the qualification of “spontaneous occupation” that many gave to these protests, it was in fact the result of many years of oppression and social control from the government. Nasser Rabbat26 argues that public life in Cairo’s public spaces was retreated from open spaces to private ones, due to this Emergency Law (Rabat 2012). However, Tahrir Square has been historically a place for rallies and protests. It is placed between royal palaces along the eastern side of the Nile River and the French style neighbourhood Isma’iliyya, which was created by Isma’il Pasha, Khedive of Egypt (1830 - 1895) in the late 1860s. The construction of the square was a long and intermittent process, part of a series of decisions that ended with the country’s bankruptcy. Pasha Isma’il visited the Exposition Universelle organized by Baron Haussmann in Paris in 1867 and when he returned to Cairo, he planned the “transformation and beautification of the city,” calling it the “Paris of the Nile” (al-Sayed 2011) (Img. 19). For that purpose, he addressed the local urban planner Ali Mubarak, to develop the master plan that included the Suez Canal and the Egyptian rail system. One of the main decisions of this master plan was the dissolution of the ‘mushrooming city’ in downtown, same strategy that Haussmann used for Paris (Saalman 1971). It was necessary to clear the arterial streets and passages and draw straight lines, which blocked the erection of barricades and revolts (Harvey 2006). A north-south axis with three-lined avenues radiated from central squares in Cairo (Img. 20), two streets were cut and transformed into boulevards: Sikka al-Gadida and Muhammad Ali, leading 23 streets towards the centre. This rational design conducted easier ways to control spaces and people, but the panopticon-like- scheme was never completed because the country went bankrupt in 1869, followed by the British occupation in 1882.
Under the British occupation, one of the first colonial acts was to requisite the main northwest royal barracks in al-Isma’iliyya district, Qasr al-Nil and transformed the zone into its headquarters. In 1919, a square was installed in a form of a roundabout, as La Place de l’Etoile in Paris. That same year, there were numerous demonstrations against the British occupation, which brought the revolution and independence to the country and consequently, people named the square as Midan al-Tahrir [Liberation Square]. After the deposition of the British troops, King Farouk issued a statue of his grandfather, Khedive Ismail, to be placed on the top of the central pedestal of Midan Square, nevertheless, he was overthrown in a coup in 1952.
26 Nasser Rabbat is a Professor and Director of the Aga Khan Program for Islamic Architecture at MIT.
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Img. 19 Left: Place de l'Etoile, Paris. Right: Tahrir Square, Cairo
Img. 20 Plan of Cairo, 1904
In this occasion, people changed again the square’s name to Midan al-Hurriya [Freedom Square], but in 1954 it was officially named as Tahrir Square. During the following years, the regime endorsed modern-style buildings around Tahrir, such as the Mogamma [collective] building, presented as a gift from the Soviet Union in the early 1950s, the National Democratic Party headquarters in 1959, alongside the former Hilton Hotel (currently the Ritz Carlton Hotel), and the Arab League which was completed in 1960. Besides these landmarks that played a role in the making of modern Cairo, Tahrir Square was part of a green-open field area of the Egyptian Museum. In 1981, Hosni Mubarak became first Prime Minister in 1981 and one year after, President of Egypt.
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It was at this moment when he indicated publicly his discontent with public demonstrations, a statement reflected when the government removed the central pedestal of Tahrir Square and fenced off the Egyptian Museum open entrance (Img. 21).
Img. 21 Tahrir Square. Left: 1962. Right: circa 1980s
1.3.1.1 Tale of a Revolution
By 2011, Egypt was a country plunged into corruption and economic crisis, constrained in an “Emergency Law” since 1981. There was a state of oppression and control, in which younger generations experienced as the only way of living. Inspired by the Tunisian Revolution, young people saw an opportunity to perform a type of activism that surprised the government and themselves.
Using social media, a group of activists created a Facebook event named “Day of Rage” and in few days, more than 90,000 people joined it. The general protest was planned for 25th January, which claiming the abolition of the “Emergency Law” and the establishment of presidential term limits. Many political groups and social movements participated in the organization, such as “Youth for Justice and Freedom,” 27 the “Democratic Movement for Change,” the “April 6 Youth Movement,” among others. Asmaa Mahfouz, a 26-year-old woman, uploaded a video on a vlog (video+blog) where she urged Egyptians to join the 25th January protest in Tahrir Square (Img. 22). Later that same day, the video was uploaded on YouTube and had more than 80,000 views.
On “Friday of Anger,” there were general protests in Cairo and across the country. Although they were pacific, by the end of that day they were turned into clashes between protestors, security forces, and pro-Mubarak demonstrators. The day after, the military presence in Cairo increased and
27 “We are all Khaled Said” was a Facebook group created when a young man died in June that same year, as a result of police’s physical attacks in Alexandria. This group reached 350,000 followers and became a social movement. Preston, Jennifer. “Movement began with outrage and a Facebook page that gave it an outlet.” The New York Times, 5 February 2011. http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/06/world/middleeast/06face.html
63 a curfew was imposed in the country. The 2nd February, the “Camel Incident” day, violence escalated quickly as some Mubarak supporters rode camels and horses into Tahrir Square injuring dozens of people.28 The 6th February, hundreds of Christians and Muslims Egyptians joined together in Tahrir Square, an unprecedented situation in this country. On 10th February, Mubarak addressed the country amid speculation of a military coup, and instead of resigning, he indicated he would delegate some powers to the Vice president. On 11th February, large protests continued around Egypt and by 6:00pm local time, the Vice President Omar Suleiman announced Mubarak’s resignation and power was transferred to the Supreme Council of Egyptian Armed Forces.
Img. 22 Asmaa Mahfouz vlog video
28 Beaumont, P., Shenker, J., Sherwood, H., Tisdall, S., “Egypt’s revolution turns ugly as Mubarak fights back,” The Guardian, 2 February 2011. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/feb/02/egypt-revolution-turns-ugly
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1.3.1.2 Spatial cartography – Tahrir Square
Img. 23 Tahrir Square area
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When thousands of people gathered in Tahrir Square on 25th January 2011, they generated a centrifugal force around the square for drawing away its centre as a body, causing at the same time inertia. Its centre was transformed from the space to see, to the space that sees, and reversed itself from convex to concave and consequently from centripetal to centrifugal force. This is, from a force that brings bodies to the centre, to a force that pushes bodies outside the centre (Img. 24). To follow this transformation, Tahrir Square occupation is tracked as a journal, in which the most important actions set up a platform for a spatial cartography.
Img. 24 Tahrir Square. Left: video footage vehicular traffic, centripetal force. Right: occupation, centrifugal force
[T:01] 25 January – “Day of Revolt” Inspired by the Tunisian Revolution, thousands of people gather on Tahrir Square demanding the resignation of President Hosni Mubarak. Security forces try to avoid the crowd to reach the square, but there are 23 streets including a wide boulevard and bridge, intercepting the police’s operations to control the crowd. After few hours of relative calm, police and protestors clash behind the Egyptian Museum [6th of October bridge that crosses the Nile]; the police fire tear gas, water cannons and rubber bullets. Protestors move in circles around Tahrir Square, Meret Basha Avenue, Kasr al-Nile Bridge, and Nile Corniche Street. Simultaneously protests are held in Ismailiya, Alexandria and Suez cities. The government blocks Twitter and Bambuser,29 yet protestors use proxies to keep on sending tweets and videos. [T:02.3] 26-27 January Contrary to the first day of protests when the police somehow allowed protestors to gather in Tahrir Square, this day they revert to tactics of blockade, mass arresting and militarization of the city. Clashes continue and violence is higher. Thousands of protestors continue reaching the square while the police build barricades, cordon off demonstrators against walls, and block entrances. They create a perimeter zone around the NDP Headquarters with trucks, lines of policemen and metal fences around Nile Corniche, Meret Basha and Wasim Hasan streets. Around 5:20pm, the government shuts down the major ISP disrupting Internet traffic and telephone services. Protests remain across several cities and hundreds of protestors are arrested.
29 “Bambuser” is a Swedish social network that provides interactive live video broadcasting, streaming live video from mobiles and webcams on the Internet. www.bambuser.com
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[T:04] 28 January More than 15,000 gather in Tahrir Square.30 Prisons are opened and burned down, prisoners escape en masse, allegedly under orders from the Interior Minister Habib el-Adly, according to the attempt to terrorise protestors.31 The police are withdrawn from the streets and military is deployed, while Internet and mobile phone text message stop working. There are clashes with the police on Nile Bridge for nearly 8 hours and some other clashes in Wasim Hasan Street and Meret Basha, where barricades are erected and hundreds of people shout from their balconies. Riot police fire water cannons at protestors that cross Kasr al-Nile Bridge. While protestors occupy the 6th October Bridge, marchers on Kasr al-Nile Bridge succeed on pushing toward Tahrir Square. After the midday prays, up to one million people walk towards Tahrir Square through this bridge, resulting in a long day of violent fighting with the police. At evening, the police start losing control over Kasr-al Nile Bridge and leave Tahrir some hours later. The National Democratic Party [NDP] building is set on fire, emblem and symbol of the government (Img. 25). Some protestors break the metallic fences and barricades that surround what once was the open entrance to the Egyptian Museum. Some hours later, they take control of Kasr al-Nile bridge, while in the centre of Tahrir Square the first tents and shelters appear, symbolizing a sense of spatial resilience.
Img. 25 The NDP Building set on fire, next to the Egyptian Museum. Photograph by Darkroom productions
[T:05.6.7.8] 29 January – 1 February The army is deployed as the police withdraw to other major cities. The military allows protestors to gather in public spaces but secures the Egyptian Museum, the NDP building area, and the state’s television headquarters, while Tahrir Square and Mogamma building are occupied by protestors. There are new checkpoints in el-Tahrir Avenue and Meret Basha Avenue. At this point, Cairo
30 Batty, D., Olorenshaw, A. “Egypt protests – as they happened,” The Guardian, 29 January 2011. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/jan/29/egypt-protests-government-live-blog 31 Abouzeid, R., “Did prison breakout reveal a plan to show chaos in Egypt?,” Time, 16th March 2011. http://content.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,2059301,00.html
67 downtown shifts into two main controlled areas by two sides: the north-west side facing the Nile river that is controlled by the military, and Tahrir Square and the narrow sinuous streets that are occupied by protestors. On 1st February, “The March of Millions” takes place as one of the largest public manifestations in Egypt with about 250,000 people gathering in Tahrir Square and thousands in other cities.32 In Kasr al-Nile Bridge, the military lines up tanks and forms checkpoints to control access to the square. The Internet is completely shut down in all the country. [T:09] 2 February – “Camel Incident” The army is deployed with tanks throughout different positions in and around Tahrir Square. Violent clashes rage around the square as pro-Mubarak supporters met anti-government protestors. Some supporters ride camels and horses into Tahrir wielding sticks, they pass through the 6th October bridge and arrive to Meret Basha Avenue, causing clashes in the zone. There are army troops around the museum without engaging in the conflict. At evening hours, protestors, who outnumber supporters, build barricades around Tahrir Square, while Google improves its speak2tweet tool, which permits to use the Internet until is partially restored. [T:10] 3 February Bursts of heavy gunfire aimed at protestors in Tahrir Square. Protestors take control of most of Tahrir area, including Kasr al-Nile Bridge and Meret Basha Avenue. Mubarak supporters gather at 6th October Avenue but are outnumbered by protestors, causing clashes in that corner. Army troops and tanks create a buffer zone and build barricades to keep protestors out. [T:11] 4 February – “Day of Departure” Tent camps have sprung up around the square and walls are filled with graffiti. Protestors build barricades and sleep under tanks. The army keeps a buffer zone at 6th October Avenue, outside the Egyptian Museum and the NDP headquarters. Protestors set up barricades in the corner of Meret Basha Avenue and 6th October Avenue, while the military creates a checkpoint in the access to Kasr al-Nile Bridge. Protestors construct a field hospital and some smaller clinics on the east side of Tahrir Square. [T:12] 5 February The army urges protestors to remove barricades from 6th October Avenue and Meret Basha and move it closer to the Square, but barricades remain in its place. Instead, protestors build a checkpoint on Meret Basha Avenue next to the east side of the Egyptian Museum and in al-Tahrir Avenue. Some supporters roam around Nile Corniche, Champollion Road, Kasr al-Nile Street and al- Bustan Street, they station men around the square to sound the alarm by banging metal plaques if supporters decide to attack. [T:13] 6 February The police return to Cairo in an attempt to remove occupiers from Tahrir Square. In 6th October Bridge and Avenue, vehicular traffic flows again although protestors continue the occupation with
32 Shenker, J. et al, “Hosni Mubarak vows to stand down at next election – but not now,” The Guardian, 2nd February 2011. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/feb/01/hosni-mubarak-egypt-president
68 tents in the square. In the afternoon hours, there are around 100,000 protestors in Tahrir Square, new barricades in Meret Basha and al-Tahrir Avenues, and the museum’s open area becomes a gathering point for security forces. [T:14] 7 February Tahrir Square’s occupation continues. Banks reopen but schools and stock exchange remain close. Protestors form a human chain around Mogamma building and more tents are placed in the roundabout and open areas, becoming “permanent spaces” while the remained voids are used for mobilization and visibility. [T:15.16.17] 8-10 February Protestors expand the occupation zone to the Parliament. Security forces keep the area around the Egyptian Museum and the 6th October Avenue, while the largest crowd pours in the square. On 10th February, Mubarak indicates he will not resign as president, which brings more occupiers to Tahrir. [T:18] 11 February – “Day of Departure” Occupiers set up tents in Tahrir’s narrow streets and around the state’s television building. There is an atmosphere of carnival and celebration, marching, mingling, and dancing around the square. Security forces remain outside the Egyptian Museum and 6th October Avenue, but are pushed back by protestors for being outnumbered. Thousands of protestors gather around the state television building. 19 hours after Hosni Mubarak indicated that he would not resign, the Vice-President Omar Suleiman announces that the president has stepped down. During the whole night, there are celebrations around the country but mainly in Tahrir Square. Soon, military forces ask protestors to leave the square. It takes two days to remove all the tents and shelters in Tahrir Square and traffic starts to flow slowly for the first time since 25th January.
Tahrir Square occupation reintroduced the notion of spatial publicness not only in Cairo but in contemporary cities. During the 18-day-occupation, Tahrir Square was transformed from a controlled one-only-function space to a praxis-commoning spatiality. The square hosted different and new forms of social organization and habitat; it served as a creative and generative space that managed to produce new socio-spatial relationships, allowing spatial flows, and hub communications between local and global movements. There were multiple dimensions in Tahrir Square, but it was remarkable the adaptation and divergence into contemporary social dynamics in public spaces by using spatial practices. Mohamed el-Shahed, PhD architect from the New York University at Middle East and Islamic Studies Department, relates the 1981 Emergency Law with public policy and urban planning, which “like most governmental matters, were filtered through the harsh lens of state security” and that “the state deployed the physical design of urban space as one of its chief means of discouraging democracy” (ElShahed 2011). Thus, by understanding that the organization of public space under Mubarak’s regime reflected the model for governmental rationality, then the occupation of Tahrir Square became an act of insurgent urban design.
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1.3.2 Zuccotti Park – New York
Img. 26 Zuccotti Park location
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Zuccotti Park is located in Wall Street, New York, it has an area of 3,100m² and is part of the Privately Owned Public Space (POPS) 1 net [see further details in Chapter 5]. After the demolition of the “Singer Building” in 1968, Pittsburgh United States Steel Company built in its place “Liberty Plaza Park,” next to “One Liberty Plaza” building. This space was one of the few open spaces in the financial district at the time, highlighting the need of public spaces in the city. After the 9/11 attacks, the park was heavily damaged for weeks because it served to task people recovering and as deposit debris. In 2005, the City Council approved an application form from its new owners, Brookfield Properties, to modify the aspect of the park. With a budget of USD 8 million, the architecture office “Cooper, Robertson & Partners” designed the new park, and its owners renamed it after the company chairman John Zuccotti.
The new design included 54 honey locust trees, pink granite sidewalks, 16 fixed tables and chairs, 307 linear meters of fixed seats, 500 ground lights placed over a diagonal grid that cross the long axis of the park, and two sculptures: “Joie de Vivre” by Mark di Suvero and “Double Check” by John Seward Johnson. Joie de Vivre is a 21-meter high sculpture that consists of bright-red beams and was moved from its previous installation in the Storm King Art Center, while Double Check is a bronze businessman sitting on a bench. There is a slight downhill slope of 30 meters in its longitudinal section, whose retaining walls create an enclosing space inside the park moderating the slope, and allocates outlets in tree-wells and two spigots deliver power and water. Benches and tables form clusters in the northeast and southwest corners forming semi-circular steps that reach the sidewalks. The central walkway is reinforced by three planting beds, two circular and one oval, which channelizes pedestrians away from the seating zones (Img. 27).
Img. 27 Zuccotti Park area
1 Privately Owned Public Space (POPS) is an urban regulation created in New York in 1969 in which private developers receive bonus-floor area in exchange of providing to the city, public spaces, although they remained in private property. In the case of Zuccotti Park, it is owned and controlled by Brookfield Properties, a real estate company.
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1.3.2.1 Urban insurgent narrative
Months before OWS, the Canadian Magazine Abdusters2 recalled the Arab Spring and Spanish acampadas in Wall Street, to protest against the economic inequality worldwide. “New Yorkers Against Budget Cuts” (NYABC) group joined this initiative, and organized meetings and rallies. There were other groups from across the country but also from Spain and Egypt, who helped with the coordination and preparation of the occupation. Thus, OWS was not spontaneous; it was influenced, organized and coordinated by many fronts and different platforms, which were open to all and shared on social media. Hence, authorities had also access, provoking a series of consequences in the evolution of the occupation. These situations are presented as a marking-point journal of the occupation, which leads to the configuration of the spatial cartography.
[Z:01] 9 June The Canadian Magazine Abdusters register the web domain “OccupyWallStreet.org." [Z:02] 13 July – A shift in revolutionary tactics Abdusters cites in a blog post that the revolution strategies in Egypt and Spain could be followed and adapted to local contexts. It proposes a protest in Wall Street: “On September 17, we want to see 20,000 people flood into Lower Manhattan, set up tents, kitchens, peaceful barricades and occupy Wall Street for a few months. Once there, we shall incessantly repeat one simple demand in a plurality of voices, [demanding] democracy not corporatocracy.” 3 The protest is planned as horizontal, leaderless, and its sole demand is not determined until gathering protesters and agree together on what should be done next. This post receives a great repercussion and the hashtag #occupywallstreet is created on Twitter. [Z:03] 26 July A Facebook group and a Twitter profile are created. Abdusters encourage different cities to join the movement, especially in Germany, Japan and Britain. [Z:04] 2 August The group NYABC incorporates a “General Assembly” with another group holding strategic sessions. In the aftermath, these two groups march toward Bowling Green Park in Lower Manhattan. [Z:05] 6 September OWS supporters start posting their photos and stories in the Tumblr page “wearethe99percent.tumblr.com.” Abdusters calls for a “Tahrir acampada” in Wall Street (Img. 28).
2 “Abdusters Media Foundation” is a not-for-profit magazine that opposes to capitalism and has launched different international actions such as Occupy Wall Street, Buy Nothing Day, or TVTurn off Week. 3 Abdusters, “Occupy Wall Street.” http://www.adbusters.org/blogs/adbusters-blog/occupywallstreet.html
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Img. 28 Adbusters tweet calling for a "Tahrir acampada"
[Z:06] 17 September An estimated of 1,000 protestors flow in Lower Manhattan to “Chase Manhattan Plaza,” however they find the park cordoned off by police officers. In order to avoid the protest’s dispersion, organizers try to reach Bowling Green Park instead, but some activist send tweets indicating that the police have also fenced it off. They decide to go to Zuccotti Park, a space where the police could not enter without a legal permit because it is a private property. There are reports of clashes with the police, which are recorded and posted on YouTube. About 150 people stay overnight in Zuccotti Park. [Z:07] 20 September The police arrest mask-wearing protestors under the “New York Penal Law 240.35 Loitering:”4 A person is guilty of loitering when he: 4. Being masked or in any madder disguised by unusual or unnatural attire or facial alteration, loiters, remains or congregates in a public place with other persons so masked or disguised, or knowingly permits or aids persons so masked or disguised to congregate in a public place; except that such conduct is not unlawful when it occurs in connection with a masquerade party or like entertainment if, when such entertainment is held in a city which has promulgated regulations in connection with such affairs, permission is first obtained from the police or other appropriate authorities. [Z:08] 24 September More than 80 people are arrested on a march to Union Square.5 The conflict brings charges over the police for overly zealous in using force and pepper spray. In a video, a police officer sprays gas on 6 women’s faces, turning viral and enlarging the movement. OWS gets its first major mass media coverage and similar occupations take place in cities like Chicago and Tampa. [Z:09] 28 September The police Commissioner indicate that the NYPD cannot ban protestors from Zuccotti Park. Since it is a POPS, it is required to stay open 24 hours a day.
4 New York State Law, Penal Law, Consolidated Laws of New York’s Penal Code. “Article 240 –NY Penal Law. 240.35 Loitering.” http://ypdcrime.com/penal.law/article240.htm 5 “NYPD: Arrests In ‘Occupy Wall Street’ Protest Justified,” CBS, New York, 24 September 2011. http://newyork.cbslocal.com/2011/09/24/police-make-arrests-in-wall-street-protest/
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[Z:10] 29 September In day 13, there is a morning march around the time the opening bell rings at the stock exchange market. “The 99 percent” becomes the leading phrase used by demonstrators. [Z:11] 1 October More than seven hundred people are arrested on a march across Brooklyn Bridge. The police indicate those arrested were blocking vehicular traffic. Meanwhile some protestors indicate the police purposefully lure and trap them on the multi-tiered bridge’s road level.6 This situation is covered by mass media and reaches front-page newspapers and TV shows openings. More cities join the Occupy Movement like Los Angeles and Washington. [Z:12] 3 October Some protestors reach Zuccotti Park dressed as “corporate zombies” in clutching fake cash, parade down Wall Street. There are occupations in cities like Boston, Memphis, Minneapolis, St. Louis, Hawaii, and Portland. [Z:12] 5 October At least 39 organizations join OWS for a march in the financial district. An estimated of 10,000 protestors rally from Foley Square to Zuccotti Park in Lower Manhattan. The march is mostly peaceful until nightfall, when 28 demonstrators are arrested for building barricades, according to the police. There are occupations in about 50 cities in the United States. [Z:13] 6 October About 4,000 protestors march in Portland, there are demonstrations unfold in cities like Houston, Austin and San Francisco, and also Zheng-zhou, Frankfurt and Barcelona. Videos and photographs are circulating intensively in social media, thus censors have selectively blocked discussions about OWS on digital platforms. Meanwhile, the functional zoning in Zuccotti Park starts to change in order to accommodate shelters and structures that are more stable, permanent, and resistant to winter. [Z:14] 10 October – “Nation undecided” A Reuters poll of 1,113 adults7 finds that 82% of citizens have heard of the movement, 33% are favourably, 40% are undecided, and 27% hold an unfavourable view. Mayor Michael Bloomberg states that so long as protesters operate under the law, they will not be arrested. Occupiers identify this statement as a permit to remain in Zuccotti Park. [Z:15] 13 October Brookfield Properties announces that protestors must vacate the park at 7 a.m. the day after due to sanitation cleaning. This communiqué indicates that after the four-hour power washing, protestors could return to the park but will not be able to remain, as there are new rules that prohibit tents, tarps, and sleeping in the park. Mayor Bloomberg and the police support this communiqué, which is
6 Wells, M., “Occupy Wall Street – the story of the Brooklyn Bridge ‘trap,’” The Guardian, 3 October 2011. https://www.theguardian.com/world/blog/2011/oct/03/occupy-wall-street-brooklyn-bridge-arrests 7 The Guardian, “Occupy Wall Street protests – Wednesday 6 October 2011. https://www.theguardian.com/world/blog/2011/oct/05/occupy-wall-street-protests-live
101 seen by occupiers as a blockade to the occupation. Thus, they proceed to clean the park by themselves and vow to defend the occupation from the police. [Z:16] 14 October Brookfield Properties announces that they will not force occupiers to leave Zuccotti Park. It postpones the cleaning at the last minute avoiding a standoff between occupiers and police. [Z:17] 15 October – “Global day of action” Protestors around the world march in a “global day of action,” in different cities in Europe, America and Asia. While demonstrations are generally peaceful, violence erupts in Rome when rioters hijack the protest. In New York, thousands of people march to the U.S. Armed Forces recruiting station in Times Square. Loosely coordinated demonstrations take place in 951 cities in some 82 countries according to organizers. [Z:18] 15 November – “Evicting OWS” A surprise police raid at 1 a.m. clears Zuccotti Park’s encampment zone, seizing tents, kitchen gear, generators, and personal belongings. City Councilman Ydanis Rodriguez is reported to have been arrested when he and a group of protestors tried to push their way through a line of police officers, who in turn were trying to prevent additional protesters to enter the park. Mayor Bloomberg states that there is not a violation of freedom of speech and assembly rights, citing the health and safety conditions in the park as reasons for the eviction: “This action was taken at this time of day to reduce the risk of confrontation in the park, and to minimize disruption to the surrounding neighbourhood. [Mayor Bloomberg has] become increasingly concerned – as had the park’s owner, Brookfield Properties – that the occupation was coming to pose a health and fire safety hazard to the protestors and the surrounding community.” OWS statement is released in response to the eviction, exercising their right to assemble and the need to create a ‘civic space’ as essential to changing public discourse. The Mayor’s office release a response: No right is absolute and with every right comes responsibilities. The First Amendment gives every New Yorker the right to speak out – but it does not give the right to sleep in a park or otherwise take it over to the exclusion of others – nor does it permit anyone in our society to live outside the law. There is no ambiguity in the law here – the First Amendment protects speech – it does not protect the use of tents and sleeping bags to take over a public space. New York City Council [Z:19] 17 November In honour to the movement’s two-month anniversary and in response to the eviction, occupiers walk from Zuccotti Park toward Stock Exchange building. More than 30,000 people demonstrate in and around Zuccotti Park, Union Square, Foley Square, and Brooklyn Bridge.
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As stewards of public spaces, OWS challenged the use of public spaces in physical and legal form, propagating to more than a thousand cities. The OWS eviction represents a “deficit in the provision and management of public space” (Marcuse 2011), and it does not act on a fixed spatial matrix, instead it transforms the material form and the affective nature of public spaces in the contemporary city.
1.3.2.2 Spatial cartography – Zuccotti Park
For two months, Zuccotti Park became not only a space for occupying and protesting, but also a contested space for practicing politics. Nevertheless, its transformation from being a corporate plaza to a radical common space, demanded changes on spatial relationships.
During the occupation, protesters used blankets and sleeping bags, tarps, and bins, zoning the park as a constantly adapting process. In the northeast corner, a retaining wall and stepped bench held book bins as the People’s Library, while tables and folding chairs created a space for reading. The retaining wall and three tables were designated as the zone for Legal, Media and Outreach. Umbrellas and tarps intermittently stretched over this space in order to shelter occupiers and electronic devices. At the end of the retaining wall, there was the sanitation zone and next to it, a freestanding installation for recycling, composting and grey-water processing. Next to People’s Library and Media Outreach at the south end stairs, it was placed the zone for the General Assembly. People’s Kitchen was partially closed by stacking boxes, crates, tables and bins around three benches in the centre of the park. The kitchen ‘walls’ were taller at the northwest end, while the other three sides formed low counters and basins. The northeast benched served as buffet while people made a line towards Trinity Place, and the southwest bench accommodated the scullery. In the central northeast side, there was the comfort workstation with bins and rolling racks holding clothing. The Medical area was placed in Cedar Street’s retaining wall. On that side, from Trinity Place towards Broadway Street, there was the sleeping zone, filled with sleeping bags and camping tents. Two tables formed a makeshift Internet cafe around the Freedom Tower, it was a tent that held antennas and a router that provided Wi-Fi. In the northwest corner of Trinity Place and Cedar Street, two fixed tables, seats, and a long bench held the Social Area, while another segment of the stairs hosted a collection of drums that turned the sidewalk into a dance floor and performance zone. The Double Check sculpture zone was turned into a “Sacred Space” for meditation and prays. In both retaining walls, there were spots dedicated to “art” and in their opposite corners, there were two desks for information.
By mid-October, the area served new functions for the upcoming winter. In the east retaining wall at Liberty St., there was a “room” of operations; a line of tables worked as the administration zone
103 and media outreach, and tables and chairs drape tarps, fill in partial enclosed areas and formed small groups. In Cedar and Liberty St., there were police vans, media vans, food trucks while on Broadway St., the police installed metal fences next to the Red Cube sculpture. This Zuccotti Park was divided in four states: walking, sitting, laying, and standing. Occupiers petitioned the City Council for permission to install portable toilets, but it was denied, so they relied on nearby restaurants and sympathetic business. By late October, there was a cold snap with snowfall. The Fire Department seized biofuel stores and five generators that were supplying power to the occupation zone, however since Brookfield Properties turned off the park’s electrical supply, they got colder, darker and many people left especially at nights. The Movement partnered with a radical cycling group to build bicycle generators for power accessories and charging batteries. They also prepared camping zones and equipment for winter, which reached discussions about whether the occupation should continue or not. Individual camping tents filled the park, covering densely most of the area and placing tents closer to others in order to contain heat. Zuccotti Park’s sidewalks, which are public property, were lined up with metal fences, leaving the block’s corners opened and peened in visitors. The perimeter of the park became a permeable interface between occupiers and visitors.
The nine-week occupation and self-regulated division of the camp was mainly a process of spatial stratification addressed by many factors, such as its spatial form, legal framework, and virtual/physical activity.
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1.3.3 Gezi park/Taksim Square – Istanbul
Img. 29 Gezi Park/Taksim Square location
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On 22nd January 2011, Istanbul’s Mayor Kadir Topbas made public a master plan for the city centre, which included the pedestrianization of Taksim Square and the transformation of Gezi Park into a shopping mall. One year later, the City Council released a video with an animation of the project.1 The video begins with an aerial shot of Taksim Square and Gezi Park and shifts into a huge concrete plaque for pedestrians, while cars go under tunnels. In November same year, the Hürriyet Daily News reported that some shopkeepers were surprised to discover that their business were permanently blocked off overnight when the master plan’s construction began on underpasses. For eight months, small and intermittent civil works were done around Taksim but as the project was not made public, it produced an ambiguous atmosphere and uncertainty. Only until an excavator entered the park and ripped out a tree on 27th May 2013, around 50 activists occupied Gezi Park to prevent its demolition. Soon after, they were removed violently by the police but photographs and videos were spread quickly on social media, causing immediate protests around the country.
These protests were consequences of different situations, but the breaking point was the plan to transform – without public participation – one of the most representative places in Istanbul: Taksim Square and Gezi Park (henceforth Gezi/Taksim). Gezi/Taksim are situated in the European part of the city and are major tourist and leisure spots for being considered the heart of modern Istanbul. This site was a water distribution area during the Ottoman Empire between 1731 and 1839, named after Taksim, which translates to ‘distribution.’ In 1806, the empire built the military barracks “Halil Pasha” in the north side (Img. 30, Img. 31), but they were extensively damaged one hundred years later during revolts against the Ottoman Empire. The Republic of Turkey was founded in 1923 and in 1929, Taksim Square was inaugurated as a commemoration of the 5th anniversary of the foundation of the Republic of Turkey, allocating in its southern end a Monument of the Republic Cumhuriyet Aniti by Pietro Canonica. In 1939, Henri Prost intervened to the site resulting in the demolition of the military barracks and it was followed with the construction of the first football stadium in Turkey (Img. 32). In 1949, the stadium was demolished and transformed as a public park, covering an area of 38.000m2, yet with poor urban planning and quality, and in the latter decades, the open area was developed through a grid of streets. During the second half of the 20th century, there was a series of actions that affected the spatial and functional layout of Taksim area. The construction of “Atatürk Cultural Centre,” a multi-purpose cultural centre and an opera house, brought the arts scene into the area. Some of the most important hotels were placed in the area such as the Inter Continental, the Ritz-Carlton, and the Marmara Hotel. In 1999, Istanbul Supreme Board of Monuments declared that Taksim Square, Historical Water Depot, Atatürk Cultural Centre, and Gezi Park should be conserved as a whole.
1 YouTube video “Taksim Meydan Duzenemesi.” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RoA52Ms9Kyc&feature=youtu.be (accessed on 25 July 2013)
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Img. 30 Taksim Square and Ottoman Barracks. Historic photograph by Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality
Img. 31 Topcu Barracks plan Img. 32 Topcu Barracks before the demolition
Taksim Square has allocated historically important events such as parades, celebrations, and demonstrations. For instance, on 16th February 1969, around 150 demonstrators were injured during clashes between leftist and right wing groups, in what was later known as “The Bloody Sunday.” On 1st May 1977 during demonstrations for the Labour Day, 36 people were killed, which consequently caused a ban on any kind of public demonstrations, allowing only gatherings for New Year’s Eve, “Republic Day” Celebrations and parades related to football games. By 2013, Taksim Square was a main transportation hub, serving as a main transfer point for municipal bus system, subway line of the Istanbul Metro, and Funicular line connecting Taksim Metro station with Kabatas tramway stations and Sea bus port. Istiklal Caddesi (Independence Avenue) is a long pedestrian shopping street where a classic tram runs from a tunnel on one end and on the other end, it reaches Taksim Square, turning the area into one of the hotspots for tourists and locals.
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1.3.3.1 Uprising depiction
Turkish protests started when an excavator removed a tree, part of an urban master plan that intended to redevelop Istanbul’s centre. It included the construction of a channel, luxury collective housing, the Yenikapi Square – a new square to gather one million people (Img. 33), 800 linear meters of vehicular underpass, the pedestrianization of Taksim Square, and the reconstruction of the military barracks as a shopping mall, opera, mosque, theatre, and cinema in the place of Gezi Park (Img. 34). The City Council of Istanbul approved this planning in September 2011 and in February 2012, Istanbul Preservation Board reaffirmed the construction of the master plan with exception of the military barracks. In December 2012, local activists and members of the “Taksim Solidarity Platform” sent an official petition to the City Council, to include public and local residents in the design and construction process of the master plan, but was denied. In January 2013, the Preservation Board disapproved officially the construction of the barracks, for what Prime Minister Erdogan opposed strongly by indicating that: “[the government] will reject this rejection.” One month later, the Supreme Board approved the barracks reconstruction legalizing finally the entire master plan. To this situation, there was a series of protests in April 2013 and on 28th May 2013, around 50 activists set up a camp in Gezi Park to avoid the demolition of 70-year-old trees.
Img. 33 Yenikapi Square, as an alternative to Taksim Square
Img. 34 Plan Taksim Square and Ottoman Barracks
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Gezi Park was one of the few-green-open-no-commercialized spaces in Istanbul (Img. 35), thus several theorists have appointed that demolishing this park was as significant as removing Central Park from New York or Hyde Park from London.2 Although these protests blasted with the demolition of one tree, there was a generalized public discontent due to recent dispositions from the government. The Development Party [AKP] was intensively controlling the use of Internet, press, television, and the right to free assembly; on 24th May, the government voted to ban the sale of alcohol in shops between 22:00 – 06:00, and some days later, it opposed a proposed extension of LGBT rights. In this regard, “Human Right Watch”3 and “Amnesty International”4 have indicated that there was an increment on restrictions of freedom of speech and press. These situations in political and social structures, caused a general discomfort within the population, for what protests were not only about the protection of Gezi Park, but about overall a social uprising. The occupation of Gezi/Taksim is presented as a marking-point journal in order to create an affective-spatial cartography.
Img. 35 Taksim Square / Gezi Park
[GT:01] 27 May Around 50 activists from different organizations and political groups gather in Gezi Park to prevent its demolition. This group voices criticism to the renovation plans all along. [GT:02] 28 May Protestors start an occupation in Gezi Park with sleeping bags and tents. At midday, Istanbul Peace and Democracy Party (BDP) deputy Sirri Sürreya Önder, joins activists that try to block bulldozers
2 BBC Europe, “Turkey clashes: Why are Gezi Park and Taksim Square so important?” 7 June 2013. http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-22753752 3 Human Rights Watch, “Turkey’s Human Rights Rollback.” 29 September 2014. https://www.hrw.org/report/2014/09/29/turkeys-human-rights-rollback/recommendations-reform (accessed October 2014) 4 Amnesty International, “Write for Rights 2013: Final Report,” 7 May 2014. https://www.amnesty.org/en/documents/act30/006/2014/en/ (accessed in October 2014)
125 from cutting trees. He uses his parliamentary immunity and makes the police to remove barricades that surround Gezi Park, indicating that there is no legal permission to cut down trees. Some hours later, the police use tear gas and pepper spray against protestors and set on fire camps in an attempt to clear the park. Photographs and videos are posted on social media, causing infuriation and indignation in the general population. There is one image that becomes one of the symbols of the protests: “The Woman in Red,” who is sprayed in her face by a policeman (Img. 36). Protests emerge immediately in Istanbul and in major cities of Turkey.
Img. 36 The Woman in Red
[GT:03] 29 May The number of protestors grows while the public outrage the excessive force used against protestors. P.M. dismisses the general protests: “Whatever they do, we have made up our minds and will do it.”5 [GT:04] 30 May The police set on fire protestor’s tents in early hours. Deputy Önder is again in the area blocking demolition machinery. Activists call for a major gathering at the park that evening. Violence increases when police use paper spray and water cannon to disperse protestors. In the evening, the number of protestors is around 10,000 people. [GT:05] 31 May The police move into Gezi Park in early hours using excessive force with tear gas and water cannon to clear occupiers. Right after, they fence off the empty park and at 10:00am, use tear gas and water cannons. At 1:00pm, people try to re-occupy Taksim Square but fail. These interventions are repeated across central Istanbul during the entire day. At midday, companies announce that they
5 Hürriyet Daily News, “Timeline of Gezi Park protests,” 6 June 2013. http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/timeline- of-gezi-park-protests-.aspx?pageID=238&nID=48321&NewsCatID=341
126 would not participate if the shopping mall were built in Gezi Park. By 8 p.m., around 100,000 protestors are in Beyoglu district but the police block streets and access to the square with barriers, and try to disperse crowds with gas and water cannons. In the coming hours, protests spread around the city including the districts of Besiktas and Kadikoy. [GT:06] 1 June Around 3:00am, hundreds of people walk across the Bosporus Bridge from the Asian to the European side of the city. Some people join protests from inside their houses, flipping their house lights on and off and banging pots and pans to make noise, while simultaneously, posting texts and images on social media. P.M. states that the Ottoman Barracks are going to be built no matter what, though the shopping mall is not anymore certain, and defends the police’s actions. Police continue to block access to Taksim Square from all directions including Istiklal Avenue, Siraselviler Avenue, Harbiye and Gümüssuyu streets but they slowly start withdrawing in the afternoon. Around 5:00pm, there are clashes among the police and protestors and by the end of the afternoon, the police leave the square, but clashes continue in Besiktas district, the nearest to Taksim, and in more than 40 cities across the country. [GT:07] 2 June In a press conference, the P.M. defends the police actions and leaves Turkey for a four-day trip to Morocco, Tunisia and Algeria. Closed with barriers and freed from the police, there is a tranquil atmosphere in Gezi Park and Taksim Square but clashes continue in Besiktas district and in other cities. There are reports that indicate that the police have attacked makeshift health clinics treating injured protestors in Ankara and Izmir. Footages on YouTube and Twitter show some protestors being attacked by the police. In the afternoon, P.M. states that he will not seek permission to go ahead with the urban plan and raise the possibility to build a museum instead of a shopping mall. 6 [GT:08] 3 June At night, police use tear gas inside houses. Besiktas football fans that have been constantly clashing with the police, agree on a truce that allows people to reach Taksim Square. Throughout the evening, demonstrations are held in various neighbourhoods of Istanbul, while the Technical University’s cafeteria in Besiktas is turned into a makeshift infirmary. A Facebook event named “Black Monday” [Kara Pazartesi] invites 100,000 people to wear black clothing that day. [GT:09.10] 4 – 5 June 38 people are detained in Izmir for posting messages on Twitter about the protests. Deputy Prime Minister Bülent Arinc apologizes for the excessive use of the police on Gezi Park. At evening, there are thousands in Taksim Square in a carnivalesque occupation.7 They receive support from OWS,
6 RT, Turkish police clamp down on anti-government protests. RT, 14 July 2013. https://www.rt.com/news/istanbul- park-protests-police-095/ 7 Al Jazeera, “Turkey Protests Live Blog,” 4 June 2013. http://blogs.aljazeera.com/liveblog/topic/www.aljazeera.com/www.aljazeera.com/www.aljazeera.com/www.aljazeera .com/www.aljazeera.com/www.aljazeera.com/www.aljazeera.com/www.aljazeera.com/www.aljazeera.com/www.alja zeera.com/www.aljazeera.com/www.aljazeera.com/www.aljazeera.com/www.aljazeera.com/www.aljazeera.com/ww
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Indignados and Tahrir Square members with a fully operational kitchen, a first-aid clinic, and a makeshift protestor’s library. [GT:11] 6 June Thousands of protestors remain in Gezi/Taksim. It is the Islamic holy night for what occupiers do not expect confrontations with the police, thus for the first night since the occupation, there are no clashes. P.M. dismisses protestors by linking them with terrorists.8 [GT:12] 7 June P.M. returns to Istanbul and refers to protests as illegal. He announces there are around 1,000 people injured, most of them police officers. [GT:13.14] 8 – 9 June Football fans march towards Taksim Square. At night, thousands of people gather in Taksim district. [GT:15] 10 June P.M. vows to take tougher actions against protestors, underlining they would no longer tolerate massive rallies in Turkey: “We will not only terminate these incidents, we will be on these terrorists’ back in the frame of law. No one will get away with what they did.”9 [GT:16] 11 June After ten days of police absence in Taksim Square, they return at 4:00am, break barricades built by protestors with heavy machinery, enter and expel occupiers in what is reported the harshest crackdowns since the occupation started. By using tear gas and water cannon, a series of violent actions end the occupation. Around 2:00pm, riot police enter Gezi/Taksim and keep on position for ten minutes. There are numerous clashes along the day. In the afternoon, Istanbul Governor indicates that the police have to clear the park because it grounded banners of terrorist organizations and calls occupiers’ mothers to bring their children back home, as he could no longer guarantee their safety. [GT:17] 12 June P.M. makes a ‘final warning’ to protestors to clear Gezi Park. German pianist Davide Martello and Turkish musician Yigit Özatalay, perform a joint piano concert at Taksim Square in a relatively quiet evening. Erdogan raises the possibility to bring into referendum the demolition of Gezi Park. [GT:18] 13 June In response to Istanbul Governor Mutlu’s call for protestors’ mothers to bring their children home, hundreds of women join the protests and form a human chain between protesters and the police.
w.aljazeera.com/www.aljazeera.com/www.aljazeera.com/www.aljazeera.com/www.aljazeera.com/www.aljazeera.co m/turkeyprotests20176 (accessed October 2014) 8 Webber, M., “Erdogan defies Turkish protesters – live blog,” The Guardian, 6 June 2013. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jun/06/erdogan-defies-turkish-protesters-live 9 Kirpalani, R., “First person account of Turkish protests in Istanbul (update),” KUT, 12 June 2013. http://kut.org/post/first-person-account-turkish-protests-istanbul-update
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[GT:19] 14 June Because there is a set-up health clinic in the centre of the Park, the Health Ministry opens an investigation on Istanbul Chambers of Medicine for not having a permission to do so. However, the Turkish Doctors’ Union (TTB) says that helping wounded people is a humanitarian duty and part of their oath. [GT:20] 15 June The police use tear gas, water cannon and plastic bullets to clear occupiers. All tents and placards are seized and destroyed by construction machinery. The police begin to stand guard at Taksim Square and use water cannon and tear gas at the entrance of the Divan Hotel, filling the lobby with tear gas where a health clinic was established to treat injured people (Img. 37).
Img. 37 Protesters escaping the fumes of tear gas thrown into the lobby of Divan Hotel. Source: Dailymail. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2342501/Turkey-unrest-Istanbul-hotel-guests-treated-medics-police- throwtear-gas-lobby.html
[GT:21] 16 June The police cordon off Taksim Square and block the entrance to the square and the park. [GT:22] 17 June A silent stationary protest, the “standing man,” begins in the evening. Many join him and provoke a silent struggle across Turkey for the right to protests. The young man is a performance artist, Erdem Gündüz, who stands in the same place without moving for 8 hours, staring the flag at AKM building. Sixteen protestors are detained and released 8 hours later. [GT:23] 18 June The “standing man” protest is spread around Turkey and is imitated by hundreds that transited through Taksim Square. Anti-terror security forces detain several people in raids at their homes in Istanbul and Ankara.
These protests led to general uprisings in the entire country for 19 days against the government. While protestors occupied Gezi/Taksim, the government supporters raised tensions at the periphery of Istanbul and other cities. The spring and summer of 2013 was filled with occupations in 90 different locations in Turkey, only by using violence and repression, the government could evict them.
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1.3.3.2 Spatial cartography – Gezi/Taksim
In 2013, Gezi/Taksim emerged out of a social movement organized around the articulation of wider notions of the right to the city, critiques over urban planning on a top-down structure, environmental issues, and authoritarian government policies. The size of Taksim Square and Gezi Park is twice the size of Cairo’s Tahrir Square, allowing up to half million to gather. The occupation took place in a moment when the practice of politics drifted from being the space of public demonstrations to a controlled spot by the government. From pacific protest to riots, protests, and occupations, Gezi/Taksim faced a spatial transformation by practicing radical performances for nineteen days intermittently but actively. The spatiality in Gezi/Taksim was a fluid urban fabric, irregular, open, and unpredictable, while the hashtag #OccupyGezi was dynamically present in the virtual space.
On 28th May, a few dozens of people gathered in Gezi/Taksim and set up tents, organized cultural events and made some spatial performances, but immediately their tents were set on fire and the park fenced off by the police. On 31st May, more than 100,000 people marched towards Taksim Square from different parts of the city.
On 1st June, the park was divided in three zones: uptown, midtown and downtown. Uptown is made up of the main platform that joins Taksim and Gezi, hosting a stage for political stands as the Speaker’s corner in Hyde Park, London. Midtown is the central rectangle of Gezi Park, which is flanked by an elevated East and West side. The East side serves as the occupation camping zone, the base camp on the Upper East Side, and the International Corner was on the Lower East Side where logistics and politics departments were based. At this side, there was also the “House of Commons,” the infirmary, the kitchen, the Çapulçu Café, the radio and mobile toilets. The park itself was covered with tents while stalls offered food to people. Taksim Square was more a mobilisation space while Gezi Park served as the commune place. The West side was dominated by a fixed structure of a previous cafeteria that was turned into the Çapulçu TV studio. The natural wall that links the upper platform leading to Taksim Square was the space for resting. In the zone between the central square and Downtown, a memorial, composed by candles and a banner saying “Taksim to the People” was erected in honour to those who died during the previous days. Downtown differs from the other two zones because of its organic form. The streets layout and green areas were destined to take the central warehouse, which collects and distributes donated medical, food and other supplies. It also hosted the Library and the Mosque made of two party tents. 23-line barricades were erected and served as checkpoints. In Istiklal street, there was a light checkpoint that permitted the entrance of ambulances, garbage trucks and supply vehicles. This
130 entire layout was called “Taksim Republic,” and at the entrances points, people handed drew maps of the area.
Gezi/Taksim involved tent’s settlements, general stores, clothing area, day care centre, information zone, veterinary clinic, community garden, and nasturtiums. It became a tactical urbanism zone: bare-bones and ad-hoc structures, tin lean-tos, bricks, spare concrete bollards and crates used to make picnic tables, and spawned its own pop-up economy with goods instead of money. Simple tape stripes in the floor marked the borders of each section in Gezi Park, defining the functions of each space. These spaces were transformed temporally depending on occupiers’ needs, expanding or shrinking, appearing, disappearing or reappearing. A remarkable spatial action was the AKM building, a classic modern building that overlooked Taksim and whose frontal façade was occupied by protestors. They filled it with banners, posters and flags, and once they reached the top, they created a cloud of colour dust layer. The series of collective actions altered the experience of the architectural materiality and urban landscape, as well as the representation and symbolism of Taksim. The occupation was in itself an act of defiance, and referring to William Mitchell,10 the occupation “is a form of expressive conduct that stated a determination to remain and dwell in the public space indefinitely” (Mitchell 2013).
10 William J. T. Mitchell is a professor of English and Art History at the University of Chicago and has been editor of the Critical Inquiry since 1978.
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1.4 Discussion. Archi-events
Three events: Tahrir Square in Cairo, Occupy Wall Street in New York, and Gezi Park / Taksim Square in Istanbul, demonstrate that in the 21st century different fields are related in time and space (physical and virtual). Politics, history, social theory, economic, urban development, digital software, architecture, media and communication are part of this body that contains revolution and affection on new created spatialities. In the case of Tahrir Square, the roundabout with a circular form allows reversing the ‘square,’ from having static centripetal to a dynamic centrifugal force. In Zuccotti Park, the quadrangular form permits to have a more stable inner organization. The occupation is longer and less violent, includes an expanded energy and intensity, and as it is a POPS, it blurred the lines between public and private, and legal and illegal. Finally, in Gezi/Taksim, the occupation shares the former two spatial features, a circle and a quadrangular form, presenting different activities of the occupation allocated in both spaces in a simultaneous way, which leads to a temporal state in the roundabout, and a steady and permanent state in the park. Some notions and approximations of ‘radical architecture’ remain from the 50s, 60s, and 70s in contemporary occupations such as movement, defiant, dissident, contested, and challenging, and dynamic, converting the spatial experience into a shared spatiality.
Since 2011, the continuous struggle for the space appropriation has been intense, when a series of global demonstrations in public spaces show the necessity of people to be visible and to have a common space. However, different from previous occupations, these ones represent the inclusion of the virtual space into the physical one, forming one single space that is dynamic and borderless, inclusive and intermittent. Not only the organization but also the mediation, communication and synchronization of people and spaces are mainly developed in the virtual space, expanding the limits of both people and spaces and shrinking the time of activation and deactivation. Occupations in public spaces have become tools that confront conventional means of communication and the physical presence of people in the city, for what the materiality of squares and parks, and the corporeality of bodies, amplify the scope of the contemporary public sphere. The radicality of these events lay on the fact that they defy the roots and current state of an established infrastructure. Occupations are not limited to time or space, they challenge them, and through these events, they form new radical spaces. Therefore, for the purpose of this work, this situation is considered as architectural events – archievents.
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CHAPTER II. SPATIAL AFFECTION IN THE VIRTUAL SPACE
Space, difficult to define but crucial to understand in the 21st century. In the Bloomsbury Thesaurus Dictionary, space is defined in twenty-one different ways. It is firstly described as distance, length, measurement, depth, expansion, and quantity, all of them in terms of Cartesian space. Then, in astronomy it is explained as the outer space. The third definition is related to geographical space as location, followed by spaciousness in reference to voluminousness and immensity. The next meanings are related to perception and sensation such as reserved space, personal space, available space, range space, and intervening space. The fourth-dimension is space-time on Einstein’s relativity theory, which includes time to its three dimensions, naming it as spatiotemporally. In this regard, spatiality is considered for the purpose of this research as the synchronicity of space [specific] and time [temporally]. In addition, real space depends upon what placemakers do in space, where several philosophers and physicists have largely tried to define it as the idea of ‘absolute space:’ i.e. space as sort of a container; the idea of ‘relational space;’ space as a matter of relationship between objects and without container (Bloomsbury 1997).
Moreover, Ali Madanipour1 indicates that space is something somehow socially produced (Madanipour 1996), and Otto Riewoldt, author of “Intelligent Spaces: architecture for the formation age,” relates digital technologies to the inclusion of a new dimension on architectural space. Although these technologies cannot redefine space’s fundamental character, “for architecture, utopia will continue to lie in the real world, not the virtual realm” (Riewoldt 1997).
This research adds other layers into the notion of space, going beyond the Cartesian space, one that is “accessible anywhere and located nowhere” (Riewoldt 1997). The inclusion of the virtual into the physical space blurs continuously their boundaries, until forming one only space. Here, movement is simultaneous in both spaces: i.e., a person walks on a street and posts a photo on Facebook using his/her mobile. The body’s movement is interconnected in the material and virtual space through a dispositive (mobile) while acting (walking), making to irradiate the body’s radius of operability. This space is nowhere in particular but everywhere at once, as William Mitchell2 refers: “it is fundamentally and profoundly antispatial” (Mitchell 1995). But virtual space should not be confused with cyberspace. Cyberspace, at large, is described as a non-physical environment shaped by computer technology or an “infinite artificial world where humans navigate in information-based space” (Benedikt 1991). It presents different place-characteristics of network technologies: in the virtual space, some (more and more) human activities take place rather than at the level of pure body experience, while cyberspace is the environment where computer networks exist. In the
1 Ali Madanipour, architect and professor of Urban Design at Newcastle University. 2 William J. T. Mitchell is a professor of English and Art History at the University of Chicago and has been editor of the Critical Inquiry since 1978.
169 virtual space, everywhere at once is possible, unlikely Genius Loci, which includes a sense of identity and belonging of a determined space. It striates the physical space because it could be created and accessed everywhere.
Places in the cyberspace of the Net are software constructions. Each piece of software running anywhere – on any machine or collection of machines in the Net – creates environments for interaction, virtual reams that you can potentially enter. The text window provided by a word processor is one such place… Like architectural and urban places, these have characteristic appearances, and the interactions that unfold within them are controlled (often very rigidly) by local rules. (Mitchell, City of Bits Space, Place, and the Infobahn 1995)
Bruno Latour relates space and time as a state within networks that recombines the world (Graham and Marvin 1996), while Mitchell adds that the architecture of the 21st Century cannot respond anymore to rigid programmes, it needs to be flexible, diverse, and respond to human and electronic nomadic occupations (Mitchell 2003). There are two states that compose this research in relation to space: ‘spatiality’ [space + time], and ‘contemporary public space’ [physical and virtual].
2.1. Virtual space in occupations
The network-based forms of social movements started in the late ‘60s when they structured organization and communication without the need of being under vertical hierarchies (Melucci 1989) (Castells 1997). In 1989 in Tiananmen Square, the first student and then social protest was one of the pioneers on using electronic technologies, it organized and mobilized large groups of people in the urban space through email.3 Ten years later in Seattle, the “Independent Media Center” (IMC) and the “Bulletin Board System” (BBS), produced and managed by autonomous people around the world, planned general protests against the World Trade Organization convention. In 2011, the Arab Spring, the Occupy Movement, the Indignados, among others, used widely social networks like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and SMS to organize protests, reason why the mass media referred to them, especially to the Arab Spring, as the “Facebook Revolution” (Baron 2012).
In the case of Tahrir Square, the government shutdown the Internet in the entire country three days after protests began, as a method of social blockade. Nevertheless, this control measure brought an unexpected reaction: more people gathered in streets to protest against the
3 “Tiananmen Square 1989: The Declassified History,” National Security Archive. Obtained through collaboration of Yin Lae on 13 January 2014. www.gwu.edu/-nsarchiv/NSAEBB16/documents/index.html
170 government. This action rose two situations: the first one was a significant increment of anger and rage among the population. Many people were following the protests on social networks, but when they were restrained from Internet, many decided to join the physical protests because they did not have ‘another place’ to be but the physical one, leading to the second situation, which made people to be more aware of their space. In order to avoid the only left space people had, clashes with the police were more frequent and violent in Tahrir area, continuing for the following days although the intensity varied. In this sense, social networks became major tools for broadcasting the social battle in Tahrir, but as days passed by, things calmed down and it started the physical occupation of the square. At this point, the virtual space was the platform for a dynamic capacity to exchange and shape opinions and ideas. Indeed, not only in Tahir Square but also in the Occupy Movement, Indignados, Gezi / Taksim, and so on, social networks were a ‘thing to have’ and was the major ‘meeting point’ of occupations. In Tahrir Square, occupiers built a media camp with two tents and five people working as an IT department that provided free and open Wi-Fi as well. This dual relationship transformed the square in the place where virtual networks were visible, materializing simultaneously posts, photos, videos, messages, tents, chants, and speeches in a physical collective body.
Tahrir Square visualized how social networking tools such as Twitter and Facebook transformed the way of appropriation public spaces. While in the ‘60s social movements like May 68 or the anti- Vietnam war, the graffiti was one of the most popular ways of messaging large groups of people, in 2011 occupations it was the hashtag [#]. It is called hashtag because the # symbol refers to hash, or ‘pound’ in some other places in the United States, and it is used to label or identify messages or comments on a specific topic. In addition, hashtags like #OccupyEverywhere, #tahrir or #OccupyGezi express literally the power of the physical space, including an action in a direct engagement with the physical body – in this case through the virtual space. In a study made by Zachary C. Steinert-Threlkeld et al.,4 they tracked 13.8 million geo-located tweets and machine- coded data on protests from 16 countries during the Arab Spring, seeing that decentralized groups were coordinated online and organized offline (Figure 1). This social networking, as Steinert- Threlked indicates, “lowers the barriers required to coordinate, making it easier to know if others will protest and whether or not they are habitual protesters” (Steinert-Threlkeld, et al. 2015). Social networking lets more people to create, produce and have access to information and having consequently an affective link among them. In this regard, individuals are more likely to protest when they know many others are protesting, and using few hashtags repeatedly is a signal that there is a latent demand to protest.
4 Zachary C Steinert-Threlkeld, Delia Mocanu, Alessandro Vespignani and James Fowler, “Online social networks and offline protest”. EPJ Data Science. 2015 4:19
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The prevalence of hashtags in Egypt was more often used for coordinating according to the studio made by GDELT [Global Database of Events, Language and Tone], where they counted the hashtags used during the occupation. Before the occupation, the coordination was minimal; it served more to express personal opinions rather than organizing or managing protests. In fact, the hashtag #egypt was barely used, while the hashtag #jan25 was first launched on 19th January, and #tahrir on 25 January. During the 18 days of protest, #jan25 was predominant in social networks but during the last days, #tahrir became more popular (Figure 2). It was a virtual shift from time to space.
Figure 1 Number of world protests by main grievance/demand between 2006-2013. Source: Zachary C Steinert- Threlkeld et al. “Online social networks and offline protest”. EPJ Data Science. 2015 4:1
Figure 2 Most frequent Twitter hashtags during the Tahrir Revolution in January-February 2011. The panel shows the percent of a day’s tweets which contain at least one of the hashtags indicated. Source: Zachary C Steinert-Threlkeld et al. “Online social networks
Different studies indicate that individuals are more likely to protest when friends and neighbours are protesting (Gould 1991), and also when they have prior experience in social movements. By exposing information, social media helps protestors to learn about tactics and strategies to act in the physical space. The logics of networking are shaped by particular cultural and political topics,
172 generally in a local context, challenging at the same time vertical practices. In this sense, contemporary revolutions emphasized physical occupations through virtual space, converging the notion of publicness into one single space through collective action [contemporary public space]. For instance, during the occupation of Zuccotti Park, the most important collective action in the physical space was the General Assembly. Debates and speeches took place in northeast side stairs of Zuccotti Park but also in virtual platforms like YouTube, Facebook and Twitter. The General Assembly acted in the contemporary public space, causing stronger engagements among participants. William Gamson and Gadi Wolfsfeld indicate that social movements are dependent on streaming media for three purposes: to mobilize political support, to increase the legitimation and validation of their demands, and to enable them to widen the scope of conflict beyond the likeminded (Gamson and Wolfsfeld 1993). The higher their influence and range in the virtual space, the stronger impact there is on the physical public space.
The use of social networks such as Facebook, YouTube and Twitter, has led to new patterns of spatial protest, producing a sense among online and offline protestors, of connectedness and co- presence in the space. These networks served with crucial “function as spheres of dissidence where collective critiques of the existing political and social order were articulated in the immediate pre- revolutionary period,” while “the way in which the Internet, especially Web 2.0 (user-generated and social network applications) became tools of revolution” (Aouragh and Alexander 2011). This state differentiates how protestors use the Internet during protests, not how Internet works during the protests. On one hand, the Internet, as a system, gave form and energy to these revolutions, it was used as a source of energy, information, organization and communication. On the other hand, social networks provided instant tools to react pre-on-post [before, during, after] the protests, especially when people were on their way to gather or already gathering in physical public spaces. Google Maps was an important digital platform used by protestors to make actions, events and performances visible in the space. When there were clashes with the police, protests in New York with OWS, in Cairo with Tahrir Square, and in Istanbul with Gezi/Taksim, demonstrators used Google Maps as a crowdsourcing platform that tracked the police (Img. 1). Though this method was first used in London during the 2011 riots, when students track riot vans and helicopters, supporting in real-time the reaction from protestors (Img. 2). In Gezi/Taksim, protesters were able to build barricades and block away vehicles, police and horses. In Google Maps platform, Taksim Square was represented with a green tent figure, road warnings in green to let people know which street was open and which one was blocked, pink tags to identify distinct protestors’ groups, light blue flags for police locations and movements, and occupation’s slogans and mottos were represented with a house symbol.
The distinction between producer and user, private and public, and self-mediation and co- production, was blurred during the development of these events. Social networks acted as
173 mediators in a three-part scheme of acting: Discursive opportunity structure, Networked opportunity structure, and Media opportunity structure (Cammaerts 2012). This scheme acted in a circular way as each part depended on each other, but it had also a dissident character because it altered the normal behaviour of the city and citizens by collective actions. It was transformed into what Ronnie Lipschutz calls “epistemic communities,” a state that transfers knowledge and influences to other movements through “movement spill over” (Lipschutz 1996).
Img. 1 Istanbul Polis Hareketleri map Img. 2 Students' protests map, London 2011
The Arab Spring stated to be an epistemic community, in a big level because of constant actions in social networks besides the proximity of different countries’ location that formed the Arab Spring. Tahrir Square was the first collective and ‘long-term’ occupation in a public space experienced in the first years of the 21st Century, providing evidence that the physical urban space was crucial to the success and continuity of public protests. The virtual space endured the occupation to grow larger and made protestors to be more determined in engaging with the space of protest. For occupiers, Tahrir Square and the hashtag #tahrir was a truly public space, ensuring the power of the body occupying the contemporary public space, and when they acted in a dissident way, they explored and practiced by collective.
2.1.1. Digital patterns of occupations
In the eighteen-day-occupation in Cairo, there was an increment of social media users; i.e., in April 2010 Facebook had 14 million users in the region and by the beginning of 2011 it was around 21 million (Salem and Mourtada 2011). It boasted nearly 100% mobile phone saturation rate, comparing to the roughly 30% of daily Internet users (Social Bakers 2012). The iLike Facebook box was widely used in the digital community, which reflected a type of engagement with the movement in Tahrir. This clicktivism is significantly important because in a way, materializes the urban battle and helps to resonate it in the local and global scope, keeping it active, empowering protestors and striating the physical space.
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The contemporary social revolutions were horizontal and non-hierarchical, but worked in an organization where individual potentialities acted as collective bodies according to different circumstances. They were not commanded; instead they were part of a big structure of processes in communication and common actions.
Img. 3 The Egyptian Revolution on Twitter. Data collected with Gephi Graph Streaming. Hashtag #jan25 at February 11 2011, at the time of the announcement of Mubarak's resignation
Img. 4 Tahrir Square occupation, 11 February 2011. Source: BBC, http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment- 15546570
Manuel Castells indicates that the decentralized structure of digital networks reflected the horizontal structure of these movements, optimizing opportunities for wider participation and creating an endless rhizomatic borderless network: “a work with no centre, no gate keeper, no margins” (Jenkins and Thorburn 2004). The new forms of digital networks provided multiple forms of gestation and organization, making it easier for social movements to occupy urban spaces. In this regard, Christina Schachtner5 developed some digital patterns that relate to participants:
● Digital networks are characterized by low-threshold access facilitating participants access and sharing information and opinions
5 Christina Schachtner, Professor of Media Studies at the University of Klagenfurt, Department of Media and Communication.
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● The network structure of the medium supports the generation of concern due to cross- links with images and videos. Castells points out the importance of YouTube as a catalyser of mobilization on political protests, making viewers to participate directly in what is going on in ‘the ground’. ● Virality relies on the transnational structure of networks in a borderless space connection. ● By using digital networks, there is a platform to exchange experiences, feelings, and thoughts resulting in the emergence of togetherness. ● The horizontality in these heterotopian spaces commands movements. ● Participants could alter the use of the digital platforms according to their needs.
These spatial features allow people not being any longer mere consumers and passive actors; instead they become active subjects, actors, creators, and producers of information and relationships. Castells calls this novelty space as “the construction of the new public sphere in the network society, proceeding by building protocols of communication between different communication processes” (Castells 2009). He also refers to the capacity of the location for being a dissent core, calling it as the ‘culture of autonomy,’ a balance of individuals in the society (Castells, Network of Outrage and Hope. Social Movements in the Internet Age 2012): “social networking sites have been used to facilitate social and sexual freedom in conservative societies” (T. F. Tierney 2015). The ‘culture of autonomy’ promotes individuation, not individualism that brings the cultural transformation of a space through the individuation, forming part of collectives. Digital platforms integrate tools that support various forms of sociality in one device, becoming tools of cognition, communication and co-operation pre-on-post occupations.
Manuel Castells considers that digital communication networks in social movements are “decisive tools for mobilizing, for organizing, for deliberating, and for coordinating” (Castells 2012). It is not one connected by a single all-encompassing network, but rather one connected by a series of networks communicating in common codes through multiple nodes, involving individuals and allowing them to share and store information in a decentralized way. The relationships between social media organize gatherings and communicate social and political issues, spatial practices in urban spaces, and expansion from local to global spaces. They rely on dynamics between digital platforms, urban protests, and media, to what Nazar AlSayyad and Muna Guvenc refers as a “the whole system [that] becomes greater than the sum of its parts” (AlSayyad and Guvenc 2015).
The connection between Tahrir Square, OWS and Gezi/Taksim is that they shared patterns of acting. The first similarity was the ‘identification’ from people that shared feelings about certain themes, producing deeper and closer links within them. In Tahrir Square, it was the youth the first social group that mobilized and claimed protests, in a sense thanks to their common use of social networks. Another factor was ‘brokerage,’ when different sites of contention connected to each
176 other in space and when temporal collectives generated multiple inter-personal contacts. Through this connection, it led to the third aspect, ‘diffusion,’ by flowing information, processing mobilization, organization and resonance commanding to frame bridging and helping to connect different sites of contention and horizontal consensus.
