On the precedent as a working tool

Process Design

Readings

RECOMMENDED READINGS

Alexander, C., 1965. A City is not a Tree - Part I+ II. Architectural Forum, 122(1), pp.58–62. Burckhardt, L., 2015. Why is landscape beautiful?: the science of strollology. Basel, Switzerland: Birkhäuser. Calvino, I., 1997. Invisible Cities. New Ed ed. London: Vintage. Castree, N., 2013. A Dictionary of Human Geography. Oxford paperback reference A Dictionary of human geography. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Defoe, D. (1719). The life, and strange surprizing adventures of Robinson Crusoe, mariner: Who lived eight and twenty years alone in an un-inhabited island on the coast of America, near the mouth of the Great River Oroonoque. Who having been cast on shore by shipwreck, wherein all the ship’s crue perished but himself. With an account how he was at last taken up and preserv’d by pyrates. Written by himself and deliver’d to a friend. London: Printed for the book-sellers of London and Westminster. Deleuze, G., 2004. Desert Islands. In: Desert Islands and Other Texts, 1953-1974, Semiotext(e) foreign agents series. Los Angeles, CA : Cambridge, Mass.: Semiotexte ; distributed by MIT Press, pp.9–14. Jackson, J.B., 1970. The Stranger’s Path. In: Landscape in Sight, Published in 2000. London: Yale University Press. Latour, B., 1996. On actor-network theory. Soziale Welt, 47(4), pp.369–381. Lehnerer, A., 2008. Grand Urban Rules. Rotterdam: 010 Publishers. Lynch, K., 1960. The Image of the City. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Maas, W., ESARQ and MVRDV, 2000. Costa Iberica: Upbeat to the Leisure City. Barcelona: Actar. Perec, G., 2010. An attempt at exhausting a place in Paris. Imagining science. Translated by M. Lowenthal. Cambridge, MA : New York: Wakefield Press. Rowe, C. and Koetter, F., 1978. Collage City. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. Shane, D.G., 2005. Recombinant Urbanism: Conceptual Modelling in Architecture, Urban Design and City Theory. Chichester: John Wiley & Sons. Ungers, O.M., Koolhaas, R., Riemann, P., Kollhoff, H., Ovaska, A., Hertweck, F., Marot, S. and Ungers Archiv für Architekturwissenschaft, 2013. The City in the City: Berlin : a Green Archipelago. Zürich: Lars Müller Publishers. Whyte, W.H., 1980. The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces. Washington, D.C: Conservation Foundation.

Perec, G., 2010. An attempt at exhausting a place in Paris. Imagining science. Translated by M. Lowenthal. Cambridge, MA : New York: Wakefield Press.

Defoe, D. (1719). The life, and strange surprizing adventures of Robinson Crusoe, mariner: Who lived eight and twenty years alone in an un-inhabited island on the coast of America, near the mouth of the Great River Oroonoque. Who having been cast on shore by shipwreck, wherein all the ship’s crue perished but himself. With an account how he was at last taken up and preserv’d by pyrates. Written by himself and deliver’d to a friend. London: Printed for the book-sellers of London and Westminster.

Design Studio

Introduction

Instructor: Dr. Fabian Neuhaus (MPLan), fabian.neuhaus@ucalgary.ca

Images by DigitalGlobe; via the CSIS Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative; and CNES; via Airbus DS and IHS Jane’s. Fiery Cross Reef. From Reef to Island in Less Than a Year. Published as Watkins, D., 2015. What China Has Been Building in the South China Sea. The New York Times. [online] 31 Jul. Available at: <https://www.nytimes. com/interactive/2015/07/30/world/asia/what-china-hasbeen-building-in-the-south-china-sea.html> [Accessed 4 Dec. 2018].

1 Studio

An advanced studio exploring contemporary themes in planning and professional planning practice. Centres on a real world problem or client project; involves analysis, synthesis, and formulation of a planning or urban design solution. Culminates in a professional report and presentation. (Graduate Course description online: https://www.ucalgary.ca/pubs/calendar/grad/ current/environmental-design-planning.html#41902 ) 1.1 Island

Islands are clearly defined in their outline. They therefore have a distinct form that is defined by a boundary. This boundary draws the distinction between inside and outside. Being on either side of this demarcation line is part of its identity as an island.

