Issue's articles | The Plan Journal
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Essay

Process of Commoning in the Production and Proliferation of Shared Space

by: Olivia Hamilton VOLUME 3/2018 - Issue 2 [THE SHARED PROJECT], Pages: 287 - 300 published: 2018-11-28

Commoning describes the social and psychological process that individuals and collectives are involved in as they establish and manage space and life shared in common. The values that underpin commoning can be adapted by spatial and urban designers to privilege and encourage more inclusive and shared social, civic and environmental conditions and disrupt existing models and economic forces that currently organise private and public space. Commoning produces spaces and social relations through participation, developing in the protagonists a sense of agency over their lives. Design practitioners with interests in the processes of commoning can engage with those values to interrupt the homogenization of communities and the cauterization of spatial imagination by commercial imperatives. Drawing on design precedents, theorists and activists involved with various aspects of contemporary commoning, this paper proposes how designers can be informed and guided by the interrelated spatial and social modes of productions that are integral to commoning. Through a commitment to commoning, spatial designers can encourage and support commoning and proliferate values capable of transforming the future.

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Essay

The Sharing Cosmopolis. Prosperity without Growth

by: Doug Kelbaugh VOLUME 3/2018 - Issue 2 [THE SHARED PROJECT], Pages: 273 - 286 published: 2018-11-28

Why is sharing important to our civilization, our cities and the earth? It is critical, even essential to our survival, because without it, we will overconsume the planet’s resources and overheat it. It is of paramount importance that we find ways to increase prosperity without economic growth, or better yet, to achieve degrowth. Sharing our assets, our services and places, even our activities and experiences may be our best hope to reduce the human ecological, energy and carbon footprints. Whether a reformed version of capitalism or a fundamentally new economy, the sharing city and no-growth ethic form a large, profound and open question. In any case, from an energy use and emissions point of view, doubling energy and technological efficiency or doubling the intensity of asset use though sharing have much the same impact - whether it is cars, transit, homes, equipment, offices or workshops. This realization opens up a huge new opportunity for reforming or replacing neo-liberal capitalism with longer-term thinking and more humane economics.

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Article

Towards a Cooperative Architecture Platform

by: Jose Manuel Sanchez VOLUME 3/2018 - Issue 2 [THE SHARED PROJECT], Pages: 327 - 340 published: 2018-12-06

This paper outlines the use of videogame simulations as a representation of the complex interactions of resources within an urban neighborhood. The research advances the use of videogames as a mechanism for the production of design patterns for the city, in the hands of its inhabitants. By establishing a real-time feedback loop between players and an ecological simulation of the city, a user can learn and make decisions that could be shared with a community. This paper will mainly discuss the research developed through the videogame Block’hood, a project developed by the Author at the University of Southern California School of Architecture and the Plethora-Project research that attempts to critically address the use of mass media technology for collective organization and value production.

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Essay

The Future of Urban Living in the Sharing Economy

by: Wendy Wei-Yue Fok VOLUME 3/2018 - Issue 2 [THE SHARED PROJECT], Pages: 301 - 314 published: 2019-02-12

This is the continued research and development that derived from the original doctoral research “Whose Digital Property,” probing into the ramifications brought about by the new business model of the “sharing economy,” and the concerns raised behind the issues of access, ownership and distributed rights among policy, economy, design and architecture, of digital and physical property law research. The doctoral research was defended in 2017 at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design with the Harvard School of Law as a partnering department. The discussion developed in this essay tries to show how several examples and trends suggest architecture and architecture-related software programming will likely become even more collaborative in the future and will necessitate a more strategic, articulated and multi-pronged cooperation between designers, companies and users.

