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R O O M S
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C I T I E S
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ROOMS + CITIES
2014-2015

ELEVEN CITY PLANS

CONTRIBUTORS

Amy Sleight
Anastasija Lukjanenko
Asya Ivanova
Charli Thomson
Georgette McKinlay
James Basey
Jessica Coxon
John Melling
Joseph Treherne
Ross Aitken
Stephanie Else
CONTENTS

Preface 8

Mapping the Cities 11

Rome 12

La Pianta Grande di Roma 1748 14

Campo Marzio plan of Rome 1762 22

Roma Interotta 1978 28

Modernist 36

Hochhausstadt 1924 38

Ilot Insalubre no.6, Paris1937 46

STOP CITY 2007 54

Koolhaas 62

Exodus or the voluntary prisoners of architecture 1972 64

Berlin: A Green Archipelago 1977 72

Abstract 80

Plan of Ideal City of Sforzinda c1460 82

Instant City 1969 90

The Manhattan Transcripts 1977 98

Acknowledgements 107

Bibliography 109
PREFACE

ROOMS + CITIES
ELEVEN CANONICAL CITY PLANS AND A NOTE ON THE CONCEPTUAL PRACTICE
OF ARCHITECTURE

This publication compiles research into the following eleven canonical city plans: Filaretes
Ideal City of Sforzinda (c1460), Giambattista Nollis La Pianta Grande di Roma (1748),
Giovanni Battista Piranesis Campo Marzio (1762), Ludwig Hilberseimers Hochhausstadt
(1924), Le Corbusiers Ilot insalubre no. 6 (1937), Archigrams Instant City (1969), Rem
Koolhaas Exodus, or the Voluntary Prisoners of Architecture (1972), Oswald Mathias Ungers
(et al.) Berlin: A Green Archipelago (1977), Costantino Dardis panel for Roma Interrotta
(1978), Bernard Tschumis Street in The Manhattan Transcripts (1978), and finally Pier
Vittorio Aurelis Stop City (2007).

Just as the actuality of the city is the concrete embodiment the collective historical sum of
manual and mental human labour, each of the selected city plans is the representation of its
authors singular values, beliefs, and critical sensibility. Each plan, in different ways, analyses
the city and sees something in it features, qualities, forms, objects, events, geometries that
was not seen by others. Once seen, the particularities become the basis for project thinking and
design.

Most of the city plans are theoretical projects by architects motivated by the possibility of
influencing the urban condition through architectures formal potential by means of framing
and representing the space of confrontation and coexistence, which is the city; and who take the
view that architecture is a conceptual practice and intellectual pursuit.

The emphasis on architecture as a conceptual practice as a theoretical project is important

because it is by being presented as theory a category autonomous yet in dialogue with design
that architecture goes beyond the art, craft or pragmatic construction of building to propose an
intellectual contribution that addresses the potential for an alternative future urban life.
The research began as a Summer project and was concluded within the opening weeks of term.
Each member of the Rooms + Cities Unit was assigned a plan and required to produce a series
of diagrams that describe the formal, conceptual and organisational principles of their plan, and
to delineate a room within their city plan. Then a representative area of 500 metres square was
redrawn at the scale of 1:500. Accompanying these drawings was a short explanatory text to
historically situate the city plan.

The purpose of this project can be summarised in the following three ways. First, the act of
redrawing the city plan is itself a form of architectural inquiry by means of architectures
quintessential critical tool: the drawing. For this reason the drawings produced should not
be viewed as illustrations of a canonical plan (although they are that as well), but as critical
examinations into the ideas that underline each city plan and therefore produce knowledge
about architecture and the city.

Second, by discussing the principles of each city plan a conceptual vocabulary was developed
to help describe the relation between room and city. Theoretical categories particular to each
plan were debated including cell, event, bigness, limit, to name a few as well as
categories common to all plans, including enclosure, context, type, and the other.

Third, the city plans act as critical reference points to be manipulated and transformed, and
which can be used to generate architectural ideas and city forms for the studio projects that
follow.

Cameron McEwan
Lorens Holm

November 2014

8|9
MAPPING THE CITIES

10|11
ROME
 La Pianta Grande di Roma
Giambattista Nolli 1748

Campo Marzio plan of Rome

Giovanni Battista Piranesi 1762
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Roma Interotta
1978

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La Pianta Grande di Roma

Giambattista Nolli
1748

James Basey
The significance of the Nolli plan for architects is that it gives a unique view of Romes innate
character. It reveals the topographic and spatial structure of the city, countering a tendency in
contemporary architectural history and criticism to examine objects as isolated monuments outside
the very context that give them life and meaning.

