Week 10: Sprawl, Megacity, (Post)Urbanism

Key readings:

Jameson - Future City

Koolhaas - Junkspace

Lin - CHINESE ARCHITECT ©

This week’s readings take off where the previous ones left off, with the failure of urbanism to be able to deal with the urbanising trends of the third world, but also suburban sprawl and the economic conditions which create this new condition of ‘junkspace.’

Together, the Chinese Architect© and Junkspace portray a fascinating, if somewhat terrifying vision of potential futures of architecture. Through extreme commodification, the architect is transformed from the designer of buildings and spaces to someone who applies a given plan to a site. Despite the increased importance of Architecture©, the agency of the architect is heavily reduced – economics govern the structure of the city. Perhaps the only remaining recognisable role of the architect is in designing the ‘hat’ or skin that adorns the generic plan, or otherwise in creating one of the architectural ‘recipes’ which others then apply to their sites. But in Architecture© even these tasks are fully subservient to the economies of development, with a drive to the most economical designs, regardless of issues of comfort and well-being.

China designs and builds with a speed that for us is unimaginable. But the shocking compromise in quality sometimes reveals itself in the news. In this building collapse in Shanghai, perhaps the most worrying aspect is that in the background there stand numerous other identical buildings, all of which presumably share the same major error in the design of their foundations.

In Junkspace, Koolhaas addresses many of the same issues (albeit in more extreme forms) that concerned Calthorpe in his vision for the Next American Metropolis. However, whereas Calthorpe flees in terror, Koolaas’ acceptance of the condition of junkspace and the way in which he embraces the possibilities it offers makes it a much richer account, and although it is largely diagnostic, he begins to set up a vocabulary of architectural techniques to deal with the condition: “clamp, stick, fold, dump, glue, shoot, double, fuse.”

“We have made them [hospitals] (too) human; life or death decisions are taken in spaces that are relentlessly friendly, littered with fading bouquets, empty coffee cups, and yesterday’s papers.” – Junkspace, p. 185

Would you like a skinny cappuccino with your hip replacement, madam?

This extract reminded me strongly of a recent BBC news item on Foster’s new Circle hospital in Bath (above). According to the reporter, the hospital was designed to make it feel like a hotel, with the aroma of coffee in the reception to make people feel more at ease. Although there is something slightly strange and unnerving about the transformation of healthcare buildings into branches of Starbucks, if the quality of space has a positive effect on the health of patients, then perhaps this is not too bad after all.