The Arab Spring, the Occupy Movement, the Spanish acampadas, and so on, formed a framework of collaborative action-research network recognized as the 2011 Global Revolution. For Adrià Rodriguez,6 it was a protest that produced geopolitical global shaking with common patterns, while nations and states were no longer the framework, and introduced the following concepts:
● Technopolitics. This state includes new ways of affection and communication such as Internet, social media, and social networks. Though, it is not only the use of digital networks and virtual space, but implies new and different paradigms of social organization, affection, communication and struggle through and within the net. The capacity to increase social engagement in a common purpose and make people going to the streets through the virtual space, empower hyper-connected multitudes offering capacities for collective work and affection. ● Composition. These movements were formed mainly by young people [commonly called as highly-educated generation] hyper-connected communities, crisis labour market, precariousness in jobs, debts, and such like. ● Democracy as a failure system with generalized institutional crisis, corruption, and constitutional crisis.
In contrast to the identification of these movements as horizontal and leaderless, there is implied a transversal, distributed, temporal, and choreographically organization and leadership. In addition, social media is not characterized by absolute horizontality, it is accompanied by a continuous rise of new forms of organization in which leadership (a term that is not comfortable to use within the movements) changes in form and location. Here, choreography adapts to its sense, it induces the idea that the time of digital network platforms when forming protests activities were not spontaneous or chaotic. Unlikely, contemporary digital protestors act by using digital platforms changing the focal point of protests to multiple active networks that serve in several phases; i.e. the physical occupation in Zuccotti Park during the first weeks was somehow controlled and enclosed by the police and by occupiers themselves. However, in the virtual space there was an effervescence activity that pushed the movement towards a global mechanism of spatial appropriation. In places like Shanghai or Bogota, people created digital platforms for crowdsourcing data that was distributed in Zuccotti Park, and in Copenhagen and Washington
6 Adrà Rodriguez, “Global Revolution – Rethinking Assumptions.” Public Intelligence Blog, 20 April 2014. http://phibetaiota.net/2014/04/mini-me-global-revolution-rethinking-assumptions/
177 there were platforms that contributed to Zuccotti Park protestors to create their own, independent and free Wi-Fi device (Creativity 2013).
Img. 5 Contemporary networks. 15M, Madrid: transversal, distributed, temporal, and choreographically leadership. Source: Tecnopolítica. http://tecnopolitica.net
Nezar AlSayyad refers to these new forms of social networking as a collective work that explores cyclical and reciprocal relationship between social media, traditional media, and spaces of protest. The mutual constitutive relationship between the virtual and physical space, form one only space, the contemporary public space, when the collective takes action to produce spatial performances (AlSayyad and Guvenc 2015). Hence, there is a new repertoire that is radically changing and containing spatial performances that articulates socio-spatial dynamics. The open sequence of 2011, as a set of events that pushed interconnected occupations in places distant from each other as Chicago and Tunisia in 2011, or Istanbul and Brazil in 2013, opened a new space for collective self-organized behaviour. The patterns of virtual space in occupations evoked a behaviour that was developed alongside technology; it was a wireless space with wireless social networks.
The Img. 5 represents the Spanish acampadas: digital networks that are in the physical space. Castells highlights these common patterns as transformational social movements that swept the globe (Castells, Network of Outrage and Hope. Social Movements in the Internet Age 2012), and reveal the importance of shared communication and activism in the contemporary real space. Thus, the Arab Spring, the Spanish acampadas, and the Occupy Movement covered symbolic urban spaces, escaping from authorities in a form of self-managed body and acting dynamically between the virtual and the physical space. They were on-and-offline, viral, leaderless, autonomic and convivial, and reinforced conventional opportunities for political assembly in the physical and virtual public space, making a multidimensionality of occupying public spaces.
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2.1.2 Physical movement within virtual movement
Not everyone in the world is in the Internet, but everyone in the Internet is in the world. @Ciudadano_zero0
In the last decades, the Internet has shrunk time and distance, and is rapidly perceived as a vast space of interlocking networks of infinite variety: biological, productive, cybernetic, social and so on. Nonetheless, cities’ physical space has done little to respond to these new dynamics, showing in many cases to be obsolete infrastructures. Thus, social movements rely on the virtual space, which works as an image of mediation between subject and object and their way to horizon of possibilities. This relationship follows Simondon’s “Imagination and Invention” (Simondon 2008), that combined to Bernard Stiegler terms, it raises the question: “how does the what of Facebook constitutes our who?” (Stiegler 1998). Manuel Castells indicates that technology does not determine society, it is society (Castells 2005). Here, society shapes technology according to its needs, values, and interests, while digital networks enable movements to overcome their predecessors and alter established limits and borders by being flexible and adaptable. They depend directly on where, for whom, and for what communication and information are used; though as Castells explains, these communication technologies emerged from the networked individualism. A self-selected communication network on-or-off depends on needs and moods of each individual: a network society and a society of networked individuals. ‘Communication constitutes public space,’ and when digital networks constitute one of the main platforms of communication, the virtual space forms the space of collective and politic behaviour. Still, the presence and absence of communication mechanisms in public spaces work as binary modes where processes are part of them but they are not necessarily visual or material. Melvin Webber in “Community without Propinquity” (Webber 1999) indicates that conceptions and transcendent spatial dispersion emphasize the importance of time-space, distancing from community and public sphere theories before the Internet, in which the network society existed as a rhizome. It maximizes the chances for fulfilling collective and individual projects, creating new processes and projects, and deploying a broader wired and wireless communication.
During 2011 revolutions, Twitter played an important role in the resistance of collectives, for permitting short and direct interaction messages, a quick way to communicate during protests. This platform is visible and reachable by anyone even those who do not have a Twitter account but a mobile phone and Internet access. In the study “The Digital Evolution of Occupy Wall Street” made by Michael Conover et al. (Conover, et al. 2013), they looked into 25,000 Occupy users and found that Twitter was the most used digital network. It evoked a highly-interconnected community of users in pre-existing interest, mainly in domestic politics and foreign social movements. Twitter contents 140-character messages [tweets] and there are two types of content streams: associated
179 accounts and topic-specific tokens [hashtags]. By following one or more accounts, a user creates a personalized platform that feeds her/his interests, linking content and users, and making public and visible. In this study, Conover et al. identify Occupy-related content with hashtags matching either #ows or #occupy, from 1st September 2011 to 31st August 2012, containing approximately 1.82 million tweets produced by 447,241 accounts (Ibid). In the Figure 3, the Occupy traffic closely mirrors activity in Zuccotti Park and other occupations and is characterized by peak-levels during the two-month occupation. In the following months, the activity related to the movement diminished significantly, decreasing 80% from the first six months. Thus, the virtual interaction is very intense during the occupation of Zuccotti Park, but it decreases significantly when the occupation is evicted.
For OWS, one of the most important objectives was to materialize virtual communities in physical public spaces. Occupations needed to show the power of former virtual networking and to experience spatial performances with direct impacts in the society as it occurred with the Arab Spring and the Spanish acampadas. During occupations of squares and park, they provided of drum circles and public jam sessions that contrasted to commercial spaces; i.e. the open kitchen faced directly the idea of paying for primary necessities of life, the people’s library represented the idea of free education for all, the General Assembly showed the equal opportunity to speak and be heard, and the technology area offered occupiers free internet access through the Freedom Towers created by Isaac Wilder7 and his team. These performances helped to run services to occupiers and to create communities and commons spaces. Zuccotti Park became a place where people went to meet others, to talk, to debate, to live together, producing feelings of transforming the physical space and at the same time potentiating the virtual space.
Figure 3 Total number of tweets related to Occupy Wall Street between September 2011 and September 2012. Source: Conover et al., “The Digital Evolution of Occupy Wall Street”. PLoS ONE, 2013
The “Network Society” of Castells acts differently during occupations because spaces experienced extraordinary events. It is divided into “Network System” and “Network Movements:” the first one refers to a complex network with a multiplicity of nodes that is articulated organically and in an ever-changing way. The second one goes beyond the sociological platform of social movements until reaching an articulated network, involving large groups of people that are somehow related to
7 Isaac Wilder, co-founder and Executive Director of the Free Network Foundation.
180 the movement (Hristova, Panzarasa and Mascolo 2015). There is a thin line that at first sight it divides networks, but it actually merges them as fluid strips. In the contemporary public space, there is a multiplied reality threaded in fictions, it is material and unstable, it is a plane of mixed signals that come up with noise in which reality has to fit. In this ever-changing spatiality of occupations, reality and fiction are placed on a mesh that evanescent territory and location; instead it fabricates fleeting configurations that induces the exploration of limits and capacities.
The geoterritory and cyberterritory created a symbiotic organism where multiple network activisms emerged as multilayer occupations. This multilayer occupation was formed primarily by a multilayer communication network that was given by a set of engaged individuals in multiple forms of communication, each one represented as a layer in the network (Kivela, et al. 2013). Individuals communicate and correspond to physical and located networks in which they are connected through online and offline meetings, like the General Assembly in Zuccotti Park that was on streaming (“in the General Assembly, everyone knows that everyone knows”). The multilayer networks represented multi-functional data with more than one type of connection pair nodes; i.e. the structures of online social network and geographic location network (physical network) are seen as single multilayer networks, where geographic and social layers are considered as autonomous networks that share same nodes. Nonetheless, during the occupations, these layers became multiple because they created a symbiotic core where the geolocation and digital platforms dissolved established structures, [Twitter and the hashtag #occupyeverywhere]. It led to an augmented event where physical occupation was seen and followed on screens and vice versa. When OWS reached a global scope, the spatiality of Zuccotti Park was also presented with the hashtag #occupywallstreet, striating an image and place to a global scope. Thus, Zuccotti Park needed to be identified as a virtual image (Figure 4), meaning to rethink the conceived assumptions of the space and its representation. The network movement acted as a hyper-social platform instead of a closed-local isolated society, in which the significant intervention and socio-spatial formation exists within a temporal frame of online and offline possession of spatial presence.
Figure 4 Network Systems - Network Movement
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Img. 6 Global tracking of Occupy Wall Street #occupywallstreet 17 September 2011
These relations relay on the prospective that came out to the front since January 2011, by being physically visible with an intense motto few years before they took place. The ability to mass-scale different concrete and collective social relationships into human experiences, potentiated the ‘common’ citizen to experience her/his capacity to generate and concentrate information, altering their form from collaborators to actors. This praxis resulted in a micro-action forming a multiple- borderless global body, where individual activity converges into a social power mechanism that carry egalitarian physical and digital networking process [the 99% facing the 1%]. Although network movement tools allowed protestors to circulate rapidly information and coordinate the physical occupation, they showed that they were more effective when broadcasting information to large numbers of people. More than organizing social movements, they set up platforms to link and stitch together interpersonal networks, facilitating the physical assemblage within the same space and through viral communication flows. Thus, rather than mobilizing networks, Twitter and Facebook generated a multitude of individuals (Hardt and Negri 2004). Public spaces, network movements and communities were not separated and did not compete among each other. Instead, they bounded into a complex assemblage of human actions, digital platforms, and mobile devices. The contemporary public space produced insights that contributed to processes of publicness and spatial performance configurations.
2.2. Virtual alterations as architectural urban manifestations
The sphere of private people [coming] together as a public… the public sphere regulated from above against the public authorities themselves, to engage them in a debate over the general rules governing relations in the basically privatized but publicly relevant sphere of commodity exchange and social labour. Jürgen Habermas, The structural transformation of the public sphere. 1962
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The public sphere represents one of the most critical and debated topics in recent years. It includes the virtual space as it has turned into a place to discus, plan, create, organize and represent actively the public realm. Thus, the public sphere is not anymore something only tangible but virtual, which by following Jürgen Habermas’ understanding of public sphere, it is the representation of a “network for communicating information and points of view (Habermas 1962 [1991]). In the late 18th century, the public sphere was represented by the bourgeoisie society in in cafes [coffee houses], where they discussed public issues and formed opinions. While in the setting of public sphere, Lincoln Dahlberg8 identifies six different concepts on Habermas notions (Dahlberg 2001):
● Autonomy. Communication has to be truly free from state and economic control ● Exchange. Public sphere has to focus on rational-critical discourse to facilitate on-going exchange ● Reflexivity. It is the internal process of critically reflecting and adjusting one’s position for building a better argument. ● Ideal role-taking. It involves people by putting themselves in others’ positions in order to be more respectful and comprehensive. ● Sincerity. To ensure the understanding of rational assessment of perspectives. ● Discursive inclusion and equality. It captures a wide range of perspectives from an established or given topic.
Dahlberg’s concepts evoke the importance of information exchange and critique for the public sphere, which emerges as a platform where people form the public, and by doing so, they create spatial domains of resistance. In addition, the printing press allowed increasing the expansion of public opinion and the possibility to extend the limits of public sphere from the bourgeoisie to the population at large. This interplay between media and public spaces, structured a platform in which both need each other in order to produce an impact. Public sphere works as a communication network where citizens interact and share information and opinions (Habermas 1996).
As virtual space enhances communication in the population, it forms an online public sphere that has capabilities for both discourse and dissemination. It presents a ‘low barrier of entry,’ a broad access and use, permitting people to produce content in a variety of ways. Therefore, this contemporary public space reflects Habermas’ narratives of public sphere as a rooted form in “networks for wild flows of messages: news and reports, commentaries and talks, scenes and images, and shows and movies with an informative, polemical, educational, or entertaining content” (Habermas 2006), which is an ideal space for political participation.
8 Lincoln Dahlberg is a professor and researcher at the Centre for Critical and Cultural Studies, University of Queensland.
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Contrary to former occupations, contemporary ones used the virtual space not only to spread information, but also to generate debate, to create networks, to communicate real-time events, to manage tools, and so on. This was the point that initiated the contemporary public space, making possible the participation in a social and socialized productive process, where spatial practices involved political participation. From cafes, to printer media, to one-to-many forms of communication as traditional mass media, the many-to-many communication has wider implications of events and social engagement. The possibility of ‘many’ making spatial processes were done in first place in the virtual space, in a simultaneous three states: sender-maker-receptor. In “Network of Outrage and Hope. Social Movements in the Internet Age” (Castells 2012), Castells sets new forms of political participation of a ‘mediatized society,’ instead of dividing it into political groups. The contemporary public space could also benchmark Michel Foucault’s heterotopias as they enlighten the potential of new political arenas beyond the digital media, spaces that drawn into existing societies in which mechanisms of traditional cultures are represented and questioned at the same time (Foucault 1984 [1967]). This contemporary public space contains fluid boundaries that do not act only on political realms but move along different scopes, constraining the space of society. Castells sees digital platforms as communication networks for social movements and public participation, linking to Habermas conception of public sphere while discussion involves matters of common concern and action. Habermas’ conception of public sphere which is one single platform, is added to contemporary occupations in the sense that they shape multiple forms of relationships and implications within the public sphere through digital networks that work as Deleuze and Guattari’s ‘knots of arborescence.’
But physical experience is still the most important aspect in contemporary revolutions. Although OWS, Indignados, the Arab Spring, Gezi/Taksim, and so on, were germinated in the virtual space, all of them needed to be materialized in the physical public space. “In contrast with established forms of political participation, as developed in political parties, the new forms of political participations are not connected by programmes but by experiences” (Castells 2012), experiences that are shared in public spaces. Besides the immense reproduction in the virtual space of those images by ‘offline activists,’ it helped to enlarge the space-event in the physical space: “The Internet was used to disseminate news and to share experiences. Videos, photos, and statements of participants were immediately spread all over the world” (Radue 2012).
Contemporary occupations were globalized and digitalized, they did not stop at legal borders, that according to Yvonne Spielmann, this borderless spatiality arose out the fact that every bit of information is constantly “circulating in mobile, flexible combinations and not taking on a fixed position” (Spielmann 2013). The influence of these spatial practices extended far beyond the virtual space, because there was a permanent global action and relationship between streets and virtual space.
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Similar to the architectural design of public spaces that hosted occupations [Zuccotti Park designed by Cooper, Robertson & Partners; Tahrir Square in Khedive Ismail’s urban plan and Gezi Park / Taksim Square by Henri Prost], that included certain functions, codes and programmes that indicate or restrict actions and activities within these spaces, the virtual space is also designed under certain specific programmes. Henry Jenkins indicates that the architects of these spaces of communication, the software developers and programmers, are identified as knots of arborescence (in the sense of Deleuze and Guattari rhizome): “they write the software code, thus programming the options and restrictions available to and imposed on users when exchanging information and participating” (Jenkins and Thorburn 2004). In both cases, there are established rules, spaces, codes, directions and conditions in order to use those spaces, but contemporary revolutions demonstrated that by knowing the infrastructure, system, language and code, they empowered and reinvented them. Information and spatial practices re-organized and transformed both spaces: collectives channelled spaces from inner to external knots of arborescence, in the form of inhabiting them temporally [occupations in physical and virtual spaces].
OWS and Zuccotti Park widespread spatial tactics and virtual strategies in social networks, inscribing them in the architectural urban landscape. Occupiers realized that there was a vital importance of space on a micro-level because they contest the sovereign power of the system regulator and controller of bodies in the [virtual + physical] space (Foucault 1979), as ‘terrains of resistance’ (Routledge 1994). Marshal Ganz explains that occupiers succeeded by acting in a dissident spatial strategy, placing their bodies where they were not supposed to be (Ganz 2011) and implying a shift from the production of things in space to produce their common virtual and physical space. It was an ‘open space’ that represented the inscription of a networking logic into the organizational architecture of assembling bodies – the radical space [Chapter 4].
The use of digital platforms during these occupations turned citizens and social groups into dissident collectivities that articulated simultaneously the logics of protests. Contemporary social revolutions developed different strategies and tactics thanks to digital networks, making them faster to happen. The virtual and physical occupation was the most important arena of dissent public spaces, and these new arrangements were articulated in the contemporary public space. It brought Castells’ ‘urban questions,’ where new urban qualities influence social dynamics and organizational forms led to the action of radical spatial performances. It was the virtual space the one that articulated the reappropriation of the architectural urban landscape.
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2.2.1. Micro-virtual actions making spatial strategies
Figure 5 Twitter Timeline from Mideast Network 24 January - 3 February. Source: www.kovasboguta.com/1/archives/02-2011/1.html
The Figure 5 shows Twitter timeline in Egypt from 24th January to 3rd February, each node corresponding to a row of tweets. The figure represents a significant chute when the government shutdown the Internet in the country on 28th January; yet, many tweets were posted making the blockade halfway successful. At the same time, there was a significant rush in tweets of blue nodes, showing the sense of urgency that the shutdown created.9 Each dot represents a tweet, which represents a digital device, which embodies a body. Hence, each tweet is a body in the physical space, but the absence of dots from 28th January to 1st February makes a reverse effect: an emptiness in the virtual space meant more bodies acting in the physical space. The direct implications of virtual and physical spaces are seen simultaneously, they both are material and they both are digital. Thus, this figure represents the materialization of bodies in spaces during the occupation, not before nor after, it is placed during a temporality that exercised a socio-spatial dynamic.
9 K. Boguta, “What happened when Mubarak shut off Egypt’s Internet.” 11 February 2011 http://kovasboguta.com/1/archives/02-2011/1.html
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This state of spatiality has a previous process of gestation. Three years before Tahrir Square, The New York Times published an article entitled “Revolution, Facebook Style,” in which the writer, Samantha Sapiro indicates that El-Facebook group “6 April Youth Movement” was created under the support of workers from El-Mahalla El-Kubra town, who planned a general strike on 6th April 2008; by January 2009, the group had more than 70,000 members.10 In 2010, the Facebook group “We are all Khaled Said” was created after the death of this young man, who was attacked by the police.11 This situation placed the Egyptian society on a state of alert; thus, before the 25 January Revolution, there was a strong influence of social mobilization on digital platforms and rallies on streets, producing simultaneously many-to-many communication as an assembly. Facebook, as the most effective social media website during the 2011 revolution, had 8,357,340 members in Egypt by July 2011.12 78% of them were between 15-29 years old and 22% above the age of 30.13 The same year the Egyptian Ministry of Communication made public a report in which it read that 70 millions of Egyptians owned a mobile phone that same year, constituting more than 87% of the country population.14 Meanwhile Twitter had 1,131,204 users between January and March 2011; the most used hashtags used were #egypt (up to 1.4 million mentions during this period), and #jan25 (1.2 million mentions).15 And finally the third most influent social network website, YouTube, which according to Techno Wireless, 16 during the first week of the occupation Egyptian users viewed 8.7 million pages on YouTube.
On the other hand, OWS started as an idea in the Canadian magazine Abdusters, when it launched the proposal to protest on Wall Street on its website. The proposal was made weeks after the Arab Spring and received an important push during the Spanish Indignados and the Greek protests. The idea of ‘occupying’ Wall Street went viral on the Internet, reaching focal attention on grassroots social movements and attaining curiosity and engagement within social media. Having information from previous protests, OWS was more organized and established than Tahrir Square or Indignados. Adbusters’ tweet: “America needs its own Tahrir acampada. Imagine 20,000 people taking over Wall Street indefinitely. #acampadaWallStreet”17 represents the notion of being in the square and appropriate its space. Ideas, tactics, organizational structures, strategies, performances and mechanisms were spread through Internet by previous occupations. Kalle Lasn, Co-Founder of Abdusters, mentioned that:
10 Samantha M. Sapiro, “Revolution, Facebook Style.” The New York Times, 22 January 2009. 11 “We are all Khaled Said”. http://www.elshaheeed.co.uk/home-khaled-said-full-story-background-truth-what- happened-torture-in-egypt-by-egyptian-police/ 12 Social Bakers, “Egypt Facebook Statistics.” https://www.socialbakers.com/statistics/facebook/pages/total/egypt/ 13 Tariq Seksek, “Facebook statistics in the MENA region.” http://interactiveme.com/2011/02/facebook-statistics-in- the-mena-region/ 14 Daily News Egypt, “Egypt’s mobile subscribers at 70 million.” DNA, 22 March 2011. http://www.dailynewsegypt.com/2011/03/22/egypts-mobile-subscribers-at-70-million/ 15 Tariq Seksek, “Twitter usage in the MENA region.” http://interactiveme.com/2011/06/twitter-usage-in-the-mena- middle-east/ 16 Reuters, “A significant increase in the number of Internet users in Egypt after the January uprising.” Mymobmob, 19th March 2011. http://www.mymobimobi.com/en-lang/viewNews/62 17 Adbusters on Twitter. 10 June 2011. https://twitter.com/adbusters/status/78989903232376832
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What made Occupy possible was the kind of anarchist stuff that was happening in Greece, the acampadas in Spain were young people started to fight back against the kind of regimes that they live in, and then, the big moment, when Tunisia and Egypt exploded. I think that this occupy movement had a lot of fertilization from the bottom-up. And it wasn’t one event; it was one series of events… from Greece we got a kind of Anarchist inspiration, from Spain we got a whole bunch of way of organizing acampadas, and from Tunisia and Egypt we got this ide that you can get hundreds of thousands of people out on the street by using the social media, and pulling of a regime change. So you see, we learn different things from different places… In a way everyone feels part of a global swarm, you can feel part of movement of young people who feel that their future doesn’t come. And every morning you get that feeling that unless you stand up and start living for a different kind of a future, you won’t have a future. And there are hundreds of millions of people who feel exactly as you do.18
The organization of spatial performances, especially when forming occupations and mobilizations of information, brought different strategies and recognition of spatial tactics. In an interview made by Léon Egberts to Kalle Lasn, he states that the global connection made the movement and people to be “plugged into a global network of activism,” it was the hub of “global activism,” highlighting the general use of strategies and ideas from other occupations, and support from global activists and people related to former occupations.
In contrast to the lack of coverage from the mass media, occupiers used the virtual space to spread the movement’s actions. OWS received the support from Anonymous group, which was determinant in the process of this occupation. It helped to spread the movement’s platform worldwide in a way that was difficult to block, making visible its outreach after the first week of the occupation in Zuccotti Park. Initially, there were around 200 people occupying Zuccotti Park, while after uploading Anonymous video online supporting OWS, the number of protesters rose to a peak of approximately 5,000 the following weekend. In the peripheries of Zuccotti Park, there was a parallel internet-based activism strengthening the movement. According to the Anonymous activist ‘MotorMouth,’ he indicated to The Guardian that members of this group were physically at the park one day and the next day online.19 Videos and messages attributed to the hacker collective Anonymous helped the hashtag #OccupyWallStreet, while the Guy Fawkes mask, image of resistance from the film and novel ‘V for Vendetta,’ became a symbol of the OWS occupation. OWS and Anonymous used social networking media in different ways during the occupation, as another Anonymous activist named ‘Jackal’ indicated:
18 Interview with Kalle Lasn by Léon Egberts. “The Rise and Transformation of the Occupy Wall Street Movement: A social movement shaped by a multitude of a shifting challenges and opportunities”. Utrecht University: July 2012 19 Ayesha Kazmi, How Anonymous emerged to Occupy Wall Street. The Guardian, 27 September 2011. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/cifamerica/2011/sep/27/occupy-wall-street-anonymous
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This is a new way to protest. Many of us have done our fair share of street protesting. But they drag us into the streets, and they mace us. Now we have brought our protests into the online social media space. We do it all at once – the street protesting along without distributed denial service [DDoS] attacks. We are a bit of an online flash mob.
This statement shows how contemporary movements respond to social dynamics, in the virtual space as a quick but deep shock wave, and in the physical space, as a core of spatial dissidence. The emerging alliance of the square occupation and online activism broke the collective notion of how those spaces were used; they changed them in a habitat for contemporary public space. The infamous pepper-spray incident, in which it could be seen that a police officer sprayed two women protesting, and the massive arrest of nearly 700 people that were crossing Brooklyn Bridge, were catalysts for mass media to cover OWS. Thus, the mechanisms of the movement made a transformative factor to the process of the self-representation. After gaining visibility on Wall Street, hashtag #Occupy spread fast in other cities of the United States first, and then around the world like London, Frankfurt, Tokyo, Bogota, and so on (Img. 7). The international network of activism helped to facilitate the irradiation of Zuccotti Park towards other countries and it amplified to the media attention, spreading a spatial process of upward scale from local to global.
The increase in the number of actors and/or geographic range of coordinated claim making, which happens when ‘localized collective actions spawns broader contention when information concerning the initial action reaches a distant group, which, having defined itself as sufficiently similar to the initial insurgents (attribution of similarity), engages in similar action (emulation), leading ultimately to coordinated action between the two sites. (McAdam y Tarrow 2004).
Img. 7 Mapping global protest 2011. Map created by "The GDELT Project". The data of this map came from a publicly available coded data-set by the ‘Global Database of Events, Location, and Tone – GDELT’, thus by reading newspapers from the United States primary
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2.3 Discussion. Hyper-forum
An example of a platform that banks on virality is the ‘Crowd Voice,’20 which contains videos, images, photographs and testimonies about political movements around the world. The impact of traditional social practices surrounding communication, relationships, space, play and work have been affected by social networks, presenting opportunities to expand their dynamics. Virtual communities took the approach to digital networks to communicate and create – through social practices – new social networks in the physical space. Protestors combined media and cognitive skills to social, emotional and cultural elements that motivated collective participation in protests and occupations. This state empowered subjects in different ways, more open, multiple and diverse in the contemporary public space. The political protests in this space was digitally supported by heterotopias, seeking diversity in actions that did not interpret feelings as signs of weakness but as potential insights. Like philosopher Wolfgang Welsch points, these actions did not consider autonomy, independency and individualism but development in-and-through relationships in multiple scopes. Castells, relating to the Spanish Indignados, says: “Let us rebuild ourselves (…) from the inside out, not waiting for the world to change to find the joy of living in our daily practice” (Castells 2012).
Like Asmaa Mahfouz’s vlog that called for protest on 25th January in Tahrir Square, was first posted in her Facebook page and then uploaded on YouTube, and became one initial individual action that was shared and spread on people’s personal accounts, causing personal engagements for protesting in Tahrir Square. This communicative action was achieved when individuals successfully communicated actions (Habermas 1962 [1991]), and as Castells relates, they were networks of individuals as “insurgent communities,” while “social explosions of resistance do not need leaders and strategists as anyone can reach everybody to share their rage.” The diffusion of squares for occupation is combined with digital networks and mass media coverage, helping distant groups to receive not only information, images and strategies, but also real-time events and energy. The upward scale transformed process of mobilization by increasing the overall number of occupiers and resources to its possession, and second, by gaining collective collaboration in-and-out the occupation zone (Sassen 2005). Contemporary occupations became the hub in the network and created its own system network of occupations, which increased its overall strength. Yet, it was not only technology but also social aspects of technology that facilitated to move easily between on- and-offline relationships, shifting to international activism (Bennett 2004). Dissident spatial performances used codes to produce spaces, while the virtual space experimented and acted in urban practices with ad-hoc performances and collective participation (T. M. Tierney 2013). The physical space was transmuted in a radical temporal stage.
20 Crowd Voice, “an open source tool that tracks and contextualizes information on social justice movements worldwide”. http://crowdvoice.org/
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CHAPTER III. BODIES, ARCHITECTURE AND PUBLIC SPACE IN OCCUPATIONS
We don’t even know what a body can do. Gilles Deleuze, Lecture transcripts on Spinoza’s concept of Affect, 1978
“I know what a body is” is a statement that could be grasped in architectural treaties like Le Corbusier’s “Modulor,” Ernst Neufert’s “Architectural Standard,” or Henry Dreyfuss’ publications on gender body dimensions. These modernist theories represent the human body as a standard measure, transforming it into a spatial normative where architecture is based on considerations for an ideal normatized body. Le Corbusier’s “Modulor” as a normative body, which figure does not follow the ideal body in the classical meaning of aesthetics, neither represent anybody’s body. It is a body that refuses to evolve,1 making it to interact with a fixed architecture that produces a normative behaviour in a pre-defined program.
Thus, “¿what happens when form is no longer the stable outline of mass but the key dynamic condition within a field of bodies?” 2 There is an obsolete relation between the body and the contemporary city, in the sense that social dynamics are continuously changing but the built environment does not evolve or adapt with them. This obsolescence in urban materiality is visible in 2011, when OWS and the Arab Spring, altered [physical and virtual] public spaces. These occupations show that reducing the body to a standardization model is a short abstraction of bodies and public spaces. Indeed, people challenge their standard representation as a non-existing body and generate instead a new spatialization of the body, an architectural body3 that involves with its context and develops processes of symbiosis and synergy. These events scrap against standardization and place bodies and spaces as living entities that evolve.
There are new approaches in architecture from the contemporary role of objects – referred as bodies [Chapter 4]– which are not passive clumps of matter but bodies of potential, disposition and forces (Meehan, et al. 2013). These forces are materialized in the urban scope during occupations, initiating projectable platforms. Judith Butler refers to this transformation as the movement of bodies claiming in cities:
We miss something of the point of public demonstrations, if we fail to see that the very public character of the space is being disputed and even fought over when these crowds gather. So,
1 For a further notion of the standard body, see “The Modernist Ideology of a Normative Body” by Léopold Lambert. http://thefunambulist.net/2011/05/29/architectural-theories-the-modernist-ideology-of-a-normative-body/ 2 Keller Easterling, The action is the form: Victor Hugo TED’S Talk. Moscow. Strelka Press, 2012 3 Architectural body is a concept researched and elaborated by Arakawa and Madeline Gins. They explore the relationship among architecture, human body and creativity defined and sustained by one another. They promote the use of architecture and design in dealing with the blight of the human condition, recommending that people seek architectural and aesthetics solutions to the dilemma of mortality. “Architectural Body” is a book written by Shusaku Arakawa and Madeleine Gris, Tuscalosa: The University of Alabama Press, 2002.
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though these movements have depended on prior existence of pavement, street, and square, and have often enough gathered in squares. (Butler 2011)
Therefore, the body ‘in’ the public space is a relationship that is considered in this chapter through architecture, first through a state of revolt and then through occupation.
3.1 Revolt and occupation
However, when we come to the story with our contemporary sensibilities, what strikes us most is something else: the very word ‘revolutionist’, the existence of a figure who openly demonstrates fidelity to a cause, to an idea. Our society, after all, can perceive dedication to a cause only as a lack of reflexivity, as fundamentalism. The ‘last man’, preoccupied by the thought of ends (of history, of events, of revolutions…), cannot imagine a political cause to fight for. Slavoj Žižek, Welcome to the desert of the real, 2002
At present, there is a general discourse about a type of revolution: the technological revolution, and how it has changed social and spatial relationships. However, in terms of politics, the term revolution is seen as a radical nonconformity action made in a moment out of control. Bulent Diken relates is as a ‘one-dimensional’ structure in which politics are hyper-politics: “we are free to politicize anything and criticize everything, but only in a reserved, non-committal way, only in so far as our ‘critique’ is confined, in a properly fetishist manner, to what exists” (Diken 2012). Nonetheless, in the ancient world political revolution was understood as the state when societies were moved in cycles of degeneration by passing the power to different groups of people. For example, like in Plato’s book “The Republic,” democracy develops a revolution from the poor against the oligarchy, seen as a regenerative movement (Plato 1992). It establishes a particular difference between the understanding of revolution in the ancient and modern conception: the first one does not recognise the possibility of permanent breaks, while the second one rejects the principles of the ancient thought. Rather than moving around a path, revolution breaks with the past.
When referring to the origins of the term, revolution shares a common derivation with revolt. In Merriam – Webster Dictionary, ‘revolt’ is defined as a fight in a violent way against the rule of a leader or government; an act that shows do not accept control or influence of someone or something and cause [someone] to feel disgust or shock.
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Revolution and revolt (…) [go] back to the Latin revolver “to revolve, roll back.” When revolution first appeared in English in the 14th century, it referred to the movement of a celestial body in orbit; that sense was extended to a “progressive motion or a body around an axis,” “completion of a course,” and other senses suggesting regularity of motion or a predictable return to an original position. At virtually the same time, the world developed a sharply different meaning, namely, “a sudden radical or complete change,” apparently from the idea of reversal of direction implicit in the Latin verb. Revolt, which initially meant “to renounce allegiance,” grew from the same idea of “rolling back,” in the case from a prior bond of loyalty. Merriam – Webster, Revolt.
‘Revolt’ comes from the Latin verb volvere (turn), an initial significance that is far from the politics scope. Revolt has different meanings in its origins such as curve, entourage, turn, return. Later on, in Old French, it means envelop, curvature, vault, omelette, roll, and to roll oneself in, loaf about, repair, and vaudeville. During the 15th and 16th centuries, French language received an important Italian influence, attaching to its meaning volutis and volute, the architectural term that refers to spiral or scroll like the ornaments in capital columns that form the basis of the Ionic, Corinthian and Composite orders. It includes volta and voltare, a circular movement and by extension, a temporal return. Volta also means ‘time’ in Italian as ‘in one time’ or ‘once:’ turning back.
Alain Rey, a French linguistic,4 compares the cohesion of these diverse etymological origins and evolutions. He refers to revolt as to twist, roll, wrap, and cover, an idea of twisting or enveloping in a topological and technical concept. In addition, Julia Kristeva in her book “The Sense and Non- sense of Revolt: The Powers and Limits of Psychoanalysis” (Kristeva 2000 [1996]) expresses the lack of current relation between revolution and helix, to rebel and to wallow. She highlights the contemporary meaning of ‘to revolt’ and ‘revolt’ as words that come from Italian and keep the Latin meaning of ‘to return’ and ‘to exchange’, which today implies a diversion at the outset of the assimilated to a rejection of authority. Then, Kristeva references to revolt in the psychological sense:
The word [revolt] contains an idea of violence an excess in relation to a norm, and corresponds to émouvoir (to move), émeute (riot) for ‘revolt.’ (…) Until the eighteen century, the word ‘revolt’ is not used for war, as is the series ‘rebel,’ ‘rebellion,’ but it is used in the political and psychological domain. Kristeva, The Sense and Non-sense of Revolt, 1996
4 Alan Rey is a French linguistic, lexicographer and a radio personality in France. He has collaborated with the Dictionnaire Alphabétique et Analogique. http://www.babelio.com/auteur/Alain-Rey/3122
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The historical and political sense of ‘revolt’ remains until the late 17th and beginning of the 18th century during Louis XIV years, when Voltaire uses ‘revolt’ to refer to civil war, unrest, cabal, insurrection, war, and revolution. Then, relationships between revolt and revolution are on the same scope but not clearly differentiated. ‘Revolution’ appears first as an astronomical and chronological term in the French Academic field, while in the middle age, ‘revolution’ marks an end of a period of time that has ‘evolved,’ signifying completion, occurrence, and completed duration. In the second half of the 17th century, the word comes closer to a sense of conflict and social upheaval and during the 18th century, ‘revolution’ is widespread with parallels frequently drawn between planetary and political mutations. Revolt shows a special plasticity from its conception to its current use. Julia Kriteva proposes three figures of revolt:
• Revolt as the transgression of a prohibition • Revolt as a repetition, working-through, working-out • Revolt as displacement, combinatives, games
These proposals are dependent on each other during revolutions but not during revolts. The revolt does not revive permanency, even if technology allows doing it; instead, it exposes to be an untenable conflict that manifests itself. “Revolt is distinguished from this notably by the fact that the tension toward unity, being, or the authority of the law (although always at work in modern revolt) is accompanied by centrifugal forces of dissolution and dispersion” (Kristeva 2006).
In this sense, Ian Parker treats psychoanalytic change as the model of “social transformation” when it is not, ‘individual self-questioning in a clinic’ being incommensurable with ‘political strategies in public collective space’ (Parker 2004). This assertion brings back one of the most important events in history, the French Revolution of Victor Hugo. He makes a prose of revolt in Les Misérables, first by distinguishing riot and insurrection like intrinsic figures of revolt and its relation to truth. He differentiates revolt as a historical phenomenon that may be infra-political, while insurrection as a phenomenon that ties politics to history:
Of what is revolt composed? Of nothing and everything. Of an electricity disengaged, little by little, of a flame suddenly darting forth, of a wandering force, of a passing breath. This breath encounters heads which speak, brain which dream, souls which suffer, passions which burn, wretchedness which howls, and bears them away. Whiter? At random. Athwart the state, the laws, athwart prosperity and the insolence of others. Irritated convictions embittered enthusiasms, agitated indignations, indistinct of war which have been repressed, youthful courage which has been exalted, generous blindness; curiosity, the taste for change, the thirst for the unexpected, the sentiment which causes one to take pleasure in reading the posters for the new play, and love, the prompter’s whistle, at the theatre; the vague hatreds, rancors,
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disappointments, every vanity which thinks that destiny has bankrupted it; discomfort, empty dreams, ambitions that are hedge about, whoever hopes for a downfall, some outcome, in short, at the very bottom, the rabble, that mud which catches fire – such are the elements of revolt. That which is grandest and that which is basest; the beings who prowl outside of all bounds, awaiting an occasion, bohemians, vagrants, vagabonds of the cross-roads, those who sleep at night in a desert of houses with no other roof than the cold clouds of heaven, those who, each day, demand their bread from chance and not from toil, the unknown of poverty and nothingness, the bare- armed, the bare-footed, belong to revolt… Revolt is a sort of waterspout in the social atmosphere… if we are to believe certain oracles of crafty political views, a little revolt is desirable from the point of view of power. System: revolt strengthens those governments, which it does not overthrow. It puts the army to the test; it consecrates the bourgeoisie, it draws out the muscles of the police; it demonstrates the force of the social framework. It is an exercise in gymnastics; it is almost hygiene. Power is in better health after a revolt, as a man is after a good rubbing down. Victor Hugo, Les Misérables
Revolt presents an ambiguous status because of its intrinsic relationship with social atmospheres and uncertainty with power. In this regard, the historian Eric Hobsbawn,5 refers to ‘revolt’ as a relatively unorganized individual or collective upheaval present for centuries, while revolution is “a modern answer to an ancient problem of oppression and injustice” (Diken 2012). For Antonio Negri, revolt is never only a matter of action; it is also the force of opposition that grows out in resistance and reflection (Negri 2004). Michael Hardt and Antonio Negriindicate that revolts are spread through different contexts by using communication and common practices desires, defined as “international cycle of struggles:”
Slave revolts spread throughout the Caribbean in the early nineteenth century, revolts of industrial workers expanded throughout Europe and North America in the late nineteenth and early twenty centuries, and guerrilla and anticolonial struggles blossomed across Asia, Africa, and Latin America in the mid-twentieth century. In each of these cycles of struggles, the common that is mobilized extensively and communicates across the globe is not only the commonly recognized enemy – such as slavery, industrial capital, or colonial regimes – but also common methods of combat, common ways of living, and common desires for a better world. (Hardt and Negri 2004)
Albert Camus believes that revolt is one of the “essential dimensions” of mankind. His ideas come to revolution as always implying an establishment of a new government. It contrasts to rebellion, which is an action without planned issues. Also, historians refer to ‘uprisings’ (from the Latin
5 Eric Hobsbawn, is a Marxist British historian considered to be the “thinker of the XX Century history”.
195 insurrection) as ‘failed revolutions’ because they do not match the expected trajectory, while ‘revolutions’ attain a permanent duration: “if the revolution triumphs, the State returns” (Bey 1985). Camus reflects on himself: “I revolt, therefore we are” or “I revolt, therefore we are to come.” Thus, a revolt gathers the collective in the momentum through strikes and other forms of civil disobedience, or through revolutionary warfare, so in the end the regime implodes, collapses amid disruption, defection and total disorder (Bayat 2013). Revolt is a ‘leap into flight’ out of the absurd, a constant confrontation, a challenge to the actual conditions without succumbing to the illusion of transcendence (Camus 1992 [1951]).
Revolt carries ideas of restrain and continuous conflicts carried out by the collective intelligence. It exists in the sudden, the dazzling perception, the moment as something that has never been experienced before. It is a rupture in the relation to the dominant order. Hakim Bey states that if history is time, then uprisings are the forbidden moments because they are temporary.
[Uprising] is like a “peak experience” as opposed to the standard of “ordinary” consciousness and experience. Like festivals, uprisings cannot happen every day – otherwise they would not be “nonordinary.” But such moments of intensity give shape and meaning to the entirety of a life. (Bey 1985)
In contemporary occupations, it is possible to identify two characteristics: movement and change. The Arab Spring presents these two conditions. Commonly referred as the “Arab Revolution,” it is a paradoxical reality with a minimal reference in the meaning of revolution, a “rapid and radical transformation of a state driven by popular movements from below” (Bayat 2013). There was movement of people, significances, symbols, ideas, physical structures, objects, modes of urban living, and so on during the occupation. Religious divisions melt away, gender equality was visible, social classes disappeared, activism took place, self-organization and democratic decisions were made by all. Thus, there were conditions that altered their form from ‘revolutions as change’ to ‘revolutions as movement.’ ‘Revolution as change’ is a radical transformation of a state drastically undermined, set in a long period of time and in which there is not an exact starting and ending point. While ‘revolution as movement’ is an exceptional spatial and social supply that explodes the established system with undertaking forms and actions. There is a mobilization of bodies and spaces that disrupt the existing states rapidly, which is a process of displacement. In the 2012 World Risk Report, it reads:
Two dominant issues of concern emerged from the Arab Spring, the ‘Occupy’ movements worldwide and recent similar incidents of civil discontent: the growing frustration among citizens with the political and economic establishment, and the rapid public mobilization enabled by greater technological connectivity. A macro and longer-term interpretation of these events
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highlights the need to improve the management of global economic and demographic transformations that stand to increasingly define global social trends in the decade to come (…) A society that continues to sow the seeds of dystopia – by failing to manage ageing populations, youth unemployment, rising inequalities and fiscal imbalances – can expect greater social unrest and instability in the years to come. (World Economic Forum 2012).
In this sense, Alain Badiou sees Tahrir Square as a constitution of a ‘communism of movement’, a revolutionary way of living the city from the authoritarian regime that was forcing specific relationships. Slavoj Žižek says that these political happenings, which are horizontal and without hegemonic organizations, leaders or hierarchies, create what he calls ‘the magic of Tahrir,’ an eventual space. It is understood as a space of contestation and agonistic engagement. Moreover, Sungur Savran6 wrote in his essay “C’est une Revolte, Pas (Encore) Une Revolution” (Savran 2013), that in the 2013 occupation in Gezi Park and Taksim Square in Istanbul, people had immediate and specific demands which, if met, could refuse a state of crisis, pointing at it as a revolt. A revolution by contrast, makes demands that cannot be met by changing policies or governments, but require fundamental social changes (Ibid). Revolts bring enormous energy and a sense of renewal transformation of the public sphere, with wholly different potentialities in human actions that cannot happen under ordinary circumstances. The necessity of revolutions to be materialized in the physical public space is to give themselves time and space of revolts: to break off, to remember, to refashion.
Situated at this point, there is a connection with Hakim Bey’s TAZ [Temporary Autonomous Zone]. Bey refers to TAZ as spontaneous and subversive tactics that are part of time, land, and imagination, and then dissolve themselves to reappear elsewhere/elsewhen (Bey 1985). Nikolai Jeffs adds to this statement a subversive characteristic:
Subversion must be deterritorialized, decentralized, and delinealized, and that those small and nomadic types of resistance must be launched because there is no place that would not be territorialized by a national state (…) [TAZ] is invisible to the state and sufficiently flexible to disappear the very moment it is identified, defined, fixed. (Jeffs 1997)
This kind of spatial and social projection assumes that all individuals are capable of changing and co-creating their own gestures, spaces, and dynamics, even if they are small compering to the system scale. Thus, the social movements of 2011 created and were created by TAZ, in which “a
6 Sungur Savran is editor of the newspaper “Gercek” and the theoretical journal “Devrimci Marksizm,” both published in Turkish.
197 radical re-ordering and re-configuration of the practices of ‘governing by the people for the people’s is urgently required” (Wilson and Swyngedouw 2014). However, revolts are transformed in occupations, and public spaces shift their sense of competition to be spaces of cooperation, from individuality to collectivity, from generic space to common grounds. These spaces are intimately connected to the event and the occupation to the multitude.
Img. 1 Political Protest Series, by Jim Campbell, 2005
Occupations take their form when there is a surpass in a period of time that shifts inside activities different from revolts: from constant clashes with the police to an internal food supply organization. The occupation represents multiple images on the same layer, with different actions and states that exist simultaneously on the same urban plane but create singular urban layers in socio-spatial notions (Img. 1). It is an on-going process of learning and experimentation, one that emerges but does not remain; still it exists long enough to change spatial notions from that point to henceforth. Occupations disrupt the sense of revolt and revolution: revolution as a complete change, revolt as a constant arhythmical explosion, and occupation needs to be a revolt with a spirit of revolutions.
3.1.1 Tahrir Square, Zuccotti Park, Gezi/Taksim. Similitudes, repetitions, and oppositions
_The Square Tahrir Square has been traditionally the stage for different revolutions and uprisings. Referring initially to 1919, one of the biggest uprisings took place. Egyptians demonstrated against the British occupation and since then, it has been the chosen place for political demonstrations. Since the colonial era, the fight against the British troops, the handover of the barracks to the Egyptian
198 authorities between 1946 and 1947, the 1970 march at the funeral of Abdel Nasser and Um Qulthum, the protests against the United States’ invasion of Iraq and the Egyptian government’s support in 2003, erected the square as a place to protest. Thus, the history and memory of Tahrir Square provided inspiration for the 2011 revolution.
Atef Said wrote the article “We ought to be here: Historicizing space and mobilization in Tahrir Square” (Said 2015), in which he indicates that the square hosted 15 major political protests and three other occupations before the 2011 revolution. The first one took place in in January 1972, the second one in March 2003, and the third one in March 2006. Said indicates that protesters sat-in the square and kept in control for less than 24 hours in each occasion. Before 2011, Tahrir Square was merely a vehicular roundabout and a meeting point for tourists [it is located next to the Egyptian Museum]. The square remained central to passers-by and transportation, but Tahrir allocated several cultural symbols and classical buildings: the Arab League headquarters, the Foreign Ministry building, the National Democratic Party headquarters [the government party building, which was burnt down on 28th January 2011], the Egyptian Museum, the American University, the Umar Makram mosque, and the Nile Hilton. In addition, 16 streets lead to the square creating a hub of movement and displacement. However, during the government of Hosni Mubarak, many rallies and demonstrations were blocked or controlled, in this regard, many experts exclaimed their surprise for being unable to predict that Egypt would face a revolution, in a sense due to the authoritarian regime and their efforts to suppress any opposition or intent of uprising against the government during three decades, and also because of the lassitude of people for living under a constant crushed economy. Plus, the government was not fully in control of the Internet, allowing to generate situations that united people.
The results were unexpected, thousands of people gathered in Tahrir, something that did not happen in the last decades; therefore, the police reacted with violence. On this behalf, Jack Shenker, reporter for The Guardian, was arrested during the protests and was witness of other prisoners being tortured, assaulted and taken to undisclosed locations by police officers (Shenker 2016). There was a general violent atmosphere as people were marching under machine guns, there were barricades in streets, some of them blocked by tanks and checkpoints. In the third day of protests, people started setting up tents, which was the transformation point from protestors to occupiers, understanding that the physical appropriation of the space one of the most important objectives. When the occupation was set up, many people visited the square, spending hours there and chatting with others, helping to create signs, participating in activities, collaborating with food supply, and those who did not stay at night, came back the day after. This spatiality created a cross- section in the Egyptian society, a mix of class, gender, sexual orientation, age, religion, dress code, and ethnicity; groups that under normal circumstances would not have met in the same space at the same time. People gathered together in the square maybe not for all the same reasons but for
199 common purposes, making a social congregation that broke down barriers and allowed having an acceptance and a space of the commons. The occupation lasted 18 days and the square was gradually transformed into a city within the city. In three days there were camping areas, media rooms, medical facilities, healthcare impromptu clinics, pharmacy, gateways, stages, restrooms, food and beverage cars, newspaper booths, art exhibits, water point, kindergarten, recycling bins and portable toilettes. The spatiality was transformed not only into a social and common public space but also into the biggest spontaneous event for community; establishing the commons Tahrir Square (Img. 2). While many journalists and authorities pointed out Tahrir as a chaotic urban cored, carried out by extremists and radicals,7 occupiers showed to be a self-autonomous organization that created a symbolic and cohesive solidarity socio-spatial condition, enhancing the place to host common actions and dynamics.
Prayers were held at the centre, the most secured area of the square. Services, trash bins and toilets were located on the western side adjacent to a construction site. Clinics were located on the edges of the space to facilitate the transfer of injured protesters to neighbouring hospitals. (Salama 2013)
It was a process of self-adaptation and divergence, which represents Lefebvre’s production of the space, featuring different and new forms of social organization. For occupiers, Tahrir became an urban heterotopia, a place for the commons engagement, collective projects, social discourse, and freedom of speech.
Img. 2 Commons Tahrir Square: city within the city. 11 February 2011. Source: BBC Middle East, http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-12434787
_The Park OWS occupied Zuccotti Park for nine weeks. It was born as an idea of the Canadian magazine Abdusters, which urged people to take the streets on 17th September 2011 and reproduce a “Tahrir moment in Wall Street.” Participants used online platforms to post information and generate
7 Paul Cruickshank, “Why Arab Spring could be al-Qaeda’s fall.” CNN Report, 21 February 2011.
200 discussion groups. On the day of protest, people arrived to Chase Manhattan Plaza, which was the chosen place to protest, although they found out the square was fenced off and police officers cordoning it. Meanwhile on Twitter, there were tweets informing that Bowling Green park, the second chosen place, was closed too. Hence, to avoid a possible dissolution of the protest, protestors decided to go to Zuccotti Park, which is a POPS – Privately Owned Public Space, 8 and avoiding a possible irruption from the police. This legal framework allowed protestors to stay in the park because one of the conditions of this POPS was the entrance of any member of the public and did not specify a limit of time. Thus, the protest was transformed into a camping zone.
OWS produced outlines of micro-cities: set up a kitchen, a zone for serving food, a legal department zone, a sanitation department, an open library with donated books, a designated area to perform general assemblies, a medical station, a media centre, a meditating zone, two info desks, a comfort area and a sacred space. Due to the park’s quadrangular form, occupiers produced nodes and workstations that cut diagonally the park. By overlaying the established condition of Zuccotti Park with new and different activities and installations, the occupation generated what the anthropologist Tim Ingold denominates as “taskscape,” a topography of related activities deployed in space and changing over time (Ingold 1993). Parallel to the physical occupation, there was a virtual occupation, which helped to generate a local and global synergy. People assembled on the virtual and physical space, navigating through a hyper-Zuccotti Park. This alternative urban body modelled by the commons, showed autonomous social and spatial self-organization, where granite and asphalt, data information and algorithms initiated new socio-spatial dynamics temporally. However, the energy of the occupation was intermittent because the intensity was not constant. As winter was coming earlier than expected in New York that year, it generated a direct implication on the occupation infrastructure.
First, camping tents were light, they were not appropriated to resist winter and the replacement of tents for more adequate ones would have represented a motive to remain permanently. This situation was not the purpose of the movement, and it would have been illegal in terms of residential and urban regulations. Moreover, OWS followed a particular structure including General Assemblies, committees, working groups, and horizontal activities, all of them developed in the open space of the park. These activities would have been difficult to perform in winter.9 Thus if occupiers had sheltered from cold, rain and snow inside their tents, the occupation would have become a more ‘inside’ body, triggering to lose its intense sociability and creativeness of spaces.
8 Privately Owned Public Space – POPS, is an urban regulation where there is a private owner of a park with a public access. This architectural urban conception will be treated deeper in the chapter 5 of this thesis. 9 The average minimum temperature in New York in December 2011 was -6ºC. Source: Weather Underground. https://www.wunderground.com/history/airport/KNYC/2011/12/10/MonthlyHistory.html?req_city=New%20York&r eq_state=NY&reqdb.zip=10001&reqdb.magic=5&reqdb.wmo=99999
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Secondly, energy. OWS was created by a huge quantity of energy, meaning it needed an important source of force to keep it in motion. Nevertheless, the dilatation of dissident activities in OWS made to lose energy within the camping zone because they became quotidian. Third, authority action. Mayor Michael Bloomberg took full responsibility for the OWS eviction, indicating that he was acting on behalf of the park’s owner “Brookfield Properties,” and on behalf of health and well-being of the city’s residents and the occupiers as well.10 Considering that New York has one of the highest rates of private public spaces, the awareness of this situation was reflected on the Mayor’s decisions who acted, as he proclaimed, on the side of private owners. Forth, the inconsistency of demands. The absence of direct and specific demands came in part from a refusal to produce limitations of the state-based politics, including top-down structures but not offering alternatives. In the occupation zone, there were general debates and discussions about different social, financial, and political aspects, giving voice to all but also provoking confused, bitter and sometimes disappointing platform.11 Fifth, police eviction. The aggressive swept out of Zuccotti Park on 19th November 2011, was the final tangible existence of OWS. Hundreds of police officers were involved, “some of them wearing riot helmets” (Baker and Goldstein 2011). For the operation to clear Zuccotti Park, officials trained specific strategies following experiences and conflictive situations from Tahrir Square and the Indignados. The training involved urban battlefield and counterterrorism (Ibid). Finally, they evicted the occupation at the most vulnerable time, in the overnight hours from Monday to Tuesday. The police could not evict the occupation before because there were ambiguities in the park’s regulations as POPS. In this regard, the city’s authorities intervened with different actions in these kind of spaces: fire marshals prohibited tents and other structures and removed generators in late October when cold was becoming more intense. Immediately after the eviction, the police erected barricades at Cortland Street, one block north, and at Pine Street, one block south. These points served as an expansion zone to increase the perimeter of control area, taking further outward from Zuccotti Park.
One of the results from OWS was that many social groups around the world emerged, people became more interconnected with the movement’s vison, and also new architectural urban regulations were generated to avoid possible future occupations [Chapter 5]. Lastly, it served as inspiration for other occupations during the following years (Gezi/Taksim, Umbrella Movement), and linked closer citizens and the practice of the everyday city.
10 “Occupy Wall Street to Turn Manhattan into Tahrir Square.” IBTimes New York, 17 September 2011. https://web.archive.org/web/20120521094829/http://newyork.ibtimes.com/articles/215511/20110917/occupy-wall- street-new-york-saturday-protest.htm 11 When the author did her research at New York, she studied, analysed and collaborated with different groups that were born from OWS. Not in all of them but in most of them, the horizontality and the lack of direct demands made the process of meeting and working very slow and inconsistent. There was no a structure of timing, planning, or a common goal, instead it was a dynamic of talking but not discussing.
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_The Square / The Park On 28th May 2013, a small group of activists set up some tents at Gezi Park in Istanbul, protesting against the government’s plan to demolish the park and build a shopping mall. The demolition of Gezi Park signified removing the last remaining green park in the centre of Istanbul. When activists gathered in the park, they were tear-gassed and pepper-sprayed by the police, however, they used social networks to spread photos and videos of these actions. The day after, hundreds of people tried to gather in Gezi Park but there were clashes with the police. Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan made public a statement saying that the decision [the urban plan construction] was final and that the park was going to be demolished no matter what.12 As a reaction, thousands of people gathered in Taksim, set up tents and initiated an occupation. However, on 30th May at 5am, occupiers faced one of the most violent clashes between protestors and the police, they raid pepper-spray, tear gas, and set on fire tents. In contrast, the mass media aired soap operas, documentaries and entertainment programs – like the infamous ‘penguin incident,’ where CNN- Turk broadcasted a documentary on penguins, while international news channels were covering the clashes in Taksim. This situation motivated more people to join the protests in order to be in the front line creating an image of unity and solidarity. After the clashes, protestors were able to remain in Taksim Square and Gezi Park.
To take Taksim Square was an action very important for the population. It has been traditionally a symbolic place for the secular Republic and a place for official ceremonies such as the celebration of the Republic and the May Day parade. Taksim Square is Istanbul’s most central and political public space while Gezi Park is the only green space left in the centre of the city; hereafter both spaces have been subject of general importance and symbolism within the city and citizens. During the occupation, Gezi/Taksim was a hub of social heterogeneity. It included leftists, secular- nationalists Kemakists, ultra-nationalists, Kurds, Islamists, unaffiliated, LGTB, environmentalists, football fans, students, merchants, artists, young and old, poor and rich, Muslims and non-religious, Alevis and Kurds; they all gathered in this space. Hence, the occupation attached an internal zoning where “micro-cities” were developed. Occupiers generated a mosque, a kitchen, a warehouse, an information zone, a stage, a media zone, a memorial, a speaker’s corner, an art zone, a library, a coffee area, a garden, a camping zone, a sanitation area and a health care zone. In these micro-cities, different social groups gathered together when in normal circumstances it would have been very difficult to do so. Hence, Gezi/Taksim was a self-governed machine, making visible groups of people and situations that were hidden in the city.
Taking as reference the Arab Spring and the Occupy Movement, Gezi/Taksim occupied the virtual space simultaneously. The virtual space helped to [re]produce the occupation and also to keep it as
12 “Istanbul Gezi Park plan to proceed – Turkish PM Erdogan.” BBC News, 6 June 2013. http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-22801548
203 long as possible; creating a digital archive that fed internal and external experiences.13 For occupiers, social media was an indispensable tool, besides communication, they shared what the occupation needed like food, gas masks, water, barrettes, toilet paper, and so on. Twitter was used to share information about how to keep the occupation, Facebook provided news and updates, Flickr and Tumblr to share photos, and YouTube for videos. However, during the days of the occupation, there were restrictions to the Internet. The online connection was unstable and many times the served failed, and phone services stopped for hours and was very irregular in areas around Gezi Park according to the lawyer Selen Cimin, who participated in the occupation, thus, occupiers created an open Wi-Fi hotspot in Gezi/Taksim to be used by people in the occupation.
On 15th June, P. M. Erdogan demanded an end to the occupation, so the police entered into Gezi/Taksim that morning with water cannons and rubber bullets in a rapid and extended action. Once evicted, they fenced off the perimeter and cordon it off, obstructing the entrance of any person and expanding the perimeter of the control zone to the surroundings. As a result of this occupation, the shopping mall was not built, neither the Taksim Square’s pedestrian concrete platform.
_Similitudes, repetitions, oppositions These occupations are usually referred as spontaneous social movements. However, none of them were spontaneous, they were fed permanently with information and activities in virtual platforms and public spaces. Activists and bloggers were constantly activating and planning protests against particular situations and tried to reach the maximum number of people, in some cases for months. During occupations, sharing information, ideas, knowledge, images, and experiences was crucial to keep their form but due to their political and spatial scopes, Tahrir Square, OWS and Gezi/Taksim had different outcomes: in Tahrir Square the occupation lasted 18 days, in Zuccotti Park 59 days, and in Gezi/Taksim 19 days.
The crucial use of the Internet and the necessity to be in the streets increased intersection and interplay in the urban scope in situ. This binary situation of the ‘virtual’ and ‘physical’ spaces generated the mobilization of a corporeality in the public space. It re-deployed the meaning and repertoire of TAZ, altering tent camps, and socially and spatially experimenting on public spaces. These occupations allowed connecting multiple movements and [re]connecting online-and-offline activists with the contemporary public space. Various theorists argue that the combination of hi- tech networking and no-tech gathering develop forms of “communicative action,” “distributed networks” and “open source activism.” Another important factor these occupations faced was the weather. OWS took place in fall, so the occupation area was not prepared resist winter, otherwise structures would have been more stable and permanent. However, by doing so protestors would
13 “Everywhere Taksim” blog. http://everywheretaksim.net/
204 have done something illegal according to New York’s Urban regulation, which allowed the police to enter immediately and dismantle the camping zone.14 Contrary to Tahrir Square and Gezi/Taksim, their cities have a climate that allows to be outside during the day and night. In Cairo for instance, the average temperature between January and March 2011 was 17°C, while in Istanbul between May and July 2013 was 23°C, if they both had remained for two months as OWS did in New York.15 These three occupations demonstrate that they change establish parameters in scopes such as spatial, legal, virtual and social. They also reveal the need of being temporal. Thinking that they could exist indefinitely is not their purpose nor their intention, still they stretched the occupation until reaching the breaking point, making visible its limits and redrawing its borders.
3.1.2 Collective installation in temporal urban borders
The three occupations that are the focus of this research, passed through a series of moments that altered the conceptions of public spaces and their architectural infrastructure, and challenged the system in which they were design, planned, and used. The processes of these spaces to become occupations, involved the practice of three motors: the collective, the multitude and the commons.
The collective individualism is according to Georgette C. Poindexter,16a spatially delineated by individual expressions of the self that is aggregated in the community definition (Poindexter 1996). On the other hand, Gilbert Simondon17 indicates that the psychological individuation is an affective process before a cognitive one, and then the social individuation [the production of social group larger than the single biological person] takes place. Individuation for Simondon is a process of the in-between, which undoes dualities. Physical individuation is more an individualization, which is also the condition of individuation, while collective individuation is one that brings the individual to constant transformation. When the police blocked the entrance to protestors into One Chase Manhattan Plaza, that shift converted protestors into a collective individuation. Meanwhile in the virtual space, Twitter was the platform that communicated and sent information that pushed this transformation.
The emphasis of collective participation is the core of protests as they required material examination that included social and spatial relationships. The Canadian Magazine Abdusters fed for months the movement towards the occupation in Zuccotti Park. Their first online post was on
14 Occupy Wall Street, “Legal Fact Sheet”. National Lawyer’s Guild NYC Chapter: 212-679-6018. http://www.nycga.net/resources/legal-fact-sheet/ 15 Weather references from the website: Time and Date. http://www.timeanddate.com/weather/egypt/cairo/historic?month=3&year=2011 http://www.timeanddate.com/weather/turkey/istanbul/historic?month=6&year=2013 16 Georgette C. Poindexter was an Assistant Professor of Law at the University of Pennsylvania. 1996. 17 Gilbert Simondon (2 October 1924 – 7 February 1989) was a French philosopher best known for his theory on individuation that would inspire later to Gilles Deleuze and Bernard Stiegler.
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2nd February 2011, influenced by the Arab Spring Revolution and continued during the following months. On 17th September 2011, the protest followed the plan to reach One Chase Manhattan Plaza, as it was not possible, people walked to Bowling Green Park and ended up in Zuccotti Park. This displacement was done in Wall Street’s grid, and during the process, the protest was transformed into revolt. Protestors moved towards one direction, one targeted space, one purpose looking at the same point and moving as a mass in an established space. But when they faced the first spatial blockade, the mass was broken and turned into a collective participation. Each individual was part of a collective body and had to take a decision, whether to stay or leave, to give alternatives or be muted, to participate more actively or be passive, to collaborate among each other or retort as an individual; it was this the moment of responding not only to what they faced in front of them but also in between them. The shift in the body’s movement, their behaviour, and condition of protester, motivated also a change in their spatial projection as a contested spatiality. Thus, the collective involves the collective subject and collective actions, which are defined as subjectification. “By subjectification I mean the production through a series of actions of a body and a capacity for enunciation not previously identifiable within a given field of experience, whose identification is thus part of the reconfiguration of the field of experience” (Rancière 2001).
From ‘Occupy Wall Street’ to ‘RE-Occupy WALL StreetS’, was the proposal for altering collectively the space. Critical geographers suggested that ‘accumulation by dispossession’ works as a term for describing a shared concern of contemporary global movements (Harvey 2005), but only when dispossession of dynamics stretches the appropriation of the space. The occupations demonstrated that it was possible to denaturalize dispossession through relational comparisons and collective efforts that mapped counter-spatial practices. The succession of events exemplified some spatial conditions, which by following Matthew Sparke’s spatial designations, these are (Sparke 2013):
• Target space. When preparing the protests in the virtual space, the target space had important significances and symbolisms. The targeting gave meaning to broad their extension by dispossession to other situations. It set a series of relations between people and places that Samuel Weber indicates as ‘targeting,’ which implies particularities of time, while space is transformed from media of alteration and dislocation to conditions of self- fulfilment and appropriation (Webber 2005). He suggests than in the end, targets tend to resist such singularizing spatial subsumption (Sparke 2013). Indeed, OWS showed the vulnerability of the everywhere space, where camping out in cities across the world was possible because of the place’s energy and the virtual collective participation. • Everywhere space. The Arab Spring that started in Tunisia but was followed through the entire region, and OWS that was extended around the world reaching more than a thousand cities, they both took the form of online multiple images. These sites of occupations were sometimes in the physical space, and sometimes in the virtual. The
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virtual space included a series of encampments that played a role in the creation of the everywhere space. The geography and the information mapped ongoing spaces whose interventions made possible to include elements throughout the gaze of the net. The everywhere space – “a shared and common world” (Sparke 2013) was suddenly resonant platforms of ideas, energies and experiences about repossessing the space – initially – but resulting in the reinvention of it. • Time-space. The momentum of the protest, expanded them everywhere and proved pivotal understandings of public spaces. They could be anywhere, but they needed to be built by a continuous socio-spatial energy, and by intermittent temporalities.
