X-Urbanism-Architecture and American Cities

Author: Gedeon Sznas
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2006-09-01
Features: Introduction This book originates from a research project that began 15 years ago: mapping American cities. During the course of this research, American cities underwent dramatic reconstruction, with transformative forces no less intense than suburbanization in the 1950s. Over the past 25 years, some major changes have affected urban and urban culture, expanding the connotations of urban and urban culture, forming new urban spaces and structural forms, and giving rise to different urban landscapes. With the continuous development of cities, the decline of built spaces and public spaces, the emergence and proliferation of new urban internal and external spaces, physical spaces and electronic spaces have appeared. However, unlike the diverse transformations of cities, urban architecture in America seems more difficult to achieve than ever before. The study of American cities in this book is also a reflection on architecture. My urban mapping attempts to depict the architectural significance of metropolitan areas that emerged in the 1970s and 1980s, and which have since continued to evolve and spread worldwide. In an era marked by spiritual trauma in architectural practice, these mappings intervene in non-architectural fields (cities), attempting to explore the limits of architecture. In the 1970s, the questioning of architectural practice, specifically the discussion on the articulation of architectural practice and theory, became a forefront issue in architectural discourse. These discussions centered around urbanism, meaning, and representation, appearing within the discourse of post-structuralism. Urban mapping unfolded in this context. It moved beyond the traditional role of mapping as a material representation of the city, becoming a space of articulation between architecture and the city—a place where two different practices and "discourse surfaces" interact. This is a difficult synthesis of two contradictory practices, as I have discussed, requiring complex strategies for coordination. This articulation is not about filling a gap, because architecture and the city have already been associated in different ways at different times. Nor is it about resolving their opposition; rather, it attempts to recognize the differences and the significance of their association. This association is not a fixed connection between two elements but rather the interrelationship between two dynamic practices. In fact, architecture and the city should be seen as signifiers of two constantly evolving practices. Because the relationship between architecture and the city is constantly changing, they need to be continuously reassociated and coordinated, never achieving a definitive balance. This effort to establish an association between architecture and the city constantly forms new patterns of relationship, further altering the characteristics of urban and architectural practice. My work does not directly study the contemporary urban condition but, through mapping, examines two cities that were "forgotten" in the new round of urban reconstruction: New York and Los Angeles. New York and Los Angeles are cities from the early 20th century and the post-World War II era, respectively, and both serve as historical stages for contemporary urban development. The mapping research conducted on these two cities reveals certain issues, leading me to realize the necessity of mapping and further theoretical research on other American cities: mapping not only reveals the characteristics of American cities but also involves architectural practice itself, not just the object but also the subject of research. Most theoretical research assumes that American urban development is a continuous process of expansion. Economists and planners who study capital flow and urban policy do not examine the formal characteristics of this process. Historians and urban scholars who focus on form tend to believe that cities are processes of continuous accumulation and (or) transformation, that is, the addition or replacement of buildings, the embedding or filling of public spaces. This perspective obscures the discontinuities in urban form during this process, that is, the dramatic reconstruction of American cities; yet this book, through its study of the association between architecture and the city, precisely reveals this phenomenon.
The foundational blocks of urban theory presented in this book primarily come from two articles: John Reps's The Making of the Urban America and Manfredo Tafuri's "The Enchanted Mountain" published in The American City. These two articles represent the philosophical perspective of American urban historians and the critical perspective of European architectural historians, respectively. Reps and Tafuri proposed two different origins of American cities, which I refer to as grid cities and skyscraper cities. The first type established the planar dominance structure of American cities, while the second determined a vertically unconstrained urban fabric at high density and compactness. The third type, completely different from the first two, is the "suburban city"—a new dispersed fabric dependent on the automobile. Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown, in Learning from Las Vegas (which can be considered one of the earliest readings of American cities by American architects), described the influence of the third type of city.