The Oxford English Dictoinary (online [REF http://www.oed.com/view/ Entry/99986?rskey=F48sUP&result=1#eid]) defines island amongst others as: “An elevated piece of land surrounded by marsh or ‘intervale’ land; a piece of woodland surrounded by prairie or flat open country; a block of buildings [= Latin insula]; also an individual or a race, detached or standing out by itself; †to stand in island, to be detached or isolated (obsolete).”There are some combinations thereof, mos interestingly the: “island-universe n. [apparently translating German weltinsel (von Humboldt), though the term has been attributed to Sir William Herschel] a distinct stellar system, such as that to which the sun belongs, occupying a detached position in space. As used fr example in: [1845 tr. A. von Humboldt Κοσμος I. 93 Unter den vielen selbstleuchtenden ihren Ort verändernden Sonnen..welche unsre Weltinsel bilden.] 1867 A. J. Davis Stellar Key to Summer Land vi. 32 The expression ‘Island Universe’ was suggested by the immense distance of the fixed stars from our Sun and Planets; giving the impression that our Solar System occupies an isolated position in the boundless ocean of space.”

This identity created by a boundary support internally a cohesiveness. A sameness that identifies against the otherness outside. Through its sameness the form issues power and asserts its control over the territory created. Islands are models of the world [German: Weltmodelle] as the philosopher Peter Sloterdijkwrites in Phären III, 2004. Such an observation is based on the fact that islands are singularities that are separated through the framing power forming the boundaries [REF Sloterdijk, P., 2004. Sphären 3. Suhrkamp. pp. 311]. It is the isolation that makes the island. It is separated enough from the surroundings to host an experiment of totality to become a world-model.

The formation of small world model is an interesting point of discussion, lets start with the island. One would think of the water as the main agent with no subject to form islands. But are they simply results of mechanical processes? Sloterdijk proposes three ways for islands to come into being. Based on the Italian “isolare” - making an island in the sense of doing. Water and other natural forces

can do so, as we have seen. But there are also subjects that can create such results. A story from the Greek Mythologies tells of a great battle between the gods of Olympus and the Titans of Mount Othrys, the old gods. The battle turned into a throwing contest of large rocks. As recounted by Danke Graves: “ Discouraged, the remaining giants fled back to earth, pursued by the Olympians. Athene threw a vast missile at Enceladus, who crushed him flat and became the island of Sicily. And Poseidon brought off part of Cos with his trident and threw it at Polybutes; this became the nearby islet of Nisyros, beneath which he lies buried” [REF Danke Graves, 1960 (first published 1955). The Greek Myths. Online: http://www.24grammata.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/ Robert-Graves-The-Greek-Myths-24grammata.com_.pdf]. Jpanese mythology has its own story of the creation of Japan as told in Kuniumi (literally “birth or formation of the country”) in which the story is told about the, literal “birth” of the Japanese Archipelago. Islands are places of death, but at the same time are born onto the world. They are a result of practice whether thrown projectiles or mating ceremonies. The isolation hence is not only brought about by the sea but by gods in the form of life and death. Fast forward from the past to the current creation of island creation as a power play of politics and territorial claims. Such as it is currently playing out in the South China Sea [REF for examples Derek Watkins for The New York Times, 2015. What China Has Been Building in the South China Sea. Online: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/07/30/world/asia/what-china-hasbeen-building-in-the-south-china-sea.html. Terraforming and land creation is big business to exert power and influence. Islands are no longer found objects but made objects of the island building modernist. From finding to making implies that the islands are networked such as in the work by Morphosis on “Connected Isolation” [REF Mayne, T., 1993. Morphosis: Connected Isolation. Architectural monographs (London, England) ; 23. London: Academy Editions. ]. It is a critique of the modernist practice of the isolation of living through the division of function. Housing as the absolute isolation, the last island, my house is my castle. It is cultivating the feeling and culture of the fencing-in of space.

Sloterdijk distinguishes between three technological types of islands. This is the detached or absolute island such as a boat, a airplane or a space station. Transitioning from water to air to space to describe the isolation. The second is the creation of atmosphere island such as conservatories or greenhouses where a kind of nature island is imitated by technical means to create specific conditions. And finally the anthropomorphic island shaped by the being-together of tool wielding humans. This creates a cradle like situation, an isolating breeding ground for society.

There are different kinds of Islands.

None of these however possess any meaning or have any consequences if they are not embedded in some kind of social practice. This is to say that everything we deal with in the city ultimately is tied to the social and cultural practice that created it and that it is creating in turn. Whilst the island evokes the romantic image of nice sandy beaches, tropical forest and an array of exotic plants and animals - time of, maybe holiday - of interest here however, is the urban island

Izanagi (right) and Izanami (left) consolidating the earth with the spear Ama-no-Nuboko. Painting by Eitaku Kobayashi (Meiji period).

Images by DigitalGlobe, via CSIS Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative. Dredgers pump sediment onto Mischief Reef, March 2015. Published as Watkins, D., 2015. What China Has Been Building in the South China Sea. The New York Times. [online] 31 Jul. Available at: <https://www.nytimes. com/interactive/2015/07/30/world/asia/what-china-hasbeen-building-in-the-south-china-sea.html> [Accessed 4 Dec. 2018].