Book Reviews

The landscape’s continuity makes it a most efficient means for shaping the cityscape. Contrary to architecture/planning periodical historical approach, it is argued that the urban landscape’s dynamic requires a fresh outlook in order to portray its time–space linear structure. The paper examines the city of Haifa in transition from colonial to the nation‐building era through the landscape production mechanism that this article calls erascape. The investigation shows how this mechanism arises from political agenda to become a powerful agent in constructing Haifa’s socio‐cultural relations. Examining the remaking of Haifa Old City enables one to understand landscape production strategies as interplay between professionals (architects and planners), administrators and politicians operating in the transformative making of colonial and national cityscapes. Landscape production, as embedded through design knowledge and planning procedures, is examined in maps, drawings, diagrams and sketches, in official and private correspondence, in laws and regulations, and as it appears in historical photographs and exists in today’s spatial experience of the city.     

On His Majesty's Service: Bangkok's architects between autonomy and heteronomy

This paper takes the example of ‘Siam’, the modern city centre of Bangkok, to analyse how architects cope with traditional power structures, torn as they are between the autonomy ascribed to their profession by architectural discourse and the practical heteronomy of their work. Most of the land around ‘Siam’ is owned by Thailand's Royal Family and the monarchy's investment arm. Hence, local and international architects had to develop the prestigious shopping arcades and hotels that cluster along ‘Siam's’ main road Rama I in the interest of a powerful client: the monarchy and its conservative guardians. Kingship has retained a hegemonic position in Thai politics and society, and is protected against criticism by harsh anti-defamation laws. Architects have to deal with this traditional-authoritarian power apparatus, thereby risking abandoning their creative freedom completely. Based on interviews with professionals from France, Thailand and Singapore the paper analyses how the external forces architects encounter in Bangkok impact on their work. Especially in the context of non-European societies the question arises anew whether the autonomy ascribed to architects is nothing more than a mere chimera.     

Amnesty for the city. The Hoogpoort design for the Carrefour de l'Europe in Brussels (1983)

In 1983, four young architects from Belgium and the Netherlands (Stéphane Beel, Xaveer De Geyter, Arjan Karssenberg, Willem Jan Neutelings) participated together in a design competition for the Carrefour de l'Europe, situated at the heart of Brussels. In this article, their proposal is interpreted, critically examined and considered in a wider historical and theoretical context. In Team Hoogpoort's project, the Brussels crossroads was left open and unhindered by architecture, while a few high-rise buildings reinforced the metropolitan potential of the city. The design is an early example of the acceptance of the conditions of the late-modern city, or at least of a reinforcement of certain aspects: such as mobility, congestion, commerce and leisure. The post-war commercial and bureaucratic development of the city centre was countered not by means of a conservative design proposal, but by a provocative and conceptual celebration of metropolitan activities.

This approach to the development of the historical city differed strongly from previous designs for the site. It was, however, concurrent with international convictions (for example, those of Koolhaas, Venturi and Ortner). As such, the project was immediately historicised, by some critics and historians, to mark the birth of a new architectural culture in Belgium. Recent projects for the Carrefour start from an alternative approach, based on different conceptions of the role of architecture in an urban environment, and on the necessity of a political approach towards the city.     

Sanitizing Jakarta: decolonizing planning and kampung imaginary

ABSTRACT

This article offers a critical view of the water and sanitation sector within the broader trajectory of Jakarta’s spatial development and planning. Its territorial focus is on kampungs and it traces their historical journey from the periphery of the colonial city – Batavia and its modern planning domain – to the centre of the post-independence planning regime. ‘Kampung’ is an indigenous term for rural-agricultural settlements. In the colonial period, it was used to label non-European and non-Chinese settlements in and around the city. Colonial modernity created certain stigmatizations: kampungs came to be seen as undisciplined and insanitary communities, sources of insurgency and threats to public health. But the kampung realm was also (re)produced through practices of segregation within the colonial planning system. The imaginaries of colonial modernity linger on within today’s planning practices, resulting in a persistent failure to improve the environmental health of kampungs and the city as a whole. Postcolonial kampungs remain as a cosmopolitan enclave open to different cultures and socio-political contestations. The article argues that, given the kampung’s resilience in varying socio-ecological conditions, urban kampungs should be seen not as a problem, but as an opportunity for new planning approaches.     

