the Temporary City_ mars 11
March 7th, 2011 § Leave a Comment
_ Mind Map
_Communication as a city frame
Project Thesis_ the Temporary City
1st Phase:
I would like to start with a quotation chosen by Dan Brown’s novel “The DaVinci Code”: People see what they know, not what there actually is, so try to see beyond the painting…
Even if this quotation may sound far away from architecture, it is how I understood mapping. Mapping is a process that describes the city from another perspective of observing it, where your mind and senses are opened toward nature and city… you leave yourself be infected by every physical and mental “catalysts”, values of the piece of land that you are about to study, “map”.
The conditions were to choose one fact and two fictions, through which the city will be observed and visualized.
1st as “Fact” I chose what I call, the “ADD ONs” (extensions in existing buildings, ambulant sellers, demolished memorials, balconies covered with plastic bags, new buildings, ect). These interventions were grabbing space, enclosing it, creating 3D “alleys”, labyrinths, such a way channeling fluxes and wind. Dealing with these Add On-s, which I also divided in 3 categories: successful; functional and resolutionary; was also dealing with the relationship between formal and informal.
2nd, the first “Fiction”, picked up is “wind” (as a factor of space structured by add on-s) strictly related with accumulation of fluxes.
A notation in the area was that narrow streets, usurped by the “add on-s”, were transformed in natural shortcuts channeling wind (its intensity grows higher) and in contrast were somehow “hostile” toward people (not accumulating fluxes).
Naming the first “fiction” could be dealing with “ephemeral” state of the city!
3rd, the second “Fiction”, picked up is “communication as a city frame”. While walking inside the area, the feeling was like getting “attacked” by information, advertisements, posters ect. It was like a direct communication from person to person, but transforming on pier in a “printed layer”. This feeling was caused because while getting overloaded with this information, my mind started to think directly for the process to be taken after brain develops the information, ending on thinking (buy; deal; learn; invest; gain; enjoy; solve; live; drink; think; dance; work out; watch ect).
The conclusion was that Communication worked as a filtering layer between people and “add on-s”. A transition frame of thinking inside the city!
Finally I ended up with a mind map, where all the 3 characteristics were connected together, and a 3D Map showing The TEMPORARY CITY.
To mention: in the 3D Map is showed only one walking trail inside the area through filling in “the empty space”.
3D Map Legend:
Planes (white, grey, red) = add on-s (successful, functional, resolutionary); density of wires = accumulation of fluxes; high of wires = intensity of wind; vertical images = communication frames.
2nd Phase:
_ Project Poster
The location of the project is in the “Bllok” Area, a highly dense part of the city, where housing, business and entertainment are merged together. Businessmen have eager investing on this city area for their entertainment businesses, though the habitants of the zone are more and more bothered by the noise of night life. So how to make this extremes work together? The solution could be “ephemeral architecture”…
Here we connect the first phase with the second one. The proposal could be, an Add On, which works as a city frame, and for that utilizes the wind.
How the whole system works: Wind is caught by pinwheels that pop out of the roof of the “add on”; its intensity is transformed into an electrical impulse, which is translated into color in the cover façade of the ephemeral Add On. The coverage is made by plastic balloon and stands up to a metallic structure.
This proposal is located in this case over the Lana River, even if it could have been on other parts of area, as popping out of an existing building, filling in an empty space, or standing in the middle of the plazas.
the motto of this project is: Nothing Permanent, Yet Effective!
In the upper writing you can understand why the project is called City of Temporality, in other words “a city of an instant moment of time”.
