les ateliers de maitrise d'œuvre urbaine en asie

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LES ATELIERS DE MAITRISE D’ŒUVRE URBAINE EN ASIE Literally "pockets of cities" are emphasized, thereby ignoring their neighbouring areas. The city has to escape from "functionalist" overwhelming scale in order to reach the "real" human scale, the scale of intermediary qualities. Individual initiatives may take over the responsibility of this new distribution of quality. Thereby, may come a new vitality in urban development and a new form of "urban spirituality". THE DEATH OF THE IDEAL CITY : PERCEPTION AND "STRUCTURING" OF THE SCHIZOPHRENIC CITY: The recognizing of the end of the ideal city is proof of our understanding that the world is imperfect. After thousands of years of attempts through writings and local utopian realizations (i.e. F.L.Wright, and P. Solari), the human constructions on earth have little power to improve the society and little capacity to perpetuate as uniformly perfect. The constant mutation of needs leading to decay (i.e. Antique abandoned cities) and the change in appreciation of things affects largely all theoretical principles to bring them back to reality (i.e. The city of Detroit). Thereby secluded areas may be viewed as momentarily perfect. But these are merely refuge areas and as such have limited impact to modify larger systems or processes of city fabrications. By definition secluded areas are closed and as such refer back to the notion of interiority which opposes in a dual vision an inside and an outside (i.e. Innen and Aussen, G.Dorfles). Similarly, society rejects what is exterior to itself under the name of madness. This explains complex relations of inside/outside because it relates directly to society's innermost subjectivity (i.e.S. Felman). Often the outside is thought of as chaos due to the fact that the rules are too "labyrinthic" to grasp for direct comprehension. However, chaos is where rules are broken to the extent that no viability is any longer possible and such an extremity is seldom reached. Chaos is a demonic vision opposed to idealistic qualities of an imagined paradise ( chaos brings "déchirements et rejets" to an unbearable level). Further more if one grasps the city as chaos one should ask why he qualifies it in those terms and what references it calls for. This questioning is as important as understanding what constitutes the environment under consideration through such allusive connotations. The so-called good city fragments versus bad city fragments are caricature readings of the city. They do not exist as unbridgeable disconnected entities. WHO IS THE OBJECT, WHO IS THE SUBJECT? Psychoanalytic theories distinguish two types of people: those who support consequences of pre-existent factors and those who act to modify and participate in the elaboration of these factors. But we may observe that most of the time both types, carrying the same collective unconscious roots, link directly the observer who later becomes the actor. For instance, a small child who litters in the city street has understood that littering inside the family premise is prohibited: thereby, he has structured the world to separate interior and exterior, the exterior needing not to be respected along similar rules as the interior. Later the same person as an adult having built this subconscious separation will act along his own hierarchy of spaces considering the exterior as evil, a world needing less care because it is outside. CYNICISM AND THE CITY AS MERE TOOL: If we consider that planning embraces all transformed environments connected directly or indirectly to the elaboration or the evolution of cities, then roads, industrial factories, energy plants are part of the environment at stake. All this transformed environment has little reason to be other than an attempt to upgrade human amenities for better living. May we consider that means for human life are not supposed to go against comfort on earth? From now on, means for current human life should not risk to damage the future of life on earth. This nontemporal vision presupposes a high level of responsibility leading to clear choices for the actors at all levels. Thereby, no decision should ever risk creating more damage than good. This point of view is widely admitted for the respect of the quality of air and water, furthermore it is clearly expressed for the preservation of nature (i.e. A. Berque) but seldom treated for the built environment at large. In this manner, a city such as Athens seems to be in this condition and appears to be under this effect of cynicism. The city is unavoidably both beautiful and ugly as in a schizophrenic nightmare. THE MYTH OF THE SAVAGE CITY: The savage world understood as a contemporary achievement seems altogether to be a result of the schizophrenic effects in city thinking, hiding serious risks for the future of cities. Apparently originating in fairy tales, the contemporary savage world is a romantic fantasy which transforms itself into a world of discomfort and constant fighting for survival. This myth amplifies the separation between the good and the bad. It makes a caricature of human beings as so called glorious warriors in a hostile environment. With the exception of pure masochism, one wonders why human beings would want to build a world of discomfort? The key is to locate what is real savagery, the cultural center looking like a "tamed" power-plant or the power plant as a noman's land expanding to uncontrollable extents. LINKS AS OVERSIMPLIFIED SOLUTIONS: In order to upgrade defective city areas, solutions of are proposed to create transportation connecting good and bad parts of the city. In schizophrenia, the illness is not so much in the gaps but in the deep split between mental worlds with different structures. The way to remedy to these problems is to put in place solutions which treat the parts within themselves. Rapport de la 4 ème session en Asie - SHANGHAI / Chine 2000 38 11/03/2009