The collective participation open new relationships in which each member of the collective executed with its own skills, in an individual or collective way. This was one of the strongest points during the occupation, when instead of remaining passive, each individual acted collectively in an extended period of time. This new state generated new spaces that are complimentary to the previous ones:
• The shared space. When protestors were one collective force in one same space. Rebecca Solnit indicates that in this space:
People of all kinds can coexist, from the homeless to the tenured, from the inner city to the agrarian. Coexisting in the public with likeminded strangers and acquaintances is one of the great foundations and experiences of democracy, which is why dictatorships ban gatherings and groups. (Solnit 2012)
The multitude mobilized highly heterogeneous groups that shared in and thereby produced spaces and spatial practices, bringing different and unique significances in occupiers. The shared space in OWS was for instance the practice of the “human microphone” (or Mic-Check), a “Human Transmission Technology” (Lambert 2013). This creative tool produced a spatial invention: “Mic- Check is the scream that precedes any speech from anybody speaking on the Square and during the marches when (s)he requests the oral transmission of what (s)he will say” (Ibid). In New York, the use of a microphone, loudspeaker or amplifier without permission from the city council is banned. Hence, instead of weakening the occupation, it made OWS stronger and leaderless because nobody held the position of speaker, it was who could do it. It was also an important feature in the General Assemblies by increasing the range of audibility and by extension, the amount of people participating. Lambert adds that
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(…) as low-tech as it [Mic-Check] seems, this means of communication is a representation of high-tech networks used to communicate with the multitude of other delocalized bodies who participate in the movement in some ways, even without being physically present. (Lambert 2013)
• The vibrant space. The temporal space when protestors started shifting their condition to occupiers. Zuccotti Park before the occupation worked as a corporate open space with passive activities like sit and chat, eat and watch. Nevertheless, during the occupation, the park took a phylogenetic and revolutionary approach to spatial typology, where new functions of the space were adopted based on human interactions. There were open platforms for public speaking, spaces for medical rehabilitation, spaces for storing medical and food supplies, and such like. • The affective space. When the hitch situations of the occupations were converted into a space of opportunities, everyone, everywhere felt affected during occupations. A concern with affect as a problem space was raised by Slavoj Žižek saying that “one of the great dangers the protesters face is that they will fall in love with themselves”. He explains that:
The protesters should fall in love with hard and patient work – they are the beginning, not the end… While it is thrilling to enjoy the pleasures of the “horizontal organization” of protesting crowds with egalitarian solidarity and open-ended free debates… the open ended debates will have to coalesce… in concrete answers to the old Leninist question, “What is to be done?” (Žižek 2011)
Žižek experiments with psychoanalytic theories of pleasure and jouissance, and brings to the space: “What is to be done?” considers a utopian space of OWS as a world contested space. Thus, the affective space acts as a “transition or lived passage from one degree of perfection to another, insofar as this passage is determined by ideas; but in itself it does not consist in an idea, but rather constitutes affect” (Deleuze 1978). Affect is the continuous variation, for someone it is the force that increases the power of acting: “it’s a state of a body insofar as it is subject to the action of another body” (Ibid), it is the action that one body produces on another when implies contact. The affective space is originated by a particular susceptible society that feels the action of others.
The spatial continuity (and at some extend division) of these occupations, subtending various engagements with assembled bodies and with their contribution to gatherings, exceeding the
208 relations of the preconfigured spatial imaginary. In this sense, Manuel DeLanda18 says that assemblages are composed themselves by assemblages in terms of forces, nor forms (DeLanda 2006). Meanwhile, Deleuze insists on immanent open-ended qualities of an assemblage that gives continuity to bodies. And Spinoza conceptualizes the boundedness of the object as processes rather than pre-given final forms. With a temporal division in the assemblage, one is constituted and another is constitutive, thus there is a temporal balance between a revolutionary moment and a state form (emancipation and restriction of assemblages). It is in this situation that the emergent envision of experimental and collective assemblages propose new conditions of spatialities that form the commons. In addition, Judith Butler elucidates the dynamics of public assembly under prevailed economic and political conditions, understanding assemblies as plural forms of performative actions, and extending to performances and precariousness, where the destruction of liveability conditions has been a galvanizing force in occupations. Assemblies of physical bodies have an expressive dimension that cannot be reduced to speech, including forms of long-distance solidarity but also for allowing a potential to be the closest relationship.
In the occupation, Butler’s relationship between assembly and precariousness, points out at the body that suffers precarious conditions and still persists and resists bringing out a dual dimension of the corporeal state. Assemblies make visible and audible bodies that require basic freedom of movement and gathering. By enacting a radical form of collectivity, a new sense of the commons emerges to take a forward position towards the occupation.
Seize upon an already established space permeated by existing power, seeking to sever the relation between the public space, the public square, and the existing regime. So the limits of the political are exposed, and the link between the theatre of legitimacy and public space is severed; that theatre is no longer unproblematically housed in public space, since public space now occurs in the midst of another action, one that displaces the power that claim legitimacy precisely by taking over the field of its effects… In wresting that power, a new space is created, a new ‘between’ of bodies, as it were, that lays claim to existing space through the action of a new alliance, and those bodies are seized and animated by those existing spaces in the very acts by which they reclaim and resignify their meanings. (Butler 2011)
It was not a coincidence that these occupations took place in some of the biggest and most populated cities around the world: New York with 8.4 million inhabitants, Cairo with 7.7 million, and Istanbul with 14 million. There are infinite borders in these cities, either social, class, spatial, political, religious, gender, and so on, dividing cities in every possible layer and point. Nevertheless,
18 Manuel DeLanda (1952) is a Mexican-United States writer and philosopher, adjunct professor at Pratt Institute School of Architecture.
209 that division was blurred during occupations. Established borders ‘within’ spaces were transformed while some others disappeared; social and spatial borders played in giving rise to struggles, revolts and radical actions that shaped their ongoing development. These common dynamics faced ‘internalities’ and ‘externalities’ [factors and processes]: in occupations zones internalities processes referred to interactions [either or both in the virtual and physical space] adhering a movement of ideas, identities and materiality. Externalities refers to factors in social, political, and spatial conditions that shape the movement and dynamics of collective participation, usually forming activities of counter-movements for the generation of the commons by being extended to the outside world (Mendez and Naples 2015). The commons transforms the public space into temporary spaces through collective self-spatial organization. In contrast to public space, which is held by an authority, or in the case of the POPS by a private owner, the commons can be enclaves, they tend to be determined by limited groups of temporal stakeholders with a geographical attachment to the occupation area. The commons has to do “with difference, not commonality, it should always be expanding those who can participate” (Stavrides 2015).
During the revolts, the spatial borders struggled the challenge, reinforced and affected contested bodies and their force and desire to transcend the space – usually involving a symbolic characteristic. Thus, the binary system of the inside/outside was far from limited to capture the complexities at play in the case of spatial borders. In occupations, bodies, objects, and spaces became corps of resilient spatialities that broke the ‘container’ state, highlighting contradictory spaces of established socio-spatial structures (Gupta 1998). In this sense, Martin Heidegger refers to boundary as something that does not stop but as something that begins its presencing (Heidegger 1971). Thus, global assemblages of contemporary occupations revealed bodies of generating and inhabiting contemporary urban scopes that took into account the virtual space, the collective spatial practice and the state of ‘being’ connected. Occupations reappropriated, reworked, and deployed cultural differences (as gender, religion, social class, and such like). They dissolved borders to let form a space without a specific shape or border, it shrank space and distance among bodies. The occupation zone was a space that negotiated and inhabited multiple contradictions and forms of difference, calling attention on the excluded.
The physical state, the legal framework, and the virtual outcome, promoted an intensification on the commons. In this sense, Deleuze sets three states for the common notion: the first one as the notion of what there is in common between the body affects the body itself and extends to its maximum living common notions. The second as a kind of knowledge [connaisance]. And in the third one, the collective is a multiplicity. There is a limit where all bodies agree and the common notions are individual. The commons heightened the intelligent individuality that was capable of practicing and producing experiences on others and on the collective at the same time. The distance between the self and the subject relies on the aesthetic moment: the self during the revolt and the
210 subject during the occupation. It was the sensation of ‘being together apart’ that transformed the spatial experience, hence in the revolt, it included corporeal, individual and collective experiences, while the occupation involved aesthetic, corporeal, collective and temporal experiences and actions. Whereas Rancière situates this perception between what is seen, thought and felt as sensorial experiences, it is already a space of displacement, which is at the same time, a continuum source of commons. This movement from experience to displacement is the core of the commons’ aesthetics.
OWS, Tahrir Square and Gezi Park enabled an unprecedented spatiality that set up bonds and conditions during the affective space for building relationships for the contemporary city. Adding to the global overview, Mike Davis initiated a review of these utopian spaces:
The electrifying protests of 2011 – the ongoing Arab Spring, the “hot” Iberian and Hellenic summers, the “occupied” fall in the United States – inevitably have been compared to the anni mirabiles of 1848, 1905, 1968 and 1989. Certainly some fundamental things still apply and classic patterns repeat. Tyrants tremble, chains break and palaces are stormed. Streets become magical laboratories where citizens and comrades are created, and radical ideas acquire sudden telluric power. Iskra becomes Facebook (…) But will this new comet of protest persist in the winter sky or is it just a brief, dazzling meteor shower? For the moment, the survival of the new social movements – the occupiers, the indignados, the small European anti-capitalist parties and the Arab new left – demands that they sink deeper roots in mass resistance to the global economic catastrophe… It’s a frighteningly long road just to reach the starting points of earlier attempts to build a new world. But a new generation has at least bravely initiated the journey. (Davis 2011)
The newly meaningful and embodied public space came out from the counterparts of the occupations by repossessing spaces, symbolism, uses, geographies, ties, tension, and relationships. Spaces of resistance, contested spaces, dissident spaces, affected spaces; there is affection in all these spaces, and all altered established borders. The spatial experience – in the case of OWS, was a direct impact of the aesthetic on the collective action, which generated a bigger collective participation and engagement, one that was shared as a deeply realisation on individuality and collectivity. During the protests, the identification of the individual was unable because they were mass, while throughout the revolt, protestors shaped a collective individuation, the in-between moment from revolt to occupation was the multitude, and in the occupation, the commons allowed the creation of new spatialities.
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3.1.3 Spatiality of the rhizome in the occupation
Contemporary occupations were not only nodes of acceleration in social and spatial aspects, but also producers of high-speed resonances. This intensity striated the space: one day there was a carnival atmosphere in Tahrir Square and few days later there were unrestrained states of violence in Libya. An insurgent deterritorialization was possible because of the fast-paced rhizomic synergy between bodies in the streets and the instant form of communication in the virtual space. Both spaces displayed images that empowered the feeling of others, resonating with more bodies. These events were rhizomatic, horizontal, and leaderless, followed by multiple lines of expansion and resilient interconnections. Deleuze and Guattari’s theory of flows and striated space, relate an affective space that changes notions, qualities and characteristics of other spaces. Thus, speed of occupations involved bodily affectations, like Spinoza’s relations to bodies that affect each other positively through good encounters, so they are able to create something more powerful that increases their capacity to act without having a specific form.
Spinoza’s axiom is that all bodies are either in motion or at rest, and that the motion or rest of particular bodies depends on the motion and rest of other bodies (Spinoza 1996 [1677]). Bodies in motion in a smooth space are unconstrained by other bodies in an un-code flow and force to remain fixed in a striated space by other bodies. The force that allows a group of bodies to control the mobility of other bodies is, as Paul Virilio explains, their capacity to generate speed. Hence, occupations created and multiplied affective connectivities that splinted unexpected lines of fight cutting through striations and producing lines of fracture, which worked as assemblages. This state brings the “Rhizomic Assemblage,” a concept based on the image of underground roots of plants (Img. 3). Deleuze and Guattari see dynamics like emergent networks from unusual, combinations that are tied to existing cultural meanings or relations (Deleuze and Guattari 2002).
Img. 3 Rhizome of Cimifuga Racemosa
Rhizome is derived from the Greek rhizome, root-stalk, a characteristically horizontal stem of a plant that is usually found underground, sending roots and shoots from its nodes. It has short
212 internodes that send out roots from the bottom and upward-growing shoots from the top of the nodes. If rhizomes are broken into pieces, each piece may be able to give rise to a new plant (Liddell and Scott 1940).
A rhizome ceaselessly establishes connections between semiotic chains, organizations of power, and circumstances relative to the arts, sciences, and social struggles. A semiotic chain is like a tuber agglomerating very diverse acts, not only linguistic, but also perceptive, mimetic, gestural, and cognitive: there is no language in itself, nor are there any linguistic universals, only a throng of dialects, patois, slangs, and specialized languages. (Deleuze and Guattari 2002)
In this sense, Gezi/Taksim received influenced by the people’s background (political, economic and social situation of Turkey) but also from Tahrir Square and OWS. As a rhizome, it worked as an organism that created new movements, flows of information and dynamics. Gezi/Taksim was constantly sprawled and understood as a social phenomenon that reinvented the space continuously, as a rhizomatic flow.
The rhizome is reducible neither to the One nor the multiple. It is not the One that becomes Two or even directly three, four, five, etc. It is not a multiple derived from the One, or to which One is added (n + 1). It is composed not of units but of dimensions, or rather directions in motion. It has neither beginning nor end, but always a middle (milieu) from which it grows and which overspills. (Deleuze and Guattari 2002)
According to Deleuze and Guattari, the relations of exteriority characterize the ‘whole.’ Based on remarks and relations of exteriority, the own ties of individual components explain the relations that create the whole: all the properties of the whole are results of practices of individuals’ parts (DeLanda 2006). In this sense, Deleuze and Guattari have approached six principles.
• Connectivity. It is concerned as any component of the assemblage that may be detached from it and plugged into a completely different assemblage (Deleuze and Guattari 2002). The relations of exteriority guarantee that “assemblages may be taken apart while at the same time allowing that the interactions between parts may result in a true synthesis” (Ibid). Connectivity states that every part of the system is connected to another part in any possible way. In Gezi/Taksim, people ‘went down’ to the Square/Park because they were previously in contact in the virtual space, which was an interpersonal network with a common purpose: every person was related to another person (either in the physical or virtual space).
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• Heterogeneity. It as the connection between things of different nature. Deleuze and Guattari employ biological examples, such as the symbiosis of plants and pollinating insects; i.e., the wasp and the orchid show a mandatory relation in the course of co- evolution. The heterogeneity of the components is considered an important characteristic of assemblages that includes territorialisation and deterritorialization. • Multiplicity. In a rhizome, all parts are connected to one another and these to others, and the others to a greater number of others. It has no beginning or end. • Rupture. It states that the rhizome can never be broken. If any of its parts is interrupted, it will continue in a different path (or plane), or be deterritorialized, but will remain. • Cartography and decalcomania. For the first term, Deleuze and Guattari referred as the method of mapping for orientation from any point of entry within a ‘whole’, rather than tracing a priori path. Decalcomania is a method of forming through continuous negotiation with its context, constantly adapting by experimentation, performing a non-symmetrical active resistance against rigid organizations and restriction (Deleuze and Guattari, 2002). It is possible to enter to any point but it is not possible to trace it. Whereas the rhizome allows the structure and pattern of reality to emerge through interaction testing the reality, accepting all points as part of them.
The protest of Gezi Park started with around 50 environmentalists demonstrated against the demolition of the park. Because of the propagation of images and videos of the police attacking the activists, thousands of people felt ‘connected’ to the protests, initiating consequently the occupation. Throughout the occupation, the effects of surprise disappeared and the resistance became part of occupiers’ daily routine: Gezi/Taksim became familiar, personal, busy, and dynamic. It operated as an organism on an everyday basis while initiated some sort of carnival gathering people from different backgrounds. By applying a rhizomatic communication wherein multiple channels were used to strengthen networks from one space to another. The advantage of spreading communication across diverse overlapping networks was that it became more difficult to stall its advance. Manuel Castells points out that horizontal features of networked social movements use anonymity as practice, not ideology (Castells 2007). Hence, occupations produced social changing networks rather than social movement organizations, and used virtual space that linked together the diffusion of information and the direct action of people. It was a ‘commons spatial rhizome’ where the creation of the affective space helped to share emotions and arguments.
“Everywhere is Taksim, everywhere is resistance” as one of the most famous slogans during the occupation of Gezi/Taksim, expressed specifically the importance of the space and borders: the first one transmuted and the second one blurred, and in both cases by the existence of the commons using architectural notions. Hence, if the rhizomatic spatiality in occupations challenged these parameters and opposed to the idea of having starting points and predictable paths, then
214 comparing the relations between objects and bodies, the rhizome formed temporal architectural assemblages. In Gezi/Taksim, Zuccotti Park and Tahrir Square, the occupations worked in horizontal schemes with no specific directions and where multiplicities of individuals and new spatialities were part of occupations.
3.2 Bodies in the architectural space of the occupation
The was the icon of the 2011 revolutions, especially of the Arab Spring. As an urban element, it is seen by Eyal Weizman in his book “The Roundabout Revolutions” (Weizman 2015) as “Dante’s circles of hell,” where its geometry acts as a counter to the counter-revolution, as an immanent power of people that “need to find its corollary in sustained work at round-tables – the ongoing formation of political movements able to enact political change” (Ibid). Weizman follows the history of roundabouts in Europe and North America in the early twenty-century and its exportation to colonial places in an attempt to discipline and police ‘chaotic’ cities. During the last decades, roundabouts functioned mainly as circular traffic marks, but they were also self-regulated urban spaces.
Self-regulation, as Michel Foucault taught in his work on governmentality, is not about the free interaction of agents, it is also about the creation of a frame within which such interaction can take place. The roundabout could thus be seen as a literal (and somewhat comical) diagram of this principle: it is an apparatus that combined a set of elements including the urban form of the street circle, traffic regulation, and the production of a modern subject (the driver) who can self- regulate. The roundabout’s unfulfilled promise, however, like that of deregulated capitalism, was to optimize flow with minimum top-down intervention. Just like the ‘self-regulated’ market, it has not only come into crisis, it has become the mode by which crisis took shape. (Weizman 2015)
Roundabouts have in their centre monuments that usually evoke a local symbolism, making them untouchable but seen by all. In Bahrain, the occupation concluded in a spatial particularity. As part of the Arab Spring. At the moment of the protests, the country was ruled by a monarchy system and its economy was the lowest compared to the region. Young people were the most active agents in social networks, and by following the energetic moment of the Arab Spring, they congregated a general protest on 14th February. Their intention was to rewrite the constitution with a popular mandate.19 For weeks, the government started a series of actions trying to avoid the protests. It offered to release some prisoners arrested for demonstrating and also the King Hamad bin Isa Al
19 Stephen Zunes, “America Blows i ton Bahrain.” Foreign Policy in Focus. 2 March 2011. http://fpif.org/america_blows_it_on_bahrain/
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Khalifa announced that each family would receive 1,000 Bahrain dinars ($2,650) to celebrate the tenth anniversary of the National Action Charter Referendum. Despite these efforts, the general protest began on 14th February 2011 but there were immediately clashes with security forces, who used tear gas, rubber bullets and birdshot. The following day, thousands of protesters marched to the Pearl Roundabout in Manama, set up tents and camped overnight.20 Two days later, the Pearl Roundabout was taken by security forces and in the process, four protesters were killed and over 300 people were injured.21 The city was placed under lockdown with tanks and armed soldiers taking up positions around the capital city,22 followed by two days of clashes. Finally, on 19th February, protestors re-established their camps at the Pearl Roundabout and remained until 16th March, when the camp was evacuated, bulldozed, and set on fire by the Bahraini Defence Force, riot police and the Peninsula Shield Force.23 Two days later, the Pearl Monument was demolished and replaced by a vehicular intersection, its name [Pearl Monument] changed to “Al Farooq Junction” and since then, security forces have sealed off the area (Img. 4).24
Img. 4 Pearl Roundabout Pre-In-Post Occupation 2011
In the case of Cairo, Tahrir Square became one of the most congested zones. Its typical image was an aerial view showing the vehicular chaos, although after 2011, it was replaced by an image of thousands of people and camping tents (Img. 5). Weizman reflects on the banality of roundabouts and why, as utilitarian instruments of traffic management, they have been historically sites of political protests and revolts. The repetitions of these actions in these spaces reveal intersections that make these phenomena being reproduced in space and time. “Urban roundabouts are the intersection points of large axes, which also puts them at the start or end of processions” (Weizman 2015), they showed the power of occupations as tactical urban acupuncture, blocking off all routes going in and out, moving outward vehicles and attracting bodies, pressuring simple pivotal points within a networked infrastructure and putting the entire city under siege. The difference with public spaces is that the roundabout has a purpose to regulate vehicular traffic, not to gather
20 Michael Slackman, “Bahrain Takes the Stage with a Raucous Protest.” The New York Times, 15 February 2011. http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/16/world/middleeast/16bahrain.html?_r=0 21 “Bahrain Protets: Police break up Pearl Square crowd.” BBC, 17 February 2011. http://www.bbc.com/news/world- middle-east-12490286 22 “Clashes Rock Bahraini Capital.” AlJazeera, 17 February 2011. http://www.aljazeera.com/news/middleeast/2011/02/201121714223324820.html 23 Laura Gamble, “Business-Friendly Bahrain Disappears; Ex-Pats Exit”. CNBC. http://www.cnbc.com/id/42124501/ 24 Martin Chulov, “Bahrain unleashes forces on protesters’ camp”. The Guardian, 16 March 2011. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/mar/16/bahrain-protesters-military-operation-manama
216 people. It keeps people away by an ephemeral wall created for the constant use of vehicles moving around it; hence they are seen but not used (Ibid).
The common point of the revolutionary roundabouts is the balance between the void they constitute and the relatively dense urban fabric that surround them, providing a spatial control. The fact that thousands of bodies decided to occupy that particular space at that time constituted a radical political attitude by the exclusivity of the space, and by extension, the exclusion of others. The difference with other gatherings in public spaces, as football matches, carnivals, etc., is that in the occupations people gathered simultaneously in time and space, in the outdoor space of the square instead of the inner architecture that shelters.
Img. 5 Tahrir Square. Left: Before the 2011 occupation. Right: During the 2011 occupation
Tahrir Square, set up a platform that reconsidered the human form when acting within these spaces of political contestation, forming the “Bodies Enacted.” This concept ties up the imaginary of ‘roaring square,’ a sense of mimesis of individuals performing the commons in an act of street politics. However, this occupation captured people by their complicity to experience the situation of oversaturated objects, images, and signs. It brought the idea of being caught within a temporal present, as Frederic Jameson explains in his essay “The End of Temporality:”
The reduction to the present… is also a reduction to something else, something rather more material than eternity as such. Indeed, it seems clear enough that when you have nothing left but your temporal present, it follows that you also have nothing left but your own body. The reduction to the present can thus also be formulated in terms of a reduction to the body as a present of time. (Jameson 2003)
Faced with the futility of any form of long term planning in the public spatial realm, occupations provided free-form-organized-changing space lacked of boundaries. These new relationships were developed with the surroundings through collective experiences. One of these spatio-temporal actions in occupations was the graffiti. It was a powerful spatial expression during occupations that staged cities and brought a social representation. In addition, people used their bodies as canvas:
217 they painted their faces, scrawl slogans on their clothing, hosted signs above the crowd, pointed bodily performances of dissident spatial practice, and by doing so, they changed simultaneously the city (Img. 6, Img. 7). It was part of a spatial process that drown out the multitude, while bodies served as politics of translation that shifted its representation alongside the occupations.
Img. 6 Mohamed Mahmoud Street, May 2012. Photograph from Cairo Images/C.I.A.
Img. 7 Body as Canvas of Protest. Photograph from Cairo Images / C.I.A.
The body in the square, the body in the roundabout, the body in the street, during revolts and occupations bring Michel Foucault’s notion of “mon corps topie impitoyable”25 [there is no escape from my body]. In Tahrir Square, the body had a confrontation with the roundabout that resulted in a political spatial [co] [re] action. Judith Butler reveals what bodies do rather than what they say. She adds a hint on Derrida in which the act of repeating something brings an unavoidable variation, the reproduction of the norm reveals its weaknesses, and in the urban scenario, the established relationships between architecture and body risks undoing them. The norm was bodily enacted, but with little turnings, deviations, and inadvertent agency, the body in the roundabout was precarious. Indeed, those features were the strength of occupations because, as Laurent Berlant indicates, they were a kind of expendability where a person was supposed to be self-reliant but as such “one became isolated, which in turn made one feel more precarious, escalating anxiety” (Berlant 2011). It reinforced the need and urgency to be with others, and formed a collective body, consequently generating the commons. For Butler, all bodies are dependant and interdependent, she calls for alliances of the unrecognizable that seek to expand the meaning of the words: “I am already an assembly, even a general assembly” (Butler 2015).
25 Michel Foucault, L’utopie du corps. Radio Feature, 1966. Broadcasted by France Culture Station.
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The performativity of bodies in roundabouts is the exercise of the right to place and belonging, the space brings the being and the existence, occupying a space as a multitude questions the established spatial conditions and as commons, transforms it. When Butler questions “What does it mean to act together when the conditions for acting together are devastated or falling away?” (Butler 2015), there is a sense for acting in the space, to be visible, to generate energy, and to be spatially recognizable in the public assemblage by sharing situations that produce trans-visibility. In a speech made in Zuccotti Park during the occupation, Judith Butler referenced the notion of the assembled bodies in public spaces:
It matters that as bodies we arrive together in public, that we are assembling in public; we are coming together as bodies in alliance in the street and in the square. As bodies we suffer, we require shelter and food, and as bodies we require one another and desire one another. So this is a politics of the public body, the requirements of the body, its movement and voice. (…) I came here to support and offer my solidarity for this unprecedented display of popular and democratic will. People have asked, so what are the demands that all these people are making? Either, they say, there are no demands, and that leaves your critics confused. Or they say: that demands for social equality and economic justice are impossible demands. And impossible demands are just not ‘practical’. But we disagree. If hope is an impossible demand, then we demand the impossible. If it is impossible to demand that those who profit from the recession redistribute their wealth and cease their greed, then yes, we demand the impossible. Of course the list of demands is long. We object to the monopolization of wealth, we object to making working populations disposable, we object to the privatization of education when education is a public good, when we support the right to education. We oppose the billions spent on wars, we oppose the expanding number of the poor, we rage against the banks that push people out their homes, the lack of health care for increasing numbers of people; we object to economic racism, and call for its end. None of these demands are up for arbitration. (…) It matters that as bodies we arrive together in public, that we are assembling in public; we are coming together as bodies in alliance in the street and in the square. As bodies we suffer, we require shelter and food, and as bodies we require one another and desire one another. So this is a politics of the public body, the requirements of the body, its movement and voice. We would not be here if elected officials were representing the popular will. We stand apart from the electoral process and its complicities with exploitation. We sit and stand and move and speak, as we can, as the popular will, the one that electoral democracy has forgotten and abandoned. But we are here, and remain here, enacting the phrase, ‘we the people’. (Butler 2011)
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3.2.1 Public space as occupation
Solon passed a law that when there was discord in the city, there would not make weapons nor with some nor with others, was subject to atimia and ceased to be a citizen. Pericles, meanwhile, affirmed: "We are the unique, in fact, we believe that someone who does not take part of these things, is no longer a quiet but useless." Fernando Quesada, City and Citizenship. Hiking contemporary political philosophy
The historical and symbolic state of the ‘revolutionary squares,’ gave to contemporary occupations the motifs to reclaim them as their own and to add new layers of history and symbolism. These occupations were processes that transformed temporally the conception and state of public space in different ways. For instance, on 1st February 2011, Tahrir Square hosted approximately 250,000 protesters26 in an area of 32,000 sq.m, a density of 7.81 hab/sq.m. In Zuccotti Park, the number of protestors changed along the two-month-occupation, which was a more extended and arhythmical transformation. While in Gezi/Taksim, when security forces left the area for four days, occupiers created multiple zones in a carnivalesque atmosphere and a very intense way. Judith Butler refers these new but temporal public spaces like the production of the public:
It is equally true that the collective actions collect the space itself, gather the pavement, and animate and organize the architecture. As much as we must insist on there being material conditions for public assembly and public speech, we have also to ask how it is that assembly and speech reconfigure the materiality of public space, and produce, or reproduce, the public character of that material environment. (Butler 2011)
Situated at this point, the definition of public space involves a considerable literature. For many urban planners, architects and designers, public space is the void between buildings that have to be filled, in a good manner, under local governments and private developers’ visions (Delgado 2011). 27 For urban planners, public space has historically been described as open spaces: streets, parks, plazas, recreation areas, and other publicly owned and managed outdoors spaces, as opposed to the private domain of housing and work. Erving Goffman refers to this space as areas in which everybody has legal access: “I refer to the streets, parks, and places of public gatherings. I refer as well to public buildings or ‘public zones’ in private buildings. Public space has to be differentiated from private space, in which the access can be object of legal restriction” (Lofland 1985 [1973]). These different approaches to public spaces in cities, question its current situation, blurring its state of public. In the contemporary scope, Manuel Delgado adds the ideological character of
26 Tom Chivers, Barney Henderson, “Egypt protests: Tuesday 1 February 2011 as it happened.” The Telegraph, 2 February 2011 27 Manuel Delgado, El Espacio Público como Ideología. Madrid: Catarata, 2011. Translation by the author.
220 consumerism and a superficial political participation (Delgado 2011). He insists that in the capitalist reappropriation of the city, there is a conversion of urban space into theme parks, gentrification neighbourhoods, transformation of industrial districts, increment of suburbs, and so on.
But public space as a term relatively new. During the 60s, 70s, and 80s, urban thinkers referred to it as the value of streets, providing a sense of social space or common space. Delgado brings to the discussion, texts like “Death and Life of Great American Cities” by Jane Jacobs in which the notion of public space appears only once (Jacobs 1993 [1961]); Kevin Lynch’s “The Good City Form” (Lynch 1981) where public space is in the analytical index; Henri Lefebvre does not use this term at all; and in William Whyte’s “City” (Whyte 1989), this term appears in four pages. Instead, most of them use “urban space” to indicate areas where people gather. Nevertheless, during the last decades, public space attached characteristics and conditions that in a sense, brings back to the scene, the Greek agora. Agora, in ancient Greek cities, means ‘gathering place’ or ‘assembly’, a place where freeborn citizens gather for military duty, to hear the ruling council, or to discuss about politics. Later, it served as a marketplace, merging political and commercial senses, although, Habermas induces this space as a privilege of few. In the polis, citizens’ rights were highly restricted to a very narrow social group [the recognized as free citizens] excluding women, farmers, and basically, the throng of common people. The publicness of the agora stratified the situation of social inequalities in the polis.
Within the urban scope, the link between public space and civic culture, allowed democracy and citizenship practice. Walter Benjamin, Georg Simmel, Lewis Mumford, Henri Lefebvre, Jane Jacobs, Richard Sennett, Manuel Delgado, Manuel Castells, Jordi Borja, encourage the space for the commons as a true practice of citizenship in the public space. However, the condition of public space for the public is increasingly restricted. For instance, in London a journalist was making a report about public spaces in the outdoor space of the City Council building, when a private security guard stopped him and his cameraman for not having an official permit to record (the City Council plaza is a POPS).28 On 14th May 2015, the author of this thesis made a spatial test in the same area. She played with a kite in the City Council Square while her collaborator, Joao Rivo, was recording the action on the other side of the River Thames. After 15 minutes, Joao crossed Tower Bridge and recorded her in the same square. 40 seconds later, two private security guards approached to them and required to stop recording and obligated them to delete the video, otherwise they would have been detained. This action did not involve any political sense, it was not collective, but still it was dissolved immediately.
28 The full video is available on YouTube. “Corporations taking over Public Spaces Part 1,” 24 January 2010. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T-c9nZ5Snrs&index=6&list=WL
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That same year in London, there was a social movement that spread through social media, images of public spaces filled with metal spikes to stop homeless people to sleep there. These metal spikes block anyone to sit, lay down or step. “It’s not just the homeless” says Selena Savic, editor of Unpleasant Design, “those impacted are usually homeless people, teenagers, the poor, those who are marginalised or don’t have good social representation, or who aren’t organised as an interest groups” (Omidi 2014) (Img. 8). As a ‘defensive architecture,’ Maryam Omidi indicates that it employs strategies to deter the behaviour that is not acceptable or proper conduct.
Img. 8 Hostile architecture on the former Coutts Bank, London. Photograph: Linda Nylind, The Guardian
Similar to Habermas’ French cafes as public spaces exercised by the French bourgeoisie, they were only for those who could afford being there, similar to the Greek agora, or current public spaces that are commercialized. It seems that the state of citizen and public space is shaped by their social condition of affordance. This right to the city is classist, differing from its condition to serve to the public that contrast to Douglas and Friedman’s claims of “city for citizens” (Douglass and Friedmann 1998):
• The right to voice, where citizens can claim presence in urban space • The right to difference, where citizens can participate in the development process of the use, function and meaning of space • The right to human flourishing, where citizens have the ability to live life fully
Thus, if there is an absence of these rights, there is a suggestion of power over citizenship. The occupations showed that public spaces in contemporary cities restricted the citizens’ rights degenerating the condition of public space (Innerarity 2006). The depoliticization and impoverishment of public space is present in contemporary global cities: the defensive architecture, the commercialization of public areas, the privatization of public spaces, indicates the loss of the public character and practice. Such loss of publicness, blurs the notion of mediation in the public space because it does not offer opportunities to produce and discuss social matters in a collective body, it only makes visible the argumentation produced somewhere else.
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Setha Low and Neil Smith denominates the current public space as the range of social locations that are:
[T]he street, the park, the media, the Internet the shopping Mall, the United Nations, national governments, and local neighbourhoods. Public space envelopes the palpable tension between place, experienced at all scales in daily life, and the seeming spacelessness of the Internet, popular opinion, and global institutions and economy. It is not a homogeneous arena: The dimensions and extent of its publicness are highly differentiated from instance to instance. (…) Public space includes very recognizable geographies of daily movement, which may be local, regional, or global, but they also include electronic and institutional ‘spaces’ that are every bit as palpable, if experienced quite differently, in daily life. (Low and Smith 2006)
In a study done by Stephanie Edgerly et al., they focus on the ability of YouTube to serve as a public space. Doing a research on different samples of videos and comments box, the authors argue that this box was a public space as it has a ‘low barrier of entry,’ by being connected to the Internet, there was a social interaction that raised several common topics (Edgerly, et al. 2009). Hence, if public space is the place for connecting with others, the virtual space enlarges the public spatial dimension, meaning that citizens have a larger space to act.
One component of an active public space is conflict, not in the sense of danger but as a dynamic, creative and operational relation. The heterogeneous structure of different cultures, languages and uses in public spaces, place interests and expressions that generate two subjects of urban and architectural fields: monumentality and centrality. Monumentality is the capacity to emit symbolism, like a bridge between different places and societies, working as an instrument to coexist, negotiate, interact and fight [as a relation]. Centrality on the other side is multinuclear, where symbolism can be placed simultaneously at several points in order to activate the territory continuously. Thus, public space has traditionally been first and foremost the ‘object’ of conflict over claims to its control and over the rights of occupation. These conflicts are usually about (Burte 2003):
• What uses and activities are acceptable in the public space. • Who (public) has the greater right of occupation over different public spaces. • Who should control or make decisions about [and on what basis the fate of public spaces access to them].
The evictions of OWS and Gezi/Taksim made visible a series of contradictions: public space is something that could not be used universally, by all within the commons state even if the political
223 occupation of a public space is the citizens’ right. It revealed that public space is a contested space, involving a conditional possession of personal wealth. During the occupations, people used, changed and defended what they felt as their space. Through the virtual communication gave endless possibilities for people to connect and have a deeper impact on the physical public space. New ways of producing public spaces appeared such as DIY and DIWO (do-it-yourself and do-it- with-others), small spaces were implemented in cities and became catalysts for bigger impacts at larger scales and distances. Tensions between politics and public space were striated by self- organization, where citizens’ rights practices, social interactions and spatial production merged on the same plane. Public space seduces many people because it is not possible to give one only definition, it is always changing and transforming, causing contradictions and conflicts, and when someone tries to control it, it changes again its form, meaning and state. Its quality is sensed with the intensity of its use when empowers the maximum heterogeneity and has a capacity to stimulate social relations and different dynamics.
3.2.2 The multitude in the occupation
In their seminal work “Architectural Body,” Gins and Arakawa propose an architecture that “ought to be designed for actions, it invites” (Gins and Arakawa 2002). Their approach towards architecture, aims a relational concept of bodies: an architectural body, a body as an organism-person- environment.
What they regard as organism is a biomass that enables a process ‘to person,’ personing as the form of compact, subjective ‘nexus’ out of actions relative to the build environment in which they take place. The potential of a personing organism depends on how to position its body while ‘surroundings’ invite, provoke, and entice persons to perform actions; the enacting motions of these actions not only serve upon alternate vantage points but inevitably shift sense organs about. (Gins and Arakawa 2002)
There is a shift from the psychological model towards the movement that intercepts perceptions and “the air passage through which the body draws in atmospheric wherewithal” (Ibid). It is an organism-body-environment. The personing and the occupations are directly related when they occupy a space in the city in a radical and temporal manner. In the case of bodies within occupations, they re-territorialize complex compositions of the public in cities; the discursive formations of their bodies transform the public because they are personing by the surroundings. The intrinsic relation of body and architecture in the case of occupations explores a necessity to interact emphasizing trajectories of self and body in order to understand the space. Gins and Arakawa manage the construction of the concept “landing site,” a state that can be identified during
224 the reinvention of the public space. It refers to a body related to other bodies allowing the movement and deterritorialization of spaces. It understands relational processes of bodies and focus on what they are capable of producing within the occupied space, where the body interacts with the perceived object. The notion of ‘site’ and the development of ‘being sited’ produce the organism-person-environment relationship, sites and ‘would-be-sites’ as organisms formed by many sites that cause a deterritorialization, allowing an opening towards the affective space through the “landing site.”
Personing, landing site, being-sited, organism-person-environment, are concepts that configure the notion of the multitude in occupations. First, the body regards the affective force that hides in the material ground through its movement, producing new spatialities. In the construction of the occupation, “all point or areas of focus (…), all designated areas of specified activity, count as perceptual landing sites (visual, aural, tactile, olfactory, proprioceptively, kinaesthetic somaesthetic [pain])” (Gins and Arakawa 2002). Thus, the body in the occupation notices and moves in relation to other bodies and landing sites: the body moves between motion and rest, always in relation to spatial assemblages and other bodies. In this regard, Bergson relates movement and space as:
[…] inextricably tied into his concept of duration as the major difference between entities or composites. Duration in relation to the shifting formations of space and place becomes the necessary compartment that moves with the re-territorializing forces of a body’s action. (Brunner 2009)
For Bergson, differences are based on duration, not on degree, the force that shifts the space is the force of collective bodies. It obtains a radical form when is materialized in the landing site of the occupation. This spatial condition could be seen in Gezi/Taksim on 1st June 2013, when hundreds of people crossed the Bosporus Bridge in an attempt to reach Taksim: here, the mass was walking across a bridge. When it tried to arrive to Taksim, there were clashes with the police, being this the moment of shift from mass to collective body: there were individual reactions within a collective force in an area that was being deterritorialize, the collective body started a series of complex multi-micro actions on their intention for being-sited. Finally, the collective body managed to reappropriate Gezi/Taksim and in order to avoid losing it again, it was transformed into a multitude, a body that permitted to reterritorialize Gezi/Taksim as an occupation. The occupation was seen at different moments as a collective carnival where different groups were performing the space in diverse manners and times. It showed tangible modes of shelter, new models of living together, discussing and debating, as the ancient Greek agora, in a virtual and physical assembly; this was the state of the commons. The Gezi/Taksim occupation transformed the protests into an upheaval against the government’s urban plan and with the involvement of marginal political and activist groups such like LGTB, environmentalists, leftists, and such like, performing a series of
225 spatial actions that could not have been done under quotidian circumstances. As per Bakhtin, the “carnival is not a spectacle seen by people, they live in it, and everyone participates because its very idea embraces all the people. (…) As a special condition and as the people’s second life, the carnival can also be exempt of some of the societal rules and restrictions” (Bakhtin 1984). Gezi/Taksim carnival-like included people dancing (Img. 9), streets as fashion festivals, walls with graffiti, tweets with the hashtag #OccupyGezi.
Img. 9 Occupier dancing the folkloric dance 'halay'
Occupation is the action that remakes the space temporally and radically; it redefines the role of citizens and the public space, emerges new assemblages of bodies that vary the urban geography and alter the architectural urban landscape.
In the case of Tahrir Square, the exchange of information and the generalized use of communication platforms such as social networks and mobile dispositive, allowed the creation of collective multi- sited-actions. This was a process that connected places and created collectivites around the region, and coordinated the collective body. Few months after, this radical occupation was extended to the region and around Europe: Madrid, Athens, Lisbon, and Paris hosted occupations in their main squares. They shaped networks of exchanging occupations. In Syntagma Square, Athens, occupiers projected videos on screens showing images from the occupation in Puerta del Sol, Madrid; a spatial action that helped to generate a feeling that occupations were happening around the world and that occupiers were part of a large commons. These relations are “communities in movement:” they are developed through common actions in the shared public space (Stavrides 2016). Roundabouts, squares, and parks, generate their own space, the commons, with quotidian practices and belonging to a global net of occupations. Each one of these occupations had their own, specific and particular spatial characteristics, features and dynamics, establishing their own inhabiting urban and social regulations, which were filled with multiple-micro actions during occupations.
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At one point of the demonstration, a group of people from the Muslim Brotherhood occupied the southeast side of the square, they had to pray so they occupied homogeneously this zone. At the same time, non-Muslims created a human chain to protect them and avoid a possible dissolution of the occupation (Img. 10). Because praying is a ritual practice, it follows certain rules and time, making it easy to identify, and therefore, presenting a weak point in the space. This heterogeneous multiplicity reacted according to a programmed situation that generated multiple singularities that during the occupation creates, innovates, improvises, produces and is produced by the temporal exercise of the commons. It is an in-situ spatiality that reinvents social and spatial dynamics, using dissidence of objects, spaces and bodies to perform new public spaces.
Img. 10 8 February 2011, Tahrir Square. Source: WNYC. http://www.wnyc.org/story/113563-religion-and-revolution/
The dynamics of occupations worked with notions of decentralization - recentralization [deterritorialization - reterritorialization]. In these reappropriated spaces, it was necessary to include the production and use of mediation spaces, common spaces were thresholds zones, borderless spaces whose forms were constantly changing, and they were porous and always in movement. Stavros Stavrides indicates that these threshold spaces were not defined nor define who [could] use them (Stavrides 2016); instead, they were dealers between occupiers and the occupied space. They opened a process of spatial identity in which the encounters were dispersed, a situation that permitted people to explore possibilities of new spatialities. Hence, communities in movement were located in occupation spaces, a “landing site” and a “being-sited” condition, emerging the path to the radical spatiality. This was a common space composed by heterogeneous spatialities, where conflict and differences were visible but were integrated at the same time within distinct spatial features.
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3.3 Occupation as public space generator
3.3.1 OWS generating the contemporary public Zuccotti Park
In New York, public spaces have been traded as commercial components because of unequal distribution of economic resources, land value, and minimum planning.29 As an alternative response to provide public spaces to the city, in 1961 the local government created the urban regulation POPS – Privately Owned Public Space [Chapter 5], in which the City Council gives special benefits to private investors in exchange of providing to the city public spaces. The organization APOPS – Advocates for Privately Owned Public Space, intends to introduce to the population, information about these POPS. They indicate that the City Council traded over 6 million sq.m of zoning concession for 32 hectares of POPS,30 and this process was not transparent. Indeed, it was OWS who made visible this situation where POPS have their own legislation. Thus, during the occupation, Zuccotti Park was turned into a contested public space.31 The appropriation of the public sense in a public private space was possible by the actions of the multitude’s actions, not by walking through but by inhabiting it. The emergence of new and needed forms of gathering and relationships [as the Mic-Check and pizzas delivered to the occupation zone from supporters on the other side of the world] reinforced the idea that the occupation was both an act of dissidence and collective effort of spatialities.
OWS reclaimed public spaces as a consensus process of the collective. Every decision was made through a process of working groups and general assembly, occupiers worked together to come to decisions. Despite the duration on reaching a consensual point, these were stronger because everyone in the occupation participated in the process. It came up as a collective force in which everyone was involved. People created the general assembly in the east side of the park, an area faced five arc stairs that went up to reach the ground level, giving the spatial shape of an agora. The General Assembly was a gathering of people engaged to make decisions based upon collective agreements or ‘consensus,’32 permitting a direct inclusive participation within occupiers. They addressed topics, debates and petitions to establish a consensus among participants: it was a process of facilitating communication and collaboration among occupiers, an open scheme that
29 Adrian Benepe, Senior Vice President and Director of City Park Development, The Trust for Public Land; Commissioner, New York City Department of Parks & Recreation 2002-2012. On an article for City & State: “New York City must add parks as population booms,” he wrote: “With New York City’s population still growing and Mayor Bill de Blasio poised to add tens of thousands of units of new affordable housing by upzoning many neighbourhoods, there are no active plans to add new parks to accommodate all those new residents. But fortunately, a handful of visionary ideas are already on the drawing boards, waiting for the mayor to give the green light and allocate relatively modest amounts of money to get them built, compared to the massive, $6 billion park-building program of his predecessor, Michael Bloomberg.” 26 July 2016. http://nyslant.com/article/opinion/new-york-city- must-add-new-parks-as-population-booms.html 30 APOPS. http://apops.mas.org/about/mission/ 31 Nicholas Mirzoeff: “public spaces are supposed to be for us, the public. We’re going to constitute that sense of public by staying here,” in Occupy Theory http://nicholasmirzoeff.com/RTL/?p=314 32 Occupy Wall Street, “General Assembly Guide.” http://www.nycga.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/occupy.pdf
228 shared ideas, information, discussions, debates and decisions. This forum of communication, self- structured and autonomous, was a platform that gave voice to everyone. It converted the General Assembly in a de facto decision of the movement. Each proposal followed the same basic format: sharing the proposal to all, explaining why they made the proposal, and if there was an agreement, there was a discussion on how to carry it out. Within the General Assembly, there were small working/thematic groups that focused on supporting specific initiatives or relevant topics to the movement such as Art & Culture, Media & Communication, Food Zone, Legal Committee, Medical Zone, and more. David Graeber33 said that the use of the General Assembly was a key reason to OWS to gain momentum in contrast to many other attempts of protest. For speaking in the General Assembly, occupiers use the Mic-Check through a Stack list. Stack list organized and ordered the sequence of people speaking with Mic-Check. During the Mic-Check, occupiers created a common language to avoid interruption, like clapping or yelling. When people wanted to show support to the person on the Mic-Check, they twinkled their fingers up, the “I’m ok with it but not really” was twinkling fingers at chest high, the disagreement was placing fingers down with arms at chest high, making a triangle with two hands was saying the person talking was getting off topic, the L sign with a hand as “speak louder”, C shape hand was clarifying question, if someone had a point of information they throw up a finger, and crossing arms at chest was block, which meant that a person was so disagreeable to it that she/he had to leave the movement or the working group if that was agreed upon (Img. 11).
Mic-check (…). The process is meant so you can be empowered to go to your own communities, wherever you are, and hold general assemblies to talk about the issues that concern you. We are all in this together. Occupy everything.34
Another way to form part of the active occupation was through the information desk ‘facilitation.’ The person had to express her/his desire to be an active part of the movement by saying what (s)he wanted to do, if had particular skills, volunteering with any task, and indicating the time of involvement. There were also online activists that shared similar actions in Zuccotti Park, like posting, sharing and coordinating in social media. The online activism previous to the physical occupation, the General Assembly, the working groups, the Mic-Check, the zoning functional areas, the way people interacted in Zuccotti Park demonstrated an autonomous and collective organization of the occupation. Therefore, the consensus on taking decisions and the way of people participating actively in the online-and-offline occupation produced a series of forms to inhabit the space in a public state, with a structure made by and for all (Img. 12).
33 David Graeber is a London-based anthropologist and anarchist activist, professor of Anthropology at the London School of Economics and has taught at Yale University and Goldsmiths, University of London. “Occupy Wall Street’s anarchist roots.” AlJazeera, 30 November 2011. http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2011/11/2011112872835904508.html 34 This Mic-Check segment lasted thirty seconds and had three repetition waves.
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It perceived distinct changes from inside dynamics and outside threats. In the first ten days of the occupation, the action was somehow pacific and calm, there were neither major disturbances nor significant problems inside or outside Zuccotti Park. Activists were protesting tranquilly around the area and carrying out two daily general assemblies. 35 Nevertheless during the second week of the occupation, dynamics changed. There were several clashes with the police, some of them were very aggressive, which were recorded and presented first in YouTube and then as evidence in trials.
In one of these videos there was an officer punching a protester three times in his head and shoulder, later the protestor was put under a soft lock in which he linked his arms with other protesters, sat down on the street and the police pulled him away and punched him several times.36 Because mass media did not cover these events, occupiers and supporters used social media and live streaming to inform and share information 24 hours a day. It was only until the infamous pepper spray incident of 24 September 2011 and the Brooklyn Bride arrests37 that made mass media to cover OWS (Figure 1). In the first case, a video shows around six women protesting on a sidewalk fenced off by the police, there were people watching, walking by, recording, and some police officers. One of them approached to these women and sprayed them in their faces.38 The video went viral immediately. In the second case, when protestors were crossing the Brooklyn Bridge towards Wall Street when around 700 of them were arrested.39 The police indicated that they were blocking vehicular traffic.
35 Zuccotti Park is located in Wall Street, lower Manhattan, New York City. This park belongs to Brookfield Offices Properties, one of the biggest real state companies around the world. 36 (Friedersdorf) 37 On 2 October 2011, OWS protestors and supporters planned a march across the Brooklyn Bridge. At the bridge, a small group of protesters walked on the roadway causing a blockade of traffic, immediately hundreds followed this route; however the police 38 YouTube video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=moD2JnGTToA 39 Matt Wells, “Occupy Wall Street – the story of the Brooklyn Bridge ‘trap.’” The Guardian, 3 October 2011. https://www.theguardian.com/world/blog/2011/oct/03/occupy-wall-street-brooklyn-bridge-arrests
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HAND GESTURES GUIDE
Description: Hold your hands up, palm open, and fan your fin- gers back and forth. Meaning: You agree with the proposal or like what you are hearing.
AGREE
Description: Hold your hands downward and fan your fingers back and forth. Meaning: You disagree with the proposal or dis- like what you are hearing.
DISAGREE
Description: Hold your handflat and fan your fingers up and down. Meaning: You are taking a neutral stance on the proposal.
NEUTRAL
Description: Curl your hand and fingers into a letter-C shape. Meaning: You either have or need clarifying information.
CLARIFICATION
Description: Raise your index fingers up. Meaning: You have information pertinent to the discussion (not for opinions).
INFORMATION
Description: Make a triangular shape with your hand by joining your index fingers and thumbs. Meaning: Telling the group the process by which discussions are held is not being followed.
PROCESS
Description: Cross your arms in front of your chest to form an X. Meaning: You have very strong moral or ethical reservations about the proposal and will consider leaving the group if it passes.
BLOCK
Img. 11 Hand Gestures Guide, OWS. Icons by Adrian Rocchio, re-made by the author
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Img. 12 Zuccotti Park - OWS in Zuccotti Park
Figure 1 Horizontal axis shows dates, vertical axis shows the amount of new hits on OWS protests. Source: FiveThirtyEight blog by The New York Times, Nate Sylver
Mainstreaming and broadcasting produced an important affluence and engagement of people in the city and across the world for the Occupy Movement. Manuel Castells shares this view by saying that “the media constitute the space where power relationships are decided between competing political and social actors” (Castells 2007). Although, it was the social network the instrument for contemporary occupations to reach the general public, acquiring approval, mobilizing potential participants and producing synergy between anyone involved.
The occupation in Zuccotti Park changed the notion of public in public spaces radically. It altered the space from being a host of passive activities such as walking through, sitting and chatting, or playing chess in one of the fixed tables, to be a publicness generator spatiality. In the occupation, there were multiple micro-cities and the personal and inter-personal distance was distorted. While colourful tents set up a design of hyper-mediated stage of occupying, the bodies of occupiers exploited the symbolic potential of textiles, banners, and building materials, objects that usually have an everyday function were transformed into acting tools of dissidence [Chapter 4]. The relations between bodies and objects were indeterminate, mobile, temporary and rapidly deployable, it created new projections of architecture as long-term collective processes. It organized bodies in a spatiality created by the commons.
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3.3.2 Contested architectural urban space in Tahrir
During the 18 days of occupation, Tahrir Square was a contested public space. People gathered in the area to protests against the government and started a revolution that transformed the relationships between the people and the city.
For instance, during the occupation, occupiers transformed the KFC restaurant located in the northeast side of the square across Meret Basha Avenue, into a medical clinic for attending injured people (Img. 13). They also made of a spot in the north side of Tahrir Square a kindergarten because schools were closed. Referring to Jane Jacobs, this spatiality links her view on cities that “have the capability of providing something for everybody, only because, and only when they are created by everybody” (Jacobs 1993 [1961]). Sarah Ichioka, former director of the Architectural Foundation (FA), London, indicates that a good public space is a space that serves to multiple publics providing of infrastructure for them. People from multiple backgrounds can have access, feel comfortable and free to express themselves within it; it is a space that embodies durability and flexibility.40 Thus, Tahrir Square meant the return of people to the public facing the fact that Cairo’s public spaces were banned from political manifestations due to the “Emergency Law” and became the space for possibilities.
Img. 13 KFC Clinic, location. Source: BBC news Middle East. Reuters http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-12434787
But besides this spatial transformation of Tahrir generated by the commons, it received another force of spatial transformation: the government. The government of Egypt initiated a blockade of streets to avoid the gathering of people with the intention to isolate the square. They used barbed wire, concrete walls, Central Security Forces [CSF] cars and trucks to block the access to Tahrir (Img. 14). These concrete walls were 3,70-meter height and placed strategically in the downtown area to restrict the protesters’ movements. In Mohammed Mahmoud street, which leads to the Ministry of Interior building, security forces placed three concrete blocks reinforced with metal straps, one above another. When military soldiers were setting up the wall, Al-Ahzar University’s students intercepted its erection. At that moment, the wall was 1.50-meter height so students stood
40 Interview with Sarah Ichioka, “Good public space is one that embodies both durability and flexibility.” Public Space. http://www.publicspace.org/en/post/good-public-space-is-one-that-embodies-both-durability-and-flexibility
233 on its top and some others created a human chain in front of it.41 Shortly, military forces came back armed and removed the students, protestors and residents from the area. They completed the last row of the wall and as students did before, soldiers did a human chain. In other spots of Tahrir, the military blocked streets using cars and trucks. In Qasr El-Aini Street, they blocked the access to the Parliament building with Central Security Forces (CSF) vehicles; the same happened in El-Shaik Rihan and Youssef El-Guindy streets. “The walls are the latest iteration of the gap between the rulers and the ruled,” says Mohammed Elshahed, editor of the Cairobserver blog, and Mona Abaza adds, “it’s an emergent spatial memorial, this is now the place were so many people died fighting for this revolution, it is the revolution graveyard.” 42
Before the occupation, to reach Tahrir from the elite Garden City neighbourhood (where U.S. and British embassies are located) it was a five-minute walk along Qasr al-Aini Street. After the walling of Tahrir, this route was blocked, and to reach the same point, it took more than 40 minutes. In addition, there were also checkpoints, barber-wire roadblocks, armoured security trucks and burned-out cars. The barricading and walling were buffer zones where barriers, barricades, tanks, walls, wires, army controlled zones, soldiers, protestors, government buildings, and streets composed a phenomenon that altered the image of Tahrir. It was turned into an archipelago of militarized architecture where every element was part of a battlefield.
In this regard, the architect and urban planner Omar Nagati,43 explains that “walls are indicative of the post-revolutionary renegotiation of the rules of the game between people and authorities. People [were] setting the terms and authorities [were] just responding by building walls.” While occupiers created the commons in Tahrir Square, the government was fragmenting the society, and this physical reorganization came with an inevitable impact in the psychology of those who lived on the other side. Walling-in the city is seen by Rem Koolhaas as a model for a concept of architecture because it is a material structure where one comes “eye to eye with the architecture’s true nature” (Koolhaas 1995). Tahrir walls drew boundaries where the mise-en-scene of a borderline made a qualitative spatial urban difference. However, as soon as these walls emerged in Tahrir, they were covered with graffiti. People started to see this art form and mean of expression as a communication tool to share messages of unity. These walls remained in Tahrir for three years, from 2011 to 2014, but in the second year, a group of artists and activists launched the project “No Walls” to transform seven walls into open spaces. In the giant concrete walls that blocked the access to Tahrir behind the American University, artists painted a very detailed graffiti that ‘extended’ the street (Img. 15) and established an urban resistance. This spatial practice resisted
41 Wael Eskandar, via Facebook, in an interview with the author on 28 June 2014. 42 Mona Abaza, professor of sociology in the Department of Sociology, Anthropology, Psychology, and Egyptology at The American University in Cairo. 43 Omar Nagati, architect, urban planner and university lecturer. He is co-founder of urban research studio “Cluster” in Cairo.
234 when people felt comfortable to place new ways of movement inside this new territory, finding other quotidian activities and searching new urban actions beyond the essential ones. By using different tactics, people presented their current hostile realm and their struggle in re-appropriating and creating their public space. The proliferation of street art presented a contested space in an intent to reclaim the right of the city. The new spatiality stood in both resistance and communal existence with radical and quotidian actions that became quotidian.
Img. 14 Location and spatial affection of walls built up during the 18-day occupation in Tahrir
Img. 15 Graffiti on a wall blocking the entrance to Tahrir Square
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3.4 Discussion. Transmutation of the architectural urban landscape
In general terms, the architectural design of public spaces distinguishes dynamic and static processes. The first one is characterized by the flows of people within it, their interactions, and the infrastructures that give kinetic energy in the urban context. Meanwhile, the static process is defined by the permanence of built assemblages, stable forms and shapes that provide reference systems and structures (Olsson & Haas, 2013). However, this situation is altered during the production of occupations because they create a series of conditions that confront the established design and conventional means of communication between the built environment and people.
This transformation of roles means changing conditions of the social scope within the public urban realm, where the urban complexity problematizes the notion of public and begins to redefine its system and language. Public spaces are expected to be used in certain manners, in ‘good manners’ [peacefully and pleasantly]. But when this order is interrupted, the public space enters in a state of exclusion and veto. The ‘expected use’ of public spaces preconceives general assumptions in the population, which are not analysed or reflected but assumed as normal and habitual. Indeed, these spaces are programmed for relaxation rather than for insubordination, like theorists of architectural urban design suggest that public spaces’ design follows experts and elected representative’s interests (Allmendinger 2002). Therefore, the occupations challenged and transformed heterogeneity in those spaces, projecting designations and producing criticism of established public spaces while the new publicness was a result of occupations (Lahiji 2014). In this sense, the urban occupation as a corporal assembly of the commons, created a series of situations and conditions that caused a reconstitution of the architecture of public spaces. Since the fragmentation of the city, it was an opportunity for bodies to form the commons, the architectural urban landscape was redefined by radical relations between bodies and objects, being the elements that constituted the transmutation of the space itself.
For this purpose, transmutation is referred to the alchemical, physical and chemical relation to convert one chemical element into another. This phenomenon appears in spontaneous nature’s form, when certain chemical and isotopic elements have unstable cores; the reaction is limited to change the form in which these elements are organized. Being alchemy a scientific process by which a structure has an object, it is possible to analyse and study from the understanding of the composition of the object, the matter and its steps to react. Then, the decomposition of the matter and its elementary particles reach even the subatomic level, and their reconstruction forms the transmutation. The reorganization of elementary particles previously decomposed constitutes the creation of a new body. This statement is the “Law of Equivalent Exchange” (Priesner and Figala 2001), where elements are the only primordial matter with different pairs of essential qualities that can vary but are essential for the transformation of the elements, causing the transmutation.
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Besides, the mutability of qualities is applied to those essential qualities that are not inherent to the elements, relying on the equivalent exchange law of alchemy: in order to obtain something, is necessary to give something of the same value (not necessarily in terms of matter but also in energy).
In Gezi/Taksim, the space started as a process of transformation in its shape, borders, conception, and location [from local to global and vice versa] (Img. 16). Here, matter and energy transmuted the space into something new, affecting the structure and organization of architectural urban elements and the movement of bodies and objects. Eventually, the commons associated and unfold a creative autonomous power, and by extending its limits, the resonance of the space took physical matter. But more than materializing the commons in the physical space, the continuous feed of energy built different and multiple micro-actions. The self-governance and self-management were active methods of TAZ, overlapping in time and space established urban dynamics with new spatialities and social relationships. These public spaces were transmuted by the energy of the multitude, allowing the exploration of spatial materialization of the body and the new state of the contemporary public space.
The intermittency was extended in time. One month after the occupation of Gezi/Taksim, on 9th July 2013, people gathered around the “Table on Earth” (Img. 17) for the first day of the Ramadan. Through social networks, people met and occupied the light-railroad crossing on Istikal Aveue to Taksim Square. This street is usually crowded with people walking through and shopping, but in this occasion, people converted it into a dinner table, where hundreds of people shared their food with others. Only few weeks before, the street was the scenario of clashes between the police and protestors. So, these different events converted the area in a performative spatial occupation, which provides empirical evidence about the power of people and public space in a bottom-up dynamic. The temporality and collective action, the energy and the multitude are elements capable of transmuting a space.
These spaces are characterized by nonexcludability and nonrivalry. It means that the use of public space could be any space in the architectural urban landscape as it was determined by public spatial practices. Contemporary public spaces were transmuted and reinvented in an ongoing temporal multiple process, while the experience of things recall the everyday, return the significance of the everyday and revalidate through the things that people make. Through strategies that sought to transgress conventional boundaries of architectural urban landscape, ideas and actions were generated from the intersections of culture-space’s particular conditions. There was a necessity of being responsive conditions that provided ultimately an architecture that was felt as much as it was understood, as immediate and tactile, legible and contributing to the commons.
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Img. 16 Taksim / Gezi May - June 2013
Img. 17 Table on Earth, Istanbul, June 2013
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CHAPTER IV. ARCHITECTURE OF THE OCCUPATION
4.1 Dissident spatiality
History might have been very different if Karl Marx had been able to send emails. Online activist, 1999
Dissidence as an aspect of creative practice depends on at least two qualities. Unpredictability and mobility, that are beyond architecture’s usual abilities. Thomas de Monchaux, Toward a dissident architecture, 2012
Dissident n. A person who opposes official policy, especially that of an authoritarian state adj. In opposition to official policy. O. Mid 16th century (in the sense ‘differing in opinion of character’): from Latin dissident – ‘sitting apart, disagreeing’, from dis- ‘apart’ + sedere ‘sit’. (Oxford 2010)
Jacques Rancière indicates that politics is a dissident act: “the principle of political interlocution is thus disagreement” (Rancière, Dissensus: On Politics and Aesthetics 2010). In dissensus he says that:
[Dissensus] is not a designation of conflict as such, but is a specific type thereof, a conflict between sense and sense. Dissensus is a conflict between a sensory presentation and a way of making sense of it, or between several sensory regimes and/or ‘bodies’. This is the way in which dissensus can be said to reside at the hearth of politics, since at bottom the latter itself consists in an activity that redraws the frame within which common objects are determined (…). A radical intervention in human affairs by which the entire aesthetic field is reorganised, and we see things we have not seen before. (Rancière 2010)
Dissensus does not present only a model of opposition, but it also means to open up a territory for different identities, so they could coexist during moments of conflict in a nonviolent mode (Hirsch and Miessen 2012). In this sense, Ines Weizman in her book Architecture and the Paradox of Dissidence, relates dissidence to the architectural imagination as a ‘discontent’ transformed into political actions such as revolts (I. Weizman, 2014). In addition, Michel Feher, ensuing Michel Foucault, explains that what dissent pursues is the mobilization of civic passion in a struggle for a radical reorganisation to force relations. 1 When there is a heterogenic series of actions against the
1 Michel Feher is a French philosopher and cultural theorist. He is also founding editor and publisher of Zone Books.
239 hegemonic forms of domination, dissident uses different tactics as activist practices. Hence, dissidence does not present a material sense, it ‘haunts’ space. Spatial practices, movements and gestures are camouflaged in architecture, changing its meaning and becoming more a self and autonomous action.
Over time, the scope of architectural dissent has been demonstrated by a refusal to participate in projects deemed unjust, by subversion of the norms and language of dominant/dominating architecture, or by a retreat into the private domain of paper architecture of hidden pedagogy. As such, the challenge of dissident practice lies between political compliance, acts of resistance and architecture’s limiting concepts. (I. Weizman 2012)
This dissident mechanism composes a body full of potential, disposition and forces that affect spatial configurations [¿What happens when form is no longer the stable outline of mass but the key dynamic condition within a field of bodies2]. During contemporary occupations, everyday objects are transformed into objects for protest and they also present opportunities to create new ones such as the ‘inflatable cobblestone’3 or the emergency blanket. Dissident objects range between the physical and the speculative, melting time and turning themselves as mobilised tools, exploring and challenging the built environment, and generating spatial practices as temporal everyday habits (Gottdiener 1993).
Spatial practices act within the notions of space, which referring to Henri Lefebvre, space is not a natural property or dimension [like place], but is socially produced [modified, dominated, appropriated, etc.] by human activity (H. Lefebvre 1991 [1974]).4 The production of space involves representation by identifying the physical, mental and social space and it is not depicted as a geographical o physical location [Cartesian], or as a commodity. Instead, it is a political instrument part of relations of production and property ownership, acting as a mediator platform for creative and aesthetic actions. Lefebvre makes a threefold distinction to explain the relations between dissent and space:
• The perceived space [spatial practice] relates to the social [re] production of space in daily life. Physical practices, everyday routines, networks, pathways and corridors, include individual rhythm and collective patterns of movement. These sequences, habits and patterns of movement in-and-through physical places are motivated by the diversity of place. Spatio-temporal patterns can be observed through Lefebvre’s illustrations of routes
2 Keller Easterling, “The action is the form.” TED’s Talk. Moscow: Strelka Press, 2012. 3 Inflatable cobblestone is an object created by Eclectic Electric Collective and Enmedio collective. It was used during the General Strike in Barcelona 2012. 4 Henri Lefebvre. The Production of the Space. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 1991 [1974].
