Tag Archives: architecture

Confronting Views on Public Space

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Tom Avermaete and Maurice Harteveld both encourage the architect to take on a socially relevant and culturally related position as safe guarders of the public domain. But what exactly can be the role of the architect in today’s society? Is there an alternative to the modernist position of relative autonomy? Both researchers will give their advice to the architectural profession.

Maurice Harteveld: ‘Design and People, Designers as People’
versus
Tom Avermaete: ‘Public Spaces, Then and Now’

These lectures will take place, on 18 September from 8:45 to 10:30h
at the Faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment, Room A
Delft

Moderator: Hans Teerds

Abandoned Area

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Rehabilitation of Hartera

Only a few people live and work in Hartera. It used to be a vibrant part of the city of Rijeka where hundreds of people were flocking in and out every day. Today, this area largely abandoned. Its famous paper factory closed its doors about a decade ago and since then the area fell into decay. Nevertheless, despite its decline, Hartera is all but forgotten! On the contrary; Hartera is in the minds of many people. Locals will relate the area to its rich industrial heritage, unique buildings and great views to the hills. Some people refer to its annual music festival, current grassroots events, and emerging cultural scene. Although Hartera is known by most people, seldom it is used by many. The challenge for the public government of Rijeka and many other actors is to make this area public with respect to the multiple images people have of the site. This area can become publicly-used, not just publicly-known. A spa facility or entertainment park will not be answers for this particular side, nor will it be for example a shopping mall. Those kinds of development stimulate appropriation of the space by special target groups, blocking the way for others, and/or they change the identity of the area so drastically that people will change their perception of the area and neglect the newly developed as soon as it will becomes out of date again.

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Interior Public Space

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Thesis Presentation
16th January 2014, 12:00h

Delft University of Technology
Aula Congress Centre, Senate Room
Mekelweg 5
Delft

‘Interior Public Space, On the Mazes in the Network of an Urbanist’ is the result of ten years of scientific research on the evolution of interior public spaces. It explores the development of the phenomenon in a time era when general accepted theoretical understanding on public space in urbanism has been established, increasingly neglecting or even rejecting the existence of public spaces within the interior. The subject is, and the research cases have been very international. They uncover relatively unknown knowledge and in syntax they are recombined to achieve new and unexpected insights.

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Mazes in the Network

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Interior Public Space
On the Mazes in the Network of an Urbanist

For centuries – and increasingly often today – the term ‘public space’ has been a synonym for government-owned spaces, open for all, and known by everyone. According to me, this is a complete misnomer. The spaces that people actually use are forgotten. Subordinated and neglected, considered unimportant by many urban theorists; the thinking on public interiors as day-to-day public space is in a poor way. The theorists who do pay attention to public spaces almost always accord them a separate status, and describe them as ‘semi-public’ or ‘collective’ spaces, neither public nor private. I base my views on the influence that people themselves have on the public character of a space.

Interior public spaces are exemplary. They are certainly not have become a new phenomenon, as some contemporary researchers suppose. They have always played an important part in various social-spatial changes and have been crucial to cities and their culture. I have studied the development of Graeco-Roman thinking on public space up to present day, and measured it against architectural and urban design practice. My research is based not just on theoretical premises or on political aims. It is based on the many designs in practice, which have been realised in various Indo-European cities, in the Turkish and Arabian countries in their periphery and in the Japanese capital, during and after the period of ‘westernisation’. My thesis can therefore also be seen as the scientific journey of a designer, close to day-to-day practice.

I believe that everyone makes a space, not just a designer. This involves a redirection of our thinking: Until theorists come to respect all public spaces and understand the complex network of people, they will lose their way in their self-made mazes.

Cover of Interior Public Space, by Maurice Harteveld

see:
Harteveld, Maurice (2014) Interior Public Space, On the Mazes in the Network of an Urbanist, A Scientific Journey of a Designer, Following the Evolution of Greco-Roman Thoughts, Through Some Remarkable Indo-European Cities, Including those in The Americas, Crossing the Turkic and Arabic Spheres in their Proximity, and Abridging to the Japanese Capital as Introductory Exemplar, to Reconstruct Today’s Reasoning on Public Interiors by Means of Defining Types, Interrelating People and Actions, Describing Socio-Spatial Transformations, and Comprehending Cultural Meaning, In Nine Books; Delft: Delft University of Technology, Faculty Architecture, Urbanism and Building Sciences

Find a copy in the library

Re-Do New Town

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Chinese University of Hoong Kong and
International Forum on Urbanism at
Shenzhen & Hong Kong
Bi-City Biennale of Urbanism | Architecture

Exhibition

Re-Do New Town: Hung Shui Kiu
on invitation of
Hong Kong Institute of Architects
Biennale Foundation Ltd

20th December 2013
23rd February 2014

E220 at Energizing Kowloon East Office (EKEO)
122 Hoi Bun Road, Kwun Tong
Kowloon, Hong Kong

The exhibition takes on the topic of future Hong Kong new towns with a contemporary look at Hung Shui Kiu, an area located in the northwest corner of New Territories, and a future site for a major urban development in Hong Kong. Today a dormant mixture of container yards, small industries and old villages, Hung Shui Kiu neighbors the towering suburb of Tin Shui Wai and looks toward the mainland across the Shenzhen Bay. Surprisingly, far more than the skyscrapers in the business districts, this plain “realness” and rural-like existence is the scene for many critical questions in Hong Kong urbanism today. The future planning of Hung Shui Kiu should challenge the previous attempts for a ready-made ideal communities and urban typologies and re-think the ideal city not as a utopian end-result, but a process allowing for multitude of voices, and even unplanned and unexpected results.