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Project

Un-Cramming - A New Shared Economy

by: Winka Dubbeldam VOLUME 3/2018 - Issue 2 [THE SHARED PROJECT], Pages: 427 - 434 published: 2018-12-06

To mark the hundredth anniversary of the New York City’s zoning code, we propose the next dimension of zoning, a four-dimensional hypercube that “un-crams” Manhattan’s second- and third-dimensional congestion into a fourth-dimensional model of sharing (space). By projecting the grid’s coordinates into a large hypercube - the fourth dimension in mathematics -, we developed a typology that falls between the scale of a city block and a building. A city in a city. Located at the water-edge of the East River, this becomes a new terminal building, a domestic/commercial hybrid that takes the notion of sharing to a new level. This waterfront site gives not only access to the new Second Avenue Subway, but also to the new water ferry and the airport water taxi. Sharing economy - this four-dimensional framework - will re-activate Manhattan’s forgotten East Side. Sixty percent of the Hypercube is a public and shared program (park, pool, terraces), while 40% percent is occupied with mixed-use space. Inhabitants are encouraged to share domestic appliances and tools, creating a new social network. This new social economy distributes the allowable 10 Floor Area Ratio (FAR) into the Hypercube, and with elevated parks it creates a new way of shared city living.

 Open Access
EDITORIAL
Editorial

In This Issue [1/2018]

by: Maurizio Sabini VOLUME 3/2018 - Issue 1 , Pages: 5 - 6 published: 2018-08-02
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TYPOLOGY
Project

"L’École Poreuse" (1) A Project for an Innovative School

by: Riccardo Zuliani , Brunella Angeli VOLUME 3/2018 - Issue 1 , Pages: 91 - 125 published: 2018-08-02

This paper details the design solution awarded at the 2017 international call for ideas for the design and implementation of fifty “innovative schools” launched by the Italian Ministry of Education and Research (MIUR). The project expands an ongoing personal research, focusing on the class layout in relation to the educational curriculum proposed inspired by the principles of Social Constructivism and with the final aim of providing continuity among nursery, infant and primary schools. The “School of Tomorrow” designed for the MIUR has no traditional desk, but modular tables of different sizes. There is no teacher desk, but an educator who moves among students, both in class and in the communal areas. Instead of the traditional class, there are size reconfigurable areas according to subjects taught and students’ needs. This school offers labs, ateliers and workshops. It has no corridors, but connective spaces equipped with poufs, sofas, soft seats and carpets. These areas become the functional and symbolic heart of the school - the Piazza and the Learning Street - hosting parties, assemblies, student works exhibitions and theatrical performances. The school of the future will stay open beyond school hours and will play the role of a civic center.

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DIGITAL TECHNOLOGY
Article

An Ontology of Robotic Architecture

by: Mahesh Daas , Andrew John Wit VOLUME 3/2018 - Issue 1 , Pages: 127 - 139 published: 2018-08-01

Robotics has recently found themselves more engrained within the ethos of architectural research and production. However, their relationship to architecture still remains to be understood. This article examines the relationship between robotics and architecture from an ontological standpoint. The article offers foundational frameworks and raises key questions to broadly define robotics in architecture.

 Open Access
CROSS-DISCIPLINARY STUDIES
Essay

An Urban/Landscape Project for the Venice Lagoon

by: Claudio Aldegheri VOLUME 3/2018 - Issue 1 , Pages: 191 - 207 published: 2018-07-16

In recent years, in the Venice lagoon we have seen an increasing number of urban planning projects with a low level of flexibility, which have not seized the opportunities offered by such a rich and complex context. This study is therefore about how to approach the project in this area, aiming to give value to its many different landscape aspects and attempting to reconsider in general the attitude to urban planning.

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CRITICISM
Essay

Pouillon’s Practical Theory. A Design Method for Contemporary Architectural Practice

by: Emilio Mossa VOLUME 3/2018 - Issue 1 , Pages: 47 - 68 published: 2018-07-07

The aim of this paper is to underline the currency and modernity of Fernand Pouillon’s method for contemporary architectural practices. In particular, this dissertation analyzes the theory hidden behind Pouillon’s practice, and the motivation influencing the final quality of his works in order to make this method implementable to the current conditions of architectural design related to the management of complexity, buildability and quality of buildings. This paper explains Pouillon’s design process through the case study of Résidence Les 200 Logements, or dwellings, built in Aix-en-Provence between 1951 and 1955. This work represents the turning point experience in the development of a design methodology that Pouillon will use for the following twenty years of his career. The 200 Logements project demonstrates the absolute effectiveness of this design method to achieve a certain quality in all the production phases. By merging technological and humanistic culture, the buildings designed by Pouillon exemplify the possibility of making theory through practice. Intended as “practical theories,” the models and the approaches proposed by Pouillon represent a design method that can still be used today.