Plan vs Pictorial Representation

The Nolli map, as an iconographic plan, presents the city with an exactitude that allows one to
immediately compare size, position and shape. This is to be contrasted with a pictorial representation
that because of perspective diminution of objects of the same size, convergence of lines, and
overlapping shapes necessarily distorts the image in order to stimulate a perceptual point of view.
Undeniably this way of seeing yields an intuitive feel. The Nolli method, like any scaled plan of
presentation, has distinct advantages. It provides a conceptual view that enables a consistent frame
of reference based on exact and comparable information and avoids the perspective distortion of
a singular point of view.

Solid/Void

The Nolli map provides an immediate and intuitive understanding of the citys urban form through
the simple yet effective graphic method of rendering solids as dark grey and rendering voids
as white. The city, thus conceived as an enormous mass that has been carved away to create
outdoor rooms is rendered intelligible and vivid through simple graphic convention.

Topography/ Space

Nollis map conveys an understanding of the citys topographic and geo-spatial structure, the
patterns of private and public buildings, and their relationship to the entire urban ensemble. This
encourages an understanding of the building, not as isolated event, but one that is deeply and
intrinsically embedded in the fabric of the city.

14|15
Figure/Ground

The idea of solid/void is closely related to the idea of figure/ground. The dark and light patterns
of the city reveal the manner in which public space in the city is conceived no less carefully
than building. In Rome, public or semi-public space possesses a distinct and identifiable character
whether it is a church interior, palace courtyard or public urban space. The Piazza Navona is easily
identified as a figural element in the city, with surrounding buildings acting as a back up field or
ground into which the element has been placed, or rather, carved away. In contrast, the Modern
city reserves this conceptual reading so that building is always seen as active figural object while
space is imagined (if at all) as a kind of recessive, formless ether or receptacle that provides the
setting for the object. In Rome, solid and void readings have the capacity to be interpreted as either
figure or ground.

Urban Dialectics

The Nolli map demonstrates the principal of contextual design evident throughout the city of
Rome at the scale of the building and the scale of the city as a whole. The relationship between
outside and inside and building and place are distinctive features that Norberg-Schulz has called
the genius loci of Rome. The detailed rendering of streets, piazza and buildings in relationship
to one another underscores how profoundly Nolli understood this quality. The context conditions
the building and the building in turn exerts an outward pressure on the city fabric. The dialectical
relationship between buildings and their context- a two way street- suggests a dynamic interplay
between solid and void, figure and ground and the new and the old. The evolution of the city and its
formal and spatial structure, therefore, is seen, not as a static proposition, but rather as a dynamic,
highly charged and even volatile discourse of competing pressures, issues, needs and desires- both
in urban and human terms.
typologies of enclosure

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500 x 500 plan location

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DIAGRAMS

1. dialogue
2. context
3. the other
4. centres + edges
5. geometry
6. infrastructure
7. figure ground

* blank square indicates N/A

1
Leonardo Bufalinis Plan of Rome 1551

2 3
Italy The Oceans last thin sheet of water gliding landwards and seawards.
4 5

6 7

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 Campo Marzio plan of Rome

Giovanni Battista Piranesi

1762

Jessica Coxon

Parti Diagram

GSEducationalVersion
The Campo Marzio Plan of Rome is Piranesis attempt to re-imagine contemporary Rome.

Following centuries of social and economic decline, by the 18th century Rome had finally stabilised
and it became possible to implement urban strategies that better managed and governed the city.
The Nolli Plan reflected this clear vision of an urban order. Piranesis Campo Marzio Plan on the
other hand rejected this conventional urban order and imagined a Rome consisting almost entirely
of ancient monuments emerging from an amorphous ground and freed from the economy of the
orders.

Piranesi envisaged a new city emerging out of the embedded history of Ancient Rome. In the
Campo Marzio, Piranesi relocated and further developed the ancient buildings, long since ruins,
from Imperial Rome, placed them in the Campo Marzio area and by using these fragments from a
glorious history, he envisaged a new city.

Campo Marzio was largely imagined; it is a free composition of masses pushed closely together.
The buildings are mostly, if not all, public buildings, enforcing the idea of social wealth and
political power. He was very specific in selecting the buildings, choosing only what he saw as
functional and satisfying social needs, both cultural and spiritual. The temples, tombs, aqueducts,
amphitheatres and sporting circuses, all suggest a city of powerful architecture. It is through the
selection of buildings and through an ambiguity of scale that Piranesi was able to express the
grandness of his intended Rome.

