Master Thesis Spring 2020
Student
Elliot Sundlin
elliot.sundlin@gmail.com
Examiners
Robert Mull Sangram Shirke
Supervisors
Amalia Katopodi Sara Thor
Andrew Belfield Jaime Montes Bentura
The Power of
Choreographed Movement
A way of creating new intersections within the city
Abstract
The city can be defined as a permanent dense settlement, where the entire arrangement is made so that its density should facilitates human interaction. With the demands for city de- velopment to be efficient, the organization of space has become increasingly important. As a result, it has affected the social landscape.
This thesis will examine the role of choreographed movement and its ability to open up the social landscape, by creating new intersections within the city. The work will reintroduce many questions and philosophies that originate from the world of art, and intertwine them with examples in architecture. Analysis work of Parc De La Villette demonstrates the important role of movement, as a way to juxtapose or superimpose different communities to create new mutations.
The further aim is to apply the findings and strategies onto a design project to address the cur- rent state in the city of Umeå. Today the city center sees a strong hierarchy of movement that has created by decisions made historically. There will be an introduction to the history of the inherited framework of the city. As well as a designed promenade that proposes a new way of moving through Umeå, independent of the limiting borders bottlenecking the current circula- tion.
Preface
of Architecture. I want especially to thanks to Amalia Katopodi, who throughout my process always have been supporting and given clarity to our discussions.
The following work derives from carefully studying the topic of orientation. There is an at- tached appendix from last year that cover how I have explored the subject through an inter- disciplinary approach. The exploration of psychology, human sciences, art and architecture landed me in a fascination for understanding the act of organizing space within the city in relation to movement, and what that means on a deeper level. As my focus point has become more specific and zoomed in, the importance of the subject has simultaneously grown increa- singly bigger.
The appendix explored in many ways how the human spatial understanding functions in a broader sense. Since it was written studies have been discovered that gives the otherwise very open-ended research an alternative point of closure. For instance, Professor Peter König did a cognitive experiment featuring a feelSpace-belt. The belt was placed on a test subject and every time they would move in the northern direction the belt would vibrate to give a subtle indi- cation. These tactile signals overtime, showed an underlying increased spatial awareness even when the belt taken off. Peter König believes in the power that these prosthetics which are used momentarily, can permanent affect and enhance, the spatial perception.1 This is outside of my thesis focus point, but have nonetheless become a noteworthy acknowledgement, as it in many ways has influenced my personal design project.
The topic of orientation is enormous, and my continuation of last year’s appendix research has landed in an exploration of understanding the correlation between the social landscape and organized movement. I owe many thanks to the professional educators at Umeå School of Architecture. I want especially to thanks to Amalia Katopodi, who throughout my process always have been supporting and given clarity to our discussions.
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1 König Peter, Socializing Sensorimotor Contingencies
Table of Contents
Introduction
Chapter 1
The frame of the city
Chapter 2
The Frame in Art
Chapter 3
Separating the
Circulation and Frame
Chapter 4
Design Project Conclusion Bibliography
5 6
8
10
14
19 20
Introduction
There have been several ways of organizing cities historically. Whether the intent has been to favor economics, technology or social life they all affect each other.2 Within the act of orga- nizing space within the city there is also an establishment of social organization. Through normalization, different worlds start to become defined, where every social group finds their place. As a result, these worlds put a strong emphasis on belonging, in order to secure the boundaries of the common world. Which is why, a common world may be crafted as homoge- nizing place where the boundaries create a frictionless social landscape of only shared values.
Such a world threatens the concept of diversity. By its separation, people who belong to these enclosures tend to experience everything outside of their own frame as hostile or alien.3
What happens in-between these worlds become very important as that is the only way to allow new ideas in and out, through movement. There is a misconception in that what outlines and essentially defines a community should be its boundaries. If the outlines could be seen as a th- reshold it could potentially allow the concept of change, mutation and essentially coexistence.⁴
How can choreographed movement affect the social landscape within the city?
