What About a Metropolitan Amsterdam?

metrodam

Manhattanism is the urbanistic doctrine that suspends the irreconcilable differences between mutually exclusive positions.

-Rem Koolhaas, Delirious New York

Conquer
Henry Hudson “discovered” in 1609 on behalf of the Dutch the area that later became New Amsterdam. Four hundred years later—Manhattan being an icon of density and cosmopolitanism—fate is reversed; it becomes a tangible possibility to re-conquer Amsterdam, only this time through the understanding of New York.

Graft
It has become almost a requirement for the avant-garde to insert in Manhattan fragments of their unsatisfied urban desires; their dreamed metropolis.

From Malevich Arkhitektonics to Le Corbusier’s Ville-Radieuse, from Fuller’s Geodesic Dome to Superstudio’s endless Monumento, the avant-garde cannot exist without trying to graft “something” onto New York.

But what happens when the strategy is inverted, when the island is left untouched and it is its counterpart that is manipulated by a transplant from the American metropolis? Are we then to become the surgeons of the contemporary European city?

Amsterdam - New York
In order to perform the “operation” from one body to the other—from the American to the European—a study of compatibility must be carried out.

New York and Amsterdam have striking similarities, and contrasting differences.
Manhattan became iconic not only because of its unique acrophilic condition—the one that sent hundreds of buildings into a contest to claim the sky—but also by its capability to integrate an almost endless variety of cultures, activities and social classes.1

On the other hand, the center of Amsterdam has become almost the total opposite of an urban laboratory. Its caricaturesque charisma is enforced through the image of old buildings, and local programs; who can ever forget to mention the “red light district” and the “coffee shops”? Amsterdam is the epitome of the picturesque Dutch city. And even when it has served as a European paradigmatic melting pot, there is still a growing need for programs that stimulate social interaction.

New York’s colossal density amounts inevitably to high congestion levels, while the “village” type urban composition of Amsterdam suggests that density could be reached without the same predicament. The possibility of a Manhattanistic “operation” over Amsterdam would seem possible.

Metropolis
As the name suggests, Metrodam takes urban strategies that resulted from the metropolitan condition of New York and applies them to Amsterdam. In that sense the project is conceived as a revision of the metropolis role of New York and how it could be incorporated into Amsterdam, in a social, economic and artistic way.

Metrodam reinterprets specific references from New York where social interaction is stimulated—as the wooden decks in Coney Island, the ice-rink in the Rockefeller Center, and the outdoor cinema in Bryant Park—and incorporates them through a series of spaces where mixed uses are encouraged.

Grid-Less Micro City
The Metrodam is envisioned as a micro version of a gridless-Manhattan where the collective of activities is stimulated not by the rigorous implementation of the square angle and strict divisions, but by the incorporation of programs that enhance a diversity of uses and people while allowing an effortless flow through open, semi-open and enclosed spaces.

Without the need of a grid, the program is distributed on layers and levels creating a flexible surface of programs that fit with their surroundings, generating a platform where architecture, landscape and urbanism become indivisible one from the other and where social, economic and cultural interaction is considered a sine qua non condition.

Program
By inserting fragments of New York’s metropolitan lifestyle we aim to make a collective of programs that individually attract people and collectively act as a heterogeneous social condenser.

The Key Parts of the Program are as follows:

Link
The Metrodam acts as a trait-d’union that not only connects the waterfront of the north of Amsterdam physically, but that creates a visual link reachable from the center of Amsterdam. As part of the Masterplan the plaza facing the IJ incorporates a green corridor that extends from the Overhoeks Masterplan. Through this corridor, Cycle and Walking Paths will connect pedestrians and bicycle users through al the IJ Sideline. The strategic location of the site also aims to incorporate a link with ferries and tourist boats for easy access from the opposite side of the IJ.

Public Art
Spaces through the plazas are intended for the insertion and/or construction of art for public display. The task of these areas is to incorporate art on an urban scale and incorporate them into public activities such as shopping, working and living. These spaces are also aimed to create a platform that not only gives a protagonist role to artists but that recognizes the potential of art as a meaningful contribution to the built-up environment.