In addition to the tendency to obscure discontinuities, another issue with most theories is their assumption that European and American cities possess fully coherent identities, with stable, unprecedented, and contrasting structures that complement each other: Europe corresponds to America, the colonial empire to the colony, dominance to subordination, and the old to the new. This perspective obscures the complex process of the continuous reconstruction of European and American urban identities. Tafuri's description of the entries for the 1923 Chicago Architectural Forum competition showcases a significant moment in historical processes: urban identities on both sides of the Atlantic were caught in a crisis. European architects had long held a dominant position for centuries, but subsequently, they faced the challenge of new American urban design to the centuries-old urban concepts of Europe. Those holding traditional views believed that American architecture was still too young or did not exist at all, rejecting the recognition of this form. The prevailing view overlooked the interdependence of European and American cities in transatlantic exchanges, where imagined identities formed a continuous cycle of morphology. This was a strange exchange, occurring between two overlapping circles of desire, each with its own self-identifying image, and the exchange ultimately distorted the cycle of urban structures. For example, American colonial cities, as described by Reps, were inevitably influenced by the early European cultures of settlers (Spanish, French, British, Dutch, and Swedish) and the unique opportunities and environments of the United States. However, what Europe brought to the formation of American urban identity from the outset and continues to influence today is the "ideal" urban plan that could not be implemented on the Old Continent. American cities were not imported from Europe but became, in fact, a laboratory for the development of European urban imagination. Another example is the fundamental transformation that occurred when the symbolic value of European commemorative axes was transferred to Washington, D.C. In the new environment, they not only represented the connections between democratic institutions but also overlaid the grid plan system simultaneously. Conversely, the opposite transformation took place in the 1920s, when American cities were influenced by Le Corbusier, whose concept of the "modern city" proposed in 1925 triggered the vertical development of American cities.
In Chapter 1, American cities appear as a collection of multiple realities, not only are cities diverse and varied, but they are also continuously influenced by European-centric perspectives—politically, economically, culturally, and formally—in both the colonial period and after American independence. However, there exists another American city, one that exists in the imagination of Europe, with different structures and roles. This is the American city as imagined in architectural discourse, particularly in the architectural imagination of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. These urban imaginings materialize in America in new ways, such as Le Corbusier's final version of the United Nations Headquarters in New York or the post-war American skyscrapers by Mies van der Rohe. The spatial coordinates of American cities originate from Europe, while the temporal coordinates stem from America's transatlantic connections, with the temporal coordinates determined by the temporal dimensions of the development of the New World's cities. Over the long temporal dimension, texture is accidental and temporary, while the urban plan is persistent. The spatial and temporal coordinates make American cities a laboratory for urban form experiments, producing various transformative changes that bring trauma to cities and form different structural patterns. The recent urban reconstruction of American cities—X-cities—is an example: in these cities, "formlessness" seems to dominate the urban plan, architecture remains at the level of buildings, and the inherent forces of the city reject any imposed architectural form. The spatial dimension seems no longer the focus, the of spatial order has declined, while the temporal dimension has gained attention, with new, complex order structures emerging. This situation is reflected in the increasing experiments appearing in the internet as a public domain, rather than in the physical urban space. Urban experiments are also associated with another place in multiple ways, namely, architectural research in the form of discourse and architectural practice.
Chapter 1 of this book studies the traumatic changes in the formation of multiple structural patterns that emerge within the spatiotemporal coordinates of the movement from Europe to America and from the city to architecture, as well as the traces left in the urban plan of American cities by this process. Chapter 2 focuses on the identity of American cities, or more accurately, their non-ultimate, open individual characteristics. Urban identity assumes an order imposed upon the urban structure. However, within this order, there is always some instability, so that urban form ultimately loses control. The disruption of this order partly comes from the resistance of constantly changing urban economies, politics, and cultural forces to the inherent structure. The independence of the United States triggered major changes in urban structures. The establishment of the new regime initiated a process of differentiation from European cities. The three types of American cities—grid cities, skyscraper cities, and suburban cities—all attempt to realize urban imagination: establishing a new order and organizing the structure of the city in new ways. Grid cities made the strongest attempt to spread the new order across the entire continent, creating a two-dimensional diagram where the plan became a representation of equal space. Skyscraper cities attempted to construct the characteristics of vertical cities within the framework of the logic of capital, reinforcing the freedom of individual buildings. The construction of the interstate highway system attempted to introduce dynamic flows, transforming the entire territory into a field, that is, the signifier of a continental garden, where the dual order—suburb and central city, residential and workplace—attempted to dominate the antagonistic forces affecting American society. Each type of city represents a failure to establish an order between urban and architectural structures. When the grid was merely implanted in America in the European manner, it could not meet the demands of high density. Due to the or distortion caused by geographical or historical factors, skyscraper cities, with their disregard for the plan, could not become a stable architectural type. The continental garden, traversed by highways, as a "lonely", could neither relate to the city nor to architecture.
