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Rodolfo Machado Professor in Practice Department of Urban Planning and Design |
Studio Options
Arequipa by the Sea: A New Town Project Introduction: To situate the studio's pedagogic agenda (or to place in a wider frame of intellectual inquiry), it should be mentioned that it continues with an investigation of a series of new urban problems produced by globalization: such was the case of the Spring 05 Budapest Studio (how to design a new central district—a real state development—after 50 years of communist rule), and also of the Spring 06 Dubai Studio (the production of new typologies in a context of unprecedented urban self-invention). This term's urban problem is the urbanization of special economic free zones (SEFZ), or how to generate a complete, varied, rich, and contemporary local urbanity in conjunction with a generic global program: the SEFZ (a zone that, in itself, also needs revision or reinvention). The Site: Approximately 5,000 Has of virgin desert land with a 20 km long Pacific Ocean coastal front. The land is located 100 km South of Arequipa, the second largest Peruvian city, with a population of 1,000,000 inhabitants and a growing metropolitan area. More importantly for this project, the Pan American Highway, a major North/South inter-American highway, runs between Arequipa and the site of the new town. Planning: Two major infrastructural interventions will be built by the Government(s) and will make the SEFZ possible: a mega-port, Puerto Punta Corio (at the center of the site), and a new East/West highway, the Inter-Oceanic, connecting Brazil and Bolivia to the Pan American Highway and to the port at the site. In addition, at the planning level there is an overriding desire to develop tourism at the coast, at both the national and the global scale; thus turning Arequipa by the sea into a destination. This will, in turn, make Puerto Corio a more desirable, more competitive international zone. At the economic planning level, the selection of Puerto Corio's location as the site for a multi-national cluster of information technology facilities (IT) implies a belief in Latin America as the new emerging market for technology and electronics. Program: A rudimentary program exists for the new town based on the assumption that it will house 50,000 workers plus their families, with an estimated total of about 200,000 residents. Internationalism of the work force is also a goal here: it is expected that workers will come from all Latin American countries, which are future markets where products manufactured in-situ will be distributed. To these, other programs hybridizing the SEFZ are to be added, such as resorts, hotels, fishing piers, offices, a high-end medical center, etc. Sponsorship and site visit: This studio is sponsored by Rio Seco Holdings, Inc. a development corporation based in California. They have commissioned a master plan for their project, which will be evaluated by the students. Space Group has executed the MP; this is a prestigious Seoul based Korean planning, urban design and architecture firm. The official name of their project is ''Miramar''. Regarding the site visit, a trip to Peru takes place from Saturday February 10th to the 16th. The cost of air tickets and hotel accommodations are kindly covered by the Sponsor. Problems: The problem posed by the design of new towns has a long history within architecture. The Renaissance discourse on the ideal city claims it as an architectural problem, as does Modern Architecture in the early 20th century. Late 20th century Postmodernism, not believing in erasing existing cities, or in ''nature'' as the site of new towns (not really believing in the possibility of good new towns or in the value of invention) abandons the subject. It is again now, for many reasons, a very relevant subject. How does one design a new town today? Latin American urbanism has a long and rich history, and two foundational moments: Spanish colonial urbanism with its precise rules for city making and mid 20th century modernism, a most fertile, inventive, formally powerful moment re-shaping those cities. How does one design a new town in Latin America today? The urban culture of Peru is particularly intense, as is the urbanism of Arequipa, the city we are, in a way, relating to as a ''source'' of people and programs than can enrich the SEFZ. How can a desire for ''localizing''—resisting global generalizations—be accomplished, how can it inform the design of the new town while avoiding the obvious problems such an attitude usually fosters? There is also the question of geography and nature: how will ''the landscape of the desert'' (to give it a name simplifying a complex number of environmental issues) affect the design of the new town? And finally, there is of course the urban problem of free zones and their many incarnations. This is a fairly new program, one that has evolved with little attention being paid to it by architects and urban designers (the logic of capital been their main author). Conceptually closer to Dubai than to Lima, it needs, for its maturing, thoughtful care and formal imagination to improve it. This studio raises these and other issues as well. Dubai Studio Introduction Truly exceptional and spectacular urbanization has taken—is taking—place in the Emirate of Dubai, prompted by a confluence of three unique conditions. First, the oil-fueled economy of the 1970's has given way to a by far more diverse economy, with great recent interest in real estate and finance supporting developments in the areas of leisure and tourism. Second, the unique socio-political circumstances of a powerful minority local population co-existing with a multicultural majority of foreign workers have created a city-state, a "world city" with a centralized power structure that acts as the center of a large world region. Added to these two conditions there is, thirdly, the very special Dubaian "taste" for urbanism and development, responsible for the unique formal characteristics of Dubai. This exceptional situation, as remarkable or fascinating as it is, may not by itself warrant academic interest from those of us teaching and practicing urbanism. However, there are indications that what is unfolding in Dubai is symptomatic of similar approaches to development in other regions as well. It is precisely this "model potential" that makes Dubai a most appropriate case study in urbanization today; in a sense, Dubai has become "required reading": a critique needs to be articulated and new (better) strategies should be proposed. What exactly is taking place there, what is this "urban taste," so unabashedly emphatic, so superlative seeking—a taste responsible for the tallest, the biggest, the most expensive, supreme life styles, etc.