 香港中文大學与
国际城市化论坛基金会
港深城市
建築雙城雙年展

展区

再造新城: 洪水橋
邀请方
香港建築師學會
雙年展基金會有限公司

2013年12月20日
2014年2月23日

E220起動九龍東辦事處
觀塘海濱道122號
九龍, 香港

再造新城: 洪水橋: 這個展覽的話題是用現代的眼光來看待香港未來洪水橋新城的開發。洪水橋坐落於新界西北角，是將來香港的主要城市發展區。洪水橋的未來規劃應帶挑戰之前試圖建成一個現成的理想社區和城市類型的想法，並且重新思考作為一個一個理想的城市，雖然不必是一個烏托邦式結局，但是是一個允許多種聲音參與的過程，是一個甚至沒有特定規劃和預期結果的過程。
 
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The Real is the Ideal

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The Square and the Big Tree in Lo Uk Tsuen Village

On 24 January 2013, I was standing under a big tree on a little square in Lo Uk Tsuen (羅屋村). Its trunk was protected by a small circular stone wall and in front of it, yet still under its crown, incense was burning in a small matching stone censer. A few kids were playing, a lady was doing her laundry, and several persons passed by. It looked like the heart of one of the villages or ‘tsuens’ of Hung Shui Kiu. It also acted as its entrance as it was positioned at its edge. The houses around were extended with all kinds of annexes and extra levels. On the streets, residents appropriated space with pot plants and a variety of other things. The density was clearly quite high and the urban space felt like a living room. An old-school figure ground analyses wouldn’t give us much open space. When I walked beyond the tree, street-like corridors led me to the next tsuen. Here in Tung Tau (東頭村), built structures and urban spaces more or less looked the same, but a small monumental temple place had adopted the communal role. People sitting under a line of trees aside looked at me with questioning eyes. They scanned who I was and why on earth my students and I were making pictures of this space. Walking out again, I faced huge piles of containers, rusty remaining relics of Modern society. At its backcloth the residential high-rise of Tin Shui Wai.

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Franklin Court Threatened

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The proposed redesigns for Benjamin Franklin Life & Legacy Museum as situated in Philadelphia’s Independence National Historical Park have been quite worrisome.

As an architect, urban designer and academician, I have been grateful for the request for input by of the U.S. National Park Service. It is an great acknowledgement of the public importance of this particular place in society and city, in the State, the Nation and beyond. Franklin Court, including its museum, is situated just off Philadelphia’s Independence Mall and, as we all know, it symbolises 1776 likewise. In retrospective, it is a crucial part of the final stages of a project presented in the built-up to the sesquicentennial of the American Independence.

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Sennett’s Interior Streets Set

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The images in this gallery come from the archive of Richard Sennett. In his view they show “different strategies for moving people through urban space, and images of the urban forms which enable people to watch others”. It seems to build on the idea of the interior street as posed by Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown, juxtaposed against my arcades study and concept of public interior space and interior urbanism (presented in 2007).

This gallery of images is found at Richard Sennett’s Interior Streets and Arcades Set
[www.richardsennett.com]
All of these images are down-loadable to borrow freely.

The Curse of Bigness

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There are some who glorify the state or quality of bigness. This seems to be something characteristic of the modern age – the first hosannas began to resound around the dawn of the metropolis. We see it in the writings of Louis Sullivan and in the statements made by Le Corbusier. They like buildings to be big. Bigness is their quality. The notion of ‘bigness’, as pushed forward more recently by among others Rem Koolhaas, is based on complete disconnection between the interior and the exterior. “Bigness is no longer part of any urban tissue”, he thinks. Context – the relationship with the building’s surroundings – is supposedly irrelevant. Nonsense! His theorem is contradicted by studies of existing cases. When a building exceeds a certain size and becomes a large-scale structure, public interiors are created. The increase in the number of people using both these indoors and the outdoor space links big buildings closely to their surroundings, more then do small-scale buildings, and thus far from being isolated, big buildings become more connected. In their urban environments, the interaction becomes visible and multi-level or privately-owned public space is created within big buildings. New public interiors extend the outdoor network and thereby give the building a fine-meshed structure. In essence, as the interiors become more public, the small scale is introduced into the building. The building may be big purely in terms of size, but in many ways it is quite as diverse as any part of the city.

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