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2p55. Weston, Richard. 100 Ideas That Changed Architecture (2011) London: Laurence King Publishing 3p33-34. Stavrides, Stavros. Common Space (2016) Zed Books London
4p33-36 Stavrides, Stavros. Common Space (2016) Zed Books London
Chapter 1
The Frame of The City
In the beginning of the 17th century the strict grid plan was introduced to the majority of the Swedish cities, and after 1620 it was this form of planning totally dominated the Swedish developments all throughout the 19th century. However, the city planner, doctor Olof Bureus who planned a lot of Finnish/Swedish cities at the time drew little inspiration from this. His streets and alleys did often form a grid, but it was more irregular. In almost medieval fashion, it adapted to fit within the existing environment with buildings, curved water front and other topographical elements.⁵ In the first plan of Umeå however there was a strict grid system applied, the original plan is nowhere to be obtained but there is a map drawn 1643 showcasing two major streets and five avenues.⁶
The reasoning behind the grid was simple, the ground it was going to be built on was com- pletely empty and flat, which made it a simple task, and it would be the most efficient form of city for fast scaling. However it only took a couple of years before the city showed more organic and irregular edges. This created the need for several strict correction plans in order to maintain the city within its given framework, to enable fast scaling.⁷ It was in 1888 after the great city fire where the first historical traces can be seen of a formal opposition to the strict grid plan. There was an uncertainty for a long time whether the old foundations of the houses would be able to be reconstructed or had to be rebuilt from the ground up. At this time the city planner Lindström had recognized flaws in the way the city operated.⁸ His critique was that the river’s strong natural borders of the city limited the option for getting in and out (which initially was to control the customs). This in combination with a strict grid plan, that was so heavily centered around the Main Hall and plaza, made many of the streets left unattractive or undesired, even though they were geographically close to the center. Lindström’s ‘radical’
suggestion was to create multiple diagonal avenues that would intersect the city center in order to create new thresholds and relationships within the city. From an economic standpoint he meant that this would enable more businesses a solid opportunity.⁹ The plan was quickly neglected for its radicality, but it still marks a historical trace of an attempt to challenge the framework of the city.
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5p15 Eriksson, Karin. Studier i Umeå stads byggnadshistoria, Umeå 1975 6p16. Eriksson, Karin. Studier i Umeå stads byggnadshistoria, Umeå 1975 7 p19. Eriksson, Karin. Studier i Umeå stads byggnadshistoria, Umeå 1975.
8p139. Eriksson, Karin. Studier i Umeå stads byggnadshistoria, Umeå 1975 9p139-142. Eriksson, Karin. Studier i Umeå stads byggnadshistoria, Umeå 1975
figure 1
1643
1648
1648Correction
1745
Chapter 2
The Frame in Art
Traditional art is consumed by the viewer who is fixating on a fiction which they do not necessarily hold a part in. While art can evoke emotional involvement that is real, the spatial surrounding is often neglected as the perception does not have to stretch beyond the walls of the frame. As a result, the awareness of the many limitations of the frame has led to it being questioned by several artists over the years in order to resurrect the participatory element in art. 10
Challenging the frame can achieve a result where the fictional art spills out onto the real world, and the viewer is presented with a necessary task of interacting with their surroundings in or- der to consume the art. No longer is the objective to rob the consumer of their presence in the real world, and replace it with a fictional one. Instead it becomes about understanding the real world in direct superimposition to that of the fictive.11
Paul Klee’s painting Ad Marginem (On the Edge) features a red ball that is centered in the drawing, with animals, plants and silhouettes scattered around the edges of the frame.