-, being at work there? At the risk of oversimplification, we can mention the following found characteristics of Dubai: it is an automobile dependant city, a spatially fragmented city and a socially polarized city (a metropolis made out of "cities" and "villages"), a city both curiously over-infrastructured (i.e. information technology infrastructure) and simultaneously under-infrastructured (i.e. public transportation infrastructure). It is a city in which there is an ongoing attempt to invent a "vernacular," as paradoxical as this may sound (to islamicize, to arabize, to differentiate it from other cities, etc.). It is also a city where the production of the "unique" and the "iconic" is so abundant that it may in the end become a self-defeating practice. But above all it is the bold and resolute practice of the Visionary and the Fantastic that marks the urbanity of Dubai. In the course of Western architecture and urbanism there is a long history attached to the Ideal, the Visionary and the Fantastic as notions that have structured other, at times marginal practices, running parallel to mainstream architectural practices. This history is studied from this studio's viewpoint, commencing with the category-defying works of Jean-Jaques Lequeu and including recent manifestations, architectonic or otherwise, of this sensibility in cities such as Las Vegas, Orlando or Shanghai. The relationships among these three aforementioned conditions and consumerisms, the role of pleasure, the importance of desire in the generation of wonder, urban theatricality, the new sublime, the unprecedented and, above all, reality, is also considered. This research helps us to locate Dubai within the history of urban imagination and in relation to imagineered urbanism. Site To begin with, the site is the Dubai metropolitan area itself. Within it there are four types of sites:
Studio sponsorship This studio is kindly sponsored by the Aga Khan Program at the GSD under the direction of Hashim Sarkis, the Aga Kahn Professor of Landscape Architecture and Urbanism in Muslim Societies. It is important to remember that in the Spring of 2003 the GSD's UPD Department and Medina (Middle Eastern Design Initiative North America) organized a conference entitled "Dubai Conglomerated: The urban planning and design challenges to building a city of many cities," sponsored by the Dubai Municipality, the GSD and the Aga Kahn Program. Thus, this studio builds on and continues the school's interest in the region. This kind of academic sponsorship allows us precisely to cast this general and detached gaze (or will it be a stare, or an incredulous gawk?) on Dubai as a site, free from the specificities of site and program that a corporate sponsor might expect. It is possible that there will be other Dubai-based studios in the future where that will be the case; those will be informed by and will benefit from the work accomplished in this introductory studio. Studio organization The first two weeks are dedicated to research on the city. During the third week we travel to Dubai. We are organizing visits to the municipality and major local development offices to obtain information on their latest projects. Until mid term the work is in teams and at the large scale of urbanism. We hope to include Dubai visitors in our mid-term review. After that, specific sites may be selected to for development at a typical urban design scale. Provoking a New Form of
Urbanity: Throughout the last decade and a half, after the fall of the Soviet Union, Hungary has pursued aggressively its participation in a free-market system, shifting from an industry-heavy country into more of a service-provider economy and corporate hub for multinational and transnational operations, mostly within Central and Eastern Europe. Budapest has been the epicenter of this wide array of new activities and has witnessed major spatial transformations in order to accommodate these new commercial forces. The majority of these transformations have been fairly reduced in scale and have been focused primarily in the city center (District 5) and its adjacent areas. Today, a high demand for new commercial and housing stock has ignited real estate developers to look for areas available outside the boundaries defined by Petrofi / Erzsebet Jozsef Avenues, and to consider economically depressed districts between the city’s first, and second, ring roads. Given this framework, this option studio, kindly sponsored by the Futureal Group, looks at the south-western portion of District VIII. The studio’s primary objective is to investigate new urban types that would replace approximately 19 blocks of mostly abandoned and highly dilapidated nineteenth century fabric with new urban tissues that are more attuned to the spatial and programmatic needs suggested by the city’s current economic trends, and curbed by the effervescent real estate scenario. Students speculate on ways in which the introduction of the most generic ingredients of city making; residential, office, and retail spaces accompanied by open space can serve as a basic palette that allows for a highly depressed area to become a high profile quarter in the city, establishing a new centrality within the broader metropolitan region and institute a new form of urbanity for the area in question. Beyond exploring alternate ways to assemble mid-rise, mixed-use types, students exploit further these basic ingredients as tools that help define broader urban and architectural issues, such as the demarcation of public, private, and privately owned public spaces; the invention and introduction of key programmatic elements; the definition of