Architectural Context Part 5: Colin Rowe & Fred Koetter
Architectural Context Part 4: Aldo Rossi
It is important to note that Rossi’s work was vital for the architectural discourse at the time since in the second half of the twentieth century the concept of the city was undergoing continuous redefinition. The reason for this active rethinking of the city was the post-war environment. As Rossi highlighted the cities can be read as an expression of collective will together with social values and are a result of a sequence of political choices. These political choices shape not only the city but also the life of those inhabiting the city. The post-war world was in search of a new model for living, and the city was considered to be the means for generating it. As a result, more and more architectural groups were emerging (CIAM, Team X, Archigram, Superstudio) and with each group, new utopian concepts of the city were introduced.
Collin Rowe in his book “Collage City” tried to reflect on the ongoing discussion by analyzing the two radically opposite models for urban utopias that existed at the time. One model being Superstudio’s “The Continues Monument” and the other being Venturi’s investigation of Disney Land. Rowe argued that Superstudio’s world composed of abstract Cartesian grid suggest complete liberation from the domination of objects through the introduction of one utilitarian object while Disney Land does the exact opposite and tries to furnish the vacuum with a multiplicity of objects.¹
Analogous to the continuous monument and Disneyland, Rowe suggests that Modern cities have ultimately become the inverse versions of traditional cities. To the extent that two of them, if juxtaposed, will resemble a figure-ground diagram. According to Rowe, the modernist city is an accumulation of solids in a largely unmanipulated void, and the classical cities are an accumulation of voids in a largely unmanipulated solid.² To illustrate this Rowe compares figure-ground plans of two cities one being Le Corbusier’s project for Saint-Dié and the other the city of Parma (Figure below).
According to Rowe, the traditional city is far more versatile in its structure. It is able to react to local impulses and immediate necessities without a need to redefine its entire structure. Each pocket or void within the homogeneous solid has the ability to be distinctly different from any other pocket without interrupting the continuity of the overall urban fabric. Rowe writes:
It is surely apparent that, while limited structured spaces may facilitate identification and understanding, an interminable naturalistic void without any recognizable boundaries will at least be likely to defeat all comprehension.³
Rowe argues that the large unstructured void becomes incredibly low in density to an extent it dissolves into the void of visual perception. The figure of the modern city becomes incredibly opaque ground that is not supported by any other ground and for that reason is indistinguishable. However, from Rowe’s viewpoint, the crucial question is not primarily about the evaluation of apparent virtues of antique cities and apparent flaws of modern cities but rather about the establishment of a new reading of a city that can incorporate virtues of both and allow coexistence. A method that can include rather than exclude.⁴
In his comparison of Vasari’s Uffizi and Le Corbusier’s Unité d’habitation Rowe argues that two buildings are spatial opposites since the Uffizi is a Marseilles turned inside out while Unité is a private and well-enclosed structure. According to Rowe the effect of Unité is to enclose a private atomized society, while Uffizi’s void accommodates and frames a public space.⁵ Same correlation can be seen between Le Pautre’s Hotel de Beauvais and Le Corbusier’s Villa Savoye (Figure below).
Rowe argues that in Villa Savoye there is an enormous effort applied to separate the building from its immediate context distinctly. That is, the Villa Savoye is a primary solid standing in an undifferentiated void. However, in Le Pautre’s Hotel de Beauvais the building is not even attempting to occupy a predominant role within its surroundings. Hotel de Beauvais, ensuring the continuity of the urban fabric, complies with the conditions implied on from by its immediate context yet at the same time shapes the void contained within it. Thus, in the city scale, the building acts as a figure, but from the inner courtyard, its form becomes a ground from which the figure of the courtyard emerges.⁶
Similar phenomena can be seen in Auguste Perret’s proposal for the palace of the Soviets in Moscow (Figure below). In his proposal, Perret used the building as a mound for the void. His proposal is at the same time a space occupier and a space definer. It has an explicit visual connection to Kremlin and is extending the courtyard towards the Moskva River, and for that reason, the proposal embeds itself into the idea of Moscow.
The building is a positive figure that stands independently yet at the same time it acts as a passive ground for the square helping it to emerge as a figure within the city. All this case studies presented above are types of interventions that Rowe describes as urban poché.⁷ Rowe writes:
But if poché, understood as the imprint upon the plan of the traditional heavy structure, acts to disengage the principal spaces of the building from each other, it is not hard to acknowledge that the recognition of poché is also a matter of context and that depending on perceptual field a building itself may become a type of poché, for certain purposes a solid assisting legibility of adjacent spaces.⁸
Thus poché can be understood as an urban structure that employs the condition of multistability introduced by gestalt psychologist in order to adapt to a multiplicity of contextual conditions. Poché belongs to figure and ground at the same time and alters its role depending on context. According to Rowe this change in role characterized by a change of context is precisely what can lay at the foundation of a fruitful model for a city. The same underlying principle can be found in the example of Picasso’s “Bulls Head.” The sculpture is composed of a bicycle seat and handlebars and resembles a bulls head (Figure below).
The creation of bullhead recontextualizes the bicycle parts used allowing them to be perceived differently, but it does not erase our memory of bicycle parts and their purpose. Thus, if needed bicycle parts can be returned to their original intended use. According to Rowe the creation of bullhead from bicycle parts is a two-directional metamorphosis.⁹ Bull’s head is a collage system where the fragments themselves remain unchanged but mere fact of their juxtaposition and their new contextual relationships they are perceived as a different whole and convey a different meaning. The same phenomenon is observed with urban pochés when the urban solid under a certain contextual influence is perceived as an urban void or vice versa. This underlying principle of a collage, in Rowe’s viewpoint, has the potential to be a new model for a city in the form of “Collage City.”¹⁰ Rowe believes that these kinds of collage systems can allow cities to: “enjoy utopian poetics without the need to suffer from utopian politics.”¹¹ The form of the Collage City can accommodate fragments of utopias without having to accept a singular utopia as a governing model. Embracing the multiplicity of meanings and forms that could emerge from two-directional metamorphoses of different utopian notions.
References
[1]: Colin Rowe, Fred Koetter, Collage City (London: The MIT press, 1983), 44.
[2]: Colin Rowe, Fred Koetter, Collage City (London: The MIT press, 1983), 62.
[3]: Colin Rowe, Fred Koetter, Collage City (London: The MIT press, 1983), 64.
[4]: Colin Rowe, Fred Koetter, Collage City (London: The MIT press, 1983), 65.
[5]: Colin Rowe, Fred Koetter, Collage City (London: The MIT press, 1983), 68.
[6]: Colin Rowe, Fred Koetter, Collage City (London: The MIT press, 1983), 78.
[7]: Colin Rowe, Fred Koetter, Collage City (London: The MIT press, 1983), 71.
[8]: Colin Rowe, Fred Koetter, Collage City (London: The MIT press, 1983), 78.
[9]: Colin Rowe, Fred Koetter, Collage City (London: The MIT press, 1983), 79.
[10]: Colin Rowe, Fred Koetter, Collage City (London: The MIT press, 1983), 138.