Wooden Beach
While in Coney Island the people are attracted to the natural beach by its artificial program, in the Metrodam project it is the artificial beach that seduces the people. The Metrodam faces the IJ with a new feature: a wooden beach. A platform of wooden decks opens downwards creating pools where people can enjoy a variety of water activities or just sit back and relax having an unobstructed view towards the city of Amsterdam.

Ice-Skating Rink
Using the Rockefeller Center as a reference, during the months of winter, the wooden beach can be covered and converted into an Ice Skate Park. This program will enhance the active use of the deck facing the IJ on the cold months, while creating an epicenter of activity that can draw people from the surrounding areas and from the other side of the IJ, from the Center of Amsterdam.

Agora
Just like the open cinema in Bryant Park in New York, an auditorium is offered by lifting the roof of the new retail area. The sloping floor creates a wooden seating zone were people can gather to watch on a screen collocated on the interior side of the tower either movie projections, performing art shows, fashion displays or any kind of public viewing activity. This area is intended to work as an extension of the activities celebrated in the New Film Museum on the Overhoeks Masterplan, and is also connected to the public art, the retail and restaurant area, and the wooden beach/ Ice Skate Park.

Mixed Use
A key factor of the project is the incorporation of mixed uses in terms of a sustainable economy for the area and a balanced injection of activities. The first and second levels will be designated to retail areas, restaurants, and workshops for creative oriented industries. The superior floors of the tower are intended for the occupation of a mixed area of office space with the possibility of residential spaces while allowing the superior “bridge area” to host residential spaces. The mix of uses will not only attract a balanced heterogeneous mix of public but will also create a constant flow of users within the building as its surroundings.

Sustainable Future
The project is intended to serve as a paradigm for future developments of this scale. The aim is to show that art, architecture, urbanism and landscape can equally promote a sustainable and ecological socio-economic growth through the incorporation of diverse activities as well as in human resources. In this way, Amsterdam could be Manhattanized.

1.The term acrophilic is first used in Shumon Basar, “The Sky Is Not Near Enough: On the New Sublime Mediocrity of Dubai’s Teaming Towers,” Monu #9 Exotic Urbanism, ed. Bernd Upmeyer, (Board: Rotterdam, 2008), 80.

Project Data:

Codename: Metrodam

Program: Mixed-use development including retail, office, housing and public spaces

Location: Amsterdam, NL

Status: Competition

Design Team: N.Frankowski, C.García (WAI)

Image Credits: WAI (N.Frankowski, C.García)

Year: 2009

What About Clean Urbanism?

Rendering the clean
What about blue sky utopias and dreams of green cities?

Imagine a city for three million inhabitants. Now add pedestrian walkways separated from the noise of the traffic. Envision greenery in every space between well distributed buildings. Picture a center with skyscrapers, cross-formed for optimized sunlight and spatial distribution, specifically designed to house intellectuals, creative minds, and bureaucrats. Visualize low-rise high-density housing - buildings for workers surrounding the center- and between those buildings, green belts of leisure parks where kids and adults can play and relax in contact with nature and without the need to leave the city. Within the residential spaces, imagine an optimum amount of health facilities, schools and libraries. Now insert this city in the center of Paris. And voila!

There is a popular phrase that claims that one image says more than a thousand words; some images shout more than a million. The perversity behind the well known collage of the Cartesian city inserted next to the Ile de la Cité shows just how a plan driven by hygienic ideals can turn out to be a city’s worst threat (at least on paper). Le Corbusier obliterated the center of Paris in the name of a sanitary duty. Paradoxically, his urbanism depended on the eradication of actual cities in order to prove its efficiency as an urban strategy. The French capital was not the only one threatened. New York, Buenos Aires and even Stockholm were in the "cleansing" plans of the Swiss architect; who can ever forget the infamous VR-8 diagram sweeping three cities at once?

It requires an ambitious mastermind to transform the four apparently harmless values of travailler, habiter, circuler et cultiver le corps et l’esprit into a series of cruciform skyscrapers and paste them on top of the “cancerous parts” of Paris and Manhattan: the historic center in the first, the island in the second. Even more, it takes a perverse deliberation to acknowledge the power of the images that depicted such megalomaniac urban strategies. The bottom line is that Modernism’s real alchemy didn’t lie in its social impromptu; it was in its imagery. Le Corbusier utilized every graphic tool available to make the cities look clean and at the same time to persuade everybody to believe in it.

