Landscape – Great Idea! X-LArch III - Department für Raum ...

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across blurred television screens, but the grid of the
chessboard has disappeared, as have the rules determining
how the pieces move … space is no longer predetermined
but rather developed through the tension and
interrelationship between figures. This is the basis for a
vigorous new model of urbanism” [Prix 2003: 18].
Fig. 01: Morley, Malcom. Los Angeles Yellow Pages. 1971. Acrylic
on canvas. h213.4 x w182.9cm. h84 x w72 in. Louisiana Museum
of Modern Art, Humlebaek.
policies and urban revitalization initiatives [particularly of
the 1950s and 1960s that segregated living and working
environments in most American cities]; Modernism
in America and privatization of urban public space; the
automobile and development of highway superstructures
[Figure 01]; and the changing patterns of land use that
resulted in the repositioning of commercial and industrial
infrastructures; which lead to the eventual demise of vibrant
city hubs – that pulsated with endless possibilities.
This failed attempt at creating a modern city with aesthetic
consistency was counter to the dynamic complexity of
space, and layered rhythms in the city, and produced public
spaces that were inappropriately designed for human
habitation. The vitality of the city as we now know was
inherently intertwined with its eclectic and organic qualities
[Trancik, 1986: 3–17]. Jane Jacobs also expressed
concern and discontent for Modernist urbanism in her
book The Death and Life of Great American Cities, where
she outlines “The Conditions for City Diversity” and “The
Need for Primary Mixed Uses”, she went on to say: “The
theorists of conventional city planning have consistently
mistaken the cities as problems of simplicity and of disorganized
complexity...” [Jacobs, 1961: 26].
These assessments underscore the gravity of Ideas as
one considers the scale [XS, S, M, L, XL and XXL], and
the consequence of those ideas as physical manifestations
in the geography of human environments. But more
profound are the effect of privatization on contemporary
urbanism and the treatment of urban public space. In
the current economic climate, cities and local government
agencies are increasingly more dependent on the
financial resources of private investors for urban development
projects – at least in the United States. Wolf Prix
recognized the perplexing condition when he creatively
expressed this sentiment: “… Contemporary urban interventions
take place in an amorphous and imponderable
space, analogous to chess figures moving horizontally
These comments are reactive to the synthetic contemporary
conditions that influence the contextual landscape
where urban and natural systems are not mutually exclusive,
but interdependent and produced as by-products of
a consumer-oriented global economy, where architects,
landscape architects and planners are key protagonists
in the translation and transformation of urban environments.
When considered carefully, they are irrefutable
observations that parallel the growing urban conditions in
the United Sates, particularly in cities like Detroit, Philadelphia,
Syracuse, and Buffalo to mention a few, where
the city’s urban public space is increasingly fractured
by mutations of commercial development, urban decay,
abandoned industrial artifacts, and marginal public
housing projects.
Prix’s observations speak to the need for innovative
use of public space and the creation of new urban domains
that are designed as cultural infrastructures – for
“transformative programming” [Tschumi 1998: 160] – that
will accommodate the tension and dialogue produce by
local and global economies. These domains are catalytic
nodes that stimulate surrounding urban conditions
through connective circuits and movement ribbons, emphasizing
programmatic interrelationships between contrasting
spatial environments in a given urban domain.
This philosophical approach to contemporary urbanism
proposes a new agenda for shaping urban public spaces
and acknowledges the criticality of creative ideas and
economic variables in sustaining nodes of attraction.
As observed, the translation of these ideas are often
imperfect, contentious, divisive, and controversial – as in
the case of the MuseumQaurtier in Vienna, Austria, which
still provokes strong disagreement in public debates.
The challenge of a new agenda requires a retooling of
operational strategies specific to the transformation of
urban voids, and poses fertile questions about urban
spatial phenomena and the urgency of rewriting existing
conditions in an effort to restore destabilized human
and natural systems. Within the framework of this study
project, the following questions serves as a springboard
for launching this investigation: As one considers the
increasing ephemerality of places, what role does contemporary
art play in the creation and transformation of
public spaces? How does the relationship of space and
experience create senses of place, identity or image?
How does one create a place that challenges conventional
notions and perception of landscape, art, architecture,
and the natural environment? How then, does
Papers