Fields of DeFormation: TRACING CRITICAL BOUNDARIES IN ARCHITECTURAL PRACTICE

Fields of DeFormation:
TRACING CRITICAL BOUNDARIES IN ARCHITECTURAL PRACTICE
LINA FAWCETT
Architectural Association / Housing & Urbanism
MA 2006 / 2007
Beneficiario COLFUTURO 2006
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This thesis is the result of the intensive work and

reflections that took place in the urban seminars and
workshops. The research has always been a joint
effort in which the guidance of Larry Barth and the
dedication of FA team were essential. I am grateful
for the time, the consistency, the endless drawing
sessions
Thanks to the Architectural Association where a dayto-day dialogue inspired new paths in this
continuous exploration, and to colleagues and
friends whose comments stimulated the ongoing
research and developing drafts, especially Paulo
Flores and Rob Stuart-Smith for their smiling
patience and support.
Contents
INTRODUCTION
ABSTRACT ENTITIES: THE URBAN GRID
QUESTION OF LEGIBILITY: FIGURE/GROUND
AMBIVALENT DELIRIOUS NEW YORK: THE PARTITIONED CITY
DISCOURSIVE SURFACES: THE BLOCK PARADOX
LOBOTOMY REVISITED
THE CRITICAL SURFACE

SECURING HIERARCHICAL DIFFERENTIATION
BLURRING BOUNDARIES
URBANISM OF INTERFACES: GRAPHIC INTELLIGENCE
URBANISM: AN ARCHITECTURAL FIELD OF REINVENTION

TRASCENDANCE OF FIGURE-GROUND: NEW PROJECTIONS
THE HORIZONTAL CONTINUUM
NON-ARCHITECTURE: PREDICAMENT OF ARCHITECTS
FROM OBJECT TO FIELD: EXPERIMENTAL DOMAINS
Fields of DeFormation:
TRACING CRITICAL BOUNDARIES IN ARCHITECTURAL PRACTICE
The landscape of the city is not merely the site where

political struggle takes place, it becomes the means by
which each party attempts to defeat the other. As such the
landscape is an important part of the practice of power.
THE KANDYAN KINGDOM, SRI LANKA
Introduction
We dont control the city but we will find a way of working with our powerlessness
REM KOOLHAAS
The impressive image of Campo Marzio as a prelude
them in new terms utilizing few notions and examples
to Rem Koolhaass article What ever Happened to
that have proven as techniques of formal stability
Urbanism begs the question if cities can be made
within architecture, as opposed to the diffuse and
anymore. If architecture, just like any other science,
complex transformational processes of the city.
has succeeded the natural impulse of evolution and
Paradoxically, it is inside architecture where diffuse
demonstrated its ever-changing creative power,
non-static surfaces of composition open the field to
urbanism has challenged its operationality by
creative processes, since they are by nature given to
revealing a logic that surpasses any established
experimentation.
concepts within the field. In contradiction, although

global, economical and political forces seem to be
As a result, two conceptual lines of investigation
winning the spatial battle, there is a growing demand
interconnect. The first attempts to demonstrate a
for an architecture that integrates into the existing
gradual repositioning of the field of architecture and
urban conditions.
its relationship to urbanism through the theoretical

debate and practice of some leading architects. The
New architectural urbanisms today are understood
second, overlapped and supported by the first one,
by weakening public life, changing the public nature
unfolds the regulating orders of the grid the plan-
of the streets and modifying the human scale.
and the formal experimentation of architecture
Furthermore, the emergent post-urban life appears
through the faade until being able to envision
unmanageable due to conditions never diagnosed
strategies to address the urban. Surprisingly, the
before: edge cities, peripheries, nodality and
architect owns the diagrammatic media that leads
disarticulation seem problematic to conceptualize.
the strategy in a time in which he finds himself at the

edge of both fields.
How can architecture perceive this change, these

new urban processes so to intervene in alternative
The sequence driven along the chapters starts by
ways? What is it about the challenge of architecture
recognising the architectural reasoning and
capable to deploy a logic that drives urban design
representational logic behind the reading of cities. It
with a certain direction?
emphasises in Modernism as the re-thinking of

customary elements to fit new intentions within
Architecture can expand its potential design
architecture thus breaking its pre-established
approaches through the investigation of its own
boundaries. Chapter two relates this rupture into the
rationality in order to find new sources that intersect
new contemporary synthesis and displaces the
emerging urban landscapes. The faade performs as architectural material into more creative procedures
a critical surface that articulates urban affects and
that present a developed graphic intelligence within
provides a positive understanding of the street-grid
the field. Acknowledging the previous diagnostics,
as a persistent and flexible planning instrument along chapter three develops a new urban logic that
time. If the plan is not sufficient anymore, by securing investigates and compares new methods of
its spatial hierarchies the building skin becomes
orientation and organization.
significant to a contemporary discussion where

architecture gains an instrument to overcome the
The effect is a shift within the architectural practice
difference.
by opening up its own disciplinary boundaries. In

consequence, although the possibilities and risks to
The ambition given to urban design is never
converge with external fields are not likely to be
reducible to a fixed set of values. It intends to rethink
assessed as part of this thesis, architecture and
urbanism find a common dialogue and potential

within the rational constructions and graphic build-up
of their own critical surfaces.
CHAPTER 1
Abstract Entities:
The Urban Grid
The grid is a powerful organisational matrix within the
city that instigates the formal conception of
architecture. By abstracting this organisational
device through spatial and perceptual logics, the
grids influence on the generation of form could
provide conceptual applications that frame
innovative performances within urban systems,
peripheries, interstices and open fields. This chapter
aims at depicting the grids rationale as to reveal
notions that further contribute to design strategies.
In order to develop a spatial diagnosis of the
contemporary urban condition it is necessary to
investigate the historical significance of the grid, and
its ability to embody social, political and economical
forces into a unified complex urban order. Even
during the modernist revolutionary operations within
architectural design, classical notions of the grid
provided a nostalgic instrument that effectively
organised the conception of the built fabric and its
transformation along time, thus leaving the role of the
grid conceptually fixed. Yet modernism meant to
indicate an alteration.
A number of seminal works will be investigated in this

paper that advocate alternative views of urban space
through the revision of the conceptual grid as a
framework to explore contemporary means of
conceiving the city and that would alter the bases for
its future discourse.
The main conceptual framework derives from the
debate held in the late 70s, where the spatial
implications of the city already provided a nonplanimetric, three-dimensional understanding of the
grid. In this sense, Colin Rowes Collage City and
Rem Koolhaass Delirious New York are selected
because of the precise difference and similarity of
context they both work. In other words, both pieces
present the possibility of contrast between the figureground dialectic of the traditional and modernist
cities, as opposed to the observational and threedimensional exploration of the paradigmatic
Figure 1: Stan Allen in Point+Lines, experimental design on

Campo Marzio.
American city. It also becomes critical to have them

in mind as pieces of work that establish a reaction
following the reversal of architectural codes driven by
modernism.
The starting point is always spatial: the grid is a
city. This new composite building is not defined
rational structure that mediates conceptual
solely by a figure/ground projection, instead it is a
references for any formal interventions and carries
complex system of space-defining elements that
generic qualities such as balance, pattern, or edge
unify sequences of collage and integrate often-
implicit in the specificities of a material and spatial
fragmented urban patterns. Rowe highlights two
practice.
contrasting existing images of the city; the

traditionally constrained grid and the modernist unmanipulated void. To make sense of these
QUESTION OF LEGIBILITY: FIGURE/GROUND
contemporary urban fragments, Rowe developed his

own tools of compositional analysis of urban
In Type and Context in Urbanism: Colin Rowes
interstitial space - the space between buildings as
Contextualism, Ellis suggests that the use of Rowe
opposed to the focusing on the built objects
and Koetters figure/ground plans in Collage City are
themselves 1 . In Collage City, Rowe uses the term
the base or anchor point in which a new device, the

composite building, can defy the polarity of a built
mass and void, or interior and exterior spaces in the
Rowes Contextualism in K.M. Hays (ed.) Oppositions Reader.