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(H. Lefebvre 1991 [1974]), where the body reveals acts of sensory perceptions in relation to physical presence in the human environment (Carp 2008).5 The perceived space denotes to the movement of bodies like traceable patterns that are tangible, textured, visible, sensorial, and simultaneously demand to allocate physical materiality by moving around, within, through, under, above [‘people know best the places they frequent the most’]. These conceptual models abstract out the embodied and sensory experiences of spatial practices that go beyond the designation of urban planners, architects, developers, and specialists (H. Lefebvre 1991 [1974]). The different conceptions of spatial practice- perceived spaces are linked to knowledge and experience of space and society, which leads to the conceived space. • The conceived space [representations of space] concerns the [dominant] representations of space as a map related to the production of meaning. The Cartesian distinction between res cogitans [the thinking being] and res extensa [the physical world] in which space is conceived in geometric terms, is an extension rather than an element of thought. Thus, it could be reduced to a set of coordinates, lines and planes, and be capable of quantitative measurement (Butler n.d.).6 These forms of abstract knowledge are generated by formal and institutional entities that rely on the organization of the space. The conceptualization of tools, models, systems, methods, strategies, and images are part of the materialization of representation in the physical space, even if spaces could be perceived. This space refers to activities of thinking, imagining, reflecting, planning, developing, illustrating, shaping and re-shaphing in both individual and collective activities. Although planning and design usually lye on official apparatus of representation of space, there is a bigger approach to the built environment. Ideas and concepts related to physical expression involve representations of space in different ways such as transportation models, private and public development, design guidelines, land use regulation, urban legislation and so forth (Carp 2008). These processes dowse the third aspect when the conceived space is built or destroyed, used or avoid, entangling the lived space. • The lived space [representational space] exists as the product of interaction of the first two categories, closely associated with the social and bodily functions of lived experience in both physical and mental space. For Lefebvre, the experience of everyday life is mediated and structured by the multifarious ways in which space is produced by the human agency, helping to shape social, economic, legal and political relations (Butler n.d.).7 This space forms part of the social imaginary of inhabitants and users of space, whose symbols are linked to non-hegemonic forms of creative practice and social resistance (H. Lefebvre 1991 [1974]). Representational spaces have a deep sense of meaning, while the mental space
5 Jana Carp, “Ground-Truthing” Representations of Social Space Using Lefebvre’s Conceptual Triad.” Journal of Planning Education and Research, Vol. 28, Issue 2, 129-42. 2008 6 Chris Butler, “Critical Legal Studies and the Politics of Space.” Griffith University, Australia 7 Ibid 15
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refers to in-the-moment awareness of being alive or fully present. It includes collective and private-public places, and experiences. The lived space is recognizable as a lived experience that links significance and communication such as verbal, visual, symbolism, photography, sculpture, music, architecture, gestures, metaphors, gasps, or the straightening of one’s back.8 The fluid nature of this space evokes multiple lived experiences that are not easy to identify because of their subjectivity from the observer’s point of view.
As social space, the places that evoke lived experience are perceptible and practiced (spatial practice); conceived as an idea and built accordingly (representation of space); and they transcend mere use and mere thought to include these moments of immediate experience (representational space). At the same time, because this aspect of the conceptual triad is defined by lived experience, it is not necessarily attached to particular places and their physical features but can happen in moment when ‘everything comes together.9 (Carp 2008)
This triad is what Lefebvre describes as the “third space.” It is the lived moment, personal, experienced collectively, and powerful and unique social experience. It is in this space that dissent makes its engagement, establishing space on its own terms [dissident space], coming along with spontaneity and multitude. In addition, David Harvey examines the role of space in social arrangements that produce conflict between different social groups, presenting a spatial dimension through forces that seek to define and control the use of the space (Harvey 2012). He discusses the nature of the commons as “an unstable and malleable social relation between a particular self- defined social group and those aspects of its actually existing or yet-to-be-created social and/or physical environment deemed crucial to its life and livelihood” (Harvey 2012). Common space could be considered as a relation between a social group and its effort to define a world that is shared, creating a possible stable space kept out from ‘outsiders’ [such as favelas or slums]. It could be porous in the process of making and dynamic when distributing modes of being occupied (Rancière 2006). The common space may be shaped through practices of an emerging and not necessarily homogeneous community that tries to exchange any kind of relation, information, practice, and experience with other communities.
Dissident spatiality invents new ways to relate Lefebvre’s third space, the common space, invisible objects or bodies, collective, multitudes, micro-actions, edifications, urban elements, and spatial practices within a not defined a-rhythmical temporality, intermittent and with a capacity to resonate. Dissident spatiality is not spontaneous, it is prepared but not planned, it organizes but
8 Representations – usually images – of representational spaces are often used in advertising and entertainment in different formats (screens, building façades…) because of the immediate response from the public. 9 Relating to occupations researched in this work such as OWS, Tahrir Square, and Gezi/Taksim.
242 does not systematizes, it could be activated but also deactivated. It causes conflicts and new forms of relationships between space [physical, digital and legal], and reinvents the organization of urban elements and their materialism and meaning, towards the radical spatiality.
4.1.1 Dissidence in occupations. Gezi/Taksim and the Umbrella Movement
In Istanbul, the 2013 occupation initiated as protests against a master plan that included three main areas of development: the creation of a concrete platform for pedestrians in the site of Taksim Square; the Military Barracks’10 reconstruction from the ones demolished in 1940, this time as a shopping mall that included a cultural centre, opera house, mosque, cinema and museum]; and the construction of luxury flats (Img. 1, Img. 2). 11 Some activists related this urban plan as significant as commercializing Central Park in New York or Hyde Park in London: “That means to convert the area into a place where people can consume, give a walk and hang out; not a place for meetings and assemblies, to avoid a space for potential strikes and demonstrations.”12
During the 2013 protests, protestors received the support from the Besiktas football club fans, who had previous experiences in urban battle against the police. 13 After three days of clashes, the police left the area and protestors and supporters were able to gather in the square. They blocked off nearly all the roads that led to Taksim Square with barricades and converted the area into a temporary police-free zone.14 This momentum was named by protestors as La République de Taksim,15 a Temporary Autonomous Zone [henceforth T.A.Z.]. Social fractions assembled together for the first time forming a new social structure in a symbolic space, which was transformed as the space of the commons (Göle 2013). In fact, the park provided a stage for interaction and performativity, creating its own language, repertoire of actions and opportunities for gathering, congregating, debating, supporting, and reassembling. Occupiers began to modify the space using objects that used to serve specific tasks, suited them into T.A.Z. The Img. 3 presents an urban landscape with daily-life objects that emerged as means of disruption. Telephone cabs flattered as part of a system of barricades; a bus that was taken by protestors at the beginning of clashes was used as barriers to avoid the entrance of trucks, and some days later, it served as an info desk; a
10 The artillery barracks called ‘Halil Pasa Topçu Kislali’ or ‘Taksim Kislasi’ were built in the late 18th century and destroyed in 1940. Since 1943, Gezi Park extends to the location of the barracks and the Armenian cemetery Pangalti which has been there since the sixteenth century. 11 Annexed. Plan Taksim Square by Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality, 2011 (In Turkish). The Project was made public in September 2011 (Radikal 2011). For a critical analysis of this project, see Pérouse (laviedesidees.fr, 24 September 2013). 12 Keyder, Çağlar, Istanbul, between the Global and the Local. Maryland, 1999. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc. 13 Esra Gürmen, “Talking to the Bulldozer-Hijacking Soccer Fans About Their Role in the Turkish Uprising.” Vice, June 18, 2013. www.vice.com/read/patrolling-democracy-in-the-streets-of-beikta 14 Nilüfer Göle, “Gezi – Anatomy of a Public Square Movement.” Inside Turkey, Vol. 15, Issue 3, 2013, pg. 7-14. 15 Jean-Paul Baquiast, La République de Taksim. Europe Solidaire, June 2013. http://www.europesolidaire.eu/article.php?article_id=1107
243 temporary mosque was built in the park with two tents; a movable food supplier was made up with blue fabrics; and an open hospital was created with plastic straps. All kinds of structures popped up: bunk beds for sleeping, makeshift barricades constructed out of benches, tents, shelters made of fabric cut-outs, steel, wood, or plastic. These dissident structures were documented and archived into a digital graphic platform ( Img. 4) developed by Herkes Icin Mimarlik [Architecture for All], a non-profit organization based in Istanbul. “Each unique structure that we encounter in the streets and Gezi Park has its own in-situ design and implementation process. Documentation of these temporary structures is of huge importance for further examination, considering their limited life-cycle.”16 These objects added a factor to kinship between being artistic and being political discontent, not by themselves but in communication with other objects. They sabotaged conventional practices and became part of an in-situ design, highlighting new architectural practices generated by anybody and everybody, and transforming consequently the role of a daily-life object in the city.
Img. 1 Plan Gezi Park. Rendering of the Topçu Img. 2 Plan Taksim Square. Rendering released by Barracks Project by Istanbul Government Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality
Img. 3 Gezi Park Protests in Turkey - Documentary
16 Dezeen Magazine. #OccupyGezi Architecture by Herkes Icin Mimarlik
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Img. 4 Ad-hoc dissident architecture. Gezi /Taksim
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Img. 5 Tweet from @NamelessInChina. Umbrellas block and exit in Admiralt station. https://twitter.com/namelessinchina/status/516444969956286465
However, during the development of this research, there was an occupation which processes were particular significant to this thesis, it brought new modalities of spatial practices that provided opportunities to explore wider the architecture of occupation: the “Umbrella Movement.” It was an occupation that took place in Hong Kong for 79 days, between 26th September and 15th December 2014, and it was considered for this research because it compliments aspects of collective participation, dissident space, the space of the commons, and the public and private interface. The Umbrella Movement was created spontaneously as pro-democracy protests against Beijing’s plans for Hong Kong’s 2017 elections. The movement claimed a true universal suffrage and received general support from local citizens and people around the world through social media (Chan, 2014, p. 571-580). Because most of the spaces to gather in this city are private, the epicentre of the occupation was the HSBC building lobby, a private public space (a space open to the public but of private property).
During the development of the protests, thousands of people tried to gather close to this area, but as the city lacked of public spaces, protestors occupied the only spaces they could: highways, bridges, and sidewalks. This situation highlighted how much the private sector owned the city, which made people aware of the importance of public spaces and as a collective response, they turned themselves into occupiers by remaining in these infrastructures. They started to use daily- life objects in dissident modes, creating safety zones and villages with cardboards and textiles, and umbrellas were deployed as temporary roofs. The Img. 5 presents a rapidly constructed barrack in a metro station exit, made with umbrellas, ladders, plastic and metal fences, maybe taken away from the police. In addition, protestors took photos, recorded videos and posted them on Facebook
246 and Twitter, capturing a real-time-in-process in both public spaces, the virtual and the physical. They created first safety zones and villages, and umbrellas were deployed as temporary roofs.
But there was a specific object that became indispensable and symbol of this occupation: the umbrella. The umbrella turned to be a powerful image of protection and resistance, as the artist Kacey Wong said: “it’s a soft thing but it’s also very hard in terms of our determination to win this battle”.17 Soon, people brought umbrellas in bulk and started using them for sheltering, barricading, writing slogans, being part of sculptures, and so on; causing an “enormous feeling of brotherhood.”18 Installations, operations and messages started colonizing the city’s infrastructure. It was also part of a system to defend protestors from tear gas, as the associate professor of Sociology at Johns Hopkins University Ho-Fung Hung 19 identified.
Hong Kong, umbrellas are daily items, especially during summers when temperatures rise above 30°C and it rains most of the days.20 It happened to be unusually hot and sunny during the middays of September 2014, therefore there were umbrellas floating around the city. Throughout clashes with the police, a photographer shot a picture of a man walking through a cloud of tear gas that was holding an umbrella (Img. 6); it became viral and was soon recognized as The Umbrella Man, as iconic as the Tank Man.21 Some days later, a statue of this Umbrella Man emerged in front of the HSBC Plaza, a roughly 3.5 meter-height statute made of wood blocks, holding a bright yellow umbrella with a right arm outstretched (Img. 7).22 Quickly, people transformed them into tools of protection, and the “police started seeing an ocean of umbrellas on the front line instead of protesters (…); it is an artefact that is just effective in defending”23 (Img. 8).
Cinemas, first aid spots, study corner, press stands, messages on banners and walls, tweets, YouTube videos, interactive workshops were some of the spaces created by occupiers in the city’s infrastructure. In the eight-lane expressway, people set up tents and fabric structures, resulting in an in-aesthetic urbanism where the processual assemblages were essential (Img. 9).
17 Li Zoe, Kacey Wong’s Protest art goes on View in Hong Kong in the Wake of the Umbrella Movement. Artnet, 2015. https://news.artnet.com/art-world/kacey-wongs-protest-art-goes-on-view-in-hong-kong-in-the-wake-of-the- umbrella-movement-273789 18 Ibid 39 19 Bloomberg News, Hong Kong protesters clash with rivals as tensions rises. http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2014-10-02/hong-kong-leader-agrees-student-dialog-as-sit-in-goes-on 20 The Year’s Weather – 2014. Hong Kong Observatory. http://www.hko.gov.hk/wxinfo/pastwx/ywx2014.htm 21 Tank Man: a man that stood up in front of a column of tanks in Tiananmen Square protest on June 1989, the morning after the Chinese military had suppressed the protests by force. As the lead tank maneuverer to pass by the man, he repeatedly shifted his position in order to obstruct the tank’s attempted path around him. The incident was filmed and seen worldwide. Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tank_Man 22 An unknown artist with the nickname “Milk,” made the “Umbrella Man” sculpture, located in the highway. Keith Bradsher, New Image of the Hong Kong Protests: ‘Umbrella Man’. The New York Times, 2014. http://sinosphere.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/10/05/new-symbol-of-hong-kong-protests-umbrella- man/?_php=true&_type=blogs&_r=1 23 Bloomberg News, Hong Kong protesters clash with rivals as tensions rises. http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2014-10-02/hong-kong-leader-agrees-student-dialog-as-sit-in-goes-on
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The occupation had the capacity to generate emergent urban modes constructed with ephemeral materials and within an intense social environment. The multiplication of these series of artefacts conformed a resilient urbanism, where the hasty architectural decisions built symbolic urban artefacts, as Adam Bobbette refers, they were “counter-cities within the city.”24 Footbridges, highways, sidewalks, roads, barricades, stages, tents, recycling, trash pick-up, supply deports, delivery networks, phone-charging stations, medical zones, religious spots, educational areas, social programming; they all moulded the hyper-commons. These T.A.Z., provided platforms to create socio-spatial relations emphasizing a reimagined proximity, coexistence, and interactions. They shaped new boundaries that blurred the existing ones, surpassing them in an abstract concept as active resistances to urban regulations.
Erving Goffman describes that daily life objects in quotidian situations are expected to have an acceptable dramatic role related to a specific social scenario (Goffman 1971) (Delgado 2011),25 which is conceived as mundane. Without porting sociability, the umbrella applies a certain promiscuity that deforms the structured organization of the space instantly, due to the re-
24 Adam Bobbette, Assistant Professor in the Department of Architecture, University of Hong Kong. 25 Manuel Delgado, El Espacio Público como Ideología. Madrid: Catarata, 2011.
248 appropriation of a multitude that generates identity and symbolism. Pierre Bourdieu indicates that the anonymous is not completely anonymous and still powerless when exiting by itself, while in a collective body and temporality, anonymous is generated and generates relations of urban power. Hence, these objects are recognizable in the city when they are placed in dissident spatialities. People reinvent them in a process that reaches a high temporization through a maximum appropriation of their spatial conditions. The occupations generate architectural practices in which materiality is not disconnected from symbolism, it keeps its physical components while bodies are rearranged in a dissenter mode. Therefore, they alter the boundaries of what is in or out, central or peripheral, visible or invisible, sensible or perceptible, within a certain frame of time and space. Seen as collective praxis processes, they constitute an antagonist element within real subsumption of disobedience, an antagonist collectivity composed by the plurality of individuals, internally and externally (Negri, 2003). It is a distribution of the sensible when the materialities of bodies, of “sensible-intelligible experiences” are in tension with the built environment.
During the occupation, dissident bodies do not reconfigure the given state of things; instead, they reinvent themselves and create new states in a partitioned time, perceptible by all. They transmute a series of spaces that are replicated in time and space, bound up spatial practices, and form dissident spaces in the architecture of occupation.
4.2 Temporality and resonance generating the architecture of occupation
Archigram’s Instant City establishes a model to project through a series of investigations of mobile facilities. The project forms metropolitan dynamics by using a cataclysm as the first stage to ‘hook- u,’ a network of information, education and entertainment, like a ‘play-and-know-yourself’ facility. There is a combination of artefacts and systems that remains as separated and distant experiments; therefore, it takes a complementary form rather than an absolute one.
The Instant City could be made as a practical reality since at every stage it is based upon existing techniques and their application to real situations. There is a combination of several different artefacts and systems which have hitherto remained as separate machines, enclosures or experiments. (Archigram 2009 [1972])
The Instant City is collective and coercive without a specific set of components, it uses notions of the environment and generates assemblages with infinitive variables. It is based upon existing techniques that combine states that are not usually linked, techniques that enclosure experiments
249 and gather information about an itinerary of communities [discos, universities, local radio, etc.]. It transforms the ‘city’ in a complementary live system (Archigram 2009 [1972]).
A typical sequence of operations (truck-borne version) 1. The components of the ‘City’ are loaded on to the trucks and trailers at base. 2. A series of ‘tent’ units are floated from balloons which are towed to the destination by aircraft. 3. Prior to the visit of the ‘City’ a team of surveyors, electricians, etc. have converted a disused building in the chosen community into a collection, information and relay station. Landline links have been made to local schools and to one or more major (permanent) cities. 4. The ‘City’ arrives. It is assembled according to site and local characteristics. Not all components will necessarily be used. It may infiltrate into local buildings and streets, it may fragment. 5. Events, displays and educational programmes are partly supplied by the local community and partly by the ‘City’ agency. In addition major use is made of local fringe elements: fares, festivals, markets, societies, with trailers, stalls, displays and personnel accumulating often on and ad hoc basis. The event of the Instant City might be a bringing together of events that would otherwise occur separately in the district. 6. The overhead tent, inflatable windbreaks and other shelters are erected. Many units of the ‘City’ have their own tailored enclosure. 7. The ‘City’ stays for a limited period. 8. It then moves on to the next location. 9. After a number of places have been visited the local relay stations are linked together by landline. Community (1) is now feeding part of the programme to be enjoyed by Community (20). 10. Eventually by its combination of physical and electronic, perceptual and programmatic events and the establishment of local display centres, a ‘City’ of communication might exist, the metropolis of the national network. 11. Almost certainly, travelling elements would modify over a period of time. It is even likely that after two to three years they would phase out and let the network take over. (…) The Instant City as a series of trucks rushing round like ants might be practical and immediate, but we could not escape the loveliness of the idea of Instant City appearing from nowhere, and after the ‘event’ stage, lifting up its skirts and vanishing. In fact, the primary interest was spontaneity, and the remaining aim to knit into any locale as effectively as possible. (Archigram 2009 [1972])
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The relationship between the Instant City and contemporary occupations is presented with notions of temporal exceptional situations in the built environment. The Instant City is mobile and temporal, it adapts to the built environment and combines electronic, perceptual and programmatic scopes, and communication is one of its main platforms because it exchanges information and experiences that are held in the city’s core, similar to contemporary occupations’ processes.
In both cases [the Instant City and contemporary occupations], temporality is the key aspect for their existence. Temporality is measured “as temporal specificity” (Negri 2003), and the relations of dissident bodies are extended to the materiality of the collective composition, the corporeality, a state in which time goes beyond individual and collective. This collective praxis liberates itself from a structured system and achieves asymmetries in spatial aspects. It endows with spontaneity as a process, not as a plan, through dynamics that are adaptable to a particular state: “this is the temporal territory, the body of the communist community” (Negri 2003). Negri presents the case for a theory of temporality as political, within the spatialization of time; he describes the dimension of temporality as “tessutto ontologico del materialism” [ontological fabric of materialism] like the power of becoming subjective (Negri 1982). In the occupation, this materialism does not have a specific form, but it accelerates time; thus, the multiple micro-actions developed in contemporary occupations generate the architecture of occupation as a spatiality [space + time]. To this spatial characterization, occupations have a precarious condition (Rancière 2010) because they respond instantly to local and temporal needs. Contemporary occupations challenge established parameters while spatial practices are DIY26 urbanism modes that transport information, techniques, tactics, content, material and symbolism in the contemporary public space. As urban guerrilla practices, occupiers befit agents of maximum efficiency, making more with less in streets. Occupations range from the most pragmatic aspects [logistics, security, food, hygiene, medical care] to the most reflective ones [build-up alternative micro-societies on the mist of a larger one]. This situation echoes the manifesto created during the OWS General Assembly on 15 October 2011, when occupiers created a list of spatial zones, or T.A.Z.:
• Arts and Culture • Craft-In-Everywhere • Comfort • Laundry and Shower Donations • Design • Direct Action Committee • Education and Empowerment • Facilitation Committee • Food Committee
26 DIY: Do It Yourself
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• Free/Libre/Open-source (FLO) Solutions • Info/Front Desk • Internet • Legal • Media Committee • Medical • Outreach Committee • People of Color • Political and Electoral Reform • Sanitation Committee • Student Engagement • Tactical Committee • Town Planning Committee • Treasury Committee • Students Committee
These T.A.Z. reflect the basic needs of occupations, which in this case are not particular to OWS but can also be reflected in Gezi/Taksim and Zuccotti Park (Img. 10, Img. 11) represents the consequence of the street-battle in Gezi/Taksim, from the chaotic state of clashes to an autonomous self- regulated body, forming an assemblage of the commons. It is an assemblage that contrasts to structural frameworks (Farías and Bender 2010), a tandem with new articulations of human-non- human materialities through relations of exteriority (McFarlane 2011). These bodies are capable to create dissident spatialities throughout the assemblage of an ad-hoc architecture, where everyday materials and objects bent spatial practices initiating a subversive design under a state of exception. Using tactics during the transformation of the public spatial conception, occupiers turn these spaces into hybrid urban zones in a temporal architectural exception. These systems could be planned or accidental, and design performs a chaotic mobility of objects that involves a conception of new designing methods.
This new urban capacity remarks a creation of platforms that invigorates subversively buildings, streets, neighbourhoods, behaviours, structures, and spatial relations. It strategizes the space through representations of political frameworks in an aesthetic scope: digital media (cameras, laptops, live-tweeting, Facebook, streaming), black bloc tactics, operational zone, art camp, meditation spot, etc. Thus, this architecture of occupation is far from being discrete, it innately striates the space when there is a fabrication of an occupation. The amount of energy contained on the public sphere creates a substantial porosity not only of private and public borders, but also arranges new dynamics of appropriation. The architecture of occupation is instant and ever-
252 changing, collective and intermittent, practical and radical; it changes from radicalization as systematic product to radicalization as systematic motor.
In Hong Kong, at the Central Government Complex, occupiers replicated Prague’s Lennon Wall. The original Lennon Wall is located in Mala Strana, Prague, when an anonymous person painted Lennon’s face after his death in 1980, representing him as a peaceful symbol that contrasted to the local political regime [at that time, Czech Republic was ruled under a communist regime]. Soon, people started writing on the wall messages, quotes, lyrics, and paintings about peace, love and freedom. The police tried repeatedly to whitewash over the portraits and messages, but every day after, the wall was filled again with poems, pieces, and paintings of Lennon, even when there were CCTV cameras and overnight posting guards. It was mostly students the ones that continued with these series of dissenting actions in this particular space, and ironically, they were described as the “Lennonism movement.”27 Over thirty years later, occupiers filled with colourful post-it notes [more than ten thousand pieces] the exterior staircase of the Central Government building in Hong Kong, with written messages about democracy and universal suffrage, solidarity, peace, freedom, song lyrics and epigrams. Protests usually involve graffiti and paintings but the exceptional [de] [re] territorialisation of the imaginary Prague’s Lennon Wall materialized collaborative spatial practices that fitted a forum for exchanging. The wall became a device for protest while post-it notes were physical Tweets, and the resonance of Prague was materialized in Hong Kong. For this purpose, resonance is understood as a system able to store and easy to transfer energy between two or more different storages modes, even if that means to lose energy in the transference [based on resonance in physics]. The tendency to vibrate bodies and increase their amplitude, causes a force that varies with time and depends on its place, fluctuating a state that is hard to grasp because it is displaced.
By covering buildings with post-it was a response from the released online document named “OCLP: Manual of Disobedience,”28 which indicated the legalities and illegalities according to Hong Kong’s urban law. This document suggested to avoid damaging or destroying public and private buildings and infrastructures, thus, occupiers used post-it notes to cover buildings’ surfaces and avoid affecting its structure. These series of micro-dissident-actions turned the city’s infrastructure into an improvised outdoor gallery of politically inspired art. The art expression in occupations are powerful tools that engage people in different ways. The “Umbrella Man,” tents filled with cartoons
27 On a trip to Prague, the author could talk to local people, especially to owners of shops nearby Lennon Wall. On a talk with a coffee shop owner, he made clear that the wall, from its beginning, represented a way of expression for young people. He has painted on the wall several times but recognized that he did not do it from the first moment. During a conversation with the curator from the Prague Gallery, she indicated that the space that surrounds Lennon Wall has been positively activated during the last twenty years, and that was indeed one of the main reasons why they installed the gallery in the area. 28 OCLP: Manual of Disobedience. http://oclp.hk/?route=occupy/eng_detail&eng_id=28
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Img. 10 Zuccotti Park. Zoning
Img. 11 La République de Taksim. Gezi Park zoning
Img. 12 Capture from YouTube video "Lennon Wall Hong Kong" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L9nJDijvXzs
254 and paintings, textiles forming art installations, umbrellas composing canopies, and so on, turned streets into enormous outdoor art exhibitions. “The art, pointedly political and often witty, has become as much an expression of the protest as the megaphone speeches and the metal barricades” (Lau 2014). In order to preserve the memory of this occupation, people created a large digital archive [some of them were displayed in the “Disobedient Objects” exhibition at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London in 2014]. Moreover, besides this outdoor exhibition, there were ‘bedrooms’ with elaborated cardboards, sprawling study areas, libraries, gardens, media centres, kitchens, and so on. This spatiality created not only new spaces of relations but also new uses of spaces and actions, where the ad-hoc architecture let the physical work to take place temporally.
Tents, encampments, tarpaulins, and fabric tents performed the ad-hoc architecture for the space of the commons. During the 79 days of the Umbrella Revolution, the movement succeeded in creating a model of civil society based on non-violence; it appropriated a large part of the business district in Admiralty, and separated affectively the government headquarters from the city. For days and nights, dissident bodies built a temporal city, consolidating spatial and social structures in an expression of new spatial conditions, a temporal dynamic, and a multi-dimensional structure. As Prague’s Lennon Wall, many spatial practices were used in Hong Kong from other occupations such as OWS or los Indignados, resonating these architectural practices. It has implicitly political participation and a valid form of cultural communication that ties networks between people and places. Then, these dissident architectural practices are about context innovation somewhat limited. Reclaiming the public sphere in a dense, commercialized urban environment like Hong Kong, means something regardless the message of the spatial practice image.
The ad-hoc architecture is a potential articulation of conflicts that negotiates spatially the discourse of temporal based on the principle of proximity, coexistence, and interaction. The dissident spatiality weds with the borderless and shares nowhere, but is a practiced-place through movement [walking] and mobility [ideas, objects, bodies, schemes, tweets], forming a space of experience where actions resonates. In Hong Kong, the created space has new meanings identified and produced by people on the streets, as Iain Chambers writes:
It does not suggest an integration with existing hegemony or the mainstream of metropolitan life, but rather with the shifting, mixing, contaminating, experimenting, revisiting and recomposing that the wider horizons and the inter-trans-cultural networks of the metropolis both permit and encourage. (Chambers 1993)
The ad-hoc architecture and dissident architectural practices form a radical space where the collective materializes dissident bodies by becoming a global network [in the physical and virtual
255 space]. The dissident spatial experience experiments a break on the sequence of urban habits and customs, changing the space, exploring the temporal existence of a determined practice, and provoking new quotidian relations.
4.2.1 Temporal Architecture as a dispositive
To disobey in order to take action is the byword of all genuine creative… I would say that there is good reason to study the dynamics of disobedience, the spark behind all knowledge. Gaston Bachelard, Fragments of a poetics of fire, 1990
The act of disobedience, or the refusal to comply, is inherent in the act of crossing a disciplinary boundary. It occupies several states simultaneously: architectural practices, geographies, DIY assemblages, and experimental performances. As seen previously, when the protest becomes the occupation, daily-life objects transmute their significance and explore their spatial limits. The chaotic mobility and displacement alter common objects in spawn protests, illustrating that design does not only shape and define, but also activates changes in politics, communication, social innovation, urban landscape and architecture.
The dissident structures that emerge during occupations, provide unusual illustrations of basic and preconceived assemblages. In Hong Kong, protesters created a self-sustaining village within a month of the beginning protests, re-territorialising the sense of public spaces in Hong Kong. Barricades were primary assemblages during the first days of the protests that obstructed mobility and visibility and gave a sense of protection. Cling film and umbrellas turned into fledged campus and carpeted stairs, water coolers served as amplifiers and Wi-Fi boosters, and strings attached to street lamps became drying racks to hang clothes and towels. These acts of building dissident spaces are not made for protesting but for encouraging the city to be public. Thus, occupations are not scenarios for protesting, they are living spaces that require social and spatial production through an ad-hoc architecture and the dissident objects.
Stavros Stavrides in his book “Towards the City of Thresholds” (Stavrides 2016), writes that radical practices contain a potential transformation of the society. They are generally conceived as altering enclaves inside an ordered urban space; however, it is necessary to “think about them not as social containers, but as formative elements of social practices” (Stavrides 2016).29 Hence, the exploration of practices that potentiate a production of connection between spatialities and emancipated processes generate urban tools of threshold within occupations.
29 Translated by the author.
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Img. 6 Protester assembling a bamboo structure during the Hong Kong's protests of 2014 - WuBamboo. Source: The Architectural Review. http://www.architectural-review.com/archive/framing-the-issue-bamboos- structural-role-in-the-fight-for-public-space/8679223.ful
These architectural practices that are visible and material, are also spatio-temporal, taking a dissident physical form, shaping new public spheres, and deactivating to resonate in other spatio- temporal enclaves. The ‘umbrella’ or the ‘post-it notes’ narrate a collective experience in a dissident spatiality, overlapping the urban fabric with them. Because these practices disturb the normal behaviour of cities, they are considered as events that discontinuous and deregulates the experience in time and space: they are happenings. Happenings suit experiences of people and spaces, impacting on how urban dynamics relate among each other: the movement of matter, meanings, bodies, thoughts and order.
The ad-hoc architecture forms an apparatus in which the proximity and overlapping of dissident bodies creates infusions of spatio-temporal articulations. The representational exploration of multiple images distorts objects, which brings Marcel Duchamp’s “ready-made,” a conception of objects in and of this world, reassembled or re-contextualized to alter their meaning [an anti- rational and deliberated contradiction of convention-eschewed]. Duchamp’s Bicycle Wheel (Img. 9) consists on a bicycle wheel positioned upright on a simple stool, and the observer is given an assemblage of parts put together in an orthodox mode. The Bicycle Wheel presents the observer a number of puzzling suggestions, stretching the conventional boundaries of use and sense of objects by implicating the observer in the process of the piece’s construction and meaning. Duchamp selected mass-produced, commercially available, often utilitarian objects,30 arguing that an ordinary object reacts to visual indifference. And here, the connection to Duchamp’s readymade conception is extrapolated to the ad-hoc architecture, sharing notions of limits, sense and meaning.
30 MOMA, “Dada. Marcel Duchamp and the Readymade”. https://www.moma.org/learn/moma_learning/themes/dada/marcel-duchamp-and-the-readymade
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Img. 7 Marcel Duchamp walking down a flight of Img. 8 Marcel Duchamp, Bicycle Wheel, 1913 stairs in a multiple image reminiscent of his painting Third version after lost original, New York, 2014 "Nudes Descending a Staircase". New York, 1952. Photographer: Eliot Elisofon
A mode of experience according to which, for two centuries, we perceive very diverse things, whether in their techniques of production or their destination, as all belonging to art. This is not a matter of the “reception” of works of art. Rather, it concerns the sensible fabric of experience within which they are produced. Jacques Rancière, Aisthesis: Scenes from the Aesthetic Regime of Art, 2013
The experience of architecture in an aesthetic platform, opens a gap on the notion of what could be an ordinary set of experiences. So, architecture sets its directions in the political framework, and “the political notion of equality cannot longer be separated from the politics of aesthetics, or aesthetics of politics” (Lahiji 2014). Architectural practices in dissident spatialities during occupations, reinvent the relationships of doing, being, and communicating, which are perceptible in the space of commons [a particular doing requires the action-capacity of another] making from the ad-hoc architecture an urban apparatus.
[Apparatus] Firstly, a thoroughly heterogeneous ensemble consisting of discourses, institutions, architectural forms, regulatory decisions, laws, administrative measures, scientific statements, philosophical, moral and philanthropic propositions – in short, the said as much as unsaid. Such are the elements of the apparatus. The apparatus itself is the system of relations that can be establishes between these elements.
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Secondly, I [Foucault] am trying to identify in this apparatus is precisely the nature of the connections that can exist between these heterogeneous elements. Thus, a particular discourse can figure at one time as the programme of an institution, and at another it can function as a means of justifying or making a practice which itself remains silent, or as a secondary re-interpretation of this practice, opening out for it a new field of rationality. In short, between these elements, whether discursive or non-discursive, there is a sort of interplay of shifts of position and modifications of function which can also vary very widely.
And thirdly, I understand by the term “apparatus” a sort of – shall we say – formation which has as its major function at a given historical moment that of responding to an urgent need. The apparatus this has dominant strategic function. This may have been seen, for example, the assimilation of floating population found to be burdensome for an essentially mercantilist economy: there was a strategic imperative acting here as the matrix for an apparatus which gradually undertook the control or subjection of madness, mental illness and neurosis. Michel Foucault, Power/Knowledge, Selected Interviews and Other Writings, 1972-1977
Giorgio Agamben, following Foucault’s dispositive concept, indicates that its origin is related to the notion of “positivity,” an “etymological neighbour.” He realizes that it is a pure subjectivity of governance devoid of any foundation in being, it is a process of subjectification that “must produce their subject” (Agamben 2009):
I shall call an apparatus literally anything that has in some way the capacity to capture, orient, determine, intercept, model, control, or secure the gesture, behaviours, opinions, or discourses of living beings. Not only, therefore, prisons, madhouses, the panopticon, schools, confession, factories, disciplines, juridical measures, and so forth (whose connection with power is in a certain sense evident), but also the pen, writing, literature, philosophy, agriculture, cigarettes, navigation, computers, cellular telephones and – why not – language itself, which is perhaps the most ancient of apparatuses. Agamben, What is an Apparatus? And Other Essays, 2009
While in “Aesthetics and Discontent” (Rancière 2009), Rancière discusses that “any object can potentially be an artwork and any activity can potentially give rise to artwork” (Ibid), like Marcel Duchamp’s “readymade.” In this sense, the temporal architecture as an apparatus works in the contemporary city during occupations, as spatial experiences that delineate new spatialities.
Rancière puts in relation this artwork as a mechanism that bears a particular political meaning: “the power of ‘form’ over ‘matter’ is the power of the class of intelligence over the class of sensible” (Rancière, 2009). Rancière’s political equality acts in the aesthetic experience of architecture as an
259 apparatus, in which any object can rise to the level of aesthetic experience if disrupts the ordered sense of space. Ad-hoc architecture acts as an apparatus that interrupts and disrupts the established order, it ensembles discourses, institutions, architectural forms, regulatory decisions, laws, administrative measures, and such like. Thus, the temporal architecture is an experienced spatial practice, not a dictated one.
4.3 Performing the architecture of occupation in the state of exception
4.3.1 Spatiality in the state of exception
Through Agamben’s conception of exception, it is the means to understand and conceptualize the contemporary city as a “city of enclaves.” The state of exception describes moments when a law is suspended under the premise of the society’s protection from internal and/or external threats. Hence, an urban enclave is a defined area where a general law is partially suspended and a distinct set of administrative rules is applied.31 Agamben indicates that authorities decide when and for how long the law could be suspended, or when the threat stops being a threat, meaning that the state of exception could be permanent. He includes ‘zones of indistinction’ as mechanisms rather than states, which empties the period of law because its force is necessary to impose the state of exception. The zone of indistinction is therefore an active zone that hazes differences in order to be suspended. During occupations, it is the temporal coincidence of law that offers legitimacy, a distinction between exception and rule. “The camp is the space that is opened when the state of exception begins to become the rule (…) a permanent spatial arrangement which as such nevertheless remains outside the normal order” (Agamben 1998).32 The occupation remains outside normal order, yet, the city is usually under control [CCTV cameras, authority forces, security guards, urban law, and so on]. There is a proliferation of checkpoints that identify, separate, and yield individuals.
Contemporary occupations struggle to re-appropriate and transform the public space, which shrinks with these urban elements of control. As the occupation is out of the normal rule, it is defined as a state of exception. But before the temporal settlement, the momentum when the protest becomes an occupation, public spaces and urban elements experience exceptional states in their essence. The way these spaces in occupations are used, made and remade, remains dynamic contestable and challenged, generating constant processes within multiple temporalities. There is a negotiation of materiality and virtuality over these elements without referring directly to representation of power, even if it is part of it. These spaces are not delineated by a defined
31 Stavros Stavrides. Emancipating spatial practices in struggle against the urban “state of exception”: Towards the “city of thresholds.” 32 Giorgio Agamben. Homo Sacer. Sovereign, Power and Bare Life. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1998.
260 perimeter, boundary or line; instead they are zones that change their form, reach, approach, practice and significance, they are porous and consequently generates a spatiality in movement. Eyal Weizman notes that the figure of archipelago describes a multiplicity of extraterritorial zones as states of exception:
These territories tend to be mobile or temporary, protected by makeshift barriers, temporary boundaries or generally invisible security apparatuses, and are the result of variety of contemporary processes that have caused the splintering of pre-existing political surfaces. They are extraterritorial because they are positioned outside of the sovereignty and jurisdiction that surrounds them, different kinds of ‘islands’ that collectively form an archipelago, although they are nor encircled by either sea or ocean. (E. Weizman 2005)
In Egypt, the “Emergency of Law” was active for three decades until the 2011 Revolution. This state of exception was permanent, becoming the normal state.
A long tradition of constitutional thought reasons that in a time of serious crisis and danger, such as wartime, the constitution must be suspended temporally and extraordinary powers given to a strong executive or even a dictator in order to protect the republic. The founding myth of this line of thinking is the legend of the noble Cincinnatus, the elderly farmer in ancient Rome who, when beseeched by his countrymen, reluctantly accepts the role of dictator to ward off a threat against the republic. After sixteen days, the story goes, the enemy has been routed and the republic saved, and Cincinnatus returns to his plow. The constitutional concept of a “state of exception” is clearly contradictory – the constitution must be suspended in order to be saved – but this contradiction is resolved or at least mitigated by understanding that the period of crisis and exception is brief. When crisis is no longer limited and specific but becomes a general omni-crisis, when the state of war and thus the state of exception become indefinite or even permanent, as they do today, then contradiction is fully expressed, and the concept takes an entirely different character. Hardt and Negri, Multitude. War and Democracy in the Age of Empire, 2004
Agamben’s state of exception is based on suspension, overthrow or abolition of pre-existing juridical order, in which the individual losses its conditions of citizen. He reflects this state in the space of refugee camps, where life is whittled down to mere biological existence [the bare life]. The camp exemplifies the category of legal and spatial exception, although Agamben points at the refugee or labour camps. In this work, the camp has a spatial implication with the camp of occupiers, fabrics, assemblage systems, modular forms, easy to mobilize, protection from the outside; components that act as improvised islands where normality is suspended. The statement of camps overlooks not only in its physical and spatial conditions but also in everyday spatial
261 practices that take place within these archipelagos; thus, a camp is the spatialization of exception. It is a demarcation of space: occupied territories, liquid borderlines, islands, buffer zones, curfew cities, state-led urban transformations, evictions and others (Franke 2003), a form of multiple variables between territory, objects, and subjectivities.
If the essence of the camp consists in the materialization of the state of exception and in the subsequent creation of a space in which bare life and the juridical rule enter into a threshold of indistinction, then we must admit that we find ourselves virtually in the presence of a camp every time such a structure is created, independent of the kinds of crime that are committed there and whatever its denomination and specific topography. Agamben, Homo Sacer. Sovereign, Power and Bare Life, 1998
Hence, occupations are seen biopolitical spaces in which subjectivity and otherness reinvent constantly urban geographies, where occupiers face experiences of this radical spatiality. The spatiality in this state of exception approaches a reinvention of everyday practices, following radical design parameters. Then, relationships with-within the outside of the occupy area, is transformed and there is not anymore an inside and outside, the ‘us’ and the ‘others.’ It is a settlement that opens up self-organized modalities in which design continues to be ad-hoc assemblages.
4.3.2 Performative spatiality
Performance provides open up, fluid and dynamic modes of occupations in both temporal and spatial dimensions: “allied with architecture, performance had everything to do with efficiency, sustainability, cost-effectiveness and the like, and nothing to do with performance art” (Gratza 2013). Architects like Didier Fiuza Faustino or the Italian collective Stalker, use the body to activate urban spaces in their walking practice, connecting to performance art and questioning the status of the self-contained art object.
In 2013, the Tate Britain presented “Performing Architecture,” a work with talks, perfomances, workshops, sound and film projects by Alex Schweder and Lamis Bayar, Kreider + O’Leary, Effie Coe, and The Architecture Foundation.33 The first phrase of the performance was: “Forget the theory! Experience it through your body:”
33 Late at Tate Britain: February 2013, Performing Architecture. http://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate- britain/performance-and-music/late-tate-britain-february-2013
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Schweder and Bayar transform the Duveen Galleries into a rehersal space where invitations writ large on the fabric of a rapidly changing Tate Britain, offer up playful and unexpected ways of discovering how you can change a space by behaving differently in relation to it. What can one to do with a wall? A hoarding? A bench? You will leave the rehearsal space a practised Performance Architect and invent your own instructions as you happen upon more walls, more hoardings, more benches. Perform them. Perform Tate Britain, perform your living room!34
Img. 9 "Touch this wall" by Alex Schweder and Lamis Bayar. Performing Architecture at the TATE Britain, 2013
“Rehearse here, perform everywhere, time-bound and ephemeral, iterative occupations of the rapidly changing Tate Britain building, the architectural time gathered pace” formed the “Practised Architecture.” “The Wall Piece” (Img. 9) built up into a series of 42 sequential invitations, transformed the Duveen Galleries into a performative space: “Look only at this join and move left,” “Don’t stop touching the wall,” “Touch at this wall,” addressed phrases performed on a wall by visitors. The performance subverted cues of notions and approaches to architecture, that follows Alain Bourdin’s “La Métropole des Individus” (Bourdin 2005), in which a permanent movement “surf[s] on fluxes of fashion, atmospheres and events.” The performative action is a radical social gesture that goes beyond the production of an aesthetic object.
Another example of performative architecture is “TechnoGeisha,” which ensues the footsteps of the artist Lucy Orta in Andrés Jacque’s proposal (Img. 10), as a response of architecture to new urban needs. TechnoGeisha concentrates in an outfit different stimulations to urban uses and conditions, and creates a hyper-equipped device that acts as a mediator between people. It is portable and bubble-like environment designed to make people feel at home while they are in the urban space. This perception highlights that architecture is less to do with buildings and spaces than with actions and gestures, operating as a political expression that understands these relationships. The performative architecture is temporary, moveable, and open instead of permanent, fixed and
34 Online invitation to ‘Late at Tate Britain’. http://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-britain/performance-and- music/late-tate-britain-february-2013
263 enclosed. “Performance, like habits, involves neither fixed immutable nature nor spontaneous individual freedom, residing instead between the two, a kind of acting in common based on collaboration and communication” (Hardt and Negri, 2004). In addition, the work of Judith Butler and her theorisation of performativity in occupations, has been addressed to the spatial discourse in order to explore more dynamic relations between architecture and bodies (Phelan 1993). She makes a distinction between performance and performativity, where performance is relegated to theatrics and cannot be recorded or documented; instead, it pertains to visceral relations that do not do discourse.
Img. 10 TechnoGeisha by Andrés Jacque. "Transforming character for the insertion of individual contribution in a metropolitan environment"
The spatial performative practice uses tactics to critique power relations in the city, arising outcomes that generate social and spatial relations in which tactical performances are collaborative and transdisciplinary. In this regard, the Situationists used tactical performances to surpass spatial boundaries in the 1960s. They installed the unitary urbanism that challenged city structures such as the derive and psychogeography, using performance as an instrument to transcend the mechanisms of control. These practices are described as tactics that reinvent the public space: deploying graffiti, taking over the streets temporally, creating new spaces through sensory experiences; here, movement is not about changing a position but a state. When Rem Koolhaas challenged to ride the flows of the generic city, in his theorization of a multitude in Lagos as a productive critique of neoliberal capitalism, the assumption between potentiality and action for the space was shown as a space of flows. During the 1990s, Koolhaas and Tschumi dealt with their desire to make performances and events as drivers of their architecture, inverting processes from adding to subtracting. Although, Koolhaas relates occupants as generators of performative practices, while the role of architecture is to create spaces in which they can happen.
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In Butler’s book “Bodies that Matter: the Discursive Limits of Sex” (J. Butler 1993), performativity is reframed as the iteration of a specific modality of power as discourse.35 It echoes a variety of meanings and uses, enters in place and discusses about how the place is enacted through processes of performance. In this regard, Katarina Bonnevier says that Butler’s work does no longer give importance to define architecture as an object to be located, or as a text to be read, but instead she suggests that “architecture appears through its performance and through its enactment it comes into being” (Bonnevier 2005). In addition, Ulmer’s notion of eutectics (Ulmer 1991), makes the performative theory of “do architecture” [construing movements] to be the necessary inventive actions that embody subjects and filling consequently the gap between theories of performativity and covered architecture. Hence, eutectics in contemporary occupations makes of architecture a process instead of an object. Such focus on dynamics, offers the promise of freedom, creativity and escape from essentials, place-bound identities, making their rhetoric to be extremely powerful in the contemporary collective imagination. The approach that performativity has with architecture seems contradictory at first because of the connotations that architecture has with power, permanency, stability, and richness, provoking changes by questioning architectural practices.
Nonetheless, Butler’s analysis deploys a spatial rhetoric that has “material effects” (J. Butler 1993). She enacts the historical positing of inside-outside within philosophy, where the object is cast beyond discourse and prior to language. But she moves quickly in the gaps that Foucault evokes, through models of thinking where time is privileged and place is largely absent, externalizing the collective body. The spatiality places subjects in a constrained state within a synchronic structure of discursive relations, “where the subject is potentially free to resist the structures within a diachronically-marked moment in the process of reproduction” (J. Butler 1993). Setting the open space of Gezi Park within the occupation, the spatiality negotiates between the established context and the new spatialized body, making the ‘remade’ state a temporal device, and the spatial relations canvas for experiencing the spatiality. Challenging the relationship between built and enacted architecture, as much as its affinity to the ‘programme,’ the architect Alex Schweder characterises the concept of “performance architecture” as the notion that relates occupied spaces and occupying subjects like permeable. (Schweder 2014). The subject perceives first its environment and then is changed by that perception. Schweder indicates that this person “alters his/her environment to make it correspond to their fantasies. This process continues until the scrimmage of objects and subjects produces an architecture where referring to the two as distinct becomes irrelevant” (Schweder 2014). Through the incremental accumulation of action, occupiers notice the city’s infrastructures alteration as direct relations to their occupation. This new urban landscape exists in flux: buildings, uses, functions, meanings, and actions are transmuted and transmute the urban space without a steady speed. So, ad-hoc architecture acts as a performance, explores the moment when the observer becomes the occupier by using a reachable and manageable architectural
35 Butler, J. (1993) “Bodies that Matter”, pg.187
265 practices. This spatiality transforms prominently his/her space and the others, and works as an individual that is part of a collective body. The occupier is part of the dissident urban corpse and learns to interpret its surroundings, giving the power to create its own space that is also the space for/of all.
4.3.3 [De] [re] territorialisation in the archievent
In occupations, there are connected micro-occupations composed by different characters, agents and functions. Micro-occupations develop simultaneously micro dynamic environments that arrange spaces in certain ways, with a particular aesthetics through its organization and timing.
The movement of objects and bodies in these micro-occupations, transform the established conception of the space and opens new conditions of relationships. Deleuze and Guattari refer to these conditions like the multiplicity of objects that are never fully stable. They define this process as territorialisation (Deleuze and Guattari, 1972). In this sense, territory is not given but constituted, like the organization of individuals on it. It is possible to territorialize through a series of markings, signs, postures, gestures, sounds, and so forth, and it is structured by the nomos, defined by forms of behaviours and their functions within the territory. Also, territory has an outside, it has a way out. Deterritorialization on the other hand, detaches signs from the context and signification of the territory (Deleuze and Guattari, 1972), containing a loss of the self. It is a separation from a given purpose, defined only in terms of its territory. It needs to be understood in cultural and spatial terms, political and economic because it involves the sense of disembedding social relations. Nevertheless, deterritorialization cannot exist without reterritorialization. While deterritorialization is a separation from a given purpose, reterritorialization is a re-purposing in another domain, by restructuring a place or territory. The transformational process affects the spatiality of the occupation in its material, psychological, political, structural and virtual dimension [deterritorializing and reterritorializing], and moving away from a territory that is already established, producing changes in the relations and connections. The design of the ad-hoc instant architecture is fundamentally a [de] [re] territorialization because it transforms banal things into dissident objects (Baudrillard, 1968). They also adapt the occupation needs as combined hyper-structures connected to a global network, constituting an inner architecture without borders. The approach is not to the object itself but to the relations between people, artefacts, diagrams, assemblages and environments in a temporal state.
The diagrammatic or abstractal machine does not function to represent, even something real, but rather constructs a real that is yet to come, a new type of reality (…). They constitute becomings. Thus they are always singular and immanent (…). Abstract machines consist of unformed
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matters and nonformal functions (…). Of course, within the dimensions of the assemblage, the abstract machine or machines, is effectuated in forms and substances, in varying stated of freedom. But the abstract machine must first have composed itself, and have simultaneously composed a plane of consistency. Abstract, singular, and creative, here and now, yet nonconcrete, actual yet non effectuated. (Deleuze and Guattari, 2002)
In Tahrir Square, women were part of the occupation because this one created a democratic and radical spatiality that allowed them to be there. The former regime equated women protesting with prostitutes: “women protesters deserved to be raped because they demonstrate in public while a woman’s place, as we know, is at home” (Abaza 2013). Hence, women were a de facto practiced in the space of the commons, while Tahrir Square became the space that changed this social structure by establishing new forms of social and spatial relations. These changes were re-invented in action and [de] [re] territorialized public spaces. Women deterritorialized the public space and then, they reterritorialized it by being there.
Another sense of [de] [re] territorialization is the virtual space. In OWS, some online activists relied on Facebook and Twitter to reach people, used open-source software, and sources such as wikicoding. At these wikicamps, the open-source operated at a local and global scale simultaneously. Here, public space and political actions show some common facts during the occupations:
• Online tools change rapidly the dynamics of political action. The aggregative, rhizomatic, and exponentially expanding character of occupations reflect the distinctive capacities of social media. • Media accelerates the pace of discourse and action. Flash mobs and viral tweets are hyped, and compressed temporally collective actions. • Digital communities are good at building systems. Wikicoding and other modes of online collaboration can build online venues fast and well. • These communities may still require face-to-face interaction to achieve substantive changes. Digital communication is easy, but for that reason it can feel too light and weightless to mobilize people to achieve deep structural changes. • Bodies on streets matter for commanding attention and galvanizing engagement. • Modern forms of police control violate basic civil liberties, from public assembly to everyday civil rights. • Asserting a right to the city means claiming public places, online and offline, for assembly, dialogue and deliberation by multiple publics, varying spatial and temporal requirements.
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• Privately owned public spaces [POPS] offer platforms for experimentation. The prevalence of corporate enclaves in our cities and the virtual space often homogenize and constrains public life. (Massey and Brett 2012)
Los Indignados created the document “How to cook a peaceful revolution.”36 In this document, organizers call for spontaneity to set up camps, emphasising that the tent is a tool that could achieve different objectives – not only spatial but also political and social through propagation. The document identifies tents as useful tools at the beginning of the occupation but eventually they become difficult objects to keep on the space and to maintain. It adds that tents have to be placed in a conspicuous location and disturb people as little as possible. This strategy let the creation of a city within the city itself, like micro-occupations. The creation of a zoning plan helps spatial and social organization in locating functional areas as media, kitchen, libraries, and so on. There is a list of protected actions that form the protest called “civil disobedience” that include:37
• Holding signs • Rally on a sidewalk and set up a moving picket line as long as people do not block buildings’ entrances or more than half the sidewalk • Leafleting • Protestors have a permit to march in the street, rally in a park with 20 or more people, have a procession with 50 or more bicycles, or use electronic sound amplification • Drumming, dancing, singing, chanting • Marching • Standing still in a group • Approaching pedestrians on a public sidewalk with leaflets, newspapers, petitions, and solicitations for donations • Setting up tables on public sidewalks for those purposes, as long as the walk is not blocked • Wearing a mask or concealing the face, though it is unlawful for more than two people to wear masks or bandannas
The initial camp is built upon improvisation: tape, string, tarp, cloth, metal tent poles holding up a sagging canvas roof, plastic sheets propped upon bamboo rods tapped together. OWS also produced
36 Spanish Revolution. How to cook a peaceful revolution. http://takethesquare.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/Roll- Up_eng_v2_reviewed.pdf 37 Guide for demonstrators. http://howtocamp.takethesquare.net/2011/10/10/guide-for-demonstrators/ NYC Chapter “Know your rights” (2008) www.tinyurl.com/legalinfo917a
268 a guide to occupy, indicating that depending on the place, strategies and tactics should adapt to their local context. About the occupy infrastructure, the document indicates the following: 38
• Internet. It is necessary to have an independent Wi-Fi hub. • Network amplification. Occupiers could use human mic and internal activists that post information through social media and digital platforms. • Kitchen. A system could be arranged to whereby food is purchased by donations and has to follow sanitary regulations. • Electricity and water. Different types of electrical generators could be employed, from traditional fossil fuel units to bike power. • Library. Usually a powerful symbol because it enriches the camp with intellectual life along actions. OWS contained more than 5,000 donated books. • Livestream. It is a key part of to rely to the outside. The main point is that live video can be very compelling, particularly during periods of conflict with authorities. • Blanket cell phone documentation. The presence of individuals recording their experiences changes the evolution of occupations. Instead of being experienced through traditional media, bewildering arrays of personal narratives transmit the occupation. Tweets, video streams, photos posted from the front lines of battles with police; they all play a role in making the protests feel more active.
In Tahrir Square, activists circulated a pamphlet as a plan for the 25 January protests. It is a 26- page document [only 9 pages were translated into English], that contains specific actions about what protesters might do during the occupation and how to react if there are clashes with riot police (Img. 18, Img. 19, and Img. 20). The creators of the pamphlet explicitly asked to distribute it only through email, not by Twitter or Facebook. 39 Delocalization, de-situating, disjoining, disturbing propagating, wandering a nomadic practice, drifting, in the middle, between, in-between, intermediating, intertying, intervolving, separating, towards, moving, developing, becoming; they constitute techniques for shifting the self-definition of the urban geography’s spatial terms. These contemporary changes intervene in [in]visible socio-spatial relationships within the urban landscape, as an affective design strategy that produces a process of extra-state zoning. There is an inherent possibility of reversal and collectivity, where qualifications disappear and spatial practices generate radical spaces.
In this regard, architectural practices become the playful ground where new ways of movement take form, addressing rarely to materials and embodying relations that occur in spatial practices; it
38 Alexis C. Madrigal. A Guide to the Occupy Wall Street API, or Why the Nerdiest Way to Think About OWS is so Useful. The Atlantic (16th November 2011) http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2011/11/a-guide-to-the- occupy-wall-street-api-or-why-the-nerdiest-way-to-think-about-ows-is-so-useful/248562/ 39 Annex 00
269 develops alternative concepts of body, space, time and movement beyond the discursive state. The practice of [de] [re] territorialisation becomes the leitmotif for a re-conceptualization of architectural urban relations, making to lose settled boundaries. Because the spatiality of the occupation is dynamic, it is a process of change and impermanence, not a single local strategy or a relativized unfettered position.
On the other hand, during the protests in Istanbul, occupiers covered the AKM (Ataturk Cultural Centre)40 with banners, posters, flags, cartels, signs, placards (Img. 21). Many protestors reached the rooftop of the AKM building, placed banners and flags, and fired smoke powder, adding another layer to the building. Simultaneously in Gezi Park, occupiers covered it with hundreds of tents. These series of re-appropriating actions in horizontal and vertical surfaces, acted as one whole mechanism that existed with the presence of the other one. The urban landscape acquired a new flexibility state where ephemeral situations embodied different structures and brought unusual but common ways of producing the radical space.
Performing architecture is experienced during the state of exception of occupation, where occupiers generated new architectural forms without being represented but representing themselves, and made an immanent experience of the event. Alan Badiou relates these actions as states that become something else (Badiou 1988):
• The multiple composed of on the one hand, elements of the site, and on the other hand, itself (the event). • Self-belonging is thus constitutive of the event; it is an element of the multiple. • The event interposes itself between the void and itself.
Furthermore, Badiou indicates that the event remains anonymous and uncertain; it pins to multiple-being by the interventional capacity, and establishes itself in the interventional retroaction, “between the empty anonymity bordered on the site, and the addition of a name” (Badiou 1988). In “Event: Philosophy in Transit” (Žižek 2014), Žižek focus on the event in the sense that something extraordinary takes place. “Within a certain field of phenomena where things go on the normal flow of things, from time to time something happens which as it were retroactively changes the rules of what is possible in the sense that something happens” (Žižek 2014). The event is generated by that situation in a way that it changes interactively the whole situation.41 He adds that events are rare, they are dramatic encounters that shape the perception of the real. The notion of event is to create the space for the proper understanding of phenomena like occupations as narrative fields.
40 Ataturk Cultural Center, AKM, is a multi-purpose cultural centre and an opera house. 41 Slavoj Žižek, Slavoj Žižek: Events and Encounters Explain Our Fear of Falling in Love. YouTube cannel: Big Think. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LXqPlYWJSII
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Img. 11 How to Protest Intelligently. Pamphlet used Img. 12 How to Protest Intelligently. Pamphlet used during the Egyptian Revolution. Page 1 during the Egyptian Revolution. Page 4
Img. 13 How to Protest Intelligently. Pamphlet used Img. 14 AKM building, Gezi Park, Taksim Square during the Egyptian Revolution. Page 10
As a series of in-between becomings, the sign of the space opposes to rigid structures and positions, and opens and shifts the self-definition of objects, subjects and relationships, where their movements disrupt the established. The in-between performs new conceptualizations of spatialities, a ‘spacing’ generated by flows and movements of dissidence and displacements where spatial implications act on unexpected relations, dissonance, consonance, and resonance.
The in-between becomings embeds the practice of resistance like the barricades around Gezi Park, which offer subjectivities in particular moments experienced as events. The situational dwelling practices in Gezi Park, Taksim Square and OWS are in themselves an ‘event-architecture’, and ‘archievent’ of dissidence, for taking decisions that displace, find resources [human, communicative and material], start different organizational systems, take technological tools, manage, and affect the space and the event.
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4.4 Discussion. Radical Spatiality
The form of making the collective brings potential to produce a spatiality. The collective brings together bodies and the practice of politics to collaborate, to participate, to extend, to share, while tactics germinate in the radical of temporal actions. In occupations, a new spatial design dimension takes shape: bodies in proximity, making contact, keeping contact, and excluding contact during days and nights, create situations in which new gestures appeared with new significances and intimacies. The instant comes from handshakes, grasp of forearms, hold arms for building human chains and let a new intimacy to pass through them.
Materials and objects take proximities too: sleeping on the asphalt, waking up on roads, the pattern of the concrete on their hands, umbrella shelters for protecting from tear gas, bamboo sticks lodging structures, plastic wrap as walls, roads median like ad-hoc offices, texting on the ground, taking pictures of the cascading lights of skyscrapers, pavement covered by chalk, bodies touching the city, it is the making of micro-occupations. Only a collective acting together creates this space as part of a radical spatiality where people do not simply exist side by side in the space, indifferent from one another, neither objects and materials, but explicitly appear for one another. Sitting, waiting on tents, and on the asphalt, make visible that the temporal space is a lot of observing and remaining. People discover the thickness of a street, what is incomplete, and the delay opens unpredictable relations, a spatiality that is based on complex varieties of contributors as non-stable conditions and contradictions. In this spatiality, the potential of the multitude relates material affection and performative actions, presenting intensities within the production in the state of exception. For Michel Hardt and Antonio Negri, the multitude does not represent as a productive force, but as creative process (Hardt and Negri 2009). Hence, the practice of radical spaces takes the event of the multitude as acting in-and-on, in which determined actions increase their potentialities and virtual power. De-territorializing and re-territorializing dialectics go alongside these spaces.
The archievents and micro-occupations display objects for disobedience rather than disobedient objects; objects that are dissident devices and take all sort of forms and use, drafting the meaning of conflict and marking immensely the intersection of technology, social media and complex political challenges. The temporal ad-hoc architecture is presented no merely as a formal act but as an enabler of political action, of communication and of production of dissident spaces. Objects, structures, bodies, boundaries, public spaces, digital spaces, laws, practices, movements, dynamics and reinventions resonate in different socio-spatial scopes [physical and digital], constantly under threat of disappearance and fabricating the radical spatiality. It is a displacement that creates the commons in a spiral and expansive relationship with all the elements. It reinvents through dissidence, the system of structures in the contemporary public space.
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The radical spatiality, constantly but temporally, reinvents relationships among dissident objects. One of these dissident objects is the tent, a structure that is pragmatic for temporal occupancy and is seen as an indeterminate-mobile-rapidly-deployable device that acts as an architectural strategy. It counterpoints the idea of home as static, nuclear, enclosed, solid, stately, and gives to occupiers the power to generate micro-occupations when it expands physical and imaginative limits to the architectural urban landscape. Fabricating the common ground that activates the ad-hoc architecture, the tent shapes limits and possibilities of organic environments in the centre of hyper- dense, commercial spaces as it happened in Istanbul or Hong Kong. When tents are placed in public spaces, it presents the shift from protests to occupations: tents are arranged in rows, fitted neatly between the highways and streets, repurpose themselves as community noticeboards, and transform the asphalt into a canvas for political expression. By way of illustration, the Umbrella Movement turned the infrastructure that served only for vehicular mobility purposes into a hyper- structure when people acted as a dissident body. They transmuted highways into libraries, classrooms, food supply stations, cinema, workshops, toilettes, allotments, art exhibitions, agora for assembly, flower gardens, mosques, and mobile food centres (Img. 15). The practice of the commons in these archievents brings the notion of habit, which displaces traditional conceptions of subjectivity to be placed in some deep inner self. “They seek subjectivity rather in daily experience, practices and conduct. Habit is the common in practice: the common that we continually produce and the common that serves as the basis for our actions” (Peirce 1992).
The radical spatiality questions the nature of daily-life objects, when are practiced with a dissident character. These deployed architectural practices are means of disruption that face an attempt to an ideal way of inhabiting the city by exploring dissident relationships. Within the radical spatiality, objects suit a practice of disobedient design and the extension of objects reaches a stage of creating new urban public landscapes. Indeed, the radical spatiality transmutes tents and barracks not only in certain physical devices, but also in dissident infrastructures and tools. When objects produce a dissident architectural practice, they induce different intensities and interactions within public spaces, the radicalisation of the space introduces new scenarios for subjects and objects to explore the radical spatiality as a verb instead of as a noun.
The occupations generate a radical spatiality that activates short-term, low-cost, and reachable interventions and policies. The creative potential unleashed by social interactions process a collective radical public space where tactics develop multiple affective in the ‘citymaking.’ The radical spatiality exists as inception42 and gains energy and force while producing the commons. Thus, city’s infrastructures are hacked during occupations through architectural practices: DIY shelters, chair bombing, parklets, guerrilla gardens, bike lines, and such like, provide a dose of whimsy and envision different notions of public spaces. They compel examples of do tanks
42 Inception: the establishment or starting point of an institution or activity. Oxford Dictionaries.
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[contrary to think tanks] and disobedient urban squads that subvert slow formalities. Although dissent is about creatively reshaping surroundings [whether in the physical or virtual space], and short-circuiting existing systems, “it is ultimately about disrupting existing processes” (Lydon and Garcia 2015).
Img. 15 Tents set up by pro-democracy protesters. Photograph: Vincent Yu. Source: http://time.com/3581690/life-in-hong-kong-occupy-protest-camps
OWS, the Arab Spring, Gezi/Taksim, Facebook, Twitter and YouTube cannot be separated. Text messages helped to share photos and videos that became viral during occupations, communicating through mobile apps inferred in a wide availability and connecting with wireless devices. Assembling in the virtual space shifted how protestors participated and organized in the physical space. These architectural practices are about making the ordinary something extraordinary and widely accessible, blurring established parameters and limits for the commons, forming interconnected networks, crafting linkages between subjects and objects, and achieving temporally the becomings.43 As multiple active micro-occupations [visible or invisible], they enhance dissident assemblages. This means: short-term actions induce long-term transformations. These processes highlight moments that reveal how informal, mobile, temporary and tactical the architectural practice could be, exploring a modification of the contemporary public space. It is as Nabeel Hamdi says: “disturbing the order of things in the interest of change” (Hamdi 2013). These spatial practices use a deliberate and accessible means for achieving desires [commons] while embedding flexibility into the experience and project process.
To operate in the public space, Setha Low and Neil Smith approaches first to the urban scope as a place composed by civic spaces, leisure spaces, or simply functional spaces that have an important
43 It is referred as temporal in the sense of the contemporary city, where new techniques, relationships, items and spaces are created continuously and the city needs to respond to them. Hence, temporality does not include an ending point; the dissident spatial practices are reinvented permanently but are always temporal.