In his cities, the air was fresh and clean, but social classes were strictly divided by their “green” architecture. Le Corbusier’s plans were a clear suggestion that only a strict political regime could achieve such a massive wash-out, eradicating the anguishing problems of the past; starting from afresh with a new architecture, a new city, and new people. Les Villes Radieuses were skyscraper Edens for the bureaucrats and intellectuals, and a green prison for the lower classes.

Le Corbusier was not alone in the voracious crusade for a new clean city. With similar intent, urban, architectural, and artistic masterminds have envisioned blocks, sectors and even cities bulldozed in the name of cleanliness. Ebenezer Howard’s slumless and smokeless “Garden Cities of Tomorrow” seem like a prototype for what today would be a carbon neutral city. The American counterpart Frank Lloyd Wright designed his “Broadacre City”, where Americans could live in harmony with their vast amounts of nature. The Japanese Metabolists were busy wondering how to multiply housing schemes while preserving the little nature Japan had left. Yes, we can easily make up an almost endless list of attempts that tried to make a perfect combination between designed surface and idyllic landscape. The ideal cities of yesterday were betting on the power of urban planning and architecture to solve all of the social burdens and wash down the cities once and for all. Ironically, they were all trying to do the same cleaning only each one using a different “detergent.”

Today, Photoshop imagery has become the favorite tool of green warfare. Contemporary “urbanists” have been uncritically green painting every Google image in the name of sustainability. So, are we about to succumb to a tsunami of green perspectives of pseudo sustainable urban irresponsibility? Or will we be able to use the same imagery as a critical tool in face of the global warming paranoia?

At this point in time we persist with the same failed strategies. In an age of green slogans everything seems to point towards a “new” campaign against the so called global warming. Photoshop utopias display green-washed urban projects thanks to the filling tool (CTRL+DEL) presented for every kind of environment, from the rural villas in China, to the deserted and sanded no man’s lands in the Middle East. Sustainability has become a cache misère for our lack of intent, a trendy make-up hiding our impotence; clean urbanism being its apotheosis.

It is obvious that amnesia has become a critical part of the repertoire that enables us to repeat failed urban plans/strategies. In order to replicate the wrongs of before, we have got to ignore the urban threats of the fin de siècle. Clean urbanism has gone mainstream, and with it has vanished our ability to be critical. We have a resurrection of the megalomaniac clean cities of the 20th century, but we no longer have a Team 10 to pose the Shakespeareanism: “what is the city but the people?” We have also lost Archizoom’s power to ridicule the institutionalized. We can’t even pretend to have a Situationist naiveté and proclaim a war against the Green Corporation. The broadbands are saturated with redundant green slogans, senseless manifestos and trendy “yes is more” claims. We reiterate with blinded faith the credo of everything that was wrong with Modernism, and imitate with a fashionable style every menacing image that was created as Modernist propaganda for the “cleanest” of the strategies: the Tabula Rasa.

In a desperate attempt to resurrect, regenerate and renew the hopes for greener and sustainable cities, we have been selling ourselves as the cleaners of all the junk we’ve accumulated. We’ve been filling every blog, every magazine, every book, every international competition, and every commission with the opposite of an urban utopia: entire master plans with absolutely no intent, no strategy and no logic, displaying what is no more than a “nice looking” image from Google Earth and a pleasant picture from a render office.

To make matters worse, we have lost the power to be critical with the arrival of Photoshop. We’ve been blinded by the glare of the lens flare and sedated by the blue of happy skies. We’ve been fooled by the camouflage of virtual cities and perfect skylines of LEED certified skyscrapers. We crave for eye candy. While perspectives are being use to seduce instead of to inform, we have surrendered to a shallow trend of green images and uncritical superficiality. The pleasures of satisfying simulacra and e-fiction have anesthetized our ability to be critical.

Frivolity is the new substance. Architecture with a capital A has been usurped; no longer important it is disappearing behind layers of uniformly cropped trees. Whatever happened to the collage as a tool of guerrilla warfare against the institutionalized? Whatever happened to a time when architecture was used as a narrative Deleuzean tool to battle against the centralized powers of the established, of the politically correct, of the “socially responsible” and collectively accepted? Maybe we should reconstruct these last years of “inconvenient truths” and apocalyptic panic by way of the skepticism of a Foucaultian genealogy. Like at the time when there was an “Il Monumento Continuo”, an “Exodus” and a “Non-Stop City.” Maybe then, we will be able to subvert the “green” and criticize the uncritical. ■WAI

By N. Frankowski and C. García

What About Monu?