227-231.
Ellis, William. 1998. 'Type and Context in Urbanism: Colin
10
10
collision effects to describe this process.
where there are no streets, yet in their place

interstitial traces that deploy a system of voids.
Collision Effects highlights the dialectical
These voids perform within certain logic of
relationship between both figure and ground,
association. Although this system is clearly regulated
however it also provides a series of ambiguous
by the grid, it is the architectural figure that acts as a
relationships and new layers in which we can study
mediator of these patterns.
the spatiality of the urban process. The politics of

collage may be seen as an early post-modern
As the relationship between elements in a concept of
reading of the city in which the architect perceives of
figure/interstitial figure projection challenge a reversal
the city as comprised of urban fragments that
promoted through modernism, the elements
contribute to a sequential experience of the city as
adjacencies become especially critical in any
either object or void. This required the designer to
composite or ambiguous building organisation.
transcend the constraints of the figure/ground
Nevertheless, if we still think of the picture offered by
relationship through the employment of innovative
the figure/void Nolli concept, how would the new
compositional strategies. These strategies
composite typology then retain its legibility?
depended though on the limitation and scope settled Following Elliss argument, the exemplars shown in
within the practice itself.
Collage City represent the attachment to a

typological reasoning of the city that is driven by the
In the mid 90s, Peter Eisenman stated that
negotiation between the architectural piece and the
architecture could only become critical by
frame of reference given by a traditional urban
incorporating an alternative view of reality into itself.
space. In other words, the problem must start with
He advocated that architecture could be
the question of discerning the present existing urban
conceptually removed from its ground by
conditions rather than defaulting to the above-
becoming intensive or qualitative. Eisenman utilizes mentioned two-edged prevalent concept of the city.
a drawing of Campo Marzio, to illustrate how an
interiority of architecture is not burdened by the
For the purposes of this thesis and its fundamental
figure/ground concept of architectural space. In lieu
question to what is interior to the architectural
of this figure/ground concept, a figure/interstitial-
practice, it is worth to allow ourselves the possibility
figure relationship is identified, in which both
of suppressing the planimetric picture of the grid that
elements are seen as equivalent, with their
first comes to our minds. Koolhaas offers a
combinatory affect providing the internal field of
significant point of departure from the prevalent
architecture . As such, the architectural figure is no
conceptual notion of the city and its associated
longer seen as an isolated object with spaces in-
planimetric grid in his treatise of Manhattan
between but as an interface that performs within a
Delirious New York. The exploration of the
compound of transitions in the completion of a
congested American city diagnoses the spatial
whole. A compact city center grid could then be
dynamics of the city out of any previous principle,
considered as a carpet of figure/figure urbanism
while conveying an urbanism that contradicts the

homogeneous or continuous approach advocated in
the modernist city yet certainly accepting its logic of
World in GSAPP, Columbia Documents of Architecture and

Theory, Vol. 6. 109.
change.
Eisenman, Peter. 1997. Critical Architecture in a Geopolitical
11
11
Figures 2-3-4: New York readings of the orthogonal grid in Rowes early projects. (From left to right) Figure/ground fragment,
armatures emphasizing on resolution and collision elements, and armatures of site adjacencies.
AMBIVALENT DELIRIOUS NEW YORK: THE
scheme of an extruded grid. A figure/ground reading
PARTITIONED CITY
of Manhattan would only reveal the footprint of the

skyscraper, yet there exists an extreme sectional
Contemporary to Collage City, Delirious New York is a extruded typology. Koolhaas directly explores the
retroactive manifesto that avoids discussing existing
grid in three-dimensions and suggests that a culture
urban space on established terms by immediately
of congestion best describes the city as flexibly
dismissing the architect as the creator of the city. By
implanted within.
highlighting the fact that the citys becoming exceeds

any one discipline involved in its creation, Delirious
Koolhaas illustrates how the city grid is neutral
New York shows how social activity takes place in
enough to support an endless and generic non-
the American city by deconstructing a real context:
architectural material production; the
Manhattan.
subversiveness of the Skyscrapers true nature the

ultimate unpredictability of its performance- is
Thus, urbanism is defined not by theoretical
inadmissible to its own makers; their campaign to
precedents, but by an observational basis. For
implant new giants within the Grid therefore
instance, Koolhaas portrays Coney Island as the
proceeds in a climate of dissimulation, if not self-
place that projects the fantasies of what people want, imposed unconsciousness 3 .
and reflects on some spectacular contradictions
driven by forceful economic processes, mobility and
pleasure. His revolutionary finding is the generic
Manifesto for Manhattan. The Monacelli Press, New York, 1994.

87.
Koolhaas, Rem (1978). Delirious New York: A Retroactive
12
12
However, this apparent unconscious irrationality
indicates a way of creating a relationship between
needs to be restricted, therefore finding its space in
the grid and the building, thought processes and
the constraints of the urban block as the coherent
emotions, urbanism and architecture; although
domain of social life and as the spatial unit to be
these aspects seem to be all independent, lobotomy
conquered by the symbolic skyscraper. Koolhaas
asserts the urban affects of the building skin and
initially sees the block as the unit that gives legibility
hence the creation of the tension amongst them.
to the urban system, Manhattan turns into an

archipelago of blocks 4 . Paradoxically, although the
Bigness, the skyscraper and the culture of
block is suggested to be the first source of the
congestion still carry the logic of the traditional grid
generic within the grid, it also is the fundamental
but introduce several architectural alterations in form
basis on which he commences an architectural

reasoning, called the three urbanistic breakthroughs:
and scale, and a three-dimensional complexity that

5
was not present in the traditional fabric. These
1. multiplication of the section or the reproduction of
alterations translate into the spatial concepts of
the World
lobotomy and vertical schism -that stacks activities
2. the annexation of the Tower,
within the building section, allowing them to be
3. the block alone.
independent of each other and arbitrary. These
Number 2 and 3 represent a strong belief in the grid
concepts complement the existing grid, yet generate
as a flexible system that organizes and regulates,
a partitioned and sequential logic through the
since the city fabric quickly absorbs any
architectural elements of the building, in this case
transformation upon the rationality of the plan. These
displacing the architectural planes of the facade and
two points imply a self-contained universe within
the section. The grid thus gains complexity and
every dense building/block, thus causing both a
elevates the urban condition to a frontier in the sky,
break in the homogeneity and continuity of the
while maintaining a tight interaction with the
traditional patterns , while reinforcing the rigidity and
rectilinear ground plan.
why not, the monumentality of the three-dimensional

The architectural partitioned logic behind the
grid.
extrusion of the clear urban grid described in

The skin of the building then belongs to both the
Delirious New York provides lobotomized interiors,
interior programmatic fantasy and to the exteriors
which produce urban fragments with no external
symbolic presence. It proposes a logic of
urban ambitions. These buildings fill themselves with
disassociation that separates rather than
fantastic private meanings -by leaving intact the
communicates, and it is the physical faade
illusion of a traditional urban landscape outside 8
assuming the partition. Koolhaas utilises the idea of
In this sense, as Hal Foster describes in Bigness,
an architectural lobotomy to describe this annexed
architecture could pretend to stay intact while
relationship between interior and exterior. This
treating urbanism as delirious residue. 9 In contrast to

Colin Rowes ambiguous buildings, the new city

97.
5
Ibid. 82-108.
6
Ibid. 93.
7
Ibid. 100.
within the city would find its start and end in a fixed
8
Ibid. 104.
Foster, Hal (2001), Bigness, quoted in Ceulemans Nick, An

Architects Apology, London, AA H&U MAThesis 2006. 17.
13
13
underground. 10 Although the approach is still

solving the problem of envelope and stacking, new
resources are to be found in order to achieve the
complex set program. The new composition needs
to defy the imposed grid/street/block logic and
recognizes the existence of two different discourses
that need to be articulated: grid/object,
outside/inside, infrastructure/building. If the block is
the fundamental morphological unit of the city, the
street and the full conditions of its adjacencies now
challenge its absoluteness.
These reflections are reminiscent of Mario
Gandelsonas in Ex-urbanism in which his drawings
attempt to extract architectural implications of the
American city and the multiplicity of dynamic forces
operate within it. Through graphic media, the
rectilinear grid in Manhattan allows the city to exhibit
its irregularities; the grid becomes architectural at
the point where it fails to impose its order. 11 This is
clearly related to Colin Rowes discourse on grid
deformations and concern for the dominant idea of
Figures 5-6: (Top) The City of the Captive Globe, Koolhaas
intuitive approximation to the architecture of Manhattan, a
system of solitudes. (Bottom) The Rockettes on stage, Radio
City Music Hall, The metropolis of metaphoric models.
the dialectic of urban figure/ground relationships in

traditional urbanism. In this sense, the threedimensional exploration Koolhaas conveyed in
Delirious New York suggests an urbanism of interiors
architectural surface.
within the block treated as architectural object, yet

defying its logic when demonstrating its relativity.
However, Rowe supports compositional strategies
DISCOURSIVE SURFACES: THE BLOCK PARADOX
and the continuity between the object and the urban

field, which do not necessarily belong to an urban
What then happens to the urban block that is static
domain constrained by the grid.
and internal, when it must transcend its bounds? The

Rockefeller Centre departs from the strategies of
Although concepts of urban interiorism are not the
interiorism criticised above by negotiating its
focus of this paper, it is essential to highlight that a
intersections with adjacent blocks. The creator

architects dream achieves this by artificially placing
a mega-mountain built mass that connects the
blocks in section and provides a sensibility that can
only go where there is no grid, that is:
10