There is no obvious evidence of infrastructure such as roads, piazzas or housing. The monumental
architecture is the infrastructure. Piranesi believed the contrasting forms did not require an urban
order to be comprehended. There is a tension between form and space, the city appears not as
ordered streets and squares, but as an open field punctuated by the gigantic and contrasting forms.
Piranesi blurs the lines between interior and exterior, public and private, by drawing everything
at street level. There is no clear spatial organisation or hierarchy, however, there is a hierarchy of
objects comprising large complexes of ancient structures that seem to share a common plane and
orientation, with smaller buildings packed into the gaps.

Piranesis Campo Marzio replaces urban order with fragments of history and in doing so he creates
a different way of recording the city; by layering history he attempts to tell the story of when Rome
was capital of the ancient World and it is this ideological view of Rome that inspired Piranesis
imagination to re-think contemporary Rome.

22|23
500 x 500 plan location

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DIAGRAMS

1. dialogue
2. context
3. the other
4. centres + edges
5. geometry
6. infrastructure
7. figure ground

* blank square indicates N/A

1
Giambattista Nollis Plan of Rome, 1748

2 3
Rome,
Giovanni Battista Piranesi, Second Frontispiece, fromItaly 1748 (plan
Il Campo byLigorio,
Pirro Giambattisia Nolli)
Antiquae urbis imago, 1561
Marzio dellAntica Roma 1762 Ligorios reconstruction of ancient Rome is the most direct precedent
for Piranesis Campo Marzio.
 N
Piranesi

Nolli

4 5
Centres and Edges Geometry

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6 7

Figure Ground

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Roma Interotta

1978

Amy Sleight
Roma Interotta was an experiment into a new way of designing cities, using the city of Rome as
a template for investigations into memory, imagination and urban planning. The competition was
introduced by the Mayor of Rome, who himself speaks of the problems of planning in Rome,
being a city of the past it has become an interrupted city through poorly planned projects, a mis-
understanding of the relationship between Rome and the countryside that surrounds it, and the
lack of preservation of Romes history. Roma Interotta gave 12 Architects the opportunity to take
Nollis plan of Rome from 1748, and re-imagine a Rome in their own individual way before it
deformed into the Rome of the 20th Century.

Through looking at each different Architects interpretation I selected the sector re-imagined by
Constantino Dardi, which contains the integral form of the Tridente leading up to the Piazza del
Popolo. The selection of this segment was partly due to the importance of the Tridente in the urban
form of Rome, but also for the way Dardi superimposed a series of structures onto the landscape
that are social tools for interaction between city and countryside.

28|29
Through the construction of gazebos down the hills of the Pincio to the Tridente, Dardi looks
to both create new passageways from rural to urban, but to also create new social spaces that
will encourage a connection between the city and the relative wasteland of the exedra left by
the Tridente. Through this superimposition they look to enhance the historical importance of
the Tridente and find links and breaks within the historical space, and incorporates them in the
project.

At the time of this experimentation the balance of Modernist architecture was merging into
Postmodernism, and it represented an integral time in transition between the two styles. Rossis
own depiction of his Analogical City was an interesting comparison in this form of urban thinking
and a contemporary of Dardi. While Dardi superimposes on an iconic city plan of Rome, Rossis
experiment is based on constructing a city of parts, through placing monuments and historical
elements placed on a base of an anonymous city. Through his drawing he looks at the relationship
between memory and the city, as well as the relationship between reality and imagination. Rather
than using an iconic plan, he chooses to place these objects on an unknown plan to emphasise this
dialogue between the journey of memory and urban structure in cities.
typologies of enclosure

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500 x 500 plan location

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DIAGRAMS

1. dialogue
2. context
3. the other
4. centres + edges
5. geometry
6. infrastructure
7. figure ground

1
Giambattista Nollis plan of Rome

2 3
The interpretive drawings that surround the whole 12 panels of plan A drawing from Dardis exhibition in the 1985 Venice Biennale for a
from Roma Interotta bridge proposal in Venice
4 5

6 7

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MODERNIST
Hochhausstadt
Ludwig Hilberseimer 1924

Ilot Insalubre no. 6, Paris

Le Corbusier 1937

STOP CITY
Pier Vittorio Aureli 2007

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 Hochhausstadt

Ludwig Hilberseimer
1924

Stephanie Else
Ludwig Hilberseimers 1924 plan for a vertical High-Rise city showcased the planning
principles and urban elements essential to the contemporary metropolis. It was developed as a
counter project to Corbusiers 1922 project for a Contemporary City for Three Million, and like
Corbusiers proposal, its site is essentially featureless. The core issue of the city is the relation of
individual room to block to infrastructure.

Metropolisarchitecture is considerably dependant on solving two factors: the individual cell of

the room and the collective urban organism. The solution will be determined by the manner in
which the room is manifested as an element of buildings linked together in one street block, thus
becoming a designing factor of the city.
Hilberseimer.

