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ABSTRACT Te Free University in Berlin, conceived by the architectural frm Candilis-Josic-Woods, raises questions about how social and utopian agendas emerged over an extended design process. Tis article analyzes how the architects conceptually linked the ideas of “stem” and “web” to establish the unifed concept of “groundscraper.” It also investigates the urban and environmental issues raised by the architects’ intentions to instigate socio-political change. Beginning with the initial diagrammatic proposal, through the development of a site strategy, to the fnal of the , Candilis, Josic, and Woods explored the urban issues that grew out of their active participation in the Congrès International d’Architecture Moderne (CIAM) and, later, in meetings of a splinter group known as Team 10. From its inception, the Free University project encouraged exchanges among diferent disciplines, resulting in a heterogeneous, multilevel grid that increased urban density at the site. Linking stem with web in the groundscraper concept at the Free University building culminated in a hybrid connecting the high-rise structure to the ground in a manner that unites architecture with social sciences, engineering, and urbanism.

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The “Groundscraper”: Candilis-Josic-Woods and the Free University Building in Berlin, 1963-1973

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Te Senate of West Berlin launched the Free University urban growth, and webs, a polycentric organizing competition in 1963. Te university aimed to provide building system based on circulation patterns, so as ample work space for 3,600 students and multiple to integrate both the surrounding context and the departments, including philology, literature, and existing transportation infrastructure into a network history, with additional arts and sciences faculties on including the academic building. Te organizational a thirty-acre site. Te mayor of the city described the principle of “groundscraper,” a system for horizontal building as “giving West Berlin’s university a symbol urban densifcation with continuous circulation, of freedom, fexibility and openness.”1 was a conceptual model that permeated both the Shadrach Woods, collaborating with Georges architectural sketches and the Candilis and Alexis Josic and with the German architect proposal.2 Te team was led by Woods, whose Manfred Schiedhelm, won the competition. Te group interest in urbanism dominated the discussions explored the theme of “the University for Greater until his premature death in 1973.3 It is therefore Numbers” and advanced their previously established no surprise that the Free University building in concepts of “stem” and “web,” on which they elaborated post-war Berlin displayed an unprecedented degree as part of Team 10, a splinter group that emerged from of incremental planning and derived from the 9th Congress of CIAM, and on which Woods wrote . However, the conceptual diagram for just before the opening of the competition. the groundscraper has not, until now, been explored Te Free University building site drawings from by scholars. To be sure, many of the architects’ 1965-66 demonstrate that Candilis, Josic, and Woods propositions evident at the University in Zurich mapped out their concepts of stems, street-driven (1967) and in their Puzzle , Boat Houses, and

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Meccano Axes structure in Barcarés-Leucatte, France quarter of the original proposal was constructed, this (1969), mediated the horizontal densifcation so as to relatively small portion exhibits the characteristics maintain natural resources along the open circulation of the groundscraper diagram from the competition patterns and maximize social interaction. Te panel: ramps and staircases rather than elevators groundscraper operated as a central concept that drove connect the diferent foor levels; outdoor and indoor the development of the projects. As an architectural spaces fow seamlessly into each other; and public theory, it was inherently interdisciplinary, mediating spaces are integrated into the circulation matrix. environmental, contextual, and socio-political In the caption for the intermediate drawing, the interests in the fast-growing, sprawling urban settings architects argue for an urban and social restructuring of 1960s Europe. where “greater possibilities of community and Te 1963 competition entry consisted of sketches, exchange are present” (Fig. 1).4 site-plan diagrams, plans, and sections, in addition to Te ten-year design process attests to the the architects’ statement of intent. It also contained importance of the groundscraper concept. Trough a storyboard, presenting the ideas culminating in the stems and webs, Candilis, Josic, and Woods applied groundscraper concept (Fig. 1). Te original entry could critical social concerns to architecture, whereas be described as an oversimplifed, pure, diagrammatic, through the groundscraper they expanded the scope idealized version of complex architectural concepts of work to include urban, environmental, and (Fig. 2); the fnal design was developed during a ten- contextual explorations that demonstrated their year elaboration of the initial proposal. concern for human behavior. Two years after they won the competition, the intermediate design proposal drawings from 1965- HISTORICAL AND SOCIAL CONTEXT 66 show that Candilis, Josic, and Woods used the groundscraper as a site planning strategy to expand Te design of the Free University building in Berlin their architectural concepts. At that point, they has entered the discourse of architectural history as a included a new site plan indicating vehicular and model for educational and social restructuring. Te mass transit networks that integrated their proposal building is a tribute to the changing political and into the surrounding urban environment. Even social agendas of European educational institutions though the architects did not explicitly elaborate on in the period preceding the student revolts of 1968. the groundscraper concept after the initial proposal As a consequence of socio-economic changes, rapidly was submitted, the site planning strategy may be seen growing population, and dwindling institutional to apply the organizational principles on an urban structures in the 1960s, European universities scale. As the groundscraper diagram indicates, the were pressured to reform. At the time, the more urban proposal at this stage suggests “giving the conventional model for academic was minimum organization necessary to an association the . Henry Van de Velde Boekentoren’s of disciplines” by removing “planes of isolation” and work at Ghent University (1933) and Charles allowing no vertical site densifcation assisted with Klauder’s Cathedral of Learning at the University of elevators or escalators (Fig. 1). Pittsburgh (1937) explored the skyscraper typology. As drawn in the intermediate design from 1965- Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, in his master plan for 66, the completed building of 1973 also implemented the Illinois Institute of Technology (1946), opted for the groundscraper concept. Even though only about a individual multistory university buildings separated

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FIGURE 1 Free University Berlin, competition, explanatory diagram, building concept, 1963. [Shadrach Woods, Candilis-Josic-Woods; Building for People (New York: F.A. Praeger, 1968), 208].