197.
11
Gandelsonas, Mario. 1999. ExUrbanism. Princeton

Architectural Press, New York. 51.
14
14
qualitative view of the grid itself reveals another
skyscraper) has petrified the city. 14 As Corbusier
alternative to the field of architectural urbanism. Greg
pointed out, the Manhattan Skyscraper is not yet
Lynn and his article Multiplicitous and Inorganic
modern because it responds to an architectural
Bodies aims to confront the nature of the interior of
accident rather than self-referencing itself within
architecture already thematized in Koolhaas work
architectural procedures.
through the erection of boundaries that establish
Perhaps modernisms most influential critique of the
difference between inside and outside. Lynn
American city and Manhattanism, is that its
describes its origin in the work of Vitruvius where an
architecture represents a mental operation. In this
internal proportional balance results from principles
sense, the concepts developed in architecture
of symmetry in architecture () However, the
belong to a different system of thought in which the
architectural orders of proportion and symmetry are
object is no longer related to a problem of historical
not simply already present within architecture. They
discourse but as a referent of mechanisms of
have been intentionally concealed so that questions
perception, mechanisms of the mind. 15 Hence, the
of interiority can be posed only within a closed
discipline becomes more abstract and begs for a
harmonic system.
12
Furthermore, Lynn states this
geometric system is in itself a whole according to
change in the spatial understanding of the Cartesian

planimetric grid.
Rowe. I would suggest the same reasoning should

be utilised when considering Eisenmans intensive
Alan Colquhoun established a critical dialogue with
discourse on Campo Marzio mentioned earlier. The
modernisms theoretical implications, such as in
building is rather the harmonic inside of architecture,
suggesting that Le Corbusier and modernisms five
and performs as an element of transition in the
points were the reinterpretation of architectural
completion of a whole.
concepts. Since one does not have to see just the

reversal of a pre-existing practice, but Le Corbusier
even assimilates the elements outside of architecture
LOBOTOMY REVISITED
into it and endows them with a new significance they

previously did not possess. 16 Although Colquhoun
In Allens Practice, Diana Agrest states that what Le
gives a mainly cultural and symbolic meaning to Le
Corbusier found to be a catastrophe in America was
Corbusiers reinterpretation of architectural
in fact, modernism operating on a different register:
concepts, he does pose a significant argument
the city could only be thought as a grid that provided
relevant to this dissertation, which is related to the
a matrix where all orders are possible.
13
What Le
inclusion of notions outside the field and what many
Corbusier finds shocking and curious about it was
theorist-architects would now call non-architecture;
that if the skyscraper is emblematic of a flexible and
then leading to an urbanism without architecture
multifaceted grid, then in the age of speed, it (the

14
LeCorbusier, 1964, La Ville Radieuse, Paris, Vincent Freal.

127.
15
Agrest, Diana, 2000, Representation as Articulation between
12
Lynn, Greg, December 1992, Multiplicitous and Inorganic

Bodies in Assemblage 19. 34-35.
13
Theory and Practice in Allen Stan, Practice. Amsterdam, G+B

Arts International. 165-166.
16
Colquhoun, Alan, 1981, Displacement of Architectural

Arts International. 172.
Concepts in Essays in Architectural Criticism. Cambridge,

Opposition Books. 51.
15
15
further developed in chapter three.

In discussing the organisational logics in the designs
of Le Corbusier, Colquhoun illustrates how Corbusier
utilises concepts of frontality and transparency that
are a consequence of a geometrical organization of
planes at right angles to the line of movement of the
observer. Thus, the faade performs as a critical
surface by initially defining a set of hierarchies and
orientation in which the building can be
approached. 17 Rather than the surface being merely
the edge condition of an internally generated
organization, Le Corbusier creates a diagram in
which ambiguous spaces are neither obviously
inside or outside, but establish a sense of frontality
that entails preliminary self-referencing methods
within the discipline.
Figure 7: Peter Eisenman. Diagrams on centroidal and linear

surface skin, Ville Savoye and Villa at Garches.
Peter Eisenman also conducted a formal analysis of

several seminal modern buildings through
diagrammatic studies. The term diagrammatic here,
refers to the act of establishing a logical interaction
arbitrary 18
between formal concepts and their being made

explicit. In the words of Eisenman, modernism
Eisenmans comparison between Ville Savoye and
establishes a formal systemic order in which the
Villa at Garches, which served also as a reference in
considerations of a logical and objective nature
Rowe and Slutzkys Transparency, proposes two
(that) can provide a conceptual, formal basis for any
diverse organizations of vertical planes. While Ville
architecture () It will be demonstrated that the
Savoye is an example of a tight homogeneous skin
inherent order derives from a geometric reference,
that creates a central massing of the volume and
from the properties of the form itself. The imposed
provides a sense of containment, Villa at Garches
order will evolve from a system that qualifies and
expresses a series of vertical surfaces that generate
orders the vocabularies of form within the design
a sequence in depth of space. By departing from the
process. It will be seen that systems provide a
traditional idea of a frontal faade, this sequence
discipline rather than a limit to this process () they
generates a directional linear development of the
can be elaborated to encompass infinite variations
volume. 19 Even though these projects have a similar
and complexities. Systems can only deny the
square plan and a cubic massing, it is in the planar

three-dimensional distribution of the facades that the
17
Colquhoun, Alan, 1981, Displacement of Architectural
Concepts in Essays in Architectural Criticism. Cambridge,

Opposition Books. 55-56.
18
Eisenman, Peter (1963), The Formal Basis of Modern
Architecture. Lars Muller Publishers, 2006.19-21.

19
Ibid. 75-81.
16
16
distinctions are rendered visible: a directional vector

breaks the container into a frontal sequence.
These diagrams discussed by Eisenman, apparent in
the work of Le Corbusier are easily comparable to
the organisational framework of the urban block. As
such, modernism has contributed to architectural
urbanism the idea of the block/grid that need not
constrain a particular kind of configuration 20 . Chapter
two will illustrate how the contemporary block is not
only a static entity but also a potentially double-sided
interface between the existence of a number of
ambiguous spaces. Furthermore, I will attempt to
demonstrate that a number of organizational
systems may be developed from the architectural
dissolution of the grid, displacing the notions of
lobotomy and schism through a rational positioning
of vertical planes. This verticality implies a world
outside inside architecture, following Agrest and her
analysis on representation, and shifts the traditional
modes of representation to the perception of
another space: from the surface of the plan to the
surface of the globe. 21
20
The Baroque and early Modern exemplars shown by Colin

Rowe and Fred Koetter in Collage City already envision the
creation of ambiguous spaces within the relative notion of urban
block. Collision and composite buildings represent notional ideas
that shift pre-established formal boundaries.
21
CHAPTER 2
The Critical Surface
Modernism utilised the architectural object to

organise space, thus providing no general principles
that order the city other than buildings. This fact
accounts for much contemporary criticism of
modernisms attempts to reinvent urbanism, where
the city is perceived as a counter-grid. If the ideals of
producing a tabula rasa prior to urban intervention
were valid, the void would be the structuring device
of the city and part of the rational operations of
architecture in order to deploy harmonic
organizational systems.
Greg Lynn notices in Rowe a new sensibility for
architectural design theory. When referring to Rowes
collage formalism, he posits a shift away from the
idea of continuity developed through proportional
harmonics in organisation towards questions of
discontinuity developed through a non-analytic
formalism of collage which resists any systematic
design approaches. 1 According to Lynn, Rowe
Lynn, Greg (1994). New Variations on the Rowe Complex,

first published in ANY 7/8. Folds, Bodies and Blobs, Collected
Essays. Bibliotheque Royale de Belgique, 1998. 199.
18
18
perceived that this message belongs to a precise
Eisenman states, the Siedlung brought a new
connection to the modernist form rather than its
attitude to the urban structure where the buildings
ideology. This idea of form is what will be
had no relationship to any existing urban pattern. The
emphasized in this chapter where we will investigate
buildings conformed themselves to an autonomous
the value of developing a formal analysis that does
organization given by an open neutral ground and
not to rely on fixed typologies, but rather advocates
the emergence of a new building type with no back
creating a set of relationships that provide
or front. In this sense, although the Siedlung solved
intervention in fractured urban environments and
concerns for health, light and views within the social
define a system of formal regulations that engender
housing problematic, Rebstock Park housing
greater complexity. We should note Lynns critique of
intended to re-evaluate the conceptual lines where
Rowes project as reductive, due to its inability to
the buildings were to be urbanistically placed, as in
depart from a strong typological reasoning within
the Siedlung they did not offer any hierarchy or
exact geometries for instance. Rowe was still in
spatial modulation rather than standardization,
search of a symbolic logic of continuity that would
repetition and totality. 3
cancel the differences and conflicts typology claims

against. 2
In Urban Forms, Panerai argues the Hausmannien

block as incapable of incorporating a variety of
This chapter will focus on the generality of the urban
functions within its interior, with the consequence of
context in which particular architectures can emerge.
some single-function blocks appearing in isolation. 4
In lieu of searching for repetitive and universal
Eisenmans critique of the rigid conceptualization of
principles as a potential source of order, we will
the existing perimeter block and the Siedlung is also
discuss how the faade represents an instance in the valid for the Parisian block, In each case, the two
process of architectural practice that has
terms figure-object and ground are both determinant
demonstrated a consistent logic and identity
and all-encompassing; they are thought to explain
precisely through differentiation. We must first define the totality of urbanism. But in most disciplines such
the context for this differentiation that lies not in the
all encompassing totalities have come into question;
simplification of architectural challenges, but in the
they are no longer thought to explain the true
exploration of the potential of the architectural
complexity of phenomena. This is certainly true of
surface to provide a shift away from typological
urbanism. 5 I would like to emphasise here that the
reasoning.
architecture Eisenman proposes in Rebstock Park

should no longer conceived as autonomous and
SECURING HIERARCHICAL DIFFERENTIATION
symbolic object, but rather as a pure physical matter

that begins to engage with the complexity of urban
Peter Eisenmans 1991 design for the Rebstock Park
contexts. In opposition to the singularity of
housing competition began with a study of the
modernist proposals discussed in chapter one, the
German Siedlung model of housing. The Siedlung
Siedlung already understands the concept of
emerged as a reaction against the closed perimeter

block and an outdated pattern of streets, which
turned city space into either boulevards or a
secondary or supportive system of circulation. As
2
Lynn, Greg (1994). New Variations on the Rowe Complex,

first published in ANY 7/8. Folds, Bodies and Blobs, Collected
Essays. Bibliotheque Royale de Belgique, 1998. 213-215.
Eisenman, Peter, 2007. Written into the Void. New Haven,