Estonian urbanism 1935–1955: the Soviet-era implementation of pre-war ambitions

Estonian 1940s–1950s town planning practices show that Stalinist principles were in line with those of Estonian architects during the 1930s pre-war, independence period. However, between 1944 and 1955, within the context of the Soviet regime’s occupation, urban planning was faced with rigid ideological constraints. After the Second World War, Estonian architects were forced to abandon projects in historical city centres, which focused on maintaining local natural conditions and cultural heritage, as well as using local materials. Some existing town centres, such as in Tallinn, Narva, and Pärnu, were reconstructed after suffering damage in the war, as well as for ideological reasons. Yet, during this time period, most efforts were directed towards building new industrial towns in East Estonia that exemplified a Stalinist utopia; this also presented the Soviet regime with an opportunity to exploit local mineral resources.     

哲匠之路──近代中国建筑师的先驱者孙支厦研究

孙支厦是最早的近代中国建筑师,他所代表的土木工程专业出身的建筑师至今仍在中国的建筑业中发挥重要作用。他又是近代中国建筑师产生过程中的非主流的过渡性人物,在他之后才出现近代意义上的、建筑学专业出身的建筑师,但这井不影响他的历史地位。     

‘History is not the Past but Another Mightier Presence’: the founding of the institute for the History and Theory of Architecture (gta) at the Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule (ETH) Zurich and its effects on Swiss Architecture

The Institute for the History and Theory of Architecture (gta) was founded in 1967 explicitly to facilitate exchange between the architects and the historians of architecture teaching in the Faculty of Architecture at Zurich's famous Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule (ETH). The founding members, Adolf Max Vogt, Paul Hofer, Bernhard Hoesli and others, encouraged a younger generation of architects to deepen and widen their knowledge of the history of architecture by working in the institute as research assistants and often writing doctoral dissertations. But it was very much due to the catalyst of the guest professor Aldo Rossi that the link between architecture and the history of architecture seriously influenced design strategy. Two of the many research collaborators at the gta who proved to be particularly important for their fellow students were Bruno Reichlin and Martin Steinmann. With the help of history they developed a ‘recherché patiente’ into the semiology of building and took this as a starting point for the design process, which influenced a whole generation of young architects to develop what became the new Swiss architecture so lauded today.     

Hitler's ‘Generalsiedlungsplanung Ost’: a case only for Poland? A forgotten dimension of national-socialist spatial and town planning in the former Czechoslovakia

Adolf Hitler constructed his Nazi ideology as a universal worldview aimed at the German Reich's eastward expansion; the ‘Generalsiedlungsplanung Ost’ programme was officially launched in 1940. The forcible establishment of multiple administrative units in 1938/1939 created the conditions for an architecture that would serve the totalitarian regime. Thus began an enormous planning process and the targeted institutionalization of urban development and spatial planning and research. This programme included not only German government agencies and research institutions specifically established or reorganized for this purpose, but increasingly also involved communal politics and independent or government architects. The author pursues the thesis that this Germanization concept, formulated within the framework of the ‘Generalsiedlungspläne Ost’, allowed the relevant agencies to increase their influence or eliminate any opponents. From this basis, the study identifies the role that GBI (Generalbauinspektor) for Berlin Albert Speer, his architects, and local architects played in the planning process in Czechoslovakia and Poland, and analyses the architectural evidence of the Nazi rulers’ Germanization and colonization policies. The initial comparison of the urban planning models applied in ‘Großreich Deutschland’ with those in the annexed regions in today's Poland and Czech Republic offers relevant arguments related to this far-reaching sociological and architecture–historical topic.     

Extension planning and the historic city: civic design strategies in the 1908–9 Copenhagen international competition

In shedding light on the 1908–9 competition for Greater Copenhagen this article examines the contest as an instrument for the accumulation and transmission of planning know‐how, ideas and innovations in relation to the development of town planning theory and practice in the Nordic Countries. Plans are considered as both technical and cultural graphics marks reflecting alternative and possibly contradictory images of the greater city or city of the future. The discussion focuses on the relationship between urban design's twin polarities: urban transformation and creation on the one hand; concern for conservation and urban continuity on the other. After considering the competition's international dimension, the article explores the civic art strand of design in northern Europe before 1914 and the idea of the historic city by investigating the conservation movement that flourished in Copenhagen when there were rapid changes in the physical fabric. The article, based on archive materials, analyses of awarded and non‐awarded entries alike, illustrates how architects, engineers and surveyors combined their design of the city's extensions with conservation schemes for both peripheries and centre. It is suggested that, at a time when Nordic municipal authorities were pressing for comprehensive town planning, planners strove to provide ways of protecting the existing built environment. This involved not only safeguarding an emerging ‘historic city’ in contrast to the new extensions, but also proposals for maintaining urban continuity in the peripheries.     

New Polish architecture - seeking to establish order?