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FIGURE 2 Candilis¬-Josic¬-Woods Free University Berlin, competition entry, 1963. [Tom Avermaete. Another Modern : Te Post-War Architecture and Urbanism of Candilis-Josic-Woods (Rotterdam: NAi, 2005), 322-323].

by streets. Additional projects, such as the UTS Kiem, and Gabriel Feld, consider the Free University Tower in Australia (1964), or Jo van den Broek and building in the context of technological innovation, Jaap Bakema’s Faculty of Architecture building at where the assembly-line production and the logic of TU Delft (1970), were only some of the high-rise modernism are replaced by collaboration.7 However, university buildings that were built during the 1960s by looking at the Free University’s design as it emerged to accommodate the rising number of students. Te over a decade, one fnds that, as a team, Candilis, increase in student enrollment and the need for Josic, and Woods repositioned the discipline of greater communication between disciplines ofered architecture as the mediator between two divergent a platform for Candilis, Josic, and Woods to depart paths: the static socio-political structure on the from the current model. Tey managed not only to one hand and the dynamic progressive impulse in respond successfully to the educational and social urbanism on the other.8 demands presented in the competition brief, but also Candilis, Josic, and Woods held productive to propose a disciplinary shift in architecture towards discussions at Team 10 meetings. Team 10 was a greater communication, wider interaction, and urban group of individuals who splintered from the CIAM densifcation. According to architectural historian congresses. Te group was concerned with the same Tom Avermaete, they also were able to combine the issues as CIAM, such as in the changing demands mass culture and mass production of modernism of modern society, but was dissatisfed with the with a humanistic focus on everyday life.5 Avermaete direction that CIAM congresses were taking. Team together with Kenneth Frampton and Manfredo 10 re-evaluated the supremacy of transportation and Tafuri use the Free University building to explore the aesthetics of modernism in post-war Europe that the relationship between modernity and tradition.6 CIAM members supported. Candilis, Josic, and Other scholars, such as Bénédicte Chaljub, Karl Woods were part of both CIAM and Team 10 from

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the beginning. As apprentices in Le Corbusier’s ofce, ARCHITECTURAL CONCEPTS: STEM, WEB Candilis and Woods took part in CIAM gatherings AND GROUNDSCRAPER and contributed to the development of the grid, a representation system that allowed comparative Writing about architecture and inventing theories analysis. After World War II, Candilis and Woods was as important to the Candilis, Josic, and met Josic in the ATBAT (Atelier des Bâtisseurs), a Woods collaboration as drawing and constructing research center founded by Le Corbusier, where buildings. With a background in philosophy architects, engineers, and technicians worked in and literature, Shadrach Woods wrote, lectured, an interdisciplinary fashion. In 1953, the three and introduced projects publicly on behalf of the architects founded the partnership and instigated group. His conceptual explorations explicate the Team 10’s separation from CIAM. Within the team’s theoretical and socio-political agenda in the Team 10 discourse, they developed the idea of the seminal articles “Stem” and “Web.”9 Te allied habitat évolutif (roughly, the changing habitat) concepts of cell, cluster, stem, and web appealed and introduced growth, change, and mobility into to Team 10 participants, since they embodied an traditional building models. alternative to both traditional urban techniques and Te Free University building came to represent those proposed by modernists.10 Woods’s concepts the principles of both Team 10 and Candilis, Josic, were precise and extensively elaborated but also and Woods. In addition, the Berlin project inherited open to interpretation, much like Team 10’s. At technological innovations from Jean Prouvé’s fexible that time, fexibility was on everyone’s mind: Aldo and interchangeable façade panels. However, the Van Eyck’s call to fnd a form for mass society, team’s actual contribution extends well beyond Bakema’s search for a counterform, Alison and Peter devising a strong formal language or integrating new Smithson’s insistence on part-to-whole relationships. technologies. Responding to the pressures of urban Candilis, Josic, and Woods persistently searched for population growth, the architects replaced the existing an aesthetic language that diferentiated the Free university building paradigm with structures based University from other Team 10 projects. In the Free on social needs. For instance, they experimented University, the main concepts of stem and web seem with Le Corbusier’s geometrical, modular system, to blend together into a coherent whole, known as a which allowed for spatial variations and socio- mat-building, as defned by Alison Smithson. More political change. With its up-to-date populist agenda, so, this mat-building “based on interconnection, the Free University building modifed traditions so as close-knit patterns of association, and possibilities to implement technological innovations. Moreover, for growth” generates a building’s urban equivalent the Free University building functions fully within known as the groundscraper.11 urban transport networks because it is a microcosm of a city. While urban planning was already included I. Stem in the modernist schemes, such techniques of city design were not hitherto simultaneously applied to a In “Stem,” an article published in Architectural building and its immediate surroundings. Candilis, Design in 1960, Shadrach Woods underlines the Josic, and Woods became instigators of change, stem concept and launches a critique of the urban negotiating the shifting urban, social, and political planning techniques prevalent in France at the contexts. time.12 He insists on embedding urban design