Yale University Press. 27-28.
4
Panerai, Philippe et al, 2004. Urban Forms: The Death and
Life of the Urban Block, Oxford, Architectural Press. 24-28.
5
Eisenman, Peter, 2007. Written into the Void. New Haven,
Yale University Press. 14.
19
19
The facade then becomes the surface where new

internal and external hierarchies merge and assumes
the critical role of securing differentiation in order to
re-establish a positive balance amongst the
produced sequential spaces.
If the street can no longer be understood as it was in
the beginnings of the 20th century and one is to ask
about the elements giving differentiation to the series
of units established by the standardization in
architecture, or to the new understanding of urban
block. In both cases, the architect is to engage
Figure 8: Rebstock Park housing competition: pure physical
matter.
innovative domains of movement and surfaces within

architectures interiority to deploy intensities and
strategic organizations within the urban. 6
repetition and physical production within

conceptuallines of movement and access points
that, although spatially loose and vague, displace the
positive or negative reading of the urban ground.
The economic demand for standardization finds a
compliant logic in the urban grid as it restores the
order and balance lost by the vast array of repetition
and homogeneity utilised in the assemblages of
architecture and its elements. Probably this is why
the Siedlung did not succeed nor found a place to
exist within the urban fabric. However, if we are to
think about a middle solution by bringing the new
type proposed by the Siedlung into the traditional
constrained urban block or to take the block to the
fractured loose periphery, new issues are to be
addressed. Since the urban block requires a breakup, the problem then becomes the hierarchical
differentiation in which the new front and back
Figures 9-10-11: (top to bottom) Images of the street in the
peripheral district of Hackney in London and composition-montage
in Tschumis Parc de la Villette according to the promenade
cinematique.
dichotomy is to be solved.
The street, for instance, has always been a positive
and legible structure of the grid. From the point of
view of the building with no back or front, the street is
not anymore the unique positive void that marks an
entry, it is also at the edge of being a mere
transportation line. If the urban block has broken up
as an entity, so is the street as its adjacent figure.
In chapter 2, Nick Ceulemans describes processes of urban

interiorism around the concept of the architectural quasi-object
and its blurred envelope. From a different, say projective starting
point, I would like to point out the new domains in which the
architect finds strategic traces to link his practice to the field of
urbanism, in this case through the displacement of the faade.
20
20
Similar to the Siedlung, the definitive boundary of the
rather than the mere extrusion of the plan. Such
street edge has dissolved, replaced by a multi-sided
buildings can only be read through movement and
field alone. For architecture to work without pre-
experience, Le Corbusiers promenade
existing boundaries, say the legible lines of the grid,
architecturale. This planimetric or sectional
the urban must become a field of relationships that
sequence is not static, but a trace that is an
addresses depth and surface rather than position
architectural projection relieved of an obligatory
and orientation alone. Such relationships should
materiality, rather than the delineation of its contour
build an urbanism that incorporates contradictions
that only distributes figure and ground. 8 In contrast
and differences collage, thus following Eisenmans
to how architecture and its translation into building is
opposition to the totality of phenomena prevalent
often understood traditionally, the trace offered a
within the discipline of urban design.
concept or strategy that modernism utilized as a

projective ordering and organizing element.
BLURRING BOUNDARIES
As I previously mentioned in the first Chapter,
Rather than the conceptualisation of an architecture
Transparency by Rowe and Slutzky advocated that a
of objects, I am advocating that architecture and
directional vector altered the architectural container
urbanism must focus on what these objects collide
into a frontal sequence. It can be seen how Le
and interface with. Opposed to the object polarity
Corbusiers design for the Carpenter Centre for the
amongst inside/outside, Modernism finds solutions
Visual Arts in Cambridge developed this by
that are more ambitious by the creation of
emphasising movement and embedding it within a
ambiguous spaces that could help to realize new
projective process of tracing probable geometries.
subjectivities and to refigure relations of private and
This becomes possible within a multiplicity of
public life in the metropolis. 7 The city of Paris, for
structural and programmatic possibilities given by
instance, was making use of the monumental block
the free-plan (one of LeCorbusiers five points).
to place public facilities that would not interfere with
Opposed to the architecture that attempted to
the straight privatization of the regular hausmannien
represent all spatial characteristics on a reduced
blocks themselves; or the public nature of the highly
extruded plane, Lynn suggests, LeCorbusier
interiorized post-modern shopping malls represents
revolutionized the architectural plane by arguing that
another example Thus the claim of theorists like
it supported only one moment of the contiguous
Rowe, and even Koolhaas, is the search for any
space that passed through it. 9
forms of hybridization fitting into the urban process.

Ambiguous spaces embody a formal contribution of
The concept of cinematic architecture Allen
modernism and a possibility to urban recombination.
illustrated through the Carpenter Centre describes

the sectional play the structure employed to create a
The architect and critic Stan Allen has discussed a
movement-image. This is reinforced through the
design methodology that enables the replacement of
curved envelope of the building, the ramps and the
the literal drawing trace by a conceptual regulating
fixed intervals of the diagonal brise-soleil. A series of
line or what Le Corbusier refers to as the
mobile sections tied to the passage of the observer
trace regulateur. This instrumental trace allowed

Corbusiers buildings to become a kind of writing
8
9
Allen, Stan, 2000. Practice, Amsterdam, G+B Arts

International. 56.
Ibid. 57-59.
Lynn, Greg (1993). Probable Geometries: The Architecture of
Writing in Bodies, first published in ANY 0. Folds, Bodies and

Blobs, Collected Essays. Bibliotheque Royale de Belgique,
1998. 88.
21
21
Figures 12-13-14: Front views of LeCorbusiers Carpenter Centre (top-left), Zaha Hadids Cardiff Opera House (top-right), and
sequence given by buildings rotation in Hadids Zolhoff 3 Media Park (bottom).
through space and governed by the fluid tectonics of
processes in which these architectures are delivered.
flat slab construction or ruled surfaces. ()The
Allen utilises the mentioned concept trace regulateur
capacity of the built work to initiate a whole series of
to insist that it opens up possibilities for
sensations beyond what is given as structure
differentiation as it functions between delineation,
movement, sound, light and boundless space, has to projection and construction 11 as activities achieved
be seen as one of Le Corbusiers most significant
inside the field. The trace is therefore immaterial but
accomplishments. To rephrase, this clearly
drives a material practice, though it allows for a free
represents an architecture of effects, evident but
interpretation of space out of fixed values.
immaterial.
10
This leads to the further development of
the random section and hold the possibility of yet

unrealized solutions in architecture. Architects like
URBANISM OF INTERFACES: GRAPHIC
Zaha Hadid experiment with series of irregular
INTELLIGENCE
geometries that would establish a range of possible

positions in order to achieve continuous systems
In the Harvard Carpenter Centre for the Visual Arts,
inside a complex programmatic and spatial
Le Corbusier disengages the building from a priori
configuration.
front and back reading by altering the horizontal

ground and eliminating any vertical faade of
However, there is a concern for the validity of the
reference. Lifting the building up and locating the

ramps in the first plane of movement within the site
10
Allen, Stan, 2000. Practice, Amsterdam, G+B Arts

International. 108-111.
11
Ibid. 64.
22
reinforce these surface modifications. We could say
22
car park, technical support, catering and facilities.
that the Carpenter Centre possesses an ambiguity

between interior and exterior, public and private
Moreover, I suggest the evolution of the modernist
space by absorbing the context into its interior and
trace regulateur in the free-plan scheme, which was
vice versa thus dismissing any clear boundaries that
treated as a punctual or linear intervention in relation
separate it from the surrounding campus.
to the ground (ramps and pilotis to render the

ground free), to the idea of complicating the
Conversely, by utilizing a similar and ambiguous set
thickened surface. If the contemporary critical block
of tools Zaha Hadids Cardiff Opera House project
is intending to find new alternatives for the
maximizes the horizontal datum by duplicating the
multiplication of complex programmes in the ground,
capacity of the ground floor. Like the ramp in the
to support secondary systems of circulation and to
Carpenter Centre, the design sets a conceptual
deploy an option for urban standardization, lack of
vector that is reinforced by a series of vertical
light and views, then the concept of alignment to the
surfaces, thus producing an urban interior through
ground displaces the horizontal and perpendicular
the surfaces transparencies and blankness. This
planes into new options for hierarchical systems.
vector is enhanced by a subtle inclined floor that
Zaha Hadids Cardiff Opera House does it by
both layers and maximizes the ground floor area. In
translating the idea of trace into the network or
consequence, a two-dimensional projection of the
interrelationship of surfaces with properties of
plan is broken into a multiplicity of grounds that
porosity, transparency and visual gradients because
would strategically achieve several layers of public
it necessarily entails a more plastic formal tension
spaces required by the complex program of such a
amongst ruptures and continuities within the whole.
public building. The genius of Hadids scheme is in

