New New Babylon

Scenes from a digital detournement of Constant's New Babylon: A documentary on the encounters of several drifters, as the remains of their paralyzed memories, as much as one can remember in such rapidly and constantly changing environment, providing a glimpse of a new future world; a new life of endless drifts and endless desires, realized by its habitants.

Credits:
Recorded live from New New Babylon by Ali Dur
Architecture & Video by Ali Dur
Music by Paul D. Miller aka Dj Spooky that Subliminal Kid
Research by Ali Dur & McKenzie Wark
Produced by Ali Dur & McKenzie Wark
Words by Constant Nieuwenhuys

New York, 2011

New New Babylon from ali dur on Vimeo.

Mass Motion Visualized

(MassMotion is the next generation of advanced software for simulating pedestrians and analyzing crowds. MassMotion is the only tool that can predict the movement of tens of thousands of individual personalities in a complex 3D environment.

It's been used in the design of multi-billion dollar projects like airports, stadiums and office towers because it saves time and money like no other software can.)

Created by Oasys Software Channel

We are going to look at some of the visualization tools that help infrastructure project take shapes. The idea is that data could be "materialized" as part of the architectural design strategy.

Bernard Tschumi and Infrastructure

(video produced for Architectural Record by Bryant Rousseau, McGraw-Hill Construction's digital media editorial director)

Grand Central was way ahead of its time in its use of a double-envelope design. Tschumi takes us on a very rare visit inside the walls--to a glass catwalk that has inspired his own work. Tschumi also tells us that he admires how Grand Central functions both as a monument--and as a living piece of architecture--the "archetype of the city building... the epitome of urbanity." And lessons for today's architects? The building serves as a prime lesson, says Tschumi, that architecture is "not only about what it looks like, but really about what it does."

(video produced for Architectural Record by Bryant Rousseau, McGraw-Hill Construction's digital media editorial director)

Watch as Tschumi takes us on a tour of this turn-of-the-last-century bridge, whose "hypnotic repetition" of forms and "relentless scale" make it an "infrastructure cathedral". His favorite detail? How the juxtaposition of scales between major infrstructure and everyday architecture coexist beautifully--just as they did in Roman times. Tschumi also uses the bridge, which makes an extraordinary urban space, as an example of why it's often unnecessary to make any distinction between engineering and architectural projects.

"Architecture is the materialization of a concept."

Why Grand Central Works

Grand Central Terminal. Why does it work so well? Listen to Vishaan tell it like it is. First, he reflects on some design details of the spectacular Main Concourse. Next, he wanders down Park Avenue and shares some of the history of how private sector competition led to a major public amenity and transformed the entire metropolitan region. Then he explores the terminal’s tentacular North-end Access and reflects further on how the terminal has transformed urban and regional economies. Finally, as he delves into the food court, he ponders lessons to be learned from Grand Central that could be applied to Moynihan Station.

Main Concourse

Lesson #1: Design matters. Beyond the obvious grandeur of its public spaces, Grand Central relies on a sophisticated layering of uses that has influenced the design of airports and train stations around the world.

Park Avenue and Midtown East

Lesson #2: The building is only part of a larger exercise in citymaking. Grand Central catalyzed the development of some of the most valuable real estate in the world.
“It’s more than just the building. It’s about how hundreds of thousands of people move around a region.”

North-end Access

Lesson #3: Plan for phases. Grand Central wasn’t built in a day, and part of what makes it work can be found in the less than glamorous network of pedestrian access passageways.
"All great train stations… have tentacles that reach out into the city. There’s not just a front door."

Lessons for Moynihan Station

Lesson #4: Think big. If we could make a commuter terminal this nice – and one that’s had such wide-ranging urban and metropolitan ramifications – imagine what we could do with a major inter-city regional rail hub?
"Train stations still have an openness about them. … as hubs [they] speak to the nature of the city that’s around them."

Click UrbanOmnibus to listen to 3 audio uploads of insightful reflections on a successful train station.

References for the Benchmark Projects

There are comprehensive introductions, some analysis and limited amount of illustrations in the following 2 books for these 5 stations:

• Hauptbahnhof - Lehrter Bahnhof , Berlin
• Santa Justa Train Station, Seville
• Arnhem Central Station, Arnhem
• Oslo Central Station, Oslo
• Amsterdam Bijlmer ArenA, Bijlmermeer

2 Books:

• Alessia Ferrarini (2004): Railway Staions, from the gare de l'est to penn station.
• Chris van Uffelen (2010): Stations.