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in real circumstances amid new parameters that II. Web require fexibility and change. Instead of outlining the building envelope as the basis for an urban plan, Not long after Woods designed important projects in Woods proposes that the stem, which resembles a Caen-Herouville, France (1961), Asua Valley- Bilbao, capillary distribution system, become the driving Spain (1961), Toulouse-Le-Mirail , France (1961), tool. Tis tool connects a building directly to and Fort-Lamy, France (1962), all of which elaborated the end of the smallest street, and allows for a on the stem principle, the architect published continuous extension into any neighborhood. another important article entitled “Web” in Le Carré Woods suggests that urban forms should be analyzed Bleu in 1962. 17 Here, Woods introduces the most and understood through the varied notions of comprehensive structuring concept for the urban mobility and modifcation. Te stem is an attempt realm: the web. As the alternative to traditional urban to capture formal characteristics of a street for a new tissue, the web concept invokes the shift in Woods’ concept of urban design, which would allow change s thinking from geometries to activities. Woods and growth. unites architecture and planning when discussing One of the main structuring elements of the the organization of interconnected places that invite urban realm is the stem.13 Mobility was of interest a wide range of activities. According to Woods, the to architects of that time as a means to make urban web is a polycentric environmental system in that planning into “urbanism as the science responsible many individual actions focus attention on peripheral for the growth and development of the city.”14 Many locations. “It is a way to establish a large-scale order Team 10 participants were faced with the challenge which, by its existence, makes possible an individual of fnding an alternative to the ordinary street. expression at the smaller scale.”18 Unlike Le Corbusier, who in “La Rue” (1929), Team 10 participants thought seriously about attacked the traditional street for being no more rapid urbanization and building for the masses. than a trench, a deep cleft, a narrow passage, and For them, ordering systems were a necessity, which who, in the Athens Charter destroyed the outdated neither the uniform modernist grid nor the war-torn “corridor street,” Georges Candilis in 1962 made a urban center could satisfy. After World War II, cities plea to “re-establish the notion of the street.”15 He underwent rapid transformation, and the known asked that the urban fabric be defned around the instruments for achieving urban density had to be coherence of a linear void.16 Candilis’s defnition revised.19 Te modernist grid did not allow enough of a street was not an unusual concept, when we fexibility and mobility for the rapidly growing consider traditional non-European streets displayed society. Woods’s web was an investigation into in Bernard Rudofsky’s “Architecture without diferent practices and programs that could be woven Architects” exhibit of 1964, but it was an innovative into a continuous pattern without limits. Te web concept for one of Le Corbusier’s apprentices. With was a system more homogeneous than the stem--it their reafrmation of the street, Candilis, Josic, and was a “stem to the next degree,” permitting limitless Woods adopted mobility as the instigator of urban development of an area unifed by a circulation change and as an axis that generated urban growth. network. Te web operates at both human and urban Te stem was a device that structured dwellings and scales but also provides fexibility in planning for a produced architectural form, as well as structuring range of functions over time.20 To ensure its longevity, urban development. the web was to be constructed in spread-out stages,

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subject to revision over time. Explored in projects Candilis, Josic, and Woods named this new socio- such as the Toulouse-le-Mirail project, France (1963) political concept of structural organization the and Frankfurt-Romerberg, Germany (1963), the web groundscraper. found its physical form somewhere between a three- “In a groundscraper organization, greater dimensional grid and a network of circulation paths. possibilities and community and exchange are present without necessarily sacrifcing any tranquility,” the III. Groundscraper architects wrote on the competition panel for the Free University (Fig. 1).23 Unlike their previous concepts, By 1963, when the competition for the Free University the groundscraper reframed the debate over many building took place, the stem and the web were existing urban planning issues, including density, well-known concepts among Team 10 participants. transportation, zoning, and social integration. Besides Trough their writings and in Team 10 meetings, explicitly advancing the groundscraper as the model Candilis, Josic, and Woods placed modernist ideas for social re-structuring, they presented an alternative under critical scrutiny: they rethought the street, to vertical , thought to be the only the city, and the grid. Even though concepts such model for accommodating the growing population. as stem and web provoked ample criticism from Candilis, Josic, and Woods attempted to capture the planners, architects, politicians, and sociologists, spatial and functional principles of the traditional they were merely formal and conceptual architectural European city within the urban density of a skyscraper provocations that did not directly challenge urban without producing vertical separation. Mechanical infrastructure. Zoning regulations, urban density transportation systems that allow vertical expansion, models, transportation systems, and the social such as elevators and escalators—unnecessary in discourse, largely inherited from the modernist era, this concept—removed modernist dependency on were still intact. machines and encouraged pedestrian movement. As a result of the CIAM conferences, the scope Te zoning division within the groundscraper was of architecture was broadened to include urban neither related to the ground it occupied nor to the planning and the wider problems of the city.21 Much functions it contained but to circulation paths, which like other CIAM and Team 10 members, Candilis, unifed the zones both vertically and horizontally. Josic, and Woods inherited the city as a model Tese ideas about the urban scale are evident as much through which to re-conceptualize the built form in the initial diagram of the groundscraper as in the by emphasizing the public sphere as in the Greek intermediate design drawings of 1965-66, and fnally polis.22 Unlike their contemporaries, they emphasized in the completed building. linking the public and private domain by including Te groundscraper developed out of Woods’s landscape elements that connected the two realms. web and proceeded to gain expression in a series of In the Free University proposal, Candilis, Josic, and proposals by Candilis, Josic, and Woods. Alison Woods balanced concerns for privacy with their Smithson attributed the Free University building’s commitment to civic space, a topic often neglected success to the team’s ability to formalize a mat- by modernists. In contrast to the vertical high rise, building concept. In “How to Recognize and a horizontal skyscraper integrated with the ground Read Mat-Building, Mainstream Architecture as maintains density but loses the planes of isolation, It Developed Towards the Mat-Building” of 1973, while encouraging activity, mobility, and integration. written immediately after the Team 10 meeting at the

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completed Free University building, she turns to the in the competition diagrams of 1963 and the later metaphor of the mat to describe the newly completed developmental site drawings (1965-66) suggests that masterpiece. Smithson points out that the dense Smithson’s interpretation of the Free University as an urban overlay and smaller-scale variations in the architectural interior is less important than the full building are essential characteristics of the web. Te integration of the building with its urban context. mat epitomizes two diferent tendencies: one being urbanistic and the other redefning the interior.24 STEM, WEB AND GROUNDSCRAPER: Te dictionary defnition of “mat” is “a fat COMPETITION DRAWINGS (1963) article, woven or plaited;… any dense or twisted growth…a matrix.” Smithson implied that an Te Free University in Berlin was based on the interior characterized as a mat has the quality of previously realized stem proposal for Toulouse de textiles evident in the interwoven layers of the Free Mirail, France (1961) and a previous unrealized web University building.25 However, one might question competition scheme for the city center in Frankfurt- whether Smithson captured the architects’ intentions. Romerberg, Germany (1963) (Fig. 3). Te initial Woods, the theoretician for the group, missed the proposal, as discovered in the Toulouse de Mirail opening of the Free University building due to illness project, was that stems gave equal importance to and died soon thereafter. It is unclear how Woods creating private spaces with universal characteristics would have responded to Smithson’s metaphoric and to the overall decentered organization. To association of the Free University with the mat. advance the stem concept and to initiate discussion Indeed, the groundscraper concept as demonstrated on grids at a 1963 meeting of the Team 10,

FIGURE 3 Model, Frankfurt-¬Romerberg competition entry, 1963. [Shadrach Woods, Candilis-Josic-Woods: Building for People (New York: F.A. Praeger, 1968), 205].

