X-Urbanism--Architecture and American Cities

Author: (American) Giedion Sauter, translated by Sun Chengren and Fu Hongjie
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Features: The introduction This book originates from a research project that began 15 years ago: mapping American cities through drawing. During the research period, 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 influenced 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, continued to evolve, and spread around the world. In an era of 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 leading issue in architectural discourse. These discussions centered around urbanism, meaning, and representation within post-structuralist discourse. Urban mapping unfolded in this context. It went beyond the traditional role of mapping as a material representation of the city, becoming a space of articulation between architecture and the city—two different practices and "discourse surfaces." 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, as architecture and the city have already been associated in different ways at different times. Nor is it about resolving their opposition; it is more about recognizing the differences and the significance of their association. This association is not a fixed junction between two elements but rather the interrelationship between two shifting 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 relationships, further altering the characteristics of urban and architectural practice. My work is not a direct study of the contemporary urban condition but a research into 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 on these two cities reveals some issues, making me 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 about objects but also about 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 a continuous process of accumulation and (or) transformation, that is, the addition or replacement of buildings, the embedding or filling of public spaces. This perspective obscures the discontinuity of urban form in this process, that is, the dramatic reconstruction of American cities; while the study of the association between architecture and the city in this book precisely reveals this.
The foundational blocks of urban theory partly elaborated 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 car-dependent, new dispersed fabric. Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown, in Learning from Las Vegas (which can be considered an early reading of American cities by American architects), described the influence of the third type of city.
In addition to the tendency to obscure discontinuity, another problem with most theories is their assumption that European and American cities have fully developed and distinct 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 in the 1923 Chicago Architectural Forum competition shows a significant moment in historical processes: urban identities on both sides of the Atlantic were in crisis. European architects had long held a dominant position for centuries, but after that, they faced the challenge of new American urban design to the old European urban concepts. Those holding traditional views believed that American architecture was still too young or did not exist at all, refusing to acknowledge this form. The common perspective overlooks the interdependence of European and American cities in transatlantic exchanges, where imagined identities form a continuous cycle of forms. This is a strange exchange that occurs between two overlapping desire circuits, each with its own self-identifying image, and the exchange ultimately distorts the cycle of urban structures. For example, American colonial cities, as described by Reps, were inevitably influenced by early European settlers' cultures (Spanish, French, British, Dutch, and Swedish) and unique opportunities and environments in America. However, what Europe brought to the formation of American urban identity and continues to influence America 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. The opposite transformation occurred in the 1920s, when American cities were influenced by Le Corbusier, whose concept of the "modern city" proposed in 1925 led to 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—during the colonial period and after American independence—in political, economic, cultural, and formal aspects. But there is another American city, existing in the imagination of Europe, with different structures and roles. This is the American city that appears in architectural imagination, particularly in the architectural imagination of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. These urban imaginaries materialize in America in new ways, such as Le Corbusier's final version of the United Nations Headquarters in New York or the post-World War II American skyscrapers by Mies van der Rohe. The spatial coordinates of American cities originate from Europe, while the temporal coordinates come 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 permanent. 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 such cities, "formlessness" seems to dominate the urban plan, architecture remains at the level of buildings, while the inherent forces of the city reject any imposed architectural form. The spatial dimension seems no longer the focus, the device 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 arise in 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 America 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, in 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 American cities—grid cities, skyscraper cities, and suburban cities—all attempted 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 plane 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 relationships. When the grid was merely implanted in America in the European way, 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 plane, could not become a stable architectural type. The continental garden, traversed by highways, as a "lonely" device, could neither relate to the city nor to architecture.
Chapter 3 draws conceptual spaces and expands urban mapping on this basis. This paper returns to the central issue 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 urban form cycle—repetition, transformation, variation—runs parallel to the architectural form cycle, 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 both the explicit, implicit, misread, and suppressed parts. The relationship between the city and architecture is actually 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 realized in Europe but could be realized in America, albeit fragmentarily. After Alberti, numerous rewritings 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 question raised here—revealing the relationship between architecture and the city—becomes another repetition of the unfulfilled architectural desire for the city as the object of desire. The perspective on American cities is always from Europe, 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 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 only changed in the 1970s, with the architectural cultural exchanges of 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: taking the city itself as the starting point of the 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 ordinary people. Why are these maps different? Because our object is the architecture of the city, based on the plane, 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 are we more concerned with the plane than with 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 various social and political forces, marked by various forces and influencing these forces. For urban observers, the primary issue of urban structure is traffic capacity, morphological influence, and readability. The urban surface that is imperceptible to the city's text and symbolic influence is revealed by the urban plane. 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 are interconnected in a series of dual elements, such as streets and blocks, open spaces and buildings, object buildings and texture, graphic voids and fields, forming a large number of floating signifiers. Architectural signifiers fix the meaning of urban structures' weaves—the perspective of the architect differs from that of the everyday user, and also differs from that of the person seeking an expected identity. Urban mapping, in their transformation, narration, and continuation, reveals that there is no final weave; instead, the continuous rereading and rewriting of American cities is a long process. Urban mapping not only expands analytical tools and strategies but also, based on the formal characteristics revealed by the analysis, proposes the possibility of the development of American urbanism. In 1989, I began to compile the Des Moines Urban Vision Plan. "This process involves mapping the city—reading the specific forms of the city and correlating them with 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.