The Unknown City: Contesting Architecture and Social Space

Architecture and the City
precisely categorized. Now, on the site there were some existing old warehouses
that had been used as a wrestling arena in the 1930s and an ice skating
rink in the 1940s, the first cinema in the region, and a ballroom, all in a
completely nonarchitectural space. These conditions had quite a character,
but the buildings were completely rotten and decrepit, and I was basically
asked to tear it down and design a tabula rasa space. But walking through
the site I was struck by the fact that those spaces, bigger actually than what
we had been asked to do, were also spaces that we would not re-create, for
we are in another economic logic. The notion of crossovers was fascinating,
so I said “Hey, what about an architecture of crossovers,” bringing things together
that were never meant to be together, and doing it in such a way that
it is not anymore a mere style thing, or a dialectic between A and B, or trying
to work in the style of. ... There was one particular condition, which was that
the warehouse roofs were leaking, and I was supposed to be designing highly
technologized sound and film studios. So it occurred to me that by putting a
huge roof on—in fact an electronic roof—not only would that provide the
umbrella and all the technological support systems, but it would also result
in an incredible residue of space 10 or 12 meters high, in between the old
roof and the new one. These were not spaces that were designed, but instead
were the result of the juxtapositions. This would be an enormous roof 100
meters by 70 meters, covering not only some of the old buildings but also
many of the new buildings that we brought in.
WM: These leftover spaces are the central public spaces in the project?
BT: Exactly—there to be appropriated by the users, the visitors, the students.
The steps over the new studios become an outdoor cinema, what one once
called an architectural promenade, but suspended in the in-between spaces.
These places are the sites of the crossovers, because that is what links the
various functional spaces.
WM: You built bridges between the new spaces?
BT: No. Bridges are wonderful, but they are vectors, and these have their limitations.
So we used a mix where you have both suspended catwalks and platforms
where people can move freely.
WM: It sounds as if you have finally constructed Buckminster Fuller’s dome
over Manhattan.
BT: Well, it is not quite the same size. Moreover Bucky was after purity, and
these spaces are not pure at all. The dome was important for what Bucky did
for technology. In the case of La Fresnoy the important part is actually the
gaps, or the interstices, between the existing and the designed, an approach