The Ideal City: a layered metropolis

The original 1924 project is presented, unusually, as a sectional plan, the purpose of which soon
becomes evident. The complexity of the city unfolds in the vertical dimension. The basis for the
city of one million inhabitants is a simple longitudinal block, 100 metres deep and 600 metres
long [the longer side orientated north-south]. At its base the first 5 stories serve commercial and
industrial purposes and contain eight transverse wings which create an internalised courtyard
arrangement. The upper 15 stories are residential: the first level of which is set back from the
elevated, 10m wide, pedestrian thoroughfare to permit access to commercial areas and apartments.
Beneath the pedestrian infrastructure, the primary 60m wide vehicular network services the lower
commercial city, beneath which lies the inner-city subway system. A long distance train line
exists at a further sub-level with routes along the primary east-west and north-south axes.

38|39
Le Corbusier v Hilberseimer

While Le Corbusiers Ville Contemporaine has geometric similarities to Hilberseimers High-Rise

city, and indeed seems to share his contemporarys machine aesthetic - the city is a machine for
living in - these two theoretical metropolises are crucially different.

While Corbusiers plan appears to be vertical with its commercial centre of cruciform buildings,
it is in fact still largely horizontal in its zoning: the commercial district is centralised, while the
residential perimeter blocks form the outer ring of the city. Hilberseimers idea of locating the
residential accommodation above the commercial city eliminates commuter traffic completely.
Where these two cities differ most is in their approach to green space: evidently at the forefront
of Le Corbusiers proposal and absent entirely from Hilberseimers, to which the latter argues that
the spatial concentration of [his] city enables one to reach the countryside quickly with the help
of a corresponding well-developed rail system.

Hilberseimer, L. (2013) Metropolis Architecture and Selected Essays. New York: GSAPP Books
typologies of enclosure

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 60m

+5: pedestrian level

0: vehicular trafc

west -1: subway

60m

-2: long distance train

east
vehicular trafc
t

500 x 500 plan location

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DIAGRAMS

1. dialogue
2. context
3. the other
4. centres + edges
5. geometry
6. infrastructure
7. figure ground

1
Le Corbusier: Ville Contemporaine

2 3
Berlin, Germany Green Space - this is absent entirely from Hilberseimers proposal
4 5

geometry

6 7

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Ilot Insalubre no. 6, Paris

Le Corbusier
1937

Asya Ivanova
In 1937 Le Corbusier and Pierre Jeanneret made a proposal for the development of a dilapidated
part of east central Paris, under the Ilot Insalubre program in which 16 insalubrious islands were
identified by local authorities for improvement and development. Their project for Ilot Insalubre
no. 6 was a pretext for implementing their theses about the city as well as an approach to slum
clearance. It exemplified Le Corbusiers five points of a new architecture: the 20-storey zigzag
apartment buildings on pillars freed the ground for the pedestrian. The plan included a solution for
traffic by eliminating the old street system (except for two main roads) and proposing a number of
multi-storey car parks connected to the apartment buildings. The project consisted of free standing
building groups with large wings at angles to meet the demands for light and views. Open spaces
would be used for landscaping, cinemas, nurseries and sports. With only twelve per cent of the
plot covered, he transformed the flat roofs into playgrounds. The individual dwellings would be of
various sizes, as most would be based on the duplex house typology with an internal stairway. Le
Corbusiers ideas stemmed from the principle that all people are equal, in the process of realising
a horizontal society.

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Urbanism

And actually millions and millions of men, women and children of the world, each day are making
a mad rush, which is a terrific waste of modern life.
Le Corbusier

In his urban proposals Le Corbusier aimed to draw attention to the planning problems of Paris. He
made the following axioms: a) town centres must be made less congested; b) town centres must be
more densely built up; c) means of transport must be increased; d) there must be an increase in open
spaces. Le Corbusier wanted to recuperate, in his plans, what he called the soul of the city a
certain poetry which despite mechanisation is the source of feelings, emotions, and sentiment. The
City of Towers was placed amidst gardens, with traffic deployed along arteries graded into easy,
rapid or very rapid circulation. It aims to eliminate disorder and lead to harmony.