WAI has been featured in MONU

(Magazine on Urbanism #11)

Clean Urbanism also includes articles, interviews and projects by: OMA, Bernd Upmeyer (BOARD), Felipe Correa, The Jackson Community Design Center, Tomorrow’s Thoughts Today, Gerd Hauser, John Southern, Randall Teal, Nikonus Pappas, Bryan Norwood, Darryl Chen, Amanda Webb, Rogier van den Berg, Aleksander Tokarz, Simon Swietochowski, and Greg Keefe.

www.monu-magazine.com

to order a printed copy:
http://www.monu-magazine.com/order%20MONU.htm

What about the King?

«(…) Le seul, cependant, à avoir poussé le processus jusqu'à son terme était Michael Jackson: il n'était plus ni noir ni blanc, ni jeune ni vieux; il n'était même plus, dans un sens, ni homme ni femme. Personne ne pouvait véritablement imaginer sa vie intime; ayant compris les catégories de l'humanité ordinaire, il s'était ingénié à les dépasser. Voici pourquoi il pouvait être tenu pour une star, et même pour la plus grande star -et, en réalité, la première – de l'histoire du monde. Tous les autres (…) pouvaient tout au plus être considérés comme des artistes talentueux, ils n'avaient fait que mimer la condition humaine, qu'en donner une transposition esthétique; Michael Jackson, le premier, avait essayé d'aller un peu plus loin.»

-Michel Houellebecq, Plateforme

What About the Fire?

Entre realidad y ficción:

Como un edifico en llamas pudo haber liberado a la arquitectura de sus ataduras

Por N. Frankowski, F. Pedrini y C. García

Rem Koolhaas no es Howard Roark. Sin embargo debo admitir que el nueve de febrero deseé que el arquitecto holandés fuera el protagonista del texto de Ayn Rand. Durante el festival de la linterna que marca la culminación de las celebraciones del año nuevo chino, la torre del TVCC se prendió en llamas. La destrucción del escultural hotel y centro de convenciones a manos de su autor sería perversamente audaz.

Tal como Roark destruyó Cortland Homes inconforme con la ineptitud que se tuvo en su construcción, Koolhaas quemaría su torre para denunciar la incapacidad de la arquitectura de los excesos de adaptarse a un periodo de debacles económicos y ambientales. El autor de Delirious New York y S,M,L,XL escogería las celebraciones de año nuevo para acentuar la diferencia entre un año de genialidades e inauguraciones monumentales y un nuevo periodo que verá pocos estrenos y se enfrentará a un clima saturado de tempestades anímicas. La imagen del centro cultural de la televisión china en llamas sería metáfora perfecta: el dragón chino arrojando fuego al cielo oriental languidecido por la profanación de sus tierras a velocidades exasperantes, anonadado por el estridente motor político que ha movido las megaestructuras que ha visto construirse sobre la tierra que debía proteger. Koolhaas habría reconocido que la arquitectura con A mayúscula sufría de sordera ya que había perdido la capacidad de reconocer el sonido de la vida cotidiana.

La ignición del TVCC por manos de Koolhaas sería el perfecto clímax para una novela de Ayn Rand. El intolerable arquitecto iracundo con la profesión, destruyendo la obra de su más ostentoso apadrinador. Congestionadas de especulaciones sobre las causas del incendio, las autoridades no sabrían que hacer. ¿Sería la póliza de seguros contra accidentes de un edificio que llevaba más de un año de atrasos? ¿Habrá sido resultado de un recorte en el presupuesto de protección contra incendios debido al inminente debacle económico? ¿Habrá sido el pueblo chino en una revuelta para reclamar para el pueblo lo que el pueblo construyó? Y si fuera así, ¿Cuál sería el próximo edificio? Estas incógnitas se desvanecerían luego de que el autor del “incidente” declarara sus acciones. “Yo quemé el edifico”, declararía Koolhaas.