housing typologies that allude to different market groups, etc. More importantly, such investigations allow for the unfolding of unprecedented notions of identity. These result from the overlap of market-driven development within still operative infrastructures that were planned under a socialist regime with the specific urban culture of Budapest. The Corvin Promenade area, the southwestern portion of District VIII, is occupied primarily by two, to three story high, decrepit buildings. Most precincts have been abandoned as the majority of tenants have been moved already to structurally safer dwellings throughout the city. A few Soviet housing blocks are scattered throughout the area, and these tenements are still heavily occupied and will remain active in the foreseeable future. The site sits behind two major avenues, Ulloi Avenue which connects the city center with Ferihegy Airport, and Petrofi Boulevard which serves as the city’s second ring road. The northern portion of the site is capped by the Corvin Cinema, a landmark from the early twentieth century. The southern border is defined by the national medical school of Budapest. The site is well served by two major subway stops, as well as by light rail and it is within walking distance of the city center and major shopping areas. The studio is made up of three distinct exercises that add up to one comprehensive project. The first two weeks, prior to the studio trip, students research the precise nature of Budapest’s recent cultural and spatial transformations in order to elaborate an adequate an background, which in combination with the site visit, can proffer, a well-tempered thesis about the territory in question. Upon the studio’s return from Budapest, students work in groups of two and focus on developing potential strategies that deal with the introduction of the new urban typologies and the definition of new open space. Finally, students select a particular fragment, or issue, from the general strategy and exploit it at an architectural scale throughout the remainder of the semester. Given the scope and ambition of the project, as well as the sponsor’s interest in developing the district into a landmark area that goes beyond the objectives defined by a real estate agenda, the spatial strategies suggested for the area might serve as paradigmatic examples for the future development of adjacent areas. A studio trip sponsored by the Futureal Group takes place February 14th - 17th, 2005. During the trip students meet with the sponsors as well as with an array of public officials. A parallel studio on the Corvin Promenade is conducted at the School of Architecture of the Technical University in Budapest. That studio works at an architectural scale and focus primarily on the development of residential units in two blocks of the site. GSD students are introduced to the Hungarian students during the trip. Travel and accommodation expenses are covered by the sponsors. Urban Form: Moscow Luzhniki
Studio The Moscow Luzhniki Studio attempts to address the need for new urban form (and a new urban logic) in the post-Soviet capital and to propose radical schemes for dealing with its cultural, political and economic complexities. Since the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, the market economy has penetrated all realms of Russian life, from informal networks to international relations. While society is generally embracing these changes, the discipline of urban design still lags behind. The planning methods developed during the Soviet years have become outmoded, yet they continue to frame contemporary decisions. This is due in part to the inflexible and layered nature of the local cultural context as well as to the lack of alternative design methods. Production of new methods or typologies has yet to catch up to the social changes. The site is still the territory of two industrial plants, with structures dating from the 1900s to the 1970s, and covering a total area of 13.5 hectares. Under the recent direction of the Moscow City Government, all centrally located industry is being moved outside of the city. The unique location of the site makes it an incredibly valuable and desirable property in the new market-driven urban economy. The site is adjacent to the largest Moscow Sports Complex “Luzhniki,” which is part of the main zone of parkland at Moscow’s center. It is bounded on the northeast by the recently completed Third Transportation Ring Road, on the northwest by a wide Stalinist avenue (Komsomolsky Prospect) and on the south by the Moscow River. The campus of the most prestigious school in the country, Moscow State University, stands across the river, marked by a monumental Stalinist high-rise building; located at Moscow’s highest topographic point, the university is a major icon on the skyline, as well as a popular viewing platform overlooking the city. The Luzhniki site is located at the intersection of car, metro, boat and pedestrian traffic routes, and in the vicinity of a park with facilities for recreational, entertainment, retail and industrial uses, thus uniting different population groups, providing jobs and attracting visitors. This project brings to focus the complex set of issues produced by a market-driven urban development overlaid on a socialist urbanism. Given the special local circumstances, this project’s impact transcends specific site proposals, and, because of its exploratory nature, the process could be regarded as an urban experiment for the rest of the city. The studio addresses quintessential urban design issues, such as public and private ownership, land use, re-zoning, re-programming, infrastructure, and the more complex notions of identity, all with emphasis on—and aspirations towards—the production of new urban form. The project calls for designing a program as well as proposing formal design solutions. This is the first Harvard option studio to be held in Moscow. The studio is sponsored by the MCD Development Company. A site visit is to take place in late March, during spring break, courtesy of the sponsors. The visit is to include interaction with the Union of Architects of Russia as well as with local students of architecture and urbanism. Downtown Seoul:
The recovery of the Chungae Chun Stream Downtown Seoul: The recovery of the Chungae Chun Stream The Metropolitan Government of Seoul, South Korea, sponsors this studio in association with Crefolio, Inc., a development group. A site visit takes place early in October, courtesy of our sponsors. INTRODUCTION: The Chungae Chun Project is a 30-year, 45 billion USD, urban revitalization project conducted by the Seoul Metropolitan Government, where a raised highway is currently being removed to restore the Chungae Stream, which still flows underneath. The site is of great importance in the context of old North Seoul. The restoration of the stream in conjunction with a partial redevelopment initiated by the government is expected to trigger the redevelopment of surrounding areas along the stream. For this to become reality the Chung Gae Chun Project needs to achieve three major objectives first, to remove the dilapidated raised highway and adjacent architectural infrastructure, which is no longer structurally sound; second, to restore the Chungae Stream and its meaningful historic landscape, thus returning the once lost green urban space back to people of Seoul; and third, to divert the unbalanced urban growth currently experienced north and south of the Han River, where growth in the new south overwhelms the original northern settlement. As expected, this ambitious project has raised diverse social, political and economic issues, which need to be resolved in order to make the project a successful one. Some of these issues include the relocation of current residents and shop owners, traffic congestion during and after project construction, limited local experience in dealing with public and private developments, and, most importantly, the redistribution of the value created by the project to those involved. The site consists of the six central megablocks currently specified by an existing master plan, which is to be revised by the studio (these parcels are considered to be the first phase of the entire Chungae Chun Project). The studio begins by surveying the available repository of urban design and architecture techniques globally employed today in dealing with projects of similar scale and complexity. The Seoul Metropolitan Government makes an extensive data pool available. Studio results are publicly presented in Seoul in the spring of 2004. Re-inventing
Apkujung, Seoul, South Korea Introduction: Population density in Apkujung is among the city's highest, with the largest concentration of apartment complexes per square foot in the country. Its demographic makeup has not changed much in the past twenty years, with its residents being predominantly high-income families with school-age children or working professionals who grew up in the area. A deciding factor in the rising cost of housing and the suppressing of the turnover rate is Kangnam's prestigious school district. It is safe to say that Apkujung is the most sought after school district in the entire nation. There are five elementary, junior and senior high schools within its immediate vicinity. Apkujung is also one of Seoul's most popular shopping and entertainment areas, attracting the trendy and the fashionable. Apkujung caters to crowds of all ages, hosting upscale eateries and fast-food restaurants, attractive shops and luxury boutiques, cafes and bars. On any given night, its restaurants, cafes and shops are crowded with a mixture of non-residents and residents alike. In short, Apkujung embodies Korea's worship of wealth, youth and pop culture in modernity. Description of Problem: Current Developmental Trends: In almost all cases, these redevelopment projects involve bigger and considerably taller apartment complexes. Customarily, individual owners (organized in a condominium-like fashion) will seek temporary relocation during construction time (with rents paid by financing banks) while a construction company will constitute the third—and all important—partner in the rebuilding process (sometimes, a number of blocks are sectored off to accommodate the temporary relocation of residents until the building completion date). Description of Site: Project Objectives: An effective proposal must also elevate the urbanity and the quality of life of this community while maintaining the area's existing commercial, entertainment and cultural abundance. The designs developed by the studio should be regarded as potential future typologies to be deployed in other similar contexts, or in other similar projects. Program: At the architectural level, a detailed design of a prototypical building will be required. Matters of landscaping and sustainability (the greening of the building) will be as important questions to consider as will questions of cultural specificity (for our information, basic unit plan types will initially be provided by the studio's sponsor; these should be seen as material for criticism and transformation). Organization of the Studio: The studio is open to 12 MAUD and MARCH students. The first part of the studio is conducted in teams of two people each. The second part consists of individual work. Pedagogic Objectives: Reinterpreting
1960s Urbanism; Case 1: Tandy Center, Fort Worth, Texas This studio, kindly sponsored by the PNL Companies of Dallas, Texas, deals with a recurrent and endemic North American urban design problem: an important sector of downtown Fort Worth (about six city blocks), under single ownership, was demolished mid-century, reconceived in the 1960s and rebuilt in the early 70s as a set of four major buildings. Named the Tandy Center, it consists of two towers—nineteen stories tall—resting on a three-story parking lot and mall base with a large stepped horizontal block building—a hotel—that widely (and mega-structurally) bridges the city streets. The resulting quality of the urbanity generated by this complex has, for years, been very poor. Recent changes in ownership, economic and cultural changes in downtown Fort Worth (the conviction that it is finally okay to live and work there) necessitate a complete rethinking of this urbanism and a major redesign of its products. This is the pedagogic objective of this elective studio, with the scale of intervention fluctuating