its ability to suppress any obstacles that this
In contrast to the design concepts of the existing
multiplication of space engenders by smoothly
static and rectilinear urban block, Lynn proposes the
warping surface and altering the building elevations
idea of light composition in order to deploy a
to eliminate gateways, narrow passages and fence
physical reasoning that transfers and stabilizes the
protections.
weight of mass perpendicular to the ground through

many multidirectional vectors. Through these vectors
These concepts suggest a reinterpretation of the
and the qualitative technique of their surfaces, a new
free-plan (already suggested in Le Corbusiers later
equalization is established within architectural and
work such as the Carpenter Centre) that opens up
urban organizations. 13
the ground to become an open possibility. Perhaps

as an erasure of the privileged status of me ground
The graphic space acquires a new dimension. For
that architecture before it so strived to reinforce,
instance, in Transparency, Rowe and Slutzky make
transforming it into but one datum among many.
12
strong emphasis in abstract modern art to explain
Hadids interpretation of the free-plan becomes the
transparency in drawing as a revolutionary field for
articulation and multiplication of the ground into a
construction and free creation in architecture. As
stratified space able to lodge any number of public
stated in the first chapter, through this graphic media
activities that had to be part of and intensify the
they were able to elucidate the nature of the
ground floor as a composite cultural building: foyers,
ambiguous space that links the garden and the

13
12
Kipnis, Jeffrey, 2006. Re-originating Diagrams in Eisenman,

Peter, Feints, Milano, Skira Editore. 194.
Lynn, Greg (1993). Probable Geometries: The Architecture of

Writing in Bodies. Folds, Bodies and Blobs, Collected Essays.
Bibliotheque Royale de Belgique, 1998. 100-103.
23
23
building in Garches, while achieving a clear frontal

orientation. Patrik Schumacher exposes in Digital
Hadid that the refusal to interpret everything
immediately as a spatial representation is a condition
for the full exploitation of the medium of drawing as a
medium of invention. 14 Following Rowe, Slutzky
and Hadids pictorial abstractions, transparency then
becomes an abstract instrument for design and more
importantly, a process that would slowly transfigure
into realizable spatial features that would represent a
set of options to articulate problems of large-scale
assemblages.
The Carpenter Centre for the Visual Arts and Hadids
Opera House in Cardiff both utilise the graphic
layering of vertical planes from the contextual first
plane of the site. This layering causes an effect of
stratification on the external space by deeply
extending it, thus creating a phenomenal
transparency that introduces a series of tensions in
relation to their respective exteriors. In Cardiff, Zaha
Hadid extends the concept to an urban scale by
producing an effect of sub-systems that work with
the completion and continuity of the whole. A
dialectic is initiated between architecture and
urbanism, one I suggest is the design
resourcefulness of the Cardiff scheme. Zaha Hadid
highlights in the El Croquis edition dedicated to her
work; one might talk of an ensemble of buildings
which ought to look like one project, even though it is
Figure 15: Cardiff Opera House, auditorium and groundcondition study models.
a series of buildings rather than a single building.

This is the challenge of articulating unity in difference
enclosing the building programme into a
and keeping the relation of part to whole
lobotomised interior within the block (established by
ambiguous.
15
a fixed normative for theatre buildings), a connection

between the inner organisation and the urban context
Intensified by the size and scale of its intervention,
is established. 16 Again, like in other Hadids early
the Cardiff Bay Opera House moves away from the
projects, this is done through a process where the
distinctions between form and content; rather than
fragmented transparencies and mere graphics

jump from their openness and uncertainty into the
14
Schumacher, Patrik, 2004. Digital Hadid: Landscapes in

Motion, Basel, Birkhauser. 17-18.
sequential specificity of the architectural surfaces.

Thus, the Cardiff Opera House demonstrates that
15
Mostafavi, Mohsen, December 2001, Landscape as Plan: a

conversation with Zaha Hadid in El Croquis Zaha Hadid 19832004. Vol. 52+73+103, Madrid, 2004. 42.
16
Ibid. 47-48.
24
24
Figures 16-17-18: Cardiff Opera House, fold-out external elevation (top), system of surfaces viewed from Pierhead Street (bottom-left),
and exploded aerial view (bottom-right).
transparency does not imply formal rigidity but a
the depth of the space. The apparent rotation of the
progression of programmes and transitions that even main theatre, the vortex apparent between the
allow for the distortion of space as they counterpoise
primary transparent and blank facades, the diagonal
linear progressions. In Zaha Hadids work, these
edge over Pierhead Street, and the skewed
distortions become a powerful compositional tool
alignment and opening of the first plane to shape the
that can be utilised in urban design. Out of formal or
existing Oval Piazza illustrate a sample of the
programmatic distinctions, they model new focal
aggressive formal features undertaken in the concept
points and new ways of orientation.
of transparency and navigation of space.
A number of the opera houses buildings were to be
Although the buildings open spaces do not belong
elevated, drawing visitors inside the block and into
to any standard organizational pattern or building
the everyday life of the theatre. This is achieved on
typology, the strategy is found in the careful
the second level with direct axis towards the main
production of programmatic space and the resulting
Oval Basin Piazza, causing a second inferior ground
collision of buildings and interstices. Primarily, the
that provides a multiplicity of edges towards the
project explores the fragmentation of a large
streets. Interestingly, neither the axis nor the edges
institutional function to retain interest while not
are imposed in a literal way, providing no symmetry breaking the urban environment. Similar to the
and in consequence no linearity, prominent figures,
solutions for the urbanism of difference introduced
hard edges or clearly bounded regions. Instead,
by Rowe, the ground floor of the Opera House
there is a progression of planes set within a
assumes this burden and intends to melt and relate
planimetric logic of gradients, only understandable in
the compact field of interstitial spaces with the urban
25
25
dissolving the perimeter block into a more complex

system of hierarchies. Integration is achieved at
several levels and scales via various modes of
spatial interlocking, by formulating soft transitions at
the boundaries between parts and by means of
morphological affiliation. 17
The graphic space of Zaha Hadid and the urban
application of transparency both have the advantage
th
Figure 19: full-scale drawing production in a mid-20 -century

aeroplane factory.
of not presupposing any formal privileges. In this

case, the formal basis of modernism turns useful as
it provides a diagrammatic reasoning that helps
context by articulating both together in what I refer to
clarify the significance of specific architectural
as a system of adjacencies or interfaces.
material such as a blank or frontal faade, or the

constitution of ambivalent spaces later applicable to
The ground plane of the Opera House improves
urbanism. If this graphic space gives concrete
further on the modernist free-ground by promoting
resolution to Rowe and Koetter discourse on the
an urbanism of interfaces. The planimetric
logic of relationships between fragments of collage 18 ,
organization still rationalizes the logic of movement
then Hadids main contribution resides again in the
by differentiating its implicated sequence and
graphic exploration that allows for a project made out

of a process.
17
Schumacher, Patrik, 2004. Digital Hadid: Landscapes in

Motion, Basel, Birkhauser. 30-31.
18
In Recombinant Urbanism, David Grahame Shane departs

from Collage City to describe a process of hybridization and
ambiguity in contemporary urban design after the totality of
modern urban master-planning, and the proliferation of gated
communities and closed-enclaves. In chapter 2 he establishes
Rowe and Koetters theories as pioneers for flexible models to
handle fragmented systems within the post-modern city. These
urban potentials and reasoning were followed, according to the
author, by young architects of the time such as Zaha Hadid and
Peter Eisenman.
CHAPTER 3
Urbanism:
An Architectural Field of
Reinvention
In the preceding chapters we discussed Rowes

fragmentary collage, a methodology that attempted
to blur traditional urban dialectics such as the
figure/ground, exterior/interior, mass/void, and even
street/block by an operative urbanism of interfaces,
similar to what Eisenman would describe as the
tension among equivalent figures or intensive
whole. With modernism, the idea of edge is then
softened by being given a dimension, which turns
out to be critical in Koolhaass Manhattan-urban-ism.
Later, as seen in Zaha Hadids work, this new
dimension expands the graphic space of architecture
through layers or gradients that further the notions of
transparency. In addition, transparency as an
instrument for design involves a set of relationships
within the strategy of layering surfaces, dealing with
depth of space and vectors of movement. Some of
these lines imply a potential displacement from
27
27
traditional formal translations into a differentiated
Models as the incorporeal. By abstracting the
space where a diagram of possible sequences is
physicality of architecture, the field itself touches the
created.
edge of the activity itself while opening up the

possibility of a new dimension of assemblage
This process of creation entail spatial methods
strategies and relations that provide coordination,
readily utilised in abstract modern art, filmmaking
organization and integration to any number of new or
and contemporary architectural practice. As Hadids
fractured urban environments. 2 These strategies
work involves the sequencing of space and therefore
need to follow the complex self-regulating orders
vectors, techniques such as frontality, neutrality,
already present in the city that are dismantled from
axiality, asymmetry and superposition, reveal some
the urban grid. The competition for Parc de la Villette
of the conceptual instruments architecture can utilise
in Paris exists within this paradigm.
to deliver new methods of orientation, and offer

alternatives to the classical notions of harmony, type
and orthogonal geometries.
TRASCENDANCE OF FIGURE-GROUND: NEW