Politics

The invention of a new form of city has always been a major objective for those in power in every
era, an aspiration whose achievement would provide permanent evidence of the culture of the time.
Carlo Cresti

Ilot Insalubre no. 6 was never built. Throughout his career Le Corbusier made a consistent attempt
to win the support of the authorities for his architectural and town-planning projects. More often
than not his contacts with the world of politics came to grief. The novelty of his ideas, the ambitious
scope of his projects and the often dogmatic thrust of his rhetoric scared authorities, who were
unreceptive to the problems that modern architecture addressed. Nor was he a master of diplomacy.
Conservatives regarded him as a communist, socialists as a fascist. The wide range of his contacts
suggests that he entertained no constant political biases in his approaches to authorities. His desire
was simply to build and equip cities. When he wrote the La Ville Radieuse in 1935 he dedicated it
To Authority, and later mailed it personally to Stalin, Mussolini, Petain and Nehru.
typologies of enclosure

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500 x 500 plan location

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DIAGRAMS

1. dialogue
2. context
3. the other
4. centres + edges
5. geometry
6. infrastructure
7. figure ground

1
Le Corbusiers proposal for central Paris

2 3
16 Ilots Insalubre, Paris Crucifix tower plan
4 5

6 7

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 STOP CITY

Pier Vittorio Aureli

2007

Jospeh Treherne
STOP CITY, 1 project in a publication of 11, titled DOGMA, presents a new way of structuring
the city in our current context of ever sprawling cities and mundane developments. Aureli calls
this continuous homogeneous development without form urbanisation to distinguish from 19th
century city-building, which still had a clear radial structure, even if it no longer had a wall. The
project was complete in 2007 and was led by the Brussels based architect Pier Vittorio Aureli.

The project comprises 8 generic blocks, each measuring 500x500x25m, evenly arranged around
a 3.5km square, containing forest/wilderness within and agricultural land without. The blocks are
void of intended character and are drawn as such, they comprise of 125 levels of concrete slabs
supported on columns - one can recognise Le Corbusiers domino in the free plan - any random
assortment of dwellings or accommodations can be constructed and placed on these slabs turning
each block into its own city, or a city within a city as Aureli puts it. The nature of these blocks
allow for any number of permutations as to what goes next to what and what may be.

As Aureli writes about STOP CITY he is explicit in having the project understood as using a
non-specific, non-figurative language, other choice words are: ubiquitous, genericness and
uprootedness. Regarding form, Aureli very much wanted to get away from form making in the
city, and therefore adopted the simplest of shapes the square.

54|55
All of our projects start from the figure of a square. For us it is dogma in the sense that we do not
even discuss the why. We simply use it and thereby skip the humiliating moment for architects when
they have to desperately search for some interesting form. (Aureli, 2013)

STOP CITY can be seen as making poignant that which Archizoom had tried to before with
NO-STOP CITY. As Aureli states: Stop City polemically appropriates Archizooms model of
homogeneous urbanisation No-Stop City (1968-72) at precisely the moment when the premise
of their project no longer [seemed] a utopian vision but rather an acute and sarcastic analysis of the
reality in which we live now. (ibid)

That which makes STOP CITY and not NO-STOP CITY of greater poignancy for the city now is
that STOP CITY separates urbanisation from void space, [positioning] itself as an absolute limit.
(ibid)

Aureli, P, V., 2013. Dogma; 11 Projects. London: AA Publications.

typologies of enclosure

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500 x 500 plan location

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DIAGRAMS

1. dialogue
2. context
3. the other
4. centres + edges
5. geometry
6. infrastructure
7. figure ground

1
Aureli - theoretical project A SIMPLE HEART located in Dsseldorf

2 3
Global Archizoom - theoretical project No-Stop City
4 5

6 7

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KOOLHAAS
Exodus or the voluntary prisoners of architecture
Rem Koolhaas 1972

Berlin: A Green Archipelago

O.M. Ungers, Rem Koolhaas et al 1977

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Exodus or the voluntary prisoners of architecture

Rem Koolhaas
1972

Georgette McKinlay
1972: Rem Koolhaas, and Elia Zenghelis, with Madelon Vriesendorp, and Zoe Zenghelis

Once, a city was divided in two parts. One part became the Good Half, the other part the Bad Half.
The inhabitants of the Bad Half began to flock to the good part of the divided city, rapidly swelling
into an urban exodus.
Koolhaas

Exodus was conceived as Koolhaas 5th year thesis at the Architecture Association in London
and later developed with his tutor Elia Zenghelis and illustrators Zoe Zhenghelis and Madelon
Vriesendorp, the four of whom soon after founded OMA. In the summer before his final year
Koolhaas travelled to Berlin to document the Wall and was entranced by its heartbreakingly
beautiful nature: a psychological and symbolical masterpiece, which despite its absence of
programme had provoked a continuous narrative of events, behaviours and effects.

The concept of exodus alludes to Cold War West Berlin, in which people voluntarily sought refuge
in a restricted enclave surrounded by a forbidding wall: a metropolis-scaled prison. Exodus can be
read either as a real or fictional scenario for the contemporary metropolis. Imposing an idea inspired
in part by the Berlin Wall, onto the urban fabric of London, Exodus, as a linear walled city is driven
by the themes of a new urban culture of architectural innovation, social organisation and political
rebellion. The resulting void of exodus can be seen as a place latent with programmatic potential;
a domain of unlimited opportunity. As Koolhaas states, Where there is nothing, everything is
possible, where there is architecture, nothing (else) is possible. Absence is stronger than presence.