between urban design and architecture. So, what is one to do to induce a contemporary urban life of rich quality there (while of course attending to the market too)? Bodily transformative operations are indeed a must: removals and implants—both skin and organs, deep and superficial—tightening, pulling, lifting and tattooing (branding?), evisceration, grafting and reengendering, etc. are some among many metaphors that can be used to describe the array of things to do (strategies for the site), not to mention what could be done "outside the body," that is to say, in adjacent available parcels, or in surrounding streets. More importantly, in a city such as Fort Worth, where the building of urban kitsch seems to be the preferred alternative in the "revitalization" of its downtown, could a kind of radical programming and an architectural "silence" in the hands of a designer with an uninhibited subjectivity and interested in urban beauty be an alternative? That is explored. The
National Archives Area of Buenos Aires, Argentina An important site southwest of downtown Buenos Aires was open for development. It consisted of 236,000 square meters in the neighborhood of Barracas, called Estacion Sola; the land is currently occupied by abandoned railroad yards which will be eradicated. The Municipality of Buenos Aires has established a corporation, "Corporacion Buenos Aires Sur," to promote and supervise the development of this area. It has been agreed by those involved that the new building of the National Archives of Argentina (NAA) shall not occupy more than 14 percent of the sites area, and that the rest of it will be dedicated to housing and green, sports-oriented public space. Housing densities and typologies were not determined, and it was up to the individual student or student team to propose densities and programs. There is interest in the new districts identity being generated by the designpresence, reverberation, geometry or character, classical correspondence or contemporary dissonance between object and fabricof the new National Archives Building. Urbanizations:
the Blank Building, the U.S. Postal Service at South Station This was the first studio in what is intended to be a series of urban design and architecture studios focusing on the production of urbanity on newly important locations within Boston. In these locations the quality of their urbanity has been damaged byor it is plainly lacking due toa variety of negative factors. These may be, for instance, monofunctional zoning, insufficient population density, or the prevailing and negative architectural character of buildings. The negative factor to be eradicated is a pair of large blank buildingsthe United States Postal Service Buildings, east of South Station and facing Fort Point Channel. By "blank" we refer to a hermetic, impenetrable, unresponsive, and essentially unpublic building condition. This major institution will be relocated to a less prominent location in Bostonone where its potential damage to its surroundings (i.e. intense truck traffic) will be less noticeable. As a result of this relocation, and of the many significant projects recently built and being planned in the vicinity of our site, it will become a center presenting major opportunities for the reimagining of a key area of downtown Boston. The studio explored the possibility of combining the Postal Service site with air rights over South Stationsites previously envisioned separately. This consolidation, in combination with the expansion of commuter and intercity train services (Acela), would create possibilities for a transit-oriented "mega project" scaled closer to New Yorks Rockefeller Center than any project yet built in Boston. In all, nearly 6-million square feet of mixed-use development could be located on a site where ample transit could support it. Significant concurrent projects considered adjacent to the site were: the Central Artery, the new Dewey Square, the Boston Horticultural Society, the South Boston convention center, the new underground Silver Line, the Gillette expansion, improvements to the Leather District and Chinatown, the new development area south of Kneeland Street, and the Bus Terminal. The program to be deployed called for a variety of building functions and various types of public places and streets. Besides the obvious and well-defined urban design consideration, the studio also concentrated on architectural design and landscape issues and included visits from members of the many city and state agencies which have an interest or jurisdiction on the site. An
Academic District—Pamplona, Spain Pamplona, a prosperous city in the Basque Country, currently possesses two large and prestigious universities. The oldest one, the Universidad de Navarra, is a private institution recognized as one of the very best in the country; it attracts students from throughout Spain as well as other countries. The second institution, the Universidad Publica de Navarra, originated in the 1960s and has become, due to its inevitable competition with the private university, an excellent institution in its own right. Both campuses are located on the southern edge of the city, separated by green areas and by minor industrial buildings to be eradicated. This common zone acts as an active entrance to the city center; more importantly, it is the first image of Pamplona visitors get when they arrive from the ever-increasingly important local airport. The space between the campuses is the site of a future district to be designed by the students. Both campuses will expand towards this new, important public space, and the space should be characterized by a water piece, shaped using the river that runs through it. The studios program consisted of a variety of facilities answering the present needs of the city and the campuses: two large hotels, a large public parking structure, student dormitories and faculty housing with commercial space, a sports center and playing fields, and an artificial lake or enhanced riverfront. More importantly, an academic zone and public zone were designed, connecting both campuses with each other and the city. The Municipality of Pamplona, Province of Navarra, Spain sponsored this studio.