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Woods presented the Frankfurt-Romerberg Center the Free University building as “not a mega-structure competition project, which was based on a three- but rather a minimal structuring organization” level grid, later named the web. In this project, that allows the project to grow and change.26 At a Candilis, Josic, and Woods sought to balance the 1964 seminar in Berlin, Woods compared the Free formal naiveté with the intellectual sophistication University project’s three-level grid system to the of the modernist grid. Even given the conceptual Frankfurt competition entry; however, because of and intellectual framework of the web, an awkward the easy integration with the city core, the pedestrian connection to the adjacent existing structures in the circulation grid at the Free University provided an Frankfurt-Romerberg proposal exposed the formal organizational system for the site.27 simplicity of this three-dimensional grid (Fig. 4). Besides having the fexibility to expand, the Free In the Free University proposal, this awkwardness University proposal put into action the concepts of disappeared, as the neutral setting of the almost fat stem and web together with the groundscraper scheme. Berlin site fostered the intellectual sophistication of Te groundscraper not only provides for greater the three-level grid. Woods, referring to the web of density and faster access to diferent planes, but it also primary and secondary circulation paths, describes allows the scheme to continue without predetermined

FIGURE 4 (LEFT) Circulation and open spaces, Frankfort-Romerberg project 1963, and (RIGHT) circulation and open spaces at the Free University, 1963. [Shadrach Woods, Candilis-Josic-Woods: Building for People (New York: F.A. Praeger, 1968), 206, 207, 211].

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outcomes (Fig. 1). In Woods’s description of the intimate spaces for diferent departments and their competition entry, this lack of perfection sets forth annexes. Candilis, Josic, and Woods proposed direct “the unstable state of becoming.”28 Te groundscraper pedestrian connection to the main existing university, seems to open up the potential for growth and change as well as to a green zone (Fig. 5). Te low-rise buildings without limits, fnally satisfying the goals in Woods’s and the circulation pathways leading to the existing writings on both stem and web. public transportation system bring the building into To accommodate the interdisciplinary character of close contact with the region and its tradition. Te institutions, the Free University integrated numerous Free University “[has] been carried beyond the level functions and users. Candilis, Josic, and Woods worked required for [its] performance… to satisfy some inner under the premise that the principal function of the notion of perfection,” an imbedded quality that Alison university was “to encourage exchange and intellectual Smithson suggests goes beyond the architects’ intent regeneration between people in diferent disciplines, and connects the building to the historical lineage of its so as to enlarge the feld of human knowledge and site.32 Te formal perfection of the proposal, admired in increase man’s control over his collective and individual comments accompanying the numerous publications activities.”29 Tis approach challenged departmental of the competition entry, instigated a ten-year-long divisions by providing multiple uses for spaces (Fig. urban and interdisciplinary exploration. 1). Te grid acted as a groundscraper: minimal organization provided maximum opportunities for STEM, WEB AND GROUNDSCRAPER: contact, exchange, and feedback without compromising INTERMEDIATE SITE-PLAN DRAWINGS the tranquility of individual work. Most of the public (1965-66) venues, such as exhibition spaces, auditoriums, large lecture halls, lounges, cafes, shops, libraries, lecture As Brian Richards stated with regard to the Free rooms, and seminars, are located along the “four main University, “ten years is a long time to sustain an idea servicing spines” and connected by secondary paths and only really worthwhile ideas when realized over that hold ofces and smaller classrooms. Spaces were this period appear up to date.”33 Te initial competition allocated vertically on the basis of efciency and the entry was no less intellectually relevant than the frequency of activity. Te principal building services interim design stages. Te long design process, from are underground for easy vehicular access. While the winning the competition to execution, was cloaked ground foor is designed for most activities, the upper in mystery, as documents are scarce and disorganized. foor houses smaller classrooms, work rooms, libraries, Tis is no surprise, as working in politically turbulent and ofces. Te fourth foor was intended for accessible postwar Berlin must have been a challenge. However, rooftops and housing. In the initial design, parking was the drawings from this period unveil the group’s not provided, according to Woods, as it had become socio-political attitudes even as they masked their clear that “the exigencies of the auto are incompatible ideologies, given the politically sensitive environment. with the economics of building.”30 Especially revealing are the three preserved site-plan Te winning design was praised for its fexibility, drawings from 1965-66 that indicated the building’s since the plan met the university’s demands for multiple connection to the rest of Berlin. Te delineated possibilities in the unpredictable future.31 Te variable physical and implied boundaries emphasized a direct use of proposed spaces ensured diferent functional connection to the U-Bahn public transportation and programmatic schemes, from the public areas to network, which spanned all of then-divided Berlin.

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FIGURE 5 Candilis-Josic-Woods, circulation diagram, Free University competition entry, 1963. [Shadrach Woods, Candilis-Josic-Woods: Building for People (New York: F.A. Praeger, 1968), 209].