Poland is a ‘shifting country’. In the postwar era it shifted geographically - 300 kilometres (186 miles) to the west - and since 1989 it has been undergoing enormous political and economic transformations. It is one of the leading ex-Soviet bloc economies. Such huge changes, however, come at a price. The combined expiration of a comprehensive planning system and excessive bureaucracy provides difficult and uncertain conditions for architects. Marta A Urbanska explains how a generation of young, enterprising Polish architects have equipped themselves to deal with this ‘quicksand-like situation’ by becoming great improvisers and jacks of all trades, as savvy about development, planning and finance as they are about design. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The elusive polemics of theory and practice: Giovanni Astengo,Giorgio Rigotti and the post-war debate over the plan for Turin

In 1944 Turin's city officials announced a competition for a new General Plan that began a long debate between architects and planners. Prior to and following the competition, intense political and professional polemics emerged: among others, it involved Giorgio Rigotti, a locally renowned planner, and Giovanni Astengo, a key protagonist in Italian post-war town planning. Sharing a common cultural and professional background, Astengo and Rigotti (the author of the plan subsequently adopted by the city) seemed only to differ in their political affiliations and ideological beliefs. Specifically, the difference between the two positions was the degree to which each emphasized the question of implementation. In fact, the polemics that preceded the adoption of the plan (1956-59) may be considered emblematic of one of the most contentious issues in planning: the problematic relationship between theory and practice.     

How participatory processes impact children and contribute to planning: a case study of neighborhood design from Boulder,Colorado, USA

Young people have much to offer urban planning, yet are not often included in such processes. A unique partnership in Boulder, Colorado, provides a venue for young people’s participation in city planning. Boulder is in many ways a learning laboratory with progressive ideals and sustainability thinking. As the city began planning for its Comprehensive Housing Strategy, tensions about the future of density within the city emerged. Participatory planning can have significant impacts on children and can also contribute new ideas to planning processes. In this study, young people demonstrated attitudinal changes toward government, increased recognition of diverse needs within a city, and integration of social and environmental sustainability into their recommendations for neighborhood planning.     

‘Unfolding from within’: modern architecture and the dream of organic totality

With the proclamation of the Turkish Republic, in October, 1923, Ankara became the laboratory and showcase of the nation-building project led by Mustafa Kemal Atatürk. A number of European architects, planners and artists were involved in the transformation of this small Anatolian town into the political and symbolic centre of the ‘New Turkey’: as the Republic was also known. At the same time, European observers were drawn to witness a place that was described as ‘the most extraordinary capital in the world’. At a crucial juncture, in which the geopolitical space of the Orient was radically reconfigured, Ankara provided an unexpected terrain of cross-cultural encounters between East and West. This essay explores the historical traces of these encounters that emerge from an uncharted body of sources, ranging from early-1920s' travel writings to the first comprehensive accounts of the new capital published in the mid-1930s. A tropological analysis of this rich and diverse literature shows that Ankara destabilised the discursive frame through which the West had hitherto constructed the Orient as its irreducible ‘other’. The accounts of this modernist experiment reasserted the hegemony of western culture while revealing, in the process, its inner fractures and contradictions.     

Critical nostalgia: Kuwait urban modernity and Alison and Peter Smithson's Kuwait Urban Study and Mat-Building

In September, 1970, Peter Smithson presented the ‘Kuwait Urban Study and Mat-Building' proposal to the Crown Prince of Kuwait. The meeting took place two decades after Kuwait's 1952 Master Plan that had transformed the historical mixed-use centre into a central business district. The new urban landscape, as some suggested, lacked the character and coherence that the old city had once possessed. At the same time, the Smithsons’ dissatisfaction with post-war British reality inspired a shift in their understanding of the city and the development of ideas of ‘re-identification’ and ‘association’. This paper explores the cultural traces of this encounter and ties these narratives together through the more recent concept of ‘critical nostalgia’. It draws conclusions from the parallel narratives of loss that were expressed about the ‘modern’ environment in mid-1960s Kuwait and those that were recorded in the ‘Englishness’ of the Smithsons’ writings. These debates about the role that ‘tradition’ would play in the contemporary city set the context of this cultural intersection that, in turn, informed the making of the Kuwait Urban Study.     

