Pedro Oliveira
THE DOTTED LANDSCAPE
DOTS IN THE FIELD OF THE
METAPOLIS
A
new reality
It is quite clear that the urban landscape has
significantly changed in the last years. The verified complexity has been
nominated in many different ways, but to the vast and polycentric shape that we
call city (?) there are always three explicative phenomenon
associated: tertiarization, globalization of the economy and culture and,
proliferation of the information and communication networks. In fact, the
technologies of the Information Era have changed irreversibly and transversely
our notions of space-time. They were exemplary manipulated by the market logic,
that, hungry of growth and change, potentiated all this events. Once that we
are in a period of crisis, ideal to re-think paradigms, let's focus on the
natural frustration with the market-driven architecture and urbanism. The
concepts of reintegration/recycling/revolution at the spatial, objectual,
functional, social, disciplinary levels, synthesize a reaction to this
frustration. The obsolesced less is more and of the more
is more gave place to the more from less. The tendency to
a bigger social solidarity, to the intensification of the Human-Nature
relationship and the approximation of natural (Ecology) and artificial models
(material and immaterial networks of the Informational Era) starts to emerge,
at the beginning of the XXI century.
Dots in the field of the Metapolis (1)
The contemporary theories of the most variate
disciplines converge to the vision of a network-based existence, fill of
interdependencies, in which all is interrelated. At the urban scale, this
vision is easily visible in the definition of the Metapolis, polycentric. This
new definition supposes a large-scale space where different centers, usually
near an older city, are created, giving a response to the new needs. The
attractiveness of a determined City-Region or Metropolitan Area is dependent
not only of their physical mobility (material) but also from the social,
economic and knowledge mobility (immaterial) - that allow us to "surf in
the flows of fashion, happenings and environments." (2) If we make the
experience of mapping the intensity of the social, economical and cultural
relations and superposed it on the infrastructural urban network (in its formal
vision) we would easily verify how they establish networks that are superposing
and juxtaposing and creating nodes or dots of convergence. The bigger the
intensity of the crossing is, the bigger is its attractiveness. In this
formalization, a bit abstract, of the physical and metaphysical
movements/flows, it's curious to see how the dots are the spaces of greater
dynamism and intensity, contrarily to their usual definition of staticity. As a
matter of fact, the concepts of constant movement and dynamism are fundamental
in the contemporary society - "In the end the urban truth is in the
flow". (3).
Old Conditions, new constructions
It matters, therefore, to think about what
defines and characterizes each dot. Accessibility is the first
and primordial condition to the appearing of a certain setting - it's valid in
old cities as in new centers, this search for a location near a natural or
artificial infrastructure that allows them to establish relationships with each
other. Functional Diversity constitutes the second condition,
defining itself as the possibility of a series of relations and synergies of
great intensity in a short space (of time). And, at last, Symbolism,
or the integration of forms and signs that build the support to orientation,
fruition and construction of collective memory. The three vertices comprehend a
great ability to transfigure from case to case, assuming different degrees of
importance in each node or dot - exemplifying, symbolism, in its conventional and
more memory-present shapes, is much more present in an older center than in a
new centrality (that uses the aestheticization of architecture and of the day-to-day life,
filling us with information and superficial stimulation).
The new paradigm is built up on the concepts of
dynamism (the passage between dots or urban zapping) and of
complementarity (the existence of a macro-logic, that gathers the needs of a
large amount of population), as something associated to these dots or nodes.
Towards a better knowledge in the way of building our cities, there's a third
concept that deserves our attention: limit. The new centralities that appeared
in the second half of the XXth Century share the fact they used the
architectural materials of postmodern architecture, from which one can
distinguish the aggressive way of closing on themselves. These enclaves impose
to/on the territory, generating situations of great artificiality and
perverting the spatial relations - being near no longer means that there are
significant relationships.(4) Their relation to context don't translate, at
all, the ideas of dynamic networks of interdependence between people, nature
and technologies. It seems obvious, as well, that a radical opposition to this
model (ie the total abolition of frontiers) doesn't constitute a reasonable
solution. The porosity in urban tissues or the utilization of permeable
membranes (in substitution of the post-modern walls and fences) are a possible
solution and start to appear in some recent architectures.
A possible way out
Given the complex reality that was reviewed
along the text, it's important to point a recent theory (that surely will be
followed up by others who diverge in form but not in content), - Integral
Urbanism, by Nan Ellin. It suggests methodology and attitudes that are able
to give a more capable and complete answer to the contemporary problematic,
focusing in five points: connectivity, hybridization, porosity,
authenticity and vulnerability. This text ends with the beginning of
Ellin's book, that explains the multiple sense of Integral Urbanism:
Integral - Essential to completeness, lacking
nothing essential, formed as a unit with another part.
Integrate - To form, coordinate, or blend into a
functioning or unified whole (...)
Integrity - adherence to artistic or moral
values; incorruptibility; soundness; the quality or state of being complete and
undivided; completeness. (5)
Notes
(1)
Ascher, François, Metapolis, ou, L'avenir des villes, 1995. The idea of Metapolis appeals to the definition
of “a group of spaces where the totality or part of the inhabitants, of
economical activities, or the territories, is integrated in the daily functioning
of a metropolis. It constitutes generally one set of job, residence and other
activities, and the spaces that compose it are deeply heterogeneous and not
necessarily contiguous. A metapolis has, at least, some hundred thousand of
inhabitants.”
(2)
Gadanho, Pedro, A arquitectura como performance, article in
Magazine DIF 70. Also see Graham, Stephen
and Marvin, Simon, Splintering Urbanism, 2001.
(3) Ellin, Nan, Integral Urbanism, 2006.
(4) Graham, Stephen and Marvin, Simon, Splintering
Urbanism, 2001.
(5)
Ellin, Nan, Integral Urbanism, 2006.
- Illustrated from: Kempf,
Petra, You Are The City – Observation and Transformation of Urban
Settings, Lars Muller Publishers -
_______________
Pedro
Oliveira
Architect.
Porto
Other Articles in the
same issue:
ANDRÉ SIER
PEDRO OLIVEIRA
PEDRO LEVI BISMARCK
ANDRÉ TAVARES
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