The Re-imagining of the Bullfinch Triangle
As a direct result of the ongoing underground relocation of the Central Artery, Boston will have the exceptional opportunity to rebuild one of its most significant nineteenth-century urban expansion projects, the area known as the Bullfinch Triangle, as well as the districts connections to its surroundings. The studio site extends from Causeway Street south to Hanover Street. It includes several new parcels as well as a variety of future public places, ranging from the traditional to the most contemporary typologies. Given this variety of conditions, it was expected that students would deploy a similar breadth of urban and architectural design techniques in order to propose resolutions to the problem. Ultimately, the studio aimed for the production of contemporary urbanities at the heart of the new Boston. As in the case of the first studio taught in the spring of 1999 by the instructor (entitled "The Urban Building at Dewey Square"), dealing with the southern end of the Central Artery, this studio will be conducted with ample support from the many institutions and organizations that will ultimately decide the future of the Bullfinch Triangle. Rosario,
Argentina Studio
Rosario is the second largest metropolitan area in Argentina, with a population of approximately 1,500,000. It is an active port on the margins of the Parana River, about 300 kilometers north of Buenos Aires. A new bridge will be constructed over the Parana River north of the central area. This bridge will have the capacity to reconfigure the major service routes throughout the country, and it will have a major impact on the urban fabric around its landing at several scales. The studio dealt with the expansion of the city around the bridge’s landing. The scales of intervention ranged from architecture to urban design and landscape architecture. Major programmatic components were housing, trucking industry service areas, and a public park along the river with sports facilities and leisure-oriented programs. Students traveled to Argentina in the first week of September 1999. While in Rosario, they met with the Municipality’s Office of Physical Planning and contacted student groups at the School of Architecture at the National University of Rosario. This studio was sponsored by the Municipality of Rosario, Argentina. For more information on Rosario, go to http://www.unr.edu.ar/rosario/ The
Urban Building
This studio involved the design of a new headquarters for the Massachusetts Horticultural Society, more precisely the design of their glass house/winter garden, to be located on parcel 22, the southernmost piece of the string of parcels created by the depression of the Central Artery. The problem included the design of the new Dewey/South Station Square. The arguments addressed by the studio were, first, that a single and large building can be imbued with enough urbanizing power for its design to qualify as a case study within the practice of urban design. Second, we explored the variety of architectural design techniques that make possible this "urbanization" of a single building. The studio had ample support from the Massachusetts Horticultural Society, the Boston Redevelopment Authority, the Dewey Square Design Group, the Central Artery/Tunnel Project, and the Massachusetts Bay Transit Authority, plus a variety of concerned abuttor groups. We benefited from their experiences, desires, and constraints and aimed to arrive at a series of realisticif unprecedentedproposals for a new urbanity for the future Boston.