 Open Access
LANDSCAPE URBANISM
Article

Cities as Hydro-Geologic Terrain: Design Research to Transform Urban Surfaces

by: Mary Pat McGuire VOLUME 3/2018 - Issue 1 , Pages: 165 - 190 published: 2018-07-02

Imperviousness is a significant design problem for the future of cities: we must reduce it, redesign it, transform it. This paper argues to insert hydro-terrain thinking to the paved surfaces of cities, instantiating the concept of “rain terrain” that links hydrologic performance across scales, from the raindrop to the region. The City of Chicago is the case study where high concentrations of pavement drain stormwater from the city - resulting in flooding, overflowing and polluting - from the Great Lakes to the Gulf of Mexico. I first share research on the glaciated history of the region, to reveal sandy soil types located in the urban area. I then correlate imperviousness, permeable soils and flooding prevalence to identify a pattern of site opportunity areas in the city. I also propose design practices - through disruptions, interventions and reconfigurations of urban surface - to tap paved-over soils as the basis for a landscape-based urban stormwater approach. In doing so, this paper aims to present a vision for urban transformation, based on specific technical design opportunities within landscape-as-infrastructure.

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LANDSCAPE URBANISM
Project

Chicago’s Urban Rivers

by: Carol Ross Barney VOLUME 3/2018 - Issue 1 , Pages: 141 - 164 published: 2018-07-02

Chicago, like other major cities, traces its growth back to a connection with water. As the city grew, the river became the backbone of commerce and economic prosperity. However, this thriving resource was not always looked upon with a sense of stewardship and care. In the wake of post-industrialization, much of the manufacturing had moved from the banks of the Chicago River, leaving behind disconnected communities and a polluted riverbed. For nearly two decades, Ross Barney Architects has been working along Chicago’s rivers. These efforts include the design of the Chicago Riverwalk, studies on all 150 mi. [241 km] of riverfront across the city, and an exhibition at the Chicago Architecture Biennial. The goal was to reconnect people with the dynamic and changing life of the river.

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REFLECTIVE PRACTICE
Project

Berlin Fragments. A Heterography of an Architectural Form

by: conrad-bercah VOLUME 3/2018 - Issue 1 , Pages: 23 - 45 published: 2018-06-25

Architectural form lives a number of mysterious lives that are characterized by different yet simultaneous temporalities. It has been said that a “secret date” exists between the modern and the archaic, not so much because the modern is fascinated by the archaic but because “the key to understanding the modern is hidden somewhere beneath the timeless and the pre-historical.” The mystery surrounding the intellectual sources in the architect’s work arguably lies in the multifaceted (aesthetic, sociological, political, spatial) relationships it establishes with a multitude of friends - be they artists, poets, or architects - who are responsible for his development and keep feeding his practice, even if long dead.

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TYPOLOGY
Project

Modular House. Coastal Typological Prototype

by: Eric A. Gartner VOLUME 3/2018 - Issue 1 , Pages: 69 - 90 published: 2018-06-25

Climate change requires new approaches to coastal settlements at all scales. The architectural community must respond with solutions not only at the urban scale, but also at the scale of the single-family home, long an integral component of the American dream. The single-family typology has been critical to the exploration of architectural ideas and basic societal needs. With shifting coastlines and rising waters, the relationship between built-form and landscape must adapt without losing the important connection between the building and its site. Equally importantly, the transformation of this building type must be broadly available to communities with a wide range of economic resources. Our firm seeks to meet this need through the use of modular construction with thoughtfully restrained site work that limits the short-term impact on the environment, while providing long-term solutions necessary for acclimating to this changing world.

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REFLECTIVE PRACTICE
Project

The Headquarters of Métropole Rouen Normandie

by: Jacques Ferrier VOLUME 3/2018 - Issue 1 , Pages: 7 - 22 published: 2018-04-11

The main idea behind the Métropole Rouen Normandie headquarters project by Jacques Ferrier Architecture was to unite all the “energy” that is found in this port site in France. While taking inspiration from the paintings of Claude Monet, especially of the Rouen Cathedral, the façades of the building were designed to be able to constantly change color depending on day, season, and time. The design is aimed at maximum efficiency and comfort of the offices inside. An innovative and exemplary building that is also easy and intuitive to navigate.