274 role in the development of cities. Nevertheless, they emphasize that public spaces allow the experience and practice of urban dynamics (Low and Smith 2006). Jordi Borja on the other hand, indicates that the principle of urban public space is not so much its juridical nature but the sociological approach, its uses and access conditions. However, defining public space as access or use is currently not enough, it is in fact the urban landscape where subjects and objects demand a process by experience. By experiencing a spatiality, it is necessary to reassess the public space essence. In this regard, Henri Lefebvre in La production de l’espace (H. Lefebvre 1991 (1974)), explains first a line for rethinking the relation between the architecture and the social, in a sense that Bernard Tschumi relates the relationship between the social and the built environment, going outside the realm of architecture to explore the space. Tschumi retains from Lefebvre the genuine social space as an assemblage of vital characteristics. First, it is a matter of accommodating social practices in a physically good way: streets designed to respond a fluent pedestrian use. Second, the social space is a matter of representativeness: it uses legible and imaginable codes. Third, the social practices need symbolism: identity, ownership, and civic pride. These characterisations of social spaces are located in Tschumi’s thinking and design on the late 1970s and beginning of 1980s,44 and in his project “The Manhattan Transcripts,” he tries to read architecture in which space, movement and events are independent, yet stand new relations to each other (Tschumi 1981). This dynamic conception resonates in contemporary situations, especially when trying to define the public sphere like the contemporary occupations. They exposed dynamic relationships between space, subjects, objects, movement, event, dissidence and suchlike, materialized in the urban scope that is practiced and unfold the contemporary city’s crescendos. “Architecture, then, does not occupy a place but provides place… and in so doing occurs as an event that ‘there is’" (Cassey 1998 [1997]).
The Umbrella Movement settled contemporary dynamics in a state of exception using contemporary and daily-life objects to produce the public space. First, in a city like Hong Kong where there is a lack of public spaces, what protestors had before becoming occupiers, was a city filled with infrastructure for mobilization and commercial shops. Henceforth, occupiers deterritoralized the city’s infrastructure and then reterritorialized it into their public space. Besides this [de] [re] territorialisation of the physical, and afterward, public space, occupiers reinterpreted these practices in the virtual public space. Fearing that the government would shut down the Internet as it happened in the Arab Spring in 2011, occupiers used the mobile app “FireChat,” which works with Bluetooth and requires a maximum distance of 65 meters between the sender and the receiver. In less than a week, the app had more than 5,1 million chat rooms and during the peak point of the protests, it was downloaded half a million times, registering 37,000 mobiles using it at
44 Bernard Tschumi, “The Environmental Trigger.” Text prepared for a symposium at the AA in 1972.
275 the time.45 This virtual condition generated a corporal approach much closer between occupiers, initiating a new active spatial common dynamic in both public spaces, the physical and virtual [the contemporary public space], which breed a relation for the new socio-spatial makers.
Radical is spatialized when there is a radical coding, a temporality, and experience spatial practice within the existing structure. Likewise, the spatial symbols of the occupations distinct between ‘institutional public spaces’ and ‘insurgent public spaces.’ It transforms quotidian actions into dissident ones with spatial experiences beyond the intents of its design or beyond the boundaries of the re-appropriation. Furthermore, the occupation shares a creative inclusive pre-figurative structure where the ‘path is the destination,’ towards the mobilization of radicality. The mobilization in this spatiality means that the act of experiencing and practicing the city with a dissident approach is an essential factor for the commons, while the idea of mobilization is essentially derived from the general idea of collectivity. According to David Niven (Niven 2004) the essence of mobilization is to conceive the fact that access to information increases and raises participation within cognitive and behavioural context. It opens opportunities to share ideas, strategies, tactics and practices involving movement, producing a public space that brings mobilization of data, information, objects, resources, knowledge and technology. Dissident bodies and the contemporary public space work as one-body in an urban assembly practice, turning space into a resonance initiation of radicality. It forms a rhizome, a decentred, horizontal, multi-sited assemblage of innumerable focal points connected with each other in space and time.
Throughout the making of the radical spatiality, another spatial situation is visible, which shifts the meaning of experiencing spatial practices, and sets one of the most important parameters that affect directly to the production of architectural urban landscape design. OWS occupied Zuccotti Park, a POPS [Privately Owned Public Space], spaces born from the bonus plaza program that give allowances for extra floors atop new buildings in exchange of creating and managing public spaces. Since 2011, this regulation became popular in different cities, affecting the production of public space in the contemporary city, for what this situation is explored in the following chapter.
Thus, the radical spatiality is a non-binary relation of private and public, inside and outside, architecture and social science, the one or the other; it is instead a continuum that manifests itself in a plane of resilient simultaneities. Ad-hoc architecture and dissident architectural practices provide conditions that diagnose processes of becomings and reterritorialisation of obsolete urban dynamics. Rem Koolhaas claims that public sphere has withered away or perished. However, he is not talking about a specific urban landscape that becomes obsolete, in its place it is more about the cultural and political practice over it: the practice of freedom, political, personal, and collective. The
45 Kevin Fitchard, As Hong Kong protests escalate, FireChat sees a surge in off-grid messaging. Gigaom, September 2014. https://gigaom.com/2014/09/29/as-hong-kong-protests-escalate-firechat-sees-a-surge-in-off-grid-messaging/
276 spatialization of the radical does not recover the cultural, spatial and life loss, but settles all the conditions for the reinvention [not the creation] of them. The radical spatiality is experienced in an evolving time-space that David Harvey suggests as time and space shrinking simultaneously. Lefebvre on the other hand, discusses how the scheme of urban forms is the most immediate and concrete way of forming a city (Lefebvre 1996). This point allows people to produce their own social conditions: the meeting of different elements countenances the focus of design-make. It means empowering the everyday urban culture, actions and landscape, emboldening the radical spatiality for bodies to move freely by experiencing the space within a public sphere and processing culturally, a dissident architectural urban landscape. Nevertheless, the temporality and continuity of this spatiality depends on temporal inside actions and interactions. The discontinuity, arythm, shock, and disturbance act as an urban narrative that produces design practices as the spatialization of radicality. Radical spatiality is the becomings, exploring, making, practising, failing, reinventing, temporal but continuously. It is a spatial designing practice that projects the architectural urban landscape in the contemporary public space.
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CHAPTER V. POST-RADICAL SPATIALITY
The space of the commons differs from both public and private space. Public and private spaces entail institutionalized relations between people and things, regulated by the state: public property is maintained by the state and private property is guaranteed by it. Sometimes this form of government operates by maintaining the distinction between public and private spaces, and sometimes by blurring them. The endless privatization of public space is mirrored by the incessant intrusion of public agents into the private domain, both constituting useful techniques of government control. Al-Mashà, The Return to the Common
¿What makes public space public? Currently, it is certainly difficult to have one definition to answer this question. It is possible to say whether a space is public or private in terms of legislation, property, physical aspects, open or restrictive use, normative, collective imagination, appropriation, virtual, and so on. In any case, public and private space cannot be described only in Cartesian terms anymore.
5.1 The legal legacy
5.1.1 Privately Owned Public Spaces - POPS
The privatization of the public land is a concept that was born in 1961 in New York. However, the public only generally knew it when OWS occupied Zuccotti Park, a privately owned park. Places like the Hong Kong’s HSBC Plaza, Taipei’s 101 Tower, Paternoster Square in London, City Square in Melbourne, Zuccotti Park in New York, Liverpool One in Liverpool, to mention a few, are public spaces of private property, and expose a global chain of hybrid spaces with inconsistent nexus of public and private domains. The urban regulations that allow privatizing legally the public land are known as “Privately Owned Public Spaces.”
Privately Owned Public Spaces – (from now onwards POPS) 1. A plaza, arcade, or other outdoor or indoor space provided for public use by a private office or residential building owner in return for a zoning concession. 2. A type of public space characterized by the combination of private ownership and zoning- specified public use. 3. One of 525 or so plazas, urban plazas, residential plazas, public plazas, elevated plazas, arcades, through block arcades, through block gallerias, through block connections, covered pedestrian spaces, sidewalk widenings, open air concourses, or other privately owned public
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spaces specifically defined by New York City’s Zoning Resolution and accompanying legal instruments. 4. Law’s oxymoronic invention APOPS, Advocates for Privately Owned Public Space1
During the early 1900s, the industrial revolution set up a series of construction systems that allowed building higher skyscrapers. In New York, there was a critical reaction to the construction of buildings that blocked light and air to reach the ground floor. In a parallel operation, there was a kind of competition to grasp the tallest building in this city, in a sense because there were no restrictions or regulations besides the limits of construction systems (Img. 1).
The 120 Broadway, also known as the Equitable Building (Img. 2) located in lower Manhattan, was a 41-floor office building completed in 1915. Its design was bulky and its walls rose uninterruptedly, however its sidewalks were only 1.5 meters wide. Due to the lack of relationship with the city, this design provoked concerns in citizens and planners. Thus, the New York’s Planning Commission wrote the first urban regulation, the “Zoning Resolution” in 1916, which was the first one of its kind in the United States. This resolution regulated height district rules in buildings’ mass and specified that buildings’ design should consider the urban context. Although, these rules were not specific or technical, which generated a vague set of design parameters.
This Zoning Resolution implied that if the building covered no more than ¼ parts of the whole plot, there were no height restrictions because it was assumed it would be slim and tall, without interfering with light and air to reach the ground level (Jerold S. Kayden 2000). Nevertheless, this initial regulation pointed at the height of buildings, not the conditions to relate to the urban context; hence, most of the projects covered their plots completely without open spaces. This situation changed when the Seagram Building was completed in 1958 (Img. 3). Mies van der Rohe’s iconic building became a model not only for architectural design but also for implementing urban regulations in the construction sector. One of the intentions of Mies van der Rohe was to connect the building with the city; thus, in a gesture of setting back the building 100 feet (30.48 meters) from the street edge, he designed an open plaza, attracting people to use it as a public space. This design distanced the building from the conventional New York urban morphology when Mies van der Rohe placed an in-between space at the entry of the building, and connecting this way the skyscraper to the city.
Three years later, in 1961, the New York City enacted a general revision to its former 1916 Zoning Resolution, this time including the Seagram’s design parameters, which became popular among local residents, critics, urban planners, architects, private investors, and local authorities. In this
1APOPS, Advocates for Privately Owned Public Space. http://apops.mas.org/about/
280 occasion, the Zoning Resolution offered incentives for developers if they included in their projects the “Privately Owned Public Spaces.” This agreement between the local government and private developers, influenced the development of the cityscape for the following decades (Img. 4).
Img. 1 Skyscrapers in New York, early 20th century
Img. 2 120 Broadway, Equitable Building, New York
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Img. 3 Seagram Building. Left: Ground floor plan. Right: Entrance plaza
It represents a giant stride forward in the City’s efforts to meet the compelling problems imposed by a modern metropolis. It frees the City from the shackles of the past as embodied by the old code. The City’s first Zoning Resolution, passed in 1916 and hailed as a pioneering achievement then, had become hopelessly inadequate Complicated by a three-map system with more than 2,500 map and text amendments, and antique and unwieldy provisions, it impeded rather than encouraged logical planning progress. It failed to provide a rational guide to the growth and future development of the City, and equally serious, failed to protect existing development from encroachment by incompatible or undesirable uses. A great number of new uses and new problems have come into being since the passage of the 1916 Resolution. Modern construction techniques and a multitude of new materials have been developed. The automobile has demonstrated an insatiable appetite for space – for parking, for highways, for garaging – in an era when our old zoning code was hitched to the horse and buggy. The demands of these technological and social changes have been met by the new Resolution. Moreover, because of its rational structure, the Resolution will be easy to amend in order to meet the needs of the future. The new Resolution, for example, specifically makes provision for the inclusion of new uses in appropriate District as they come into existence. City Planning Commission, Department of City Planning. The City’s of New York. Zoning Handbook.
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Img. 4 New York Map Guide, 1963. Herman Bollmann2
This resolution introduced the concept of incentive zoning by adding a bonus of extra floor space, with the purpose to encourage private developers to incorporate open and publicly accessed spaces into their projects.
A Floor Area Ratio (FAR) defined the total floor area that a building could have in a specific zoning lot in relation to the area of the building plot. Floor area ratio = (total covered area on all floors of all buildings on a certain plot, gross floor area) / (area of the plot)
If private developers applied for POPS, they were rewarded with up to 10 sq. m. of FAR bonus for their buildings, with a limit of 20% in building size. The regulation was successful; almost every building built from the 1960s to the 1970s included the POPS amendment in their design. The local government required POPS to be open and accessible 24 hours a day, to include a sign indicating their state as POPS, which has to be mounted on a wall or a permanent free-standing post within 1.5 meters of the sidewalk, its centre 1.5 meter above the elevation of the nearest walkable pavement (Img. 5), and made of concrete or metal.
2 Henri Bollmann, New York Map Guide, 1963. One of the greatest cartographic feats of all time, this 1963 axonometric (‘bird’s eye view’) map of New York City was the first such since 1866. The technique dates back to the 15th century, and developed in Germany into a fully flowered cartographic art form called Vogelschaukarten in Germany in the 1800s. Herman Bollmann prepared this particular map for the 1864 New York World’s Fair, where it was sold at information and tourist kiosks. In making the map in the 1950s, Herman Bollmann and his staff faced a seemingly insurmountable problem, one never before encountered by his few predecessors in axonometric cartography: how to show New York’s many and densely concentrated skyscrapers from the same angle and relative height, while not obscuring most of the city behind them? He and his team designed and built special cameras to take 67,000 photos, 17,000 from the air. Using these photos as a base, they then began to hand draw the entire city. Using then-secret cartographic techniques, Bollmann and team managed to depict the smallest details while simultaneously conveying the city’s soaring, vertiginous beauty. The viewer is thus placed in the position of an Olympian God, a perspective that no other technologic and artistic form offers, even in the Internet age: with this map spread out before you, you have the ability to look upon any part of the city at will, down to its smallest detail, without waiting for a camera to pan or zoom or cut, without waiting for the next web page to load or zoom. Via Geographicushttp://www.geographicus.com/P/AntiqueMap/NewYorkGuide-bollmann-1963
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Img. 5 Sample entry plate of POPS known as the "broccoli."
During the following years, the Zoning Resolution was constantly updated in design and requirements sections. It added the permissible height of plazas above and below an abutting sidewalk, movable chairs and fixed benches, a minimum number of trees, and planter ledges, to mention a few. Nevertheless, during the 1970s crises, the City Hall took some decisions related to the Zoning Resolution in order to reactivate the city’s economy. It soft some regulations such as giving to developers special permissions to have higher densities in their constructions, to have more built-area, less environment requirements, less restrictions in designs, and faster procedures in processes reviews. In 1980s, there appeared again bulkier buildings, and by the 1990s, the Zoning Regulation was very complex and difficult to understand even for specialized lawyers (Kayden 2000).
To deal with this situation, Jerold Kayden,3 the New York City Department of Planning, and the Municipal Art Society, collaborated together in a research about POPS created from 1961 to 2000. It resulted in the book “Privately Owned Public Space: the New York Experience,” which indicates their legislation, data, use, and design. In numbers, the research quantifies 503 POPS, in a covered area of 300,000 sq. m. – nearly the 10% of Central Park area and a media of 1,400 sq. m.; 3% of this area is qualified as space for people from inside and outside the neighbourhood, 13% is categorized as a neighbourhood space, 21% as hiatus space for brief stopovers, and 18% works only for mobilizing as pedestrian circulation. 41% of the total area is described as marginal spaces “without any measurable public use” (Kayden 2000). There are also POPS that are not necessarily created but are maintained and preserved by private entities, or if a building has an indoor space, it is used for the public. By doing so, the developer is entitled to apply for tax benefits. The publication also specifies that by 2000, New York City granted over six million sq.m of additional floor area to developers, whereof nearly five million sq.m were built [a similar built area of the Empire State building].
3 Jerold Kayden, professor of Urban Planning and Design at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design. He served as Co-Chair of the Department of Urban Planning and Design and as Director of the Master in Urban Planning Degree Program.
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_Location The Img. 6 presents that most of the POPS are located in Manhattan, specifically in Wall Street and Upper East Side. The reason is the basic mechanism of the Zoning Resolution: the reliance on the market attracted developers to build more offices or residential buildings where the demand is higher, in this case, mostly in Manhattan. Meanwhile in other areas of the city where the demand is limited or reduced in profit for developers, POPS simply do not exist. Consequently, it alters first, and then transforms, the architectural urban landscape of the city.
Img. 6. Location, Rules and Regulations of POPS in New York, Manhattan. Source: www.whoownspace.blogspot.com
_Design “Design Controls” refer mainly to ways of having light and air reaching the ground floor. In 2007, the City Council included an amendment related to design and operational standards for POPS, being the biggest renewing on the urban regulations since 1961. For instance, a plaza is defined as a space accessible to the public at all times, not less than 3 meters deep measured from the front lot line, not at any point more than 1.5 meter above, and not more than 3.65 meters below the current level of the joining the street.
The public plaza shall contain an area of not less than 2000 sq. feet (…). Any non-bonus open area located adjacent to a public plaza, other than an open area bounding, a street line used for pedestrian access, must either: a) be separated from the public plaza by a buffer, such as a wall, decorative fence, or opaque plantings at least six feet in height; or
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b) meet all requirements for minor portions of ‘public plazas’ related to size, configuration, orientation, as specified in section 37-716.4
Img. 7 POPS in New York. 155 East 29th Street
It indicated that these places need permissible heights above and below abutting sidewalks, movable chairs and fixed benches, a minimum of number of trees, planter ledges, and hard materials for most of the surfaces. About seating, the Zoning Resolution designates that at least 50% of linear feet of fixed seating, have to back at least 35 cm high and a maximum seat depth of 50 cm. Walls located adjacent to a seating surface do not count as seat backs. All seat backs must either be contoured in form for comfort or be reclined from vertical between 10 to 15 degrees. Moveable chairs shall not be chained, fixed, or otherwise secured. However, they could be removed during the night-time hours from 9:00 pm to 7:00 am.5
5.1.2 The Nomosphere and the nomospheric OWS
David Delaney’s work “Nomospheric Investigations,” [re]conceptualises the field of law and space, and proposes a coherent analysis about how practical intertwining are accomplished and transformed (Delaney 2010). He projects this articulation in Lefebvre’s conception of space, constituting the realm of the legal and the spatial into what he denominates as the nomosphere. Nomosphere refers to “the cultural material environs that are constituted by the reciprocal materialization of ‘the legal’, and the legal signification of the socio-spatial, and the practical, performative engagements through which such constitutive moments happen and unfold” (Delaney 2010).
Take, for example, law’s many material locations – the guarded precincts where what law there is, is everyday announced and imparted, reminded-of and applied, dutifully taught and dutifully learned, keenly catalogued and attentively researched or, else, professionally illustrated and then dearly made available. Take, in other words, our tribunals, courts, prisons, police stations, universities, law schools, law libraries, archives, law firms, etc. These precincts are seen to rise
4 Appendix 4 5 Public Plazas. Follow up text amendments. http://www1.nyc.gov/assets/planning/download/pdf/plans/pops/zoning_text_proposal_2009_02_09.pdf
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(as physical constructions) or develop (as institutional places) in Space. Consider, too, law’s innumerable people – the people by whim the law is said to be represented and, each time, given a name, a face and a voice – the name, face and voice of the thousand legal practitioners, judges, law, professors, law students, inmates, etc. who live, breathe and work in the West. They too are usually seen to occupy or be surrounded by, each time, this or that particular fraction of linear, measurable, calculable Space – this or that building, this or that subjective place (the place of a subject “like them”), or his or that office or bench (the place generated by a particular institutional context) – a space, moreover, with which or my or may not come across one day during our own everyday activities. Take, finally, law’s almost infinite web of legal instructions (rules, regulations, offices, judgments, procedures principles, concepts, etc.), which, they too, are to be found (or so it appears) in Space. Accordingly, in space as legal places law’s many material locations, people and instructions invoke and evoke the (legal) evidence of a neutral, universal equivalence (the equivalence between Space and the places that they are), as well as contextually suggesting what, from now on, the essence of each (legal) place should be dutifully taken to be. (Stramignoni 2004)
The immersion on Lefebvre’s spatial conception conforms a unity between physical, mental, and social space, while the nomosphere as a singularity, or in terms of its more specific or localized components, is irreducibly discursive, performative and material. It exists in the ever-shifting interplay among legal signifiers, material locations, things, and socio-spatial forms that mediate embodied practices (Munro 2012). Borders, checkpoints, prisons, colonies, empires, camps, municipalities, and so on, show a jurisdiction and governance of this kind of spaces. Thus, it is necessary to differentiate the legal from the nomic. The first one refers formally to law, while nomic is understood as “the dimension of social order and ordering implicated by normatively inflected, world-constituting rules (nomic traces) with reference to which social power is constellated or finds worldly expressions. Such rules may be tacit or explicit, informal or formal” (Munro 2012). Both Delaney and Munro observe that the ‘parcelization’ of legality and spatiality is still fragmented, for what they need to be transversal. Legality is seen in a more material term and space in a more legal mode, which is a platform that embeds an interdisciplinary morphology.
David Delaney entices the socio-spatial notion as “one point of entry from which to initiate nomospheric investigations” (Delaney 2010), for what the OWS archievent is considered to understand the transformation of a temporal architectural urban landscape. During the evolution of this archievent, the everyday aspect implies a certain urgency or problematic in occupiers. They can refer to any scale, from the microscopic to the global, and embracing the location as a set of circumstances (Munro 2012), it “implies an active involvement of being and the world, it implies a dynamic of co-constitutively through which being [experience] and world are jointly made up or
287 happen” (Delaney 2010). It can be an occurrence that shatters ordinary life, a radical spatiality that transforms collective experiences. Thus, the nomospheric dissidence in which conflicts present nomic situations are forced to actively comply or transgress.
Our situations are never conditioned by the workings of nomosphericity as (variously) imagined, materialized and lived. You are always either “home” or “not home”, “in public” or not. You are always in some state or subject to some jurisdiction. Are you ever outside of the international? (Delaney 2010)
In this sense, Zuccotti Park presents itself as an oxymoron.6 OWS reclaimed literally and symbolically the public in a private place (Sassen 2011), and display an irony of the occupied use of Zuccotti Park once called “Liberty Plaza” (Mendieta 2011). Elaborating symbolism, Mendieta argues that to occupy can only mean to re-occupy a space that was formerly public but sold to a real estate developer. To occupy means to reclaim what belongs properly to the public sphere. On the other hand, Peter Marcuse notes that in a city as dense as New York, there are few spaces where citizens can gather to learn, discuss, and confront issues of public matters,7 thus OWS converted a concrete park into a public square. The appropriation of Zuccotti Park is a rejection of the routines of corporate life in the city, presenting another layer of the blurred legislation about urban regulations and public spaces. The archievent illustrates that POPS are not really public, they are semi-public or quasi-public, controlled by landlords and determined who could have access or not to these spaces. During the occupation, OWS illustrated how citizens granted the ideal of public space, a place to express openly, to create and be part of assemblies, free entertainment, public speech [i.e., the Speaker’s Corner in Hyde Park, London], and challenged their commercial state [i.e., Spanish terrazas].
5.2 Transformation of the architectural urban landscape
5.2.1 From Tahrir Square to New Cairo
_ Land property in Egypt In 1952, the Egyptian State implanted a land reform that changed the structure of land property. During that time, less than 6% of Egypt’s population owned more than 65% of the land, and less than 0.5% owned more than one-third of all fertile land. Owners charged high rents with an
6Oxymoron: a figure of speech in which apparently contradictory terms appear in conjunction. Oxford Dictionary, third edition. 7Peter Marcuse, Occupy and the Provision of Public Space: The City’s Responsibilities. (Oakland-United States, New Village Press, 2012)
288 average of 75% of the income generated by rented land,8 thus, the president in turn Muhammad Naguib, installed in September 1952 the Law No. 178, which limited land holdings to 200 feddans (84 hectares) per person. Owners were entitled to transfer up to 100 feddans (42 hectares) to their non-adult children and to sell the remains in the open market. In 1961, a new law of land reduced the limit to 100 feddans per individual and 200 feddans per household. In total, 15% of Egypt’s agricultural land was affected. By the end of the 1960s, about 80% of land was officially redistributed with full rights to 318,000 small farmers (17% of families depended on agriculture); 25% of them owned between one and five feddans. The ceiling remained at 200 feddans per family, and the measures brought no benefits to landless or holders for less than 1 feddan. The law did not fully achieve its objectives since many large landowners managed, usually illegally, to keep possession of estates exceeding the limits.9 Under Mubarak’s regime, one in ten Egyptians lost their farms, and by 1990s, self-sustained farmer families became landless sharecroppers or migrated to cities.10 Instead, military officials were appointed as regional governors, village chiefs and put in charge of state-run companies. The military undertook land expropriations and started to run companies and factories [mainly in agriculture and construction].11 Mubarak implemented further reforms alongside United States Agency for International Development [USAID] and the World Bank, and by 1991, he signed the Economic Restructuring and Adjustment Program with the International Monetary Fund [IMF], which liberated trade and prices, privatization, and labour flexibility, and removed several social safety net measures. These reforms resulted in an extensive dispossession of small farmers and a further alliance between economic and military political elites.
This privatization program led to an unprecedented plundering of national economy to a small elite. “Out of 314 state-run companies, 209 were privatized by 2005. The number of workers employed by public sector companies was cut in half between 1994 and 2001. The IMF praised the privatization program in 2006 for having surpassed expectations.”12 Only the 8% of land was registered, which meant that acquiring property was very difficult while governmental use of land was not part of official records.13 The land regulation monopolized by a small elite was followed by an endless list of rules and restriction. By 2010, very few people could afford to buy a piece of land and for those who wanted to build a house or to cultivate, needed a lease on land without receiving a title of property. In this situation, from 1998 to 2010, there were registered between 3,400 and 4,000 strikes that involved around 4 million workers. In 2006 there were 266 strikes, the following
8Assem Al-Desoky, Major Landowners in Egypt: 1914-1952. (New Jersey, Yale University Press, 2009) 9BeshirSakr, PhanjofTarcir, The 1952 land reform (Le Monde Diplomatique, 2007) https://mondediplo.com/2007/10/10reform 10Roy Prosterman, Egypt’s landless have no love for Mubarak (The Guardian, 8 February 2011) http://www.theguardian.com/global-development/poverty-matters/2011/feb/08/egypt-landless-mubarak 11Angela Joya, The Egyptian revolution: crisis of neoliberalism and the potential for democratic politics (Review of African Political Economy, Vol. 38, No 129, September 2011) 12Henry Veltemeyer, Unrest and Change: Dispatches from the Frontline of a Class War in Egypt (Globalization, Vol. 8, No 5, October 2011) http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/14747731.2011.625823 13 Felix Inmonti, Egypt: As Military owns 92 Percent, Land Reform is Key (ValueWalk, September 23, 2013) http://www.valuewalk.com/2013/09/egypt-military-owns-92-percent-land-reform-key/?all=1
289 year 614 rallies, and 1,900 in 2009.14 These demonstrations were consolidating the energy for the 2011 Revolution.
_Privatization of the architectural urban landscape – military After the 2011 Revolution, the city’s landscape started a process of militarization. Between 2011 and 2013 around Tahrir Square, there were continuous strikes that somehow formed a battlefield, which initiated a temporal mechanism that altered daily activities and spaces into stages or urban warfare. Concrete walls were placed and blocked mobility and congregation of people (Img. 8). There were metal fences on sidewalks, police stations, watchtowers, new monuments and statues in squares and parks, military hotels, administrative and companies’ buildings and even military training grounds (Elshahed 2015). These elements took the role of a militarized architecture that framed social interactions through movements. The architect and urban planner Omar Nagati, indicates that these walls are a post-revolutionary spatial renegotiation between people and authorities: “people are setting the terms and authorities are just responding by building walls” (Malsin 2013).
The walling created a buffer zone where barriers, barricades, tanks, walls, wires, army controlled zones, soldiers, protestors, government buildings, streets, and so on, composed a phenomenon that altered people and spaces’ behaviours. It fragmented Tahrir area in two spatialities: a regulated area and a conflict zone. Tahrir became an archipelago of militarized architecture where every element was part of a battlefield.15 In November 2013, President Morsi passed a law16 that banned any form of public demonstration, and put under curfew Egypt's major urban centres from 7:00pm for public security. According to Amnesty International, this law threats freedom of assembly and grants unrestricted allowance to use force, including lethal force against demonstrators.17 With this law, the Minister of Interior and governors could declare public spaces out off limits to protest, including zones that surrounds presidential palaces, parliaments, ministries, diplomatic missions and embassies, court buildings, hospitals, prisons, police stations or points, military zones and heritage sites. In addition, if people wanted to protest, they needed to obtain five different permissions before they were allowed to gather in public, overnight sit-ins were banned, and gatherings of 10 people or more were immediately sanctioned.
14Joel Beinin, Egyptian Workers and January 25th: A Social Movement in Historical Context (Social Research Vol. 79, No 2, Summer 2012) 15 The author made a field research in which, through interviews, observation and investigation, could identify certain aspects of this urban model in Cairo. 16 Appendix 5 17 Amnesty International, Egypt: New protest law gives security forces free rein. https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2013/11/egypt-new-protest-law-gives-security-forces-free-rein/
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Img. 8 Egyptian army engineers and soldiers build a third line of concrete blocks outside the presidential palace in Cairo, 9 December 2012
Img. 9 Tahrir Walls
_Post-Tahrir Square Simultaneously, in the outskirts of the city, the government was using a different urban development strategy with the intention to build a new Egypt’s capital. In 2008, the master plan “Cairo Vision 2050,” known as the dubaization model,18 followed the vision of other global cities’ projects such as Tokyo 2050, Sydney 2030, Paris 2020, London 2020, and Singapore 2050. By using the slogan “Global… Green… Connected,” the project bases on redistributing a significant part of the Greater Cairo Region’s population in order to lower the capital’s density (2050 2008). With Arab Emirates funding, this project presented a city centre filled with skyscrapers, green open areas, and bulky buildings (Img. 10). However, after the 2011 Revolution, the plan “Cairo 2050” was dismissed by the General Organization for Physical Planning (GOPP) (Tadamun 2014).
Img. 10 “Cairo Future Vision 2050” presentation. Img. 11 Egyptian President Abdel Fatah el-Sisi and Photo credits: GOPP (2009) Dubai ruler Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum
18 Dubaization, http://dubaization.com/post/114206050823/obsession-or-why-the-new-new-cairo-is-not
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But it was the 2013 occupation in Gezi/Taksim the motif that provoke in Egyptians a possible new uprising in Tahrir Square. Therefore, the government closed officially the “Cairo 2050” project. However, two years later in March 2015, President Fattah al-Sissi announced the construction of a new capital city. Investing £30bn, this 700-sq. km. project (unnamed but commonly called “The New Capital”) included 21 residential districts, 1,250 mosques and churches, 1.1 million houses, artificial lakes, about 2000 educational institutions, a technology park, 663 medical centres, and 40,000 hotel rooms (Img. 11).19 This project meant the construction of an entire city by using private investment and following POPS regulations. This project is currently under construction. It has an area similar in size to Singapore, an airport bigger than London Heathrow, a park double the size of New York’s Central Park, and a theme park four times as big as Disneyland, and it is expected to be completed in ten years (Cairo 2015).20 Nezar al-Sayyad, Professor of Architecture, Planning, Urban Design and Urban History at University of California, Berkeley, compared this plan to other similar projects such as Brasilia, Islamabad, and Canberra, and concludes it is farcical and fails to achieve any prerequisite of success (Ibrahim 2015). In addition, David Sims, urban planner based in Cairo, told The Guardian that the plan was ludicrous:
The scale is huge, and there is questions like ¿how are they going to build the infrastructure? ¿How are they going to get water? ¿How will they move all the governmental buildings? In other words, I think it’s just desperation. It will be interesting to see if anything comes of it, but rather doubt it. (Kingsley 2015)
Nezar al-Sayyad pointed that during the official presentation, some images presented in Cairo were taken from the project “Marin Bay Sands and Gardens” in Singapore, they were not even authentic. Thus, the 2011 Revolution brought two different urban, economical and legal interventions on Cairo: one is a city centre controlled by the army [concrete walls, metal fences, watchtowers], and one that intends to create a private-funded new capital city.
Img. 12 Egypt’s new capital to be situated east of New Cairo. Source: thecapitalcairo.com
19 Presentation of the project “The Capital Cairo.” http://thecapitalcairo.com/ 20 President el-Sisi during the conference called out: “ten years is too long, make it five” (Cairo 2015).
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5.2.2 Spatializing Occupying London
The Occupy Movement was a decentralized and horizontal social multi structure materialized in the public space [physical and virtual] that activated new dynamics in the public sphere, a phenomenon that was quickly extended around the world. Nevertheless, in London the situation was particularly different from other Occupy protests. When the movement started to emerge, it was rapidly controlled, not by authorities but by private security guards. Protesters intended to sit-in Paternoster Square, the outside plaza of the London Stock Exchange building, located in the City, but they could not enter. The reason: the square was a private property.
The creation of Paternoster Square revealed a promiscuity of changing hands’ owners for more than twenty years. In 1980s, the city started a plan to demolish all the post-war buildings. At that time, the plaza was property of the Church Commissioners but in 1985, the Mountleigh Group took a 250-year lease on the core of the site and organised an urban planning competition (Glancey 2003). The square, located adjacent to the north side of St Paul’s Cathedral in the City of London, was bombed in 1942 and re-built in 1961. Because of its symbolism, location, and history, the competition brought worldwide recognized architectures firms to the scene such as Richard Rogers, Norman Foster, Arata Isozaki, Richard MacCormac, James Stirling, Arup Associates and Skidmore Owings & Merrill. Arup’s postmodern project won the competition although the Prince of Wales Charles and his ten-architect team presented a new project: a neoclassical concrete structure with an underground shopping mall. However, the Prince’s idea and Arup’s project were revoked. As the public was drizzling in ideas, the project was pointed to William Whitfield, a British architect, who designed the current curate’s egg (Img. 13).
Img. 13 Paternoster Square. Left: Ground floor plan. Right: Google Maps street view
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Paternoster Square [from the Latin pater noster: Our Father] is surrounded by a mass of offices and bulky buildings where Whitfield designated two styles: classicists and modernists. These buildings are hulking: six and seven-floor high, with colonnades on the ground level and finishes in a mix of bricks and stones. The pedestrian alleys that lead to Ave Maria Lane are narrow, and there are classical-lite shops, flats, and offices; this pedestrian precinct invokes displacement, not permanence. There is a general use of stone, and lacks of water supply, vegetation spots, or comfortable seating. By 2003, the project was completed with an investment of £120 millions and currently belongs to Mitsubishi Estate Co. (Img. 14).21 Anecdotally, it was repeatedly described as a ‘public space’ when it was under construction.22 In the fall of 2011, the owners of Paternoster Square were able to issue a court injunction that banned protesters to use the square for protests as they felt the threat of a new OWS or Arab Spring (Koksal 2015). Immediately, a sign was placed in the main access to the Square, which reads (Img. 15):
Paternoster Square is private land. Any licence to the public to enter or cross this land is revoked forthwith. There is no implied or express permission to enter the premises or any part without consent. Any such entry will constitute a trespass. Limited consent is hereby given, but can be revoked at any time, for entry on the accessible parts of the square, solely for access to the offices, retail units and leisure premises for genuine building, retail and leisure purposes. Visitors must at all times comply with the directions given by our security personal.
Img. 14 Paternoster Square property sign Img. 15 Sign at the entrance of Paternoster Square
21 Jonathan Glancey, Pull it down! The Guardian, 3 April 2003, http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2003/apr/07/architecture.artsfeatures 22 Koksal, Isabelle, Activist Intervention: Walking in the City of London. Occupy! A Global Movement. Oxon: Routledge, 2015
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Nonetheless, protesters did find a space to occupy in the City: a small triangular plot outside St. Paul’s Cathedral, yet it was not a truly public space as it belongs to the Church of England and the Corporation of London. Occupy London thwarted intention to occupy Paternoster Square proved the power corporations have in London, especially when regulating and deciding what, how, who and when the square could be used.
During the last years, London has transferred nearly one million sq. m. [an area of seventy-football pitches] of public areas to private investors. The latest POPS in this city is the “Granary Square” project (Img. 16), which was opened to the public in 2012 and is considered one of the biggest publicly accessed spaces in Europe (27 hectares) and in London since Trafalgar Square in 1845.23 Designed by Townshend Landscape Architects, this project is part of the master plan “King’s Cross Central,” is managed by a private estate of 10 plazas and parkland near the rail hub (Cross 2015). At the entrance, the welcoming sign says: "Welcome to King's Cross. Please enjoy this private estate properly." At the centre of the square, there are 4 banks of fountains that correspond to the size of the building in front, “the Cubitt,” and the channels next to the plaza contain individual jets that are programmed individually. The plaza includes restaurants, pubs, café shops, while the open space host festivals, concerts, and expositions. Thus, the design programme addresses a certain group of activities that are mainly commercial.
In recent years, large parts of Britain's cities have been redeveloped as privately owned estates, extending corporate control over public spaces. Some of the consequences of this privatization of public land are the creation of new spaces characterised by high-security, defensible architecture, and strict rules and regulations that conduct particular behaviours.
Img. 16 Granary Square, London
Cycling, skateboarding, and inline skating are often banned, so are busking and selling goods, filming, taking photographs and any kind of political protest. In 2014, an urban law passed through the UK Parliament. The law “Anti-Social Behaviour, Crime and Policing” (Kingdom 2014) tackles a
23 King’s Cross, Granary Square, https://www.kingscross.co.uk/granary-square
295 wide range of issues and gives to local authorities the power to make Public Space Protection Orders (PSPOs), to control access to open spaces. This law includes new Gating Orders [fencing public spaces], which could be applied to any public space.24 It gives to PSPO owners the authority to determine and restrict access under the articles 10 and 11 of the European Convention on Human Rights. 25 A dispersal power allows the police to remove any individual or group of people from a locality for up to 48 hours, and to confiscate property that has been used or is likely to be used in an activity that harasses, alarms or distresses a member of the public. These legal statements fusion in one-body to authorities and private investors as an association to pressure the aspect and use of these spaces.
5.3 Post-occupation architectural urban landscape
5.3.1 Post – POPS. New York
The Lincoln Center Atrium in New York, the “David Rubenstein Atrium,” a POPS re-designed by the architects TWBTA in 2009, and serves mainly as a ticketing facility for the Lincoln Center. In the official website, it describes the place as:26
24 Appendix 6 25 Anti-Social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Act 2014. PART 4 Community protection notices, CHAPTER 2 Public spaces protection orders, 59 Power to make orders (1)A local authority may make a public spaces protection order if satisfied on reasonable grounds that two conditions are met. (2)The first condition is that— (a)activities carried on in a public place within the authority’s area have had a detrimental effect on the quality of life of those in the locality, or (b)it is likely that activities will be carried on in a public place within that area and that they will have such an effect. (3)The second condition is that the effect, or likely effect, of the activities— (a)is, or is likely to be, of a persistent or continuing nature, (b)is, or is likely to be, such as to make the activities unreasonable, and (c)justifies the restrictions imposed by the notice. (4)A public spaces protection order is an order that identifies the public place referred to in subsection (2) (“the restricted area”) and— (a)prohibits specified things being done in the restricted area, (b)requires specified things to be done by persons carrying on specified activities in that area, or (c)does both of those things. (5)The only prohibitions or requirements that may be imposed are ones that are reasonable to impose in order— (a)to prevent the detrimental effect referred to in subsection (2) from continuing, occurring or recurring, or (b)to reduce that detrimental effect or to reduce the risk of its continuance, occurrence or recurrence. (6)A prohibition or requirement may be framed— (a)so as to apply to all persons, or only to persons in specified categories, or to all persons except those in specified categories; (b)so as to apply at all times, or only at specified times, or at all times except those specified; (c)so as to apply in all circumstances, or only in specified circumstances, or in all circumstances except those specified. (7)A public spaces protection order must— (a)identify the activities referred to in subsection (2); (b)explain the effect of section 63 (where it applies) and section 67; (c)specify the period for which the order has effect. (8)A public spaces protection order must be published in accordance with regulations made by the Secretary of State. 26 Lincoln Center, David Rubenstein Atrium. http://atrium.lincolncenter.org/index.php/about-the-atrium
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● A vibrant community-gathering place to linger in and enjoy, with plenty of places to sit ● A venue for free weekly performances ● A resource for discount tickets to available Lincoln Center performances ● Food service from Chef Tom Colicchio’s witchcraft café ● A staffed Tour and Information Desk ● Restrooms ● A destination for free Wi-Fi access
Before the re-design and construction of the David Rubenstein Atrium, there was “The Harmony Atrium,” a City Council property as a public space. It was an indoor public space that extended from Broadway to Columbus Avenue between 62nd and 63rd streets. It attracted many people who used its rocks-climbing wall and also homeless people sought shelter during winter especially. For the new project, the architects TWBTA expressed their desire to create a hot spot outside the Lincoln Center, where people could buy a day-of-show ticket and-or sip a cup coffee or a cocktail before or after the Center performances. Tom Dunn, director of the David Rubenstein Atrium, indicated that the project was a "true urban oasis, a theatrical garden that's got these wonderful architectural signature items, 25-foot-high vertical gardens, floor to ceiling fountains, and a 97-foot-long installation in felt by the Dutch textile artist Claudy Jongstra – all designed to be a welcoming space for the public.”27 The Atrium project was part of the $1.2 billion Lincoln Center redevelopment and has an area of 650 square meters28 (Img. 17). People who assist to the Centre’s performances, mainly visitors and tourists, use currently The Atrium.29
Img. 17 David Rubenstein Atrium at Lincoln Center. Left: Ground floor plan. Right: Interior view. Source: http://www.twbta.com/work/david-rubenstein-atrium-at-lincoln-center
27 WQXR, An Atrium Gets an Extreme Makeover. http://www.wqxr.org/#!/story/2331-an-atrium-gets-an-extreme- makeover/ 28 Theresa Agovino, Lincoln Center completes $1.2B redevelopment. Crain’s New York Business. October, 2012 29 In a visit to The Lincoln Center in 2012, I decided to spend one day and night at the Atrium. The space was used by freelancers but mainly tourists and people that stopped there for a drink, to get tickets for the Centre’s performances or exhibitions, or to meet people before entering to the Centre. After talking to waiters, bartenders and security guards, they said - among other things - there have not been issues with homeless people or any spontaneous action that could be violent or uncomfortable. However, they said sometimes there have been performances that involved art, music, or dance.
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This project stratifies both use and people that are allow to be in this space. It is a situation that reflects how architectural design and urban regulations work as a system of exclusion and fragmentation. Hence, the power that multitudes and public spaces showed since 2011 incited the creation of POPS and an increment of regulations in more cities across the world. Facing the fact that local governments lack of enough budget to provide and manage public spaces, they have been systematically adjusting these regulations in their urban development plans.
In the position of a private developer, the rational is simple: the value of the incentive is equal or exceeds the cost of providing public space (Kayden 2000). This financial mechanism incentives and attracts private developers because it gives more built area [the higher the building, the more expensive the property is on upper floors], offers taxes benefits, and offers the building an open space that also increases their properties value. Large parts of capital cities are redeveloped as privately owned estates, extending corporate control over squares and thoroughfares. As the Occupy Movement highlighted, private owners can refuse the right of entry to members of the public, closing off swaths of the city and promoting instead, passive activities: “at times when you are not working or shopping, you may go to restaurants or attend to a show or sport’s spectacle.”30 Consequently, there is very little space to do spontaneous activities in current cities. This oxymoronic POPS state blurs the space as public.
Before the occupation in Zuccotti Park, mostly local workers used the place during morning early hours, evening and lunch rush hours, speeding the movement to-from work. The design incentivized passive activities such as sitting or walking through, without leaving any chance to do spontaneous and flexible activities, resulting in an over-designed pseudo-public space. Besides these conditions of spatial control, POPS added another aspect: private security. In this sense, private figures decide who and how could be in these spaces, combining in one body architectural urban design and urban regulations. The POPS owners’ association implemented a legal document called “Rules of Conduct” is 2007, indicating which activities are permissible and prohibited. However, after OWS archievent, this document was reviewed in 2012 [the last version dates to 13th August 2015] ensuing consequently in exhaustive catalogues of conduct. This document contains provisions about design and content of POPS.
[A “Rule of Conduct”] sign shall not prohibit behaviours that are consistent with the normal public use of the public plaza such as lingering, eating, drinking of non-alcoholic beverages or gathering in small groups. No behaviours, actions, or items may be listed on such sign that are otherwise illegal or prohibited by municipal, State, or Federal Laws. (Kayden 2000)
30 Naomi Colvin, Occupy Activist. http://www.theguardian.com/uk/2012/jun/11/granary-square-privately-owned- public-space
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Rules of Conduct signs specify prohibitions in four categories: movement (i.e. no skateboarding); sound (i.e. no radio-playing); illegal activity (i.e. no distribution of controlled substances); and use of space (i.e. no sleeping). These signs express a view of public space as a refugee from urban life rather than a place of social engagement, a situation that Jerold Kayden highlights as a contradiction to the origins of POPS. In the 1958 Zoning Resolution draft, there was a matter-of- factly that recites the rationale for incentivizing public space through zoning:
In order to bring more light and air into the streets surrounded by tall buildings, as well as to create more usable open space, a bonus device has been established to encourage the setting back of buildings from the street line. (Planning 2015)
In the original bonus agreement of 1961, the regulation dealt with plazas in front of buildings, in connection with the Corbusian model of the tower in the park, vexed by contextualists and their street-wall model. According to the City’s own analysis, the Zoning Resolution never expressly defined which limits the owners could enforce, if any, upon public use. Thus, one of the aims of the new Rules of Conduct was to remove the condition that POPS have to be open and accessible by the public at all times. In addition, they ban ‘loitering’ and forbid congregations of a large number of people. In this regard, the Real Estate of New York is reportedly preparing to ask the city to endorse universally applicable rules prohibiting future OWS-style use of public space, coming together with the right to close these spaces at night (Img. 18). Some of the new regulations are the following:
● No camping or erection of tents During OWS occupation, this article started to circulate in the Urban Department of New York. Nowadays, this regulation is part of different cities’ urban plans. ● No Snoozing in Public Most cities have an anti-camping ordinance that prohibits camping or sleeping in public spaces, particularly public parks. They were used before to avoid an image of homeless people using these spaces during nights. ● No umbrellas The Umbrella Revolution in 2014 turned the umbrella [object] in a symbol of defiance and resistance. Consequently, local governments prohibited the erection of permanent or semi-permanent structures such as tents, tarps, and umbrellas. In Seattle, these urban regulations determine that people cannot have an umbrella open unless they are standing or walking and holding it, otherwise they are considered structures, for what they could be confiscated. ● No Open Flames The burn ban generally applies to outdoor cooking like grilling in POPS.
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● No lying down on the ground or on benches These activities are currently considered as a criminal offense that can result in a fine of $50 in the United States, or up to €300 in Spain. In addition, the city council of Honolulu spent about $11,000 removing benches and installing stools (Lockton 2008). ● No tarps or sleeping bags Because OWS started the occupation with the use of these elements, they are currently prohibited. ● No obstructing the Pedestrian Walkway In New York it is called “impeding pedestrian traffic.” ● No Private Belongings in Public Space Chicago’s spur-of-the-moment version of San Francisco’s sit-lie law applies to the private belongings of protesters. Occupy Chicago website alerted activists with the plan “Occupy Chicago, Phase 2 – Mobilization,” by saying that every item needs to be completely mobile. ● Unaffordable Fees The city of Dallas, Texas, demanded that Occupy Dallas fork up to $1 million for liability insurance if they want to keep their permit and continue occupying Pioneer Plaza. ● No Potties It is one of the most direct regulations against the Occupy Movement, to avoid bringing a Porta-Potty. ● No Masks This regulation prohibits masked gatherings of two people or more, with the exception of masquerade balls, although it does not apply to Carnivals or Halloween. ● Mass Arrests, Excessive Force When OWS protesters crossed Brooklyn Bridge, the police arrested over seven hundred people including journalists. The purpose is to scare protesters and those who are considering joining the movement, galvanized protester’s solidarity (Khalek 2011).
These new Rules of Conduct and Zoning Regulation, seek to sanction protesters and involve them in a complex system of laws, regulations and civil ordinances. It is a softer repression that locates protesters in a bureaucratic tether. Hence, ¿should POPS owners be allowed to prohibit the use of these spaces by organized large groups? ¿Are passive activities like quiet conversations or sharing lunchtime the only approved behaviours? ¿ POPS were meant to create and contribute meaningful
300 life to the city, not only by assuring that those spaces are provided as legally promised, but also by encouraging improvements, activities, and public educational opportunities.
Img. 18 Zuccotti Park POPS sign. Left: original sign. Right: post OWS sign
5.3.2 Reconfiguration of the architectural urban landscape
Zuccotti Park in New York, Tahrir Square in Cairo, Gezi Park in Istanbul, Puerta del Sol in Madrid, Paternoster Square in London, HSBC Plaza in Hong Kong, Euromaidan in Kiev, 101 Tower in Taipei, City Square in Melbourne, Syntagma Square in Athens. This endless list shows different spaces that befit catalyst factors when taking decisions about the transformation of the architectural urban landscape. The contemporary occupations [the Occupy Movement, Indignados, the Arab Spring] are a strong force for changing the global urban landscape physically, virtually and legally. They bring to light the little discussion and knowledge that there are about how public spaces should be in the contemporary city, but they also show a blurred-to-public fact: these archievents display a noiseless stabilized situation over the public sphere, the privatization of public spaces.
The city is in a progressive privatization when facing the fact that local governments do not have the money to provide, create or maintain public spaces. However, that situation does not represent a problem, there are POPS well designed that respond to people’s needs. Nevertheless, these cases are more exceptional than common. The co-production of public spaces that incorporate private actors is a phenomenon that is increasingly being established in urban centres of global cities [referring to Saskia Sassen’s “The Global Street”]. Progressively, cities are scenarios of ready-made public spaces: “it is instead a global corporate subject. The situation enforces innovation by people and communities, even if they do not necessarily become powerful in the process, they produce components of a city” (Sassen 2015). City planning has become adept at the delivery of high quality public realm as part of large-scale private developments combining office, retail, residential and leisure: they all need public spaces. The planning system has not caught up with the fact that these POPS are often subject to private management private requirements, leading them to pursue control of public areas and to apply codes of conduct.
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POPS so different and distant as San Francisco or Hong Kong have similar physical components and design parameters that compose the urban landscape in a worldwide homogeneous landscape. Developers use a copy-paste strategy from New York’s POPS without attending the local needs and contexts. Local history, stories, planning culture, actor networks, and spatial conditions have not been taken into account when designing and locating POPS; instead, there is a replication of use: fixed chairs and tables, granite pavement, certain number of trees, bushes on perimeters, long rows of concrete, or stone benches. In addition, private security, the excess of CCTV cameras, and fences, are elements that include security connotations for controlling the space and people’s behaviour (Img. 19). The consequences of multiplying and expanding POPS affect from the personal psyche to the ability of protest, they make people feel too monitored and controlled, they eradicate most of the possible collective spontaneous actions and allow communal activities to unfold. In this regard, David Harvey indicates that “the freedom to make and remake our cities and ourselves is (…) one of the most precious yet most neglected of our human rights” (Harvey 2012).
Img. 19 POPS in different cities
Public space is defined not only by being publicly owned and funded but also by its public use. Susan Chin, Executive Director, Design Trust for Public Space, New York. Putting Public Space in its Place. Graduate School of Design, Harvard University
Public place means any place to which the public or any section of the public has access, on payment or otherwise, as of right or by virtue of express or implied permission. Anti-social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Act 2014, United Kingdom
Civic spaces, leisure spaces, or simply functional spaces have either an important or discrete role in the development of cities, however public spaces are the ones that transform themselves in tools of urban politics with a much wider significance (Carmona 2015). In this sense, Jordi Borja (Borja
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2002) indicates that the definitional principle of public space is not that much its juridical nature [public or private property] but its sociological [use and conditions of access]. There are buildings of public property to which the public cannot have access while other of private property are used by the public. Thus, it could be said that public space in contemporary cities relies on is its access, referring to the degree of access granted to “outsiders.”
This spatio-social-legal framework is relevant in the conception of a public space, merging in the same plane with POPS. Hence, definition helps but does not reconcile the public space. Privatized public spaces are an example of the eviction from the public, and the modification of the historic meaning of the city. Therefore, POPS’ regulations transform the architectural urban landscape. It is simple, what was small and-or public, and is currently becoming large and private. Small properties, local shops, public parks and square are crossed by large shopping malls, commerce chains, high-value housing, and so on. This homogeneous architectural urban landscape addresses a certain group of people: consumers. Generally, POPS are identical for using grey seats, fixed tables, puny birch, espaliered trees, long rows of dark granite benches or mini amphitheatres and stairs. Gradually, new different flanks open as they do not meet the requirements of the contemporary city. In fact, several important questions challenge the current status of this landscape. ¿Who should design public spaces of cities? ¿Which are the potentials that should generate public urban architecture? ¿Should public spaces be design? ¿How could a public space be measured as an accurate public space? ¿Could the private sector participate in the provision of public spaces without losing the genuine sense of public? ¿Do these spaces depend on the achievements of democracy and social equality on the availability of urban public spaces? ¿Is it possible to universalize the features that a public space should take no matter where they are located? ¿Are the temporary and informal public spaces the ones that propose an innovative use of the city? Whether a public space is of public or private ownership, it must serve to the city and inhabitants. Moreover, whether there is a space for public protest or not, it does not mean there is a factor in urban design because protestors take places, they do not go to places that are designed for such purpose. However, it is important that citizens have the possibility to enact their right to protest or gather in an assembly,
In order to make softer the control and surveillance over public spaces, stones, bricks, towers, chains, plastic cones, riot police vans, are replaced by flower planting, sentry boxes, benches, bollards, CCTV cameras, one-way systems, open Wi-Fi connection, and so on. Through a three-party collaboration, the RIBA [Royal Institute of British Architects], the Home Office, and the National Counter Terrorism Security Office, published a counterterrorism guide in October 2011 [one month after OWS occupied Zuccotti Park]. This document called “RIBA guidance on designing for counter- terrorism,” addresses to architects and planner to consider different design parameters in their projects as minimum requirements for the future architecture of protection:
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Clear lines of sight around the building, absence of recesses on façades or elevations, materials as reinforced concrete, especial and resistant glazed façades, uncluttered street furniture, orientating the building so that it overlooks public space [usually POPS] to support informal oversight by those who use and visit the location, well-managed access points and reception facilities, external barriers and-or a strengthened perimeter to prevent access to the facility, to limit secondary fragmentation, avoidance of hiding places around buildings and within façade arrangements, any pedestrian and vehicle gates to be compatible with the robustness of the remainder of the perimeter.
These solutions discourage people from lingering but welcome if they engage commercially. Thus, the modern building style of concrete blocks [bunker style] has been replaced by discrete elements that cover the space of surveillance and control. Thus, these designing parameters do not only include architectural and urban design but also an insertion of legal regulations.
In London, after the local 2011 riots and global occupations, new and more restricted and controlled regulations and guidelines were updated as part of the “Protection of Freedoms Act 2012.”31 Restricting the movement of vehicles and tracking people’s movement and behaviour are some of the main aims of this regulation. It includes a range of less obtrusive barrier techniques that avoid considerably walls, ditches, water features, and slopes. Instead, it promotes the use of bollards and movable bathroom cabins, elements that are usually ubiquitous, cheap, flexible and easy to deploy. This new designing set permits a slender visual strategy: shallower foundations, temporal structures that could sink in the ground when not in use, bollards can be disguised as picnic tables, balustrade walls, waste bins, flower tubs, plant holders and so on.
Img. 20 Architecture of Control. Invisible Ring of Steel, Img. 21 New U.S. Embassy in London. Source: U.S 20 Fenchurch Street, London. Base photograph source: Embassy & Consulates in the United Kingdom. The Guardian https://uk.usembassy.gov/wp/content/uploads/sites/16/ 2015/10/new_embassy_benefits_KT-08_resized
31 Protection of Freedoms Act 2012, United Kingdom http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2012/9/pdfs/ukpga_20120009_en.pdf
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5.4 Extrapolation of privatized public spaces post-occupation. Tokyo
Saskia Sassen in her book “The Shifting Meaning of the Urban Condition,” she indicates that in order to develop an urbanism that is the equivalent to the open source urbanism, architectural practices are the ones that can face the urban problematic and its unusual spaces (Sassen 2006). By detecting, creating, intervening, and making, temporal architectural practices could develop common spatial tools that extrapolate the activation of post-public spaces. Erik Swyngedouw calls for a “reworking [of] the ‘creative’ city as agonistic urban space rather than limiting creativity to the musings of the creative class” (Swyngedouw 2009). It is a reconceptualization of how architectural design of public spaces should be and accommodate heterogeneous approaches and uses. In this situation, the post-public space is presented itself as a generator of publicness: the simultaneous production of contemporary public spaces that involve and transcend technical decisions and design, financing and management. It operates at a variety of scales that overlap and intersect in order to create a mosaic of spaces in a multi-layered space: physically, virtually, legally, and politically.
The generation of a common spatiality in current cities is altering the conception of public space. This is possible due to the virtual era in which data collection and access to information could be instant, transforming the relationships between people and spaces. The contemporary occupations have shown that there is an enormous desire and need of people to gather in physical public spaces, but also to represent, share and activate different actions and places in the virtual public space like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, to mention few. These occupations have provoked some changes in the processes and development of public spaces, stimulating their privatization. After the production of these occupations, local governments have applied extensively the urban regulation “Privately Owned Public Space” [POPS], with a special emphasis to avoid - physically and legally - any attempt of the public to sit-in and occupy public spaces. Cities like New York, London, Cairo, Madrid, Seattle, Santiago de Chile, Tokyo and so on, have pushed this regulation during the last five years, allowing private investors to design, build, manage and regulate these spaces. In their design, many of these POPS do not necessarily fulfil local needs, respond to local context, dynamics or history; instead, there is an application of a ready-made designing formula that generates a homogeneous and fragmented architectural urban landscape, especially in city centres where the cost of land is more expensive. Parks, squares, streets, and sometimes entire neighbourhoods, take more and more an analogous form in which the commercialization, and the spatial and social control, are consistent conditions. In this sense, Tokyo is presented as a platform where the privatization of public spaces is extrapolated to every layer and level of the city, in large part due to the next 2020 Olympic Games. This event presents an opportunity to prepare the ground for a large-scale transformation, not only of the physical and aesthetic aspects of the city, but also of urban regulations and spatial functions. This modification of the architectural urban landscape
305 produces an image that brings in turn an emotional impact inside and outside the city through its public spaces.
Tokyo is a particular place in terms of contextualizing contemporary public spaces. Although, the concepts public and private are relatively new in Japan, they stretch their inclusion to the second half of the 20th century. While in the West, ‘public’ is a strong and powerful term due to its sense of empowerment, general access and availability to the community, and private of an individual or a particular group’s possession that is not open to the public, in Japan, these two terms have a different perception. Public in Japanese does not have a literal translation; hence this word has been integrated into Japanese language as paburikku,32 meaning something that is related to the public domain. The equivalent Japanese meaning of public-private would be uchi-soto. Uchi means 1) inside, 2) house or home, 3) group, and 4) wife or husband; while soto means 1) outside, 2) outdoors, 3) other groups, 4) outside the home, anything outside the uchi.33 This division reflects the Japanese dichotomy between the inside and outside, more like intimacy and community, rather than public and private (Img. 22).
At the same time, however, the areas of the city (e.g. chome) from another kind of insider group beyond which is another outside. While these latter suggestions may show a measure of ambiguity (the street may be ‘outside’ of the plot but inside of the uchi), it is no more so than is common to most aspects of Japanese life. In fact, what we have are layers of (positive) insides and (conceptually empty) outsides.34
In Japan, the term “public space” does not have a direct or unique understanding and representation, becoming a flexible conception that could be adapted to different contexts. In the first part of the 21st century, the capital presents subjectivities of a variety of public spaces in a similar set of privatised public spaces. This scenario is identified in “global cities,”35 where the most powerful force is the global property market, leading the urban design development.
Img. 22 Public-private [uchi-soto] street relationship, Tokyo
32 Paburikku is a katakana word, which is a script used for foreign words in Japanese language. 33 Kokugo Jiten (Japanese Dictionary). Tokyo: Ohbunsha, 1991. 34 Ibid 35 S. Sassen, “The Global City: Introducing a Concept.” In Brown Journal of World Affairs, Vol. 11, Issue 2, 2005.
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Matthew Carmona, Professor of Planning and Urban Design at UCL’s Bartlett School of Planning, and Filipa Matos Wunderlich, Lecturer in Urban Design at the same university, reveal in “Capital Cities,” how London’s public spaces have changed since the late 1980s due to the intervention of the capital realm (Carmona & Wunderlich, 2012). Streets, plazas, and entire neighbourhoods have been created or modified driven by private interests: Canary Wharf in the Docklands, Paternoster Square in the City, Stratford and the Olympic Villa, all these areas have received private funding for their development, attaching consequently the figure of ‘products.’ This model creates a process of expansion for corporate spaces more than for public spaces since they include, most of the time, only a commercial and market feature. However, Carmona and Freeman identify a possible way to successfully integrate commercial characteristics with the surroundings, though these cases in London involve an extensive control of spaces and people. If for market these decisions are made upon rational thought to serve private requirements, the objectives of urban design follow the privatized role.
5.4.1 Occupying Shinjuku Station
To measure a public space in this scenario of privatization is a matter of economic return on property investment. Buildings that offer this kind of corporate public space to the city whilst retaining property and management, set-up detailed parameters of aesthetic and functional standardization that in addition, take greater control over the public sphere. Thus, the potential users of these spaces are a specific group of people: consumers. Loukaitou-Sideris and Banerjee in “Urban Design Downtown: Poetics and Politics of Form” (Loukaitou-Sideris and Banerjee 1998), argue that this mode of design cuts off the space, it fragments and separates, which in turn can be easily controlled. Nonetheless, shifting the public space into a corporate space in order to avoid potential protests or social gatherings, is a designing tool that has been applied for decades. One of the most illustrative examples is Shinjuku Station, the busiest station in the world,36 currently a commercial complex and once the stage for one of the biggest social protests and occupations in Tokyo.
In the spring of 1969, the “Folk Guerrilla” was a movement of students and activists that occupied the West and East exits of Shinjuku railway station for about five months; they carried out Anpo protests (over the Japan – U.S. security treaty) and anti-Vietnam War. In February that year, thousands of people occupied the large open space on the west exit lower level of the station, known as Shinjuku Plaza, and performed debates, meetings, concerts, speeches, artistic
36 According to the Guinness Records, in 2011, Shinjuku Station was categorized as the busiest station in the world. With an average of 3.64 million passengers per day and over 200 exits, it serves to Tokyo’s western suburbs via intercity, commuter rail and metro lines to the centre of the city. Source: http://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/world-records/busiest-station/
307 performances, clashes with the police, dances, group discussions, built-up barricades, temporary encampments, gatherings, and sit-ins (Img. 23). These collective actions formed an aesthetic political movement that transformed the station from being only a transport hub into a living agora. The occupation generated an agora that striated the urban fabric, redrawing simultaneously the boundaries between the public and the private. During the development of the protests, daily life continued around the station, workers kept commuting and shops opened regularly, though many passers-by stopped and joined the gatherings, collaborating many times with demonstrators. But most of the cases, they just shouted at protesters for irrupting the local order and not claiming specific demands (Andrews 2014).
At that time, Shinjuku Plaza was a complex multi-level net of roadways, railways, bus terminal, parking lot, transit points, and mezzanine levels, completed in the late 1966. The project was envisioned as part of the Metabolist movement and precursor of the Osaka Expo (Img. 24). The round form and the sense of plaza acted as generators of Shinjuku’s agora, where the “Folk guerrilla” was a blending fiction because it merged utopia and spatial praxis at the same time. There was a search for a new spatial praxis embodied through an emotional connection in the community, directly influenced by other protests like May 68 in Paris, the student protest in Seoul, the global anti-Vietnam war and the feminist movements in the United States and Europe. At the pick point of the protest, more than 7,000 people joined the occupation (Andrews 2014), connecting collective spatial practices to ideology and utopia. It was a temporal reinvention of the public space that at the same time rediscovered the city limits, possibilities and potentials of bodies in the public space (Img 25).
The occupation was officially evicted on 26th July 1969, followed by an immediate transformation of the station towards one more controlled and eventually, programmed. In Ouchida’s film “Underground Plaza,”37 a documentary about the Folk guerrilla, one of the last scenes is a view of the plaza with dozens of policemen making announcements on loudspeakers: “Don’t stop, keep moving. Don’t stop, keep moving.”
After the occupation, the was a project to redevelop Shinjuku Station area as a master plan, which removed pedestrianized shopping streets [forcing out homeless], and the fountain stopped running. The result was a more multifarious commercial network of buildings. Its current state is very complex system of paths, staircases, and ramps, while its exits lead to major commercial zones in the outside, inside, underground and upper floors of the station. The place for transit and commuting is always in movement, while the mega shopping areas are the only places for staying (Img. 26).
37 Keiya Ouchida, director of the film ’69 Haru-aki chika hiroba (’69 Spring-Autumn Underground Plaza) and also known as Chika hiroba (Underground Plaza), was a documentary about the “Folk guerrilla” protests in Shinjuku Station. It was first shown in public in 1970 in black and white.
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Img. 23 "Folk guerrilla," Shinjuku Underground Img. 24 Shinjuku Station West Entrance Plaza, by Junzo Plaza, July 1969. Documentary Sakakura & Associates. Circa 1967. Left: model images. Right: aerial view. Source: DNP Museum artscape Japan
Img. 25 Shinjuku Underground Plaza, July 1969. Img. 26 Shinjuku Station. January 2017 Source: http://apjjf.org/2015/13/11/Oguma-Eiji/4300.html
5.4.2 Public space privatized. Miyashita Park
Miyashita Park is one of the few green open areas in Shibuya Ward, a commercial, entertaining, fashion, and business district that brings thousands of people every day. In Shibuya Station, the second busiest station in the world, 1.2 million people commute daily in Tokyu Toyoko Line,38 an average of 3 million people at the entire station,39 and up to 3,000 people walking through “Shibuya Crossing” every time the traffic light turns red. 40 It is a complex and multifaceted structure that operates 24 hours a day where movement and efficiency are critical points. Miyashita Park is located 350 meters away from Shibuya Station, turning it into a very attractive spot.