New Urbanity: The Case of Marina Bay This was the third and last studio dedicated to the investigation and design of new urban conditions for Singapore’s Central District. This trilogy was sponsored by the Urban Redevelopment Authority (URA), for which we are grateful. The site is the largest urban piece generated by recent water reclamation projects. The program contains office space and residential quarters, plus the myriad of programmatic elements that are essential for the production of a sense of urbanity. The studio required a site visit, which took place during the spring break; the midterm review was held in Singapore in the office of the URA. The
Ria de Bilbao
The ria de Bilbao is a sea inlet approximately 3 kilometers deep that is comprised of a series of municipalities spread on both banks, of which Bilbao is the most important. The ria thus defines a metropolitan area that has constituted until today the economic and financial capital of the Basque country and one of the most important urban complexes of Spain. During the 1960s, a rapid process of industrialization took place, based almost exclusively on steel manufacturing and shipyards. This fast growth, together with poor programming, produced a strong migration of labor from adjacent rural areas and other depressed areas of Spain. This process also brought about the "urbanization" of both edges of the ria that hitherto had been occupied almost exclusively by the fishing industry. In terms of urbanism, the physical planning and structure of, and provision of services to, these new settlements were very poor. This, together with the intense use of the ria as a principal heavy industry harbor, produced a radical change in the landscape of the ria, and more importantly, contributed to this natural region closing more and more unto itself until becoming an independent industrial unit with little rapport with its surrounding towns and rural areas. The economic crisis of the 1980s together with the globalization of the traditional markets and the loss of competitiveness of the 1ocal industry meant a rapid deterioration of the industrial infrastructure which had had such an important impact on the transformation of the ria and its adjacent areas. Finally, after the closing of many industries and the successful attempt to regain competitiveness by building a new, state-of-the-art harbor directly on the seashore, the possibility of reclaiming the ria as the key element that could once again structure the metropolitan area (not only in functional terms but also in its visual and symbolic aspects) could give the urban area a new image.
Concretely, what we are confronted with is a regional element that has been transformed into an architectural and urban landscape, which, in spite of its seductive and evocative image of a large-scale "industrial ruin," nevertheless will require a profound and drastic programmatic and operational change that will have to be undertaken at the urban design scale. Only then might the ria be able to recover its role as a "liquid" axis capable of structuring a disperse and disparate teritory. Part of this operation has already started in the very urban center of Bilbao. There, the hermetic character that the ria acquired in the previous decades had reached its maximum closure so that its relations to the city were severed while producing a degraded industrial landscape physically and visually adjacent to the urban center. A number of urban and architectural interventions undertaken in the last few years (chiefly the building of the new Guggenheim Museum by F. Gehry and the new Metro system by N. Foster) are good examples of the authorities (both municipal and regional) to intervene and positively reverse and transform these conditions. To this we should add that the aggressive clean-up of the ria, which until then had been the recipient of all industrial waste, will allow the effective recovery of its waters as an urban resource. The Diputacion Foral de Bizcaia, the highest provincial authority, has set its course of action along these lines and is interested in undertaking serious studies regarding the reclaiming and development of the ria in its entirety. At the same time, it plans to focus and zero-in specifically on the most immediate and significant areas. For the latter, it has identified a number of programmatic interventions that include the development of a new university campus on an island in the ria, thematic parks, a museum complex, a "water park," and the overall recovery of the landscape of the ria.
The Diputacion Foral de Bizcaia, the entity under whose jurisdiction the ria's municipalities are located, is sponsoring a research program at the GSD, directed by Professor Jorge Silvetti that addresses the conditions outlined above. The program is particularly geared toward generating alternative proposals for specific areas in the ria as a way to better understand the problems and opportunities ahead. Two advanced studios were conducted during the 1997-98 academic year following the format of GSD-sponsored studios. The one in the fall was taught by Professors Rodolfo Machado and Jorge Silvetti and the one in the spring will be taught by Professors Francisco Mangado and Jorge Silvetti. Both studios included 12 students and required travel to the site by all participants. The site visit for the fall semester studio took place before the fall semester began -- during the first 10 days of September. The site visit in the spring took place during the spring break, at the end of March.
Singapore II: Entertainment District
Singapore's Urban Redevelopment Authority, this studio's sponsor, wished "to develop a vibrant, dynamic, multifaceted and active district supported by a strong performing atrs/entertainment hub as a themed destination attraction for Singapore's Central Area." Further, this is to be realized "through the establishment of a critical mass of arts and entertainment facilities based around a network of pedestrian oriented streets and spaces which are safe, festive and fun, as well as through the use of electronic media events and large signage along pedestrian malls in the area." This immediately posed a number of urban design and architectural problems on which this studio concentrated, such as: the urbanity of Singapore and the construction of the tropical; the relation between entertainment and social planning; the notion of district and the question of theme; control, censorship and entertainment; Western, Asian, or culturally nonspecific interpretations of entertainment; the role of architecture and of image design in the making of these districts, etc. Students were required to spend spring break in Singapore,
as guests of the Urban Redevelopment Authority, where the
mid-semester review of their work was conducted.