 Open Access
THEORY
Book Review

Exaltation of Apartness? "The Building"

by: Christophe Van Gerrewey VOLUME 3/2018 - Issue 1 , Pages: 209 - 217 published: 2018-04-11

 

 Open Access
CRITICISM
Exhibition Review

Little Boxes and Big Boxes. On Donald Judd’s "Obdurate Space"

by: Kyle May , Julia van den Hout VOLUME 3/2018 - Issue 1 , Pages: 233 - 240 published: 2018-02-21
 Open Access
THEORY
Conference Report

The Danish Way. The Rising Architecture Week 2017 in Aarhus

by: Maurizio Sabini VOLUME 3/2018 - Issue 1 , Pages: 241 - 257 published: 2017-11-12

The Rising/Architecture Week 2017 was held in Aarhus as part of the Aarhus European Capital of Culture 2017 initiatives. The array of conversations, debates, and exchange of ideas generated at Rising 2017 proved once more the vitality and the maturity of Danish design culture. 

Rooted on a strong Modernist tradition, Danish design culture weaves a savvy mix of promoting and further sharpening its brand, as well as of stimulating thoughtful reflections on relevant disciplinary and societal issues. The conference was intelligently used as vehicle to showcase the good work that is being produced not just in Copenhagen but across Central Denmark and to bring in a diverse pool of international designers, planners, critics, and thinkers. What can be called the Danish Way to design culture offers the opportunity “to rise,” above the conventional and the predictable, for an exciting view over a possible better world.

 Open Access
CRITICISM
Exhibition Review

Make New Critical Stories. A View on the 2017 Chicago Architecture Biennial

by: Maurizio Sabini VOLUME 3/2018 - Issue 1 , Pages: 219 - 231 published: 2017-10-13

The 2017 edition of the Chicago Architecture Biennial, Make New History, like any other similar event, has caused debate and controversy. Beyond inevitable flaws and shortcomings, the CAB though deserves to be appreciated for the quality of most of the exhibited projects, works or installations, some of which managed also to offer what was missing in this CAB’s main theme: a critical perspective. The theme itself of the CAB is challenged, but the good works of many international architects and artists, well selected by the Artistic Directors Sharon Johnston and Mark Lee, is appreciated for their contributions to a critical discourse in our field, for their “critical stories.” Through a discussion of the curators’ hypothesis and of some of the most interesting works, as well as of some critical contributions included in the exhibition catalog, this review tries to offer a critical assessment for an event that, fortunately, has already acquired an outstanding position within the architecture cultural landscape of our time.

 Open Access
Position Paper

The Resilient Metamorphosis of Cities

by: Carlo Gasparrini VOLUME 2/2017 - Issue 2 [RESILIENT EDGES], Pages: 161 - 165 published: 2018-02-08
 Open Access
Article

Waterscapes in Transformation: The Case of the Belgian Coastal Area

by: Sis Pillen , Kris Scheerlinck , Erik Van Daele VOLUME 2/2017 - Issue 2 [RESILIENT EDGES], Pages: 743 - 766 published: 2018-02-05

The socio-economic impact of nature in Belgian coastal landscapes on a regional scale is high due to their general attractiveness for visitors, their strongly developed tertiary service economy and other related sectors (tourism, residential, agriculture…). Due to climate changes however, these coastal landscapes and their required accessibility and continuous character are threatened by the unavoidable planned infrastructures (dikes, new connections, floodable areas, etc.) that will generate ruptures, frictions and additional transition spaces within the landscape. Flanders urgently needs to unfold policies and strategies to avoid or reduce the undesirable effects of the expected changes. Influential changes for the coastal zone will be sea level rising, increasing temperature, changing rainfall patterns, floods, fragmented ecological system, salinization, and reduced drainage capabilities to sea. A thoughtful planning policy forms the necessary key to a sustainable development. Policies and plans lead to the formulation of spatial proposals for mitigation and adaptation, to be executed by major infrastructural works planned for the next decades. Most of these infrastructures, conceived at a large scale, generate a different model of accessibility for the Flemish Coastal landscape.