38 Tokyu Corporation, “Tokyu Line Data.” http://www.tokyu.co.jp/railway/data/passengers/ (Japanese). M. Blaster, “The 51 busiest train stations in the world - All but 6 located in Japan.” Japan Today, 6 February 2013. https://www.japantoday.com/category/travel/view/the-51-busiest-train-stations-in-the-world-all-but-6-located-in- japan 39 M. Blaster, “The 51 busiest train stations in the world - All but 6 located in Japan.” Japan Today, 6 February 2013, https://www.japantoday.com/category/travel/view/the-51-busiest-train-stations-in-the-world-all-but-6-located-in- japan 40 Beauty of Japan, “Shibuya Crossing 3,000 people cross at one time.” http://beauty-of-japan.com/article/shibuya- crossing/
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In 2008, a representative of Nike Japan contacted Yoshiharu Tsukamoto, founder of the architectural studio “Atelier Bow-Bow,” and requested to redesign the existent park, after the studio released the book “Made in Tokyo” that same year (Img. 27). Some of the design conditions were that the park should follow a sports theme, include equipment for rock-climbing, skating ramps, dancing floor and two futsal courts. In addition, Nike indicated that it was necessary to pay fees to use the sport facilities, which was approved by the Shibuya Ward: futsal field ¥4000- 7000/1h (approx. $30), skateboard park ¥200/2h (approx. $2.00), and climbing wall ¥350/2h (approx. $3.00).41 The park had to be closed during night-time hours, from 22:30 to 8:30, and finally, to change the name of the park to “Nike Miyashita Park.” The construction cost was $4 millions, with public and private funds, turning the project into a Public-Private-Partnership (PPP). On 30th April 2011, the 14,000m2 park was reopened to the public.
The location of the park provokes it to be an “interstitial” space: on the west side, there are the Yamanote and Saikyo’s railway lines, and on the opposite side there is a six-lane avenue. It is 330 meters long and 25 meters wide average, and is elevated one floor as there is a parking lot on the ground floor. In order to add a climbing wall and a skateboarding park, Atelier Bow-Bow expanded 1.50m to all sides over its structural limit, which was destined for circulation and concrete benches (Img. 28). The studio wanted to preserve some remnants of the park, so they reused some of the old concrete walls to build some tables, connected the park to the street level through two staircases and one lift.
Img. 27 Miyashita Park, “Made in Tokyo,” by Img. 28 Miyashita Park, “Made in Tokyo,” by Atelier Bow-Bow Atelier Bow-Bow- Section perspective. Source: vo Villa Noailles
Tokyo City Council created Miyashita Park in 1930. It was placed in-between Meiji Street, Yamanote Line, Udagawa River and Shibuya River, in “Miyashita-machi.” After the Second World War, the park had to be reassembled and the area around was greatly developed, but it continued being a resident neighbourhood (Img. 29). In 1966, a law changed the resident use of the area and replaced the name of Miyashita Town to Shibuya. Because of the 1964 Olympics, the park was rebuilt all at
41 Shibuya City Office, “Refurbishing of Miyashita Park at Shibuya City.” http://www.city.shibuya.tokyo.jp/eng/miyashita_park.html
310 once (Img. 30). Japan’s economy improved during the 1960s, increasing the number of cars on streets; thus, Shibuya Ward decided to put a street-level parking and elevate the park one floor, converting it into an ‘airborne park’ and resulting in an interstitial space. This decision, as locals said, caused the real transformation of the park: people had to climb some stairs, big trees and the vegetation was leafy in its perimeter, reason why people started referring to it as kobayashi (small forest). During the 1980s, Shibuya started to prosper as a commercial area, provoking the increment in tenant buildings. Soon, the residential layer disappeared and soared the land price to business and commerce, changing the number of residents in the area and bringing more temporal users (Img. 31). By the 1990s, the facility was old and neglected, and right after the Japanese economic crisis, as many people lost their houses, some of them started to assemble cardboard houses in the park (Img. 32).
In 2010, Shibuya Ward announced officially a program to help the homeless. They indicated that in 2004, there were around 105 people but this number decreased in 2009 to 30 due to welfare support services: “As of October 8, 2010, the last remaining homeless person in Miyashita Park has voluntarily moved to an alternative site.”42 Yet, in August 2009, the local police tried to evict over 50 homeless, which caused in clashes with local activists. Yuki Takahashi, manager of Shibuya Ward’s welfare section, indicated that “despite the effort the council has made to relocate the homeless, it has not been 100% effective.”43 In addition, when the renewal project and the plan to change the name of the park were made public, social groups restarted their campaign against the local government and Nike, with several demonstrations, protests and occupations, and claiming to reintegrate the homeless community in the park.
Img. 29 Miyashita-machi, 1952. Shibuya River is in the east side and extends to the north; it is caverned as Udagawa river. On the left side, there is the JR rail track, which convert the vacant lot in a sandwich. Source: Shibuya Photo Museum.
42 Ibid 43 (2015, April 1). Battle over Shibuya park heats up as Tokyo Olympics loom | The Japan Times. Retrieved January 9, 2017, from http://www.japantimes.co.jp/community/2015/04/01/issues/battle-shibuya-park-heats-tokyo-olympics- loom/
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Img. 30 Miyashita Park, JR Train rail, circa 1960s. Img. 31 Shibuya commercial district, circa 1980s Source: Tokusaburo, Kakuren-bo Source: Tokusaburo, Kakuren-bo. http://tokusaburo.kakuren-bo.com/wakadaisho/ http://tokusaburo.kakuren-bo.com/wakadaisho/
_The dissident park Fence in the park and lock the doors overnight. You can’t call that a park. Mendosugiru, blogger. Hima ni makasete
In William Andrews’ book “Dissenting Japan” (Andrews 2016), he explores the dissident character of the Japanese society, disrupting the country’s overview of being “harmonious” and “peaceful.” In the introduction, Andrews takes a journey through Japan’s history emphasising on the post-war time, especially during the 1960s and 1970s, and reveals how students and militant groups produced a general dissident and disobedient state in Tokyo. He indicates that Japan has been historically a conflictive country, and references to the most famous heroes in the Japanese culture, like the rōnin of the Chūshingura.44 In this Japanese narrative, failure is admired because it involves transparency, sincerity, and fight against adversity (Andrews 2016). Andrews relates it to the protests “Narita International Airport” in 1966, the “Folk Guerrilla” rallies in Shinjuku in 1969, and the “Shibuya riot” in 1971.
In the 1970s, Miyashita Park was the base for demonstrations and gatherings alongside Meiji Park and Shimizuya Park. After the three big catastrophes of 2011: Tōhoku-Kantō earthquake, tsunami
44 The story of the Chūshingura, known in the West as “The Forty-Seven rōnin” is considered a master legend in Japan. It is a group of samurai who were left masterless in 1701, for assaulting a court official whom he felt had insulted him. They succeeded in avenging their master by killing the court official. Although they had committed murder, they had done so in obedience to their duty. As a result, they were allowed an honourable death.
312 of 11 March, and the Fukushima nuclear crisis, social movements started rising again with general protests and demonstrations, some of them taking place in Miyashita Park. The anti-nuclear power and anti-government demonstrations bound social movement in the streets and open areas, an activism that exposed the hole of the tranquil Japanese society, with public rebellions, demonstrations, protests and occupations.
This dissident character formed a state of protest in the park. Thus, from March to September 2010, people occupied the park protesting against Nike’s privatization, an action that activists called “Nikefication.” One of the main actions was the consolidation of the social movement “Coalition to Protect Miyashita Park from Becoming Nike Park” in 2008, which consequently created “Artist-in- Residence,” a physical and virtual platform to occupy the park, perform art activities, and generate communal spaces. Many other activist groups from Tokyo and around the country joined this movement and sparked protests around the city, causing a resonance of the occupation. Some of the banners that the group set-up included political and disobedient content against Nike, such like “Nike, don’t steal Miyashita Park,” “the Park is ours” or “Don’t do it” (Img. 33). These protests took place simultaneously in the virtual space, through social networks like YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, and “A.I.R. Miyashita Park” and “Minnanokouenn” blogs. These platforms mobilized people and resources, organized events, coordinated protests, and made the occupation and protests bigger, which attracted the mass media and consequently, the movement became a city’s political matter.
One of the radical images of the movement was the street performance “Fashion Parade” parody, in which protesters, men mainly, walked on their underwear alongside the homeless community from Miyashita Park to Nike’s headquarters in Ginza. During the six-month sit-in, artists, activists and homeless used this space in several ways: to protests, to prevent the eviction of the park, and to perform artistic and community activities. The park was filled with dolls, banners, sculptures, umbrellas, tents, shoes, and many other objects that attached new uses, a situation that was possible only through dissident collective actions. Bicycle wheels were turned into mechanisms that rotated banners; suitcases served as mobile speakers; clothing racks were converted into small shrines; chairs were turned into bookshelves; plastic cones became speakers; blankets were part of greenhouse structures; cords were turned into hammocks; ladders functioned as info desks; umbrellas formed part of the performance stage; benches served as clothing racks; and lamps served as ornamental racks. The backside of a futsal pitch was turned into a ‘ghetto’ garden. The park’s entrance was turned into an art workshop and was filled with paintings and sculptures made of cardboard, fabric, sunglasses, wooden sticks, plastic bottles, and bricks. The playground became a dance floor and next to it, an assembly room was filled with anime and action figures. In addition, there was a common kitchen, a stage on which to play music, an outdoor cinema, and an outdoor karaoke area. There were also spontaneous poetry readings.
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Intermittency characterised this occupation, lasting from a couple of days to a couple of hours; serving the intimacy of Miyashita Park. This intimate community produced different carnivalesque public performances, events that became mechanisms to appropriate the space, which turned out to be alternative urban tools to produce other spaces. The occupation was the event that irrupted the established order settled by a non-social consensual state, reintegrating the dissidence character design to the park’s interstitial feature, remarking the relationship between community and intimacy rather than public and private. This was the moment when the intimacy and the community acted as one body in space and time. This “chaotic” scenario was an opportunity to design new spaces that were performed as T.A.Z. Through a non-hierarchical system, information was the key structure for creating new territories, while dissident spatial practices generating an immediate action of adaptation of the park (Img. 34). Simultaneously, A.I.R. Miyashita Park platform spawned a digital archive that documented the new spatiality. The radicalization of the objects sabotaged the conventional practices of designing public spaces, giving the chance to anyone to do it. The multiple interstitial layer-level in Miyashita Park “embraces not only such notions as openness, porosity, breach and relationship, but also those of process, transformation and location” (Lévesque 2001). This complex interpolation between the physical space, the aesthetic, the local history, the legislation, the perception of the space, and the personal and collective memory, stand as a mechanism that goes beyond the physical change of spaces. It allows moving around the construction of the urban landscape that in exchange includes different subjects within it. Six months after the beginning of the occupation and one week before the construction of the new project, the occupation was evicted and the park fenced off.
Img. 32 Miyashita Park, 2000s. Source: Carl Cassegard Img. 33 Protests banner against Nike: "Prevent https://carlcassegard.blogspot.jp/2010/07/atelier-and-park.html NIKE'S commercial exploitation of public land! Source: A.I.R. Miyashita Park
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Img. 34 T.A.Z. Miyashita Park. Source: A.I.R. Miyashita Park, edited by the author
In September 2010, the police evicted the occupation and the month after, the renewal of the project started. Right after the reopening of the park, in April 2011, A.I.R. Miyashita Park sued Shibuya Ward in the Tokyo District Court, claiming that the homeless were treated harshly and that naming the park after Nike was unappropriated to locals. On 13th March 2015, the judge upheld the group’s stance by saying that Nike and Shibuya government were neither transparent nor open. The group’s statements can be read as:45
1. According to the renovation plan, Miyashita Park will be converted to a park expressly for sports enthusiasts. This means that a highly public space which people have been able to freely and actively utilize up until now will be turned into a commercial space for the profit of one business. Persons who do not pay for using the park as a service, will be unable to even rest at the park. This will surely have a negative impact on society at large and generally the way in which people come together. 2. For many years, Miyashita Park has been known as a space where many citizens’ groups hold gatherings, or as a starting and ending point for local marches and events. Also, it has stood as life-saving place where many persons forced to live on the streets can stay. This plan would unquestionably deprive groups and individuals of space for their freedom of expression, and for their daily lives.
45 (2008, July 4). The Statement of the Coalition to Protect Miyashita Park from Becoming Nike Park. Retrieved January 9, 2017, from http://minnanokouenn.blogspot.com/2008/07/statement-of-coalition-to-protect.html
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3. This project has been forced onto the ward by Shibuya’s mayor and a number of assembly persons in a top-down manner. Neither the ward assembly nor the city planning council has been consulted, and almost no information can be found in materials that have been available to the public. Also, we would like to know how Nike came to be involved in this. Nike is a corporation that gave rise to the grave problem of child labor in a number of Asian countries, which reported instances of management beating and/or molesting workers. It is highly doubtful that Shibuya-ku has undergone democratic processes so as to adequately reflect the will of ward residents with regard to this plan.
Soon, some of the homeless reinstalled their tents and structures adjacent to the north and south sides of the park (Img. 35, Img. 36, Img. 37, and Img. 38).
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5.1 Discussion. Towards the Post-Public Space
The Global Occupations of 2011 included other platforms to protests alongside occupations: the virtual space. Social networks like Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Snapchat and so on, became the other public space to protest. These platforms allowed organizing, broadcasting, informing, recording, streaming, and archiving diverse events and moments of the occupation. It was created a new relationship between public spaces [physical + virtual] and the multitude. Since then, there have been significant and critical efforts to control public spaces, in a way to avoid future citizens’ protests and occupations. London, New York and Tokyo are at the forefront of experimenting and implementing these kinds of spaces in the urban scope, which have been developing a standard urban design manual for POPS. As a consequence, this formula has been repeated in many other cities like Cairo, Madrid, Seattle, Santiago de Chile, and so on, becoming a manual that transforms local architectural urban landscape into a net of homogeneous centres.
However, the privatizations of public spaces and public land are an urban regulation that dates back to 1961 to New York, when the City Council started to adjust POPS. It is an agreement between the local government and private developers in which they receive construction benefits in exchange of providing public spaces to the city. During the last years, this regulation has turned popular in different cities around the world, including Tokyo, where by 2008 more than sixty hectares of public land were sold to private investors to be operated as public space (Hayashi 2011). In the same year, Shibuya Ward sold Miyashita Park name’s rights to Nike Corporation and planned the renewal of the park; consequently, there were protests and a six-month occupation (Kiib, Marling and Hansen 2014).
In August 2014, three years after the renewal of Miyashita Park, Shibuya Ward formally launched an open call for proposals to support some aspects of a new project to redevelop again Miyashita Park. However, in this occasion, the project revealed that there was already a designed project signed by the local government and the real estate developer Mitsui Fudosan Co. The project is envisioned to keep the sports theme due to the 2020 Olympics (Hayashi 2011), and is a five-story sports complex: the basement and ground floor allocate a parking zone, the first-floor shops, the second-floor shops and cafes with sports themes, and the last floor - as a terrace - is the park, which includes two futsal fields, an athletics track, a multipurpose sports field, a basketball court, skate ramps, a climbing wall, and some cafes. In addition, there is a hotel in the northern-end side of the park, a 17-story building that Mitsui Fudosan Co. would run for 30 years (Img. 39 and Img. 40). 1 However, in the current City Planning Regulation, it specifies that any building inside a park should not be taller than two stories and should not have any basements. Thus, there are many efforts to
1 (2015, April 1). Battle over Shibuya park heats up as Tokyo Olympics loom | The Japan Times. Retrieved January 9, 2017, from http://www.japantimes.co.jp/community/2015/04/01/issues/battle-shibuya-park-heats-tokyo-olympics- loom/
339 change the Urban Regulation to accommodate this project, but so far, the Shibuya Ward has not clarified how they would do it.
This new plan is addressed to consumers: two floors for parking revenue, two other floors for commercial trade, and the rooftop for the park includes fees to use the offered sports facilities (Img. 41). It is a determinative position that denies open and free public access, it simultaneously converts it into what Anna Minton2 describes as café-creep: “renting out spaces by local governments for commercial purposes in the pavements of public spaces” (Minton 2012). The design conducts certain social behaviours that contrast to the traditional dissident use of the park: skaters, activists, homeless, and dancers. In 27th March 2017, Shibuya Ward government fenced off and shut down Miyashita Park without prior notifications, in order to start the construction of this new project, evicting once again, the homeless community that was living in-and-around the park. The chief of Shibuya’s Department of Parks, indicated that it should be open in time for the 2020 Olympic and Paralympic Games. Activists and residents tried to protests against this sudden action but security guards and police officers prevented them from entering the park. This normalized justification of forceful evictions, leads to a criminalization of dissident practices through the proposed Anti-terrorism bill (Img. 42).
Img. 39 New Miyashita Park Renovation Project. Img. 40 New Miyashita Park Renovation Project. Currently under construction. Source: Shibuya Ward Currently under construction. Source: Shibuya Ward
Img. 41 New Miyashita Park Renovation Project. Scheme
2 Anna Minton is a journalist, writer, and academic. She is currently a Reader at the University of East London, School of Architecture, Computing and Engineering.
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Img. 42 Miyashita Park. Top: Atelier Bow Bow project [Nike], 2 January 2017. Bottom: current state "New Miyashita Park Renovation Project," 23 April 2017
After Shinjuku Station and Miyashita Park occupations, both spaces acquired new meanings in the local society like dissidence and collective power, the practice of public and the appropriation of the city. They reflect the radical practice through occupations, making visible the presence of different subjects, creating one body that integrates a variety of objects, and involves sparks of spontaneity and collectively. The radical spatiality is developed by everyday spatial temporal practices, a praxis described as resistance actions in a fixed and planned state of things or spaces that alter their role.
Therefore, contemporary occupations show that the physical presence of the body is the most important action when protesting, and include other characteristics that push the boundaries of dissident practices. The inclusion of the virtual space in the physical space creates a new state of public, the post-public space, where the individuation allows people to practice their own skills and is also a place for skill building. This public blossom spurs the contemporary public space in different ways and temporalities. It is not the only solution but it permits to connect in space and time other public spaces, creating a resonance. Thus, the post-public space is a network conceived as a lived laboratory that always changes its conditions, a continuous transformation process that occurs simultaneously at various levels, speeds and scales. This speed is an opportunity for the post-public space, serving to host crowds for protesting, occupying, sitting-in, for festivals, markets, or any kind of public event. It is not a matter to concentrate the public into one single spot, but to co-exist in an augmented network of spaces that operate temporary and immediately.
The post-public space in the contemporary city, acts as an opportunity to transform temporary fixed and controlled spaces, through the corporeal experience within the physical and the virtual space that act as one. The occupations of private public spaces display that intimacy and community activate other spatialities [space + time], going beyond the public – private relationship, and performing temporally a component of an aesthetic experience in a complex corporeal augmented spatial practice. While the body is a medium of transformation and creation of spaces, the occupation is an opportunity for community to design an intimate post-public space.
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CONCLUSION
This research presents contributions of architectural design tactics, which are developed within contemporary occupations to the complex dialectics between change and persistence in the built environment, presented through dissident practices in conflictive situations. The principal aim of this thesis was to develop architectural relationships in urban, social, technological, and legal aspects referring to public spaces and how these were altered during-and-post occupations. This approach was complex and developed by iterative observation and analysis of diverse and concrete relationships between multiple aspects. Through an exploration of transforming everydayness and everyday-life objects, this research recognized different states and built theoretical aspects and concepts that conducted to structuring the Radical Spatiality. These conclusions discuss achieved dissident design parameters not by giving answers to all the initial questions, but by opening new ones, revealing an increasing scope of research in different aspects initially incorporated. The particular conclusions deriving from the main case studies, Tahrir Square in Cairo, Occupy Wall Street in New York, and Gezi Park/Taksim Square in Istanbul, as well as the Umbrella Movement and Miyashita Park, are presented as contributions to performative architecture and the direct affection on the architectural urban landscape of contemporary public spaces.
_The transformation of the architectural urban landscape during occupations After developing the atlas of Revolutionary Squares, which considered some of the revolutions and occupations more significant between 2011 and 2013, two factors were contemplated in order to choose case studies: the political and spatial scopes. The occupations of Tahrir Square, Occupy Wall Street (OWS), and Gezi Park/Taksim Square (Gezi/Taksim) were selected for differentiating their political system and spatial features. In the first case, the country was ruled under the authoritarian regime of Hosni Mubarak for thirty years, and the occupation took place in a roundabout. In the second case, the country had a democratic system while the occupation was developed in a quadrangular park. And in the third case, the country had a democratic government although the political party was in power for over twelve years, and the occupation was generated in a roundabout and a quadrangular park, mixing the two former case studies.
In order to understand the spatial affection, cartographies and analysis of these occupations were produced, making visible similarities and differences among each other. In the case of the roundabout, the occupation was more dynamic and the inhabiting zones changed more frequently; there was a constant movement – at different speeds – of people and objects. It caused a change from a centripetal to a centrifugal force from the centre to the outside of the roundabout, in borderless and inclusive means. Due to these conditions, the occupation altered the built environment and the limits between public and private, interior and exterior, and legal and illegal. Thus, spaces that served to specific functions were transformed into spaces that responded and
343 adapted to occupiers’ needs, through the collective participation and the application of dissident architectural practices. In the case of the quadrangular park, the occupation was more stable and permanent, with some peak points of intensity that transformed the space internally. The inhabiting zones were more defined, and although they changed over time, it was slower and less intense. In this case, the occupation transformed the image, aesthetic and use of the park itself but did not affect the surrounding area.
However, in both forms, quadrangular (park) and circular (roundabout), the occupations developed synchronized and intermittent actions, where communication in the physical and virtual space was the conductor to the amplification of the occupations. Thus, because these events included these architectural conditions, they were called archievents. They have been showed not as scenarios for protest but as living spaces, requiring social and spatial production through an ad-hoc architecture elaborated with dissident objects. Limited resources and heightened emotional settings altered the stakes of design, presenting the moment when intimacy and community acted as one when they were immersed in a chaotic and conflictive scenario. This momentum for disruption in the architectural urban landscape, generated immediate actions of adaptation and as radical practices, multiple micro-occupations redistributed the sense of when the materialities of bodies, of ‘sensible- intelligible experiences’ (Rancière 2004) were in tension with the built environment. Dissident objects added a factor to the kinship between artistic endeavours and political discontent, in which their symbolic materiality alongside bodies, transformed the architectural urban landscape. These bodies and objects sabotaged conventional practices and became part of an in-situ design, highlighting new architectural practices generated by anybody and everybody.
_The virtual space forming the contemporary public space One of the most important results from the occupations produced in Cairo, New York and Istanbul was the inclusion of the virtual space as part of the physical pubic space. During these events, the capacity to produce simultaneously and immediately collective spatial practices was done through an instant communication in social media such as Facebook and Twitter mainly, and also to propagate their energy and extent through YouTube and blogs not only in local places but also around the world. In this sense, videos, images, photographs, posts, testimonies, and data became viral, which formed cognitive and affective networks. In addition, they produced a resonance that adapted to specific conditions and generated real-time-in-situ tools. Thus, the virtual space was not considered anymore as a different element, but as part of one only space, the contemporary public space.
On the other hand, these occupations also demonstrated the undeniable necessity to gather physically in the public space and being visible. The synchronized occupation in the virtual and
344 physical space showed that these two factors could not be identified as independent anymore, but considered as one only space that performs a hyper forum for the public in the contemporary public space.
_The privatization of public spaces through urban regulations The contemporary occupations demonstrated the importance and power that public spaces and the multitude had when acting together as a synchronized body. The most extraordinary cases happened in the Arab Revolution with the overthrown of different governments and important political changes introduced in different countries. Since then, urban regulations about the use and design of public spaces have become more strict and severe, leaving a narrow path to act spontaneously in these spaces and making extremely difficult, if not banning completely, future possible occupations. However, this situation is contrasted with others, especially to those that do not involve a political aspect. For instance, when Apple launches a new iPhone, people occupy public spaces (outside the stores) for days, with tents or sleeping bags. In another example, in Madrid’s centric neighbourhood “Las Letras,” there are people occupying sidewalks and plazas close to the basilica of Jesus de Medinaceli for weeks, especially before the first Friday of March every year.
Thus, these regulations intend to forbid, or at least to control completely, social gathering with political purposes. One of the methods local governments have applied in different cities is the privatization of public spaces, based on the “Privately Owned Public Space” regulations developed by the New York City Council in 1961. This regulation is a bonus trade-off between local governments and private developers, who are granted the right to build bigger and/or taller building that the permissible on the basis of zoning guidelines. By accepting this bonus, private landowners have to provide a publicly usable space, which remains in private property but has to be used by all members of the public at any time. In this sense, OWS and the Umbrella Movement especially, made visible the situation of a general privatization of public spaces in city centres, but they also pushed an implementation of this regulation in more cities.
Since 2011, there have been a number of organizations and regulations that intend to control more public spaces. That is the case of the RIBA (Royal Institute of British Architects) that alongside the Home Office and the National Counter Terrorism Security Office, developed a guide manual for the future of public spaces under the label of security against terrorist attacks. In this manual, there is a series of guidelines for designing public spaces, addressing to architects and planners to consider the location of urban elements in open areas in order to avoid mass gatherings, to include buildings for commercial purposes and be composed by glass façades in order to have a wider visual observation to the outside, to replace fences by automatic and metallic bollards, to incorporate different levels of ground and avoid circular shapes, which are potential areas for assemblies, and
345 so on. In addition to these design parameters, the urban regulations of use of public spaces have been also modified, prohibiting a spontaneous collective gathering without official permissions, to allow authorities to detent any person that remains in a public space, to forbid the installation of any kind of light structure without official permits, to lye down, to storage, and so on.
Facing the fact that local governments generally do not have the budget to create, maintain and manage public spaces, the privatizations of these ones are a solution that could work if it is applied appropriately to the local context. Thus, public spaces in contemporary cities are not considering only its legal ownership, whether it is public or private, but they stand as performing the sense of public. In this situation, dissident architectural practices developed during the occupations appear as opportunities, tools and tactics that activate the post-public space.
This is a space that goes beyond the physical and legal conditions, and promotes the production of a temporal and intermittent public space. The post-public space opens discussion and platforms to continue a research related to the complexity of these situations, and acts as an opportunity to transform the temporary fixed, controlled and established public spaces through virtual and physical actions. It also displays an intimacy and community that activate other spatialities, going beyond the public-private relationships and performing design strategies in dissident modes. For these reasons, the sense of intimate and community, and interior and exterior spaces that are built in Tokyo, present the spatial stage to carry out these new processes.
One of the main characteristics of these spaces is their intermittency, lasting from a couple of hours to a couple of days and sometimes weeks; the spaces were not programmed, but planned and designed to reveal the occupation’s intimacy. An intimate community re-appropriated a space and turned it into an alternative urban tool that produced other spaces through micro-occupations. They irrupted the established order settled by a non-social consensual state, reintegrating their dissident character as the ‘haunting’ of space and commenting on the relationship between community and intimacy rather than between public and private. Occupiers altered the boundaries of what is in or out, central or peripheral, visible or invisible, sensible or perceptible, and gave new notions of dissident collective time and space.
In this way, this research does not respond to all the initial questions; instead, it formulates and generates more questions, and moreover, it opens a platform to continue a research in different aspects but connected to the radical spatiality.
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APPENDIX 1
Campinas Occupy)Movement)_)Cities Curitiba Goiania 15-October-2011 Rio-de-Janeiro Porto-Alegre AFRICA Bahia-de-Salvador Country City)or)District Date)protest)began) Sao-Paulo Egypt Cairo 15-October-2011 Chile Concepción Nigeria Abuja Santiago 15-October-2011 Ojota 15-October-2011 Valparaíso Kano Colombia Bogotá 15-October-2011 South-Africa Cape-Town Costa-Rica San-José 15-October-2011 Durban Dominican-Republic Santo-Domingo 15-October-2011 East-London 15-October-2011 Ecuador Quito 15-October-2011 Grahamstown Guatemala Guatemala 15-October-2011 Johannesburg Honduras Tegucigalpa 15-October-2011 Tunisia Tunis 11-November-2011 Mexico Mexico-DF Monterrey 15-October-2011 Tijuana AMERICA Panama Panama-City 15-October-2011 Country City)or)District Date)protest)began) Paraguay Asunción 15-October-2011 Canada Vancouver Peru Lima 15-October-2011 Montreal Uruguay Montevideo 15-October-2011 Toronto United-States Auburn 15-October-2011 Edmonton 15-October-2011 Birmingham Nelson Bedford 29-October-2011 Victoria Mobile 8-October-2011 Ottawa Montgomery 22-October-2011 Nanaimo Tuscaloosa 8-October-2011 Calgary 13-October-2011 Anchorage 4-October-2011 Winnipeg Bethel Moncton Fairbanks Halifax Homer 15-October-2011 Comox-Valley Juneau Saskatoon Kenai Kamloops Unalaska 16-October-2011 Saint-John Flagstaff 15-October-2011 Charlottetown 15-October-2011 Phoenix 14-October-2011 Kelowna Prescott 6-October-2011 Fredericton Tempe 15-October-2011 London Tucson 1-October-2011 Windsor Yuma 15-October-2011 Regina Conway- 26-October-2011 St.-John's Fayetteville 11-October-2011 Kingston Jonesboro 15-October-2011 Corner-Brook 22-October-2011 Little-Rock Sudbury /California Alameda Chicoutimi Amador-County 7-October-2011 Guelph Anaheim Red-Deer Arcata Sault-Ste.-Marie 15-October-2011 Auburn 17-October-2011 Lloydminster Bakersfield 7-October-2011 Hamilton Berkeley 8-October-2011 North-Bay Camarillo 5-October-2011 Thunder-Bay Chico 7-October-2011 Argentina Buenos-Aires Coachella-Valley Córdoba Culver-City 11-October-2011 Mendoza 15-October-2011 Davis Rosario Encinitas 15-October-2011 San-Miguel-de-Tucumán Escondido 5-November-2011 San-Salvador-de-Jujuy Eureka 13-October-2011 Bolivia La-Paz 15-October-2011 Fontana Brazil Belo-Horizonte Fresno 15-October-2011
15-October-2011 Gilroy 15-October-2011 Miami 15-October-2011 Grass-Valley Orlando Half-Moon-Bay 4-October-2011 Pensacola Huntington-Beach 9-March-2012 Sarasota Irvine St.-Augustine Lompoc 15-October-2011 St.-Petersburg Long-Beach Tallahassee Los-Angeles Tampa 24-September-2011 1-October-2011 Marysville Vero-Beach 6-October-2011 Merced West-Palm-Beach Monterey Athens Nevada-City Atlanta Oakland Augusta 15-October-2011 Ojai Dalton Oxnard Fort-Benning Palo-Alto Macon Pasadena Savannah Petaluma 29-October-2011 Valdosta 15-October-2011 Redding Hilo 6-October-2011 Redlands Honolulu Redwood-City 28-October-2011 Kaua'i Riverside 15-October-2011 Kona Sacramento 7-October-2011 Maui Salinas 15-October-2011 Boise San-Diego Idaho-Falls San-Francisco 7-October-2011 Moscow San-José Pocatello San-Luis-Obispo Bloomington- San-Marino 5-October-2011 Carbondale San-Rafael Champaign-Urbana 5-October-2011 Santa-Ana 22-October-2011 Chicago Santa-Barbara 8-October-2011 DeKalb Santa-Cruz 6-October-2011 Galesburg 17-October-2011 Santa-Maria Macomb 21-October-2011 Santa-Monica-College Naperville 15-October-2011 Santa-Rosa Ottawa Sebastopol Peoria 22-October-2011 Stockton 12-October-2011 Rockford Temecula Springfield 15-October-2011 Torrance Streator Van-Nuys 28-October-2011 Bloomington 9-October-2011 Venice 9-October-2011 Elkhart 7-October-2011 Ventura 14-October-2011 Evansville 10-October-2011 Aspen Fort-Wayne Boulder Indianapolis 8-October-2011 Colorado-Springs Muncie 9-October-2011 15-October-2011 Denver Portage 22-October-2011 Fort-Collins South-Bend 7-October-2011 Grand-Junction West-Lafayette 10-December-2011 Longmont Ames 13-October-2011 10-October-2011 Pueblo Cedar-Valley 15-October-2011 Branford 6-October-2011 Cedar-Rapids 22-October-2011 Hartford 7-October-2011 Decorah 5-November-2011 New-Haven Des-Moines 9-October-2011 8-October-2011 New-London Iowa-City 7-October-2011 Wilmington 15-October-2011 Sioux-City 8-October-2011 Washington 1-October-2011 Kansas-City Daytona-Beach 6-October-2011 Lawrence Ft.-Myers Manhattan Gainesville Pittsburg 15-October-2011 Jacksonville Wichita Lakeland Ashland Melbroune Bowling-Green- 15-October-2011 Lexington 29-September-2011 Carson-City Louisville Las-Vegas-Valley Owensboro 4-October-2011 Reno 15-October-2011 Paducah Concord Baton-Rouge 24-October-2011 Conway Lafayette 17-November-2011 Exeter New-Orleans Hanover Shreveport Keene 13-October-2011 Augusta Manchester- Bangor Nashua Bar-Harbor 15-October-2011 Atlantic-City 5-November-2011 Brunswick Jersey-City Portland Mount-Olive Presque-Isle Newark 10-October-2011 Annapolis Princeton Baltimore 3-October-2011 Toms-River Cumberland 8-October-2011 Trenton 6-October-2011 Frederick 11-November-2011 Albuquerque 1-October-2011 Amherst 5-October-2011 Las-Cruces Berkshire-County 10-October-2011 Los-Lunas Boston 30-September-2011 Santa-Fe 21-October-2011 Cambridge 9-November-2011 Taos Greenfield 9-October-2011 Albany Jamaica-Plain 13-November-2011 Binghamton 13-October-2011 Lenox Buffalo 1-October-2011 Newton 15-October-2011 Fredonia Needham Ithaca 28-November-2011 Northampton Kingston 6-October-2011 15-October-2011 Reading New-Paltz Salem 22-October-2011 New-York-City 15-September-2011 Springfield/Massachusetts Poughkeepsie Somerville 10-October-2011 Rochester 15-October-2011 Williamstown Saranac-Lake Worcester Syracuse 2-October-2011 9-October-2011 Ann-Arbor Utica Detroit Asheville-Chapel-Hill East-Lansing 14-October-2011 Charlotte Flint Durham Grand-Rapids 8-October-2011 Fayetteville Kalamazoo Greensboro Lansing Hendersonville Muskegon Raleigh 15-October-2011 15-October-2011 Traverse-City Wilmington Ypsilanti WinstoneSalem Duluth Fargo Minneapolis 7-October-2011 Grand-Forks Moorhead 15-October-2011 Akron Jackson Athens Biloxi Canton Cape-Girardeau 5-November-2011 Cincinnati Columbia Cleveland 6-October-2011 Kansas-City 5-October-2011 Columbus 27-September-2011 St.-Joseph Dayton St.-Louis 1-October-2011 Kent Billings Toledo 15-October-2011 Bozeman Youngstown Butte Norman Great-Falls Oklahoma-City 10-October-2011 15-October-2011 Helena Tulsa 7-October-2011 Kalispell Shawnee Missoula Ashland/Oregon 11-October-2011 Lincoln Bend Omaha 29-September-2011 Corvallis 6-October-2011 Eugene 6-October-2011 Rutland 9-November-2011 Medford Upper-Valley 9-December-2011 Mosier 5-November-2011 Arlington Portland/Oregon Blacksburg 15-October-2011 Roseburg 6-October-2011 Charlottesville Salem/Oregon Martinsville Allentown 3-October-2011 Norfolk 6-October-2011 Bethlehem 24-October-2011 Richmond Doylestown Roanoke Easton 17-November-2011 Williamsburg Erie Bellevue Harrisburg 15-October-2011 15-October-2011 Bellingham Lancaster Bremerton Philadelphia 29-September-2011 Centralia Pittsburgh 16-October-2011 Cle-Elum Pottsville Colville University-Park Everett 25-October-2011 Scranton Federal-Way York Leavenworth San-Juan 15-October-2011 Longview Providence Mt.-Vernon Charleston Olympia Columbia Port-Townsend Greenville Puyallup Hilton-Head 29-December-2011 Richland Rapid-City Seattle 15-October-2011 Sioux-Falls Spokane Spearfish Stanwood Vermillion Tacoma Chattanooga Vancouver Clarksville Walla-Walla Johnson-City Wenatchee Knowville Yakima Memphis West-Virginia Murfreesboro 15-October-2011 Janesville 11-October-2011 Nashville La-Crosse 15-October-2011 Amarillo Madison 7-October-2011 Austin Milwaukee 15-October-2011 Bryan Casper 8-October-2011 College-Station- Cheyenne Corpus-Christi Jackson-Hole 15-October-2011 Dallas /Puerto-Rico San-Jose Denton El-Paso Ft.-Worth 10-October-2011 ASIA Galveston Country City)or)District Date)protest)began) Houston Armenia Yerevan 11-February-2012 Lewisville Bahrain Manama 15-October-2011 15-October-2011 China Luoyang Lubbock 6-October-2011 Marfa Zhengzhou McAllen Hong-Kong Central 15-October-2011 San-Angelo India Kolkata 22-October-2011 San-Antonio 3-October-2011 Mumbai 29-October-2011 San-Marcos 5-October-2011 Indonesia Jakarta 15-October-2011 Ogden- 6-November-2011 Israel Tel-Aviv 15-October-2011 Park-City 31-October-2011 Japan Tokyo 11-September-2011 Provo 29-October-2011 Malaysia Kuala-Lumpur 30-July-2011 Salt-Lake-City Mongolia Ulaanbaatar 15-October-2011 7-October-2011 St.-George Pakistan Islamabad 26-October-2011 Bennington 19-November-2011 Philippines Manila 15-October-2011 Brattleboro 7-October-2011 South-Korea Seul 14-October-2011 Burlington Taiwan Taipei 15-October-2011 9-October-2011 Central-Vermont 15-October-2011
Waterford EUROPE Italy Milan 15-October-2011 Country City)or)District Date)protest)began) Rome Belgium Antwerp 22-October-2011 Kosovo Pristina 15-October-2011 Brussels 15-October-2011 Macedonia Skopje 15-October-2011 Leuven- Montenegro Podgorica 15-October-2011 Bosnia-and-Herzegovina Banja-Luka 15-October-2011 Netherlands Alkmaar 29-October-2011 Saravejo Amersfoort 22-October-2011 Croatia Buje Amsterdam 16-October-2011 Dubrovnik Arnhem 27-October-2011 Pula 15-October-2011 Assen 28-October-2011 Rijeka Deventer 27-October-2011 Split Doetinchem Zagreb Dordrecth 29-October-2011 Czech-Republic Prague 15-October-2011 Ede Cyprus Nicosia 15-October-2011 Eindhoven 5-November-2011 Denmark Copenhagen 15-October-2011 Groninge 7-October-2011 Estonia Tallinn 15-October-2011 Haarlem 1-November-2011 France AixeeneProvence The-Hague 15-October-2011 Auch Leeuwarden 24-October-2011 Dijon Maaskantje 18-November-2011 Grenoble Nijmegen 15-October-2011 Lyon Rotterdam Marseilles Tilburg 5-November-2011 Montpellier 15-October-2011 Utrecht Nantes Venlo 15-October-2011 Paris Zwolle Pau Norway Oslo 15-October-2011 Réunion Bergen Rochefort Poland Krakow 15-October-2011 Strasbourg Warsaw Touluse Portugal Barcelos Finland Helsinki Braga Joensuu Coimbra Jyvaskyla 15-October-2011 Evora Tampere Faro 15-October-2011 Turku Funchal Vantaa Lisbon Germany Berlin Porto Bochum Santarem Cologne Romania Bucharest 15-October-2011 Dusseldorf Russia Moscow 7-November-2011 Dresden Serbia Belgrade 15-October-2011 Freiburg-im-Breisgau Slovakia Bratislava 15-October-2011 Frankfurt Slovenia Koper Hamburg 15-October-2011 Ljubljana 15-October-2011 Hannover Maribor Karlsruhe Spain Barcelona Kiel- Madrid Leipzig Malaga Munich Mieres 15-October-2011 Rostock Las-Palmas Stuttgart Palma-de-Mallorca Greece Athens 15-October-2011 Pontevedra Thessaloniki Valencia Hungary Budapest 15-October-2011 Sweden Gothenburg Pécs Helsingborg Iceland Reykjavik 15-October-2011 Malmo Ireland Cork Norrkoping Dublin Ostersund 15-October-2011 Galway 15-October-2011 Stockholm Letterkenny Sundsvall Limerick Umea 15-October-2011
Uppsala Switzerland Geneva 15-October-2011 Zurich Turkey Istanbul 30-October-2011 United-Kingdom Bath 30-October-2011 Belfast 15-October-2011 Birmingham Bournemouth Bradford Brighton Bristol 15-October-2011 Cardiff Edinburgh Exeter Glasgow Lampeter Lancaster 30-November-2011 Leeds 11-November-2011 Liverpool 26-November-2011 London 15-October-2011 Manchester 2-October Norwich 15-October-2011 Plymouth 5-November-2011 Sheffield Thanet 27-January-2012
OCEANIA Country City)or)District Date)protest)began) Australia Adelaide 15-October-2011 Ballarat 3-December-2011 Brisbane Byron-Bay 15-October-2011 Cairns Canberra Castlemaine 17-November-2011 Darwin Fitzroy 4-November-2011 Geelong 17-March-2012 Gold-Coast 15-October-2011 Hobart 29-October-2011 Kingaroy Latrobe-Valley 2-March-2012 Launceston 15-October-2011 Melbourne Perth 28-October-2011 Sydney 15-October-2011 Townsville Wonthaggi 7-January-2012 New-Zeland Auckland Christchurch Wellington 15-October-2011 Dunedin Invercargill APPENDIX 2
6/2/2017 İstanbul'un Mega Projeleri
TAKSİM MEYDANI YAYALAŞTIRMA PROJESİ MEGAİSTANBUL http://megaprojeleristanbul.com
İlgili Kurumlar İstanbul Büyükşehir Belediye Başkanlığı http://www.ibb.gov.tr/tr-TR/Pages/Haber.aspx?NewsID=20709
Proje Alan Büyüklüğü 98.000 m² http://gundem.milliyet.com.tr/taksim-yayalastirma-projesi/gundem/detay/1762975/default.htm
Proje Türü Meydan düzenleme
Maliyeti 51 milyon 555 bin 370 TL. http://www.gazetecileronline.com/newsdetails/7869-/GazetecilerOnline/taksim-yayalastirma-projesi39nde-ihale-skandali
Müelli Tümaş/On Tasarım http://www.radikal.com.tr/turkiye/bu_projeyle_taksim_meydan_ozelligini_yitirecek-1210137
İnşaat Şirketi Kalyon GrupSanayi ve Ticaret A.Ş, Tümaş , On Tasarım http://www.haberturk.com/yasam/haber/770453-geri-sayim-basladi
Proje Modeli -
Güncel Durumu Taksim'e yapılacak caminin temeli atıldı. http://www.yapi.com.tr/haberler/taksim-camisinin-temeli-atildi_156175.html
Konumu Beyoğlu
Kamuya Açıklanma Ağustos 2007 Tarihi http://www.ibb.gov.tr/tr-TR/Haberler/Pages/Haber.aspx?NewsID=14903
Proje Alanının Çizildiği 17.01.2012 tarihinde onaylanan "Beyoğlu ilçesi, Taksim Meydanı Yayalaştırma Projesi'ne ilişkin 1/1000 ölçekli koruma Kaynak amaçlı uygulama imar planı tadilatı".
ZAMAN ÇİZELGESİ
Haziran 2011 12 Haziran genel seçimleri öncesi Başbakan, Taksim Projesini açıkladı. Taksim projesinin, Başbakan Erdoğan’ın belediye başkanlığı dönemindeki düşünceleri dikkate alınarak ve günümüz ihtiyaçlarına göre hazırlandığı belirtildi. http://haber.gazetevatan.com/bir-cilgin-proje-de-taksime/380949/1/gündem
Başbakan Erdoğan’ın önceki gün açıkladığı Taksim Topçu Kışlası’nı yeniden inşa projesi, İstanbul 2010 Avrupa Kültür Başkenti Ajansı’nın desteklediği ‘Hayal-et Yapılar’ adlı sergi ve kitap projesinden alıntı çıktı. http://www.radikal.com.tr/turkiye/hayal_etti_gercek_olacak-1051623
Eylül 2011 İstanbul Büyükşehir Belediye Meclisi Taksim Yayalaştırma Projesini kabul etti. http://www.ibb.gov.tr/tr-TR/Pages/MeclisKarari.aspx?KararID=22527
Şubat 2012 Taksim Yayalaştırma Projesine karşı sendikalar, odalar, siyasi partiler, çevre örgütleri ve dernekler Taksim Dayanışması’nı kurdu. http://haber.sol.org.tr/kent-gundemleri/akpnin-taksim-projesine-karsi-taksim-dayanismasi-kuruldu-haberi-52230
Haziran 2012 TMMOB Mimarlar Odası, Şehir Plancıları Odası ve Peyzaj Mimarları Odası, projenin yürütmesinin durdurulması ve iptali istemiyle dava açtı. http://www.radikal.com.tr/turkiye/taksim_icin_240_gunluk_geri_sayim-1092599
Eylül 2012 Taksim Meydanı'nın araç tra ğine kapatılarak yayalaştırılmasını amaçlayan "Taksim Meydanı Düzenleme İnşaatı" ihalesi Kalyon İnşaat’ın kazanmasıyla sonuçlandı. http://www.sabah.com.tr/yasam/2012/09/27/taksim-meydani-kalyona-emanet
Ekim 2012 Taksim Meydanı Yayalaştırma Çalışmalarına Başlandı. http://www.ibb.gov.tr/tr-TR/Pages/Haber.aspx?NewsID=20709#.VF-ph_SUf5k
Kasım 2012 Taksim Yayalaştırma Projesi ile ilgili önceden yeterli bilgilendirmenin yapılmaması hayatı olumsuz etkilemeye devam ediyor. http://www.radikal.com.tr/ekonomi/turizmciler_yaya_kaldi-1106688
Taksim'deki tüneli 8 ayda bitirmeyi hede eyen rma kurul kararı gereği iş makinelerini durdurarak, inşaat alanı önce elle kazacak. http://www.radikal.com.tr/turkiye/taksim_elle_kazilacak-1107281
Büyükşehir Belediye Başkanı Topbaş, Taksim Meydanı'na yapılacak Topçu Kışlası'nın içine yerleştirilecek olan buz patenini projesinin devam ettiğini açıkladı. http://www.radikal.com.tr/turkiye/topbas_dogrladi_gezi_parki_buz_kesecek-1107108
Taksim yayalaştırma projesinde cumhuriyet caddesine yapılacak tünel için iş makineleri bu sabahtan itibaren kazmaya başladı. http://www.radikal.com.tr/turkiye/taksim_elle_degil_makineyle_kaziliyor-1107526
Yayalaştırma çalışması için Taksim Meydanı'na çıkan engelli asansörü süresiz olarak kapatıldı. Tekerlekli sandalyeyle Taksim'de metrodan inip meydana çıkılması bir saat sürdü. http://www.radikal.com.tr/hayat/bu_da_engelli_taksim_maratonu-1107600 http://megaprojeleristanbul.com/print/taksim-meydani-yayalastirma-projesi 1/4 6/2/2017 İstanbul'un Mega Projeleri
Yayalaştırma projesinin hayatı felç ettiği Taksim'de meydan ile Cumhuriyet Caddesi girişine yapılan 70 metrelik üst geçit açıldı. http://www.radikal.com.tr/turkiye/taksim_ust_gecidi_acildi-1109421
Aralık 2012 Topçu Kışlası inşaatının başlatılmaması ve Gezi Parkı'nın korunması için toplanan 46 bin 500 imza kurula teslim edildi. Projeye halen onay vermeyen kurulun, kararı bekleniyor. http://www.radikal.com.tr/turkiye/gezi_parki_icin_46500_imza-1112627
Ocak 2013 Topçu Kışlası Projesi, II Numaralı Koruma Kurulu'nca "kamu yararına aykırı" denerek reddedildi. http://bianet.org/bianet/toplum/154649-yayalastirma-projesi-nin-koruma-kurulu-kararina-da-iptal
Şubat 2013 Taksim Gezi Parkı'nı Asker Ocağı Caddesi üzerinden karşıya bağlayan ve Prof. Henri Prost tarafından tasarlanan 70 yıllık yaya köprüsü, İstanbul Büyükşehir Belediyesi tarafından yıkıldı. http://bianet.org/bianet/kent/144303-gezi-parki-nin-70-yillik-koprusunu-yiktilar
Taksim Yayalaştırma Projesi'nin en önemli ayağı Topçu Kışlası'na Kültür ve Tabiat Varlıklarını Koruma Yüksek Kurulu'ndan onay çıktı. http://www.radikal.com.tr/turkiye/taksim_topcu_kislasi_icin_son_karar_verildi-1123242
İstanbul 2 No'u Kültür Varlıklarını Koruma Kurulu, Taksim'deki yayalaştırma çalışmaları sırasında ortaya çıkan tonozlu yapı ile ilgili kararını verdi: İstanbul Arkeoloji Müzesi bu bölgedeki kazıyı elle yaparak eseri ortaya çıkarsın. http://www.radikal.com.tr/turkiye/kultur_varliklarini_koruma_kurulu_taksim_elle_kazilsin-1123182
Mart 2013 Taksim Meydanı yayalaştırma projesi kapsamında devam eden inşaat sırasında Cumhuriyet caddesi üzerinde bulunan kalıntılar için İstanbul 2 Nolu Kültür Varlıklarını Koruma Kurulu ‘kaldırılsın’ kararı verdi. http://www.radikal.com.tr/turkiye/taksim_karari_kalintilar_kaldirilsin-1124166
Taksim Meydanı Yayalaştırma Projesi ve Topçu Kışlası'na karşı sanatçıların da içinde yer aldığı Taksim Gezi Parkı Koruma ve Güzelleştirme Derneği kuruldu. http://www.bianet.org/english/toplum/145126-reddin-reddini-reddediyoruz
Nisan 2013 Yayalaştırma ve inşaat çalışmaları sebebiyle Taksim Meydanı’nda 1 Mayıs mitingine izin verilmeyeceği açıklandı. http://www.zaman.com.tr/gundem_tadilat-nedeni-ile-taksim-1-mayis-torenlerine-kapali_2080003.html
Mayıs 2013 Başbakan Erdoğan bundan sonra herkesin neresi gösterildiyse orada miting yapacağını söyledi:Taksim ve Kadıköy’de miting yok. http://www.radikal.com.tr/politika/basbakan_bundan_sonra_taksimde_kadikoyde_miting_yok-1132168
Taksim Meydanı Yayalaştırma Projesi kapsamında, yol inşaatı yapımı gerekçesiyle ağaçların yıkılması Taksim Dayanışması Bileşenleri tarafından protesto edildi. Saat 19.00'da park içinde toplanan yaklaşık 500 kişi park içine çadır kurdu. http://www.radikal.com.tr/turkiye/taksim_gezi_parkinda_nobete_devam-1135395
Taksim Gezi Parkı'nda gece yarısı başlayan yıkım çalışmalarına karşı, bölgenin kamusal alan olarak kalmasını talep eden ve gece çadır kurarak direnişe geçen gruba polis müdahale etti. http://www.radikal.com.tr/arama/aranan=taksim_yayala%C5%9Ft%C4%B1rma&siralama=tarihe_gore_azalan-13/
Taksim Gezi Parkı'nda iş makineleriyle yapılan çalışmalara karşı 3 gündür nöbet tutan gruba polis sabaha karşı saat 05.00 civarında yeniden müdahale etti. http://www.hurriyet.com.tr/gundem/23396499.asp
Taksim Gezi Parkı'ndaki ağaçların kesimine karşı 27 Mayıs'tan beri nöbet tutan gruba polis bu sabah 05.00’da yine gaz ile saldırdı. Direnişçiler İstiklal Caddesi girişinde 6:30'dan 8.00'a dek polisin TOMA ve biber gazlı saldırısıyla karşılaştı. Saat 10.00’da Taksim Dayanışması'nın çağrısıyla Divan Otel önünde basın açıklaması yapıldı. Polisin kesintisiz saldırılarına rağmen yüzlerce kişi 13.00 civarında Taksim Meydanı'nda toplandı. Gezi Parkı merdivenlerinde saat 19.00’da toplanma çağrısı yapıldı ancak Taksim Meydanı 17.00 itibarıyla araçların girişine yasaklandı, metro Osmanbey’de son buluyor, fünikülerler kapandı, Kadıköy iskelelerinde çanta aranıyor. http://www.bianet.org/bianet/insan-haklari/147053-polis-gezi-ye-yine-saldirdi http://www.bianet.org/bianet/toplum/147055-gezi-parki-ni-istiklal-de-savundular http://www.bianet.org/bianet/insan-haklari/147080-polis-saldiriyor-halk-tepkili http://www.bianet.org/bianet/kent/147085-taksim-e-ulasim-engeli
İstanbul 6. İdare Mahkemesi, Taksim'de Gezi Parkı'na yapılması planlanan Topçu Kışlası Projesi hakkında yürütmeyi durdurma kararı verdi. http://www.bianet.org/bianet/toplum/147093-mahkeme-topcu-kislasi-nin-yurutmesini-durdurdu
Haziran 2013 Gezi Parkı için İstanbul ve çevresinde günlerdir direnen binlerce insan polisin çekilmesiyle sonunda meydandan Gezi Parkı’na girdi. İstanbul ve ülkenin diğer bir çok şehrinde Gezi Parkı ile başlayan direnişler devam ediyor. http://www.bianet.org/bianet/2013/6/1 http://www.bianet.org/bianet/toplum/147105-saldirilar-ve-direnisler-turkiye-ye-yayildi
Başbakan Erdoğan, İstanbul 6. Bölge İdare Mahkemesi'nin Topçu Kışlası projesiyle ilgili yürütmeyi durdurma kararını eleştirdi: "Projeyi mi ilan ettik. Ne oldu da geldin akşam saatinde açıklama yapıyorsun..." http://www.radikal.com.tr/turkiye/basbakan_erdogan_topcu_kislasina_dur_diyen_mahkemeye_itiraz_hakki_var-1135876
Erdoğan, Taksim'e Topçu Kışlası'nın yanında iki proje daha yapılacağını belirterek "AKM inşallah yıkılacak. Muhteşem bir opera olarak kültür merkezi yapacağız. Evet cami de yapacağız. Ben bunun iznini gidip de birkaç çapulcudan alacak değilim" dedi. http://www.radikal.com.tr/politika/erdogan_akm_yikilacak_taksime_cami_de_yapilacak-1135947
Başbakanvekili Bülent Arınç'la görüşen 'Gezi Parkı direnişçileri' taleplerini hükümete ve kamuoyuna duyurdu. Eylemcilerin 6 talebinin ilki, Gezi Parkı'nda hiçbir yapılaşma olmayacağının resmen açıklanması. http://www.radikal.com.tr/turkiye/gezi_parki_direniscileri_taleplerini_acikladi-1136367
1. İdare Mahkemesi Gezi Parkı’nda yapılaşmanın önünü açan 1/1000 ve 1/5000 ölçekli imar planlarını iptal etti. http://www.radikal.com.tr/turkiye/topcu_kislasi_onayi_uygundur-1180789 http://megaprojeleristanbul.com/print/taksim-meydani-yayalastirma-projesi 2/4 6/2/2017 İstanbul'un Mega Projeleri
İstanbul Büyükşehir Belediye Başkanı Kadir Topbaş da Taksim Meydanı'nda ağaçlandırma düşündüklerini Başbakan Erdoğan'la da bu konuda anlaştıklarını açıkladı. http://www.radikal.com.tr/turkiye/kadir_topbas_avmden_gina_geldi_mackaya_kadar_park_olabilir-1136794
Başbakan Erdoğan ve 11 kişilik Gezi Parkı heyetinin yaklaşık 5 saat süren görüşmesi bitti. Görüşmede Başbakan Erdoğan, Gezi Parkı için referanduma gidebileceklerini açıkladı. http://www.radikal.com.tr/turkiye/hukumet_gezi_parki_icin_referanduma_gidecek-1137375
Gezi Parkı için ‘plebisit’ yapılacağı tartışmaları sürerken, Erdoğan “Yargı kararını bekleyeceğiz” açıklamasını yaptı. http://www.radikal.com.tr/turkiye/gezi_davalarinda_son_durum_ne-1137511
Gezi Parkı ile ilgili Başbakanlık'ta görüşmeler yapıldı. Görüşmeye 8 sanatçının yanı sıra Taksim Dayanışma üyeleri katıldı. http://www.radikal.com.tr/politika/erdoganlardan_ailecek_gezi_mesaisi-1137548
Gezi Parkı haftaya çadırlı eylemciler yerine yüzlerce polis ve belediye çalışanıyla başladı. Olayların 21. gününde park halka kapalıydı. http://www.radikal.com.tr/turkiye/gezideki_cicekler_polis_nezaretinde-1138038
6. Bölge İdare Mahkemesi’nin parkla ilgili yürütmeyi durdurma kararına rağmen İBB’ye ait dozerler yıkım çalışmalarına devam etti. http://www.radikal.com.tr/turkiye/taksimde_dozerler_yeniden_yikima_basladi-1139125
Temmuz 2013 Gezi Parkı'nda 'Topçu Kışlası' yapılmasına olanak tanıyan Kültür ve Tabiat Varlıklarını Koruma Yüksek Kurulu kararı için verilen yürütmeyi durdurma kararı Bölge İdare Mahkemesi tarafından kaldırıldı. http://www.radikal.com.tr/turkiye/gezi_parkinda_insaat_icin_yurutmeyi_durdurma_karari_kaldirildi-1142823
Ağustos 2013 Taksim Yayalaştırma Projesi 1. Etabı'nın tamamlanmasının ardından Sıraselviler Caddesi araç tra ğine çift yönlü açılacak. Bu kapsamda Atatürk Kültür Merkezi (AKM) önünde yol genişletme çalışmaları başlatıldı. http://www.radikal.com.tr/turkiye/taksim_yayalastirma_projesi_basladi-1148099
Eylül 2013 Taksim Meydanı yayalaştırma çalışmaları kapsamında Gezi Parkı’nın önünden geçen, otobüs duraklarının bulunduğu yol tamamen tra ğe kapatıldı. http://www.hurriyet.com.tr/gundem/24633614.asp
Taksim yayalaştırma projesi tamamlandı. Tarlabaşı Bulvarı – Cumhuriyet Caddesi araç tra ği yer altına alınarak bu bölge yayalaştırıldı. Toplamda 98 bin metrekare, yayalaştırıldı. http://www.trthaber.com/foto-galeri/taksim-yayalastirma-projesi-tamamlandi/5097.html http://www.radikal.com.tr/turkiye/yeni_taksim-1150718
İstanbul Büyükşehir Belediye Başkanı (İBB) Kadir Topbaş Taksim'in yayalaştırılması projesi ile ilgili olarak, "Esasında meydanlarda ağaç olmaz. Ama bizim insanlarımız meydanda da ağaç istiyor." dedi. http://www.radikal.com.tr/turkiye/meydanlarda_agac_olmaz-1151153
Ekim 2013 Yayalaştırma projesi kapsamında tra ğin yeraltına alındığı Taksim Meydanı göle döndü. http://www.radikal.com.tr/turkiye/taksim_meydani_gole_dondu-1153784
Mart 2014 Gezi Parkı Koruma ve Güzelleştirme Derneği’nin ‘Topçu Kışlası’ projesine Yüksek Kurul’da verilen onayın iptal edilmesi için açtığı dava, İstanbul 6. İdare Mahkemesi’nce reddedildi. http://haber.sol.org.tr/kent-gundemleri/mahkeme-gezi-parkina-topcu-kislasi-uygundur-haberi-89246
Mayıs 2014 Danıştay 6. dairesi projeyi iptal etti. Bu kara projeyle ilgili son karar oldu ve yasal süreç sona erdi. Projenin büyük kısmı tamamlanmış, ikinci etapa geçilmişti. http://www.radikal.com.tr/turkiye/gezi_parki_icin_son_karar-1190591
Danıştay, İstanbul 1. İdare Mahkemesi tarafından Taksim Yayalaştırma Projesi için verdiği iptal kararını önceki gün onayladı. Alınan son kararla sadece Taksim Yayalaştırma Projesi ve tüneller değil Topçu Kışlası'nın yapılması da imkânsız hale geldi. http://www.cumhuriyet.com.tr/haber/turkiye/69455/Topcu_Kislasi_projesi_tarih_oldu.html
Danıştay'ın Taksim Yayalaştırma projesine iptal kararı vermesini değerlendiren Kadir Topbaş "Orada yapılan işlem bitmiştir. Herhalde toprak dolduracak halimiz yok. Öyle de bir karar değil zaten. Proje gerçekleşmiştir. Hayata geçmiştir" dedi. http://www.radikal.com.tr/turkiye/topbas_danistay_kararini_degerlendirdi_proje_hayata_gecti-1191253
Eylül 2014 Beyoğlu'ndan sorumlu koruma kurulu, İBB'nin hazırlattığı 'Taksim Meydanı düzenleme projesi'ni onayladı. Tümaş ve On Tasarım rmalarının imzasının yer aldığı proje raporunda, Taksim’e bu proje sayesinde "bir kent meydanı olma özelliği" getirildiği öne sürüldü. http://www.radikal.com.tr/turkiye/bu_projeyle_taksim_meydan_ozelligini_yitirecek-1210137
Kasım 2014 İstanbul Büyükşehir Belediyesi 2015- 2019 yılı Stratejik Planında ve 2015 performans yatırım planlarında “Taksim Meydanı Kentsel Tasarım ve Taksim Kışlası Restitüsyon Yeni Kullanım” projesi yer aldı. http://www.cumhuriyet.com.tr/haber/turkiye/142777/AKP_nin__Gezi__inadi_bitmiyor___Kisla__icin_butceden_pay.html
Ocak 2015 Beyoğlu Belediye Başkanı Ahmet Misbah Demircan, İstanbul Büyükşehir Belediyesi'nin Taksim Meydanı'nın düzenlenmesine ilkbaharda başlayacağını belirtti. http://ilerihaber.org/taksim-meydan-projesi-ilkbaharda-basliyor/9187/
Mart 2015 Taksim Meydanı Düzenleme Projesi'nin, Nisan ayında İstanbul Büyükşehir Belediyesi tarafından başlatılacağı açıklandı. http://www.yapi.com.tr/haberler/taksim-meydani-duzenleme-projesi-basliyor_129690.html
Nisan 2015 İstanbul Büyükşehir Belediye Başkanı Kadir Topbaş Mayıs ayı içerisinde Taksim Meydan düzenlemelerinin hızlıca tamamlanacağını belirtti. http://www.radikal.com.tr/turkiye/topbas_taksim_meydan_duzenlemesi_mayista_yapilacak-1338413
Mayıs 2015 İstanbul Büyükşehir Belediyesi 2014 yılında iptal edilen Taksim Meydanı Yayalaştırma Projesi’ne devam ediyor. Taksim Meydanı’nda iki alan üzerinde projenin tanıtımının olduğu demir bariyerlerle çevrildi. http://www.sendika.org/2015/05/ibbden-taksim-meydaninda-kacak-duzenleme/ http://megaprojeleristanbul.com/print/taksim-meydani-yayalastirma-projesi 3/4 6/2/2017 İstanbul'un Mega Projeleri Temmuz 2015 Gezi Parkı’nda bir ağaç devrileceği gerekçesiyle İBB ekipleri tarafından kesildi. Kesim sırasında bazı yurttaşlar, “Ağaç kurtarılabilirdi neden kesiyorsunuz” diyerek belediye çalışanlarına tepki gösterdi. http://www.diken.com.tr/ibb-gezi-parkinda-bir-agaci-kesti-yurttaslar-kurtarilabilirdi-diyerek-tepki-gosterdi/
Danıştay 6’ncı Dairesi, ‘Topçu Kışlası’nın da içinde olduğu Taksim Yayalaştırma Projesi’ne ilişkin geçen yıl onadığı iptal kararını oy çokluğuyla kaldırdı. http://www.diken.com.tr/bir-yil-once-onadigi-iptal-kararini-kaldiran-danistay-geziye-topcu-kislasinin-onunu-acti/
Davayı açan Mimarlar Odası’nın avukatı Can Atalay kararın çok istisnai durumlarda verildiğini söyleyerek, “Karar oy çokluğuyla alındı. Kararı onaylayan üyeler Erdoğan tarafından atandı” dedi. http://www.diken.com.tr/topcu-kislasinin-onunu-acan-kararin-altinda-erdoganin-atadigi-uyelerin-imzasi-var/
Taksim Dayanışması "Tekrarlıyoruz, aklınızdan bile geçirmeyin!" başlığıyla bir basın açıklaması yaptı. http://www.diken.com.tr/geziye-topcu-kislasi-inadina-yanit-taksim-dayanismasindan-aklinizdan-gecirmeyin/
İdare Mahkemesi tarafından verilen Beyoğlu Kentsel Sit Alanı Koruma Amaçlı Planları’nın iptaline ilişkin karar Danıştay’dan döndü. Danıştay'ın, 6. Dairesi planların iptalini gerektirecek bir durumun oluşmadığını belirterek, bilirkişi raporunun hükme esas alınabilir teknik ve bilimsel verileri içermediği kanaatine vardığı açıklandı. http://www.yapi.com.tr/haberler/beyoglu-kentsel-sit-planlarina-danistay-onayi_133017.html
Eylül 2015 Danıştay 6. Dairesince Beyoğlu Koruma Amaçlı Uygulama İmar planı ile ilgili İstanbul 10. İdare Mahkemesi’nin verdiği iptal kararını bozması üzerine Beyoğlu Belediyesi bozulan plana göre uygulama yapmaya başladı. http://www.radikal.com.tr/turkiye/topcu_kislasi_yeniden-1429309
Ekim 2015 Geçen Mayıs ayında başlayan "Taksim Meydanı Düzenleme Projesi" kapsamında meydana parke taşı döşenmeye başlanmıştı. Taş döşenen meydanda yağmur suyu kanallarının yapımının unutulduğu ortaya çıktı. Taşlar yeniden sökülüp kanallar yapılmaya başlandı. http://www.radikal.com.tr/turkiye/taksim-projesinde-yagmur-suyu-kanallarini-unuttular-taslar-sokuluyor-1456335/
Kasım 2015 Taksim Meydanı'nda devam eden çalışmalar sırasında yapılan kazılarda insan kafatası ve kemikleri bulundu. http://www.birgun.net/haber-detay/taksim-deki-kazida-insan-kemikleri-bulundu-95366.html
Ocak 2016 Taksim yayalaştırma projesi kapsamında inşa edilen araç tünellerinin inşasından sonra artan su baskınlarından biri de önceki gün metronun araç tüneliyle bağlantı noktasında gerçekleşti. Tavandan bir şelale gibi akan suyu önleyemeyen İBB, çareyi tavana bir branda gererek suyu duvar hizasından su giderine akıtmakta buldu. http://www.yapi.com.tr/haberler/taksim-metrosunda-su-baskini_141325.html
Şubat 2016 Şubat 2013 tarihinde yıkılan ve Gezi Parkı'nı Harbiye'ye bağlayan 70 yıllık yaya köprüsünün yerine yenisini yapacağını açıkladı. Köprünün Haziran 2016 tarihinde bitirilmesinin planlandığı açıklandı. http://www.zaman.com.tr/gundem_gezi-parkina-yaya-ust-gecidi_2345001.html
Nisan 2016 Yayalaştırma projesinin 2. etabının Mete Caddesi'nin alt ve üst yapı imalatlarıyla başlanacağı açıklandı. 2 Nisan günü başlayacak olan çalışmaların 31 Temmuz 2016 tarihinde bitmesi öngörülüyor. http://www.yapi.com.tr/haberler/taksim-cevre-duzenlemesinde-2-etap-basliyor_143967.html
Haziran 2016 Cumhurbaşkanı Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Gezi Parkı'na Topçu Kışlasının yapılması hakkında"Cesur olacağız. Taksim Gezi Parkı'na o tarihi eseri inşa edeceğiz. Adım atacağız, bir an önce yürüyeceğiz" dedi. http://www.yapi.com.tr/haberler/cumhurbaskani-erdogandan-gezi-parki-aciklamasi_145272.html
İstanbul Büyükşehir Belediye Başkanı Kadir Topbaş, bir mimar olarak ön yargılı duruşu kabul edemediğini söyleyerek, Topçu Kışlası'nı yapacaklarını ifade etti. Mahkeme kararlarının da yapılabileceği yönünde netleştiğini ekledi. http://www.yapi.com.tr/haberler/kadir-topbas-topcu-kislasini-yapacagiz_146821.html
TMMOB İstanbul İl Koordinasyon Kurulu tarafından yapılan açıklamada "Taksim'e bir kışla yapılmasına ilişkin hükmün iptali ile ilgili dava hala sürmektedir" denildi. http://www.yapi.com.tr/haberler/tmmobdan-topbasa-yanit-dava-devam-ediyor_146826.html
Temmuz 2016 Cumhurbaşkanı Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, darbe girişiminin ardından meydanlarda toplananlara Kısıklı'da gece saat 01.30'da seslendi. Erdoğan, Gezi Parkı'na yapılması planlanan Topçu Kışlası için 'isteseler de, istemeseler de yapılacak' dedi. http://www.yapi.com.tr/haberler/erdogan-isteseler-de-istemeseler-de-yapilacak_146640.html
Şubat 2017 Mimar Şe k Birkiye ve Selim Dalaman’ın imzasını taşıyan cami projesine “onay” İstanbul 2 Numaralı Kültür Varlıklarını Koruma Bölge Kurulundan çıktı. Cami projesi, Kurul’dan, ada pafta parsel numarası ile 19 Ocak günü geçti. http://www.hurriyet.com.tr/taksim-camii-icin-kuruldan-onay-cikti-40357301
Taksim'e yapılacak caminin temeli atıldı. http://www.yapi.com.tr/haberler/taksim-camisinin-temeli-atildi_156175.html
http://megaprojeleristanbul.com/print/taksim-meydani-yayalastirma-projesi 4/4
APPENDIX 3
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٢٦ ٢٥ APPENDIX 4
(10/17/07)
Chapter 7 Special Urban Design Regulations
ZONING RESOLUTION Web Version
THE CITY OF NEW YORK (2/2/11)
37-10
APPLICABILITY OF ARTICLE II, CHAPTER 6, TO DEVELOPMENTS WITH
PRIVATE ROADS THE CITY OF NEW YORK
Bill de Blasio, Mayor In C1 or C2 Districts mapped within R3, R4 or R5 Districts, and in C3 Districts, the provisions of Section 26-20 (SPECIAL CITY PLANNING COMMISSION REQUIREMENTS FOR DEVELOPMENTS WITH PRIVATE ROADS) shall apply to Carl Weisbrod, Chairman any #zoning lot# with #buildings# accessed by #private roads#, except where such #zoning lot# contains #private roads# constructed prior to February 6, 2002. In addition, the open area between #buildings# and sidewalks required pursuant to Section 26-25 need not be planted where such open areas front upon #commercial uses#.