Whichever way you turn the painting it seems like something is always upside down, thus it lacks orientation. If the painting however would be placed on the ground a new logic becomes apparent. The red ball becomes a reflection of the sun on a watered surface, and the objects on the edges are reflections. The painting is a mirror of a reality that stretches outside of the frame containing it. Ad Marginem manages to augment an imaginary alternative world onto reality, through superimposition.12
figure 2 _____________________________________________________________
10 Jenkins, Megan. Viewpoints, Visual Narratives in the Promenade Architecturale, San Diego 2005
11 Jenkins, Megan. Viewpoints, Visual Narratives in the Promenade Architecturale, San Diego 2005 12 Klee Paul, Ad Marginem
Felice Varini is a Paris-based Swiss artist who through projector stencil-based techniques does mural paintings onto architectural surfaces. His work is defined by a double condition; A very strict presence of frame, and its total disappearance. Varini’s art is momentary in the sense that it is created from a single vantage point where very simple geometry is projected and painted onto the space. This condition does not enable the consumer to view the geometry from any other point than the original vantage point. Would the viewer move outside of that point they would see the art work and its framework fragmented, scattered into pieces. Varini has in in- terviews been very clear with the fact that he does not care too much of the vantage point once the painting is finished, but he finds interest in what happens outside of it.13
Eija Liisa Athila is another example within a different field. The Finish video artist has for many years done film installations were her narratives are displayed over multiple panels. By fragmenting the story and multiplying it over several screens, it achieves an effect that ampli- fies the drama. Athila has always found interest in perception and has drawn great inspira- tion from the speculative biologist Uexküll, who studied different animals’ perceptions of the world. Athila wants to, through her art, make visible the limits or edges of human percep- tion.14
In all these three cases mentioned above the frame is challenged, yet still present. Every artist above recognized that there always has to be a frame of sorts, and a way to challenge it can be through superimposition. They all have found ways to superimpose or juxtapose an alter- native framework, that coexists with the traditional, and that enables them together to create a new experience.1⁵ In the words of Mark Twain: ”There is no such thing as a new idea. It is impossible. We simply take a lot of old ideas and put them into a sort of mental kaleidoscope.
We give them a turn and they make new and curious combinations. We keep on turning and making new combinations indefinitely; but they are the same old pieces of colored glass that have been in use through all the ages.”1⁶
figure 3 figure 4
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13 p45-46. Varini, Felice. Point of View (2004) Lars Müller Publishers 1⁴ p10. Athila, Eija-Liisa. Parallel Worlds (2012) Moderna Museet, Stockholm
15 Jenkins, Megan. Viewpoints, Visual Narratives in the Promenade Architecturale, San Diego 2005 1⁶ Twain, Mark. Mark Twain’s Own Autobiography: The Chapters from the North American Review.(1990) Univ of Wisconsin Press
Chapter 3
Separating frame and circulation
Parc De La Villette was among the first recent competition to feature a new programmatic take on the urban park. The site located in central Paris shares similarities to that of Umeå in the sense that its borders are outlined by the metro, canal de Saint-Denis and the Bd Périphérique.
The program encouraged many activities to take place and juxtapose each other to create new perspectives and combination. The open-air cultural center contains Museum, workshops, gymnasiums, bath facilities, exhibitions, concerts, games, etc.17 Interestingly the competition for the park requested a practical execution to address many of the challenges with common space within the city. The requested program in addition to the striking similarities of the surrounding borders of the site found in La Villette and Umeå, has highlighted many relevant strategies. Le Parc De La Villette’s has many entries of which the ones mentioned below is the winning entry by Tschumi as well as the entry by OMA
The logic behind the winning entry of Bernard Tschumi combines three main elements to compose the park; points, lines and surfaces. The varying programmatic features are explo- ded in a series of fragments that were distributed around a folie (folly).1⁸ Each folie is placed in accordance to a point grid, mathematically spreading them 120m apart, across the site.