PROJECTIONS
Considering the architectural exploration that has

taken place, I would like to highlight two ideas
A typological reasoning was rampant amongst
concerning the urban design process, further
urbanism and architecture until recently, due to its
explored in this final chapter. Firstly, the relationship
provision of a universal, figure-ground delineation
of these conceptual instruments and the urban grid
that addressed issues apparent in both fields. Aldo
which is partitioned and reversed in order to achieve
Rossi, for instance, links them within the idea of type
the possibility of similar systems of hierarchies. If this
as the notion that subverts any differentiation
were feasible, then the conceptual and experimental
amongst the architectural building and the urban
lines of investigation followed in this dissertation
building. 3 The universality sought within the type
would evidence a direction to intervene the urban
also implied the ideas of permanence and repetition,
from the architectural practice -since there are
suggesting that not only generic concepts have been
interconnected issues in both fields that find a
explored historically inside the practice of
common dialogue and common traces in the
architecture and urbanism, but also that there is a
projections done by architects and urbanists-. The
typical way of reasoning that sticks to a planimetric
possibility of a repetition of difference embedded in
picture of the building and the figure/ground.
the diagram (in the abstraction) would also make this

conceptual material become existing conditions in
1
This approach to architecture and urbanism puts into
architecture that allow for a differentiated,
consideration the diagram as a useful concept for
generative process each time. Current architectural
design if seen as a reformulated typology. By
and urban design practices demonstrate this
allowing for an architecture that can repeat things
alternative.
differently rather than through direct rerepresentation of the existing, and actualising the
The second and complementary issue deals with the
practice into a set of relationships crucial to the
challenge of contemporary design practice that
evolution of the building premises; relationships that
Sanford Kwinter identifies in The Genealogy of

2
1
Exploration of architectures interiority. Eisenman, Peter, 1998.

Diagram: An Original Scene of Writing, in ANY 23. New York.
27-29.
See Kwinter, Sanford, 1998. The Genealogy of Models: The
Hammer and the Song in ANY 23, New York. 59-62.

3
Rossi, Aldo, 1982. The Architecture of the City.Cambridge,
Oppositions Books. 65.
28
28
Hence, Hadids Cardiff Opera House is not the

rejection of type itself, but an investigation and
experimentation into urban configurations that
provoke self-evolution, such as how the building skin
and ground surface can be displaced and redrawn in
order to articulate the series and sequences that
make part of the implicit continuity that defines the
urban. Since the idea of type is not fixed and the
challenge of large integrated urban assemblages is
posed, the types morphological premises and its
capacity to constitute organizational fields can be
explored.
THE HORIZONTAL CONTINUUM

Taking a leap into the contemporary practice within
architectural urbanism, it is relevant to talk about the
Figure 20: Why must everywhere be like everywhere else?
project seen as a strategic process in which the plan

acts as a primary instrument for design. This view
does not entail an initial figure/ground reading or
are in a continuous process of disclosure.
perspective view of what the building or buildings

might become, but a kind of armature in which basis
On the other hand, urbanistically speaking the
the area or block is going to achieve an organization.
figure/ground projection provides a building with an
However, this organization involves many stages
understanding of continuation of the urban fabric and inside the exploration of type, meaning that the initial
contribution as a part in the completion of a whole,
armature would affect the architectural material as it
rather than owning a particular selfish significance.
performs in time as a catalyst of the resulting ground
Perhaps for this reason Alan Colquhoun, when
surface, lower ground, first floor, faade rotations,
considering housing as a critical aspect in the
degrees of openness and enclosure, while adding
contemporary city in his essay The Superblock,
stability to the programme. In a way, similar to the
focuses on a setback in the issue of size by which
conditions established for Parc de la Villette
certain non-significant buildings seem to loosen and
competition, the problem was less of design in terms
fracture the proximity embedded in traditional urban
of styling identity, representation, or formal
tissues. If we assume size is an imminent and
composition, and much more of strategic
critical aspect of contemporary urban debates, then
organization.
the graphic space reappears as the media through

which we see the potential of large-scale urban areas
and actualise the practice for their development.
Colquhoun, Alan, 1981, The Superblock in Essays in

Architectural Criticism. Cambridge, Opposition Books.
29
29
S333 Architecture+Urbanism and SauerBruch

Hutton Architects are two European leading
architectural offices I have had the opportunity to
explore as part of my recent MA programme in the
Architectural Association. Inside their projects Schots
1 & 2 in the Netherlands and the Federal
Environmental Agency in Germany, many of the
questions stated in this document have arisen. The
transcendence they have given to the architectural
surface out of mere planimetric extrusion to provide a
sectional space or mere figure/ground projections
have let them abstract the plan in a manner that does
not lead to any fixed architecture. Moreover, they
have seen in these plans that otherness of
architecture or a possibility that rethinks not only the
specific built forms but, as a condition for doing so, it
also rethinks the articulation of its practice of
architecture (just as Koolhaas envisioned a few
decades earlier in S, M, L, XL and Bigness by
jumping into new schemes and sub-divisions inside
OMAs practice). 5 If architecture finds a way to
become something other or something new, I dare
say it is a strategy for urbanism.
As it mediates between two quite diverse old city
fabrics there is a clear need for Schots 1 & 2 to filter
these differences and provide new kinds of services
that would have been difficult to achieve in the
existing fabric. By virtue of its porosity and the
elimination of a figure-ground differentiation, the
Figures 21-22-23: Drawings (top to bottom). Armatures

projected for the Schots and Federal Environmental Agency,
public and collective space surfaces in the Schots, and
sectional sequence of the deep blocks and relation to the
building typology (Schots 1 & 2, Federal Environmental Agency
and Hackney in London departing from Mare St following
random sections towards the west).
Schots manage to develop a superposition of levels

that brings to the ground a considerable number of
the possibility of two high-quality residential collective
programs and types that would stabilize the
spaces.
performance of the streets, courtyards and collective

spaces proposed while securing the first floor for
This diagram stratifies and interweaves distinct
residential use. Moreover, it clearly states a hierarchy
housing types to create a sense of proximity and a
of activities that drives the attention into the block
tissue of access points. Although in the Schots the
providing good accessibility, a vibrant commercial
facades do not represent themselves the penetrable
street that reacts diversely to conditions of
points of the complex, their planimetric and sectional
compactness, privacy and intensification, besides
shifts as architectural surfaces serve to indicate the

general organization of the project. By alternating the
Speaks, Michael (1994) about S, M, L, XL publication in ANY 9,

New York. 62.
seriality of the facades and making them

asymmetrical in their construction, the fact that they
30
30
Figures 24-25: Federal Environmental Agency, formal arrangement of the building type, and MVRDV Housing Silo in
Amsterdam.
mirror each other generates an urban image in which
issues dealing directly with depth of space by
axiality is dominant. The diagonal is smoothly used
establishing clear transitions and the mediation of
as an element of demarcation and densification thus
skin-surfaces from front to rear.
revealing the presence of the main interior axis and

controlling the entry point to the main residential
Both projects generate a series of mini-gridded
courtyard. An axonometric view inextricably links the
systems that recreate a horizontal reference to
planimetric and sectional relationships and, opposed produce an autonomous organization. By bending
to the unity of the Agency in Dessau, the space
this grid, the Federal Environmental Agency finds a
depth is treated more as an articulated assemblage
way to define a formal language that alters the
of parts that integrates a diversity of formal solutions
orthogonal transparencies thus articulating its size
in regard to residential environments; it dissolves any and not breaking the required continuity of a large
fixed volumes and blurs the boundaries between
building. Its axiality is given by the sequence of these
inside and outside.
transparencies, whereas in the Schots it is

coordinated by a clear hierarchy of movement
The Federal Environmental Agency in Dessau
vectors articulated within asymmetric, rotated but
performs a bit differently as it makes use of the
mirrored vertical planes.
contraction and expansion of two curved lines to

differentiate several interior collective spaces while
maintaining its unity. The concept of bridge-corridors
is utilized to connect both lines and the courtyards
while reasserting the programmatic differentiation
between them. The distinction between the main
public space and the sequence of courtyards is
achieved through the union and bending of the
curved lines and the lift up of the second floor thus
creating a very clear entry point. An axonometric
view and sectional sequence help clarify these
Figure 26: Cardiff Opera house, the composite plan.
31
31
If Raymond Hoods strategy for a similar organization

in Rockefeller Center defied the logic of the existing
grid then it fits in this chapter once more to state the
plan is of primary importance. In other words, he
pleas for an architecture which is not obsessed with
form, but which conceives structures in previously
nonexistent juxtapositions and catalyzing
combinations on the surface. 6 The talented
architect knew the plan was the regulatory device,
insufficient to complete any compositional
experiment but unavoidable.
NON-ARCHITECTURE: PREDICAMENT OF
ARCHITECTS
Another conceptual reflection is also present in
Koolhaas and Tschumis competition for Parc de la
Villette where the contextual matrix of street,
neighbourhood, block and unit is replaced by an
abstract organization given by superimpositions.
The problem was again less of design and much
more of strategic organization of a field condition,
since the surface had to be equipped and staged in
such a way as to both anticipate and accommodate
any number of changing programs.
OMA responded with the drawn superposition of four
strategic layers for organizing different parts of the
Figures 27-28-29: Superimpositions in Reiser+Umemotos West