Sin embargo, Koolhaas no quemó la torre del TVCC. El incendio que iluminó la noche de Pekín por horas parece ser producto de un accidente con fuegos artificiales. El zinc que lanzaba llamas incontrolables no fue un espectáculo premeditado; no había un mensaje oculto detrás del incendio.

De este modo, no habrá un juicio como el de Courtland Homes en contra de Koolhaas. El arquitecto holandés no denunciará la ineptitud en escalas monumentales de la profesión en un juicio en contra de un batallón de políticos y desarrolladores coléricos. La arquitectura seguirá siendo un ejercicio para los poderosos, los ojos entrenados y las mentes educadas. Los arquitectos seguirán siendo seducidos por el poder de las hegemonías y el brillo del papel couché. Lo que mas me llamó la atención de “The Fountainhead” es como el arquitecto se convirtió en héroe al no perder la compostura y resistir la “crisis”. En estos momentos tenemos todos los elementos necesarios para hacer nuestra propia novela pero, ¿tendremos al fin a nuestro héroe o Howard Roark seguirá siendo solo un personaje ficticio?■

What About the Wall?

Strip City: Rethinking the Meaning of the Gaza Border

By N. Frankowski and C. Garcia

A wall in itself is meaningless. But instead, if that wall is charged with symbolism or with “content”, it can become the ultimate tool for change. As the most basic element of architecture, “the wall” can produce an unlimited array of possibilities. Very often used as a tool for separation, what happens when “the wall” is repurposed to “embrace” instead of excluding? What happens when the “wall” is fragmented to allow permeability? What happens when a no-man’s land is metamorphosed into a social condenser? What happens when instead of dividing East and West, it becomes a “melting pot”?

Strip City addresses the concept of the wall as a barrier, moreover rethinking the border line of the Gaza Strip. In the pictured scenario a ceaseless band of buildings is displayed along the Strip. Rectangular Blocks seem from far as a reminiscence of a continuous wall. But instead of an uninterrupted barrier, the buildings are spaced between them creating a zone for an incessant flow of creative freedom and possibilities.

The East-West conflict that used to be accentuated by a strong physical division is cancelled by the creation of transitional space. Taking as departure the point “0” that marked the separation between two territories, a new Architecture is enhanced. One that looks for the optimization of different behaviors, utilizations, and interpretations of space. Architecture in the “border zone” acts as a landscape background for a space intended to assemble differences and similarities.

As a new archaeological discovery, Strip City proposes a refreshing programmatic flexibility to its occupants. Like an oasis in the desert, people are attracted to the infinite possibilities of the space created that acts as a trait d’union between East and West. A new architecture welcomes the new comers and gratifies its inhabitants with its neutral and peaceful spaces. Common areas are displayed all over between the buildings as tangible ways of social, cultural and economic integration. Sport, health, economic and educational facilities act as enhancers of multiculturalism. Like alchemistic architecture, Strip City turns desolation into hope; a desert into an oasis. At the end a new and healthy architecture shines full of promises.

What About 2008?

Cuarenta años luego, el mundo se sumerge ante un diluvio de incertidumbre, a lo que nos preguntamos ¿Habrá espacio en el Arca para la Arquitectura?

Por N. Frankowski and C. García

Vivimos la trama de una película repetida, aunque posiblemente con un final alterno. Nacidos en la década del 1980, con la llegada del Nintendo, la computadora, la televisión a color, el capitalismo sobre ruedas y la democracia tendiendo su velo prometedor sobre la faz del globo, tuvimos la oportunidad de ver un mundo sentado en la estabilidad económica y política del fin de siècle. La caída del muro y el fin de la guerra fría pondrían en pausa algunas de las variables que causan inestabilidad en una sociedad cada vez más sensible a los altercados extra-bordes. Consecuentemente, la década de los noventa vio florecer un mundo colorido, con barreras demolidas y libertades inéditas. La Unión Europea creaba una colosal versión multi-nacional de los Estados Unidos, la Republica Popular China se hacia cada vez mas capitalista y Rusia se estabilizaba poco a poco, pero con pasos de gigante.