The pedestrian movement is dependent on three factors. 1) A two coordinate axes that covers movement from folie to folie. 2) a sequential promenade that moves the visitor through mul- tiple programs and folies following its own logic. 3) Alleys of trees, which create an underlying hierarchy by linking what could be interpreted as the “key” activities of the park. Each folie is a cube-like structure, with each side measuring 10x10m. Each structure is three stories of unprogrammed space that can be altered for specific needs.1⁹
Parc de la Villette seeks out to demonstrate that any “new” architecture stems from the combi- nation of many previous ideas, with the sequential promenade becoming one of its key featu- res. The act of combining a promenade with multiple other systems, separated, yet collapsed into one allows for different mutated sequences to occur. The visitor constantly finds them- selves framed in a threshold between one reality and another.20 The order these framings are experienced also holds a significance, as framings established in memory will affect the per- ception of other framings moving forward. Making the combination of possible experiences infinite.21
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17 p10-11. Tschumi, Bernard. Cinegramme Folie, Le Parc De La Villette (1988) Princeton Architectural Press 18 Tschumi, Bernard, Conceptualising Content
19 p14-18. Tschumi, Bernard. Cinegramme Folie, Le Parc De La Villette (1988) Princeton Architectural Press 20 Jenkins, Megan. Viewpoints, Visual Narratives in the Promenade Architecturale, San Diego 2005 21 p21. Tschumi, Bernard. Cinegramme Folie, Le Parc De La Villette (1988) Princeton Architectural Press
figure 5
OMA’s Parc De La Villette entry has similarities in their thinking but a different execution. The main idea was to not propose something that was definite, but rather combine ‘programmatic instability with architectural specificity’ Which in time would generate a multicultural park through programmatic mutations. This was supposed to be achieved through the placement of programmatic bands that spanned across the entirety of the park from east to west, stacked upon each other. Then smaller facilities such as kiosks, playgrounds and BBQs were placed according to a grid pattern similar to Tschumi’s folies. The circulation in OMA’s entry is also treated as its own layer, following a separate logic. There is a boulevard that runs through the site north to south cutting through the laid out horizontal bands, as well as a promenade inter- secting at a different angle. This strategy enabled a continuous threshold to penetrate multiple programs, and at the same time forming plazas in between, which are framing unorthodox configurations of programmatic strips, and allowing them to become one.22
Both Tschumi and Koolhaas had recognized the importance of separating the programmatic organization and the organization of movement, in order to elongate and multiply the th- resholds in between the different communities, and enable them to communicate with one another.
figure 6
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22 OMA, Parc De La Villette
figure 7
Chapter 4
The Design Project
The designed promenade proposes a new way of moving through Umeå, independent of the li- miting borders bottlenecking the current circulation. A series of nodes have been selected that represent areas in close proximity to the city center that either see little movement today or have parking lot space occupying it. The idea is not primarily to resurrect or reimagine these nodes specifically, but to address what happens in between them. The nodes create an inter- connected network that lay down the foundation for a new way of navigating the city. Inspired by the historical traces found of Lindström’s radical plan, there are diagonals cutting through the existing grid framework to create new intersections within the city.
The frame of the city can be seen in how the programs of the city are contained within the lots that are formed by the strict grid. Which is why a new frame is projected as an augmen- ted layer onto the existing, in order to challenge it. As mentioned earlier it is what happens in between that becomes important.23 Several fragmented images and guerilla tactics in the form of murals, follies, and decoys will be inserted onto the site. Their material palette consists of wood, tar and fur as these have been the primary exporting goods of Umeå historically.24 They are essentially what had to be monitored, by creating the custom borders in the first place. This creates a contradiction where the materials, are challenging the framework, they were part in creating. This aesthetic can also already be seen today at the speech stand at Renmarkstorget as an urban landmark, which functions as an intersection of ideas.
Inspiration has been withdrawn from the historical badstugor and stolpbodar. These were the first structures to neglect the strict organization of the grid, creating the need for several cor- rection plans.2⁵ These structures are fragmented to provide several exploded sections, facades and components that will act as follys. They frame views whilst also being a portal of move- ment. They can be aligned in such a way to create anamorphic illusions, an exchange of near and far which disorientates the visitors spatial understanding. At moving closer to the house frame the visitor realizes that it is in fact fragmented. This strategy enables a way to elongate the threshold and encourage movement. These all become breadcrumbs in a larger network that trigger curiosity to follow up until you eventually have derived at one of the five nodes.
Each node has a watchtower as a point of connectivity, that are in the different tucked away location within the city. For finding it the visitor is rewarded with the possibility of ascending it to get a new perspective of the city.
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23 p31. Stavrides, Stavros. Common Space (2016) Zed Books London 24 p22. Eriksson, Karin. Studier i Umeå stads byggnadshistoria, Umeå 1975 25 p17. Eriksson, Karin. Studier i Umeå stads byggnadshistoria, Umeå 1975
Points and Confetti
fragments/Decoys Paths/Circulation
Programmes of the city
The watchtower is constructed by a simple spiral geometry that is multiplied to break up the otherwise very static movement of the city. The two spirals are slightly offset from each other, in a sense they stand in juxtaposition to each other, creating multiple different mutated silhou- ettes, which makes the structure in itself encourage movement around it to explore all its dif- ferent appearances. At successfully reaching the top, the path takes a vertical turn straight into the ground. This is to make the visitor acknowledge that they started this journey by exiting their path to explore a new one. Therefore, the project now asks for a leap of faith by having the visitor step off the path midair onto a transparent slab of plexiglass, as a representation of once again exiting their path for a new one. At this moment several anamorphic illusions align to create momentary windows in the cityscape, connecting to the other nodes, by giving you directions to keep on moving.