 Open Access
Article

Climate Change Adaptations for Coastal Farms: Bridging Science and Mātauranga Māori with Art and Design

by: Martin Bryant , Penny Allan , Huhana Smith VOLUME 2/2017 - Issue 2 [RESILIENT EDGES], Pages: 497 - 518 published: 2018-02-06

Indigenous coastal farming communities need to address future climate change impacts, yet many communities are slow to respond, due to lack of adequate information, economic pressures, the abstract nature of climate change science and poor communication between what science knows and what indigenous farming communities need to know. Art and design can address these issues by synthesizing broad scientific principles with local place-specific culture and their visual language can effectively communicate short and long-term benefits to local communities. Art and design are thus both generative research methods and media for representation. This research uses art and design to provide a bridge between the Māori culture of a local farming community in coastal New Zealand and climate change science. It provides a framework of strategies for new farm practices. Underpinned by the qualitative awareness of thresholds and an open-ended toolbox of land-based strategies, the role of the framework is to catalyze adaptation. The framework is responsive to both the Māori worldview and scientific knowledge, and has the potential to provide a model for other coastal communities.

 Open Access
Article

Challenges of Disaster Relief Housing: Evaluating Coastal Domestic Typologies in Eastern Sri Lanka

by: Kira Bre Clingen , Mark Robert Bavoso VOLUME 2/2017 - Issue 2 [RESILIENT EDGES], Pages: 601 - 628 published: 2018-02-06

In the aftermath of the December 2004 tsunami, an unprecedented natural disaster that disproportionately affected the impoverished and conflict-ridden eastern coast of Sri Lanka, the outpouring of disaster relief and support for housing reconstruction was primarily led by international aid organizations for the erection of capital-intensive dwellings to allow for immediate habitation. Three case studies representative of significant housing typologies deployed since the tsunami are investigated: two global prototypes sponsored by foreign aid, and one informal, vernacular construction. We argue that in Sri Lanka the aid-housing-as-commodity paradigm - which in its specificity and immutability disregards the robust tradition of integration between natural and built environments and between individual and community - represents an increasingly and unsustainably risky expenditure of capital resources due to the likelihood of more frequent disasters in coastal zones. We argue for a shift toward spatial frameworks, not static prototypes, which take into account that the longer temporal dimension of rebuilding community and housing after a natural disaster is not necessarily synonymous with expensive, structurally robust building practice. 

 Open Access
Article

Salinas: Interstices of the Urban, Cultural and Political Processes in Mediterranean Ecologies

by: Ana Morcillo Pallares VOLUME 2/2017 - Issue 2 [RESILIENT EDGES], Pages: 707 - 719 published: 2018-02-06

Salinas, or Mediterranean coastal salt marshes, are priceless ecological wetlands, resilient spaces along the coast that have survived over time and hold incalculable cultural, historical, and ethnographic values associated with them. Today, artisanal sea salt production is no longer a profitable business, and in many cases, these spaces become a no-man’s-land in-between nature and city, falling victims to pressures of changing land uses and the unsustainable urban growth of the Mediterranean coastal tourism. However, the process of change and abandonment of these former production landscapes presents an opportunity to promote new formulas for spatial tactics, public use and new sustainable futures. A liminal condition full of spatial and formal assets that opens the rising potential of the local economy and the right of the salina’s active exploitation, interaction and identification.

 Open Access
Article

Fragile Edges and Floating Strategies along the Albanian Coastline

by: Loris Rossi , Laura Pedata , Enrico Porfido , Giuseppe Resta VOLUME 2/2017 - Issue 2 [RESILIENT EDGES], Pages: 685 - 705 published: 2018-02-06

The essay investigates coastline development along the southern area of the Albanian Riviera, introducing the concepts of “landscape fragments” and “landscape within a landscape” as design methodologies. By speculatively reversing the order of landscape perception from land to water, the coastline becomes a flexible device capable of responding to unpredictable future events - natural disasters related to climate change (rising sea levels), or globally challenging socio-political phenomena (such as mass migration growing in scope, complexity and impact). The experimental design approach involves the design and representation of an incremental waterscape. By reversing the morphological perception of the coastal landscape and making a set of tactical selections in natural and artificial landscapes, the students highlighted the territory’s potential. With new awareness, they proposed site-specific interventions along the coast and inland, re-territorializing the “apparent tabula rasa” and demonstrating the coastline’s potential dynamic reaction to environmental challenges.

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