Te number of pedestrian pathways at the Free and Woods expanded their urban proposal much University site suggests that it was accessible to all. later. Unlike proposals for utopian megastructures, Te urban proposal is a combination of a modernist the site-plan drawings of the Free University show street grid and a traditional open public space, where a strong intent to facilitate urban integration. Te the planned and accidental pedestrian circulation intermediate drawings illustrate the importance intermingles to encourage interaction, and integrates of integrating the ground and site with the Free the everyday life of the neighborhood with the University building. In these drawings, Candilis, university students. Josic, and Woods not only expand their concept of Tom Avermaete points out that, in the case of the groundscraper to increase the density of the whole the Free University, the integration into the existing neighborhood, but they also suggest an alternative neighborhood of Berlin Dahlem seems, at the frst urban model that integrates ground activity with the glance, to be rather absent. Yet, Avermaete claims, site plan, where the vehicular and, more importantly, closer inspection of the initial competition drawings pedestrian circulation determines the location and reveals a diferent reading: they illustrate how the the relationships between buildings. Free University relates to the existing roads in the Candilis, Josic, and Woods did not believe in neighborhood.34 Tere may be some indications of a suburban model.35 However, the site for the Free how Candilis, Josic, and Woods intended to connect University building was chosen for its central location the Free University building to the network of streets in the former West Berlin, which placed the building and the university structures in the site circulation in a peripheral, residential, suburban neighborhood diagrams of the competition entry panel. Yet, as of old Berlin. Te premise of the Free University the 1965-66 site drawings suggest, Candilis, Josic, competition was to instigate the growth of the new

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city center for West Berlin; however, the existing site no less conceptual than the competition entry. Te in the quiet suburban neighborhood did not allow proposed pathway system resembles Peter Smithson’s for such a drastic shift in urban patterns. In order “Play Brubeck” ideogram in the overall shape of the to resolve the discussions concerning a suburban- site and in the use of nodes and overpasses.36 Like versus-urban location, Candilis, Josic, and Woods Smithson’s ideogram, which shows points in space focused their attention on the groundscraper, an connected by multiple intersecting lines without organizational system mediating the low-rise and any obvious hierarchy, the site plan by Candilis, high-density development. Increased density allowed Josic, and Woods suggests a web-like constellation of them to move beyond the traditional, detached- parts where patterns emerge. In the case of the Free building development model of the surrounding University, those patterns illustrated human actions area and, at the same time, to propose that low-rise as defned by their circulation paths. In keeping with structures blend into the existing urban context of Woods’s theory of the groundscraper; the site plan single family houses. diagram extends horizontally overlapping planes Te 1965-66 site-plan diagram illustrates the and suggests that circulation pathways promote team’s idea of reformulating suburban Berlin by interactions among people. challenging the isolated-building concept (Fig. 6). Even though buildings are not included in the site Tis drawing shows the grid of newly proposed diagram, density was a primary concern. Instead of pedestrian paths and the boundaries of the site, marking of individual lots, Candilis, Josic, and Woods where the structure connects with footpaths, parking, proposed pedestrian pathways to delineate boundaries streets, and suburban housing. Whereas the idealistic, between individual parcels, anticipating future growth decontextualized competition drawings show a across the site. Tus, pathways defning pedestrian utopian version of the building, this site-plan diagram activity separate the inconsistently shaped lots. It is establishes limits, draws connections, and accepts the evident that the strategy prioritizes densely site boundaries. However, the 1965-66 diagram is spaced, low-rise buildings. As the size of parcels decreases and the number of nodes increases at the northern end of the site, it is easy to see how the parcels become too small to accommodate even an ordinary residence. One can only imagine the shape of those structures on the smallest parcels. With no direct street access to the street which ignores the problem of the car, these “lots” also suggest a dense living condition of a traditional city with relatively few vehicles. As if a skyscraper had been laid onto the ground, the isolated horizontal planes of a high rise are transformed into adjacent, vertical blocks distributed across the site. Much like the groundscraper, this allowed fast and easy movement between the zones. FIGURE 6 Candilis-Josic-Woods, Free University, site diagram, 1965-66. Without showing the location of the Free University (Shadrach Woods Architectural Records and Papers, 1923-2008, Department building, this diagram defnes the zones of diferent of Drawings & Archives, Avery Architectural and Fine Arts Library, Columbia University, New York, NY, Temp. Box 1). sizes and shapes as if to suggest that activities would

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fll the entire complex. Pathways with loose ends, Variations between the site diagram and the continuing of the page into oblivion, suggest that site-plan drawings further illuminate the attitude subsequent developments in this neighborhood will of Candilis, Josic, and Woods toward the urban occur along these trajectories. Toward the boundary environment. Two development plans from 1965- of the site, the pedestrian pathways cross roads or 66 in Columbia University’s Avery Architectural join with preexisting sidewalks. Principles such as and Fine Arts Library attest to the team’s persistence the stems that generated growth and the webs of in linking lot division to the evenly distributed connectivity fuse the groundscraper concept with the inhabitation of the site (Figs. 7, 8). Much like the site complexity of lot division. diagram, the development plan featured no actual

FIGURE 7 Candilis-Josic-Woods, Free University, Berlin, master-plan, intermediate site-plane drawing, 1965. (Shadrach Woods Architectural Records and Papers, 1923-2008, Department of Drawings & Archives, Avery Architectural and Fine Arts Library, Columbia University, New York, NY, Roll A0008.11).

FIGURE 8 Candilis-Josic-Woods, Free University, Berlin, master-plan, intermediate site-plane drawing, 1966. (Shadrach Woods Architectural Records and Papers, 1923-2008, Department of Drawings & Archives, Avery Architectural and Fine Arts Library, Columbia University, New York, NY, Roll A0008.11).