Sin embargo, y como afirma Luis Fernández Galiano: si el siglo XX terminó en Berlín, el siglo XXI comenzó en Nueva York. Vivimos desde el once de septiembre de dos mil uno un nuevo periodo estrenado por el “performance” más grande de la historia que a su vez parece evocar los espíritus de la infame década del 1960. De hecho, exactamente cuarenta años mas tarde tenemos el revival de lo que podría ser un año sesentaiochista. Excesos y decesos dieron color a un canvas que, como pintado por Pollock, mostró mucho color y nada de forma. En China se construían colosales íconos que coqueteaban más con las usuales e históricas propagandas de poder que con el estridente motor turístico al que recientemente estaban siendo sometidas tales arquitecturas. Mientras tanto, la bolsa de valores caía estrepitosamente ante la mirada incrédula de los accionistas, Fannie Mae y Freddie Mac –las casas de hipotecas más importantes en Estados Unidos, y posiblemente en el mundo—se declaraban en banca rota y el precio de crudo establecía una nueva plusmarca mundial; al parecer Usain Bolt y Michael Phelps no eran los únicos en hacer historia. A esto le podemos sumar la alarmante incomodidad por el calentamiento global, la resurgencia de las revueltas en las calles del Tibet y Atenas y para concluir el recrudecimiento de la volátil relación entre palestinos e israelíes que hacen del polvoriento Gaza un bacanal de agresiones.

La Arquitectura con A mayúscula no solo ha hecho mellas de la situación mundial, sino que parece marchar en una dirección totalmente opuesta. La profesión de diseñar edificios y erigir ideas ha decidido desaparecer en el momento más crítico y cuando aparece es para reforzar las ya problemáticas relaciones políticas y sociales. Paseándose resplandeciente sobre la alfombra roja de Beijing y Dubai, ha mostrado todo menos su herencia de soldado ante la batalla por la impronta social. La promesa alquimista del modernismo ha llegado finalmente a su culminación. Leemos el epitafio de una profesión, que aunque fuese en el papel, se decía ser para la gente. Una funesta ceguera nos aqueja como aquella que describió José Saramago en su Ensayo sobre la Ceguera. Vemos todo blanco y nos aislamos dentro de un edificio desolado, lejos del alcance de la gente que ve más allá que la blancura insondable que no tan solo nos obstruye la vista, sino que devora la memoria de las cosas como eran; de la arquitectura sin A mayúscula. Nuestros héroes construyen iconos para estados políticos difusos o para situaciones sociales confusas.

Nos quedamos sin respuestas ante una serie de inquietantes preguntas sobre nuestro potencial de pensadores. Mientras más evidente se hace la crisis, menos pensamos. A cuatro décadas del año posiblemente más volátil en la historia moderna, tenemos ante nosotros lo que podría ser el fin o el comienzo de una nueva era. El axioma que explica que ante la crisis se generan las grandes ideas, se encamina a probarse como uno erróneo. Tal es la desesperación y el desasosiego que multitudes transnacionales se inclinan en reverencia ante un evento político. Un eslogan hace eco mudo y reverbera sobre las paredes del mundo. Como el objectile deleuceano, Barack Obama proyecta su “Change We Need” y levanta el ánimo colectivo de los que se abrazan a la esperanza del evento mientras se balancean en el limbo.

No obstante, incrédula ante el avasallante paso del desamparo, la Arquitectura se jacta de andar en su mejor momento. Luciéndose como dama en traje de gala, la arquitectura coquetea golosa con las que aparentan ser fuentes económicas inagotables, no así dando muestras de un irrecuperable cansancio y deterioro espiritual. Tambaleándonos de inseguridad sometemos a la profesión a ridículas rutinas que ponen en contexto cuan fuera de contexto la profesión puede estar. Podemos tomar por ejemplo la Bienal de Venecia bautizada por Aaron Betsky: “Out There: Architecture Beyond Building.” En lo que parece ser un intento por recobrar la trascendencia intelectual de la disciplina, el crítico estadounidense confió en el potencial de los mega-arquitectos contemporáneos para dar vida a una Bienal con boga de cambio. Sin embargo el resultado no mostró mucho mas que vanos intentos de recuperar el aire vanguardias de los sesenta y peor aun, un recital de manifiestos vacíos e inocuos. ¿Nos habremos quedado sin fuerza para remar justo cuando la corriente va en nuestra contra?

