JOURNAL OF ARCHITECTURAL CULTURE 2017 JOELHO # 08 IDEAS AND PRACTICES FOR THE EUROPEAN CITY —— Guest Editors: José António Bandeirinha Luís Miguel Correia Nelson Mota Ákos Moravánszky Irina Davidovici Matthew Teissmann Alexandre Alves Costa Chiara Monterumisi Harald Bodenschatz Joana Capela de Campos Vitor Murtinho Platon Issaias Kasper Lægring Nuno Grande Roberto Cremascoli Exhibition History of Architecture III / IV Biographies of Power: Personalities and Architectures Jorge Figueira and Bruno Gil EDARQ JOURNAL OF ARCHITECTURAL CULTURE 2017 JOELHO # J08 IDEAS AND PRACTICES FOR THE EUROPEAN CITY —— Guest Editors: José António Bandeirinha Luís Miguel Correia Nelson Mota Ákos Moravánszky Irina Davidovici Matthew Teissmann Alexandre Alves Costa Chiara Monterumisi Harald Bodenschatz Joana Capela de Campos Vitor Murtinho Platon Issaias Kasper Lægring Nuno Grande Roberto Cremascoli Exhibition History of Architecture III / IV Biographies of Power: Personalities and Architectures Jorge Figueira and Bruno Gil em cima do joelho série II: Joelho Editores / Editors JOELHO Edição / Publisher Tipografia / Typography Contactos / Contacts Jorge Figueira (CES, DARQ, UC) e|d|arq – Editorial do Departamento Logótipo Joelho: Garage, Desenhada [email protected] Gonçalo Canto Moniz (CES, DARQ, UC) de Arquitectura Faculdade de em 1999 por Thomas Hout-Marchand, [email protected] — Ciências e Tecnologia da Universidade Editada pela sua editora 256TM — JOELHO 8 de Coimbra / Department of Joelho Website Ideas and Practices for Architecture, Faculty of Sciences and JOELHO VIII: Neutraface Slab, http://impactum-journals.uc.pt/index. the European City Technology, University of Coimbra desenhada em 2009 por Susana php/joelho/index — — Carvalho e Kai Bernau, sob direcção https://digitalis.uc.pt/pt-pt/ Editores convidados / Guest Editors Design artistica de Christian Schwartz e Ken node/84925 José António Bandeirinha R2 · www.r2design.pt Barber. Jigsaw, Desenhada em 2000 — (DARQ, CES, UC) — por Johanna Bilak. Adobe Caslon Joelho Address Luís Miguel Correia Imagem da Capa / Cover Image Pro, Desenhada em 1990 por Carol Colégio das Artes, (DARQ, CEIS20, UC) João Bicker Twombly a partir do desenho original Largo D. Dinis, Nelson Mota (TU Delft) — de William Caslon em 1766. Akurat 3000-143 Coimbra Impressão e Acabamentos / Print Mono, Desenhada em 2005 por Portugal — Nozzle Lda. Laurenz Brunner. +351 239 851 350 Comissão Científica / Scientific — www.uc.pt/fctuc/darq/editorial/ Committee Depósito Legal / Legal Deposit e_darq Adriana Collado, FADU, UNL (Arg) 327180/15 Alessandra Capuano, Sapienza, — Univ. Rome (It) ISSN (impressão / print) Alexandre Alves Costa, FAUP / DARQ 1647-9548 Ana Vaz Milheiro, FAUTL — David Leatherbarrow, ISSN (em linha / digital) Univ. Pennsylvania (EUA) 1647-8681 Domingos Tavares, FAUP / DARQ Jorge Spencer, FAUTL José António Bandeirinha, DARQ / CES José Miguel Rodrigues, FAUP Konstantina Demiri, NTUA, Univ. Athens (Gr) Mário Krüger, DARQ / CES Paulo Providência, DARQ / CES Tom Avermaete, TU Deft (Nl) 2 JOELHO #08 CONTENTS 4 Editor's note 112 University City of Coimbra: Gonçalo Canto Moniz, ‘tabula rasa’ as a Project Methodology Jorge Figueira Joana Capela de Campos, Vitor Murtinho 5 editorial The European City as a Place 126 From the Flat to the City: of Coexistence The Construction of Modern josé antónio bandeirinha, Greek Subjectivity luís miguel correia, Platon Issaias nelson mota Section 3: Reviews SECTION 1: discourses on the european city 142 The Politics of the Plinth: Notes on a Latent Ocularcentrism in Aureli’s 22 Blow-Up: The Powers of Scale Theory of an Absolute Architecture Ákos Moravánszky Kasper Lægring 36 Tafuri on Hous-‘ing’: Housing 156 Neighbourhood: A Threatened History as City-making Praxis Heritage in Contemporary Europe Irina Davidovici Nuno Grande, Roberto Cremascoli 52 An Ideological City: Koolhaas’ Exodus in the Second Ecumene 170 Exhibition Matthew Teissmann History of Architecture III / IV (DARQ , UC) 66 The City, The Suburb and The Rest. Biographies of Power: The Earth Personalities and Architectures Alexandre Alves Costa Jorge figueira, bruno gil Section 2: Projects for the European City 80 Towards the ‘People’s Home’: First Housing Districts in Stockholm Chiara Monterumisi 96 Public Housing in Fascist Rome: A European Perspective Harald Bodenschatz JOELHO #08 3 Joelho #8 Editors’ note Gonçalo Canto Moniz, Jorge Figueira Joelho 8 challenged scholars to present full Joelho 8 also presents material from the papers for peer review, creating new standards for an exhibition “Biographies of Power: Personalities academic journal that combines the scientific with and Architectures”, developed by the students of the pedagogical approach, in the open walls of the the course History of Architecture III / IV, under University of Coimbra. the supervision of Jorge Figueira and Bruno Gil. Thanks to the students for sharing their pedagogical The debate proposed by our guest editors — a experience with Joelho. discussion on ideas and practices for the European City — is key to understand the quick environmental The European City is also reflected on an artistic and social changes that our cities are currently level with the drawing on the cover of Joelho by dealing with, in a challenging attempt to integrate João Bicker, an anthropologist and designer, which new phenomena into their urban and architectural juxtaposes the word “city” in several European history consolidated over more than two millennia. languages, thus creating a noisy but beautiful effect Although ideas are the framework of this long that aims to capture European cultural diversity. process, it is interesting to explore the practices that have built this collective project. The contributions selected from the call for papers are complemented by insightful accounts of established scholars invited by the guest editors of Joelho 8 to offer a more complete overview of this complex theme. Special thanks to José António Bandeirinha, Luís Miguel Correia and Nelson Mota that move, one again, Joelho to the highest level of the architectural culture and debate. Illustration of João Bicker. EDITORIAL 4 JOELHO #08 (CES, DARQ, UC) José António Bandeirinha Luís Miguel Correia (CEIS20, DARQ, UC) (TU DELFT) Nelson Mota The European City as a Place of Coexistence EDITORIAL JOELHO #08 5 This issue of Joelho aims at bringing together contributions to discuss the European City as a project and as the vital locus for the historical processes that populate our collective memory and our shared cultural heritage. The European City, as Leonardo Benevolo put it in 1993, defines “the stable background against which the flow of diverse experiences that characterize each generation is given significance”. For more than five centuries, the architecture discipline has been instrumental in defining this background. For example, in the Renaissance, architecture gained momentum as a key player in the radical development of the city as a project. The city became a powerful concept and the progressive rise of the bourgeoisie as the ruling social class granted political agency to the architectural discipline. Five centuries of permanent encounters and intersections between architecture and the city defined our urban identity and shaped the physical context in which we live. Throughout the twentieth century, however, the power of architecture was challenged by new political mantras and economical dogmas that encouraged architecture’s disciplinary retreat. The articles published in the following pages illustrate some key moments in this process. EDITORIAL 6 JOELHO #08 Up until the First World War, the European city was chiefly defined by one of its genetic characteristics: it was a space of exception, physically determined and independent. As Benevolo argues, in the European tradition “cities were born as closed entities, in which the need for independence dominated those of internal equality and openness to the outside world”. “The result”, Benevolo continues, “was a composite and imperfect setting, formed by a balance of competing forces”. This characteristic would relentlessly change throughout the twentieth century, though. Ákos Moravánszky’s article, “Blow Up”, discusses a particular moment in our recent urban history when this distinctive feature of the European city was challenged. It is the moment when the relationship between landscape and human life went beyond the physical reality defined by the bourgeois city. In the interwar period, Moravánszky argues, visual narratives based on aerial photography became increasingly used in the United States (e.g. the TVA project) and in the USSR to release architecture from Earth’s gravity. This process triggered the emergence of scalar-planning as a new approach to rethink the relationship between man and nature. It would influence the production of regional plans (e.g. Olivetti’s Aosta Valley) and projects at a geographical EDITORIAL JOELHO #08 7 scale in Europe, integrating ecological, engineering, landscaping, architectural, and aesthetic concerns to realize a socio-economical vision. Through the Age of Extremes, as Eric Hobsbawm called the short twentieth century (1914–1991), most European countries developed housing policies to provide shelter for the working class. This process would challenge the architect’s agency in design decision-making and eventually re-configure the European city. The article written by Irina Davidovici, “Tafuri on hous-ing”, brings about the intellectual framework in which one of the main architectural historians