However, in C3A Districts located within #lower density growth management areas#, the provisions of 26-30 (SPECIAL REQUIREMENTS Article III: Commercial District Regulations FOR DEVELOPMENTS WITH PRIVATE ROADS IN LOWER DENSITY GROWTH Chapter 7 - Special Regulations MANAGEMENT AREAS) shall apply.
Effective date of most recently amended section of Article III Chapter 7: 07/24/13 (12/21/05)
37-20 Correction: 37-716 SPECIAL REGULATIONS FOR LOWER DENSITY GROWTH MANAGEMENT AREAS IN THE BOROUGH OF STATEN ISLAND
(12/21/05)
Date of file creation: Web version of Article III Chapter 7: 11/25/14 37-21 Special Screening Requirements between Residential and Non- CITY PLANNING COMMISSION DEPARTMENT OF CITY PLANNING Residential Uses nyc.gov/planning ©Copyrighted by the City of New York In all C1, C2 and C4-1 Districts in the Borough of Staten Island, Zoning Disclaimer- the Web version of the Zoning Resolution of the City of New York is all #developments# or #enlargements# containing non-#residential provided for reference and the convenience of having the Resolution in an online uses# shall be screened from adjoining #zoning lots# containing format. Recent amendments to the Zoning Resolution also appear on the Web prior to only #residential uses# by a planting strip at least five feet being incorporated into the print version of the Resolution. wide along the common #side lot line#, densely planted with
evergreen shrubs at least four feet high at time of planting and For the purposes of Sections 37-30 through 37-37, inclusive, a of a variety expected to reach a height of six feet within three "contiguous block" is a #block# containing one or more #zoning years. No chain link fences shall be permitted. However, no such lots# separated by a #narrow street# from the #block# containing screening shall be required where both such #buildings# front the #development#. upon a #street line# that forms the boundary of a #block# front mapped entirely as a #Commercial District#. Contiguous lot
For the purposes of Sections 37-30 through 37-37, inclusive, a "contiguous lot" is a #zoning lot# which shares a common #side (10/17/07) lot line# with the #zoning lot# of the #development#.
37-30 Development STREETSCAPE For the purposes of Sections 37-30 through 37-37, inclusive, in addition to the definition of “development” pursuant to Section 12-10 (DEFINITIONS), “development” shall also include an (2/2/11) #enlargement# involving an increase in #lot coverage#.
37-31 Predominantly residential use Applicability For the purposes of Sections 37-30 through 37-37, inclusive, a The regulations of Sections 37-30 through 37-37, inclusive, shall "predominantly residential use" means a #building# having a apply to any #development# occupied by #predominantly residential #residential floor area# in excess of 50 percent of the total use#, constructed after April 21, 1977, located on any #zoning #building floor area#. lot# within C1-8, C1-9, C2-7 C2-8, C4-6, C4-7, C5-1, C5-2, C5-4, C6-3, C6-4, C6-5 or C6-8 Districts, or C1 and C2 Districts mapped within R9 or R10 Districts. However, Sections 37-30 through 37- 37, inclusive, shall not apply within any Special Purpose (2/2/11) District nor shall it apply to any #Quality Housing building#, except as otherwise set forth therein. 37-33 Applicability of Article II An application to the Department of Buildings for a permit respecting any #development# shall include a plan and an In C1-8, C1-9, C2-7, C2-8, C4-6, C4-7, C5-1, C5-2, C5-4, C6-3, elevation drawn to a scale of at least one-sixteenth inch to a C6-4, C6-5 and C6-8 Districts, or C1 or C2 Districts mapped foot of the new #building# and #buildings# on #contiguous lots# within R9 or R10 Districts, the regulations of Article II, or #contiguous blocks# showing #signs#, other than #advertising Chapter 6 (Special Urban Design Guidelines - Streetscape), shall signs#, #arcades#, #street wall# articulation, curb cuts, apply to any #development# occupied by #predominantly residential #street# trees, sidewalk paving, central refuse storage area and use#, except as modified by the provisions of Sections 37-34 to such other necessary information as may be required by the 37-37, inclusive, relating to Modifications to the Applicability Commissioner of Buildings. of Article II, Chapter 6. The purpose of these modifications is to make the regulations of Article II, Chapter 6, applicable to #Commercial Districts#.
(2/2/11)
37-32 (2/2/11) Definitions 37-34 Contiguous block Modifications to Applicability of Article II, Chapter 6
In C1-8, C1-9, C2-7, C2-8, C4-6, C5-1, C5-2, C5-4, C6-3, C6-4, C6-5 and C6-8 Districts, or C1 or C2 Districts mapped within R9 In addition to the applicable district regulations in C1-8, C1-9, or R10 Districts, the regulations of Article II, Chapter 6, C2-7, C2-8 and C4-6 Districts, and C1 or C2 Districts mapped applicable to #developments# occupied by a #predominantly within R9 or R10 Districts, all #signs#, other than #advertising residential use# are modified by the provisions of Sections 37-35 signs# and window #signs#, shall be located in a horizontal band (Retail Continuity), 37-36 (Sign Regulations) and 37-37 (Street not higher than three feet, the base of which is located not Wall Articulation). higher than 17 feet above #curb level#. Where there is a grade change of at least 1.5 feet in 100 along the portion of the #street# upon which the #development# fronts, such signage band may be staggered along such #street#. (2/2/11) When a #building# on a #contiguous lot# or #contiguous block# 37-35 contains #accessory# business #signs# within a coordinated Retail Continuity horizontal band along its #street# frontage, the signage strip along the #development# shall be located at the same elevation as For #buildings# with front #building# walls that are at least 50 the adjacent band, but in no event higher than 17 feet above feet in width and front upon a #wide street#, a minimum of 50 #curb level#. Where coordinated horizontal bands exist on two percent of the width of such front #building# wall shall be #contiguous lots# or #contiguous blocks# on both sides of the occupied at the ground floor level by #commercial uses#, as #development#, the signage strip shall be located at the same permitted by district regulations. elevation as one adjacent band, or between the elevations of the two. For the purpose of this Section, the elevation is measured In C1-8, C1-9, C2-7, C2-8, C4-6 Districts, and C1 or C2 Districts from the #curb level# to the base of the signage strip. mapped within R9 or R10 Districts, #uses# which occupy such 50 percent of the front #building# wall shall be limited to those The City Planning Commission may, by certification to the listed in Use Groups 6A, 6C and 6F, excluding banks and loan Commissioner of Buildings, allow modifications of the offices, except that in C4-6 Districts only, such #uses# may requirements of this Section. Such modifications will be additionally include those listed in Use Groups 8A, 8B and 10A. permitted when the Commission finds that such modifications will All #uses# permitted by the underlying district regulations are enhance the design quality of the #street wall#. permitted in the remaining 50 percent of the front #building# wall.
Such requirement of #commercial uses# for a minimum of 50 percent (2/2/11) of the front #building# wall may be waived, or additional #uses# permitted, upon certification by the City Planning Commission to 37-37 the Commissioner of Buildings that an adequate supply of such Street Wall Articulation #uses# already exists at the ground floor level in the surrounding area. When any #building# wall which is five feet or more in height adjoins a sidewalk, a #public plaza# or an #arcade#, at least 50 The Commission may require that an application for such percent of the total surface area of such wall between #curb certification of additional #uses# for a completed #building#, level# and 12 feet above #curb level# or to the ceiling of the where #floor area# has been designated for occupancy for such ground floor, whichever is higher, or to the full height of the #commercial uses#, establish that a good faith effort has been wall if such wall is less than 12 feet in height, shall be made to secure tenancy by such #uses#. transparent. The lowest point at any point of any transparency that is provided to satisfy the requirements of this Section shall not be higher than four feet above the #curb level#.
(2/2/11) Door or window openings within such walls shall be considered as transparent. Such openings shall have a minimum width of two 37-36 feet. Sign Regulations
In addition, any portion of such #building# wall, 50 feet or more or entrances into a subway station located within the #Special in width, which contains no transparent element between #curb Midtown District# as listed in Section 81-46, the #Special Lower level# and 12 feet above #curb level# or the ceiling of the Manhattan District# as listed in Section 91-43, the #Special ground floor, whichever is higher, or to its full height if such Downtown Brooklyn District# as listed in Section 101-43, the wall is less than 12 feet in height, shall be covered with ivy or #Special Long Island City Mixed Use District# as described in similar planting or contain artwork or be treated so as to Section 117-44, the #Special Union Square District# as listed in provide visual relief. Plants shall be planted in soil having a Section 118-60 and those stations listed in the following table, depth of not less than 2 feet, 6 inches, and a minimum width of the existing entrance or entrances shall be relocated from the 24 inches. If artwork is being used, approval by the New York #street# onto the #zoning lot#. The new entrance or entrances* City Design Commission shall be obtained prior to the certificate shall be provided in accordance with the provisions of this of occupancy being issued for the #development#. Section.
A relocated subway stair or a subway stair that has been renovated in accordance with the provisions of Section 37-50 (9/30/09) (REQUIREMENTS FOR PEDESTRIAN CIRCULATION SPACE) may be counted as pedestrian circulation space pursuant to Section 37-50. 37-38
Sidewalk Widening in Certain Districts Station Line
C6-3D The Bronx 161st Street** Grand Concourse In the district indicated, and in C1 or C2 Districts mapped within an R9D District, for #developments# or #enlargements# on #zoning lots# fronting upon #wide streets#, or fronting upon Manhattan #narrow streets# that include an elevated rail line, sidewalks, 8th Street Broadway-60th Street with a minimum depth of 20 feet measured perpendicular to the curb of the #street#, shall be provided along such entire 23rd Street Broadway-60th Street
#street# frontages of the #zoning lot#. In locations where the 23rd Street Lexington Avenue width of the sidewalk within the #street# is less than 20 feet, a sidewalk widening shall be provided on the #zoning lot# so that 28th Street Lexington Avenue the combined width of the sidewalk within the #street# and the sidewalk widening equals 20 feet. However, existing #buildings# 33rd Street Lexington Avenue to remain on the #zoning lot# need not be removed in order to 34th Street-Penn Station 8th Avenue comply with this requirement. All sidewalk widenings shall be improved to Department of Transportation standards for sidewalks, 59th Street/Lexington Lexington Avenue and shall be at the same level as the adjoining public sidewalks, and Avenue-60th St. Broadway-60th Street shall be accessible to the public at all times. In addition, the provisions of paragraphs (f)(2) through (f)(5) of Section 37-53 (Design Standards for Pedestrian Circulation Spaces) shall apply. * Provision of a new subway entrance or entrances pursuant to the requirements of this Section may also require satisfaction of additional obligations under the Americans (2/2/11) for Disabilities Act of 1990 (ADA), including the ADA Accessibility Guidelines. The New York City Transit 37-40 Authority should be consulted with regard to any such OFF-STREET RELOCATION OR RENOVATION OF A SUBWAY STAIR obligations
Where a #development# or an #enlargement# is constructed on a ** Access stairways to elevated portions of a station complex #zoning lot# of 5,000 square feet or more of #lot area# that are exempt from this requirement fronts on a portion of a sidewalk containing a stairway entrance may overlap with a #public plaza# or an #arcade# in (10/17/07) accordance with the provisions of Sections 37-53 (Design Standards for Pedestrian Circulation Spaces) or 37-80 37-41 (ARCADES). Standards for Location, Design and Hours of Public Accessibility No stairway shall have more than 14 risers without a In addition to the standards set forth in the current station landing, and each landing shall have a minimum width equal planning guidelines as issued by New York City Transit, the to the width of the stairs, and a minimum length of five following standards shall also apply: feet.
(a) Location Throughout the entire stairway entrance, including passageways, the minimum clear, unobstructed height shall be The relocated or renovated entrance shall be immediately at least 7 feet, 6 inches from finished floor to finished adjacent to, and accessible without any obstruction from, a ceiling, including all lighting fixtures and #signs#. public sidewalk or pedestrian circulation space as defined in Section 37-50. Any such pedestrian circulation space The entire entrance area, including passageways, shall be shall have a minimum horizontal dimension equal to the width free of obstructions of any kind, except for projecting of the relocated stairs or the minimum width of the information signage. pedestrian circulation space, whichever is greater. The relocated entrance shall connect to an existing or The relocated or renovated entrance may be provided within a proposed subway passageway, or shall connect, via an #building# but shall not be enclosed by any doors. The area underground passageway, to a mezzanine area of the subway occupied by a relocated or renovated entrance within a station. #building# shall not be counted toward the #floor area# of the #enlargement# or #development#. The below-grade portion of a relocated entrance may be constructed within the #street#. (b) Design standards (c) Hours of public accessibility The relocated or renovated entrance shall have a stair width of at least eight feet for each run. The relocated or renovated entrance shall be accessible to the public during the hours when the connected mezzanine Where two or more existing stairway entrances are being area is open to the public or as otherwise approved by New relocated or renovated as part of the same #development# or York City Transit. #enlargement#, the new entrance or entrances shall have total stair widths equal to or greater than the sum of the stair widths of those existing stairway entrances, but in no case may any stair be less than eight feet in width. (2/2/11)
The relocated entrance may be relocated within a #public 37-42 plaza#, provided that the minimum width of each stair is ten Administrative Procedure for a Subway Stair Relocation or feet and the queuing area of the relocated entrance is Renovation unobstructed and contiguous to a sidewalk or a sidewalk widening. A relocated entrance within a #public plaza# is a For any #development# or #enlargement# that is subject to the permitted obstruction, but shall not be subject to the requirements for the relocation of a subway stair entrance or percentage limit on permitted obstructions for a #public counts a renovated subway stair as pedestrian circulation space plaza#. in accordance with the provisions of Section 37-50 (REQUIREMENTS FOR PEDESTRIAN CIRCULATION SPACE), inclusive, no plan shall be For a relocated entrance only, the entrance shall have a approved by the Department of Buildings and no excavation permit queuing space at the top and bottom of the stairs that is at or building permit shall be issued, unless the following criteria least eight feet wide and 15 feet long. Such queuing space are met:
(10/17/07) (a) for a relocated entrance, such plan includes a stair relocation plan and related documents that require: 37-43 Modification of Requirements for a Relocated or Renovated Subway (1) construction of the new stair entrance in accordance Stair with such plan; The Chairperson of the City Planning Commission may, by (2) demolition of above-ground elements of the existing certification to the Commissioner of Buildings, allow entrance; modifications of the requirements of Sections 37-30 (STREETSCAPE), inclusive, and 37-41 (Standards for Location, (3) sealing of the existing entrance at the sidewalk level; Design and Hours of Public Accessibility) or 37-70 (PUBLIC and PLAZAS) if the relocated subway stair cannot be accommodated without modification to these provisions. (4) maintenance of the work performed on the relocated or renovated entrance; or
(b) for a renovated entrance, such plan includes a renovation (10/17/07) plan and related documents that require: 37-44 (1) renovation of the entrance in accordance with such Waiver of Requirements plan; and The provisions of Section 37-40 (OFF-STREET RELOCATION OR (2) maintenance of the work performed on the renovated RENOVATION OF A SUBWAY STAIR) may be waived by joint entrance; and certification of New York City Transit and the Chairperson of the City Planning Commission that major construction problems or (c) such plan and related documents bear New York City Transit’s operating design considerations render the stair relocation approval; and infeasible. In such event, the stair relocation requirement may be satisfied by retention of the existing stair and the provision (d) such plan is accompanied by a certified copy of an on the #zoning lot# of an open area, qualifying under the agreement, as recorded between New York City Transit and the provisions of Section 37-50 (REQUIREMENTS FOR PEDESTRIAN owner for an easement on the #zoning lot# for subway-related CIRCULATION SPACE), that accommodates pedestrian traffic passing use of the new stair entrance and for public access via such the existing stair entrance. entrance to the subway station, which agreement has been recorded against the #zoning lot# in the Office of the Register of the City of New York and is accompanied by the Register's receipt of recordation; and (10/17/07)
(e) no permanent certificate of occupancy shall be issued for 37-50 the #building# either altered or #developed#, as set forth REQUIREMENTS FOR PEDESTRIAN CIRCULATION SPACE in Section 37-40, or #enlarged#, that is subject to the subway stair relocation requirement or is counting a All pedestrian circulation space required pursuant to the renovated subway stair as pedestrian circulation space in provisions of any special purpose district shall comply with the accordance with the provisions of Section 37-50, inclusive, provisions of this Section, as such may be modified by the terms unless and until all of the work required under paragraph of the special district. (a) or (b) of this Section has been completed and New York City Transit has so certified in writing to the Department of Buildings. (2/2/11)
37-51 Corner arcade x Amount of Pedestrian Circulation Space Corner circulation x The minimum amount of pedestrian circulation space to be provided space for #developments# or #enlargements# shall be determined by the following table: Relocation or x x x renovation of subway MINIMUM stair
PEDESTRIAN CIRCULATION SPACE Sidewalk widening x x x REQUIREMENTS Subway station x x x
Required area of pedestrian improvement
Size of #zoning lot# circulation space Through #block# x x connection 5,000 to 20,000 sq. ft. 1 sq. ft. per 350 sq. ft. of new #floor area# #Public plaza# x x x
Above 20,000 sq. ft. 1 sq. ft. per 300 sq. ft. Minimum design standards for each type of pedestrian circulation of new #floor area# space and, where applicable, the maximum amount of each type of pedestrian circulation space that may be counted toward meeting the requirements of Section 37-51 (Amount of Pedestrian Circulation Space) are set forth in Section 37-53 (Design (10/17/07) Standards for Pedestrian Circulation Spaces).
37-52 Types of Pedestrian Circulation Space (4/30/12) The pedestrian circulation space provided shall be of one or more of the following types: an arcade, #building# entrance recess 37-53 area, corner arcade, corner circulation space, relocation or Design Standards for Pedestrian Circulation Spaces renovation of a subway stair, sidewalk widening, subway station improvement, through #block# connection or #public plaza#. (a) Arcade
Each #zoning lot# shall be categorized as either a #corner lot#, Arcades shall not be subject to the provisions of Sections #through lot# or #interior lot#, and pedestrian circulation space 12-10 (DEFINITIONS) and 37-80 (ARCADES). In lieu thereof, shall be provided on each #zoning lot# in at least one of the the provisions of this Section shall apply. applicable types, or combinations of types, specified in the following table: An arcade is a continuous covered space that adjoins and extends along a #front lot line#, is at the same elevation PROVISION OF PEDESTRIAN CIRCULATION SPACE as the adjoining sidewalk, is open for its entire length to ON CERTAIN TYPES OF LOTS the sidewalk except for columns and is accessible to the public at all times. An arcade shall be provided on the #wide street# frontage of a #zoning lot# of a #development# Type of Pedestrian #Corner #Through #Interior or #enlargement# where the #zoning lot# lies directly Circulation Space lot# lot# lot# adjacent to an existing arcade on a #wide street#, except
Arcade x x x where an existing #building# without an arcade extends along a portion of the #wide street front lot line# of the #zoning #building# entrance x x x lot# containing the #development# or #enlargement#. Where an recess area arcade abuts another arcade, there shall be a clear,
unobstructed passage between both arcades. loading berth located at the #side lot line# of the #zoning lot#, or if the arcade provides An arcade shall meet the following requirements: unobstructed pedestrian flow along such entire frontage in combination with one or more of the (1) Dimensions following other spaces with which it connects at one or both ends: a corner arcade, a #publicly An arcade with columns shall have a minimum clear width accessible open area#, an off-street rail mass of 10 feet, exclusive of all columns, and a maximum transit access improvement, an intersecting width of 15 feet, inclusive of columns. No column width sidewalk widening, an intersecting #street#, a shall be greater than five feet. Columns shall be relocated or renovated subway entrance, a spaced along the #street# with a minimum clear width through #block# connection or a through #block# between columns of 15 feet. An arcade shall have a galleria. clear height of not less than 12 feet and not more than 30 feet. (iv) On a #wide street#, an arcade shall be permitted, provided that: (i) On an #interior lot# or a #through lot# fronting on a #narrow street#, an arcade without columns (a) the arcade extends along the full length of is permitted only if: the #street line# between intersecting #streets#; or (a) it has a continuous, unobstructed minimum length of 100 feet or, with the exception of (b) in the case of an arcade that occupies less the width of driveways for the required than the entire #street# frontage between loading berths located at the #side lot line# intersecting #streets#, on a full #block# of the #zoning lot#, is unobstructed for the front #zoning lot#, unobstructed pedestrian full length of the frontage of the flow along the entire frontage is provided on #development#, whichever is greater; and the #zoning lot# by the arcade in combination with one or more of the following #open (b) the entire #front lot line# shall be spaces# with which the arcade connects at one unobstructed for the same depth of the or both ends: a corner circulation space, a arcade, except for that portion of the #front #publicly accessible open area# or an lot line# occupied by an existing #building#. intersecting sidewalk widening; or
(ii) On an #interior lot# or a #through lot# fronting (c) in the case of an arcade whose #zoning lot# on a #narrow street#, an arcade with columns is occupies less than the entire #street# permitted only if it connects directly to an frontage between intersecting #streets#, the existing arcade on an adjacent #zoning lot#, arcade connects with an existing arcade of matching it in width and alignment, and has a matching width and alignment, a #publicly continuous, unobstructed minimum length beyond accessible open area# on an adjacent #zoning the existing adjacent arcade of at least 100 lot#, so that unobstructed pedestrian flow feet or, with the exception of the width of along the entire #block# front is provided by driveways for the required loading berths the arcade in combination with such existing located at the #side lot line# of the #zoning spaces. lot#, is unobstructed for the full length of the frontage of the #development#, whichever is (2) Full #block# front arcade greater. When a #zoning lot# occupies a full #block# front, both (iii) On a #corner lot# fronting on a #narrow street#, ends of the arcade on that #street# frontage shall be an arcade is permitted only if it extends for open and accessible directly from the sidewalk of the the full length of the #street# frontage, with intersecting #street# or any other qualifying the exception of a driveway for a required pedestrian circulation space. an overhanging portion of the #building# shall have a (3) Permitted obstructions minimum clear height of 15 feet. It shall be free of obstructions except for exterior wall thickness Except for #building# columns, and exterior wall pursuant to Section 33-23, and #building# columns, thickness pursuant to Section 33-23 (Permitted between any two of which there shall be a clear space Obstructions in Required Yards or Rear Yard of at least 15 feet measured parallel to the #street Equivalents), an arcade shall be free from obstructions line#. Between a #building# column and a wall of the of any kind. #building#, there shall be a clear path at least five feet in width. (4) Specific prohibitions (3) Permitted overlap No vehicular driveways, except as permitted under paragraph (a)(1) (Dimensions) of this Section, parking A #building# entrance recess area may overlap with an spaces, passenger drop-offs, loading berths or trash arcade, a corner arcade, a corner circulation space or storage facilities are permitted within an arcade, nor a sidewalk widening, and may adjoin or overlap and shall such facilities be permitted immediately adjacent connect directly without obstruction to another to an arcade. #building# entrance recess area except that, on any one #street# frontage, each lobby or ground floor #use# (5) Illumination shall connect to only one #building# entrance recess area. All existing and new arcades shall maintain a minimum level of illumination of not less than five horizontal (c) Corner arcade foot candles between sunset and sunrise. A corner arcade shall not be subject to the provisions of (b) #Building# entrance recess area Sections 12-10 (DEFINITIONS) and 37-80 (ARCADES). In lieu thereof, a corner arcade shall be a small covered space A #building# entrance recess area is a space that adjoins adjoining the intersection of two #streets# at the same and is open to a sidewalk or sidewalk widening for its elevation as the adjoining sidewalk or sidewalk widening and entire length and provides unobstructed access to the directly accessible to the public at all times. #building's# lobby entrance or to the entrance to a ground floor #use#. A corner arcade shall meet the following requirements:
A #building# entrance recess area shall meet the following (1) Dimensions requirements: (i) a corner arcade shall have a minimum area of 200 (1) Dimensions square feet, a minimum depth of 15 feet measured along a line bisecting the angle of intersecting A #building# entrance recess area shall have a minimum #street lines#, and shall extend along both length of 15 feet and a maximum length of 50 feet #street lines# for at least 15 feet but not more measured parallel to the #street line# at a than 40 feet from the intersection of the two #building’s# lobby entrance and a maximum length of 30 #street lines#; and feet parallel to the #street line# at a ground floor #use# entrance. It shall have a maximum depth of 15 (ii) the height of a corner arcade shall be not less feet measured from the #street line# and shall have a than 12 feet and a clear path at least 12 feet minimum depth of 10 feet measured from the #street wide shall be provided from one #street line# to line#. another #street line#.
(2) Permitted obstructions (2) Permitted obstructions
Any portion of a #building# entrance recess area under Except for #building# columns, and exterior wall
thickness pursuant to Section 33-23, a corner arcade shall be free from obstructions of any kind. Entrances to ground level #uses# are permitted from a corner circulation space. (3) Specific prohibitions An entrance to a #building# lobby is permitted from a The specific prohibitions pertaining to an arcade as corner circulation space, provided that the entrance is described in paragraph (a)(4) of this Section shall at no point within 20 feet of the intersection of the also be applicable to a corner arcade. two #street lines# that bound the corner circulation space. (4) Permitted overlap (4) Permitted overlap A corner arcade may overlap with an arcade; however, the area of overlap may only be counted once toward the A corner circulation space may overlap with a sidewalk fulfillment of the required minimum area of pedestrian widening. circulation space. (e) Relocation or renovation of a subway stair (d) Corner circulation space When a #development# or #enlargement# is constructed on a A corner circulation space is a small #open space# on a #zoning lot# containing a relocated stairway entrance or #zoning lot#, adjoining the intersection of two #streets#, entrances to a subway, or an existing stairway entrance or at the same elevation as the adjoining sidewalk or sidewalk entrances to a subway, and such entrance or entrances are widening and directly accessible to the public at all times. relocated or renovated in accordance with the provisions of Section 37-40 (OFF-STREET RELOCATION OR RENOVATION OF A A corner circulation space shall meet the following SUBWAY STAIR), inclusive, one and one-half times the area, requirements: measured at #street# level, of such entrance or entrances may count toward meeting the pedestrian circulation space (1) Dimensions requirement.
A corner circulation space shall have the same minimum (f) Sidewalk widening dimensions as a corner arcade, as described in paragraph (c)(1) of this Section. A sidewalk widening is a continuous, paved, open area along the #front lot line# of a #zoning lot# at the same elevation (2) Permitted obstructions as the adjoining sidewalk and directly accessible to the public at all times. A sidewalk widening shall be provided A corner circulation space shall be completely open to on the #wide street# frontage of a #zoning lot# of a the sky from its lowest level, except for temporary #development# or #enlargement# where all existing elements of weather protection, such as awnings or #buildings# on the same #block# frontage, whether on the canopies, provided that the total area of such elements same or another #zoning lot#, provide sidewalk widenings. does not exceed 20 percent of the area of the corner circulation space and that such elements and any A sidewalk widening shall meet the following requirements: attachments thereto are at least eight feet above #curb level#. A corner circulation space shall be clear of (1) Dimensions all other obstructions including, without limitation, door swings, #building# columns, #street# trees, A sidewalk widening shall have a width of no less than planters, vehicle storage, parking or trash storage. five feet nor more than 10 feet measured perpendicular However, exterior wall thickness may be added pursuant to the #street line#, and shall be contiguous along its to Section 33-23. No gratings, except for drainage, entire length to a sidewalk. shall be permitted. A sidewalk widening shall extend along the full length (3) #Building# entrances of the #front lot line# except for the portion of the #front lot line# interrupted by an existing #building# widening; which is located at a #side lot line# or, in the case of a full #block# frontage, located at the intersection (iv) by an off-street subway entrance, provided such of two #streets#. an entrance is located at a #side lot line# or is located at the intersection of two #street A required sidewalk widening on a #wide street# shall lines#; connect directly to any existing adjoining sidewalk widening and shall extend the entire length of the (v) if overlapped by the queuing space of a relocated #front lot line#. or renovated subway entrance, provided that the queuing space for the entrance leaves at least a The width of such a required sidewalk widening shall five foot uninterrupted width of sidewalk equal that of the existing adjoining sidewalk widening. widening along the entire length of the queuing If there is more than one such existing sidewalk space; or widening, the width of such a required sidewalk widening shall equal that of the existing sidewalk (vi) by a driveway that is located at a #side lot widening that is longest. line#; however, where the #zoning lot# has a through #block# connection, a through #block# A sidewalk widening is permitted on a #wide street# galleria or a through #block public plaza# at when not adjacent to an existing sidewalk widening only such a #side lot line#, the location of its if either the sidewalk widening extends along the driveway is not restricted. The area occupied by #street line# of the #wide street# for the full length the driveway, up to the width of the sidewalk of the #block# front, or the #zoning lot# is a #corner widening, may be counted toward meeting the lot# and the sidewalk widening extends along the full pedestrian circulation space requirement, length of the #street line# of the #wide street# to its provided that there shall be no change of grade intersection with the #street line# of the other within the area of the sidewalk widening. #street# on which the #zoning lot# fronts. (3) Permitted obstructions Except for the permitted interruptions, as set forth in paragraph (f)(2) of this Section, a sidewalk widening A sidewalk widening shall be unobstructed from its is permitted on a #narrow street# only if it has a lowest level to the sky except for those obstructions length of at least 100 feet. permitted under paragraph (f)(2) of this Section, for exterior wall thickness pursuant to Section 33-23, and (2) Permitted interruptions for temporary elements of weather protection, such as awnings or canopies, provided that the total area of Interruptions of the continuity of a qualifying such elements, measured on the plan, does not exceed 20 sidewalk widening shall be permitted only under the percent of the sidewalk widening area, and that such following conditions: elements and any attachments thereto are at least eight feet above #curb level#. (i) by an arcade that has a width equal to or greater than the width of the sidewalk widening and (4) Specific prohibitions which is directly connected to the sidewalk widening; No #street# trees are permitted on a sidewalk widening. No vehicle storage, parking or storage of trash is (ii) if overlapped by a corner circulation space or a permitted on a sidewalk widening. Gratings may not #building# entrance recess area that permits occupy more than 50 percent of the sidewalk widening uninterrupted pedestrian flow; area nor be wider than one half the width of the sidewalk widening. (iii) if overlapped by a #public plaza#, provided that the overlapping portion of such #public plaza# (5) Special design treatment conforms to the design standard of a sidewalk
When one end of the sidewalk widening abuts an existing (1) Location #building# on the #zoning lot# or an existing #building# on the #side lot line# of the adjacent (i) A through #block# connection shall be located at #zoning lot#, design treatment of the termination of least 150 feet from the intersection of two the sidewalk widening is required to smooth pedestrian #streets#. flow. The portion of the sidewalk widening subject to design treatment, hereinafter called the transition (ii) Where the #zoning lot# or a portion thereof is area, shall not extend more than 10 feet nor less than directly across a #street# from, and opposite five feet along the sidewalk widening from its to, an existing through #block# connection on an termination. adjacent #block# and the existing connection is at least 150 feet from the intersection of two The transition area shall receive special design #streets#, the alignment of the new through treatment which may include, but is not limited to, #block# connection shall overlap with that of landscaping, sculpture or #building# transparency. The the existing connection. Such existing transition area shall be designed to effect a gradual connection may also be a through #block# change of the sidewalk widening width to match the galleria, through #block public plaza# or any #street wall# line of the existing #building# at the through #block# circulation area with a minimum sidewalk widening’s termination. This may be width of 12 feet, which is located within a accomplished by a curved or diagonal edge of paving #building#. along a landscaped bed, the use of stepped edges of the #building# or other architectural treatment of the (iii) Where there are already two through #block# #building# or paving which avoids an abrupt visual connections located on the same #block#, a new termination of the sidewalk widening. Such special through #block# connection shall not count design treatment may be considered a permitted toward meeting the pedestrian circulation space obstruction. requirement.
(g) Subway station improvement (iv) No through #block# connection shall be permitted on any portion of a #zoning lot# occupied by a For #developments# or #enlargements# that are granted a landmark or interior landmark so designated by special permit pursuant to Section 74-634 (Subway station the Landmarks Preservation Commission, or improvements in Downtown Brooklyn and in Commercial occupied by a #building# whose designation as a Districts of 10 FAR and above in Manhattan), no more than landmark or interior landmark has been 3,000 square feet may count toward meeting the pedestrian calendared for public hearing and is pending circulation space requirement. before the Landmarks Preservation Commission.
(h) Through #block# connection (2) Design standards for a through #block# connection
A through #block# connection is a paved, open or enclosed (i) A through #block# connection shall provide a space providing unobstructed access to the #building's# main straight, continuous, unobstructed path at least lobby and connecting, in a straight, continuous, 15 feet wide. If covered, the clear, unobstructed path, two parallel or nearly parallel unobstructed height of a through #block# #streets#. connection shall not be less than 15 feet. Exterior wall thickness, as set forth in Section Up to a maximum of 3,000 square feet of a through #block# 33-23, shall be a permitted obstruction to such connection may count toward the minimum pedestrian path. circulation space requirement. (ii) At no point shall the level of a through #block# A through #block# connection shall meet the following connection be more than five feet above or below requirements: #curb level#. In all cases, the through #block# connection must provide a clear path, accessible to people with disabilities, through its entire length. (1) a public space symbol, provided in the Required Signage Symbols file at the (iii) A through #block# connection may be located Department of City Planning website, inside or outside of a #building#. The area of a which is at least 14 inches square in through #block# connection located within a dimension, has a white background, has #building# shall be counted as #floor area#. a grid of four straight lines no greater than one-eighth inch wide and (iv) A through #block# connection located partially or green in color and has a tree-shaped wholly within a #building# shall adjoin and symbol as shown: connect directly to the #building's# main lobby via unobstructed openings with an aggregate width exceeding that of any other entrances to the lobby.
(v) A through #block# connection located wholly or partially outside a #building# shall provide unobstructed access directly to the #building's#
main lobby through the major entrance. For the purposes of this Section, the major entrance (37-53h2.8a1, 37-751a1) shall be that entrance to the main lobby which has the greatest aggregate width of clear (2) lettering at least two inches in height openings for access. stating "OPEN TO PUBLIC." This lettering shall be located within nine inches of (vi) Any portion of a through #block# connection the public space symbol; and located outside a #building# shall be illuminated throughout with a minimum level of (3) an international Symbol of Access for illumination of not less than five horizontal people with disabilities that is at foot candles (lumens per candle). Such least three inches square. illumination shall be maintained throughout the hours of darkness. The entry plaque shall be mounted with its center five feet above the elevation of the (vii) A through #block# connection shall at a minimum nearest walkable pavement on a wall or a be accessible to the public from 8:00 a.m. to permanent freestanding post. It shall be 7:00 p.m. on the days the #building# is open for placed so that the entire entry plaque is business and shall have posted, in prominent, obvious and directly visible without any visible locations at its entrances, #signs# obstruction, along every line of sight from meeting the standards set forth in paragraph all paths of pedestrian access to the through (h)(2)(viii) of this Section. #block# connection, in a position that clearly identifies the entry to the (viii) A through #block# connection shall provide the connection. following information for public access at each public entry to the through #block# connection: (b) For an enclosed through #block# connection or a portion thereof: (a) For an unenclosed through #block# connection, the public access information (1) a public space symbol as described in shall be an entry plaque located at the paragraph (h)(2)(viii)(a) of this entrance to the through #block# connection Section, not less than six inches at each #street# frontage. The entry plaque square, shall be mounted with its center shall contain: five feet above the elevation of the
nearest walkable pavement; Any area of permitted overlap between pedestrian circulation (2) lettering stating "PUBLIC ACCESS TO ____ spaces or other amenities shall be counted only once toward STREET," indicating the opposite meeting the required amount of pedestrian circulation space. #street# to which the through #block# Unobstructed access shall be provided between overlapping spaces. connection passes and which lettering shall not be less than three inches in height and located not more than three inches away from the public space (10/17/07) symbol; and 37-54 (3) lettering not more than two inches or Modification of Design Standards of Pedestrian Circulation Spaces less than one and a half inches in within Existing Buildings height stating "OPEN TO PUBLIC" with the hours and days of operation of the The City Planning Commission may authorize a modification of any through #block# connection. This required minimum amount of pedestrian circulation space to be lettering shall be located not more than provided on #wide street# frontages and design standards, as three inches from the public space indicated, for the following required pedestrian circulation symbol. spaces, to be provided within or under an existing #building# to remain on a #zoning lot#: The above required information shall be permanently affixed on the glass panel of the (a) Arcade: minimum width, minimum height, obstructions, minimum entry doors of the through #block# connection clear width between obstructions, minimum length, column clearly facing the direction of pedestrian sizes flow. The information shall be located not higher than six feet or lower than three feet (b) #Building# entrance recess area: minimum length, minimum above the level of the pedestrian path at the depth from #street line#, minimum height, obstructions, entry, and shall be in a format and color clear space between obstructions and clear space between which will ensure legibility. obstructions and #building# wall
(i) #Public plaza# (c) Corner arcade or corner circulation space: minimum depth, minimum width of clear path, minimum height, obstructions A maximum of 30 percent of the area of a #public plaza# that faces a #street# intersection, or provides access to a major (d) Through #block# connection: minimum width of unobstructed #building# entrance, may be counted toward meeting the path, minimum height, through #block# level. pedestrian circulation space requirement. The Commission may authorize a modification of design standards A maximum of 3,000 square feet of a through #block public for pedestrian circulation spaces when the following findings are plaza# may be counted toward meeting the pedestrian met: circulation space requirement. (1) a modification is needed because of the inherent constraints For all other #public plazas#, the first 10 feet of depth of the existing #building#; from the #street line# may be counted toward meeting the pedestrian circulation space requirement, provided that the (2) the modification is limited to the minimum needed because of #public plaza# conforms to the design standards of a the inherent constraints of the existing #building#; and sidewalk widening as set forth in paragraph (f) of this (3) the pedestrian circulation space as modified shall be equal Section. in area, and substantially equivalent, to the required space in terms of quality, effectiveness and suitability for All #public plazas# shall comply with Section 37-70 (PUBLIC public use. PLAZAS), inclusive. City Planning Commission, pursuant to Section 74-761 (Elimination or reduction in size of bonused public amenities). (10/17/07)
37-60 PUBLICLY ACCESSIBLE OPEN AREAS EXISTING PRIOR TO OCTOBER 17, 2007 (10/17/07)
37-623 Nighttime closings (10/17/07) The City Planning Commission may, upon application, authorize the 37-61 closing during certain nighttime hours of an existing #plaza#, Design Standards #residential plaza# or #urban plaza# for which a #floor area# bonus has been received, pursuant to Section 37-727 (Hours of Design standards for #plazas#, #residential plazas# and #urban access). plazas developed# prior to October 17, 2007, are located in APPENDIX E of this Resolution.
(10/17/07)
(10/17/07) 37-624 Kiosks and open air cafes 37-62 Changes to Existing Publicly Accessible Open Areas Kiosks and open air cafes may be placed within an existing #plaza#, #residential plaza# or #urban plaza# upon certification by the Chairperson of the City Planning Commission, pursuant to Section 37-73 (Kiosks and Open Air Cafes). (10/17/07)
37-621 Elimination or reduction in size of non-bonused open area (7/14/13)
Any existing open area for which a #floor area# bonus has not 37-625 been utilized that occupies the same #zoning lot# as an existing Design changes #plaza#, #residential plaza# or #urban plaza#, for which a #floor area# bonus has been utilized, may be reduced in size or Except as otherwise provided in Section 74-41, design changes to eliminated only upon certification of the Chairperson of the City existing #plazas#, #residential plazas# or #urban plazas# may be Planning Commission that all bonused amenities comply with the made only upon certification by the Chairperson of the City standards under which such #floor area# bonus was granted. Planning Commission that such changes would result in a #plaza#, #residential plaza# or #urban plaza# that is in greater accordance with the standards set forth in Section 37-70 (PUBLIC PLAZAS), inclusive. The provisions of Section 37-78 (Compliance), (10/17/07) other than paragraph (e) (Special regulations for an urban plaza in the Special Lower Manhattan District), shall be made 37-622 applicable to such #plaza#, #residential plaza# or #urban plaza#. Elimination or reduction in size of bonused open area
No existing #plaza#, #residential plaza# or #urban plaza# shall be eliminated or reduced in size except by special permit of the (10/17/07)
37-70 PUBLIC PLAZAS (6/10/09)
#Public plazas# are open areas on a #zoning lot# intended for 37-712 public use and enjoyment. The standards contained within Sections Area dimensions 37-70 through 37-78, inclusive, are intended to serve the following specific purposes: A #public plaza# shall contain an area of not less than 2,000 square feet. In no case shall spaces between existing #buildings# (a) to serve a variety of users of the #public plaza# area; remaining on the #zoning lot# qualify as #public plazas#. In addition, in order to preserve the provisions relating to the (b) to provide spaces for solitary users while at the same time boundaries, proportions and obstructions of #public plazas#, on providing opportunities for social interaction for small any one #zoning lot#, an open area which does not qualify for groups; and bonus #floor area# may not be located between two #public plazas#, or between a #public plaza# and a #building# wall or (c) to provide safe spaces, with maximum visibility from the #arcade#. #street# and adjacent #buildings# and with multiple avenues for ingress and egress. Any non-bonused open area located adjacent to a #public plaza#, other than an open area bounding a #street line# used for All #public plazas# shall comply with the provisions of Section pedestrian access, must either: 37-70 through 37-78, inclusive. These provisions may be modified pursuant to Section 74-91 (Modification of Public Plazas). (a) be separated from the #public plaza# by a buffer, such as a wall, decorative fence, or opaque plantings at least six feet in height; or
(10/17/07) (b) meet all requirements for minor portions of #public plazas# related to size, configuration, orientation, as specified in 37-71 Section 37-716. Basic Design Criteria
(6/10/09) (10/17/07) 37-713 37-711 Locational restrictions Definitions No #public plaza#, or portion thereof, shall be located within Corner public plaza 175 feet of an existing #publicly accessible open area# or #public park# as measured along the #street line# on which the A “corner public plaza” is a #public plaza# that is located on an existing amenity fronts if the #public plaza# is to be located on intersection of two or more #streets#. the same side of the #street#, or as measured along the directly opposite #street line# if the #public plaza# is to be located on the other side of the #street#. Such distance shall include the Through block public plaza width of any #street# that intersects the #street# on which the amenity fronts. However, such location restriction may be waived A “through block public plaza” is a #public plaza# or portion of if the #public plaza# is located directly across the #street# a #public plaza# that is not a #corner public plaza# and that from the existing #publicly accessible open area# or #public connects two #streets# that are parallel or within 45 degrees of park# and if the Chairperson of the City Planning Commission being parallel to each other. finds that the location of the #public plaza# at such location would create or contribute to a pedestrian circulation network connecting the two or more open areas. adjoining public spaces. Major portions shall occupy no less than 75 percent of the total #public plaza# area.
(10/17/07) (a) All contiguous #public plaza# areas on a #zoning lot# shall be considered as one #public plaza#. 37-714 Restrictions on orientation (b) The shape and dimensions of a #public plaza# shall be such that all points within the major portion shall be visible For purposes of the orientation requirements, a "north-facing," when viewed perpendicular from each adjacent #street#. "south-facing," "east-facing" or "west-facing" #street line# #Corner public plazas# that front on two #streets# that do means a #street line# facing within 45 degrees of the direction not meet at a 90 degree angle must be fully visible when indicated. To front on a #street# means to be contiguous to the viewed perpendicular from one adjoining #street# and at #street line# or to a sidewalk widening along the #street line#. least 50 percent of the #public plaza# must be visible when viewed perpendicular to the other adjoining #street#. For (a) Where the major portion of a #public plaza# fronts on only the purposes of this regulation, points that when viewed in one #street line#, such major portion is not permitted to plan may be joined by a straight line shall be considered front on a north-facing #street line# of a #zoning lot#. visible one from the other; visibility between points shall not be affected by permitted obstructions or by changes of (b) No major portion of a #public plaza# shall only front on a grade. Points within #public plazas# that front on three west-facing #street line# or an east-facing #street line# if intersecting streets shall be treated as two #corner public the #zoning lot# also has frontage that is 40 feet or more plazas#. in length on a south-facing #street line#. The major portion of a #public plaza# shall be at least 75 (c) A #corner public plaza# must have its major portion, as percent of the #public plaza's# total area, except that in defined in Section 37-715, paragraph (b), front on the the case of a #through block public plaza#, pursuant to south-facing #street line#. In the case of a #zoning lot# Section 37-717, a line drawn within 25 feet of the midblock having frontage on a south-facing #street line# of less than line shall divide the #through block public plaza# into two 40 feet, or having its frontage at the intersection of a areas that must separately meet all requirements of the north-facing #street line# with either an east- or west- #public plaza# regulations. The major portion of the #public facing #street line#, the major portion must front on the plaza# shall be subject to the proportional requirements set east- or west-facing #street line#. forth in paragraphs (c) and (d) of this Section.
However, the orientation restrictions may be modified if the (c) The major portion of a #public plaza# shall have a minimum Chairperson of the City Planning Commission finds that the average width and depth of 40 feet. For #public plazas# that orientation regulations would conflict with mandatory #street front on only one #street#, no more than 20 percent of the wall# regulations or that the modifications would result in #public plaza# area may have a width of less than 40 feet. better access to light and air for the #public plaza#. Dimensions shall be measured parallel and perpendicular to the #street line# on which the #public plaza# fronts.
(d) For major portions of #public plazas#, the maximum width (10/17/07) measured parallel to any one #street# shall not be greater than three times the average depth of the #public plaza# 37-715 measured perpendicular to the #street line# or the average Requirements for major portions of public plazas width measured parallel to any one #street# shall not be greater than three times the maximum depth of the #public The major portion of a #public plaza# is the largest area of the plaza# measured perpendicular to the #street line#. #public plaza# and the area of primary use. Major portions shall be generally regular in shape, easily and directly accessible from adjoining #buildings# and public spaces, and continuously visible from within all portions of the #public plaza# and from (10/17/07)
#Through block public plazas# shall contain a circulation path at 37-716 least 10 feet in width, connecting the two #streets# on which the Requirements for minor portions of public plazas #public plaza# fronts, as specified in Section 37-723.
Minor portions of #public plazas# are secondary areas that allow for additional flexibility in the shape and configuration of a #public plaza#. Minor portions shall not occupy more than 25 (10/17/07) percent of the total area of the #public plaza#. The width of a minor portion shall be measured parallel to the line separating 37-718 the major and minor portions. The depth of a minor portion shall Paving be measured perpendicular to the line separating the major and minor portions. The provisions of Section 37-715 (Requirements The paving of the #public plaza# shall be of non-skid durable for major portions of public plazas) shall not apply to such materials that are decorative and compatible in color and pattern minor portions and the following regulations shall apply: with other design features of the #public plaza#.
(a) The minor portion shall have a minimum average width and depth of 15 feet. (10/17/07) (b) The minor portion must be directly adjacent to the major portion. 37-72 Access and Circulation (c) All points within the minor portion must be visible from within the major portion when viewed perpendicular to the line separating the major and minor portions. (4/30/12) (d) The minor portion must front directly on a #street# adjoining the major portion, unless the minor portion has: 37-721 Sidewalk frontage (1) a width to depth ratio of at least 3:1; and To facilitate pedestrian access to a #public plaza#, the (2) its longest dimension contiguous with the major following rules shall apply to the area of the #public plaza# portion. located within 15 feet of a #street line# or sidewalk widening line:
(a) At least 50 percent of such area shall be free of (10/17/07) obstructions and comply with the following provisions:
37-717 (1) at least 50 percent of the #public plaza# frontage Regulations for through block public plazas along each #street line# or sidewalk widening line shall be free of obstructions; and #Through block public plazas# shall be treated as two #public plazas# separated at a line drawn within 25 feet of the midblock (2) such unobstructed access area shall extend to a depth line. of 15 feet measured perpendicular to the #street line#. The width of such access area need not be contiguous Where any #building# wall or walls adjoin a #through block public provided that no portion of such area shall have a plaza# or through #block# portion of a #public plaza# and where width of less than five feet measured parallel to the such wall or walls exceed 120 feet aggregate length, a minimum 10 #street line#, and at least one portion of such area foot setback at a height between 60 and 90 feet is required for shall have a width of at least eight feet measured the full length of the #building# wall. parallel to the #street line#.
(b) In the remaining 50 percent of such area, only those obstructions listed in Section 37-726 (Permitted Circulation paths within #public plazas# shall provide for obstructions) shall be allowed, provided such obstructions unobstructed pedestrian circulation throughout the minor and are not higher than two feet above the level of the public major portions of the #public plaza# and shall, at a minimum, sidewalk fronting the #public plaza#, except for light connect all #streets# on which the #public plaza# fronts and all stanchions, public space signage, railings for steps, major elements of the #public plaza#, including seating areas, exterior wall thickness pursuant to Section 33-23 (Permitted #building# entrances, approved open air cafes and kiosks, and Obstructions in Required Yards or Rear Yard Equivalents), significant design features of the #public plaza#. A minimum of trash receptacles, trees and fixed or moveable seating and one such circulation path shall be provided of at least eight tables. Furthermore, planting walls or trellises, water feet clear width. Circulation paths shall extend to at least 80 features and artwork may exceed a height of two feet when percent of the depth of the major portion of the #public plaza#, located within three feet of a wall bounding the #public measured perpendicular from each #street line#. #Through block plaza#. public plazas# shall provide at least one circulation path with a minimum width of 10 feet connecting each #street# on which the For #corner public plazas#, the requirements of this Section #public plaza# fronts. Trees planted flush to grade, light shall apply separately to each #street# frontage, and the area stanchions, trash receptacles, and public space signage shall be within 15 feet of the intersection of any two or more #streets# considered permitted obstructions within circulation paths; on which the #public plaza# fronts shall be at the same elevation however, all trees located within circulation paths must comply as the adjoining public sidewalk and shall be free of with the regulations for flush-to-grade trees in Section 37-742. obstructions.
(6/10/09) (10/17/07) 37-724 37-722 Subway entrances Level of plaza Where an entry to a subway station exists in the sidewalk area of The level of a #public plaza#, inclusive of major and minor a #street# on which a #public plaza# fronts and such entry is not portions, shall not at any point be less than the average replaced within the #public plaza# itself, the #public plaza# elevation of #curb level# of the nearest adjoining #street# nor shall be at the same elevation as the adjacent sidewalk for a more than two feet above the average #curb level# of the nearest distance of at least 15 feet in all directions from the entry adjoining #street# in front of the major and minor portions of superstructure. Such #public plaza# area around a subway entry the #public plaza#. However, a #public plaza# with an area of shall be free of all obstructions and may count towards the 10,000 square feet or more may additionally have a maximum of 20 required clear area requirements as specified in Section 37-721 percent of its area at an elevation more than two feet above, but (Sidewalk frontage). not more than four feet above #curb level# of the nearest adjoining #street# in front of the major and minor portions of the #public plaza#, provided that such higher portion may not be located within 25 feet of any #street line#. #Public plazas# that (10/17/07) front on #streets# with slopes greater than 2.5 percent along the frontage of the #public plaza# may not at any point be more than 37-725 one foot below the #curb level# of the adjoining #street#. Steps
Any steps provided within the #public plaza# must have a minimum height of four inches and a maximum height of six inches. Steps (10/17/07) must have a minimum tread of 17 inches; steps with a height of five inches, however, may have a minimum tread of 15 inches. 37-723 Circulation paths
designated on the site plan, and not measured as individual (4/30/12) pieces of furniture.
37-726 Trees planted flush-to-grade in accordance with the Permitted obstructions provisions of Section 37-742 (Planting and trees) and tree canopies do not count as obstructions for the purpose of (a) #Public plazas# shall be open to the sky and unobstructed calculating total area occupied by permitted obstructions. except for the following features, equipment and Planting beds and their retaining walls for trees count as appurtenances normally found in #public parks# and obstructions, except that lawn, turf or grass areas intended playgrounds: water features, including fountains, reflecting for public access and seating shall not count as pools, and waterfalls; sculptures and other works of art; obstructions, provided such lawns do not differ in elevation seating, including benches, seats and moveable chairs; from the adjoining #public plaza# elevation by more than six trees, planters, planting beds, lawns and other landscape inches. Exterior wall thickness added pursuant to Section features; arbors or trellises; litter receptacles; bicycle 33-23 (Permitted Obstructions in Required Yards or Rear Yard racks; tables and other outdoor furniture; lights and Equivalents) in any #publicly accessible open area# or lighting stanchions; public telephones; public restrooms; #public plaza# built prior to April 30, 2012, shall not permitted temporary exhibitions; permitted awnings, canopies count as obstructions for the purpose of calculating total or marquees; permitted freestanding #signs#; play equipment; area occupied by permitted obstructions. exterior wall thickness added pursuant to Section 33-23 (Permitted Obstructions in Required Yards or Rear Yard (c) Canopies, awnings, marquees and sun control devices Equivalents); permitted kiosks and open-air cafes; stages; subway station entrances, which may include escalators; and (1) Entrances to #buildings# located within a #public drinking fountains. plaza# may have a maximum of one canopy, awning or marquee, provided that such canopy, awning or marquee: However, an area occupied in aggregate by such permitted obstruction shall not exceed the maximum percentage cited in (i) has a maximum area of 250 square feet; paragraph (b) of this Section. In addition, certain of the obstructions listed in this paragraph, (a), shall not be (ii) does not project into the #public plaza# more than permitted within the sidewalk frontage of a #public plaza#, 15 feet when measured perpendicular to the as described in Section 37-721 (Sidewalk frontage). #building# facade;
(b) Permitted obstructions may occupy a maximum percentage of (iii) is located a minimum of 15 feet above the level of the area of a #public plaza#, as follows: the #public plaza# adjacent to the #building# entrance; and For #public plazas# less than 10,000 square feet in area: 40 percent (iv) does not contain vertical supports.
For #public plazas# less than 10,000 square feet in area Such canopies, awnings, and marquees shall be designed with a permitted open air cafe: 50 percent to provide maximum visibility into the #public plaza# from adjoining #streets# and the adjacent #building#. For #public plazas# 10,000 square feet or more in area: 50 However, canopies, awnings, and marquees associated percent with entrances to #buildings# containing #residences# located within a #public plaza# may project more than For #public plazas# 10,000 square feet or more in area with 15 feet into the #public plaza# and contain vertical a permitted open-air cafe: 60 percent. supports if they are located entirely within 10 feet of the edge of the #public plaza#. The area of permitted obstructions shall be measured by outside dimensions. Obstructions that are non-permanent or (2) Sun control devices may be located within a #public moveable, such as moveable chairs, open air cafes, or plaza#, provided that all such devices: temporary exhibitions shall be confined within gross areas (i) shall be located above the level of the first 37-727 #story# ceiling; Hours of access
(ii) shall be limited to a maximum projection of 2 All #public plazas# shall be accessible to the public at all feet, 6 inches; times, except where the City Planning Commission has authorized a nighttime closing, pursuant to the provisions of this Section. (iii) shall have solid surfaces that, in aggregate, cover an area no more than 20 percent of the area In all districts, the City Planning Commission may authorize the of the #building# wall (as viewed in elevation) closing during certain nighttime hours of an existing or new from which they project; and #publicly accessible open area#, if the Commission finds that:
(iv) may rise above the permitted #building# height, up (a) such existing #publicly accessible open area# has been open to the height of a parapet wall or guardrail, to the public a minimum of one year or there are significant pursuant to Section 33-42 (Permitted operational or safety issues documented, or for new #public Obstructions); plazas# significant safety issues have been documented and provided as part of the application for authorization of (d) Prohibition of garage entrances, driveways, parking spaces, nighttime closing; loading berths, exhaust vents, mechanical equipment and #building# trash storage facilities (b) such closing is necessary for public safety within the #publicly accessible open area# and maintenance of the No garage entrances, driveways, parking spaces, passenger public open areas as documented by the applicant; drop offs or loading berths shall be permitted within a #public plaza#. No #building# trash storage facilities are (c) the layout and design of the #publicly accessible open area# permitted within an #public plaza#, nor shall any #building# will promote public use and free and easy pedestrian trash storage facility be accessed or serviced through the circulation throughout the space; #public plaza#. If garage entrances, parking spaces, passenger drop offs, driveways, loading berths or #building# (d) any approved design element that limits public access, as trash storage facilities are located near or adjoin a specified in paragraph (e) of this Section, shall not impede #public plaza#, they shall be separated from it by a barrier public circulation, visual or physical access within the sufficient to substantially conceal these facilities and any #publicly accessible open area# or between the #publicly vehicles therein when viewed from any point in the #public accessible open area# and other public areas during hours of plaza#. public operation;
No exhaust vents or mechanical equipment are permitted on (e) a design element that limits public access shall: any #public plaza# or on any #building# wall fronting upon the #public plaza#, unless such exhaust vents are more than (1) be of a design that is integrated with the design of 15 feet above the level of the adjacent #public plaza#. All the #publicly accessible open area# in a manner that exhaust vents and mechanical equipment located adjacent to a would promote the attractiveness of the space for #public plaza# shall be separated from it by a barrier public use and enjoyment; sufficient to substantially, visually and audibly, conceal their presence and operation. Air intake vents or shafts (2) not exceed five feet in height; shall be permitted within a #public plaza# provided that such vents are concealed from public view by planting or (3) be fully removed from the #publicly accessible open other design features and that such vents do not impair area# during the hours of public access; however, visibility within the #public plaza# area. barriers not to exceed 3 feet, 6 inches in height may have posts or supports that remain during the hours of public access provided that such posts or supports do not exceed six inches in width; (10/17/07) (4) not involve stanchions or cabinets for barrier storage
located with the #publicly accessible open area#, accessibility to the public. All such plans for #publicly except for stanchions or cabinets located at the edges accessible open areas#, once authorized, shall be filed and duly of the #publicly accessible open area#; recorded in the Borough Office of the City Register of the City of New York, indexed against the property in the form of a legal (5) not inhibit or diminish access to the #publicly instrument providing notice of the authorization pursuant to this accessible open area# nor impede pedestrian circulation Section. The form and contents of the legal instrument shall be into, through, or along the frontage of the #publicly satisfactory to the Commission, and the filing and recording of accessible open area#, and not obstruct access during such instrument shall be a precondition for the nighttime closing the hours of public access; and of any #publicly accessible open area#. The recording information shall be included on the certificate of occupancy for any (6) be substantially transparent; #building#, or portion thereof, on the #zoning lot#, issued after the recording date. (f) public access to the #publicly accessible open area# between the hours of 7:00 a.m. and 10:00 p.m. from April 15 to The land use application for an authorization under this Section October 31 and from 7:00 a.m. to 8:00 p.m. from November 1 shall be sent to the applicable Community Board, local Council to April 14, or a schedule specified by the Commission, is Member and Borough President. If the Community Board, local assured by appropriate legal documents and that an hours of Council Member or Borough President elects to comment on such access plaque shall be affixed to the enclosure or barrier application, it must be done within 45 days of receipt of such which shall indicate the hours of public access to the application. #publicly accessible open area#, as specified in Section 37- 751, paragraph (c). However, if an open-air cafe or kiosk is The Commission shall file any such authorization with the City located within the #publicly accessible open area#, such Council. The Council, within 20 days of such filing, may resolve #publicly accessible open area# shall remain open to the by majority vote to review such authorization. If the Council so public during the hours of operation of the open air cafe or resolves, within 50 days of the filing of the Commission's kiosk; authorization, the Council shall hold a public hearing and may approve or disapprove such authorization. If, within the time (g) plans have been submitted that demonstrate that, where periods provided for in this Section, the Council fails to act on appropriate, the #publicly accessible open area# will be the Commission's authorization, the Council shall be deemed to improved, to the maximum extent feasible, in accordance with have approved such authorization. the standards set forth for #public plazas#;
(h) a program for continuing maintenance of the #publicly accessible open area# has been established in accordance (6/10/09) with Section 37-77. 37-728 In order to promote increased public use of the public open Standards of accessibility for persons with disabilities areas, the Commission may require, or the applicant may request, additional improvements to the existing #publicly accessible open All #public plazas# shall conform with applicable laws pertaining area#, including, where appropriate, amenities such as kiosks or to access for persons with disabilities regardless of whether the open air cafes as described in Section 37-73. In no event shall #building# associated with the #public plaza# is existing or new. any #publicly accessible open area# be reduced in size.