Kelly Shannon + Marcel Smets's: The Landscape of Contemporary Infrastructure (2010) is a good source to not only look at stations (very limited illustrations though) but to generate useful "frames" for analysis.

You can find Tschumi's station project in 2 phases from his Event Cities, vol-2 and Vol-4. Ingenhoven's Stuttgart Main Station is well published and make sure you focus on the main design features and its attitude toward urbanism and ecological concerns. Calatrava is an architect popular among general public so you want to make sure that the materials you've selected for benchmark study are not mere the repetition of fashionable "sound bites". There is a short essay by Kenneth Frampton assessing this early transportation work of Calatrava's under rather positive light. It is a must for exercise 1: "Calatrava at Stadelhofen", A+U, No.8 (251), August 1991. Project introduction with a few good context dwgs is includede in the same issue.

Be sure to look for monographs and collected works of each architects too. You want your analysis to be rich, thorough and carried by rigorous scrutinization: quality analysis + essential dwgs + essential dwgs!!

For example, Antonio Cruz and Antonio Oritz have their works published in quite a few beautifully produced books with inspiring essays written by other Spanish architects. You want to get that special quality of Spanish urbanism.

Do look into architect's office website as well as research for reputable sources via Avery Index to Architectural Periodicals database (you can access it via our main library's Sirius).

As to the 4 architectural movements:

1) Archigram (England) + The Situationist International and Constant’s New Babylon: plenty of books out there with lots of dwgs and research findings.
2) Drosscape (Alan Berger) + Periphery as Project (Manuel de Solà-Morales): I have given you one article by Berger and you can find a copy of Drosscape in our main library. The latter article is from Manuel de Solà-Morales's recent book: A Matter of Things (2008). Our library has a copy and it is available so you better be fast...
3) Megastructure of the 60s & 70s: you need to check out Reyner Banham’s Megastructure:Urban Futures of the Recent Past (1976). Go over it and organize the key ideas + works. Is this notion of a megastructure in architecture still relevant in nowaday? How does it compare with the large scale urban project fueled by infrastructural desing?
4) Japanese Metabolism Group: lots of research out there. make sure you get your hands on the A+U & JA special issues around that period, early 60s. They are just amazing, hand drawn futuristic stuffs.. Pay attention to Kenzo Tange's Tokyo Plan and later on, Fumihiko Maki's idea of "Master Form" in his Toward Group Form (1960), co-author with Masato Ohitaka. By the way, Maki will be the keynote speaker for next week's RAIA Conference in Melbourne!

Let's have the group list posted here:

Group 1
Amahl
Chenxi
Jimmy



Group 2
Linda
Scott
Matthew

Group 3
Kevin
Sherwin
Zhengyang


Group 4
Josh
Joyce
Simon

Please consult Course Outline for your assigned benchmark projects + architectural movements.

What is a Park - Landscape or Infrastructure?

These images are from archinet.com. Read it for an interesting discussion between Nam Henderson and Gerdo Aquino on infrastructure as a theoretical "tool" for the practice of landscape architecture. Please read between the lines and consider how can some of the ideas help you re-conceptualize a train station.

3 Videos

1 - Maarten van Acker: Re-tracing the Ringscape - Infrastructure as a Mode of Urban Design (2009)  via Vimeo

2 - Stan Allen: Pavilions and Fields: Beyond Landscape Urbanism (2009)

3 - Marcel Smets + Kelly Shannon: The Landscape of Contemporary Infrastructure (2010) - 

Click on: Video

The design of infrastructure is a formative element of the contemporary landscape. It inevitably produces a physical presence that affects its environs and constitutes a layer of a new totality. Infrastructure is not just an isolated entity for organizing transport or generating motion. It acts as the cornerstone for generating an inclusive new environment.

In this lecture, Marcel Smets will analyze the basic attitudes that dominate the design of transport infrastructure in the world today. He characterizes five basic approaches:
- Hiding
- Camouflage
- Assimilation
- Detachment
- Fusion

Each of these design approaches will be clearly identified and amply illustrated by archetypical examples of different programmatic nature (roads, bridges, parking, rail, and airport infrastructures). Indirectly, the lecture pleads for a more integrated design effort that addresses a new public space typology. Such conception of infrastructure as an inclusive landscape design is presented as a major requirement for enhancing the quality of today's built environment.