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Enclosed within the wall is a highly compartmentalised series of scenarios; autonomous squares
suggesting inversions of typological city situations, a narrative reel of urban confinement. These
scenes portray a mirror-image of contemporary architecture, described by Koolhaas as a force
as intense and devastating but in the service of positive intentions. Within Koolhaas plan is a
double logic of utopian dreams and a critique on the many shortcomings of the contemporary
metropolis. Individuals become guardians of their own imprisonment in a series of compounds
where perfection would be assured.

This project is filled with oxymorons such as hospitals that do not cure, private areas under
surveillance, nocturnal suns and object-less museums. It questions: through what system of
exclusion, by eliminating whom, by creating what division, through what game of negation and
rejection, can a society begin to function?

Koolhaas, R. and Mau, B. (1995) SMLXL. New York: Monacelli Press

typologies of enclosure

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500 x 500 plan location

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DIAGRAMS

1. dialogue
2. context
3. the other
4. centres + edges
5. geometry
6. infrastructure
7. figure ground

1
The idea of Exodus alludes to Cold War West Berlin.

2 3
Exodus is an island situated in the sea that is Londons built fabric. Inmates, conscious of their confinement, flee to this artificial paradise
from their private urban realm.
4 5

6 7

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 Berlin: A Green Archipelago

O. M. Ungers, Rem Koolhaas et al.

1977

John Melling
In September 1977, when Berlin - A Green Archipelago was published, large areas of post-war
Berlin were still in ruins. The Green Archipelago imagines a Berlin of concentrated islands of
development within a sea of parkland and forest. It remains a reference point for managing cities
whose populations are shrinking.

Having spent his childhood in Indonesia, Koolhaas drew comparisons between the archipelago of
Indonesia and the multitude of isolated communities within the city of Berlin. Berlins identity and
urban quality lay in its differences and the variety that manifests in its historic quarters. A Green
Archipelago aims to define Berlins urban make-up less through the standardisation or monopoly
of ideas, than through formulating growth based on connections of existing fragments, and an
understanding that variety was necessary to densify & invigorate the city from its post-war slumber.

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The 1970s witnessed the publication of a large body of manifesto-like theoretical texts on cities,
including Learning from Las Vegas (1972), Chicago a la Carte: The City as an Energy System
(1970), and Los Angeles: The Architecture of Four Ecologies (1971), each of which was based on
the study of a significant city. Berlin A Green Archipelago was first presented by Rem Koolhaas,
in the summer of 1977, to his former tutor Matthias Oswald Ungers. Alongside Koolhaas, Peter
Riemann, Hans Kollhoff & Arthur Ovaska are credited with contributing to the manifesto, which
Sebastien Marot deems comparable to, if less well known than, the seminal texts Collage City
(1978) and Delirious New York (1978). The French architect Le Corbusier was a visual influence
on the project. His redrawing of Ligorios Antiquae Urbis Imago displayed Rome as a series of
simplified geometric forms. Likewise, A Green Archipelago proposed to complete the urban fabric
by developing discrete enclaves or islands.
Leonidovs Magnitogorsk Housing Proposal

typologies of enclosure

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500 x 500 plan location

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DIAGRAMS

1. dialogue
2. context Rem Koolhaas
3. the other COLLAGE CITY Delirious New York
4. centres + edges
5. geometry
6. infrastructure
7. figure ground

Colin Rowe and Fred Koetter

1
Comparable Texts

2 3
Ligorios Antique Urbis Romae & Le Corbusiers Re-drawing Indonesia
4 5

6 7

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ABSTRACT
Plan of Ideal City of Sforzinda
Antonio Averlino c1460

Instant City
Archigram 1969

The Manhattan Transcripts

Bernard Tschumi1977

80|81
Plan of Ideal City of Sforzinda

Antonio Averlino [Filarete]

c1460

Ross Aitken
Filaretes Sforzinda, although unbuilt, was a vision of a utopian city and an evolution of the
traditional medieval city, in which zoning and architecture reflected a clear social and political
hierarchy. The ideas were developed from Vitruvius Town Plan, in which he uses an octagonal
shape with roads radiating out from the centre. Sforzinda was designed at a time when there was a
perceived need for a central power, but also when there was fear that Rome, rather than individual
rulers (such as the Sforza family), would become the ruling power in Italy.