Diez años atrás el mundo prometía un futuro esplendido, digitalizado y glamoroso. Hoy, nos sumergimos en un mar de preocupaciones e incertidumbres. En términos de construcción, el panorama se muestra aun más preocupante. España construirá la menor cantidad de pisos en cincuenta años e Irlanda ya cuenta con serios problemas en el mercado de banca y vivienda. El surgente tigre celta dejo de rugir y se unió a Gran Bretaña, Dinamarca, Alemania y Japón en la lista de potencias económicas en recesión. En Inglaterra se vaticinó que de un 20 a un 30 porciento de los arquitectos quedaran desempleados durante la recesión y números mas alarmantes se asoman en países vecinos, incluyendo a los Estados Unidos. Pronto el batón de la responsabilidad pasará de mano de los baby-boomers a los más jóvenes quienes no han visto nunca una crisis y quienes quizás no se han preparado con el armamento necesario para lanzarse a batalla.

Ante este escenario nos vemos en la necesidad de preguntarnos si contamos aun con el combustible necesario para mover adelante a la profesión responsable de idear edificios y edificar ideas. Hace cuarenta años soñábamos con carros voladores y visionábamos ciudades capaces de caminar sobre mundos post-apocalípticos. Hoy, construimos torres antes impensables y estadios que ni en los sueños más profundos podíamos haber anhelado. Sin embargo, hemos dejado de soñar, lo único que va por los aires es el precio del combustible y el futuro parece más una vuelta a un pasado inestable que la puerta a un porvenir utópico.

Peter Eisenman comentaba en su visita a Puerto Rico como la arquitectura pudiera estar aplicando el “late game”, tras el nombre de la estrategia de ajedrez en la cual se ataca en la parte tardía del juego. Según Eisenman la arquitectura por su naturaleza es la más tarde de las artes en evolucionar. Sin embargo no hay quien nos asegure que la profesión responsable de edificar ideas podrá predecir las próximas jugadas de una sociedad vertiginosamente cambiante. ¿Podrá la arquitectura poner en jaque lo incontrolable, o por falta de iniciativa y sagacidad finalmente sucumbiremos ante un jaque-mate?■

What About Glamour?

We are all spectators in this peepshow of urban frivolity

By N. Frankowski and C. García

Glamour is the new black. The contemporary city lies as a catwalk for the showcase of the sexy products of fetishistic contemporary Starchitects. Glittering facades, exclusive brand names, flashing lights and slick materials are the Botox and silicone of the glamorous twenty first century urbanism. So what about glamour and the city? Are "we", the designers of the city just a bunch of mere cosmeticians?

As Luis Fernandez Galliano wrote in a soul tearing note about “Losing Faith in Architecture”, the dramatic spectacle orchestrated by the empty-handed and empty-minded in an empty stage was not even able to catch a whisper. But what happens when the collective of that non-sense pretentiousness finds its apocalyptic epitome in a bigger scale? What happens when the aura of the metropolitan is driven by the sensationalistic pleasure of the hedonistic mind? Is the urbanism of the twenty first century like a distorted apotheosis of Koolhaas' City of the Captive Globe? Has the city finally turned into the capital of ego? Is its neatness and its fashionable offerings nothing more than nice looks cast over a lack of substance that hides behind the cosmetics?

In an orgy of desire, the contemporary city exists as a mixture of well branded marketing and eye candy pleasures. Magazine covers, TV shows, Music Videos and Movie Sets highlight that the city is finally a superstar in its own. Beijing, Dubai, and even Lagos are brand names like Paris, Bogotá, London and Manhattan; the taste of the month in the centerfold image. The job of the urbanist has become more and more infatuated by the visual pleasures of Photoshop and by the flash of the cameras. Architecture is a Rock Star, the City its red carpet.

In order to understand the city we must update our jargon; glorify our lexicon. A new terminology has to be applied to describe the glamour that has taken over the city like Plastic Surgery over a model's face. The wrinkles of age are being photoshopped in the name of vanity. Glamour transcends the city; it obliterates it. It transforms the city from a summation of randomness, to a pre-programmed living rendering. The urban dictionary must therefore be reinvented. In constant revision, never serious, these new concepts portray the zeitgeist of the modern grozsdtadt.