Planning doctrine as an element in planning history: the case of Cardiff

This paper sets out to illustrate the value of the notion of planning doctrine in urban planning history. Planning doctrine is a perspective within which planning issues are framed, and possibilities and solutions emerge; it includes ideas about appropriate spatial structure as well as appropriate mechanisms (public/private/and so on) for achieving change. The paper uses the idea of planning doctrine in discussing key strands in the history of planning in Cardiff, south Wales since the early twentieth century. It argues that the development of a planning doctrine provides a key to the pattern of Cardiff’s planning and connects the city’s planning to a broader national and regional context. Since the mid‐1950s a planning doctrine has clearly shaped the plans for the city. Moreover, doctrine has been nurtured, sustained and modified (but not renounced) as economic and political circumstances change because it has a valuable function in sustaining a broad socio‐political consensus in support of the main priorities and directions in the city’s planning.     

Master plans and urban change: the case of Sheffield city centre

This paper critically examines the character, development and implementation of master plans as vehicles of urban change. The case of Sheffield’s city centre master planning is used to analyze how the city was reimagined from the early 1990s to the mid-2010s, and how the economic, cultural, social and political dimensions of urban regeneration were addressed. The paper argues that, in comparison to the post-war, welfare-state master plans, the master plans of the neoliberal period had a narrower spatial and thematic focus, linking place qualities to economic considerations, to be delivered through real estate investment. As such, social considerations were marginalized and, when a major economic crisis occurred, the new generation master plans’ lack of flexibility and vulnerability to economic fluctuations became apparent, much the same as their predecessors. This shows how master plans can be effective instruments for mobilizing investment and coordinating development around a selective spatial vision in periods of economic growth, but their utility is severely curtailed in economic downturns, when their coordinative potential is much diminished. They run the risk of becoming top-down technical devices to coordinate speculative real estate investment, without durable connections to the local economic and social capacities and needs.     

Dabaodao: the planning,development, and transformation of a Chinese (German) neighbourhood

Dabaodao is an old city district located in the heart of the historical centre of Qingdao (north-eastern China). It was created over 100 years ago as a segregated ‘Chinese town’ under German colonial rule. This article embarks upon a journey into the past, reviewing the continuity and change of Dabaodao and its courtyard-style houses known as Liyuan over last century of socio-political turmoil. It discusses how they have evolved and transformed under different city administrations, beginning from the early colonial years, to the Republican era, the Maoist years, all the way into the reform period. Specifically, the article illustrates how city-planning, laws, and regulations as well as a general urban development ideology during one time period conditioned and shaped those of following periods, eventually turning Dabaodao into what it is today: a dilapidated and poor inner-city neighbourhood with an uncertain future whose historical significance and preservation value remains highly contested and under debate. This article reviews colonial city planning and its impacts in Qingdao, an under-represented city in the English language literature on colonial China; moreover, the article links Dabaodao’s diverse history to current contestations over urban renewal, hereby engaging the complex issue of using the past in the present.     

Differences between young architects' and non-architects' aesthetic evaluation of buildings

Previous studies showed significant differences between expert architects and laypeople in aesthetic evaluations of buildings. However, studies exploring the aesthetic preferences of architecture students are lacking. The present study focused on a population of students and young architects to explore the aesthetic opinion shift within architectural careers. This study was intended to be a conceptual replication of the study of Brown and Gifford (2001) in a Central European context. A total of 109 participants (21–28 years old) evaluated 40 randomized pictures of houses to detect whether non-architecture undergraduates and fresh graduates of architecture would express different aesthetic preferences compared with their peers from the general population. The study also examined whether laypersons can predict the preferences of architects, and vice versa. Results show a trend that is contrary to the original research, that is, young architects and laypeople did not significantly differ in their aesthetic evaluations of the given stimuli. Analyses revealed high prediction ability in young architects and their non-architect peers. Moreover, the existing professional experience of young architects had no influence on the accuracy of their estimations. Findings suggest that the professional shift in architects’ expertise is obscured at an early career stage, as revealed in their aesthetic preferences.     

Names,norms and forms: French and indigenous toponyms in early colonial Dakar,Senegal

Research on street naming systems in general and on colonial street names in particular is not abundant. This article examines the French colonial policy regarding street names in Dakar, as well as the accompanying colonial terminology that was applied in Dakar’s quarters. With occasional references to the pre‐colonial and the post‐colonial periods, the main focus of this article is on street names in early colonial Dakar, as they were designated by the preliminary master plan of Pinet‐Laprade in the 1860s. While residential segregation was never a stated policy on the part of the colonial authorities there, who formally fostered assimilation, it will be shown that toponyms had a key role in the alienation of the indigenous population in the city centre. As Dakar’s city centre was considered ‘European’ and a chief lieu de colonisation in West Africa, its colonial urban toponyms reflected an official memory that excluded African histories and identities. Using original historical evidence, alternative naming systems of reference to certain urban areas on the part of the Dakarois will be discussed – systems that sometimes challenged and sometimes supplemented their French counterparts.