Chapter 3 draws conceptual spaces and, based on them, unfolds urban mapping. This returns to the central issue often overlooked by general theory, that is, the relationship between European cities and American cities is always determined by another exchange—the exchange between architecture and the city; and the cycle of urban form—repetition, transformation, variation—runs parallel to the cycle of architectural form, with similar shifts, transformations, or innovations. To fully understand the role of architecture, we need not only to consider the urban influence primarily originating from Europe but also the role of architectural discourse, including not only what is said but also what is implied, misread, and suppressed. The relationship between the city and architecture is, in fact, a component of architecture. This relationship's historical origins and its impact on the city and architecture first appear in Renaissance architectural texts. Alberti's On Architecture proposed an urban imagination that could not be fully realized in Europe but could be, and only partially, in America. Following Alberti, numerous rewrites emerged, from Palladio to Ledoux, Le Corbusier, and the cities studied in the research were no longer Rome but developing, immature American cities. Each rewriting changed architectural practice, sometimes fundamentally. Ultimately, the issue raised here—revealing the relationship between architecture and the city—becomes another repetition of the unfulfilled architectural desire aimed at the city as the object of desire. The perspective on American cities is always European, and in most cases, American cities are subordinate to European cities. This subordination also occurs in architectural discourse. For example, in common narratives, American cities are described as sources of technological innovation that influenced the formation and development of architecture in Europe, rather than viewing American cities as a part of the development of Western architecture. This narrative rule not only indicates the absence of architecture in American cities but, more importantly, the absence of American cities in architecture. America's cultural dependence on Europe only began to change after World War II. In architectural culture, this dependence changed only in the 1970s, with the architectural and urban cultural exchanges between New York's architectural and urban research institutions, when young European architects began to enter America. In recent years, research on America's influence on Europe has appeared more frequently in European academic circles.
Traditionally, urban architecture forms by attempting to impose architectural order onto the urban body. The urban mapping presented here shifts the scene of urban architectural formation to the site of architectural reception, treating the city as given: using the city itself as the starting point for mapping. The architectural characteristics of urban mapping distinguish it from the political cartography of urban practice depicted by Michel de Certeau: the cartography of geographers differs from the everyday trajectories of ordinary people. Kevin Lynch proposed a systematic method for urban image mapping for these ordinary people. Why is there a difference? Because our object is the architecture of the city, based on the plan, described through two-dimensional and three-dimensional mappings, differing from the phenomenal logic mapping proposed by Kevin Lynch. Because urban mapping is conceived as part of practice, with the potential to transform or vary the city, rather than as a city for everyday life. Why do we focus more on the plan than on the material reality of the city? The city is the result of the interaction of natural and social factors; it is the economic engine that creates the material landscape, the stage for the activities of various social and political forces, marked by these forces and influencing them. For urban observers, the primary issue of urban structure is traffic capacity, morphological influence, and readability. The city's perceptible surface masks what the urban plan reveals—the text and symbolic influence of the city. This is precisely the place where the city and architecture are associated.
The second part of this book was completed between 1984 and 1994, including urban mappings of New York, Los Angeles, Boston, New Haven, Chicago, Des Moines, and Atlantic City. Urban mapping first raises the issue of architectural identity in American cities. In each city, two-dimensional and three-dimensional multiple structures interrelate in a series of dual elements, such as streets and blocks, open spaces and buildings, object buildings and texture, graphic voids and fields, forming numerous floating signifiers. Architectural signifiers fix the meaning of urban structures' interweaving—architects' perspectives differ from those of everyday users, and also from those seeking anticipated identities. Urban mapping, in their transformation, narration, and continuation, reveals that there is no definitive interweaving; instead, the continuous re-reading and rewriting of American cities is a long-term process. Urban mapping not only expands analytical tools and strategies but also, based on the formal characteristics revealed through analysis, proposes possibilities for the development of American urbanism. In 1989, I began working on the Des Moines Vision Plan. "This process involves mapping the city—reading its specific forms in relation to local socioeconomic factors. The entire process is based on different narratives, where we presented our reading of the baseline form of Des Moines to the local community to obtain feedback, dialogue, and raise their awareness of the visual world they inhabit. This association between the city and architecture began with the dialogue triggered by urban mapping, opening the process of urban planning to urban architecture and bringing the political dimension into urban mapping.