Bling Bling Urbanism- Eye candy is applied on a one to one thousand scale. Removing all the layers of human evidence, Bling Bling urbanism shows the surrealist alternative of a non-existent reality. Like the paintings in a museum, the world is turned into an image, and all we can do is to view the forms drawn by the hand of the omnipotent architect/urbanist. We have been doing lèche vitrine on windows filled with empty urban promises. Graphically efficient we lie to ourselves in order to lie to everybody. Too far from eyesight, glamour is being shaped for the city. From the palm shapes of man made islands, to the orthogonal, obtuse and acute angles, and organic forms that are cad-drawn and photoshopped over Google earth images of toy sized cities. Bling Bling urbanism dazzles the spectator.

Sexy Shapes- Previously used exclusively to describe attributes that provoked sexual stimulus; “sexy” is no longer attached to the human figure. As icons are being molded with lust and desire, sexy man-made machines are being raised. Whoever holds the tallest sexiest tower becomes the most virile, thus glamorous of all. It's the perfect mathematical formula: the more it twists, bends, or spread wide open, the most exposure it receives. In this world of paraphernalia, sexy describes it the best, and is being commonly used in magazines, public presentations, and even in the most sacred events in school. Like an adrenaline rush, lust anesthetizes our logic as we become unable to distinguish the obvious lack of content behind the shapes. Unable to identify the repeated plot we fall in the scheme like a lover about to be laid. The scene has been set: a flock of birds flying through a sun irradiated, clean, happy sky; the joyous effect of summer lapped by a gentle wafting fog, and in the background, sexy shapes are erected…

Bimbo Towers- Like the supermodel, high rise is getting primetime broadcast. In a frivolous race for coverage, clients are pouring a lot of time, architects and money to erect towers that, like bimbo girls, look amazing but are empty inside. The skyscraper is, indeed, the final, definitive typology. It has swallowed everything else; its big throat spells the epitaph of what used to be variety and heterogeneity. Aiming for the sky, the new race is on; again, and like Yona Friedman's mobile architecture, it grows equally over a desert, a rice field or a gentrified ex-slum. Sooner than expected, glamour will take over and every city will raise its bimbo tower.

Sassy facades- Distinctively stylish, these pretty faces create boulevards reminiscing boutiques of exclusive clothing. A surgical approach that operates over the urban epidermis, a collective of nicely done facades to decorate our urban experience. Libraries, churches, shopping malls, restaurants and banks are submersed into a bacchanal of urban frivolity. Looking sassy and glamorous, every client hires a nice cosmetician to blur its capitalist intentions with good looks in this tell-me-who-you-hire-as-an-architect-and-I’ll-tell-you-who-you-are parade.

Chic Interiors- The most intimate and perhaps exclusive part of the glamour scheme. The interiors seduce, but don’t satisfy. Identity is dropped intentionally in order to gain credibility in the name of design. You are not longer able to identify the function of the place (or the purpose of it). All neon lit, chic interiors suggest you are in a hotel lobby. At the same time you could be waiting for food, for a shoe, for a book or an airplane. Typology is transfigured into ambience and environment. While not exposed to the outside, it is a direct contributor; an extension of it. The interiors don’t clarify their functions in the city, instead they blur them. Contradiction is its fuel, and while it creates an eternal flow of first-level visitors, could be nothing but a fifth category in the urban meme lexicon; lacking substance and just trying to be glamorous.

Blinded by the glitter and exclusive features of architecture, the neatness of man-made forms and the manifestation of the architects' interpretation of the will of the powerful, the city is about to be dead (again). With an excess of frivolity we have condemned the city to be a little miss sunshine in a beauty pageant, without noticing that its about to become an anorexic model that cannot see itself in the mirror anymore. After modernism, "we" have failed to see ourselves again as urban alchemists. Not because our inability to remember previous Herculean efforts, but because we don’t care anymore. A polished caricature of the city; we have condemned it to be everything we want it to be, not everything it needed to be. Are we about to assume responsibility for the intentionally irresponsible, or are we about to succumb to Al Pacino's favorite sin in his role of a contemporary Mephisto: Vanity. As the world turns, it reveals an instable economy, and uncertain future, it is time for us to wonder what happens when the fireworks are finished and the smoke clears, will the city still be there?■