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buildings as drawn. Tese site drawings contain only University building as providing interior architecture textual descriptions of the program to be assigned for the exterior. As she points out, “the ‘same’ panels of to each lot, clearly demonstrating that the Free the Maison du Peuple can be used to make a building University project rejected the formal division of that can bend and go up and down to modestly follow building from ground. Tis lack of defnition for its interior streets, as the elements of the language the built form suggests that the design focused on of classical architecture in Bath were made to serve pedestrian circulation. Activities are linked across a new sort of town-fabric and a new sensibility, is the main pathways instead of staying within their the F.U.’s achievement.”37 In the scheme as actually vertical lots, so that associated disciplines connect built, stems, webs and groundscraper survived some laterally. For example, the buildings labeled Physics I alternations to the plan including interventions that and IV, sharing the same lot, are joined with Physics severed connections to existing university buildings, II and III by a main pedestrian pathway (Fig. 8). roads and metro stations. Today, Free University’s Te three architects made every attempt to ground level is accessed by ramps and staircases with increase density without relying on machines; the evident connections to the outside, as well as to the car was brought into the site plan with skepticism. green roof. Te east-west axis connects with the Te vertical circular parking structures in the 1965- original university buildings from 1948. All these 66 site plans connect the existing roads with the web elements attest to a low-rise density, indicating that of pedestrian pathways. When Candilis, Josic, and the organizational system of the groundscraper has Woods introduced cars into the design, they proposed persisted. tall, circular parking structures at the edge of the site, Te Free University building can hardly be minimizing the imprint of cars at the core. After described as a building in the traditional sense.38 inserting the circular parking structures in the plans Bryan Richards describes it as “a city in microcosm produced between 1965 and 1966, the architects and the ideas in it are ideas for cities.”39 Serge removed the suburban houses from those locations Chermayef characterizes it as “an open-ended grid (Figs. 7, 8). system accommodating omni-directional growth Cars, thus, delivered some of the desired density in three dimensions.”40 Candilis, Josic, and Woods of the groundscraper for the New Berlin city center. described it as “a system where individuals and groups Te presence of multiple parking garages facilitated may determine desirable relationships.”41 Te street- circulation across the site as people moved from the like circulation, leading into linearly aligned ofces parking garages toward the buildings. and gathering spaces situated along the avenues, resembles a city more than a building.42 STEM, WEB AND GROUNDSCRAPER IN Strolling today down the pedestrian sidewalk THE BUILT STRUCTURE from the Dahlem U -Bahn metro station, one en- counters a newly expanded Free University, com- Filled with tranquil spaces, the Free University pleted in 1973 and restored by Foster + Partners in groundscraper in its built form reverberates with small- 2005. Te third level, initially intended to incorpo- town intimacy (Fig. 9). Comfortably small spaces, rate housing units, now holds ofces and gardens. narrow corridors, private housing units, diminutive Te underground level hides private meeting spaces, courtyards, and green roofs with individual benches storage spaces, and auxiliary services, so that the attest to Alison Smithson’s interpretation of the Free seamlessly functioning city remains above ground.

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FIGURE 9 (LEFT) Aerial view, Free University, soon after completion, 1974. [Gabriel Feld and Peter Smithson, Free University, Berlin: Candilis, Josic, Woods, Schiedhelm. Exemplary Projects, 3 (London: Architectural Association, 1999), 16].

FIGURE 10 (RIGHT) Competition diagram showing circulatory patterns, primary and secondary stems. [Gabriel Feld and Peter Smithson, Free University, Berlin: Candilis, Josic, Woods, Schiedhelm. Exemplary Projects, 3, (London: Architectural Association, 1999), 20].

As one approaches the current building, four en- wide, axial corridors for large groups of students, the trances and two exits survive from the Candilis- primary corridors are the most active zones. Like busy Josic-Woods groundscraper diagram. Entrances and streets, the primary stems replace elevators as the main exits punctuate the building as often as possible, means of circulation. During the ten-minute interval seemingly violating the building’s integrity (Fig. 9). between classes, the hallways efciently distribute Indeed, the fat terrain of Berlin’s southwest suburb the student body. Te secondary system of pathways is the only stable element. One swiftly slips unde- runs perpendicular to the primary stems. One leaves terred from the dynamic interior into the fat and the main corridors to enter into the secondary stem, bucolic Dahlem neighborhood. passing into narrow and intimate spaces.43 Te Street-like pathways, designated as stems, weave secondary stems are one-hundred-feet apart, parallel across the Free University building’s interior (Fig. 10). to each other, and connect places that require privacy, For a visitor, the frst contact with the Free University such as ofces and smaller classrooms. Tese narrow building leads one to encounter a maze of stems. corridors that lead the traveler to tranquil areas of Primary and secondary systems of circulation defne solitude and exclusion also span the primary stems the stem network. Te primary circulation leads one and unify the fast and the slow movement in a web directly to public areas, such as the auditoriums, of motion. cafés, lounges, libraries, lecture halls, and exhibition Te intent of Candilis, Josic, and Woods was spaces. Tere are four primary, parallel stems that are to “use the plural because we do not see one ideal spaced two-hundred-feet apart. Conceptualized as society, but rather a number of societies in a state of

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44 becoming.” In the Free University building, they the structure together horizontally into a unifed defned a multitude of experiences as visitors moved environment and allows communities to form, so as through the primary and secondary stems. Along to establish areas where “individual and group may the way, ramps and three kinds of stairs provided determine desirable relationships,” while retaining vertical connectors. Single-directional staircases run the principles of urban densifcation in the low-rise along ramps like catwalks (Fig. 11). Interior stairs for structure. Te process leading up to the actualization egress and outdoor spiral stairs blur the distinction of the Free University was one of exploring a vision between interior and exterior. Te spiral stairs for a society where negotiation and interaction was provide views onto the surroundings (Fig. 12). As if facilitated by architects.45 Te groundscraper’s urban they were the diagrammatic, dashed lines from the density remains intact even though the constructed groundscraper diagram, these vertical, spiral elements web of streets might not be as extensive as Candilis, allow continuous mobility at various speeds and Josic, and Woods initially envisioned. frequencies. After completing the Free University and Candilis, Josic, and Woods included , returning to New York, Woods stated that “in fact courtyards, terraces, and green roofs throughout generally, in northern and western countries we do the Free University building. Te groundscraper ties not practice democracy, nor do we live in an open

FIGURE 11 Ramp within primary stem. [Photograph by Charles Tashima, in Gabriel Feld and Peter Smithson. Free University, Berlin : Candilis, Josic, Woods, Schiedhelm. Exemplary Projects, 3 (London: Architectural Association, 1999), 83].