The plan for Sforzinda is created by the layering of two squares, one orientated 45 degrees to the
other, to form an eight pointed star. This idea reflected the Pythagoreans theories that true realities
lie in the geometrical shapes such as, squares, circles and triangles. Using a circular moat around
the walls and a circular road internally enhances the geometrical forms, while the combination
of squares and radiating roads creates a series of triangles within the plan. Every second road
would have canals running alongside them, as the idea of the city was trade, and this allowed the
movement of goods from the outside to the central district. The inner parts of the star shape is
where the access to the city is, with eight gates leading directly to the heart of the plan.

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The plan emulates the Platonic idea that suggests there are three aspects of society that need to
work harmoniously together for the city to work: the authority that creates the rules and laws, the
soldiers that enforce them and the producers who provide goods for the city. If we break Filaretes
plan into sections, we can see that this idea has been implemented in the overall scheme. The centre
of the plan is where the seats of power are located, the outer walls are for the protection of the city,
and everything else is for the production of goods. Working from descriptions of the centre we can
also see this Platonic view in the arrangement of the three interconnecting piazzas. The central
piazza (authority) contains the two main powers, the Ducal Palace and the Cathedral. To the north
of this piazza is the merchants piazza (soldier), containing buildings such as the town hall, law
courts and prison. To the south of the main piazza is the market piazza (producers), in this area are
buildings such as the inns, taverns and public baths.
typologies of enclosure

84|85
500 x 500 plan location

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DIAGRAMS

1. dialogue
2. context
3. the other
4. centres + edges
5. geometry
6. infrastructure
7. figure ground

1
Vitruviuss Town Plan

2 3
Filaretes location plan drawing Italy confined by the walls with Rome at the centre
4 5

6 7

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 Instant City

Archigram
1969

Anastasija Lukjanenko
The city is nomadic, the city is image, the city is event. With its mobile cranes, robots and airships
it becomes a global network of immediate and ephemeral information: in an instant city, new
spaces of interaction and communications slot into the existing city and transform it.

Instant City (IC) was designed by Peter Cook and the avant-garde architecture group Archigram.
The Twentieth century was a time of rapid urbanisation, and IC was proposed as a response to
the nature of the metropolis. Drawing on contemporary magazines, ephemera, science fiction and
comics, Archigram brought the aesthetic of advertising and pop culture to architecture and urban
thinking. People living in suburbs or bedroom towns tended to be isolated from the metropolis. The
main idea driving IC was to offer inhabitants a taste of a city life. IC was to bring the entertainment,
cultural and educational resources of the metropolis to the suburbs, which could be operated under
any weather conditions. Using vehicles including airships and balloons, the temporary elements
could be installed anywhere. The likely components were audio-visual display and projection
systems, television, trailered units, pneumatic and lightweight structures and entertainments
facilities, exhibits, gantries and electric lights.

Instant City was designed to respond to the changing needs and desires of individuals. IC proposed
a radical architecture whose program always changed, comprising temporary structures and
industrial forms that could be rapidly erected on a site according to local characteristics. Not all
the components were to be used in all cities, therefore a group of researchers was engaged to
investigate the needs of inhabitants prior to the IC visit.

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There are two types of IC:

1. The IC which comes to the bedroom town and revives it, using the existing buildings. Some of
the components are provided by the town, some are transported into it;

2. The IC which can be installed in a field for a short period of time using only the IC components.
The intention was that Instant City would move from town to town, leaving in its wake an IT and
entertainment network that, after a number of years, would link all the cities and towns of the UK.
This futuristic idea was proposed in 1969, some 30 years before this network would become a
technological reality. It anticipated related ideas in game theory, cybernetics, and education.
Game theory, cybernetics and education on the move

Instant City is related to projects like The Fun Palace and the Potteries Thinkbelt by Cedric Price.
The Fun Palace was designed using the sciences of cybernetics, information technology and
game theory. The Fun Palace was to be the university of the streets, where people could learn
languages, use computers, cook, watch movies, or observe passers-by. Like IC, the Fun Palace had
to be adaptable to a fluid program. The Potteries Thinkbelt design involved mobile educational
studios on the disused Midlands railway lines.