Conclusion
The city as a settlement requires a great amount of organization, as a result there will always be a framework of sorts present. The use of the grid plan began at the scale of town, and have been utilized at many levels ever since. Lindström’s critique of the way the grid plan operated in Umeå was site specific. The grid plan is through rationality supposed to be modular and universally applicable. With that comes questions and individual problems dependent on the location.
Parc De La Villette really embodies an architectural approach, where the rationality of the grid is put in direct juxtaposition to another logic. By separating the circulatory elements for movement, and the organization of the programmatic elements. By presenting another way of interacting and moving through space the different configurations of experiences multiply exponentially.
Movement is essentially a way to give new life to what the site already has to offer. By intertwi- ning already existing programs through the site as a reimagined connector. As a result, the overlaid network provides new intersections and thresholds, that facilitate new encounters and experiences within the city. While at the same time constantly redefining its framework.
Bibliography
Published:
Athila, Eija-Liisa. Parallel Worlds (2012) Moderna Museet, Stockholm
Stavrides, Stavros. Common Space (2016) Zed Books London
Varini, Felice. Point of View (2004) Lars Müller Publishers
Tschumi, Bernard. Cinegramme Folie, Le Parc De La Villette (1988) Princeton Architectural Press
Twain, Mark. Mark Twain’s Own Autobiography: The Chapters from the North American Review.(1990) Univ of Wisconsin Press
Johnson, Steven. Where Good Ideas Come From (2010) New York: Riverhead Books
Leatherbarrow, David. Uncommon Ground (2002) Cambridge: Massachusets Institute of Technology
Weston, Richard. 100 Ideas That Changed Architecture (2011) London: Laurence King Publishing
Eriksson, Karin. Studier i Umeå stads byggnadshistoria, Umeå 1975
Jenkins, Megan. Viewpoints, Visual Narratives in the Promenade Architecturale, San Diego 2005
Web:
OMA, Parc De La Villette
Web: (https://oma.eu/projects/parc-de-la-villette) Access date: 2020-04-16
Klee Paul, Ad Marginem
Web: (https://www.paulklee.net/ad-marginem.jsp) Access date: 2020-04-06
König Peter, Socializing Sensorimotor Contingencies Web: https://socsmcs.eu/content/peter-k%C3%B6nig Access date: 2020-04-22
Tschumi, Bernard, Conceptualising Content
Web: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SkeKmMxO63E&t=831s Access date: 2020-04-22
David Leatherbarrow, BEPA Seminar ‘The Hidden World of Contemporary Architecture’ - 04 David Leatherbarrow, Web: (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7INicONr3hA&t=146s) Access date: 2019-12-31
H.Najafpour, Wayfinding characteristics and familiarity indexes in an urban environment, Web: (https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/abec/f156963fdbb65cc37c8b0a8ba588f751a2e0.pdf) Access date: 2020-01-10
Figures:
Figure 1 self-illustrated
Figure 2 https://www.paulklee.net/images/paintings/Ad-Margi- nem-1930.jpg
Figure 3 https://external-preview.redd.it/JXhIWVeJzt_T5w_iR- fq114LKeDxs9iQiOcgcuZLf_Ac.jpg?auto=webp&s=9a90dcd- b940850ee8bd157390a2f1270190f589a
Figure 4 https://i.pinimg.com/originals/6e/67/84/6e67845176feacb5c- f05317891c786e3.jpg
Figure 5 https://i.pinimg.com/originals/ea/4c/58/ea4c58b6d75c- 49b72766a1943407a090.jpg
Figure 6 https://oma.eu/projects/parc-de-la-villette
Figure 7 https://i.pinimg.com/originals/a8/94/b0/a894b0aaa81f92e- 5756e331a113cebc0.jpg