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a continuously expanding landscape with the density of a city center but the atmosphere of an open feld, implementing the concept of groundscraper. Te groundscraper, initially proposed in 1963, expanded to include urban planning in the site plans and diagram of 1965-66 and was fnally built 1973. Te groundscraper in the Free University proposal mediates architectural, environmental, contextual, and urban approaches to design with the political agendas of an educational institution so as to produce dynamic social change.

FIGURE 12 As Woods’ famously declared, Spiral staircases in the small courtyards and the Cor-¬ten covered Enough pretentious verbiage & fraud & façade with shading mechanisms, [Photograph by Charles Tashima, in Gabriel Feld and Peter Smithson. Free University, Berlin : Candilis, Josic, Woods, Schiedhelm. perversity. Exemplary Projects, 3 (London: Architectural Association, 1999), 77]. A modest recommendation: When next in Berlin, go and see the university (Fig. 13).47

society, but rather we hold these up as ideals to be DINA KRUNIC, is an independent scholar who revered, while going about the sordid business of received her M.A. and M.Arch. degrees at the University getting and spending: a business which seems to rely of California at Los Angeles. entirely upon economic or fnancial oppression of one

class by another.”46 In keeping with this statement, the Free University seems to suggest a model for an open society where the groundscraper realized the architects’ social model. Indeed, the Berlin complex provides a model of public and private spaces whose integration advances democratic ideals.

GROUNDSCRAPER: A CONCEPT FOR OPEN SOCIETY

Confronting mass urbanization and industrial production, Candilis, Josic, and Woods spent much of the 1960s working through their concepts of stem, web and groundscraper. In the Free University designs, the architects applied their groundscraper ideas to provide spaces for an open society that accommodated a wide array of human activities and FIGURE 13 interactions facilitated by free pedestrian circulation. Entrance to Free University, Berlin, from Tielallee, 2011. Teir proposal featured what they hoped would be (Photograph by author).

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS 14. Avermaete, Another Modern, 234. 15. George Candilis, “À la recherche d’une structure urbaine,” L’Architecture Te author would like to thank Avery Architectural and Fine Arts Library for d’Aujourd’hui 101 (1962): 51. allowing access to the Woods archives and to Prof. Gregor Kalas, whose editing of this article not only fne-tuned the writing but also perfected and enriched the 16. Candilis, 51. research. 17. Woods, “Web,” 4.

18. Woods, “Web,” 4.

19. Woods, “Web,” 4. ENDNOTES 20. Avermaete, Another Modern, 302.

1. Veneta Charlandjeva, “Pérennité d’une utopie” Le Carré Bleu 1 (1999): 4. 21. Starting with CIAM (Congrès International d’Architecture Moderne) IV on Functional City and continuing with CIAM V, VIII, IX, and X, 2. “We seek rather a system giving the minimum organization necessary to participants looked at how architecture can address problems of the city. In an association of disciplines. Te specifc natures of diferent functions are these conferences, the scope of architecture was broadened to include urban accommodated within a general framework which expresses university. In planning. skyscraper type buildings disciplines tend to be segregated. Te relationship from one foor to another is tenuous, almost fortuitous, passing through 22. Polis, according to Habermas, is an old model of the city where public life the space-machine-lift. in a groundscraper organization greater possibilities takes place. Te model is no longer valid because people are no longer tied of community and exchange are present without necessarily sacrifcing any to a location. See Jürgen Habermas, Te Philosophical Discourse of Modernity: tranquility.” From Candilis-Josic-Woods, original competition panel. Twelve Lectures (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1987) 3.

3. Both Georges Candilis and Alexis Josic attributed the Free University 23. Shadrach Woods, Candilis-Josic-Woods: Building for People (New York: F.A. project to Woods. See Gabriel Feld, Interview with Alexis Josic, January Praeger, 1968) 208. 1, 1997, Shadrach Woods Architectural Records and Papers, archival material, Department of Drawings & Archives, Avery Architectural and 24. Smithson, 573-590. Fine Arts Library, Columbia University, New York, Temp. Box. 4. 25. “Mat,” Te New International Webster’s Comprehensive Dictionary of the 4. A part of the diagram in Fig. 1. See Shadrach Woods, Candilis-Josic-Woods: English Language (Naples, Fl: Trident Press International, 1996). Building for People (New York: F.A. Praeger, 1968), 208. 26. Shadrach Woods, “Berlin – Freie Universität Competition,” Professional 5. Tom Avermaete, Another Modern: Te Post-War Architecture and Urbanism of paper, Sept, 1963, Shadrach Woods Architectural Records and Papers, 193- Candilis-Josic-Woods (Rotterdam: NAi, 2005), 15. 2008, Department of Drawings & Archives, Avery Architectural and Fine Arts Library, Columbia University, New York, NY 3. 6. Avermaete. Another Modern; Kenneth Frampton. Modern Architecture: A Critical History. London: Tames and Hudson, 1992; A. Smithson, 27. Giancarlo de Carlo, “BFU/Nine Evaluations,” Architecture Plus (Jan/Feb Manfredo Tafuri, and Francesco Dal Co., Modern Architecture, New York: 1974): 50. H.N. Abrams, 1979. 28. Woods, “Berlin – Freie Universität Competition,” 1. 7. Bénédicte Chaljub. Candilis, Josic, Woods. Patrimoine, Centre des Monuments Nationaux, 2010; Karl Kiem. Die Freie Universität Berlin (1967 - 73) : 29. Woods, “Berlin – Freie Universität Competition,” 1. Hochschulbau, Team-X-Ideale und Tektonische Phantasie / Te Free University Berlin (1967 - 73) : Design, Team X Ideals and Tectonic Invention.; 30. Georges Candilis, Alexis Josic, and Shadrach Woods. Project for the Free Weimar: Verl. und Datenbank für Geisteswissenschaften, 2008; Gabriel Feld University of Berlin, excerpt, Shadrach Woods Architectural Records and Papers, and Peter Smithson. Free University, Berlin : Candilis, Josic, Woods, Schiedhelm. 1923-2008, Department of Drawings & Archives, Avery Architectural and Exemplary Projects, 3. London: Architectural Association, 1999. Fine Arts Library, Columbia University, New York, NY.