In contrast to modern architecture with its strict planning, both Price and Cook offer the concept
of non-plan. The projects imply that cultural values are not inherent in a place, such as a building,
a museum or an archive. Because culture is inconstant and values change, the surroundings should
be amenable to modifications.
INSTANT CITY

IC
IS
RM A

INF NOW
T ION

M US I
HERE
C
DO
ME

typologies of enclosure

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 SCHOOL
UNIT SCHOOL
UNIT

ROBOT

SE
LIGHTNET

QU
PLAYGROUND

EN
DANCING ETC ELECTRONIC

CE
CABARET

DI
SEMINAR TENT

NF
RESTAURANT

RM O
AT
IO
N
ROBOT SCHOOL UNIT
OPEN EXHIBITION AREAS

HOLOGRAPHIC CONTROL
MAINTENANCE

STUDY/THINK/INFO PLAY AUTO SHOP

CENTRE

ROBOTPIT

NIGHTCLUB
PROGRAM MESH SERV

EATING

NIGHT SOUND RESPONSE TENT

SHOWSTAGE
SHOW CAPSULE

INSTANT CITY PROMENADE

HL SCREEN

NIGHT LEVEL SCREEN

BALOON TOWER SHOWRING

ELECTRICAL SIGN TAIL

TAILORED OFFICE/HOUSE

PREVAILING WIND

CAR PARKING
500 x 500 plan location

94|95
DIAGRAMS

1. dialogue
2. context
3. the other
4. centres + edges
5. geometry
6. infrastructure
7. figure ground

* blank square indicates N/A

1
Cedric Price: Pottery Thinkbelt

2 3
Global Typical sleeping town
4 5

6 7

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The Manhattan Transcripts

Bernard Tschumi
1977

Charli Thomson
The name, Manhattan Transcripts is indicative of Bernard Tschumis speculative investigation
of Manhattan, illustrating ideas concerning dialogue and narrative development. In this theatrical
narrative, Tschumi portrays a sequence of frames which combine the object, the event and
human movement to complete the architectural experience of the city. Tschumi suggests that this
experience is located at the intersection of logic and pain, rationality and anguish, and concept and
pleasure; he presents a matrix of movement through the city, challenging typical boundaries of
architectural depiction.

He suggests that spaces and forms are carved from movement in a frame by frame sequence that
is analogous to the grid structure of Manhattan as if architecture were a malleable substance
formed by dancing, skating, acrobatics etc. Tschumi captures these movements shot by shot
and allows the final meaning of such shots to be determined by its context where the blocks of
Manhattan project a frame by frame series. Tschumi also portrays the way that pleasure is captured
from architecture: spatial and conceptual paradoxes combine in a delight that breaks down the
conventional architectural language of form and representation.

By avoiding typical architectural representation - plan, section and axonometric the Manhattan
Transcripts attempt to rearrange the segments of perceived reality into the three concepts of the
object, the event and the movement. They are analogous to the actors, stage set, and choreography
of a theatre production, which foretell the life and vibrant activity of the city.

98|99
Tschumi juxtaposes the three elements in specific narrative depictions; with the intent of signifying
a disjunction between use, form and social value within mans everyday activity. Human movement
is the connecting factor between components of the matrix. This interpretation of the modern city
addresses unexpected confrontations of human existence; for example, the documentation of a
murder and the aftermath of tracking down the murderer. Within his breakdown of the street
sequence, a route through 42nd Street is illustrated where an individual embarks on a route through
each block - each block offering its own internal world becoming part of the street projecting a
connection between the movement, the visualised space and turning points of the route.

This depiction of the city is analogous to film production where the buildings constitute the
image track whilst the pedestrian routes are reminiscent of the productions soundtrack. His
work emphasises disjunction between elements of the matrix, allowing one to interpret movement
through Manhattan, with the rigid system of blocks acting as a series of dramatic frames. I have
selected to represent the intersection of West 42nd Street and Broadway which is also representative
of the border or shift between north and south sectors of New York. This crossing point between
West 41st and 42nd St portrays a differentiation between crime ridden and prosperous segments
of the city where Tschumi represents a spatial sequence through the blocks; exploring, probing
and carving out the inner hidden surfaces and secret spaces of this rational gridded outer world,
often approaching the darker side of human movement the prison and the dark alley of the more
informal separation of the city.
typologies of enclosure

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4 2 ND S T R E E T
500 x 500 plan location

102|103
DIAGRAMS

1. dialogue
2. context
3. the other
4. centres + edges
5. geometry
6. infrastructure
7. figure ground

1
Narrative: Rem Koolhaas Delirious New York 1978.

2 3
Manhattan, New York The figure represents the various adaptations of human movement
carving space from the city block, creating a series of narratives/
movements which are suggested to be the basis of an architectural
experience.
4 5

6 7

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Thanks are due to the Guildry Geddes Institute for Urban Research who have
consistently recognised the work undertaken by students at the University of Dundee
and who have also facilitated the publication of this research.

We must further note our appreciation to Dr Lorens Holm and Dr Cameron McEwan,
whose guidance throughout this process has been invaluable.

Finally, we would like to recognise the Print Unit at the University of Dundee for the
final publication of this document.

Rooms + Cities Student Members

Dundee, November 2014

106|107
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