All applications for nighttime closings of #publicly accessible open areas# filed with the Commission shall include a detailed (6/10/09) site plan or plans indicating compliance with the provisions of this Section, including but not limited to materials, dimensions, 37-73 and configuration or any design element that limits public Kiosks and Open Air Cafes access, the storage location for the design element that limits public access during the hours of public operation of the #public Kiosks and open air cafes may be placed within a #publicly plaza#, and the hours of the #publicly accessible open area's# accessible open area# upon certification, pursuant to this Section. Such features shall be treated as permitted that provides service for such cafe must be included in the obstructions. Only #uses# permitted by the applicable district calculation of the maximum aggregate area of the open air regulations may occupy #publicly accessible open areas# or front cafe. Open air cafes shall be located along the edge of the on #publicly accessible open areas#. #publicly accessible open area#, except for open air cafes located within #publicly accessible open areas# greater than (a) Kiosks 30,000 square feet in area. Open air cafes may not occupy more than one third of any #street# frontage of the Where a kiosk is provided, it shall be a one-story temporary #publicly accessible open area# and may not contain any or permanent structure that is substantially open and required circulation paths. An open air cafe must be transparent as approved by the Department of Buildings in accessible from all sides where there is a boundary with the conformance with the Building Code. Kiosks, including roofed remainder of the #publicly accessible open area#, except areas, shall not occupy an area in excess of 100 square feet where there are planters or walls approved pursuant to a per kiosk. One kiosk is permitted for every 5,000 square prior certification for an open air cafe. Subject to the feet of #publicly accessible open area#, exclusive of areas foregoing exception, fences, planters, walls, fabric occupied by other approved kiosks or open air cafes. Kiosk dividers or other barriers that separate open air cafe areas placement shall not impede or be located within any from the #publicly accessible open area# or sidewalk are pedestrian circulation path. Any area occupied by a kiosk prohibited. All furnishings of an open air cafe, including shall be excluded from the calculation of #floor area#. tables, chairs, bussing stations, and heating lamps, shall Kiosks may be occupied only by #uses# permitted by the be completely removed from the #publicly accessible open applicable district regulations such as news, book or area# when the open air cafe is not in active use, except magazine stands, food or drink service, flower stands, that tables and chairs may remain in the #publicly information booths, or other activities that promote the accessible open area# if they are unsecured and may be used public use and enjoyment of the #publicly accessible open by the public without restriction. No kitchen equipment area#. Any kitchen equipment shall be stored entirely within shall be installed within an open air cafe; kitchen the kiosk. equipment, however, may be contained in a kiosk adjoining an open air cafe. An open air cafe qualifying as a permitted Kiosks must be in operation and provide service a minimum of obstruction shall be excluded from the definition of #floor 225 days per year. However, kiosks may operate for fewer area#. days in accordance with conditions set forth in paragraph (c) of this Section. The exterior corners of the border of the space to be occupied by an open air cafe shall be marked on the ground Notwithstanding the provisions of Section 32-41 (Enclosure by a line painted with white latex traffic or zone marking within Buildings), outdoor eating services or #uses# paint. The line shall be one inch wide and three inches in occupying kiosks may serve customers in a #publicly length on each side of the cafe border from the point where accessible open area# through open windows. the borders intersect at an angled corner. In addition, a line one inch wide and three inches long shall be marked on (b) Open air cafes the ground at intervals of no more than five feet starting from the end point of the line marking the cafe corners. Where an open air cafe is provided, it shall be a permanently unenclosed restaurant or eating or drinking Open air cafes must be in operation and provide service a place, permitted by applicable district regulations, which minimum of 225 days per year. may have waiter or table service, and shall be open to the sky except that it may have umbrellas, temporary fabric Open air cafes shall be located at the same elevation as an roofs with no vertical supports in conformance with the adjoining #public plaza# and sidewalk area, except for Building Code, and removable heating lamps. Open air cafes platforms that shall not exceed six inches in height. shall occupy an aggregate area not more than 20 percent of the total area of the #publicly accessible open area#. (c) Certification #Publicly accessible open areas# less than 10 feet in width that are located between separate sections of the same open Kiosks and open air cafes may be placed within the area of a air cafe or between sections of an open air cafe and a kiosk #publicly accessible open area# upon certification by the
Chairperson of the City Planning Commission to the Chairperson shall furnish a copy of the application for such Commissioner of Buildings, that: certification to the affected Community Board at the earliest possible stage. The Chairperson will give due (1) such #use# promotes public use and enjoyment of the consideration to the Community Board’s opinion as to the #publicly accessible open area#; appropriateness of such a facility in the area and shall respond to such application for certification within 60 days (2) such #use# complements desirable #uses# in the of the application's receipt. surrounding area; The Chairperson shall file any such certification with the (3) the owner of such #use# or the #building# owner shall City Council. The Council, within 20 days of such filing, be responsible for the maintenance of such kiosk or may resolve by majority vote to review such certification. open air cafe, which shall be located within areas If the Council so resolves, within 50 days of the filing of designated on building plans as available for occupancy the Chairperson's certification, the Council shall hold a by such #uses# and no encroachment by a kiosk or open public hearing and may approve or disapprove such air cafe outside an area so designated shall be certification. If, within the time periods provided for in permitted; this Section, the Council fails to act on the Chairperson's certification, the Council shall be deemed to have approved (4) such #use# does not adversely impact visual and such certification. physical access to and throughout the #publicly accessible open area#; Such certification shall be effective for a period of three years. (5) such #use#, when located within a #public plaza#, is provided in accordance with all the requirements set All applications for the placement of kiosks or open air forth in this Section; cafes shall include a detailed site plan or plans indicating compliance with the provisions of this Section, including (6) for kiosks and open air cafes located within an the layout and number of tables, chairs, restaurant existing #publicly accessible open area#, such #use# is equipment and heating lamps, as well as the storage location proposed as part of a general improvement of the for periods when the kiosk or open air cafe is closed. Where #publicly accessible open area# where necessary, a kiosk or open air cafe is to be located within an existing including as much landscaping and public seating as is #publicly accessible open area#, each kiosk or open air cafe feasible, in accordance with the standards for #public application must be accompanied by a compliance report in plazas#; accordance with the requirements of Section 37-78, paragraph (c). (7) a #sign# shall be provided in public view within the cafe area indicating the days and hours of operation of Where design changes to #publicly accessible open areas# are such cafe; and necessary in order to accommodate such kiosk or open air cafe, or to comply with paragraph (c)(6) of this Section, a (8) for kiosks that are in operation less than 225 days per certification pursuant to Section 37-625 (Design changes) year, an off-season plan has been submitted to the shall be required. Chairperson showing that such kiosks will be completely removed from the #publicly accessible open area# when All such plans for kiosks or open air cafes, once certified, not in operation, that the area previously occupied by shall be filed and duly recorded in the Borough Office of the kiosk is returned to public use and such area is in the City Register of the City of New York, indexed against compliance with the applicable #publicly accessible the property in the form of a legal instrument providing open area# design standards. notice of the certification for the kiosk or open air cafe, pursuant to this Section. The form and contents of the legal (d) Process instrument shall be satisfactory to the Chairperson, and the filing and recording of such instrument shall be a An application for certification shall be filed with the precondition for the placement of the kiosk or open air cafe Chairperson of the City Planning Commission, and the within the #publicly accessible open area#. shall have backs and at least 50 percent of the seats with backs shall face the #street#.
(10/17/07) Seating requirements may be satisfied by the following seating types: moveable seating, fixed individual seats, fixed benches 37-74 with and without backs, and design-feature seating such as seat Amenities walls, planter ledges, or seating steps. All #public plazas# shall provide at least two different types of seating. #Public All #public plazas# shall provide amenities, as listed in plazas# greater than 5,000 square feet in area shall provide at Sections 37-741 through 37-748, inclusive. All required amenities least three different types of seating. #Public plazas# greater shall be considered permitted obstructions within the #public than 10,000 square feet in area must provide moveable seating as plaza#. one of the required seating types.
Not more than 50 percent of the linear seating capacity may be in moveable seats that may be stored between the hours of sunset and (6/10/09) sunrise, where the City Planning Commission has authorized a limitation on the hours of access pursuant to Section 37-727. 37-741 Seating Devices or forms affixed or incorporated into planter ledges, steps, sills, or other horizontal surfaces that would otherwise Standards for seating within #public plazas# are intended to be suitable for seating that are intended to prevent or inhibit facilitate the provision of abundant, comfortable and accessible seating (such as spikes, metal bars, or pointed, excessively seating throughout the #public plaza#, including, more rough, or deliberately uncomfortable materials or forms) shall be specifically, as follows: prohibited.
(a) to provide a broad variety of seating types and Deterrents to skateboards, rollerblades and other wheeled devices configurations; are permitted on seating surfaces if they do not inhibit seating, maintain a minimum distance of five feet between deterrents, and (b) to accommodate individual users engaged in solitary are integrated into the seating surface at the time of activities as well as groups engaged in social activities; manufacture or construction or should be constructed of materials that are consistent with the materials and finish quality of the (c) to provide a comfortable and safe seating surface by seating surface. providing smooth, even and level surfaces with rounded edges; The following standards shall be met for all required seating:
(d) to incorporate, to the maximum extent possible, a (1) Seating shall have a minimum depth of 18 inches. Seating combination of fixed benches, moveable chairs, seating with with 36 inches or more in depth may count towards two seats, backs, seat walls and ledges, and seating steps; provided there is access to both sides. When required seating is provided on a planter ledge, such ledge must have (e) to provide ample opportunity for social seating as a basic a minimum depth of 22 inches. seating type that consists of seats that are placed in close proximity and at angles to one another or in facing (2) Seating shall have a height not less than 16 inches nor configurations that facilitate social interaction. greater than 20 inches above the level of the adjacent walking surface. However, as described in paragraph (5) of There shall be a minimum of one linear foot of seating for each this Section, seating steps may have a height not to exceed 30 square feet of #public plaza# area. 30 inches and seating walls may have a height not to exceed 24 inches. A minimum of one linear foot of the required seating for every two linear feet of #street# frontage must be located within 15 (3) At least 50 percent of the linear feet of fixed seating feet of the #street line#. At least 50 percent of this seating shall have backs at least 14 inches high and a maximum seat
depth of 20 inches. Walls located adjacent to a seating All #public plazas# shall provide a minimum of four trees. For a surface shall not count as seat backs. All seat backs must #public plaza# greater than 6,000 square feet in area, an either be contoured in form for comfort or shall be reclined additional four caliper inches in additional trees or multi- from vertical between 10 to 15 degrees. stemmed equivalents must be provided for each additional 1,000 square feet of #public plaza# area, rounded to the nearest 1,000 (4) Moveable seating or chairs, excluding seating for open air square feet. cafes, may be credited as 24 inches of linear seating per chair. Moveable seating provided as a required amenity shall For all #public plazas#, at least 50 percent of required trees be provided in the amount of one chair per 200 square feet shall be planted flush-to-grade or planted at grade within of #public plaza# area. One table shall be provided for planting beds with no raised curbs or railings. Trees planted every four such moveable chairs. flush-to-grade shall be surrounded by a porous surface (such as grating or open-joint paving) that allows water to penetrate into All moveable seats must have backs and a maximum seat depth the soil for a minimum radius of 2 feet, 6 inches. Such porous of 20 inches. Moveable chairs shall not be chained, fixed, surface shall be of sufficient strength and density to or otherwise secured while the #public plaza# is open to the accommodate pedestrian circulation, including all requirements public; moveable chairs, however, may be removed during the related to accessibility for the disabled, and shall be of a nighttime hours of 9:00 pm to 7:00 am. design that allows for tree growth. Installed fixtures such as lighting stanchions, electrical outlets or conduits shall not be (5) Seating steps and seating walls may be used for required located within the required porous area of any tree planted seating if such seating does not, in aggregate, represent flush-to-grade. more than 15 percent of the linear feet of required seating in the #public plaza#. Seating steps shall not include any Where trees are planted within a #public plaza#, they shall steps intended for circulation and must have a height not measure at least four inches in caliper at the time of planting, less than six inches nor greater than 30 inches and a depth unless alternative, multi-stemmed equivalents are specified in not less than 18 inches. Seating walls shall have a height the approved planting plans. Each tree shall be planted in at not greater than 18 inches; such seating walls, however, may least 200 cubic feet of soil with a depth of soil of at least 3 have a height not to exceed 24 inches if they are located feet, 6 inches. within 10 feet of an edge of the #public plaza#. Planting beds shall have a soil depth of at least eighteen inches (6) Seating in open air cafes shall not count towards meeting for grass or other ground cover, three feet for shrubs and 3 the seating requirement of this Section. feet, 6 inches for trees. No planters or planting beds shall have bounding walls that exceed 18 inches in height above an adjacent (7) Seats that face walls must be a minimum of six feet from walking surface or the highest adjacent surface where the such wall. bounding wall adjoins two or more walking surfaces with different elevations. Any planting bed containing required trees shall have a continuous area of at least 75 square feet for each tree exclusive of bounding walls. Furthermore, each tree located (6/10/09) within a planting bed shall be surrounded by a continuous permeable surface measuring at least five feet square. Any lawns 37-742 or turf grass planting beds shall not exceed six inches above any Planting and trees adjacent walking surfaces.
The provisions of this Section are intended to facilitate a All planted areas shall either be automatically irrigated or combination of landscaping elements in order to provide comfort, shall consist of species that do not require regular watering. shade and textural variety. All planted areas located above subsurface structures such as At least 20 percent of the area of a #public plaza# shall be #cellars# or garages shall have drainage systems to prevent comprised of planting beds with a minimum dimension of two feet, collection and pooling of water within planted areas. exclusive of any bounding walls. #Street# trees are required to be planted in the public sidewalk area adjacent to a #zoning lot# that contains bonus #floor area# for #public plazas# in accordance with Section 26-41 (Street Tree (10/17/07) Planting). The length of frontage of the #zoning lot# for the purpose of computing required #street# trees may be reduced by 50 37-744 feet for each #street# intersection fronted by the #zoning lot#. Litter receptacles If the Department of Parks and Recreation determines that the tree planting requirements of this paragraph are infeasible, the One litter receptacle shall be provided for every 1,500 square number of required #street# trees that cannot be planted shall be feet of #public plaza# area, up to a maximum of 6,000 square planted in accordance with the off-site tree provisions set forth feet. Plazas greater than 6,000 square feet in area must provide in Section 26-41 or within the #public plaza#. an additional litter receptacle for every additional 2,000 square feet of #public plaza# area. #Public plazas# that contain open air cafes or kiosks providing food service shall provide one additional litter receptacle for each 1,500 square feet of (2/2/11) #public plaza# area occupied by such outdoor eating area. All litter receptacles must have a volume capacity of at least 25 37-743 gallons and shall be located in visible and convenient locations. Lighting and electrical power All top or side openings must have a minimum dimension of 12 inches. Litter receptacles shall be provided within 50 feet of #Public plazas# shall be illuminated to provide for safe use and required seating areas in the #public plaza#. enjoyment of all areas of the #public plaza#. Special attention should be provided in lighting steps and other changes in elevation and areas under tree canopies and permitted canopies within the #public plaza#. (10/17/07)
#Public plazas# shall be illuminated with a minimum level of 37-745 illumination of not less than two horizontal foot candles (lumens Bicycle parking per foot) throughout all walkable and sitting areas, including sidewalks directly adjacent to the #public plaza#, and a minimum All #public plazas# shall provide parking for at least two level of illumination of not less than 0.5 horizontal foot bicycles. #Public plazas# greater than 10,000 square feet in size candles (lumens per foot) throughout all other areas. All must provide parking for at least four bicycles. Bike racks must lighting sources used to satisfy this illumination requirement be provided on the sidewalk directly adjacent to the #public shall be located outdoors on the subject #zoning lot#. Such level plaza# in accordance with Department of Transportation standards, of illumination shall be maintained from one hour before sunset unless the Department of Transportation has determined that the to one hour after sunrise, including #public plazas# that are sidewalk area adjacent to the #public plaza# cannot accommodate authorized to close at night. A lighting schedule, including the required bicycle parking. fixtures, wattage and their locations and designs together with a diagram of light level distribution, with light levels indicated at intervals of no more than every 20 square feet, shall be part of the required detailed design plans. Electrical power shall be (10/17/07) supplied by one or more outlets furnishing a total of at least 1,200 watts of power for every 4,000 square feet, or fraction 37-746 thereof, of the area of a #public plaza#. Drinking fountains
All lighting sources that illuminate the #public plaza# and are A minimum of one drinking fountain shall be provided in all mounted on or located within #buildings# adjacent to the #public #public plazas#. plaza# shall be shielded from direct view. In addition, all lighting within the #public plaza# area shall be shielded to minimize any adverse effect on surrounding #residences#. (10/17/07)
37-747 Public space signage (1) food service in a retail space directly accessible from the major portion of the #public plaza#; or Entry and information plaques shall be provided, as described in Section 37-751 (Public space signage systems). (2) an open air cafe or kiosk, as described in Section 37- 73.
#Public plazas# greater than 10,000 square feet in area and (10/17/07) associated with a #commercial building# must include a food service as one of the three additional required amenities. 37-748 Additional amenities
#Public plazas# between 5,000 and 10,000 square feet in area must (10/17/07) provide one of the following additional amenities and #public plazas# greater than 10,000 square feet in area must provide at 37-75 least three of the following additional amenities. All additional Signs amenities shall be considered permitted obstructions within the #public plaza#.
(a) Artwork (6/10/09)
Artwork that is provided as an additional amenity must 37-751 integrate with the design of the #public plaza#. Artwork Public space signage systems shall not interfere with public access, circulation or visual openness within the #public plaza# or between the The following public space signage systems shall be required for #public plaza# and adjoining public areas. Artwork may not all #public plazas#: incorporate addresses, text or logos related to the adjacent #building# or tenants of such #building#; (a) Entry plaque
(b) Moveable tables and chairs, as described in Section 37-741, The entry plaque shall be located at each #street# frontage paragraph (4); or point of pedestrian entry to the #public plaza#. On each #street# frontage occupied by the #public plaza#, a minimum (c) Water features (such as fountains, reflecting pools, of one entry plaque shall be provided for every 40 feet of waterfalls); linear #street# frontage occupied by the #public plaza#. The entry plaque shall contain: (d) Children’s play area; (1) a public space symbol which is 12 inches square in (e) Equipment provided as part of children’s play areas must be dimension and dark green or black in color with a designed and constructed in accordance with applicable highly contrasting background, a grid and tree-shaped United States Consumer Products Safety Commission standards symbol, as shown in this paragraph, (a)(1). The symbol and best practices, including installation of protective shall match exactly the symbol provided in the Required surfaces and barriers. All barriers surrounding play areas Signage Symbols file at the Department of City Planning shall be designed to allow for the adequate supervision of website; children at play and shall in all cases be substantially transparent and no more than 3 feet, 6 inches in height;
(f) Game tables and associated seating; or
(g) Food service, including: color with a highly contrasting background, a grid and tree-shaped symbol, as shown in paragraph (a)(1) of this Section. The symbol shall match exactly the symbol provided in the Required Signage Symbols file at the Department of City Planning website.
(2) if provided on a separate plaque from a required entry plaque, the words, in lettering one-half inch in (37-53h2.8a1, 37-751a1) height, “Open 24 hours” or, if a nighttime closing has been authorized pursuant to Section 37-727, the words, (2) lettering at least two inches in height stating "OPEN in lettering one-half inch in height, “Open to the TO PUBLIC." This lettering shall be located immediately public:” followed by the approved hours of operation; adjacent to the public space symbol; (3) in lettering three-eighths of an inch in height, the (3) lettering at least one inch in height stating the words words “This public plaza contains:” followed by the “Open 24 hours” or, if a nighttime closing has been total linear feet of seating, the type and quantity of authorized, pursuant to Section 37-727, shall contain trees, the number of bike racks, the number of drinking the words “Open to the public:” followed by the fountains and the number of any additional required approved hours of operation; and amenities, such as moveable seating;
(4) an International Symbol of Access for persons with (4) in lettering three-eighths of an inch in height, the disabilities that is at least three inches square. name of the current owner of the #building# and the name, address, phone number and email address of the The entry plaque shall be mounted on a wall or a permanent person designated to maintain the #public plaza#; free-standing post within five feet of the sidewalk with its center five feet above the elevation of the nearest walkable (5) in lettering three-eighths of an inch in height, the pavement. The maximum height of such free-standing post statement, "Complaints or Questions: Call 311 and shall be six feet, with a maximum width and depth of 16 reference the #public plaza# at [insert building inches. It shall be in a position that clearly identifies address]; and the entry into the #public plaza#, and placed so that the entire entry plaque is obvious and directly visible, without (6) the statement, "This public plaza is accessible to any obstruction, along every line of sight from all paths of persons with disabilities." pedestrian access to the #public plaza#. (c) Hours of access plaque (b) Information plaque On each #street# frontage occupied by the #public plaza# and An information plaque constructed from the same permanent where the City Planning Commission has authorized a materials as the entry plaque or combined with one or more limitation on the hours of access for a #public plaza#, of the required entry plaques shall be provided. Information pursuant to the provisions of Section 37-727, a minimum of plaques shall be mounted on a wall or a permanent free- one hours of access plaque shall be provided for every 40 standing post within five feet of the sidewalk and shall linear feet of approved barrier that limits public access. have all required lettering located three feet above the The hours of access plaque shall be located on the barrier elevation of the nearest walkable pavement. The maximum that limits public access to the #public plaza# and shall height of such free-standing post shall be six feet, with a consist of: maximum width and depth of 16 inches. The information plaque shall consist of: (1) a public space symbol which is two inches square in dimension and dark green or black in color with a (1) if provided on a separate plaque from a required entry highly contrasting background, a grid and tree-shaped plaque, a public space symbol which is at least six symbol, as shown in paragraph (a)(1) of this Section. inches square in dimension and dark green or black in The symbol shall match exactly the symbol provided in
the Required Signage Symbols file at the Department of by the applicable district regulations set forth in Section 32-60 City Planning website. (SIGN REGULATIONS), except as provided below:
(2) the statement: “Open to the Public:” followed by the (a) each establishment fronting on the #public plaza# shall be approved hours of operation. permitted to have not more than one #sign# affixed to the #building# wall fronting on the #public plaza#; All required public space signage shall be fully opaque, non-reflective and constructed of permanent, highly durable (b) all #signs# shall be non-#illuminated#; materials such as steel or stone. (c) all #signs# shall contain only the #building# or All lettering provided on required public space signage establishment name and address; shall be in a clear, bold, sans-serif, non-narrow font such as Arial, Helvetica, or Verdana, solid in color with a (d) all #signs accessory# to retail #uses# affixed to #building# minimum height of 3/4 inch, unless otherwise specified walls may not exceed four square feet in size; above, and shall highly contrast with the background color of the #sign#. (e) not more than three #accessory signs# may be located within the #public plaza#, of which one may be freestanding. All such #signs#, including structures to which they are affixed, shall not be higher than three feet above the level (10/17/07) of the adjoining public access area. Such #signs# shall not exceed an area of two square feet. In addition, no portion 37-752 of such #sign#, including structures to which they are Prohibition signs affixed, shall exceed a width of 16 inches facing a #street#, and 24 inches when not facing a #street#. For To ensure a safe and comfortable environment for all #public #corner public plazas#, such limitations shall apply to only plaza# users, a maximum of one prohibition or “Rule of Conduct” one #street# frontage. If such #sign# is associated with a #sign# may be located within the #public plaza#. Such #sign# #building# used for office #use#, such #sign# shall contain shall not exceed one foot square in dimension, may not be only the names of principal building tenants and shall also freestanding, and shall contain no lettering greater than 3/4 contain the public space symbol as described in Section 37- inch in height. 751 and the words “Open to Public” in lettering at least two inches in height; and Such #sign# shall not prohibit behaviors that are consistent with the normal public use of the #public plaza# such as lingering, (f) all #signs# located on permitted canopies or awnings within eating, drinking of non-alcoholic beverages or gathering in small the #public plaza# shall contain only the #building# or groups. No behaviors, actions, or items may be listed on such establishment name and shall not exceed a height of one #sign# that are otherwise illegal or prohibited by municipal, foot. State, or Federal laws.
(6/10/09) (6/10/09) 37-76 37-753 Mandatory Allocation of Frontages for Permitted Uses Accessory signs (a) Ground floor level uses A #public plaza# shall be treated as a #street# for the purposes of the applicable #sign# regulations. #Signs#, except for the At least 50 percent of the total frontage of all new plaque required by Section 37-751, are permitted only as #building# walls fronting on a #public plaza#, or fronting #accessory# to #uses# permitted within the #public plaza# and on an #arcade# adjoining a #public plaza#, exclusive of such #uses# adjoining the #public plaza#, and are otherwise regulated frontage occupied by #building# lobbies and frontage used for subway access, shall be allocated for occupancy at the whichever is less, but in no case shall #building# entrances ground floor level by retail or service establishments or lobbies occupy less than 20 feet of frontage on the permitted by the applicable district regulations but not #public plaza#. including #uses# in Use Groups 6B, 6E, 7C, 8C, 9B, 10B, 11 and 12D, or banks, automobile showrooms or plumbing, heating (c) Transparency or ventilating equipment showrooms. In addition, libraries, museums and art galleries shall be permitted. All such All new #building# walls fronting on the major and minor #uses# shall: portions of the #public plaza# shall be treated with clear, untinted transparent material for 50 percent of the surface (1) be directly accessible from the major portion of the area below 14 feet above the #public plaza# level, or the #public plaza#, an adjoining #arcade#, or a #street# ceiling level of the ground floor of the #building#, frontage shared by the establishment and the #public whichever is lower. Any non-transparent area of a new or plaza#; existing #building# wall fronting on the major or minor portion of a #public plaza# shall be treated with a (2) have a minimum depth of 15 feet, measured perpendicular decorative element or material or shall be screened with to the wall adjoining the #public plaza#; and planting to a minimum height of 15 feet above the #public plaza#. (3) occupy such frontage for the life of the increased #floor area# of the bonused #development#.
The remaining frontage may be occupied by other #uses#, (6/10/09) lobby entrances or vertical circulation elements, in accordance with the district regulations. 37-77 Maintenance As an alternative, where retail or service establishments located in an existing #building# front upon a #public The #building# owner shall be responsible for the maintenance of plaza# or an #arcade# adjoining a #public plaza#, at least the #public plaza# including, but not limited to, the location of 50 percent of the total frontage of all #building# walls permitted obstructions pursuant to Section 37-726, litter fronting on the #public plaza#, or fronting on an #arcade# control, management of pigeons and rodents, maintenance of adjoining a #public plaza#, exclusive of such frontage required lighting levels, and the care and replacement of occupied by #building# lobbies and frontage used for subway furnishings and vegetation within the #zoning lot#. access, shall be allocated for occupancy at the ground floor level by retail or service establishments permitted by the applicable district regulations but not including #uses# in Use Groups 6B, 6E, 7C, 8C, 9B, 10B, 11 and 12D, or banks, (2/2/11) automobile showrooms or plumbing, heating or ventilating equipment showrooms. In addition, libraries, museums and art 37-78 galleries shall be permitted. All such #uses# shall comply Compliance with the provisions of paragraphs (a)(1), (a)(2) and (a)(3) of this Section. (a) Building permits
(b) Public entrances No foundation permit shall be issued by the Department of Buildings for any #development# or #enlargement# that A public entrance to the principal use of the #building# includes a #public plaza#, nor shall any permit be issued by associated with the #public plaza# shall be located within the Department of Buildings for any change to a #plaza#, 10 feet of the major portion of the #public plaza#. Frontage #residential plaza# or #urban plaza# without certification on the #public plaza# that is occupied by a #building# by the Chairperson of the City Planning Commission of entrance or lobby shall not exceed 60 feet or 40 percent of compliance with the provisions of Sections 37-625 or 37-70, the total aggregate frontage of the new #building# walls on as applicable. the major and minor portions of the #public plaza#,
An application for such certification shall be filed with and the affected Community Board shall be provided with a the Chairperson showing the plan of the #zoning lot#; a site report regarding compliance of the #publicly accessible open plan indicating the area and dimensions of the proposed area# with the regulations of Sections 37-625 or 37-70, as #public plaza# and the location of the proposed applicable, as of a date of inspection which shall be no #development# or #enlargement# and all existing #buildings# earlier than May 15 of the year in which the report is temporarily or permanently occupying the #zoning lot#; filed. Such report shall be provided by a registered computations of proposed #floor area#, including bonus architect, landscape architect or professional engineer, in #floor area#; and a detailed plan or plans prepared by a a format acceptable to the Director and shall include, registered landscape architect, including but not limited to without limitation: a furnishing plan, a planting plan, a signage plan, a lighting/photometric plan and sections and elevations, as (1) a copy of the original #public plaza# or design change necessary to demonstrate compliance with the provisions of certification letter and, if applicable, any approval Sections 37-625 or 37-70, as applicable. letter pertaining to any other authorization or certification pursuant to this Chapter; All plans for #public plazas# or other #publicly accessible open areas# that are the subject of a certification pursuant (2) a statement that the #publicly accessible open area# to Section 37-625 shall be filed and duly recorded in the has been inspected by such registered architect, Borough Office of the City Register of the City of New York, landscape architect or professional engineer and that indexed against the property in the form of a legal such open area is in full compliance with the instrument, in a form satisfactory to the Chairperson, regulations under which it was approved as well as the providing notice of the certification of the #public plaza#, approved plans pertaining to such open area and, if pursuant to this Section. Such filing and recording of such applicable, the requirements of any other authorization instrument shall be a precondition to certification. The or certification pursuant to this Chapter, or non- recording information shall be included on the certificate compliance with such regulations and plans; of occupancy for any #building#, or portion thereof, on the #zoning lot# issued after the recording date. No temporary (3) an inventory list of amenities required under the or final certificate of occupancy shall be issued for any regulations under which the #publicly accessible open bonus #floor area# generated by a #public plaza# unless and area# was approved and the approved plans pertaining to until the #public plaza# has been substantially completed in such open area and, if applicable, the requirements of accordance with the approved plans, as verified by the any other authorization or certification pursuant to Department of City Planning and certified to the Department Section 37-70, together with an identification of any of Buildings. amenity on such inventory list for which inspection did not show compliance, including whether such amenities Notwithstanding any of the provisions of Section 11-33 are in working order, and a description of the non- (Building Permits for Minor or Major Development or Other compliance; Construction Issued Before Effective Date of Amendment), any #residential plaza# or #urban plaza# for which a (4) photographs documenting the condition of the #publicly certification was granted pursuant to Article II, Chapter 3, accessible open area# at the time of inspection, or Article III, Chapter 7, between June 4, 2005 and June 4, sufficient to indicate the presence or absence, either 2007, and any #public plaza# for which a certification was full or partial, of the amenities on the inventory list granted prior to June 10, 2009, may be provided in of amenities. accordance with the regulations in effect on the date of such certification. The report submitted to the Director of the Department of City Planning shall be accompanied by documentation (b) Periodic compliance reporting demonstrating that such report has also been provided to the affected Community Board. No later than June 30 of the year, beginning in the third calendar year following the calendar year in which Compliance reporting pursuant to this paragraph, (b), shall certification was made and at three year intervals be a condition of all certifications granted pursuant to thereafter, the Director of the Department of City Planning Section 37-70. application N070416ZCM, filed in conjunction with (c) Compliance reports at time of application application C070415ZSM, and such #urban plaza# may be provided in accordance with the regulations of Section 37- Any application for a certification or authorization 04, inclusive, in effect on April 23, 2007, as modified by involving an existing #publicly accessible open area# shall the special regulations for such #urban plaza# as set forth include a compliance report in the format required under in Article IX, Chapter 1 (Special Lower Manhattan District) paragraph (b) of this Section, based upon an inspection of and in the following provisions: the #publicly accessible open area# by a registered architect, landscape architect or professional engineer (1) #Floor area# bonus for an #urban plaza# in the #Special conducted no more than 45 days prior to the filing of such Lower Manhattan District# application. A #floor area# bonus for such #urban plaza#, pursuant The following conditions may constitute grounds to to Section 91-22, may be permitted for a #development# disapprove the application for certification or or #enlargement# located within 50 feet of the #street authorization: line# of a #street# subject to the regulations for #street wall# continuity Type 2B. (1) such report shows non-compliance with the regulations under which the #publicly accessible open area# was (2) #Street wall# regulations for an #urban plaza# in the approved, conditions or restrictions of a previously #Special Lower Manhattan District# granted certification or authorization, or with the approved plans pertaining to such #publicly accessible The #street wall# regulations for #street wall# open area#; or continuity “Type 2” in the #Special Lower Manhattan District# shall be superseded by #street wall# (2) the #publicly accessible open area# has been the continuity Types 2A and 2B as indicated on Map 2 in subject of one or more enforcement proceedings for Appendix A of Article IX, Chapter 1. which there have been final adjudications of a violation with respect to any of the foregoing.
In the case of a certification, the Chairperson, or in the (2/2/11) case of an authorization, the Commission, may, in lieu of disapproval, accept a compliance plan for the #publicly 37-80 accessible open area#, which plan shall set forth the means ARCADES by which future compliance will be ensured. The provisions of this Section shall apply to all #developments# (d) Failure to comply an #enlargements# containing an #arcade# that qualifies for a #floor area# bonus pursuant to Sections 24-15, 33-14 or 43-14. Failure to comply with a condition or restriction in an authorization or certification granted pursuant to Section An #arcade# shall be #developed# as a continuous covered space 37-70 or with approved plans related thereto, or failure to extending along a #street line#, or #publicly accessible open submit a required compliance report, shall constitute a area#. An #arcade# shall be open for its entire length to the violation of this Resolution and may constitute the basis #street line# or #publicly accessible open area#, except for for denial or revocation of a building permit or certificate #building# columns, and unobstructed to a height of not less than of occupancy, or for a revocation or such authorization or 12 feet, and either: certification, and for all other applicable remedies. (a) have a depth not less than 10 feet nor more than 30 feet (e) Special regulations for an #urban plaza# in the #Special measured perpendicular to the #street line# or boundary of Lower Manhattan District# the #publicly accessible open area# on which it fronts, and extend for at least 50 feet, or the full length of the In addition, the Chairperson of the City Planning Commission #street line# or boundary of the #publicly accessible open may certify any #urban plaza# that is the subject of area# on which it fronts, whichever is the lesser distance;
or (1) a total number of parking spaces #accessory# to (b) on a #corner lot#, is bounded on two sides by the two #commercial# or #community facility uses# on the intersecting #street lines#, and has an area of not less #zoning lot# that is at least 20 percent greater than than 500 square feet and a minimum dimension of 10 feet. the number of such spaces existing on November 28, 2007; or Such an #arcade# shall not at any point be above the level of the #street#, or #publicly accessible open area# that it adjoins, (2) a total amount of #floor area# on the #zoning lot# that whichever is higher. Any portion of an #arcade# occupied by is at least 20 percent greater than the amount of #building# columns shall be considered to be part of the area of #floor area# existing on November 28, 2007, and where the #arcade# for the purposes of computing a #floor area# bonus. at least 70 percent of the #floor area# on the #zoning lot# is occupied by #commercial# or #community facility No off-street parking spaces, passenger drop offs, driveways or uses#; and off-street loading berths are permitted anywhere within an #arcade# or within 10 feet of any bonusable portion thereof. By (c) existing #buildings# with new #accessory# open parking areas certification, the Commission may permit such activity in the in which 70 percent or more of the #floor area# on the immediate vicinity of an #arcade# provided such activity will not #zoning lot# is occupied by a #commercial# or #community adversely affect the functioning of the #arcade#. In no event facility use#. shall such vehicular areas be eligible for an #arcade# bonus. All #public parking lots# shall comply with the provisions of #Arcades# shall be accessible to the public at all times. Section 37-921 (Perimeter landscaping).
The provisions of Section 37-90, inclusive, shall not apply to surface parking located on the roof of a #building#, indoor (11/28/07) parking garages, #public parking garages#, structured parking facilities, or #developments# in which at least 70 percent of the 37-90 #floor area# or #lot area# on a #zoning lot# is used for PARKING LOTS automotive #uses# listed in Use Groups 9 or 16.
For the purposes of Section 37-90, inclusive, an “open parking area” shall mean that portion of a #zoning lot# used for the (2/2/11) parking or maneuvering of vehicles, including service vehicles, which is not covered by a #building#. Open parking areas shall 37-91 also include all landscaped areas required pursuant to this Applicability Section within and adjacent to the open parking area.
C1 C2 C3 C4 C5 C6 C7 C8 Notwithstanding the provisions of this Section, where parking requirements are waived pursuant to Sections 25-33, 36-23 or 44- In all districts, as indicated, the provisions of Section 37-90 23, as applicable, on #zoning lots# subdivided after November 28, (PARKING LOTS), inclusive, shall apply to open parking areas that 2007, and parking spaces #accessory# to #commercial# or contain 18 or more spaces or are greater than 6,000 square feet #community facility uses# or curb cuts accessing #commercial# or in area, as follows: #community facility uses# are shown on the site plan required pursuant to Section 36-58, the provisions of Section 37-921 (a) #developments# with #accessory# open parking areas in which (Perimeter landscaping) shall apply. 70 percent or more of the #floor area# on the #zoning lot# is occupied by a #commercial# or #community facility use#; A detailed plan or plans prepared by a registered landscape architect demonstrating compliance with the provisions of Section (b) #enlargements# of a #building# with #accessory# open parking 37-90, inclusive, shall be submitted to the Department of areas or the #enlargement# of an open parking area, that Buildings. Such plans shall include grading plans, drainage plans result in an increase in: and planting plans, and sections and elevations as necessary to demonstrate compliance with the provisions of this Section. The open parking area shall be graded to allow stormwater runoff to drain into all required perimeter landscaped areas Any application for a special permit certified by the Department and planting islands required pursuant to Section 37-922 of City Planning or application for an authorization referred by (Interior landscaping). The perimeter landscaped area shall the Department of City Planning for public review prior to be comprised of soil with a depth of at least two and a half November 28, 2007, may be continued pursuant to the regulations feet measured from the adjoining open parking area. Beneath in effect at the time of certification or referral and, if such soil, filter fabric and one foot of gravel shall be granted by the City Planning Commission and, where applicable, provided. Proper drainage rates shall be attained through the City Council, may be #developed# or #enlarged# pursuant to underdrains that are connected to detention storage that the terms of such permit or authorization, including minor meets the drainage and flow requirements of the Department modifications thereto and, to the extent not modified under the of Environmental Protection or through infiltration through terms of such permit or authorization, in accordance with the the surrounding soil volume. If underdrains are not regulations in effect at the time such application was certified provided, soil boring tests shall be conducted by a licensed or referred for public review. engineer to ensure that ponded surface water is drained in at least 24 hours. The perimeter landscaped area shall have an inverted slope to allow a minimum of six inches and a maximum of one foot of stormwater ponding, and surface (11/28/07) ponding must drain in at least 24 hours. To allow for adequate drainage, elevated catchbasins shall be placed in 37-92 the planting island above the ponding level. A raised curb Landscaping shall edge the perimeter landscaped area, shall be at least six inches in height and shall contain inlets at appropriate intervals to allow stormwater infiltration from the open parking area. (2/2/11) However, where the Commissioner of Buildings determines that 37-921 due to the natural sloping topography of the site the Perimeter landscaping drainage provisions of this paragraph, (a), would be infeasible for a perimeter landscaped area, such drainage All open parking areas with 18 spaces or more or 6,000 square provisions may be waived. In lieu thereof, such perimeter feet or more in area that front upon a #street# shall be screened landscaped area shall be comprised of soil with a depth of at the #street line# by a perimeter landscaped area at least at least three feet measured from the adjoining open parking seven feet in width measured perpendicular to the #street line#. area. A raised curb shall edge the perimeter landscaped area Such perimeter landscaped area may be interrupted only by and be at least six inches in height. The planting vehicular entrances and exits. Walkways may also traverse the requirements of paragraph (b) of this Section shall apply to perimeter landscaped area in order to provide a direct connection such perimeter landscaped areas, except that plantings need between the public sidewalk and a walkway within or adjacent to not be selected from the lists in Section 37-963. the open parking area. In the event a perimeter landscaped area is greater than seven feet in width, the first seven feet (b) Plantings adjacent to the open parking area must comply with paragraphs (a) and (b) of this Section. The remainder of the landscaped (1) Parking lot frontage perimeter area may comply with paragraphs (a) and (b) or be comprised of any combination of grass, groundcover, shrubs, trees The first two feet of the planting island fronting the or other living plant material. open parking area shall be comprised of mulch and densely planted with groundcover above jute mesh to The perimeter landscaped area shall comply with the following stabilize the inverted slope. This area may be used as requirements: an automobile bumper overhang area and may be included in calculating the required depth of an #abutting# (a) Grading, drainage and soil parking space. All required groundcover shall be selected from the list in Section 37-963.
(2) Sidewalk frontage 37-922 Interior landscaping The remainder of the perimeter landscaped area shall be densely planted with shrubs at a distance of 24 inches All open parking areas of 36 or more parking spaces or at least on center and maintained at a maximum height of three 12,000 square feet in area shall provide at least one tree for feet above the surface of the adjoining public every eight parking spaces. Fractions equal to or greater than sidewalk. All required shrubs shall be selected from one-half resulting from this calculation shall be considered to the list in Section 37-963. be one tree. Such trees shall be in addition to the trees required in the perimeter screening area. Each such tree shall (3) Trees have a minimum caliper of three inches and be located in a planting island with a minimum area of 150 square feet of One two-inch caliper tree shall be provided for every pervious surface. 25 feet of open parking area #street# frontage. Fractions equal to or greater than one-half resulting (a) Distribution from this calculation shall be considered to be one tree. Such perimeter trees shall be staggered wherever The following distribution rules shall apply: possible with #street# trees, but in no event shall perimeter trees be planted closer than 15 feet on (1) Each end space in a row of five or more parking spaces center or within three feet to a perimeter screening shall fully abut a planting island or a perimeter area curb. Furthermore, a radius distance of at least landscaped area along the long dimension of such end 20 feet shall be maintained between trunks of perimeter space; trees and #street# trees. If such distances cannot be maintained, the perimeter tree shall be waived in that (2) No more than 15 parking spaces shall be permitted location. However, if a #street# tree cannot be planted between planting islands, or a planting island and a in the public sidewalk adjacent to the perimeter perimeter landscaped area; and screening area because the Department of Parks and Recreation has determined that it is infeasible to (3) For open parking areas at least 150,000 square feet in plant a tree in such location, such tree shall be area, in addition to the requirements set forth in planted instead within the perimeter screening area paragraphs (a)(1) and (a)(2) of this Section, every adjacent to such portion of the public sidewalk and other row of parking spaces in which each space does credited towards the amount of perimeter trees required not fully abut a perimeter landscaped area shall abut a pursuant to this paragraph. However, any perimeter tree planting island. Such planting island shall have a within 15 feet of an elevated rail line or elevated minimum width of eight feet and extend along the entire highway shall be waived. All required perimeter trees length of such row of parking spaces. Such planting shall be selected from the list in Section 37-961. islands may be traversed by walkways no more than three feet wide and spaced at least 50 feet apart. (c) Obstructions
Utilities and #signs# permitted in Sections 32-62, 32-63 or 42-52 may be located in the perimeter screening area. Ornamental fencing, excluding chain link fencing, with a surface area at least 50 percent open is permitted in the perimeter screening area, provided such fencing does not exceed four feet in height and is located at least five feet from the #street line#.
(2/2/11) runoff to drain into all planting islands required pursuant to this Section and perimeter landscaped areas required pursuant to Section 37-921. Planting islands shall have an inverted slope to allow a minimum six inches and a maximum of one foot of stormwater ponding, and surface ponding must drain in at least 24 hours. To allow for adequate drainage, elevated catchbasins shall be placed in the planting island above the ponding level. Planting islands shall be comprised of soil with a depth of at least two and a half feet measured from the surface of the adjoining open parking area. Beneath such soil, filter fabric and one foot of gravel shall be provided. Proper drainage rates shall be attained through underdrains that are connected to detention storage that meets the drainage and flow requirements of the Department of Environmental Protection or through infiltration through the surrounding soil volume. If underdrains are not provided, soil boring tests shall be conducted by a licensed engineer to ensure that ponded surface water is drained in at least 24 hours. A raised curb (37-922a3) shall edge the planting island, shall be at least six inches in height and shall contain inlets at appropriate intervals (4) Planting islands required pursuant to paragraphs (a)(1) to allow stormwater infiltration from the open parking area. and (a)(3) may be discontinued where a pedestrian access lane is provided that serves no more than five However, where the Commissioner of Buildings determines that parking spaces required by the Americans with due to the natural sloping topography of the site the Disabilities Act. drainage provisions of this paragraph, (b), would be infeasible for an interior planting island, such drainage provisions may be waived. In lieu thereof, such planting island shall be comprised of soil with a depth of at least three feet measured from the adjoining open parking area. A raised curb shall edge the perimeter landscaped area and be at least six inches in height. The planting requirements of paragraph (c) of this Section shall apply to such planting islands, except that plantings need not be selected from the lists in Section 37-963.
(c) Plantings
The first two feet of the planting island fronting the open (37-922a4) parking area shall be comprised of mulch and densely planted with groundcover above jute mesh to stabilize the inverted (5) Compliance with paragraphs (a)(1) and (a)(2) may be slope. This area may be used as an automobile bumper waived where the Commissioner of Buildings determines overhang area and may be included in calculating the that tree planting in such locations would conflict required depth of an #abutting# parking space. The remaining with loading operations. Such trees shall be planted area of the planting island shall be densely planted with elsewhere in the open parking area. shrubs, maintained at a maximum height of three feet, at a distance of 24 inches on center. Planting islands which are (b) Grading, drainage and soil bisected by pedestrian access lanes serving Americans with Disabilities Act parking spaces (as shown in paragraph The open parking area shall be graded to allow stormwater (a)(4) of this Section) shall provide groundcover in lieu of
shrubs. Each required tree shall be centered in a planted area measuring at least eight feet by eight feet. Multiple (4/22/09) trees are allowed in a single planting island provided they are spaced no closer than 25 feet on center and there is at 37-95 least 150 square feet of pervious area for each tree. Any Modifications of Design Standards area with a dimension of less than two feet shall not contribute to such 150 square foot minimum area. Required trees shall be located first in planting islands at the ends of parking rows required pursuant to paragraph (a)(1) of (4/22/09) this Section, and then in planting islands that break up parking rows with more than 15 spaces required pursuant to 37-951 paragraph (a)(2) of this Section. Any remaining required Modification of landscaping requirements trees may be located in the continuous planting island required pursuant to paragraph (a)(3) of this Section or The requirements of Section 37-90 (PARKING LOTS), inclusive, may located in other planting islands within the open parking be waived in whole or in part if the Commissioner of Buildings area. All required trees, shrubs and groundcovers shall be certifies that such requirements are unfeasible due to unique selected from the lists in Sections 37-962 and 37-963. geological conditions such as excessive subsurface rock conditions, underground municipal infrastructure, a high water table, or a City, State or Federal mandated brownfield remediation that requires the site to be capped. Where a high (11/28/07) water table exists, the planting requirements of Section 37-90, inclusive, shall be complied with, except such planted areas need 37-93 not be designed to absorb storm water runoff. Maintenance Such waiver shall be based on a report prepared by a licensed All on-site landscaping shall be maintained in good conditions at engineer that such conditions exist. all times. Landscaped areas must be kept free of litter, and drainage components maintained in working order. In the event of the loss of any on-site landscaping, the owner of the #zoning lot# shall replace such landscaping by the next appropriate (4/22/09) planting season. All landscaped areas must contain a built-in irrigation system or supply hose bibs within 100 feet of all 37-952 planting islands. Modification of design requirements by authorization
For #enlargements#, the City Planning Commission may authorize modifications or waivers of the maneuverability and curb cut (11/28/07) standards of Section 36-58, and the landscaping requirements of Section 37-90 (PARKING LOTS), inclusive, for portions of the 37-94 #zoning lot# occupied by existing open parking areas, provided Refuse Storage the Commission finds that:
All site plans must show an area designated for refuse storage. (a) maneuverability and curb cut regulations have been complied Any container used for refuse storage must be enclosed and with to the maximum extent practicable; screened either within a #building# or an #accessory structure#. If refuse storage is located in a container or #accessory (b) the amount of perimeter landscaped areas have been provided structure#, it must be located at least 50 feet from any #street to the maximum extent practicable; line# and screened on all sides by a six foot high masonry wall, with one side consisting of an opaque, lockable gate. (c) the amount of interior planting islands and their distribution throughout the existing open parking area have been provided to the maximum extent practicable; and Prunus 'Okame' Okame Cherry (d) perimeter landscaped areas and interior planting islands Prunus padus European Birdcherry have been engineered to absorb storm water runoff to the Prunus sargentii Sargent Cherry maximum extent practicable. Prunus serrulata “Kwanzan” Japanese Flowering Cherry Prunus virginiana “Schubert” Schubert Cherry The Commission may request reports from licensed engineers and Prunus x yedoensis Yoshino Cherry landscaped architects in considering such modifications. Rhus copallina Shinning Sumac Salix discolor True Pussy Willow Sambucus nigra Black Elderberry Syringa reticulata Japanese Tree Lilac (4/22/09) ______37-96 Landscaping Selection Lists * Asian Longhorn Beetle quarantine species - planting not recommended in parts of Brooklyn, Manhattan, Queens and Staten Island
(4/22/09)
37-961 (4/22/09) Selection list for perimeter trees 37-962 BOTANICAL NAME COMMON NAME Selection list for interior trees Acer campestre Hedge Maple* Acer ginnala Amur Maple* BOTANICAL NAME COMMON NAME Acer negundo Boxelder* Acer rubrum Red Maple* Acer truncatum Shantung Maple* Acer saccharinum Silver Maple* Amelanchier arborea Downy Serviceberry Acer x freemanii Freeman Maple* Amelanchier canadensis Shadblow Serviceberry Catalpa speciosa Northern Catalpa Amelanchier laevis Allegheny Serviceberry Celtis occidentalis Hackberry Betula lenta Sweet Birch* Celtis laevigata Sugar Hackberry Betula nigra “Heritage” Heritage River Birch* Eucommia ulmoides Hardy Rubber Tree Carpinus caroliniana American hornbeam Fraxinus americana American Ash* Cedrus atlantica Atlas Cedar Fraxinus excelsior European Ash* Cedrus deodara Deodar Cedar Fraxinus pennsylvanica Green Ash* Crataegus laevigata English Hawthorn Gleditsia triacanthos inermis Honeylocust Crataegus viridis Green Hawthorn Ginkgo biloba Ginkgo Cornus mas Cornelian Cherry* Gymnocladus dioicus Kentucky Coffeetree Cornus racemosa Gray Dogwood* Juglans nigra Black Walnut Cercis canadensis Redbud Larix decidua European Larch Hamamelis vernalis Vernal Witchhazel Larix laricina American Larch Hamamelis virginiana American Witchhazel Liquidambar styraciflua Sweetgum Koelreuteria paniculata Goldenraintree Liriodendron tulipifera Tulip Tree Larix laricina Tamarack Metasequoia glyptostroboides Dawn Redwood Magnolia stella Star Magnolia Nyssa sylvatica Tupelo Magnolia virginiana Sweetbay Magnolia Platanus occidentalis American Sycamore Maackia amurensis Amur Maackia Platanus x acerifolia London Planetree Pinus virginiana Virginia Pine Pyrus calleryana Callery Pear*** Prunus cerasifera Purpleleaf Plum
Quercus bicolor Swamp White Oak Abeliax grandiflora Glossy Abelia Quercus imbricaria Shingle Oak Aesculus parviflora Bottlebrush Buckeye Quercus palustris Pin Oak Andromeda polifolia Bog-rosemary Quercus phellos Willow Oak Aronia arbutifolia Red Chokeberry Quercus rubra Northern Red Oak Aronia melanocarpa Black Chokeberry Taxodium distichum Baldcypress Baccharis halimifolia Eastern baccharis Ulmus americana American Elm*/** Betula nana Dwarf birch Ulmus carpinifolla Smooth-leaf Elm*/** Betula pumila Bog Birch Ulmus parvifolla Lace Bark Elm*/** Calluna vulgaris Scotch Heather Styphnolobium japonicum Scholar Tree Castanea pumila chinkapin Tilia americana Basswood/American Linden Cephalanthus occidentalis Buttonbush Zelkova serrata Japanese Zelkova Chamaecyparis spp. Chamaecyparis Clethra alnifolia Summersweet _____ Cornus sericea Redtwig Dogwood Cornus sericea “Flaviramea” Yellowtwig Dogwood * Asian Longhorn Beetle quarantine species - planting not Cotoneaster dammeri Bearberry Cotoneaster recommended in parts of Brooklyn, Manhattan, Queens and Daphne cneorum Rose Daphne Staten Island Daphne caucasica Caucasian Daphne Ericacarnea Spring Heath ** Only cultivars of elms that have been bred for resistance to Euonymus fortunei Wintercreeper Euonymus Dutch Elm Disease Eubotrys racemosa Swamp Doghobble Gaylussaciabrachycera Box Huckleberry *** Excluding “Bradford” cultivar Hydrangea quercifolia Oakleaf Hydrangea Ilex crenata Japanese Holly Ilex glabra Inkberry
Ilex verticillata Winterberry (4/22/09) Itea virginica“Henry’s Garnet” Virginia Sweetspire
Juniperus procumbens Japgarden Juniper 37-963 Juniperus sabina Savin Juniper Selection list for ground covers and shrubs Juniperus squamata Singleseed Juniper
Kalmia angustifolia Sheep Laurel GROUND COVERS Ledum groenlandicum Labrador Tea BOTANICAL NAME COMMON NAME Leiophyllum buxifolium Box Sandmyrtle Asclepias tuberosum Butterfly Weed Leucothoe racemosa Sweetbells Leucothoe Calamagrostis stricta Slimstem Reedgrass Microbiota decussata Russian Arborvitae Comptonia peregrina Sweetfern Myrica gale Sweetgale Cortaderia selloana “Pumilla” Dwarf Pampas Grass Paxistima canbyi Canby Paxistima Euonymus coloratus Euonymus Pieris floribunda Mountain Pieris Festuca glauca Blue Fescue Grass Rhododendron canadense Rhodora Juniperus horizentalis Creeping Juniper Rhododendron viscosum Swamp Azalea Hibiscus moscheutos Swamp Rose Mallow* Rhododendron atlanticum Coast Azalea Iris pallida Sweet Iris Rhus aromatica “Gro-Lo” Gro-Lo Sumac Iris sibirica Siberian Iris Rosa Palustris Swamp Rose Iris versicolor Blue Flag Iris Spirea x bumaldi”Anthony Waterer” Goldflame Spirea Vaccinium macrocarpon American Cranberry Zenobia pulverenta Dusty Zenobia SHRUBS BOTANICAL NAME COMMON NAME _____ APPENDIX 5
Presidential Decree, The Arab Republic of Egypt 1- When the aim of it is to select a candidate or candidates for the memberships of parliaments or to listen to their electoral programs. Law No.107 for 2013 2- When it’s limited to the voters, and candidates, or both of them. For organizing the right to peaceful public meetings, processions and protests 3- When the meeting takes place in the time designated for electoral campaigning.
(Article 3) A procession is every march of individuals in a public place, or road, or square that exceeds ten The Interim President to peacefully express opinions or issues that are not political. After viewing the Constitutional Declaration issued on July 8, 2013; The Penal Code; (Article 4) The Criminal Procedures Law; A protest is every gathering of individuals in a public place, or proceeds on the public roads and Law 10 for 1914 regarding Gathering; squares that exceeds ten to express their opinions or demands, or political discontentment in a Law 14 for 1923 for determining the provisions of public meetings and protests in public roads; peaceful manner. Law 394 for 1954 regarding Weapons and Ammunition; Police Authority Law issued by law 109 for 1971; The Judicial Authority Law issued by law 46 for 1972; (Article 5) The State Council Law issued by law 47 for 1972; Public meetings for political purposes are prohibited in places of worship or their arena, or their The Local Administration System Law issued by law 43 for 1979; annexes. It is also prohibited to conduct processions to them or from them, or protest in them. The Environment Law issued by law 4 for 1994; Law 94 for 2003 regarding the establishment of the National Council for Human Rights; (Article 6) Law 113 for 2008 regarding the protection of the sanctity of worship places; Participants in public meetings, processions, or protests are prohibited to carry any weapons or ammunition or explosives or fireworks or incendiary material or any other tools or material that And after the approval of the Cabinet; subjects individuals or buildings, or properties to damage or danger. They are also prohibited to And based on the view of the State Council: wear masks or coverings to hide facial features with the intention of committing any of these acts. The following law’s text has been decided upon: (Article 7) Chapter One Participants in public meetings or processions or protests are prohibited to disrupt public security General Provisions and Definitions or order or obstruct production, or call for it, or hamper citizens’ interests or harm them or subject them to danger or prevent them from exercising their rights and work, or affecting the (Article 1) course of justice, public utilities, or cutting roads or transportation, or road, water, or air Citizens have the right to organize and join peaceful public meetings, processions, and protests, transport, or obstructing road traffic or assaulting human life or public or private property or in accordance to the provisions and rules stipulated in this law. subjecting it to danger.
(Article 2) A public meeting is every gathering that takes place in a public place or site, entered by or could be entered by individuals without a prior personal invitation, not less than ten to discuss or exchange views on an issue of general interest. Electoral meetings that abide to the following conditions are considered as public meetings in applying the provisions of this law:
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Chapter Two Without prejudice to the jurisdiction of the Administrative Court, organizers [submitters of the Organizational Procedures and Rules request] may appeal against the prohibition or postponement decision before the Urgent Matters for public meetings, processions, and protests Judge at the appropriate First Instance Court. The Judge shall issue his verdict swiftly.
(Article 11) (Article 8) Whoever wishes to organize a public meeting, or conduct a procession or protest should submit a Within the framework of procedures, measures, and methods of treatment placed by the written notification to the police station or point that falls within the zone of the place of public committee mentioned in article 9, security forces shall take the necessary measures and meeting or the start point of the procession or protest. The notification should be submitted at procedures to secure notified public meetings, processions, or demonstrations, while protecting least three working days prior to the start of the meeting, procession, or protest, with a lives, the well-being of the participants, and the public and private properties, without maximum of 15 days. In the case of electoral meetings, this duration will be 24 hours. The obstructing the purpose [of the demonstration]. notification is to be delivered by hand or by a notice served by a bailiff and should include the following data and information: Officially dressed security forces – based on an order from the appropriate field commander – 1. The place of the public meeting or the place and route of the procession or protest. may disperse the public meeting, procession, or demonstration, and arrest suspects, if the 2. The start and end time of the public meeting, procession or protest. participants in the public meeting, procession, or demonstration take any action that constitutes 3. The subject of the public meeting, procession, or protest, its purpose, the demands as a crime punishable by law or violate the peaceful nature of expressing opinions. requested by the participants in any of them, and the mottos used. 4. The names of individuals, and their titles, or entities organizing the public meeting or procession or protest, their residences and contact information. The Security Director, with geographic jurisdiction, may request from the Urgent Matters Judge
at the appropriate First Instance Court - prior to the dispersal, break-up or arrest - to second (Article 9) whoever he may see fit, in order to authenticate the non-peacefulness of the public meeting, The Minister of Interior shall issue a decree to compose a Standing Committee in each procession, or demonstration. The Judge shall issue his verdict swiftly. governorate, headed by its Security Chief. It is responsible for putting in place the rules and guaranteeing measures that would ensure securing the notified public meetings, processions, and protests and methods of dealing with them in case they become non-peaceful, according to the provisions of this law. (Article 12) In the cases in which the law permits the dispersal or break up of a public meeting, procession, or demonstration, the Security Forces shall abide by the following methods and stages: (Article 10)
If serious information or evidence is found before the scheduled time for starting a public meeting, procession, or demonstration, indicating the presence of threats to security of peace, the Firstly: Requesting from the participants in the public meeting, procession, or demonstration to Minister of Interior or the specialized Director of Security may issue a justified decree voluntarily depart by directing repetitive verbal warnings at an audible level to disperse the prohibiting the public meeting, procession, or demonstrations, or suspending it, or relocating it, public meeting, procession or demonstration, while specifying and securing the departure routes or altering the route; the organizers [submitters of the request] should be notified with the for the participants. decision, at least 24 hours prior to the scheduled date.
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Secondly: In case of the non-responsiveness of the participants in the public meeting, procession, or demonstration to the departure warning, the Security Forces shall disperse them in accordance with the following order: (Article 15)
1. Using water cannons; The appropriate governor shall issue a decree determining sufficient space inside the 2. Using tear gas canisters; governorate, in which public meetings, processions, or demonstrations, with the purpose of 3. Using batons peaceful expression of opinions are allowed without prior notification.
(Article 13) Chapter Three In the case of the failure of the previously stipulated methods in dispersing or breaking up the Penalties participants in the public meeting, procession, or demonstration, or in cases in which the participants undertake acts of violence, sabotage, destroying public and private properties, or (Article 16) assaulting individuals or forces, the Security forces may gradually use force, as follows: Without prejudice to any severer penalty stipulated in the penal code or any other laws, the acts stipulated in the following Articles will be punished as specified. - Firing warning shots; - Firing sound bombs or gas bombs; (Article 17) - Firing rubber cartouche bullets; Anyone who possessed or obtained weapons or explosives or ammunition or incendiary material - Firing non-rubber cartouche bullets or pyrotechnic material while participating in a meeting, procession or protest shall be punished by strict imprisonment not less than 7 years, and a fine not less than EGP 100,000 and not more than EGP 300,000, or either penalties. In case the participants in the public meeting, procession, or demonstration resort to using firearms, thus providing a legitimate basis for self-defense, they [demonstrators] shall be dealt with using tools proportionate to the danger posed against life, money, or property, in response to (Article 18) the assault. Anyone who offered or received cash or any benefit or mediated to organize public meetings or protests, with the intention of violating Article 7 of this law, shall be punished by imprisonment and a fine not less than EGP 100,000 and not more than EGP 200,000, or either penalties The (Article 14) same punishment will be applied to whoever incited to commit the crime even if it didn’t occur. In coordination with the appropriate governor, the Minister of Interior shall, by issuing a decree, determine a ‘specified safe area’ in front of vital facilities, such as presidential premises, (Article 19) parliamentary councils, international organization offices, foreign diplomatic missions, premises Anyone who violated the prohibitions stipulated in Article 7 of this law shall be punished by of governmental, military, security and auditing agencies, courts and prosecution offices, confinement not less than two years and not more than five years and a fine not less than EGP hospitals, airports, oil facilities, educational institutions, museums, monumental areas, and other 50,000 and not more than EGP 100,000, or either of these two punishments. public facilities. (Article 20) Anyone who wore masks or coverings with the intention of hiding facial features during the meeting, procession or protest, or violated the prohibitions stipulated in Articles 5 and 14 of this Participants in the public meeting, procession, or demonstration are prohibited from trespassing law shall be punished by imprisonment for a period not exceeding one year and a fine not less the boundaries of the specified safe areas, stipulated in the previous paragraph. than EGP 30,000 and not more than EGP 50,000, or either of these two punishments.
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(Article 21) Anyone who organizes a public meeting or procession or protest without the notification stated in Article 8 of this law shall be punished by a fine not less than EGP 10,000 and not more than EGP 30,000.
(Article 22) Without violating the rights of those who don’t practice goodwill, the court shall confiscate the materials, tools, and money used in any of the crimes stipulated in this law.
(Article 23) The referenced Law No. 14 for 1923 shall be cancelled, as well as any provisions that is contrary to this law
(Article 24)
The Cabinet shall issue necessary decrees to implement the provisions of this law.
(Article 25)
This law shall be published in the Official Gazette and shall be enforced one day following the day of its publishing.
Issued by the Presidency on November 24, 2013
Adly Mansour
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APPENDIX 6
34 Anti-social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Act 2014 (c. 12) Anti-social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Act 2014 (c. 12) 35 Part 4 — Community protection Part 4 — Community protection Chapter 2 — Public spaces protection orders Chapter 2 — Public spaces protection orders
(a) to prevent the detrimental effect referred to in subsection (2) from (3) A local authority may make a variation under subsection (1)(b) that makes a continuing, occurring or recurring, or prohibition or requirement more extensive, or adds a new one, only if the (b) to reduce that detrimental effect or to reduce the risk of its continuance, prohibitions and requirements imposed by the order as varied are ones that occurrence or recurrence. section 59(5) allows to be imposed. (6) A prohibition or requirement may be framed— (4) A public spaces protection order may be discharged by the local authority that (a) so as to apply to all persons, or only to persons in specified categories, made it. or to all persons except those in specified categories; (5) Where an order is varied, the order as varied must be published in accordance (b) so as to apply at all times, or only at specified times, or at all times with regulations made by the Secretary of State. except those specified; (c) so as to apply in all circumstances, or only in specified circumstances, (6) Where an order is discharged, a notice identifying the order and stating the or in all circumstances except those specified. date when it ceases to have effect must be published in accordance with regulations made by the Secretary of State. (7) A public spaces protection order must— (a) identify the activities referred to in subsection (2); Prohibition on consuming alcohol (b) explain the effect of section 63 (where it applies) and section 67; (c) specify the period for which the order has effect. 62 Premises etc to which alcohol prohibition does not apply (8) A public spaces protection order must be published in accordance with (1) A prohibition in a public spaces protection order on consuming alcohol does regulations made by the Secretary of State. not apply to— (a) premises (other than council-operated licensed premises) authorised 60 Duration of orders by a premises licence to be used for the supply of alcohol; (1) A public spaces protection order may not have effect for a period of more than (b) premises authorised by a club premises certificate to be used by the 3 years, unless extended under this section. club for the supply of alcohol; (c) a place within the curtilage of premises within paragraph (a) or (b); (2) Before the time when a public spaces protection order is due to expire, the local (d) premises which by virtue of Part 5 of the Licensing Act 2003 may at the authority that made the order may extend the period for which it has effect if relevant time be used for the supply of alcohol or which, by virtue of satisfied on reasonable grounds that doing so is necessary to prevent— that Part, could have been so used within the 30 minutes before that (a) occurrence or recurrence after that time of the activities identified in the time; order, or (e) a place where facilities or activities relating to the sale or consumption (b) an increase in the frequency or seriousness of those activities after that of alcohol are at the relevant time permitted by virtue of a permission time. granted under section 115E of the Highways Act 1980 (highway-related uses). (3) An extension under this section— (a) may not be for a period of more than 3 years; (2) A prohibition in a public spaces protection order on consuming alcohol does (b) must be published in accordance with regulations made by the not apply to council-operated licensed premises— Secretary of State. (a) when the premises are being used for the supply of alcohol, or (b) within 30 minutes after the end of a period during which the premises (4) A public spaces protection order may be extended under this section more than have been used for the supply of alcohol. once. (3) In this section— 61 Variation and discharge of orders “club premises certificate” has the meaning given by section 60 of the Licensing Act 2003; (1) Where a public spaces protection order is in force, the local authority that made “premises licence” has the meaning given by section 11 of that Act; the order may vary it— “supply of alcohol” has the meaning given by section 14 of that Act. (a) by increasing or reducing the restricted area; (b) by altering or removing a prohibition or requirement included in the (4) For the purposes of this section, premises are “council-operated licensed order, or adding a new one. premises” if they are authorised by a premises licence to be used for the supply of alcohol and— (2) A local authority may make a variation under subsection (1)(a) that results in (a) the licence is held by a local authority in whose area the premises (or the order applying to an area to which it did not previously apply only if the part of the premises) are situated, or conditions in section 59(2) and (3) are met as regards activities in that area. (b) the licence is held by another person but the premises are occupied by a local authority or are managed by or on behalf of a local authority.