8. Te article builds on the existing argument by Mohsen Mostafavi, 31. “Concours pour l’Université Libre de Berlin,” Le Carré Bleu 1, (1964): XLIV. “Performative Skin,” in Gabriel Feld and Peter Smithson, 100-103, that the project insisted on the collaboration between architects and engineers. Te 32. Alison Smithson, “BFU/Nine Evaluations,” Architecture Plus (Jan/Feb 1974): project was the impetus for collaboration between Candilis, Josic, Woods, 47. and Shiedhelm, who collaborated with Jean Prouvé. In turn, Prouvé’s fexible panels were the occasion for collaboration among trades. Tis article focuses 33. Brian Richards, “BFU/Nine Evaluations,” Architecture Plus (Jan/Feb 1974): on the architects’ interest in urban planning and social sciences, with the 47. emphasis on urbanism. 34. Tom Avermaete, Team 10: 1953-81, in Search of a Utopia of the Present, 9. Shadrach Woods, “Stem,” Architectural Design 5 (1960): 161; Shadrach ed. Max Risselada and Dirk Heuvel (Rotterdam: NAi, 2005), 311. Woods, “Web,” Le Carré Bleu 3 (1962): 4. 35. In this lecture, he states: “My premise is that urbanism as we know it 10. “Cells” and “cluster” were additional concepts that Candilis, Josic, and in Europe and North America is a stupendous hoax in global terms…. Woods realized in projects. Tey were developed in drawings and diagrams When our predecessors, in the frst third of the century, were re-inventing for housing in Aulnay Sous Bois, France (1960) and in their competition architecture and urbanism, they were also occasionally, and rightly, entry for semi-urban housing in Algeria (1960). Alison and Peter Smithson presenting themselves as being exemplary of social consciousness in their wrote about them in “Cluster City. A New Shape for the Community,” Te time….However, in most Europe and all of America, inequality, exploitation, Architectural Review (Nov. 1957): 333-336. Since there is no writing that waste and poverty did not too much intrude upon their area of concern, synthesizes cells and cluster as clear concepts by Shadrach Woods himself, which was usually essentially esthetic, that is, an abstraction of the total they are treated as intermediate concepts that led to the development of web. scene. It was at this time that the esthetics of social concern were invented; these considerations grazed but did not penetrate (even within the white 11. Smithson, Alison M. “How to Recognize and Read Mat-Building; world) the real problems of social and economic disparity. It was, in a way, Mainstream Architecture as It Has Developed Towards the Mat-Building.” like being against war, but only because one found the fags and the uniforms Architectural Design 9 (September 1974): 573. to be somehow overstated.” See Shadrach Woods, “Te Incompatible Butterfy,” Eighth Gropius Lecture at Yale University, May, 1968, Shadrach 12. Woods, “Stem,” 161. Woods Architectural Records and Papers, archival material, Department of Drawings & Archives, Avery Architectural and Fine Arts Library, Columbia 13. Woods, “Stem,” 161. University, New York, 1-2.

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36. Te sketch “Play Brubeck” by Peter Smithson was published in Team 10 Primer with the following caption “Ideogram of net of human relations. P.D. S. A constellation with diferent values of diferent parts in an immensely complicated web crossing and recrossing. Brubeck! A pattern can emerge.” It was also published in “How to Recognize and Read Mat-Building” by Alison Smithson.

37. Alison and Peter Smithson in George Candilis, Alexis Josic, and Shadrach Woods, “Te Free University and the language of modern architecture,” Domus 534 (Mar. 1974): 1.

38. O. M. Ungers, “BFU/Nine Evaluations,” Architecture Plus (Jan/Feb 1974): 46.

39. Bryan Richards, “BFU/Nine Evaluations,” Architecture Plus (Jan/Feb 1974): 47.

40. Serge Chermayef, “BFU/Nine Evaluations,” Architecture Plus (Jan/Feb 1974): 48.

41. O. M. Ungers, “BFU/Nine Evaluations,” Architecture Plus (Jan/Feb 1974): 46.

42. “Hence, for Candilis-Josic-Woods the design of a city or a university was not solely a matter of the design of collective space, but rather of the installation of a basis that could accommodate varied and nuanced relationships between the individual and the collective realm. A university or a city consists of ‘places for individual – places for group, tranquility and activity, isolation and exchange.’” See Avermaete, Another Modern, 318.

43. Architects’ Statement in Gabriel Feld. Architectural Association: Exemplary Projects 3: Berlin Free University: Candilis, Josic, Woods, Schiedhelm (London: AA Publications, 2004), 25.

44. Shadrach Woods, The Man in the Street: A Polemic on Urbanism (Baltimore: Penguin Books, 1975), 25.

45. A part of the diagram in Fig.1. See Woods, Candilis-Josic-Woods: Building for People, 208.

46. Woods, Te Man in the Street, 11- 13.

47. Quote spacing, ampersands, and italics are as they appear in the magazine. Shadrach Woods, “BFU/Nine Evaluations,” Architecture Plus (Jan/Feb 1974): 51.

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