Side competition entry, Tschumis Parc de la Villette, and
Koolhaass Melun Snart: fields of what if?
program: the strips of varying synthetic and natural

surfaces, the confetti-grid of large and small
service points and kiosks, the various circulation
described their project as a landscape of
paths, and the large objects, such as the linear
instruments, where the quality would derive from the
and round forests. The designers in OMA redefined
uses, juxtapositions, and adjacency of alternating
the relation of figure and ground by generating a
programs over time.
system of effects and points of intensity that

emerged from the field itself. It is not surprising they
6
Bernard Tschumi projected the winning award and

built project with a similar process of random
Rem Koolhaas interprets Hoods statement on the significance
of the plan and includes it as part of the description of the ideal

architect under the sub-chapter The Talents of Raymond Hood
in Delirious New York: A Retroactive Manifesto for Manhattan.
The Monacelli Press, New York, 1994. 161-177.
7
Koolhaas, Rem, 1991. S, M, L, XL, New York, Princeton
Architectural Press. 894-939.
juxtaposition: he aimed to prove that it was possible

to construct a complex architectural organization
without resorting to traditional rules of composition,
hierarchy and order. At the edge of the architectural
activity concepts like disintegration, montage, non-
32
32
cause-and-effect relationships and plurality were
culminating in the translation of architecture from
utilized to deploy an architecture that means
object to field, then questions of time and production
nothing or that is just pure trace . The critique of
in architecture require a second thought. Since the
risking the physical nature of architecture is not valid
notion of field engages larger and more complex
anymore considering the mechanisms of
scales then it has to be addressed by architecture in
architectural production: to call these traces is to
conceptual modes that follow certain principles for
insist that concepts are produced in and through the
design. With it, I do not intend to prescribe design
materials and procedures of architecture itself, and
but explain the paradox amongst abstraction and
not grafted onto them from outside.
materiality. For instance, the lines projected by

Tschumi give up some measure of control in terms of
The processes involved in the construction of this
their conceptual openness: as part of urbanism, they
urban field are comparable to a narrative that
do not intend to fix but assemble possible futures by
organizes a continuous sequence of spatial
utilizing a gridded notational field that can be
situations in time. Rather than a fixed design, they
decoded just to proof it articulates a specific domain,
formulated an urbanism that produced a system of
in this case the navigation through an urban park. As
dynamic differences, of superimposed autonomous
part of architecture, these lines stay as instruments to
systems that could co-exist within a non-hierarchical,
produce effects, and then they become physical
non-formalist structure. In Tschumis case rejecting
surfaces of interaction (Villa at Garches, Carpenter
the totalizing synthesis of objective constraints
Centre for the Visual Arts, Cardiff Opera House, The
evident in the majority of large-scale projects () the
Schots and the Federal Environmental Agency
park became architecture against itself: a dis-
served to this purpose). The notion of axiality, though
10
integration. This diagrammatic framework
reductive as an example in itself, helps clarify the
represents architecture analogous to the city by
existence of a single trace with the potential to
recognizing the least architectural, the
interconnect both fields. The paradox stands when
incompleteness and fuzziness of the diagram itself. It the recombination of traces opens a whole range of
develops flexible systems that converge rather than
urban potentials opposed to the limitations of
flatten the differences and allow for quantitative
architecture, perhaps pulling out the continuous
changes without loss of organizational structure.
repositioning of its material and conceptual interiority.
If this is a symptom of architectural urbanism
Tschumi, Bernard, 1999. Architecture and Disjunction.

Cambridge, The MIT Press, Cambridge. 198-203.
9
When talking about Eisenman in Trace Elements, Stan Allen

refers to the trace as an indexical sign that adds a meaningful
imprint to the affected object. Although he presents the index as
the root of a process that explains retrospectively the existence
of a building from the point of view of design, he also accepts the
limitation by stating the trace as a strategic point in which the
architect captures any condition or formal dynamic. Allen, Stan,
2006. Trace Elements in Tracing Eisenman, Davidson,
Cynthia (ed.), London, Thames and Hudson. 49-65, and Plotting
Traces: On Process in Practice, 2000, Amsterdam, G+B Arts
International. 55-64.
10
Tschumi, Bernard, 1999. Architecture and Disjunction.
Cambridge, The MIT Press, Cambridge. 198.
From Object to Field:

Experimental Domains
Architectural work by its nature endorses the value of the
physical over the virtual. Yet if understood simply as a form
of resistance over the virtual, architecture risks its own
marginalization.
STAN ALLEN, 1999.
34
34
Architecture fundamentally counts with
The diagram is the invisible media that evolves and
representation and form, and we have seen
permits this process of creation within the visible. 3
representation and form result from a displacement.
Something comes into architecture by being graphic
These displacements along history instigate an
first, finding the architect himself controlling a
experimental and evolutionary approach to new
process rather than a design. Opposed to the whole
contexts. For instance, in modernism painting
truth sought by modernism there is no philosophical
becomes a tool for architectural production as it
need for insights or avant-gardes because the
performs as the conceptual mode of representation
intelligence of architecture resides in its plurality for
for an architecture that did not yet exist. The
production: modelling, speculating, and thinking by
perception of image then becomes part of a different
doing. It is the process that allows the form an
system of thought that relates to the object as a
opportunity to manifest itself. 4
mental operation. 1
If the described spatial mechanisms and their
The mental construct architecture has come to be
displacements through drawing allow the codes of
since modernism and that has been inherited by
one system to be switched to another, then the
some contemporary architects is precisely the
diagram does mediate and potentialise new ways of
mechanism where it meets the self-regulating orders
spatial intervention by being capable to transpose
of the city. The extent of these forces is only
and produce concepts, which (the concept) turns
graspable in a diagrammatic practice because it
here into a creative in-forming act. 5 With it, my mind
represents a strategy that is open in time as it
opened up towards some new alternatives of
recognizes the city is not given all at once.
convergence with external fields that are certainly not

explored.
Is this not what the grid implicitly does? Or the

media Grahame Shane misses when exploring the
Finally, I hope to have sharpened the platform to
architectural reasoning all the way from Rowe to
some key spatial methodologies that already carry a
Hadid?
transformation within the practice: by guiding the

displacements or alterations mentioned earlier, these
From the abstraction of the grid to the definition of a
methodologies construct a domain of knowledge rich
strategy, there is a graphic space that plays with the
enough to reposition a body of work within spatial
premises of the type as the agencies that shape any
design practices and overcome the existing
particular appearance. The facade continuously
disparities between architecture and urbanism. For
reconfigures the generic and creative design notions
this reason, it was necessary to examine the
that fit both fields of study by opening a series of
historical devices in which these disciplines have
urban potentials; Zaha Hadids representational
shaped their own understanding.
procedures are self-explanatory in this sense.

3
See Sanford Kwinter and architecture (as an information

science) implies a creation that posits the interaction of invisible
and visible systems. ANY 23, The Genealogy of Models: The
Hammer and the Song in ANY 23, New York. 59-62.
4

2
See Note 18 in Chapter 2.
Speaks, Michael, 2006, speaking of Versioning: Evolutionary

Techniques in Architecture, Architectural Design, Vol. 72, in his
AA Lecture Liars, Bullshitters, Intelligencers.
5
Ingeborg Rocker quoting Gernot Bauer, September 2002,

Architecture as Brand Communication in Versioning,
Architectural Design Vol.72. 17.
35
35
Yet, the core specificities of the architectural practice

remain and in so, constitute the arena that initiated
this thesis. The physical reality architecture intends to
represent, codify or create is conceptualized through
its critical surfaces, and refers to an operation given
by the architect in which the trace carries the rational
storyline. The critical surfaces thus force the architect
to view cities not through buildings, but through the
set of relations they establish among each other.
Notes & Bibliography