Singapore Studio
This studio, kindly sponsored by the Urban Redevelopment Authority of Singapore, undertook the redevelopment of the Kallang Basin area. Located on the fringe of Singapore's Central Area, at the waters' edge, the site is traversed by two rivers and shows the results of the various land reclamation projects effected since 1930. The site includes the old Kallang Airport, the National and the indoor stadia as well as remarkable public housing buildings from the 1950s and 60s. The program called for, essentially, 25,000 units of housing of various types and sizes, 88,000 square meters of commercial and recreational development plus those programmatic elements the students deemed essential for the production of an appropriate Singaporean urbanity. The following points were of particular interest to the studio: first, the relationship between the notions of high density and normative urbanism; second, the relationship among "tropical architecture," interior architecture, and public space; and, third, the relationship between various "types" of bdemocracy, cultural specificity, or the lack of it, and the built world.
Valparaiso, Chile: The Recovery of the Sea This studio, open to students of urban design and architecture, was the secone one sponsored by Forestal Valparaiso, a Chilean corporation. Forestal Valparaiso is interested basically in the development of their lands in the vicinity of Valparaiso, around the town of Placilla. Such development was the subject matter of the previous fall 1992 studio (which dealt with resolving the congestion and general inefficiency of the existing port of Valparaiso by relocating containers and related port facilities on the corporation's lands; it was a studio where planning and various infrastructure and landscape issues became, as expected, very important).
This second studio, located in Valparaiso, specially addresses an urban design/ architecture scale of intervention. It is our sponsor's interest to demonstrate Valparaiso's gains and potential for redevelopment once port faciliteis are relocated to the vicinity of Placilla. Metropolitan Region, Valparaiso, Chile This studio addressed the design of a new town in the outskirts of Valparaiso, Chile. Forestal Valparaiso, a Chilean corporation, is interested in developing lands in the vicinity of Valparaiso, around the town of Placilla. The initial objective of its project is twofold: a0 to relocate containers and port-related facilities from the congested port of Valparaiso to the corporation's land; and b) to develop a residential enclave within the heavily wooded property.
After a visit to Chile, the students critiqued the existing master plan for the new development and looked at the use of grid as an alternative planning device. Their revised master plans made recommendations at the infrastructural, zonal, and architectural levels. Landscape issues, as expected, became extremely important. The studio also dealt with the problem of designing
significant sites in the new town, such as "downtown," entrances
from the highway, and recreational areas. Students included in
their studies designs for a port-related support and distribution
center, an industrial research and development park, and a residential
district. Redevelopment of the
Retiro Railroad Station and Adjacent Port Area in Buenos Aires,
Argentina
This urban design and architecture studio dealt with an exceptional site in Buenos Aires. The site is exceptionally large (about 90 hectares), exceptionally well-located from a socioeconomic point of view (it is adjacent to prestigious residential neighborhoods and shopping districts), and it is also exceptionally located from a geographic perspective: the foot of a very densely built barranca, constituting a veritable campo between the city and river, between the grid and the port. It has the immensity and the scale of the pampas, yet has never been built upon (the Retiro Station's 19th-century railyards are its original occupant). The site represents Buenos Aires's only remaining opportunity for high-quality contemporary development. Dewey Square, Boston:
The Urbanity of Public Places
SITE: This Boston site is of great significance for the city at large and it will become ever more so once the Central Artery Project is completed. Presently it is conformed by South Station, the Federal Reserve Bank, One Financial Center, and many other smaller buildings (it is referred to as parcels 19, 21, and 22 by the adopted master plan for the area). PROGRAM: The program calls for the production of an appropriate urbanity for a site which is both a major point of arrival to the city and a "center" giving access to important and highly different districts around it (this assumes that the traditional urbanity of "the square in front of the railroad station" needs to be revised). The physical supports for what amounts to the STAGING of the effect of urbanity include: an explicit relation to the underground tunnel(s), public TV/information/advertising systems, a monument (iconographic program to be determined), international newsstand, public rest rooms, space heaters, loggias, terraces or other types of public architecture, automatic teller machines, MBTA headhouses, tunnel emergency exits, eating facilities, taxicab stands, etc. To this, the presence on the site (or in its vicinity) of the Massachusetts Horticultural Society should be added, as well as any other program considered to be necessary.
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