LES ATELIERS DE MAITRISE D’ŒUVRE URBAINE EN ASIE The treatment of links is often a patch to hide the seam, a disguised solution. Paradoxically, the city cannot be imagined without bounds, separations and frontiers (i.e. K. Lynch). Resolving city gaps by the erasing of separations is to underestimate the very identity of each city fragment. PASSING THROUGH THE MIRROR, "LA TRAVERSÉE DU MIROIR": The positive and negative in thinking about city opposes the acceptable city to the ill-city. In order to go beyond this closing up of perception we need to metaphorically pass through the mirror (i.e.L.Carroll) In psychoanalytic theory, the phase of going beyond mental boundaries is a way to achieve real changes or rather to attain a full mental acceptance of the reality of better living with less suffering. Thereby, the flattering representation of the city is false because it rejects parts of the city. This false representation must be surpassed in order to reorganize our current representation of the city. If we refuse this mutation in perception, the re-evaluation of the city will never be done and the negative will consume the parts we value as livable environments. SCHIZOPHRENIA AS A THEORETICAL TOOL FOR CITY REAPPRAISAL: The intent here is to relate not only physical observation to theory but to see influences of less conscious perception of the city. Schizophrenia refers to a double vision of the city of juxtaposed fragments. Beyond the existence of fragments, the mental status we assign to each fragment is linked to a hierarchical composition that is worth analysing. The notion of parasitic fragments is not what we are trying to resolve here but rather we are concentrating on the creation of black holes of the city, a sort of anti-city. These anti-city fragments appear often to us as unavoidable, nonetheless we must confront and try to understand them. By correcting this destructive thought, we are in a sense curing effects of schizophrenic appreciations of the city. This dualism is comparable to deviant behaviour (i.e. R. Jacquard), similar to man building a world that he does not like, in which man destroys the potential of his own survival and revels in self destructive behaviour. The city was to be democratic for all (i.e. Plato), at present it has become individualistic and savage and even perversely dangerous, bordering the limits of madness. We tend to repress our reading of the ill-city of uncomforted by accepting it with hypocritical attitude. With a fear of these city fragments nearing psychosis, we end up living in a world of pretence. This may lead to a study of causes dealing with city illnesses namely an "etiology of the city". This path is required to engage and explore methods of urban planning extending to more sensitive and comprehensive values in decision making. FROM RENAISSANCE TO THE END OF THE BEAUTIFUL CITY : Throughout history, we see man preoccupied by building cities as an homage to deities and gods (i.e. Dellos in Greece). During the Humanist period, the city was conceived to be beautiful for land owners and political leaders (i.e. Florence). Later, we witnessed the merchants making the city as an expression of their commercially flourishing business. Today, this evolution has mutated toward other directions, with buildings built for pure instrumental necessity. Beautiful or ugly, building designers tend to use glass. We are evolving towards a transparent city, but in fact metaphorically are we not building the city that we do not want to see? CONCLUSION: PRESCRIPTIONS FOR COUNTERACTING RISKS OF URBAN SCHIZOPHRENIA: In order to cure the city from effects of schizophrenia, a methodology which reinterprets and reconstitutes the city as a "whole" must be employed. This process of reassemblage may be rendered effective with the following means: - there is a level of consciousness to raise and to activate. In that way, people will understand that anything built for any purpose is part of our personal and collective responsibility. The environmental qualities are directly linked to this level of responsibility. - there is a vision of cohesion to require which takes account of the simultaneous existence of city fragments. This demands that city fragments are not only considered within themselves but also as a component of the city in its entirety. - the effective search for equilibrium between city fragments will bring to light recurrently underestimated odd parts of the city. In this way, becomes necessary a sense of the dosage of care needed to re-evaluate various areas of the city. - this requires a reconsideration of city hierarchy so that no part would then be viewed as a mere service or infrastructure. (As an image, let us consider that without engines, vehicles would not move, but engines don't have to pollute or generate noise or dirt). - concurrently this implies a re-evaluation of backdrops as valuable landscapes. Therefore decisions will be made collectively for all formal parts of the city. Nothing is the exclusive domain of engineers, economic or financial powers because all built environment affects both the group and the individual. - the above considerations imply that all city parts are positive. No part of the entity is negative, minor or secondary. Nothing should be concealed. BIBLIOGRAPHY Seidensticker, Edward: Low city, High city, C.E. Tuttle publishers, New-York, 1985 Berque, Augustin: Le Sauvage et l'Artifice, Gallimard, Paris, 1986 Carrol, Lewis: De l'Autre Coté du Miroir, Hachette, Paris, 1993 Dilet, Marc: Publication Collective Fondation Franco-Japonaise, Paris, 1997 Dorfles, Gillo: Innen et Aussen en Architecture et Psychanalyse, Nouvelle revue de Psychanalyse, N°9, 1974 Felman, Shoshana: La Folie et la Chose Littéraire, Seuil, Paris, 1978 Hall, Edward T.: La Dimension Cachée, Seuil, Paris, 1973 Jacquard, Rolland: L'Exil Intérieur, Schizoïdie et Civilisation, P.U.F. Paris, 1975 Lynch, Kevin: L'Image de la Cité, Dunod, Paris, 1976 Platon: Thééthète, Flammarion, Paris, 1994 Pontalis,J.B.: La Force d'Attraction, Seuil, Paris, 1990 Taylor, Mark: Erring: A Postmodern Theology, University of Chicago Press, Chicago,84 Rapport de la 4 ème session en Asie - SHANGHAI / Chine 2000 39 11/03/2009
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les ateliers de maitrise d'œuvre urbaine en asie

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