Allen, Stan, 1999, Contextual Tactics in Points+Lines: Diagrams and Projects for the City, New York,
Princeton Architectural Press.
_ _ _ _____ _ _ _2000. Practice, Amsterdam, G+B Arts International.
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ 2006. Trace Elements in Tracing Eisenman, Davidson, Cynthia (ed.), London, Thames
and Hudson.
Agrest, Diana, 2000, Representation as Articulation between Theory and Practice in Allen Stan, Practice.
Amsterdam, G+B Arts International
Barth, Lawrence, 2007, The Complication of Type, for Diploma Unit 6, London, Architectural Association.
Ceulemans, Nick, An Architects Apology, London, AA H&U MAThesis 2006.
Colquhoun, Alan, 1981, Displacement of Architectural Concepts in Essays in Architectural Criticism.
Cambridge, Opposition Books.
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ 1981, The Superblock in Essays in Architectural Criticism. Cambridge, Opposition Books.
Corner, James, 1999, Programming the Urban Surface in Recovering Landscape, New York, Princeton
Architectural Press.
Eisenman, Peter. 1997. Critical Architecture in a Geopolitical World in GSAPP, Columbia Documents of
Architecture and Theory, Vol. 6.
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ 1998. Diagram: An Original Scene of Writing, in ANY 23. New York.
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ 2006, The Formal Basis of Modern Architecture. Lars Muller Publishers.
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ 2006. Feints, Milano, Skira Editore.
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ 2007. Written into the Void. New Haven, Yale University Press.
El Croquis Zaha Hadid 1983-2004, December 2001. Vol. 52+73+103, Madrid, 2004.
Evans, Robin, 1997, Translations from Drawing to Building and Other Essays, London, AA Documents 2,
Architectural Association.
Ellis, William. 1998. 'Type and Context in Urbanism: Colin Rowes Contextualism in K.M. Hays (ed.)
37
37
Oppositions Reader.
Gandelsonas, Mario. 1999. ExUrbanism. Princeton Architectural Press, New York.
Gregory, Paola. New Scapes,Territories of Complexity. Birkhauser. Basel. 2003.
Hadid, Zaha, 1998, The Complete Buildings and Projects, London, Thames & Hudson.
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ 2001, Urban Architecture, Berlin, Aedes.
Hays, Michael, 1999, Points of Influence and Lines of Development, in Points+Lines: Diagrams and
Projects for the City, New York, Princeton Architectural Press.
Heynen, Hilde, 1999, Architecture and Modernity, Cambridge, The MIT Press.
Kipnis, Jeffrey, 2006. Re-originating Diagrams in Eisenman, Peter, Feints, Milano, Skira Editore.
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ 2004, Towards a New Architecture in Folding in Architecture, Architectural Design,
London, John Wiley & Sons.
Koolhaas, Rem, 1991, S, M, L, XL, New York, Princeton Architectural Press.
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ 1994, Delirious New York: A Retroactive Manifesto for Manhattan. New York, The Monacelli
Press.
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ 1997, Urban Operations in GSAPP, Columbia Documents of Architecture and Theory, Vol.
3.
Kwinter, Sanford, 1998. The Genealogy of Models: The Hammer and the Song in ANY 23, New York.
LeCorbusier, 1964, La Ville Radieuse, Paris, Vincent Freal.
Lynn, Greg, December 1992, Multiplicitous and Inorganic Bodies in Assemblage 19.
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ 1998, New Variations on the Rowe Complex, first published in ANY 7/8. Folds, Bodies and
Blobs, Collected Essays. Bibliotheque Royale de Belgique.
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ 1998, Probable Geometries: The Architecture of Writing in Bodies, first published in ANY 0.
Folds, Bodies and Blobs, Collected Essays. Bibliotheque Royale de Belgique.
Panerai, Philippe et al, 2004. Urban Forms: The Death and Life of the Urban Block, Oxford, Architectural
Press.
Reiser+Umemoto, 2006, Atlas of Novel Tectonics, New York, Princeton Architectural Press.
Rossi, Aldo, 1982. The Architecture of the City.Cambridge, Oppositions Books.
Rowe, Colin / Koetter, Fred, 1978. Collage City, Cambridge, The MIT Press.
Rowe, Colin / Slutzky, Robert, 1997, Transparency, Basel, Bikhauser.
Shane, Grahame, 2005. Recombinant Urbanism, London, John Wiley & Sons Ltd.
Schumacher, Patrik, 2004. Digital Hadid: Landscapes in Motion, Basel, Birkhauser.
Speaks, Michael, 2006, Architectural Association Lecture Liars, Bullshitters, Intelligencers.
Tschumi, Bernard, 1999. Architecture and Disjunction. Cambridge, The MIT Press, Cambridge.
Versioning, September 2002, Architectural Design Vol.72.
38
Image Credits
Figure 1: Allen, Stan experimental design on Piranesis Campo Marzio in Points+Lines: Diagrams and
Projects for the City, New York, Princeton Architectural Press. 6.
Figure 2: Colin Rowe Manhattan figure/ground fragment in 'Type and Context in Urbanism: Colin Rowes
Contextualism in K.M. Hays (ed.) Oppositions Reader. 1998. 237.
Figures 3-4: Colin Rowe and Peter Eisenman North Bronx Project in 'Type and Context in Urbanism: Colin
Rowes Contextualism in K.M. Hays (ed.) Oppositions Reader. 1998. 239.
Figure 5: Koolhaas, Rem, The City of the Captive Globe in Delirious New York: A Retroactive Manifesto for
Manhattan. New York, The Monacelli Press. 1994. 295.
Figure 6: The New York Rockettes in Porphyrios, Demetrios, Pandoras Box: An Essay on Metropolitan
Portraits, Architectural Design, Vol. 47. 1977.
Figure 7: Eisenman, Peter, Diagrams on Ville Savoye and Villa at Garches skin-surfaces in The Formal Basis
of Modern Architecture. Lars Muller Publishers. 2006. 74, 80.
Figure 8: Eisenman, Peter, Rebstock Housing Park competition model in Written into the Void. New Haven,
Yale University Press. 2007. 16.
Figure 9-10: Pictures taken by Lina Fawcett in Hackney, London.
Figure 11: Tschumi, Bernard, Parc de la Villette competition entry in Architecture and Disjunction.
Cambridge, The MIT Press, Cambridge. 1999. 202.
Figure 12: Rosenthal, Steven, LeCorbusiers Carpenter Centre for the Visual Arts in Allen, Stan, 2000.
Practice, Amsterdam, G+B Arts International. 105.
Figure 13-14: Hadid, Zaha, El Croquis Zaha Hadid 1983-2004, December 2001. Vol. 52+73+103, Madrid.
Figure 15: Hadid, Zaha, 1998, The Complete Buildings and Projects, London, Thames & Hudson. 121.
39
39
Figure 16-17-18: Hadid, Zaha, El Croquis Zaha Hadid 1983-2004, December 2001. Vol. 52+73+103,
Madrid.
Figure 19: Versioning, September 2002, Architectural Design Vol.72. 9.
Figure 20: Reiser+Umemoto, 2006, Atlas of Novel Tectonics, New York, Princeton Architectural Press. 246.
Figure 21-22-23-24: Drawings by Lina Fawcett, Urban Workshop, AA Housing & Urbanism, 2006-2007.
Figure 25: MVRDV Housing Silo in Amsterdam, El Croquis MVRDV, 1997, Vol. 86, Madrid. 410.
Figure 26: Hadid, Zaha, Cardiff Opera House in El Croquis Zaha Hadid 1983-2004, December 2001. Vol.
52+73+103, Madrid.
Figure 27: Reiser+Umemoto, West Side competition entry in Atlas of Novel Tectonics, New York, Princeton
Architectural Press. 2006. 61.
Figure 28: Tschumi, Bernard, Parc de la Villette competition entry in Architecture and Disjunction.
Cambridge, The MIT Press, Cambridge. 1999. 190.
Figure 29: Koolhaas, Rem, Melun Senart project in Urban Operations in GSAPP, Columbia Documents of
Architecture and Theory, Vol. 3. 1997. 32.

Fields of DeFormation: TRACING CRITICAL BOUNDARIES IN ARCHITECTURAL PRACTICE

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Beneficiario COLFUTURO 2006

This thesis is the result of the intensive work and

Beneficiario COLFUTURO 2006

THE CRITICAL SURFACE

URBANISM: AN ARCHITECTURAL FIELD OF REINVENTION

FROM OBJECT TO FIELD: EXPERIMENTAL DOMAINS

Beneficiario COLFUTURO 2006

The landscape of the city is not merely the site where

Beneficiario COLFUTURO 2006

Beneficiario COLFUTURO 2006

The impressive image of Campo Marzio as a prelude

them in new terms utilizing few notions and examples

to Rem Koolhaass article What ever Happened to

that have proven as techniques of formal stability

Urbanism begs the question if cities can be made

within architecture, as opposed to the diffuse and

anymore. If architecture, just like any other science,

complex transformational processes of the city.

has succeeded the natural impulse of evolution and

Paradoxically, it is inside architecture where diffuse

demonstrated its ever-changing creative power,

non-static surfaces of composition open the field to

urbanism has challenged its operationality by

creative processes, since they are by nature given to

revealing a logic that surpasses any established

concepts within the field. In contradiction, although

As a result, two conceptual lines of investigation

winning the spatial battle, there is a growing demand

interconnect. The first attempts to demonstrate a

for an architecture that integrates into the existing

gradual repositioning of the field of architecture and

its relationship to urbanism through the theoretical

New architectural urbanisms today are understood

second, overlapped and supported by the first one,

by weakening public life, changing the public nature

unfolds the regulating orders of the grid the plan-

of the streets and modifying the human scale.

and the formal experimentation of architecture

Furthermore, the emergent post-urban life appears

through the faade until being able to envision

unmanageable due to conditions never diagnosed

strategies to address the urban. Surprisingly, the

before: edge cities, peripheries, nodality and

architect owns the diagrammatic media that leads

disarticulation seem problematic to conceptualize.

the strategy in a time in which he finds himself at the

How can architecture perceive this change, these

The sequence driven along the chapters starts by

ways? What is it about the challenge of architecture

recognising the architectural reasoning and

capable to deploy a logic that drives urban design

representational logic behind the reading of cities. It

with a certain direction?

emphasises in Modernism as the re-thinking of

Architecture can expand its potential design

architecture thus breaking its pre-established

approaches through the investigation of its own

boundaries. Chapter two relates this rupture into the

rationality in order to find new sources that intersect

new contemporary synthesis and displaces the

that present a developed graphic intelligence within

provides a positive understanding of the street-grid